Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “John didn’t think you were worth tracking. Now, John’s dead. You damn black heathens!”

  A laugh, deep and hollow, froze Iyapo’s blood. He struggled fiercely craning his neck to see an afiti.

  The afiti, taller than Iyapo, had a nose more vulture than human and a crocodilian grin. He wrapped his muscular body in a black hyena hide.

  “You damn – you led us into a trap!”

  The afiti turned his head to the white man and approached him until their faces were within a hair’s breath. “Address me as ‘Lumo, afiti to the Most Exalted’.”

  “What the hell are you?” William’s voice now wavered.

  “Afiti!” Iyapo shouted.

  “‘Witch’, in the white man’s language.”

  At that, William’s muscles went slack. “That’s it? A witch doctor? Hah! When I get back to the ship, I’ll send more men to hunt you down and kill you for killing John.”

  Lumo smiled. “Greed led you to my city. This was your undoing.”

  William spat in Lumo’s face.

  In the same stern tone, Lumo said, “You whites believe yourselves the supreme masters of our land. There are things of this earth you do not understand.”

  “Well, I do know that, one way or another, I’m getting out of here.”

  “Perhaps you are right. One way or another, you shall leave.”

  Lumo raised an arm, and then let it fall to his side. The drums spoke shadow talk, an ancient and strange language that provoked an involuntary shudder from Iyapo. The talking drums awakened the dead. The skies blackened with afiti on the backs of emaciated owls with membranous wings. They came from the forest; phantoms with insipid hyena laughs shambled toward the temple. Lumo approached the altar. He called for an attendant, who handed him a large, curved knife that caught the glint of firelight. He uttered strange words that Iyapo knew were older than any human language.

  Arms outstretched, Lumo cried, “Tonight, our god, the Ancient One, will grace us with his appearance!”

  Lumo carved up the body. He placed the pieces in a bowl and passed it around to the crowd. Some ate the meat raw, while others skewered their piece and roasted it over the fires near the huts.

  An afiti larger than Lumo strode through the crowd and ascended the steps, swinging an axe. He stood over the dead man and, in one swing, decapitated the corpse. The crowd cheered. Lumo lifted the severed head for all to see. Then he faced the temple with outstretched arms, chanting, calling again the name of his god. The ground quaked from the thing that came from earth’s bowels. Two glowing orbs peered from the blackened temple. Iyapo saw a flash of white, dagger teeth set in a reptilian snout. A tendril snatched the severed head and disappeared back into the temple.

  The crowd, lazy from their feast, savoured every scrap and morsel of their first meal in centuries. Then the drums sounded and afiti, beast and human, rose up to dance.

  Lumo came to Iyapo. “You are next.”

  Iyapo struggled fiercely against the ropes, despite the intensifying pain in his shoulder. William whimpered and cried. He said this was no way for a white man to die. Iyapo stared at him. And this was okay for him?

  Lumo laughed as he untied Iyapo. As soon as he was unshackled, Iyapo swung his good arm and struck Lumo across the face with his chain. Lumo staggered from the blow, touched his face and looked at his fingers wet with blood. Iyapo didn’t wait, but struck him repeatedly, keeping Lumo unbalanced until he fell beneath the altar, stunned. Frantically, Iyapo searched for a rifle and saw one of the attendants running towards him with one. The attendant cocked and fired, jerking back several paces from its recoil. No time. He had to flee.

  He ran past the slaver and then stopped. The revelers became aware of what had occurred and shouted their alarm. He hated himself for this but ….

  Another shot fired. Iyapo ducked from the whizzing bullet as he desperately untied William from the stake. With two people to catch, the afiti would have to split into two hunting parties. A slim chance but a chance, nonetheless. He wasn’t releasing the white man out of sympathy.

  William slapped Iyapo on the back. “Let’s get out of here before they roast us, too.”

  Both slaver and Iyapo ran through the throng of afiti. William grabbed a javelin and used it to cut a small swath for himself and Iyapo. Iyapo swung his chains overhead, keeping the swooping owls away from them. As soon as they entered the forest, they separated, followed no more by afiti because their god rumbled angrily in the temple. Unbound by Lumo’s words, their god arose from the temple and punished its worshipers.

