I touch the stone with which the church has been built, as one bright daemon star above me burns onto my diadem and reminds me of that other star, the orb of refracted fire that guided shepherds on this celebration of Yule to the manger and its infant born of seed of Holy Spectre. My hand is firm against the chilly rotting stone, that stone that seems an emblem of my damaged withered heart, that organ whose beating I no longer sense. My hand is firm against the ancient edifice, and for one haunted moment I am as olden as the rock that has formed this haunt of silenced prayers; and yet I seem to hear an echo of those dead prayers deep inside my skull, where they frolic beneath my eyes. I feel them spill from out my brain and slip unto my mouth, which mumbles them as I pass through the threshold, into the church. I smile at the lingering stench of destruction as I walk past charred and disintegrated pews beneath the splintered stained-glass saints.
And then I see her, bathed in sheath of starlight that flows through the cavity where once a stained-glass saint had worn a heart. Ah, sweet Pieta, how beauteous you are, enhanced in cosmic light. And yet, what a forlorn image you present, on this day of your infant’s rumored birth; for you are alone, your lap is vacant, you hold no holy corpse in your embrace. Lady, let me lie upon your lap and press my head against your marble breast, beneath which I seem to hear strange palpitation. My diadem has lightened, and when I touch my hand to it I find that it has withered into a thorny crown that pricks my palm. Ah, sweet saint, how your jeweled eyes gleam in shaft of starlight, as I lift to you my wounded palm, the stigmatic stain of which you bend to sup upon. Happy, happy holiday.
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Many have called Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire the greatest living Lovecraftian writer. W.H. Pugmire is a writer of horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe. Strongly influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, many of Pugmire’s stories directly reference “Lovecraftian” elements (such as Yog-Sothoth of the Cthulhu Mythos). Pugmire’s major original contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos is the Sesqua Valley, a fictional location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States that serves as the primary locale for much of his fiction. According to his official biography, his “goal as an author is to dwell forevermore within Lovecraft’s titan shadow.” Pugmire is a self-proclaimed eccentric recluse as well as “the Queen of Eldritch Horror.” His stories have appeared in major horror anthologies, and collections of his fiction and poetry have appeared under small press imprints such as Necropolitan Press, Mythos Books, Delirium Books, and Hippocampus Press.
Visit W.H. Pugmire’s page at Amazon.com to buy his books!
Illustration by Ronnie Tucker.
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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.
Among the Dark Places of the Earth
by Julio Toro San Martin
It was on a Tuesday when we crossed the towering peaks of the Andes Mountains. Its continuous chain of monstrous girth, which extends all the way along the west of South America, aroused to my sensibilities a sense of the magnitude of its suggestive power, and with this sublime elevation of feeling came a dread. These gigantic growths, spawned of earth’s rocks, seemed to live a life apart from man, brooding and majestic to themselves, true only to themselves, as brothers. As I gazed atop their snowy summits from the 6-passenger plane I feared we had greatly erred and had made an intrusion into places where man should not be, and watched beings that saw our onlooking and curious eyes as trespasses and voyeurship, but they were patient and waited. To our north in the distance loomed one of the highest of earth’s monoliths, iridescent Aconcagua, clothed with a sliver of clouds. I imagined it to be the mighty monarch of the peaks –peaks that were its subjects. And should it become annoyed, what then? I thought, what if mountains moved? What if they got up and walked? What army could stop one leg from lifting? A profound respect for them dawned on me such as I never experienced before, for if these mountains moved, would they even see us as sharers in a common destiny on this earth; or as nuisances, as flies, inconsequential to their estranged and alien minds?
After awhile these disturbing thoughts began to abate, and the terror softened as we left the Andes behind somewhat and beheld their western slopes. Yet they were never wholly gone, for always they remained to our left while we journeyed, as the Pacific Ocean did to our right. Like two boundaries they seemed, land and water, poised to attack, while we flew between them. The pilot and I were in Chile, the snake-like country to the west of Argentina.
Refueling in the capital of Chile, Santiago, we continued our journey south. We passed various cities in Chile’s pleasant central valley and crossed the Bio-Bio River. Our journey south took us through densely forested areas and lake regions, remarkable for their beauty and solitude. Our destination was Chiloe Island. The last grand majestic marker before our descent should have been the glacier-covered volcano, Osorno. We planned to land at Tepual Airport in Puerto Montt, and from their chart the ferry that would take us to Chiloe. In all, we would have covered the land mass between Buenos Aires in the east of Latin America to Chile’s bustling capital Santiago in the west, and covered 668 miles from the capital in the north, and would have stood near the worlds end. We knew that not much further south lay nearly untraversable fjords and inlets, dark brooding cities, the straits of Magellan, tempestuous waters, and then the daunting, cold wastes of the Antarctic.
