Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  All over the world people joined in with the @greatcthulhu in conversation. Darren recognised a lot of the users from Mythos-based games and knew many of the writers from Lovecraftian anthologies and magazines. They all kept the joke going, re-tweeting @greatcthulhu to an ever wider audience.

  The bulk of the traffic came through one particular hash-tag, #starrywisdom, and seemed to be concentrating on collecting information from world-wide sources on dreams, and in particular, dreams about the end of the world. Darren decided to play along.

  @dazza Last night it was ice-giants and Ragnarok LOL Anyone else gone #viking?#starrywisdom

  His expectations of any comeback were low; he only had a couple of dozen followers and his tweets were infrequent and rarely commented on. So he was pleasantly surprised the next morning to see that his follower count had risen to number fifty-two, and that @greatcthulhu was responsible.

  @greatcthulhu Hey dude THX for the new dreamers at #viking. Y’all should be following @dazza

  By mid afternoon Darren’s follower count had risen to the low hundreds and he was hooked on the rush. He started posting using hash-tags that he knew had large numbers of followers.

  @dazza Hey #kindle #ebooks Check out #starrywisdom for some cool reading material

  He checked his follower count before going to bed. It was over a thousand and rising fast.

  He thought he was too excited to sleep. He was wrong. He dreamed.

  He is alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing exists save the dark and the boom of a pounding beat from below. Shapes move in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that caper and whirl as their dance grows ever more frenetic.

  He tastes salt water in his mouth, and is buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grows ever stronger he cares little. He gives himself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.

  He wanders, there in the space between. He forgets himself, forgets everything in a blackness where only the dance matters.

  He woke to a crumpled, sweat-stained bed, upset that he had been taken out of the dream. But a ping from his laptop got his attention and seconds later the dream was forgotten as he read his Twitter follower number.

  Five thousand? How high can it go?

  The #starrywisdom tag was now showing as a trending topic, in the top ten of all subjects being discussed on Twitter. The @greatcthulhu handle seemed to be enjoying all the attention.

  @greatcthulhu Any more of this and I might have to wake up early LOL! #starrywisdom

  Darren spent the day tweeting to a large number of hash-tag topics, funneling more and more people towards the #starrywisdom topic. By the time he went to bed he had ten thousand followers on his own account, and #starrywisdom was the hottest topic in the Twitterverse.

  He floats, mere shadow now, alongside tens of scores of others, in that cold silent sea. He has no thought for anything but the rhythm, the dance. Far below him, cyclopean ruins shine dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumble in a non-Euclidean geometry that confuses the eye and brooks no close inspection. And something deep in those ruins knows he is there.

  He dreams, of vast empty spaces, of giant clouds of gas that engulf the stars, of blackness where there is nothing but endless dark, endless quiet. And while the slumbering god dreams, they dance for him, there in the twilight, dance to the rhythm.

  He is at peace.

  Coming up out of the dream felt like surfacing through hundreds of feet of water. He woke, panting and exhausted, physically drained. But mentally his mind buzzed with new ideas for promoting #starrywisdom and he wasted no time in putting them into action. He didn’t even bother checking his own follower count. If he had, he’d have seen it was now over thirty thousand.

  By late afternoon #starrywisdom was the hottest trending topic in Twitter history, with millions of people posting to the hash-tag, all of them including other tags in their posts, all of which further emboldened the @greatcthulhu poster.

  @greatcthulhu 200K followers. Whoo-Hoo! #countdown brought forward. #starsareright

  That next night Darren was at the keyboard for hours, posting a tweet every minute to as many new hash-tags as he could find. He also started to see new tags trending across the planet, all seemingly related to what he was doing. The #dance tag in particular got a lot of attention, with tens of thousands of people looking for information on a strange dream involving a great city deep under water and a dance in shadows.

  At some level Darren knew he should be worried, and that something was spiraling out of control, something that had wormed its way into the Twitterverse and seemed intent on taking over. But as sleep took him he was thinking of yet more ways he could help #starrywisdom in the morning.

  The dream is the same as before, but now there are many more shadows dancing with him, a host of shadows, numbering in the millions.

  In the morning all the talk online was centered around #dance, and @greatcthulhu was being followed by over fifty per cent of all Twitter users. And that next night, in their dreams, they danced.

  They float, mere shadow now, tens of millions of them in that cold silent sea. And while the slumbering god dreams, they dance for him, there in the twilight, dance to the rhythm.

  Everyone is at peace.

  Darren lay on his bed, fully clothed, eyes open but sound asleep. Fifty thousand people followed him on Twitter, but he would never know. He was lost, lost to the dance.

  @greatcthulhu Wakey-wakey ROFLMAO #countdown=0. #dance #starsareright

  -

  -

  William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries, the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. His current best seller is The Invasion, a sci-fi alien invasion tale with mass carnage, plucky survivors, and last minute rescues. It has been as high as #2 in the Kindle science fiction charts (and #4 in Kindle horror ). Click here to view and buy William Meikle’s books at Amazon.com.

  Illustration by Mike Dominic.