  Iyapo heard strangled cries from the City of Witches. He ran deeper into the forest until the cries disappeared in the forest canopy. When he felt safe, Iyapo stopped to rest against a thick tree. He closed his eyes, listened to his own breathing, the forest sounds, and the cool breeze that tickled his sweaty skin. The lulling sounds of the forest relaxed his muscles and he slumped onto the forest floor, drifting slowly to sleep.

  He heard a gun cock. Startled, Iyapo jumped up to face a small group of white men, rifles aimed at his head. Captain William Marsh pushed through, still carrying the javelin that had saved them from the afiti.

  “This is the one,” he said to his men.

  “You ain’t never said where John was,” one man said.

  “He got stupid. A lion killed him. C’mon back to the boat!” Captain William shoved Iyapo with the javelin. The other men grabbed his chains and kicked him forward. They mumbled that they had never seen a lion in this part of Africa.

  Iyapo looked behind his shoulder. Captain Marsh walked fast, looking all around like a scared monkey. Iyapo knew, no matter what the Captain might say, that Lumo and his god would follow him and the white man to wherever they journeyed.

  Regina Allen lives in upstate New York, where she is attending college full-time in a nursing program and works at a hospital as a patient care associate. When not studying or working, she writes speculative fiction, reads everything she can get her hands on and researches the strangest theories born out of her dreams. She is currently working on a science fiction short story and a novel.

  The author speaks: Years ago, I researched American slavery and African kingdoms because I love history and was keenly interested in African mythologies and legends. The result was “City of Witches” and other short stories centered on the main character.

  AHUIZOTL

  Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas

  Furious, the sea bellows, tearing the sails of the San Cristóbal, protests with roars of foam, yells like a woman in labour, cries like an abandoned child .... Those were the words I managed to make out in the last, demented babbles of a Moorish youth who, with eyes popping out, threw himself overboard during the storm that lashed the ship taking me to meet my brother’s corpse.

  Unlike the other passengers of the San Cristóbal, I did not embark for New Spain looking for fortune, but to stand face to face with misfortune and to bid goodbye to the last family member I had left. My brother, Fernando Villaplana, sailed in the year 1511 of Our Lord, being but a teenager. He had the fancy of becoming rich, gaining fame and possessing everything that our orphanhood had denied us. I remember seeing him, with eyes ablaze and hair uncombed, when he told me this before parting, as if the wind had already started flinging him towards those unknown lands full of wonder and danger, like the ones told in the Amadís. I knew from a letter of his that he had participated in the expedition commanded by Don Diego de Velázquez to the island of Cuba and that, a few years later, together with more than five hundred men, he joined the troops of Hernán Cortés to explore other lands and reclaim them in the name of His Majesty. After this, I had no news of him until, nearly thirty years after his parting, I received a letter from a friar named ‘Juan de los Ángeles’.

  With beautiful and tight lettering, the friar told me how they had found Fernando’s corpse at the edge of the lake of Texcoco: “His skin was wet and slippery like that of a fish, but he did not squirm searching for the com
fort of water; he remained still, as if asleep. He appeared to have no bruises or signs of violence. It was only up close that we realized his eyes, teeth and nails had been torn out with much care. ‘Ahuizotl! Ahuizotl!’ cried an Indian who kept us company and, drooling like a rabid dog, refused to help us carry the deceased.”

  When I finished reading the epistle assuring me of a grave on sacred ground for my brother, I did not know if my unease sprang from the way in which events were narrated or the fact that I had read that name written by an unknown hand: ‘Elena Villaplana’. Letter by letter, the maroon ink on the paper from New Spain returned me to the moment in which Fernando, dragged by the wind, had left me at the door of the convent of the Jerónimas so he could follow his dreams by the sea. From then on, I was Ágata de la Inmaculada Concepción; nevertheless, with the devastating news crumpling between my hands and tears in my eyes, the Elena inside me yelled, “Ahuizotl! Ahuizotl!” and forced me to head towards the murky waters of the New World.

