by Nick Mamatas
“And then he explained that he was six-foot-five so he definitely wasn’t little, so obviously I was calling him an anti-Semite…”
“His brother owns the hotel,” Barry said. “It’s why we get it so cheap.”
“Speaking of,” Panossian said. “Your key, Colleen.” He dug a keycard out of his pocket and slid it across the table to Colleen. Everyone turned to him.
“It’s a deeply shitty room. Mold on the ceilings, the blinds. And I couldn’t get in the conference block, so I’m on the hook for full price.”
“Oh, so that’s why you filled out a Roommate Request form,” Colleen said, but Panossian wasn’t looking at her face and so didn’t respond.
Ms. Phantasia had walked into the Warwick. He was a larger man, in his sixties, in a full evening gown—tons of sequins this time around—and combat boots. On the back of his bald head was a tattoo of Lovecraft’s face done sufficiently well enough that occasionally drunkards in dark rooms tried to address Ms. Phantasia from behind. Sometimes, Ms. Phantasia didn’t turn around.
But Panossian wasn’t looking at Ms. Phantasia; he was looking at the woman behind him. She was dressed exactly like Phantasia, though she wore her hair in a peach fuzz crewcut and had no giant tattoo on her head. She was young enough to be Phantasia’s granddaughter. The Phantasias turned and walked up to the table.
“Hello!” Panossian said. “Got your own mini-me, do you?”
“I have,” Ms. Phantasia said, “an acolyte of my own.”
“Hi,” the young woman said. “I’m Chloe.”
“And you’re an acolyte?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Published?” Colleen asked.
“Stick with being an acolyte,” Panossian interjected before Chloe could answer. “There’s a future in that.”
“We have a collaboration in the souvenir booklet,” Phantasia said. “You must check it out, darlings.”
“And we will,” Raul said.
“We’ll fill a hot tub with marmalade, hop in, and take turns reading passages to one another,” Panossian said.
“That reminds me, I’m here for lunch,” Phantasia said, and with that he led Chloe to the bar.
Barry said, after Phantasia left, “He’s a strange writer.”
“We know,” R.G. said.
“I mean, his work. It’s Lovecraftian, but also decadent. He has a unique vision.”
“I read one of his stories; it was all about people licking one another’s palms,” Colleen said.
Panossian muttered something.
“Did you say ‘That’s hot’?” Colleen asked him.
“I said ‘It’s hot.’ I need some air. I’m going outside.”
Everyone had to shift over and bring in their knees to let Panossian out. He tread on Colleen’s toes, by mistake, and didn’t notice. Raul did notice and winced sympathetically. After he snaked out of the booth and turned to walk off, Colleen could see that he was a wreck. Old black jeans that he had likely been wearing for several days, sneakers with untied laces flopping about as he walked with the trace of a limp and hunched-over posture. He didn’t say good-bye or even nod or smile in farewell.
“You okay?” Raul asked.
“Steel-toed boots,” Colleen said. “Didn’t feel a thing.”
“So how do you know him, Colleen?” Barry asked.
“Online, like everyone else I guess.”
“And you’re roommates?”
“I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman,” Colleen said, but for that moment she wasn’t sure at all.
“Did he say he was a perfect gentlemen?” R.G. asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Thank God. Then he might be one yet.” The two women laughed, but the two men looked a little confused.
Eventually R.G. said, “Opening ceremonies, or the book room?”
“Well, there’s only going to be one opening ceremony, and the book room is open all weekend, so I guess I’ll go to the ceremony,” Colleen said. “How about you guys?”
“Uh, book room,” Barry said.
“Definitely,” Raul agreed.
“I’m with them,” R.G. said. “Not that first-timers don’t find the opening ceremonies…uh, interesting sometimes.”
“Is it that bad?”
“You need to go once,” Barry said. “It’s something to tell the grandkids about.”
“You’ll never want to touch a man again,” R.G. said.
“I hope you’ve already reproduced,” Raul said.
