by Nick Mamatas
Also by Nick Mamatas:
Novels
Move Under Ground
Under My Roof
Sensation
The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham (co-written with Brian Keene)
Love is the Law
The Last Weekend
Collections
3000 MPH in Every Direction at Once
You Might Sleep…
The Nickronomicon
As Editor
The Urban Bizarre
Realms (co-edited with Sean Wallace)
Spicy Slipstream Stories (co-edited with Jay Lake)
Realms 2 (co-edited with Sean Wallace)
Haunted Legends (co-edited with Ellen Datlow)
The Future is Japanese (co-edited with Masumi Washington)
Phantasm Japan (co-edited with Masumi Washington)
Hanzai Japan (co-edited with Masumi Washington)
I Am Providence
Nick Mamatas
Night Shade Books
an imprint of Start Publishing
Copyright © 2016 by Nick Mamatas
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing LLC, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
Night Shade Books is an imprint of Start Publishing LLC.
Visit our website at www.nightshade.start-publishing.com.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mamatas, Nick.
Title: I am providence : a novel / Nick Mamatas.
Description: New York, New York : Night Shade Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003876 | ISBN 9781597808354 (paperback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Horror. | FICTION / Occult & Supernatural. | FICTION / Suspense.
| GSAFD: Occult fiction. | Suspense fiction. | Horror fiction | Mystery fcition.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A525 I5 2016 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003876
Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-835-4
eISBN: 978-1-59780-583-4
Cover illustration by Magdalena Pqgowska
Cover design by Lesley Worrell
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
1.The Whisperer in Darkness
2.The Call of Cthulhu
3.The Outsider
4.Cool Air
5.The Thing on the Doorstep
6.The Haunter of the Dark
7.The Terrible Old Man
8.The Unnamable
9.He
10.What the Moon Brings
11.The Tomb
12.The Festival
13.From Beyond
14.The Other Gods
15.The Evil Clergyman
16.The Colour Out of Space
17.Re-Animator
For Molly Tanzer, L & O.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious, especially you. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
1. The Whisperer in Darkness
On any other weekend, my body would have been discovered more quickly. The smell alone would have tipped off a maid or some other member of Hotel Bierce staff within hours, except that The Summer Tentacular was in full swing, and the attendees of Providence’s premiere literary conference about pulp-writer, racist, and weirdo Howard Phillips Lovecraft tended to stink up a joint when they manifested en masse.
I should know. For years, I was one of them. Almost one of them anyway. My claim to fame was a single book, published by a small press. You’ve probably never heard of it, and I don’t mean that in an arch, hipsterish sort of way. My book was a literary mash-up of the sort that was popular some years ago called The Catcher in R’lyeh. Salinger’s protagonists and Lovecraft’s had a lot in common. They tended to be bookish intellectuals, and were often driven mad thanks to their encounter with the ineffable. Bananafish, Deep Ones, just squint and they’ll look alike. The authors were mirror images of one another, both recluses with cults of personality. Lovecraft, the anti-Semite, was briefly married to a Jew. Salinger, the Jew, was once married to a Nazi. Close enough to alike for me to combine via nucleic exchange, and to integrate me into the small but intense community of Lovecraftians—writers, fans, collectors, obsessives, and even the occasional religious entrepreneur looking to graft Lovecraft’s squamous and cyclopean imagery onto a vaguely Satanic nihilism.
Take that, Mom and Dad! Thanks for dragging me to church for all those years.
If I sound waspish about The Summer Tentacular, I should note that I am deceased and that someone at the convention killed me. I didn’t see what happened, but I definitely felt it, for a few frantic seconds before…well, I am still here, indeed. But not the way I was. I feel like I have just been woken up from an incomplete nap by a voice on a distant radio, but that voice on the radio is also mine.
I’ve been visited three times, the drawer I’m in opened for me to be removed and scrutinized. I don’t know what’s happening, except that I think I heard the voice of my friend Colleen Danzig, who was sharing my room, but not my bed, at The Summer Tentacular. And some people I don’t know. Police I guess, but a few sounded more familiar than that.
I am absolutely terrified. Is this what death is? Consciousness, forever, floating somewhere in the body, being able to listen until one’s ears rot away, but not see or speak or move? Is that how every dead grandma and leukemia baby in the cemetery is experiencing the world now? When a bunch of us—Colleen and Bhanushali and Ginger J, David Cob and Ms. Phantasia and another half-a-dozen people—went to Lovecraft’s grave two nights ago, was there something left of him, under our feet, listening?
Oblivion is now something I’m anxious for. Whomever it was that killed me, I’ve not been murdered enough. I pray to fade away. Perhaps I could extinguish myself, like two fingers pressing out a candle flame, but I’m still burning to know what happened. I can only imagine, try to piece together what might have happened, and hope I am visited again in the morgue before I am moved, or embalmed.
I don’t know what happened before; I don’t know what will happen next. I’m just a head, floating in the black.
