As she stepped closer to the sliding doors, her hip bumped the edge of a table. Something heavy and rounded wobbled atop it. Eleanor caught the item before it fell, and gasped at how warm it was to the touch.
It was made of bronze, and she initially took it for some sort of lidless little teapot – short and stout, as the rhyme went; there was its handle and there was its spout – but it held no liquid, no dregs of leaves. She thought next that it might be an incense-burner and cautiously sniffed at it, anticipating that same dank, mossy, fleshy scent.
What she smelled instead made her think of hot oil left too long on the stove, not quite to smoking but very nearly to the point of bursting into flame.
Fine lettering embossed the object’s curving metal side. She ran a fingertip along it as she puzzled out the archaic-looking script.
The Nameless One For Whom We Raise A Thousand Smokes.
The voice that recurred to Eleanor then was that of her own sister. “We found the lamp, the brazen bowl,” and something about a mad flash, great shapes, gates and mazes.
The residue coating the inside of the brass –
“… lamp, the brazen bowl …”
-- container looked greasy, like streaks of paraffin or petroleum jelly.
Acting on an impulse – even a compulsion – she could neither understand nor resist, Eleanor found and lit a match. The matchhead flared, then guttered in the breeze. Before it could blow out, she dropped it through the lidless opening.
With a flash – “a mad flash!” – the oily substance ignited. It burned glassy-clear flames etched and shot with lightning-blue. Thin beams sprang from the lamp’s spout, a dancing, dazzling intricacy of –
“… far blue rays …”
They pointed in the direction of the light, the amber beacon. There, the rays touched upon and illuminated –
“… great shapes … the gate, sphinx-guarded … gates of graven dolomite … the stone-lanterned maze …”
She set a hand to her head, which seemed filled with voices, all speaking at once.
“… the hour when the moonstruck poets know …”
The rays did touch upon and illuminate shapes she swore had not been there before. Statues, two hulking granite statues, of winged lionesses with the heads and breasts of women. Sphinxes. They stood moss-encrusted and climbing with ivy, flanking a gateway topped with a carved arch of some pale-hued, crystalline-glittering mineral.
Through the archway was a narrow path, a high-walled maze, marked by lampposts also made from granite and set with golden lozenges of glass. She caught a glimpse of someone just turning a corner – fleeting though it was, she was sure she recognized the long white hair of Brother Zoar.
Without pause for concern or consideration, Eleanor slid open the doors and stepped outside. Heedless of the rain, she dashed across the deck and down the steps toward the forest.
The far blue rays and amber beacons vanished as she left the brazen bowl behind, but she did not need their guidance. Within moments, slipping on wet grass, she reached the place where she had seen the sphinxes.
They were not there.
She blinked and wiped raindrops from her face.
They were there.
Looming above her, stern-visaged, terrible and strange, the sphinxes were there. And between them, the gate with its carved arch … but the gate held only nothingness.
Not blackness, not blankness, not emptiness.
Nothingness.
Eleanor hesitated, then stepped through.
The rain stopped as decisively as if she’d gone indoors, but no ceiling stretched above her. The maze’s high, vine-choked walls were open to the sky. Open to the pink sky, a sky not rose-pink with dawn or blushed with sunset’s fires but pink nonetheless, a pink sky where the stark outlines of birds like herons flew.
She stood, dripping, on a path of dry bricks, porous-seeming as if cut from thirsty pumice. The air felt balmy. It smelled not of cold fog and wet brine but of a more stinging alkaline; she thought of salt-flats and deserts.
When she looked back the way she’d come, she saw the silent sphinxes continuing to loom there. She saw the backside of the arched gateway, and the nothingness it held.
Spindly insects buzzed faintly as they ticked and batted against the lozenge-shaped panes set into the stone lampposts. She recognized them no more than she recognized the vines that grew up the high walls, or the kinds of trees whose boughs interlaced above the decorative stonework at their tops.
