Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  The Time Eater

  by Adam Bolivar

  I am alone. I live in a farmhouse in the wilds of western Massachusetts. Loneliness is a condition that I have experienced for most of my life. And it is a condition I do not expect to change before my life comes to an end. But this was not always the case. There was a brief duration when I was not alone. It was during this time that my life changed forever. It was then that I learned my true nature. For I am cursed with a singular affliction, a disease like no other.

  Every day I visit the centuried foundation of a house in the wood. I stand inside the ruin and drink in the oldness of the stones, the history of the place. Next to the foundation is a well, whose ancientness fills me with bliss. I stand near the well, but never too near, lest I am tempted to climb down into it. I am wary of that after what happened. But I am getting ahead of myself.

  Let me start in Boston, where I was born, and where I spent my youth. Boston was a perfect place for one such us I, for of all the cities in this country, it is the one most filled with antiquity. There is such a wealth of graveyards and churches to be found there! I used to run my fingers along the winged skulls carved into smooth grey slate. I sat in the white pews once occupied by men who wore powdered periwigs and proclaimed: “God Save the King!”

  But merely visiting the old places was not enough. I began furtively stealing pieces of the past for myself–a chip of slate from a gravestone, a hand-forged iron nail from a church. And then I would sleep with these objects under my pillow and dream of times when my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents had walked the earth.

  By morning, however, the antiquity would somehow be drained from the stolen object. It would feel as ordinary as something that had been manufactured yesterday, and have no power to inspire the dreams I craved.

  I took to stealing larger and larger things. In the dead of night, I removed entire gravestones, and, crazed with delight, curled up with them in my bed like cold lovers. But even these prizes would lose their potency after a few days, and I would discard them like empty husks of corn.

  Then, on my third-and-twentieth birthday, I received a letter from a cousin of mine named William, who lived in Shutesbury, near our family seat. The letter was brief, and, after a few opening pleasantries, he invited me to come stay with him at his house.

  The invitation was well timed, for I was beginning to feel a sense of desperation at my nightly thefts, that I should be caught soon, and yet unable to stop. Perhaps a visit to the country was just what I needed to get a hold of myself. Though as a rule I am loath to use such a modern instrument as a telephone, I made a hurried exception to call William and finalise the arrangements.

  The next obstacle was travelling from Boston to western Massachusetts. I was forced to purchase a ticket on a frighteningly contemporary omnibus, and forebear an excruciating two-hour journey surrounded by nothing but painful modernity and the vulgar stares of my fellow passengers due to my anachronistic attire. At last, the ride came to a merciful end in Amherst, and I found myself waiting in the November chill for William to arrive. It was not long before his automobile appeared, and, with an awkward nod, he took my suitcase and spirited me to his home in Shutesbury. Thankfully, William’s tastes also ran towards the antiquated, and the farmhouse where he lived dated to the mid-1800’s, an early enough vintage to keep me comfortable.

  That night, however, my longings vexed me. I tried to resist the temptations of antiquity, but the craving overpowered me. I stole from my bed and crept outside into the moonlight, drawn inexorably to the ruined barn behind my cousin’s farmhouse. The barn was nigh upon two hundred years old, and wonderfully decayed.

  I pried loose a pair of hand-forged nails from the doorframe, intent on smuggling them to my bedroom. But I was surprised in my furtive labours, and futilely attempted to secrete the stolen nails in my pocket.

  “Richard,” said my cousin. “What are you doing out here?”

  “N-n-nothing,” I replied. “Just getting some air. I was having difficulty sleeping.”

  “What are you putting in your pocket? Some nails from my barn?”

  “Of course not,” I lied.

  William fixed me with his clear blue eyes and, guiltily, I turned away. He smiled kindly and clapped me on the shoulder. “No need to be ashamed, cousin. I too feel the longings for old things.”

  “You do?” I cried, scarcely able to believe my ears.

  “It is a family curse, passed down to us from our grandfather. We are chronophages. Time-eaters.”