I’m a fool. I thought Lovecraft might prepare me for this. If fiction is a way of inducing an organism to remember experiences it never had, than reading Lovecraft is crucial for understanding the futility of life and the screaming horror of death—while you’re still around to enjoy it, that is.
Is there a reason for a literate person to read century-old pulp fiction? For the most part, no, which is why most of it has been forgotten by all except obsessives and weirdoes. Lovecraft stands out. People only know Tarzan and Conan because of films and comic books, but Lovecraft’s creations are famously difficult to visually apprehend, despite his sometimes exacting descriptions. The Great Race’s members were immense rugose cones ten feet high, and with heads and other organs attached to foot-thick, distensible limbs spreading from the apexes…
What Lovecraft did do, better than anyone, was radically decenter the human experience from the art of fiction. Critics, or people who just don’t “get it,” complain that Lovecraft’s characters are paper-thin cyphers who faint at the slightest hint of cosmic horror lurking in the ink-black sky. Correct, but that is a thematic strength, not an auctorial weakness. We are alone in an infinite universe, or so far from anyone else out there that it hardly matters. If we were to encounter alien life-forms, we would have no more ability to communicate with them than we do with a bread mold, or a warthog, or a solar flare.
&nbs
p; They might destroy us, accidentally or from an ethic of pure malevolence.
Lovecraft didn’t stop there. Another major theme of his work is that of the outsider as the secret insider, and the insider—the literal self—becoming or degenerating into the other. Were his only issue that our brains are just large enough to realize how puny we are in the universe, he would be just another college freshman looking up at the sky and realizing, finally, that nobody will ever love him as much as his mother did, before he could express himself. Lovecraft found the otherness encoded in our own genes, creating an enemy on which it was impossible to wage war. There are Elder Gods and Great Races and Deep Ones living in deep time, and somehow we are both their pawns and their spawn. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.
Except, of course, that we won’t, as I posthumously discovered. As I am perhaps the ten billionth person to posthumously discover. We dwell in darkness, anxious and panicked and alone without the benefit of senses or a future, and for who knows how long after death. Has it been a moment? Will my brain finally stop when my body cools, or will I have to wait for my synapses to literally rot in order for this consciousness, the I addressing an empty universe, to fail?
My reconstruction of the events that led up to my murder is an academic exercise. I want neither justice nor vengeance. After all, I know what happens after we die. Those responsible, and you too, will be here soon enough.
2. The Call of Cthulhu
Colleen Danzig wasn’t exactly nervous, nor was she excited. It was a sort of Starbucks jitter that had her rehearsing what to say as she approached The Summer Tentacular’s registration table. She had half a dozen short stories published, all online, and a chapbook due out next year with a very small press. Small enough that the publisher still lived with her parents, and produced the books herself one at a time from homemade paper and crochet thread. Small enough to probably not be known to even the hardcore fans, really.
The men behind the registration desk seemed to know some of the attendees by face, and quickly dug out name badges and little plastic clips for them. Others had to wait, repeat their names, wave for attention, or simply just fume silently. It was a knot of black t-shirts and bad haircuts—ratty ponytails, the sort of bangs one usually sees on a child, and the like. Colleen had dyed her own short hair, just north of a buzzcut, green for the convention, and was feeling pretty good about it when the line shifted and she found herself at the edge of the table.
“Colleen Danzig, all-weekend member.”
The man before her just stared for a long moment, his mouth hanging open and flesh hanging from his jaw and throat like something amphibious. The Coke-bottle lenses completed the “Innsmouth Look.”
“Danzig,” he said. His voice wasn’t froggy, at least, but he said her name as though it were an intractable philosophical question. The other fellow behind the table looked up from his laptop and smiled toothily at Colleen.
“Danzig!”
“Yes?”
He smiled wider, even quaked a bit in his chair. He was a heavy dude with a bushy beard and twinkling blue eyes. Kind of like a young Santa Claus.
“Wolf’s blood!” he bellowed. Then he giggled at his own joke, tapped a few keys on his laptop, and when a label bearing her name was printed out, he affixed it to a square of thick paper and handed it to Colleen. His own badge read CHIEF SHOGGOTH, which Colleen decided was apropos. “Here you are. Oh, hey—I liked your story, ‘The Satanic Manuscript of the McCrumb Brothers’... well, except for the gay incest.”
“Incest,” the froggy man repeated, mostly to himself.
“Well, thanks. And thanks for the badge,” Colleen said as she slid it into a holder. Her story had only been maybe seven percent gay incest, tops. Mostly just awkward erections during uncomfortable conversations. “I’d like to know—”
“Program guide,” said the froggy man. “Panel descriptions.” He held up a pair of booklets featuring a line drawing of a gaunt, anvil-chinned H. P. Lovecraft and a sea of tentacles spilling out from behind him. “Opening ceremonies?” he continued. “Party schedule? Gaming schedule?”
“Oh God,” Colleen snapped. “Bar!”
Chief Shoggoth hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ah, writer’s workshop, right? Thattaway.”