“I’ll take a drink with me,” Colleen said. She got another red wine and sipped at it as she walked through the first floor of the Hotel Bierce to the Main Ballroom. The glass served as a decent shield against awkward conversations. Eye contact, smile, and then quickly take a sip to avoid saying even a word. Right outside the opening ceremony someone called out, “Hey, Asparagus Head!” Colleen cringed and looked about furtively, thinking that someone was mocking her, but then she spotted a smiling man whose head really did resemble an asparagus—his hair was feathered and seemed to come to a point thanks to some unfortunate cranial architecture. He brushed past her without apology or even slowing down. Then she heard someone calling out, “Oh man, if only Tomato was still around—we could make a salad!”
The Main Ballroom was only about half full, with most attendees gathering in clumps. To Colleen it looked like what she imagined a large AA meeting would be, except instead of alcoholism the attendees had all sorts of other, subtler, problems. At the front of the room was a dais and there sat Bhanushali, a wide smile on her face. She wore a sari, which was not the boldest choice, as a large hirsute man next to her was essentially dressed like Cthulhu himself—his beard was painted with green streaks, and he wore a muumuu, also green, that had masses of plastic ivy and seaweed stapled to it. Cardboard bat wings, also green with sequins for scales, and a Styrofoam bicycle helmet spray-painted green completed the ensemble. He stood to speak when someone tapped Colleen on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” said the froggy man from registration as he rustled through a knapsack he’d just swung over his shoulder. “Would you like to buy my book?”
The book was real enough, in that it hadn’t been hastily put together in a copy shop somewhere, with spiral binding and a cover image stolen from DeviantArt. Madness of the Death Sun was a decent-looking trade paperback, with a black and white cover that was only a little faded by age. The froggy man wrote under the name Hiram Chandler, a name Colleen recognized from online.
“It’s about a dying world in which the last sane man and the last sane woman are like unto gods—”
“Like unto…”
“Gods.”
“Shouldn’t you be in the dealers’ room?” Colleen said.
“I am in the dealers’ room,” Hiram said.
“Huh?”
“I have two tables. I sell books, old pulp magazines, Lovecraftian jewelry, collars, corsets, floggers, magickal implements, rope and tackle—”
“Hullo.” It was Panossian, who had just materialized somehow. “Excuse me, Hiram,” he said. Hiram didn’t just move over, he stuffed the book into his knapsack and scuttled away, his gait strange and limping thanks to the heavy bag.
“Don’t blame Hiram for the hard sell,” Panossian said to Colleen conspiratorially. He had a drink in his hand too and sipped it between sentences. “He has to make up for last year, when his distributor collapsed.”
“Oh, what happened?”
“He accidentally left his knapsack at the bus depot.”
Colleen laughed, then nodded toward Panossian’s drink. “What’s your poison?”
It was a tall glass full of a brownish mixed drink that looked more like muddy water than any proper liquor. “Try it.” He offered it to her; she held it to her nose and sniffed at it.
“That’s…unusual.”
“Are you still a vegan?”
“Yes.” She put her lips to the glass.
“No wonder. It’s a bullshot. Like a Bloody Mary,
but with beef bullion instead of tomato juice.”
Colleen still had the glass. Her fingers tightened around it like it was a neck. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she said. “You were going to let me drink this?”
Panossian just peered at her, his dark eyes wide. She handed the glass back.
“You’ll need more than red wine to get through this,” Panossian said. He flicked his head over behind his shoulder. “Check out the goon squad in the back.”
Colleen was too angry to turn around or listen to anything Panossian had to say. Then, from the dais Bhanushali jumped to her feet and shouted, and barked, and ululated, and howled.
Then she said, “Do you hear the call!”
“The call!” she repeated.
“Of Cthulhu!” an enthusiastic fifty percent of the audience responded. The other half of the audience either looked embarrassed, or were just glancing down at their phones.
Colleen glanced over at Panossian, who had just finished his brothy drink in a gulp.
From the dais came an air-rending noise, half throat-singing half-gagging. The man dressed as Cthulhu stood up and threw his arms in the air. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” he shouted, and the audience participants chanted along, some shouting and others muttering like a bunch of occasional churchgoers who didn’t quite remember the Lord’s Prayer.