  So there was a name for my affliction. Time-eater.

  William sighed. “Keep the nails for tonight. But tomorrow I will show you another way to live. A better way.”

  I followed him back into the warmth of the farmhouse. Settling into my bed, I put the cold iron nails under my pillow. Their antiquity was just enough to dull my craving, and I fell into a shallow, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, I accompanied William on a walk through the wood behind his house. The trees were barren, their denuded branches grasping towards heaven like supplicating hands. We spoke little, and the silence was broken only by the sound of our feet crunching the dry, dead leaves.

  At last we reached the destination to which William had been guiding me. Deep in the wood, we came upon the stone foundation of a house. It was very old, doubtless from Colonial times, and the antiquity reverberated in this place like the echoes of a beautiful symphony.

  My eyes lighted upon a stray scrap on lumber, a surviving fragment of the original house. Three exquisite nails jutted from the jagged wood, and my fingers involuntarily moved to pry them loose. But William grasped my wrist and stared at me with those blue eyes of his.

  “No,” he said. “You don’t need to take them. Just feel. Can’t you feel the antiquity all around you?”

  He let go of my wrist. Instead of taking the nails, I resisted, and held my open palm above them. I could feel the waves of oldness flooding into me like the flush of warmth one feels after imbibing an excellent wine.

  I stood that way for a number of minutes, and then a most extraordinary thing happened. I could see the faint traces of the house shimmering around the foundation, as it had been when it was still standing.

  The ghost-image became more distinct, and I could see a man and a woman inside the house. The man wore a brown frock coat with silver buttons and knee breeches. He sat at a table drinking ale from a brass tankard and read a leather-bound edition of Plutarch’s Lives. The woman wore a bonnet and hoop skirt, and sat at a spinning wheel, gently coaxing a thread from spindle to distaff as she spun her husband a new waistcoat.

  William and I stood there entranced, watching the lingering images of this long-dead man and his wife for the rest of the day. I am certain he saw the same thing as I, although we never spoke of it. Finally, the sun sank low in the sky, and the bare-branched trees were casting grotesque shadows over the forest. William nudged my shoulder and broke my trance. The house vanished like a morning mist, leaving behind nothing but a stone foundation once again.

  “We should head back,” he said.

  Dumbly, I nodded my affirmation. We turned to head back to the warmth of William’s farmhouse, and I realised that my hands and feet were numb from standing in the late-autumn chill for so many hours. Then I noticed something I had not seen before and stopped.

  The low stone ring of an old well poked up from the ground next to the foundation of the house. I stared down into the hole and the darkness stared back up at me. Powerful waves of antiquity were drifting up from the well like fragrant smoke from an incense burner. I was transfixed, and stood staring down the well until William took my arm and gently pulled me away.

  “What is at the bottom of that well?” I asked. “It feels very old. Very old indeed.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, although he looked away, not meeting my gaze as he usually did. “Come now. I don’t think it is wise that we should linger here after dark.”

  Relu
ctantly, I followed my cousin away from the well and out of the wood, where we retired to the sanctuary of his farmhouse for a modest meal of bread and butter and boiled potatoes.

  Twice more we visited that house in the wood, and other secret places that William showed me. Each night I found it easier to fall asleep than the last, sated after a day’s immersion in old things. But on the third night, I was awoken by disturbing dreams. In the dead of night I heard a voice calling to me from outside.

  “Richard. Riiiichard! Come to me. I need you. Come to me now…”

  Hastily donning my clothes, I stole from my cousin’s farmhouse, quietly shutting the door behind me. The voice was coming from the forest. Of course it was. And I knew just where it was leading me.

  I found myself standing before the well. My legs had brought me there of their own accord. Just as they now stepped over the lip of the well and carried me down a long vertical tunnel of absolute darkness. My fingers and feet found protruding blocks of stone that served as a ladder, helping me to climb downwards into the unknown.

  At last the narrow well opened up into a large underground chamber with a ceiling, walls and floor of stone. The protruding steps continued along the wall of the chamber, guiding me downwards until I found myself at the bottom. It should have been pitch-dark here, but somehow there was a dim green glow whose source I could not ascertain.