This was not the world as she had always known it. This was someplace else altogether. Someplace strange, unreal and unfamiliar.
To call out, to raise her voice, seemed a terrible transgression. Eleanor hastened on instead. The path was indeed a maze, bending and switching, splitting off in every direction, filled with hidden alcoves, intersections and dead-ends.
“The labyrinth of wonder,” Chaos had said.
And, indeed, so it was. Within moments, she’d all but forgotten in her fascination her true purpose for coming here.
Or was this her true purpose in coming here?
Were they not, perhaps, one and the same?
Each pace she took brought new angles of view. Apertures in the walls, slanting from width to narrowness like castle windows, offered peeks at tantalizing features – terraced gardens, crumbling slabs and statues, puzzling shrubs laden with shiny clusters of fruit, low bridges spanning pools where what resembled monstrous lily-pads and lotus-blossoms floated against the reflected pink-hued sky.
These always seemed but a turn or two ahead, yet when she reached where they should have been, she found only more of the winding maze itself. She saw broken towers, decaying spires twisting upward to weathered white turrets, and a gaping hole where stairs descended into a blackness darker than eternal night –
Or had that been something her sister said, reciting from her poems?
“… stone steps leading down, to eternal night’s black haven where the primal secrets frown …”
The vines rustled against the walls. A bird cried somewhere on high, its screech that of a madman. Thin, brittle leaves whirled around Eleanor in a frenetic blowing dance. The insects buzzed and ticked against the amber glass of the stone lampposts.
Somewhere, it seemed, a cracked flute played, the music splintered and atonal, the sort of music to which lunatic throngs might caper.
Another turn in the maze brought her to a gate, this one not flanked by sphinxes or topped with an arch but a simple gate of corroded metal bars. It hung askew on a hinge, wedged partway open and weedily entangled as if it had not moved in centuries. The pumice-brick path she walked on continued a ways past this gate, but more and more weeds straggled through cracks, and it was swiftly overgrown and lost.
The scene beyond it was one of fetid greens and greys. Mossy hills humped up from marshy moors. Ground-mist seeped in steamy vapors. Ancient stumps and fallen logs lay half-buried by layers of mold. Pallid, fleshy growths of fungus sprouted from their decomposing crevices … not mushrooms in any sense that Eleanor could comprehend, but horrid rugose stalks topped by caps somehow both bulbous and pendulous … and the ground-mist, she realized, was not ground-mist at all but issuing from the sporulating folds and gills forming the undersides of those caps.
The prevailing odor was both mildewy and acrid, slightly sour, with the barest hint of something almost spicy, something not-quite-anise. She felt again that sense of expectancy and dread, vague but overwhelming.
“We knew you’d come,” Chaos said from behind her.
Eleanor spun to see him emerging from an alcove concealed in the stonework of the maze walls. He smiled, his dark eyes glinting. Behind him, Hesperia and Brother Zoar also appeared.
“We knew you couldn’t resist,” Hesperia added. “Now you can help us gather what we need.”
“You … you make incense from … these?” She shuddered as she indicated the clumps of sighing fungal growths.
“Not only those.” Chaos held up a
jagged, spiky stem tipped with a single glassy-clear flower. The petals – veined and membranous like dragonfly wings – blossomed out in a radiating spiral from its vile heart.
She caught its scent of fading, dying, unearthly starlight. This time, it repelled her and she drew back.
“Child.” Brother Zoar raised empty, upturned palms. “My dear Eleanor, you do not understand. Our search for enlightenment is the Nameless One’s poison dream. It lures us into the idiot vortices, and loses us amid the cosmic spheres.”
“Looking for awareness,” Hesperia said, “looking to expand the consciousness and open the inner eye.”
“They don’t know,” Chaos continued. “They’re making themselves more vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?” cried Eleanor.
“The madness of the Outer Gods,” said Brother Zoar. “The streams of Time, the voids of Space.”
She gazed at him in incomprehension.
