My answer was to fake my own death, and in doing so both give him the adventure he’d long been craving and put such a fright into him that he’d lose all taste for such investigations and intrigues.
I made a show of opening some new line of inquiry, and was even less communicative about it than normal. This piqued his interest, and made him more bothersome than ever. I opened books long since packed away, volume he hadn’t seem before. I made reference to my discovery of an ancient tomb, just down the road. He practically begged me to be included, and the more I shut him out, the more frantic he became. I told him that I would not, could not speak to him about the nature of my weird studies, as his fragile nature could not handle it. The man practically soiled himself with delight.
There few things that I needed to take with me were packed, and a few irreplaceable objects, mostly books and some personal effects, I sent on to friends in other cities to hold. The majority of my possessions I was willing to abandon, as I wouldn’t be able to take them on my foreign excursion. Let Carter have them. By the time the night was over, he would have earned them. I had hired a man with a car to wait for me further down the road from the plantation site, in the opposite direction of our – soon to be solely his – home. Carter saw him, and was brought in and questioned by the police as a witness, but he only stated that he saw the two of us walking along the road near the Old Cypress Swamp.
We had brought a large amount of equipment with us, to help sell the seriousness of this adventure to Carter. Chief among this was a telephone rig with long coils of wire, an artifact of the Great War. Such was the depth of my cruelty, and my desire to inflict shock and horror upon my friend. Carter had been in the war, and in the trenches. This was the source of his feeble constitution and vacillating nerve. I have often wondered, since that night, if that was why he wrote the sorts of stories he did, and had become fascinated by the occult. If there were forces at work, outside of man’s knowledge and understanding, perhaps it would somehow mitigate man’s own humanity to man, in some way lessen the abominations he had seen, restore his faith in the goodness and men by being able to say “we are not at fault”.
It is a rationalization to say that, if what I did next somehow confirmed his belief in the supernatural and somehow brought him peace, it would be a good thing and not merely a selfish and dreadful act on my own part.
The sight of the telephone alone had made him began to tremble, and he dropped the coil of wire at least once upon our walk. When we arrived, the lantern light showed all color had drained from his face as he stared at the hole in the ground. I had managed to drag a flat slab, likely a remnant of some above-ground crypt, to partially cover the tunnel entrance. He did not work out for himself that we wee no longer in the cemetery. It was hard enough for me to work that out in daylight, and it was now quite dark, fast approaching midnight.
The electric torches cast shadows in the long grass, and between the rocks and remnants of headstones. I advised him that I was going in, and not to follow, for surely he was far to frail in both body and mind to deal with what was about to come next. I took the telephone, and had him unspool the wire as I went.
“God!” I said into the telephone, “If you could see what I am seeing!” There was no answer. I tried to sound excited, as well as frightened. “Carter, it’s terrible—monstrous—unbelievable!”
“Warren, what is it? What is it?” came his voice from the other end.
At this point I had found a place to settle in, and sat down comfortably with my back against a large, smooth stone. I continued to pull at the wire, to give the impression that I was continuing to travel downward. I was having difficulty with not laughing. “I can’t tell you, Carter! It’s too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell you—no man could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of THIS!”
There was a long silence then. I stopped pulling on the wire, and waited for some response. Non come. It was time to put on the best act that I could. “Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can! Quick!—leave everything else and make for the outside—it’s your only chance! Do as I say, and don’t ask me to explain!”
“Warren, what is it? What is it?” he repeated.
“Beat it!” I shouted into the phone. “For God’s sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!”
“Warren, brace up! I’m coming down!” he shouted into the phone, and I could hear his natural voice echoing down the tunnel. In his own report, he said that at this point he heard me scream, but the cry of despair was his own. I could not allow him to come down with me, and discover me hiding!
“Don’t! You can’t understand!” I said. “It’s too late—and my own fault.” I tried to sound calm, in control, but I was genuinely panicking that my plan was not going to work. “Put back the slab and run—there’s nothing else you or anyone can do now! Quick—before it’s too late!”
I have a few tugs on the wire, then a huge yank, pulling more of the coil down into the tunnel. Perhaps if it sounds as if there were a struggle. What was he thinking, at this point? That I was being attacked by ghosts? The living dead? The corpse of some ancient sorcerer? I had intentionally left me details vague, knowing that his own imagination would conjure something more detailed than I could describe.
“Carter—hurry! It’s no use—you must go—better one than two—the slab—” I trailed off, and let silence settle in for a moment. Then I said, “Nearly over now—don’t make it harder—cover up those damned steps and run for your life—you’re losing time— So long, Carter—won’t see you again.” Here the laughter got the best of me. I could no longer contain myself. With a manic tone, gasping fro breathe, I cried out, “Curse these hellish things—legions— My God! Beat it! Beat it! Beat it!”