At 3,000 feet, I remember looking out the window and noticing the forested lake regions below us. Then I took a brief nap and when I awoke I saw a worried look on the pilot.
“That’s funny,” I overheard him say. “There shouldn’t be mountains this high.”
I immediately looked out the window and realized we were overhead the Andes again. I could see their snow covered peaks below and some giant sentinels in the distance. It was as if we had backtracked our voyage and were now recrossing the Andes all over again.
“Are we turning back?” I remember asking him, holding my fear in check.
“I don’t know. The navigational instruments aren’t working right,” he said. And then added in an ominous undertone, “I don’t know where we are.”
From that point on our flight became one of real, and not imagined, terror and mind-numbing stress.
“Can’t you contact anyone?” I remember yelling.
“All I get is static.”
I tried to use my cell phone and it too didn’t work.
“Sit beside me and help me any way you can,” he then said to me.
I sat beside him and followed his instructions in an intensity of fear as best I could, sensing everything, his instructions, our movements, in wild dimensions of phantasmagoria which passed dizzyingly before me in transmutations incorporeal and unreal. The world outside the cockpit became as a solitary giant, dark and uninviting. This feeling was intensified when a thick, encroaching mist, began to encircle the environs of the strange, moving skyscape before us. It surrounded the plane and covered the sun. I remember seeing one hoary mountain top become completely submerged within it. Soon the mist, now a thick fog, blanketed everything, and no matter how high we rose, it was always there. The only sound was the loud hum of our engines.
It must have been hours, or minutes, when the fog began to disperse and we caught sight of land below us. We were unnerved to realize we were flying lower than was safe.
“It looks like the ends of Patagonia. How did we travel so far in so little time?” the p
ilot said. “We shouldn’t be here. Not enough fuel.”
He estimated we were past the Straits of Magellan. Confused, he warned me that we were running out of fuel and had no choice but to land in this isolated, nethermost region of the world, far away and farther south than we had planned. Flying lower, we circled a wide expanse of flatland and the pilot made a safe, yet highly rocky, landing.
#
“I’ll go check to see if anyone can help us,” I said to the pilot.
We were on elevated ground and in the distance I could see far away a lonely homestead and a wooded area near it, and stretching in all directions, empty grassland. Behind us began small foothills, which gradually increased into a chain of low-lying and then larger mountains. The pilot guessed they were a tributary of the Andes Mountains and that we were inexplicably lost on Tierra del Fuego, either on the Chilean or Argentine side.
We didn’t talk much when we landed, and the pilot said he would spend his time checking the plane for whatever was malfunctioning, and trying to fix the radio. Help would come soon he was sure, and if it didn’t, tomorrow we’d head off with supplies to one of the nearest cities, that he was convinced were no more farther away than a few days walk from our landing place. He encouraged me to go, in case the small house in the distance had a phone that worked or other communication device, and also suggesting that the walk would be good for my flailed nerves.
When I was ready to leave a low buzzing noise started to sound.
“Don’t worry,” the pilot said. “It’s probably just wind blowing through the mountains.”
#
As I walked, I tried to keep my thoughts from making any compromise with the irrational and told myself that some explanation for our past danger in the plane would present itself, in time. I wore a heavy sweater, meant to have been worn in Chiloe, since the weather here was also cold. Low heavy clouds formed overhead and a small drizzle of rain began to fall. I estimated it to be near evening.
The dwelling was farther than it looked, however, so by the time I reached the wooden fence of the house I was soaking wet and the light through the clouds had dimmed a considerable degree. The fence surrounded the rural one-story house. Sparse trees dotted the small property irregularly throughout it. To the east I could see the long forested area and to my north the small mountain chain and our plane like a speck of dust in the immense surrounding grassland.
I yelled from the fence to see if someone was home, but when no one answered I took it upon myself to enter the property, since I was by this time extremely chilled and as I have said wet, and its then that I noticed that the small wooden gate was open and the corral for horses was empty. I looked at the front door of the house and saw also that it was slightly open and creaking slowly because of the wind.
The property did not seem right. It now took on for me the impression of a house not lived in, abandoned, perhaps an old gaucho residence gone to rot, unnoticed in the quiet plains. A gaucho being an Argentine cowboy. The thought unnerved me that I and the pilot were perhaps the only two people in this out of the way place.
Uneasily I stepped through the door, since as I have said I was extremely cold and wet and needed to get help.
“Hello!” I yelled into the void. The void made no reply.
I yelled again as I further entered cautiously into the dwelling. A lone shutter I could hear now banging monotonously against a window. A sense of years upon years of emptiness now hit me.