“The theme of this year’s Summer Tentacular,” Bhanushali said, “is the Mythos and God.” After the boos quieted down, she continued. “As we all know, H. P. Lovecraft was a strict materialist—”
“Was not!” came a voice from the audience, which Bhanushali ignored except for the slightest straightening of her posture.
“—and atheist. He had no truck with God, or any religious sentiment. And yet, there is much to learn about Lovecraft when examining his work and life through the lens of faith.”
“Bullshit!” came another voice from the audience, this one much louder and more determined. When Colleen looked back, she saw that everyone was craning for a look, except for Panossian, who was just fiddling with his glass of leftover ice.
The bellowing man was nearly as large as the frame for the open double doors in which he was standing.
Panossian leaned in and muttered into Colleen’s ear. “This should be pretty good.”
“The cult of Cthulhu is real!” the man said as he walked down the aisle toward the dais. Colleen recognized him as Chief Shoggoth from the registration table, though he had changed into a ridiculous-looking oversized black velour robe decorated with a rope-like golden thread along the sleeves and hems, and was shirtless. Thankfully, he was wearing boxer shorts and flip-flops.
“I meant terrible,” Panossian said.
Bhanushali stood stock still, one hand in the air, still gesturing toward the ceiling from when she had said the word “faith.” Her smile, frozen like the rest of her, had taken on a darker mien. The Cthulhu beside her stood up, chest forward and hands up, as if he was going to jump off the dais and charge the heckler.
“You can laugh—” said Chief Shoggoth, and indeed, a number of people were at least tittering, “but the concept of tulpa is a venerable one. Would any of you be laughing if the Dalai Lama were here before you?”
“Yes!” someone shouted, but Colleen didn’t know who it was. She noticed that her wine was not in her hand anymore, and saw that Panossian had managed to slip it from her grip and had just finished the last of it.
“Lovecraft first manifested the Elder Gods—the convention proves the power of his creations. All of you are feeding the creation of the tulpa, the Cthulhu thought-form, just by being here, by reading his work, by writing your own. I mean, look at this guy!” He waved a thick-fingered widely-splayed hand toward the stage and the man in the very unconvincing Cthulhu costume.
Colleen leaned over to Panossian and was about to say, Well, he is only the second worst-dressed person here, when she bumped heads with Panossian who was leaning in to whisper in her ear.
He winced and said “Well, he is only the—”
“—second worst-dressed person here,” Colleen said.
“I was going to say ‘third.’” He cut his eyes to a few rows behind them both, where a young man was wearing a black t-shirt.
“So?”
“Look closely.”
She did—the t-shirt featured the utterly ubiquitous green bulb of Cthulhu’s head, and the tentacles dripping from his lips…and a typo. Chtlulu read the legend over the monster’s head.
“I think he’s NSA,” Panossian said. “Here’s your wine.” He handed her the empty glass.
Chief Shoggoth had begun bellowing, and Bhanushali was shouting back, citing some fanzine or blog post that explained somehow about how stupid the Chief Shoggoth was being. “Why not summon up Nora from Et dukkehjem,” she finished. The crowd was mostly hooting and applauding until the man actually dressed as Cthulhu grabbed the mic.
“This is just gutter Satanism,” he said. “But have no doubt that even gutter Satanism is Satanism. Christ is real, He is watching and, truly, I worry about your soul, young man.” One of his wings wobbled and nearly came off his back. Nearly everyone shut up, except for one person who started cackling and then quickly stopped.
“Is this a put-on?” Colleen asked. “I mean, is this the opening ceremony?”
“The guy dressed like Cthulhu is an actual Bible scholar or something,” Panossian said. “Maybe it’s real.”
“It’s getting heated. What if the hotel calls the police?”
“If incoherent shouting were a crime, we’d all be sharing one big electric chair.”
“Is it like this every year?” Colleen asked.
Panossian shrugged. “I usually just hang out in the bar and sometimes go to the dealers’ room and look at books. I guess I have another reason to come this year, though,” he said.
“Why did you come this year?”
Panossian opened his mouth, clamped it shut, then opened it again. “I came here for you, Ms. Danzig. To see you.”