It was easy to find the writers in the Warwick, the hotel bar. They clutched at their drinks with a special sort of desperation the fans and the locals who just wanted to watch the Red Sox couldn’t muster. Faces, mostly familiar from online thumbnails, bobbed up and down in the shadowy venue. More black shirts and jeans, more white heads, seemingly floating in space. It was like an awkward Mummenschanz show. The Warwick smelled like fried everything.
Colleen spotted Panossian at a three-couch booth with two other men with familiar faces, and one woman—her identity was obvious, since there was just a handful of female Lovecraftians and even fewer of them were Latina. R.G. Gonzalez, the publisher of Arkham Advertiser, a Canadian fiction magazine that supposedly actually looked like a newspaper. Supposedly actually because Colleen had never seen a copy.
Shopping for items otherwise completely unavailable was a good reason to attend The Summer Tentacular. Buying something is usually a good idea, but should Colleen buy a drink first before introducing herself? Order some French fries, even if they were cooked in animal fat? Sometimes even a vegan just has to say Fuck it. Or dare she approach Panossian dry and wait for the next round? What if some dude offered her a sip of his drink, and his gross beard was already wet?
Too many questions. Colleen walked up to the bar, snatched an unattended half-empty glass of red wine to use as a prop, and then went up to Panossian’s table. He wasn’t actually talking to anyone, so he was the first to smile and wave. The others turned and offered greetings. Butts shifted, space was made, Colleen took a seat next to R.G., and across from the two men. Panossian sat with his back to the wall, a couch to himself, and was wrapped up in a fairly thick wool coat despite the temperature.
“Hey,” Colleen said. She took a sip of the wine and was pleased with whatever the person who had actually ordered it had selected. And everyone was wearing nametags. Raul Smalley, a very tall and thin man, wore his around his neck, partially hiding the big red heart between the words I and PICKLES on his shirt. The man seated next to him had a tag reading BARRY HAGGIS, which was for some reason affixed to his forehead.
“Barry Hagman,” he said immediately, offering a heavy-seeming hand.
“Panossian called him Barry Haggis…and it stuck!” Raul offered. “It was the only way to keep everyone from calling him ‘Larry Hagman’ as a joke instead.”
“Hi, I’m R.G.,” R.G. said, instantly friendly in the way a woman is when another woman finally shows up to a sausage fest. She offered her hand as well, then grabbed Colleen’s and pumped it a few times, leaving Barry hanging. Panossian saved the day by leaning across the table to shake Barry’s hand instead. Raul laughed at that.
“So, is this your first Tentacular?” R.G. asked Colleen.
“First Tentacular, first time in Rhode Island. It’s, uh, pretty interesting so far,” Colleen said.
“Did they put you on any panels?” Raul asked.
“‘Women and The Mythos—Blasphemy or Abomination’,” Colleen and R.G. said together. They looked at one another and laughed.
“Ah, a true classic of tokenism and marginalization,” Barry said. “It’s a good thing, getting all the women into one room like that, so that the convention can, you know, go on without you interfering with it for an hour.”
“We’ll finally be free to strut around in the nude, the way God meant it,” Raul said. “Wait till you meet Norman.”
“Speaking of strutting around nude, you mean?” Barry asked.
“God, I hope not,” R.G. said. She puffed out her cheeks and made a gesture suggestive of rotundi
ty. “Oh wait, you probably already met him at registration, right Colleen?”
Colleen shrugged and glanced at Panossian, who was smiling and nodding along, but who had yet to say anything. He peered not at Colleen, but at Raul. Colleen immediately figured out that Panossian was deaf, or close enough to it to have to read lips in a noisy hotel bar.
“I’ve got a panel on Robert Aickman versus Lovecraft,” Barry said.
“They were lovers, you know,” Panossian said, finally speaking up. Barry looked stunned for a moment, then laughed along with everyone else.
“This is why you don’t have any panels,” R.G. said to Panossian.
“Really?” Colleen said.
“Yeah,” Panossian said. His voice slow and loud. “‘Besmirching the honor of Lovecraft.’ You know, on Twitter, where all utterances of importance are made.”
“They almost revoked his membership,” Raul said.
“It was ugly,” Barry said. He finally took his nametag off his forehead and applied it to the lapel of his blazer.
“I said that H. P. Lovecraft was not only a racist, but utterly terrified of blacks, Jews, and even—” Panossian shifted his eyes back and forth dramatically—“Armenians. When Bhanushali brought up Lovecraft’s Jewish wife Sonia Greene as proof that he wasn’t that big an anti-Semite I said, ‘Of course he married a Jew. Pathetic little racist men of course marry women they think are inferior.’”
“Then what happened?” Colleen asked. “I mean, there has to be more to it than that.”
“Oh, then it became a total shit show. It was epic, really,” R.G. said. “Some fan said that he too had married a Jew and was Panossian calling him a pathetic little racist of a man—”
“And I said, ‘Well, it has nothing to do with your choice of spouse, but you’re two-thirds right,’” Panossian said.
“Turns out, the guy was in charge of programming and panels for Summer Tentacular,” Raul said.