The door I passed led into a kitchen. Decrepitude had done its work, and thick dust accumulated on one finger, as I ran it atop a table. I also noticed overturned chairs, lying sprawled as if knocked over in a hurry.
I continued to explore the house, with its moldy smell of wet age. I noticed there was no TV, but only an old antenna radio. I found it strange that personal belongings and furniture should still remain in the house, more so in the three small bedrooms, where there were still bedsheets and clothes in the closets.
In one room I located a diary, which confirmed the pilots suspicions that we were somewhere on chilly Tierra del Fuego, that southernmost island at whose bottom the Atlantic and Pacific meet and which skirts the ice-cold Antarctic. It further confirmed my suspicions that the past residents were a family of gauchos. The writer was a girl of about 15 or 16 years of age I estimate, and the diary is peculiar since it is written more like random thoughts hurriedly scrawled, than in a typical compendium of a day’s events and thoughts. The reasonably long age of the diary also unsettled me. Why had no one else been here since the time it had been written and then carried it off? Was there some meaning, also, in the fact that it had been penned at the dawn of the ‘flying saucer’ age? With curiosity I took up the small book, wiping off the dust and cobwebs, and with slow mounting horror, in that house between mountains, sky and land, started to read it.
#
November 14, 1951
#
Uncle said the thing squirmed on the ground like a giant worm, but he couldn’t get a good look at it since it quickly disappeared into a huge hole that uncle could fit in. Later on I went to my window and looked up at the stars. Father says the stars are eyes.
#
November 29, 1951
#
The whales sing to the night, uncle said, when he returned from the coast. He also saw ice-bergs on the water. He also said a man and his horse got lost from them in a fog so he didn’t come.
#
December 2, 1951
#
The disappeared man came today. He said he’d only been riding for 2 hours.
#
December 3, 1951
#
Mom keeps telling me we should live our lives like nothing is happening. I try to. Uncle tried to remember if the old Fuegian or Patagonian Indians had any stories about these things. He said they didn’t.
#
December 4, 1951
#
This morning I overheard mom and dad fighting. Dad was saying how hard life is and then this happening. He said he can’t leave us to go to the sheep farm to work. Over yerba maté tea today uncle told us he thinks those things come originally from far in space and they’re a danger not only to us but to the world. He says we should tell more people no matter how much they think we’re crazy. I believe him.
#
Undated
#
Men came today. They stayed overnight and nothing happened. They laughed at my dad and uncle. They said they’re not true gauchos.
#
Undated
#
I saw one good today standing nearby. Like uncle describes them. Uncle says there’s more now. I hate looking out my window at the mountains, where grandma says they come from. Mom says from a pit in the ground, like devils from hell. Christmas and New Years is coming soon.
#
December 15, 1951
#
There are more of them now. Every night they surround the house. Every night I hear the strange buzzing sound they make to the sky. I dreamt last night I saw them falling from the sky, millions of them like snowflakes. I hear everyone crying secretly. I want to run away to Ushuaia or Rio Grande, where there’s more light. I want to go to school. I want to kill them all. I would even run into the Antarctic.
#
Undated
#
More friends came from close where the Beagle Channel is today. They showed themselves to them. I don’t understand those things. Why do they only show themselves to some people? What do they want?
#
January 10, 1952
#
Christmas and New Years passed already. I got few presents. I pray a lot.
#
January 13, 1952
#
We’re taking the two living horses. It’s late and foggy and uncle and his friends shot at the things near the foothills. He said he saw one eating Heber or at least he thinks it was eating him. It was impossible to see clearly. It was lying on the grass, a dough
ty, glistening, maggoty-thing uncle says, and Heber was sticking out of the top of its head. All uncle could see were Heber’s legs and boots and mid-waist the things mouth started and then the rest of it. Heber was slimy. Uncle shot it again and again. They’re outside now. I hear them buzzing and I hear more in the mountains and in the woods and on the prairie. Heber’s brother keeps crying and we’re leaving. It’s raining and father says we’ll carry what we can and send for our things later. I want to see Lorena to tell her about all this. I can see their shadows outside. I can hear their buzzing.
#
Undated (or perhaps at a later hour from the last entry)
#
I’m alone now and I feel like I’m falling into a dark hole.
#
Finishing the diary I put the book down and became fully aware of how dark it had become. I went to the window and saw rain and again a fog so thick I couldn’t see clearly past a few feet in this gray weather of the south. The plane and the mountains were completely obscured. I could also now hear the strange buzzing noise I’d heard by the plane –the same noise so ominously described in the diary. It’s then that I heard something entering the house where the kitchen was.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 45