  And then I saw her. Standing before me was a woman dressed in the sombre clothing of another era: a black bonnet and black hoop-skirted dress that was tattered almost to shreds. The woman’s skin was pale and greenish, though I couldn’t tell if the verdant hue was her skin’s natural tint or merely an effect of the weird light in the chamber.

  She beckoned me towards her, and I stepped closer, enchanted by her. She was beautiful. And old. Antiquity wreathed her body like a subtle perfume.

  “Richard, no!”

  The enchantment was broken my cousin’s urgent voice, which echoed around the chamber harshly. He scrambled down the steps and rushed to stand between me and the black-clothed woman. William was holding a silver ankh engraved with symbols I didn’t recognise. The woman skittered away from the ankh, holding her hands in front of her, as if the sight of it caused her pain.

  William turned toward me. “Go back, Richard!” he shouted. “She wants to make you as she is…” Taking his eyes off the woman had been a mistake. She struck William’s hand, causing him to drop the ankh, which clattered to the floor with a metallic ring.

  Not waiting to see if my cousin was following me, I flew up the steps, climbing back up into the darkness of the well. I heard William’s screams behind me, and I knew then that he would not escape. I hauled myself out of the well and lay on the ground panting, my breath misting in the cold night air.

  I waited until morning, but William never emerged. His screams had stopped suddenly as I was climbing, and since then I had heard nothing but silence from the darkness of the well.

  Fifty years have passed since that terrible night, and still I live in my cousin’s farmhouse by the wood. I never seek the company of others, only venturing to town long enough to purchase the necessities of life, and then returning immediately to the life of a hermit.

  Every day, I enter the wood and visit the foundation of the vanished house. And I stand before the well that sits beside it. The antiquity that bubbles up from the well refreshes me like a fountain of cool water in the desert.

  One day I may climb down it again and join my cousin and that beautiful woman. One day I shall become as they are. But not yet. Not just yet. Back I go to the farmhouse at the end of another day.

  -

  -

  Adam Bolivar is an expatriate Bostonian who has lived in New Orleans and Berkeley, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. His short story “Down and Out in Mythos City” will appear in the Amazing Stories of the Flying Spaghetti Monster anthology, scheduled for publication by Eraserhead Press in November of 2011. His short story “Drake” will be printed in the debut issue of Grave Demand magazine, also due out in November. Several of his stories, including his “Weird Jack Tales” series, have been featured in the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  Illustration by Steve Santiago.

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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.

  Elder Instincts

  by W.H. Pugmire

  I. With soft repeating of archaic words I chant of elder things to ancient stone And step with spectral rats that swarm in herds Among the pile of disconnected bone. Among the pile of disconnected bone That haunt the shadows of my arcane eyes I sink beyond civility’s safe zone Into a realm where secret altars rise. They rise, assemblies of archaic wood, Above the bones the spectral rats have gnawed; And in this haunt of nightmare’s netherhood I see the spectre of a Faceless God. I make an Elder Sign to Doom’s hierarch. I bow before yon Haunter of the Dark.

  II. I walked beneath the yellow sky, over the ancient track. Moss and grass now covered most of the large sandstones with which the road had been constructed in some early epoch. I stopped once and used the firm edge of my shoe to shove the growth aside, and then I bent down and touched the hefty block of stone that had been worn into a rut in the road by the traffic that had journeyed on it over many decades. I tried to imagine those carts, drawn by horses or mules, which had crossed the road so long ago on their way to Dunwich two miles yonder. I tried to imagine what I fancied might have been the curious cargo of some of those carts, and the curious dreams of they who walked beside them. I carried my own outlandish cargo, within the depths of my skull-space, images that had so haunted me that I returned, at last, to this ancient track, to the once-familiar spot where I knew the olden ways.