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  NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ¬©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.

  What Dances In Shadow

  by Derek Ferreira

  For as long as I can remember I’ve dedicated my life to history and the antiquated artifacts that are its legacy. My parents were both affluent and educated; they had wanted for me to become a doctor or a barrister. It must have been terribly disappointing to them that I, like so many rebellious spawn before me, had a different destiny in mind. In truth, I should like to think that I warned them fairly. I never showed any interest in the subjects that captivated them. The tangled web of rules and protocol that formed the basis for the modern courts held no love for me. Nor did the complex workings of anatomy or biology. When we were at home in Bristol, England I spent my days attempting to collect and catalogue older coins. I used what allowance my parents bestowed upon me at the local antique stores. When we summered in New England, I spent my days digging about in the dirt looking for arrowheads or musket shot.

  I attended university in the States and graduated with high honors from Miskatonic U. My degree was in Art History. I afforded myself some time for romance and was married to an intelligent young woman shortly thereafter. I also opened a shop, which she named Clive’s Curious Curios. She was a creative writing enthusiast and happened to think that alliteration was the height of the Eng
lish language. The name stuck, but the marriage didn’t. Irreconcilable differences. In the end, I was offered an ultimatum, the shop or her. Clive’s Curious Curios still operates on a lonely Providence side street just five minutes’ walk from the mall. I live above the shop, renting both the storefront and the one bedroom flat above at a very generous discounted rate from an absentee landlord.

  Five days a week I run the store personally, on the weekends I take the time to venture out to auction houses, second hand stores and foreclosures. The thrill of discovering a true forgotten treasure is intoxicating. There’s hubris there as well, the arrogance of recognizing the worth of something very valuable shoved into a one dollar-bin at a yard sale and cackling about it all the way home. Those circumstances are generally rare, but I do quite well for myself, despite not seeing much in the way of foot traffic as of late. Instead, I do most of my sales online on a site I had commissioned for my store. I had thought that the internet would offer an opportunity to ply my trade to a far broader client base, but instead, I find myself realizing more and more that it is a construct that has led to my obsolescence.

  Years ago, it took knowledge and experience to do what I do. People would come to my shop and ask me how much certain bric-a-bracs were worth, or perhaps they’d like to learn the history of a family heirloom. These days those answers are a click away, usually far closer than a small, but cozy, shop on a quiet side street in Providence.

  It was the clarion call that heralded an inevitable transformation from Antiquarian to common Shopkeeper. When people no longer had use of my knowledge, all I would be needed for would be to work the register. In many ways I despised the internet. Despite my hectic work schedule I managed to set some time aside for hypocrisy. I rarely purchased an item without first Googling it. Though I still loved my store, I was beginning to loathe what I was becoming. More than ever I resented the lack of a truly extraordinary find.

  ***

  I was sitting in my office searching the web for auctions in the New England area when I heard the familiar tolling of my door bell. It’s solid iron and was forged in a factory in the Netherlands during the 1920’s. I found a matched pair at a yard sale for a very reasonable price. The first I sold for nearly ten times what I’d paid for both, the second I hung on my door. I rolled my desk chair back along the wooden floor and made my way out to the front. Whenever I hear that bell I get genuinely excited. I enjoy my job and by and large my clientele are interesting, curious people with an appetite for conversation. I only had to take one look at the man standing in front of me to lose the enthusiasm that carried me out of my office.

  He was of average height and build, with thinning greasy black hair that receded into a deep widow’s peak. A long brown trench coat draped over his gaunt body. His clothes hung on him; they were several sizes too large and dingy looking. Dark circles surrounded his bloodshot eyes and he had a nervous, fidgety energy about him. He pretended to look at a few items on display before making his way towards the counter. I got his kind in here every now and then. Sometimes people attempt to foist stolen goods on me, like I was running a common pawn shop. My gut was telling me not to buy whatever this individual was peddling. I’ve always followed my instincts and so far they’ve served me well. He turned to look up at me and I caught the exhausted, haunted look in his eyes. With the recent downturn in the economy, I’d become familiar with the look of desperation. This man was beyond desperate. He stared in my direction at the counter. He didn’t say anything; for awhile I wondered if he really saw me at all.

  “Hello.” I forced a smile. “Can I help you?” There was never an excuse for rudeness, even when he continued to look blankly at me. “Can I help you, sir?” I repeated, a bit louder and slower.

  “No,” he muttered, but blinked, his eyes focused on me finally. “I mean…maybe. I have something. I want to sell it.” He began, reaching into the side pocket on his trench.

  I held up a hand shaking my head lightly. “We only buy antiques here.”