  The preparations for my departure happened in a mist, as in a dream, as though I were staring beneath the water. I remember little of what happened before I found myself kneeling next to the mast, praying and commending new souls to God during such a hard trial. It was then that the young Moor came running – drenched, he seemed black and slippery, and with his eyes so ominously open, he resembled a grotesque fish. He screamed strange words, perhaps in a strange tongue. I was only able to distinguish a few in Spanish before he threw himself overboard and disappeared amidst the foam.

  A couple of weeks later, we arrived at the port of San Juan, which is also called ‘Ulúa’, for they say that the natives of the islet where the fortress-port is located howled at the sea, “Chlúha! Chlúa!” Words that the Spaniards understood as the actual name of the place. The crew was tired. It was agreed we would spend the night in an improvised camp on the beach and, at first light, would continue towards our destination, la Villa de la Veracruz. It was a relief to rest upon firm and warm sand, so that I fell asleep almost at once. Nevertheless, my sleep was restless; I dreamt that a huge figure emerged from the sea. On the shore, little animals the size of a dog greeted it, wagging their long tails that seemed to finish upon a hand. Waves crashed with strength and brought in their waters human corpses. Some seemed like abominations between man and fish, or seemed to have been turned inside out, and their guts were showing. The little creatures devoured, with much care, the eyes, teeth and nails of the corpses dragged by the sea for the satisfaction of the monstrous figure.

  I awoke, bathed in sweat and trembling uncontrollably. I tried to commend myself to the Archangel Saint Michael, but the abominable images of the dream continued to haunt me in the darkness of moonless night. I don’t know how long I was victim of this terror, but, still drenched with fear, I noticed suddenly that not far from me there were lights dancing in the palm trees. I approached them, thinking that it was a gathering of some of the mariners and it would do me well to sit before a fire. But no sailor was there: a group of strangely dressed Indians danced around a nest of palm leaves, inside which there stood a small stone figurine, no bigger than a fist. They sang in an odd tongue, but repeated constantly “Chlúha! Chlúa! Dagoatl! Dagoatl!” and howled like dogs, their cries increasing. The sailors from the San Cristóbal were awakened by the howling and, enraged, frightened them off by force. Soon, morning broke and I saw something shining amidst the sand removed by the dance of the Indians. It was a small stone figurine of a black-and-bright crystal, the obsidian stone they employ in the realm of the Indies to make knives. It represented the silhouette of a man with huge eyes and tiny, pointy ears. The hands, adhered to the body, resembled those of a frog and it might have had a tail that had broken off. I could not stop thinking about Fernando as I looked into the wide, large eyes of the figurine, so I took it with me.

  The end of the trip was short and calm. We arrived at the Villa de la Veracruz at midday, thus I decided to leave immediately towards the city of México-Tenochtitlán, where, thanks to a letter from the Mother Superior, I would be received by the newly established convent of the Jerónimas of New Spain. The roads were tortuous and the mist did not allow me to see the mountains surrounding us. Sometimes, you could hear howls like the ones of the natives of the port of San Juan; the driver told us it was the coyotes from the mountain and that we should not be afraid. Nevertheless, I felt a drop of cold water stream down my side, until it reached the pocket of my habit, and it incremented the weight of the black figurine until I was slouching.

  After I finally arrived at the convent and rested, I went to visit Friar Juan de los Ángeles at the Jesuit home. He was an old man and walked with difficulty. Even so, he wanted to take me to my brother’s grave, which was far off, in the atrium of a small chapel. As we walked together, he once more related the story of the discovery of the corpse, going into detail on the missing eyes, teeth and nails. The friar’s gaze seemed to grow empty every time he spoke of the appearance of Fernando’s skin, “moist and slippery, like a fish”. I tried to speak of something else, but he seemed engrossed, as though he did not know I was there. After a little while, we arrived at a small cemetery, where I prayed in silence. I carried no flowers to place next to the wooden cross, so I took out the figurine and decided to leave it by the grave, as a gift for my brother. Friar Juan de los Ángeles grew pale when he saw it, made the sign of the cross several times and began to scream, “The Ahuizotl! Have respect for the dead and take away from this sacred place the demon that murdered your brother. You, servant of the aquatic Satan, do not deserve to wear the habit with the figure of Our Lord!”