  I had walked this way once before, beside my father’s cart, when I accompanied him to Dunwich to meet a man who was interested in buying our cattle. For an Aylesbury farm boy who had seen little of the world, it was a big adventure, and I wanted to experience all of it. So when I saw the place where the fields ended and the high hill began, I wanted to run to it, to climb that hill and then meet my father on its other side. But my father had clasped my hand and would not let me wander to the man-shunned slope. “Boys have been known to get lost up there,” he rasped as his hold on my hand tightened. I had, over the years, completely forgotten that episode, until I saw again the great hill rise before me. Now there was no hand to hold me back. I walked beside the white stone wall toward the gabled farmhouse and its field, and then I stopped; for in that field, dancing between two scarecrows, was a woman in tattered white. Her long red hair billowed behind her, tossed by gusts of wind, and her smooth black flesh seemed accentuated in hue by the contrast of her pale apparel. I watched as she caught sight of me and ceased her movement, as she leaned against a third post that was as yet uninhabited by creature of straw and discarded clothing. I entered the field and approached her, asking if she was a resident of the farm and could she supply me with a glass of water. Laughing, she proposed that I follow her and led me to a small circle of stones set in the ground, in which a pool of water reflected the yellow sky. Smiling, she cupped her hands into the pool and brought its liquid to my mouth. I supped.

  How heavy my eyes grew, and how soft her lap was as she knelt beside me and guided my head into it. Her flesh smelled of spice and oils, an intoxicating fragrance that sailed into my nostrils as I shut my eyes. I dreamed of my father and seemed to hear him call me, but when I opened my eyes I was alone, in a darkened field above which a
late moon glimmered. I rose and studied the silhouetted crest of Zaman’s Hill, and there was no hand to hold me back as I stumbled onto the path and crept along it as it grew steep and high and led me toward the night sky. I reached the crest and walked to look down upon the town I knew should be there; but instead I saw the unfamiliar sight of an uninhabited vale that huddled beneath the moon’s yellow light. And when I turned away from the unfathomable sight, I saw her dancing beneath the moon, beside a pool that had formed in the grassy ground. And when she knelt beside that pool and dipped her cupped hands into it, I could not resist her lure, and went to her, and drank. And I glanced into the pool and saw the shadowed forms that were lost boys, and they seemed so lonely and forlorn that I wanted to embrace them and whisper love into their ears. And so I tilted toward the liquid surface and fell beneath it, where phantom hands clasped mine own and led me to a dream within a dream.

  III. It is the effect of night that swims within my liquid eyes as I bend onto this tainted soil and plant my fingers into unhallowed earth. Windsong moans through the cracks and crevices of a ruined church where air is no longer sanctified or sinless, and as I work my hand into the churchyard sod I pray the name of one strange god who tastes me in his deepest dreaming. It is this dread lord that whispers to my psyche of the thing I am destined to discover – the thing that, now, I touch. I tighten my fingers around one triple spire and unearth the relic from its bed of filth and darkness. There is no midnight moon to which I can hold up the artifact, and so I raise the thing to dim stars that brighten slightly as they drink the alien beauty of the object that I grasp. I cannot ascertain what strange alloy has been combined with yellow gold so as to give the thing its platinum lustrousness. Its beauty captivates and I gaze at it for many moments as I imagine that it was fashioned to be seen in darkness only, in this effect of night, wherein its magick spills forth and evokes wonder. I lift the relic above me and set it on my head, where the chilliness of its metal spreads through my entire tissue. I shudder as one bell surmounted above an antique cathedral peals its somber sound. I hear that reverberation as it floats through air toward the sea that swells before an old town below the hill on which the basilica stands erect. I turn my face toward the ancient edifice and see that it, too, has been enhanced by the cloak of night that drapes it; and as I grimace at its chilly stones a thing from within the bell tower calls my mind, coaxing me to rise from bended knee and proceed in quest of sinister sensation, my diadem tilted on my dome. How solid feels the frigid earth on which I creep beneath the stars, and how icy the starlight is upon my liquid eyes, those eyes on which is reflected the erection of ancient stone before me.