  “It’s old,” he whispered. He produced an eight-inch long, yellowing, bone-white tube and hesitantly set it down on the counter. It reminded me of a rhino’s horn, with a wider base, narrowing to a tip. I adjusted my glasses and started to reach out towards the object. He flinched as my fingers got close, tensing visibly. I had never seen something like it. It was hollow and the outside had been hand carved. There were figures etched into the side but they had worn over the years. It was too faded to get a clear idea of what they were. It wasn’t ivory, but rather something that reminded me of an osseous material. It was bone of some type. I looked down the inside of the object. I noticed thin dark bumps spaced along the inner walls, something had grown there and been filed down I wagered. There were three holes spaced apart in the middle of it, reminding me of a simple flute or pipe. Strangely, there were no signs that the holes had been drilled into the object. They looked like they had always been there. Perhaps time had worn them away like the carvings. Certainly, there wasn’t any question that whatever this was, it was very old. More importantly, it may have been unique. I felt my heart palpitate quickly as I realized what I was holding.

  I looked over my glasses at the man. He had turned his eyes down to the floor. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  “I…my grandfather…it was his.” His eyes darted quickly to the corner of my store as he gasped. I followed his gaze over to a beautiful Persian rug I’d obtained at an estate sale. “H-how much will you give me for it,” he asked quickly. I wet my lips with my tongue and raised my eyebrows. I honestly had no idea. I couldn’t even pinpoint the country of origin.

  “Oh, well…give me a moment. May I?” I lifted the pipe up a bit and he nodded quickly, but his eyes were welling up. I walked into my office, setting the piece on my desk as I searched the web for anything bearing a resemblance to the item. I found a dozen different ‘faux ivory’ antique smoking pipes from Japan and a few styles of bone-pipes utilized mainly in England during the middle ages, but nothing even remotely close to what this thing was. I nearly cried out for joy. Finally I had found something unique, something that the internet with all of its collected knowledge had never heard of.

  The sound of the iron bell over the door broke me from my reverie. I looked back through the door over to the counter and saw that the man was no longer at it. I moved quickly back towards the front, the door had just finished swinging itself shut. I saw him moving on the sidewalk, looking one way and then the next. He walked like a lost man trying to figure out which way to go. I stepped out from behind the counter and started to head towards him. He had left the pipe with me. I was excited about the piece, but I was no crook. His eyes caught mine through the glass door. His face twisted into horror and he ran back into the street. I’ll never know if he saw the delivery truck. I gasped as the large truck hammered into the man, dragging him down like a rag doll beneath the thick black tires. I heard the sick, wet slap of his body against the grill and the scream drowned out by the high pitched squeal of the air brakes. The street was so narrow and the trucks always rushed down this road on their way to the next stop. I had said it would be a matter of time before this happened. I never thought that I would have witnessed it. My limbs grew cold with the realization that a man had just died, my stomach twisting into knots as the crash replayed itself in my head on an endless loop.

  Why did he run?

  I felt the weight of the pipe in my hand as I watched the slowly blooming puddle of crimson beneath the parked delivery truck.

  ***

  “Oh my God! Are you alright?” Amy Carter’s voice slid like silk through the phone line.

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine…a bit shaken,” I conceded. I had called her the moment the police had gone. They’d taken a statement from me. Amy had a way about her that made me forget that entire dreadfulness. She was the perfect companion for me. She was there when I longed for her and absent when I wanted to focus on my work. I believe she preferred it that way herself. She was far y
ounger than me, a daughter of one of my classmates at Miskatonic. She had decided to forsake her father’s alma mater and attend Brown instead. Miss Carter had been told by my friend to look me up once she had gotten into the city. We slept together the first night we’d met. It wouldn’t be the last time.

  “Did you want me to stop by after class?” She asked. I caught the tone in her voice. Our meetings had become more frequent since her father had tightened his purse strings. I helped lighten her financial burden whenever she stopped by. A part of me felt guilty over the nature of our association.

  “Yes. I would like that very much.” I looked at the off-white pipe sitting on my desk. “I have something to show you, Amy. It…might be the single most important find I’ve ever had.”

  “Clive, the professor just showed, I gotta go. But I’ll see you tonight? Okay, bye!” she whispered hurriedly. I heard the receiver click as she hung up.

  ***

  I sat at the edge of my bed and held the pipe in my hands. Amy shifted beneath the covers. She hadn’t been as excited as I had been about my find. She had only been interested in the accident. I turned to look at her, letting my eyes travel over her soft, pale curves. Her fiery red hair glistened in the dim glow of the streetlights streaming through my blinds. She was beautiful. But my interest in her beauty dwindled with every passing moment, as it always did. I found her presence in my bed, my apartment to be an intrusion into my privacy. It was an annoyance I had become accustomed to, but was never comfortable with.

  How could she not have seen what an important piece this pipe was? I wondered when the last time it had been played was. What the tone of the instrument would sound like. It didn’t seem much different than the recorder I was forced to play in elementary school. I wet my lips with my tongue. As I raised the pipe to my lips I felt my stomach sink. My arms felt light and weak and a nervous, inexplicable chill spread through me. It was a primal dread, something I didn’t really understand. I tried to shake the sensation. It was ridiculous for a grown man to feel that way over nothing. I placed the cool lip to my mouth, forming a seal around the thin end. I held the object in front of me, gingerly setting my fingertips over the trio of valves that stretched along the top ridge. I inhaled through my nostrils and forced air through the tube.