To stifle my laughter, I dropped the phone and with the electric torch in front of me ran toward the far end of the tunnel. Faintly, I could hear him speaking into the phone, repeating “Warren, are you there”. He wasn’t leaving. I felt a tinge of regret. This man had been my partner for seven years. He was not an evil man. He wasn’t deserving of this sort of depravity. He had seen bloodshed and death in the service of his country. He deserved better than this.
“Warren? Warren, are you there?”
He deserved better than me.
“YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!”
For a short time the police had suspected him of my murder, but as no body was ever found no charges were brought against him. My understanding is that Randolph Carter returned to his childhood home in Boston and continued writing his weird fiction. It was from there that he recently vanished, with no trace. I spent the intervening years in Cairo, continuing my studies, and only recently returned to New York. He was often in my thoughts, and I have always regretted what I had done. For a while I considered looking him up, writing him a letter of apology, or simply showing up on his doorstep. That always seemed as if it would be cruel, so I continue to let him think me dead. In the end, I was the one who was the coward. Better for him to go on thinking he had failed me, than to have him find out that I had betrayed him, his trust and friendship, in such a manner. I will live with me shame for the rest of my days. As for Randolph Cater, I hope that he is out there somewhere, and that he is doing well.
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Berin Kinsman is best known as the father figure of tabletop roleplaying game bloggers, but he also writes Cthulhu Mythos fiction and tales of swords and sorcery. He’s currently working on a book of literary criticism centered on Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Berin resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife, the artist Katie Kinsman.
Story art by mimulux.
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Sky Full of Fire
by Corinna Sara Bechko
I think it started the day the house fell down. I came home and there it lay, nothing but jagged crossbeams inclosing sad triangles of empty space. The detritus of a lifetime. A lot of broken things that meant nothing. That meant everything. And Justin nowhere to be found. I mean, if he’d been in the house, they would have found him, right? Things hadn’t swung that far from normal yet, that they wouldn’t have done a thorough search. Right?
Or maybe that was just a coincidence. Maybe the changes happened gradually. Living in a car, sleeping with one eye open, can jangle your nerves at the best of times. Things might have slipped out of true quite a while later. The death of the house might have just been my personal punctuation mark.
And meanwhile, where the hell is Justin? I have to acknowledge that people have been disappearing for a while now. Not even a puff of smoke to mark their passing. Just… Gone. Is it possible that he was the first? That whatever takes people away hadn’t figured out how to do it yet, had to take the house apart to get to him? If he had been the first, and the house hadn’t collapsed, I wonder if that would have been worse. If I simply came home one day and he never did. Yes, I think that might have been worse.
But now, nothing works. I don’t know how he could even find me. That is, if he were here, in this city, alive, and wanted to. Phones don’t work. Emergency response stopped a long time ago. Even this car doesn’t work. I think it would start if I could find any gas to put in it, but I’m not resourceful enough, or brave enough, to figure out how to do that. The stations are guarded, and the whole enterprise seems like more trouble than it’s worth. So I suppose this is my new home, in this car that won’t move, next to this park that I don’t like the looks of. There’s a tepid lake down there, across a broad swath of browning lawn, so at least that means water if the taps stop working in the increasingly awful public restrooms. But there are no ducks on the lake, which seems odd. Then again, that also means that I’m not constantly reminded that I’ll soon be drinking duck shit. So you see, there is a bright side after all.
You couldn’t pay me enough to enter those bathrooms now that the lights don’t work. Even if you were paying in cans of gas. I’ve been seeing fewer lights go on in the buildings across the street after dark too. I don’t know if that’s because the electricity finally gave out, or if the people have moved on, or if they are trying to blend into the darkness. I do know that it’s uncommon to see anyone in the park or on the street now. A car went by this morning and, good lord, the noise of that thing! I wanted to run out and tell it to hush, that it was drawing attention to itself. I wanted to hide. I wanted it to take me with it.
In the end, I hid. It wasn’t a very clever form of hiding. I just scrunched down in my seat and turned my head towards the park, the way you might if you were trying to avoid an acquaintance you had promised a favor to, one you had no intention of fulfilling.
But while my head was turned I noticed something: the minivan that had been parked across the lake for the last month was gone. And with it, presumably, the family of four that had lived there. I hope they found somewhere better to camp. I had never talked with them, couldn’t, probably, since we didn’t seem to share a language, but I had waved at the kids, times I was down by the lake collecting water or washing up. Maybe they got tired of drinking stagnant water and went to find a park where the taps still work. Maybe. I hope.
My routine works for me. I don’t necessarily enjoy it, but it works. Get up with the sun, stretch, eat a can of something. Wash up at the lake, fill the bottle that hasn’t held syrupy Mexican soda for months with greenish water, wait for the algae to settle to the bottom before drinking it. Take a walk around the park, always keeping an eye and an ear out and my car in sight. Try to note any changes.