  Not knowing what to do, I rushed away, disconcerted, through the cemetery.

  Back at the convent I fell victim to feverish tremors, which kept me in bed for many days. I dreamt, over and over again, about the titanic figure emerging from the sea and on the beach, it was received with joy by the ahuizotls, who, imitating the screams of a birthing woman or the cry of an infant, devoured my brother over and over again, or made terrible necklaces of teeth and nails. One afternoon, when my fever seemed to have eased, a dark-skinned girl with black hair took me to walk by the edge of a river. The sun was sinking, revealing the intense brightness of a few stars, when the girl told me to wait, for she could hear something resembling a baby’s cry. I could not stop her. A dark, scaly hand rose from beneath the murky waters, pulled her hair and everything went black.

  Days later, they found the dead girl. A little child told me her corpse glinted, like a horrible fish at the market. I resolved then to abandon New Spain forever and with it, my brother’s corpse and the terrible dreams.

  I arrived at the port of Veracruz on a Thursday at dawn, the first rays from the sun greeting the sailors with hundreds of dead frogs and fish upon the sand. My ship was soon parting, but we managed to hear the screams from the coast; I felt a drop of cold water stream down my side, until it reached the pocket of my habit, and it incremented the weight of the black figurine until I was slouching. I held the figurine between my hands and, though I tried to pray, no words came out.

  The waves rise until they resemble a mountain in the ocean that turns dark, like the skin of the Ahuizotl. Barely illuminated by the convulsive light of the candle, the obsidian figurine seems to glint by itself and I feel it coming: black, huge, stirring the ocean with its innumerable scales, its eyes eternally open. The scent of salt and blood drifts through the air. God help us.

  Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas is a Mexican writer and a freelance copy editor. Her stories have been published in local independent magazines and small-press anthologies. When she’s not dreaming about cats or Cthulhu, she updates her lovecraftian/astronomical blog, “Desde R’lyeh ...” (fascinantemente-freak.blogspot.com), searching for scientific data about the time when the stars will be right.

  The author speaks: I decided to set the plot of “Ahuizotl” in early New Spain (a couple of decades after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire), because this period represented th
e primordial soup of the present Mexican idiosyncrasy. Aztec mythical creatures and gods, like the ahuizotl, were considered to be demons or diabolical beings by the Spaniards, so it was pretty interesting to “play” with the narrative, mixing that ancient lore with Lovecraftian Mythos and actual historical details.

  AN IDOL FOR EMIKO

  Travis Heermann

  I

  We all suspected that Emiko would give in soon. We had long prepared her “funeral” ceremony to signify her passage from this world to the other, but all these years, she had resisted.

  The fishermen sometimes reported sighting her on her veranda, looking out over the Ariake Sea, a lone, hunched figure. They saw her waist-deep in surging froth, a bulwark against the tide, even in winter, head bowed under the weight of age and ugliness and stubbornness. She would have suffered less if she had listened to us.

  Sometimes, the fishermen even claimed to see her out there, with her idiot son huddled next to her, his spindly arms and lumpen features like a pale, crumpled spider. Of course, that was impossible.

  When Taro was alive, those two had kept to themselves, secluded in that decrepit house with the portion of once-resplendent tiled roof now collapsed in disrepair, that house which had once belonged to the proud Otomo clan. Before Taro’s crimes, he would sometimes answer the door and gaze up at the visitor, all slack face and watery eyes, tongue licking absently at cracked lips. He would croak something to his mother and she would shout back from the depths of the house to send the visitor away.

  The nail that sticks up must be pounded down, as the saying goes, and ever since the village had grown prosperous, Emiko had been like a jagged splinter hiding in a freshly polished floor.

  Her grandfather came from old samurai blood, but after Tokugawa’s rise to power, much of the Otomo clan had been scattered like leaves in an autumn wind. Emiko’s grandfather had been one of those leaves. To proclaim his loyalty to the new Shogunate – and escape likely execution – he had given up his swords for the life of a nori-farmer, but he had kept the family’s ancestral property. A farmer’s livelihood had not been sufficient to maintain such a house.