“Wha—”
“Ssshhh,” he hissed. “I’m trying to listen to the bullshit.” He pointedly turned away from Colleen.
Chief Shoggoth shouted back to the man dressed as Cthulhu. “Why are you even here then? Wasn’t Lovecraft an atheist? Didn’t he despise religion?”
“I can ask you the same question!” Bhanushali said. “Why would you think it at all rational to appropriate a Buddhist notion to bring to life an Elder God that is utterly fictional—and even if you could do it, why on Earth would you believe it to be a good idea?
“Have you ever managed to read one of Lovecraft’s fictions all the way to the end, Norman?”
Everyone laughed at that. Even Panossian chuckled.
But Chief Shoggoth, Norman apparently, wasn’t flummoxed. “I have! All of them. And the revisions, and the Derleth rip-offs, and even the crap you people all write.” He waved his arms about extravagantly and got caught up in his robe’s oversized sleeves for a moment. “We all want something to happen, don’t you see? We want cosmic horror because it’s better than the alternative—cosmic boredom!”
“I’m already cosmically bored,” Panossian said to Colleen.
Norman went on, bellowing. “We’re right! We’ll be right! We can create something out of eternal emptiness!”
“I think I’ll go to the dealers’ room,” Panossian muttered, and then he got up and skulked away. In his long black coat, he looked about as ridiculous as the people he’d been mocking. Colleen was at a loss for what to do for a moment, until she saw just how many people were sliding out of their chairs and heading out of the ballroom. If Norman’s display was supposed to be a part of the show, it wasn’t going over very well. Colleen hopped from empty chair to empty chair till she made it to the far wall, then followed it to the door and sprinted across the hall.
The dealers’ room was just as loud as the opening ceremony, but the noise here came from a collective susurration in the c
rowded room. Dozens of conversations seemed to be happening at once as Summer Tentacular attendees picked over boxes of used paperbacks or carefully held up hardcover books and haggled for deals. Dozens of conversations, or one being played out in dozens of different ways at once. Shoggoth Cthulhu black goat Yog-Sothoth Mi-Go Cthulhu nigger—
Did someone actually say the word “nigger” in public? Colleen scanned the room despite herself. Pretty much everyone was white, and not one person in the dealers’ room, as far as she could see, was African American. Perhaps someone was talking about Lovecraft’s cat, which he had called Nigger-Man. Colleen pushed on into the room, muttering pardons and leading with her shoulder. Nyarlathotep, Tsathoggua, Necronomicon.
Not every table featured books. T-shirts abounded, many emblazoned with jokes about role-playing games that Colleen was pleased to not actually understand. Displays of pewter dragons and wizards seemed only mildly out of place, like a Seventh Day Adventist in a roomful of Mormons. Toward the back of the room stood the folding changing screens and racks of fetish wear and corsets.
“Hey!” said a large man as he spotted Colleen. He wore a black pirate shirt with a plunging neckline, and leather pants tucked into knee-high black boots. On purpose, but Colleen put on a friendly face and smiled, then turned around as if looking for some friends.
The froggy man was behind her, holding a copy of Madness of the Death Sun up to his chest. He almost managed to make eye contact before Colleen turned on her heel again and decided to deal with the pirate instead.
“Colleen Danzig, right?” the pirate said. “Love your stuff.”
“Hey, thanks,” Colleen said. The pirate’s claim was a generic one, and Colleen was wearing a name tag, so she knew not to take the recognition or compliment too seriously. “I have a chapbook coming out soon.”
“Too bad you don’t have copies now. I’d buy one from you immediately. My name is Rob,” the pirate said, offering a hand. Colleen took it, and then he clamped his fingers tightly around hers and leaned in close.
“You are a geek goddess,” he whispered. “I would love for you to try on a corset.” He pronounced it cor-say. “You can keep it for the weekend, if you like. Are you on a panel? You can wear it to a panel; that would be free advertising for me, and of a certain benefit to you as well.” He gave her the once over, and Colleen felt like a hand had reached inside her and run up and down the bones of her spine.