The noting-of-changes is the hardest part. I sleep so poorly at night that I feel like I’m in a constant dream state. Sometimes I’m sure that I note things that haven’t really changed, or that changed a long time ago, or that have changed, but in a completely natural way.
Today, for instance, a duck actually flew over. It didn’t stop at the lake, but I noted the shadow it cast on the water. That’s a natural change, I suppose. And it tells me something: there is life out there, somewhere. It also made me realize that I haven’t seen another human for days now.
“Duck, come back!” I said. “I don’t care if you shit in my drinking water!”
As soon as the words were out I regretted them. They sounded loud, foolish, in the quiet that is never quite quiet of the park. The duck ignored me. It had better places to be.
It’s been days now since I saw that bird. I’m not surprised that it never came back. Why would it? Even so, I cried to think of it this morning. I’m almost out of food, which means that I’m going to have to go hunting for cans. I’m frightened to leave the vicinity of the car though. It would be easier if I had a companion, and I started thinking of how nice it would be if the duck had stayed for a visit. My logic seems broken though. I don’t think I ever fantasized about making friends with a duck while Justin was around, when we lived in our house, when I had a panini press and a car that ran.
I actually thought I saw a person yesterday, a shadow that disappeared quickly into the dank parking structure down the block. I didn’t fantasize about making friends with the person. Instead, I stayed locked in the car the rest of the day. People are too difficult. Who knows what they might want? Besides, I don’t want to share my last packet of Gatoraid. It makes the lake water taste like sweet citrus-flavored algae, which is only slightly better than regular algae. But still. I don’t think a duck would make those sorts of demands on my resources.
Worse than seeing the shadow person is what happens at night now. Something is walking. I don’t know what it is, and don’t want to know. But something, or somethings are abroad. They cast no shadow even when the moon is up. I hear them though. Sometimes there’s a low thumping, like a distant steam piston. Sometimes there’s a sort of clacking, like a train going over the trestles of a bridge. And once, quite close to the car, there was a chitinous clicking, as if some giant crab was climbing the building across the street. Perhaps there was. I kept my eyes tight closed, rolled in a checkered blanket in the backseat of the car. In the morning I could find no sign of tracks, of anything passing. All the same, I approach the lake with a certain amount of trepidation now, in case there is something hiding under the dull thick water.
I’ve been noticing the sky lately. It looks fine when you look strait at it, pale blue, or streaked with high thin blades of white, or occasionally obscured by dark thunderheads. But, sometimes, if I happen to look up out of the corner of my eye, I see fire. And roiling clouds the color of spilled blood. I noticed it first when I went on the foraging expedition.
I had thought first about entering one of the apartment houses along the neighboring blocks. Surely they are deserted by now. I’ve not seen another human since that might-have-been-person entering the parking garage. When was that, anyway? Must have been days and days ago. Time seems to move strangely now. One day blends into another, and the nights seem longer and longer.
So, the foraging expedition. It was a success, of sorts. I couldn’t bring myself to walk those (hopefully) empty apartment building hallways, so I crept to a diner on the next block instead. Weak early-morning light showed me rows of dusty booths through serrated windows. The fact that it had already been ransacked was a blessing and a curse. I knew there would probably be nothing inside worth bringing back to the car, but at least it saved me jarring anything awake with the violence of breaking glass. I don’t think I could handle a noise like that, now.
Inside
I found that of course, all the good stuff was gone. There were a couple of mummified cupcakes in a glass case, and what might have once been a salad. The place didn’t even smell any more. In the back I found several big cans of pie filling and a box of tea. The tea was exciting. I made elaborate plans for placing glass containers filled with tea bags and lake water on the roof of my car. Would it get hot enough to brew? I was enthusiastic, even started imagining some sort of water filtration system. I was startled to realize that it was the first time I had made any plans at all since Justin disappeared.
And then, as I was hoisting myself over the sharp ridge of glass still attached to the windowsill, I caught a glimpse of the sky. And I wondered. Who can make plans in a world like this? A world where I may be the last thing alive aside from whatever walks at night, where the sky can’t decide whether or not to burn. I went back to the car as quickly and quietly as I could, the box of tea still clutched, forgotten, under my arm.
Justin is back. Justin is back! At least, I think it’s Justin. It pains me that I don’t know for sure. He looks like Justin, under the unfamiliar beard, has the same eyes, longer hair, sure, but the same hair. The things that made him him seem to be gone though.
He doesn’t talk, doesn’t really acknowledge me. Where did he come from, where has he been? He won’t, or can’t, say. I almost died of fright when he woke me in the middle of the night by opening the passenger side door and climbing in. I thought I was dreaming when I saw who it was. He found a granola bar in the glove compartment, mechanically chewed and swallowed it, while I babbled on to him, quietly, in the darkness. It’s strange, but I could have sworn that I locked all the doors before I curled into my checkered blanket. But if it really is Justin, maybe he still has his key? He won’t say, won’t show me what’s in his pockets.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 32