“There is no harmony,” Chaos said. “There is no purpose, only visions in the muttering dark. We are nothing.”
Hesperia nodded. “We have seen into the gulfs, and retained our minds. We’ve seen ourselves upon the altar. We’ve stood alone before eternity, and nothing since has looked the same.”
“Think of it as an inoculation,” Brother Zoar said. “To save us from ourselves.”
They showed it to her then, the truth beyond the truth. They showed her where unknowable things flopped and fluttered – formless things, shapeless, perhaps once human but no more – to the shrill piping of insane flutes.
She beheld with her own living eyes the dead eyes of blind Azathoth, and ceased to hope … because she understood.
Salt Water Bodies
Susan Hicks Wong
We cruised through the warm moist night air with our favorite band blasting out the open windows; two eighteen-year-old beach town rats dressed to look twenty-one. Our band was in town tonight. The most amazing, incredible band you could imagine. We two freckled, salt-mouthed mermaids talked about them all the time.
Tube tops pulled down, acid-washed jeans with the knees and bottoms strategically torn, black velvet mascara and glitter eye shadow, hair flamboyantly roostered, lip gloss as slippery as a porpoise’s backside. My cousin Mar-Lyna and I had planned this night for months and nothing was going to go wrong. As we barreled past the AME Zion church a wrinkled old lady shot us the wary eyeball from under her big flowered hat as she snatched the cross at her neck and kissed it.
We was bad news.
Traffic slowed to a molasses pour of rocking vans, pick-up trucks and rusty band-stickered imports full of kids as we neared the auditorium. Our old Falcon throbbed as we waited to turn into the parking area. A smoke-filled van next to us honked wildly and some guy inside waggled his tongue at us. “Moon him,” Mar-Lyna commanded and I waited until the cars ahead of us cleared, yanked down my pants and aimed my backside out the window. She stomped the accelerator with a screech and I fell back into my seat, slithering into my pants as the air behind us filled with male hoots and raucous laughter.
Mar-Lyna cackled and waved her middle finger out the window as she cut off another car and slid into a parking space. A spotty-faced parking attendant shone his flashlight at us and shook his head no with a frown. She blew him a kiss and jumped out, grabbing my arm. “Come on, girl. We don’t have all night.”
We strutted down the dusty parking lot aisles and into the heaving crowd of hormone-stoked teenagers. Her hand clamped my elbow as we were sucked into the vortex of the auditorium entrance. A guard motioned me and I opened my bag for her to inspect it with what I hoped was a look of peach-fuzz innocence. The ticket was taken from me and someone stamped my hand. It said UNDER 21 in smeary red script. I looked around for Mar-Lyna on the other side of the turnstile and for a moment lost her in the sea of denim.
“Bet you thought you got rid of me.” Juicy bubblegum popped next to my ear. “Let’s hit the Ladies’ Room, if you know what I mean.” She elbowed me hard in the ribs. I hooked two fingers through the back collar of her fake snakeskin jacket and she pulled me through the crush at the door of the Ladies’ like a water skier behind a motorboat. Someone cried out in protest, no fair jumping in line! Mar-Lyna pushed a pasty brunette out of the way, yanking me into the stall as she slammed the door in the girl’s face.
“Here, hold my bag while I pee and then you can go.” She smirked as she slid something out of her boot. “Mama’s got treats.” She waggled some pink and white pills in a baggie and a small leather flask. “Was my dad’s. He don’t need it no more.” She gestured at the flask. “Drink up,” she commanded, unscrewing it with a sharp smell of whiskey.
I wobbled a bit as we found our way to our assigned seats. The arena was already filled with a furtive haze of acrid smoke. “Nosebleed section,” Mar-Lyna sneered. “Follow me.” We talked loudly as we scooted down the stairs, swinging our hips. Nearer to the stage, a group of teenage boys gave us appreciative looks.
“Need some company?” she slithered in next to the cute one with long hair. Bitch. She always got the best-looking ones. She pushed her lips in a cherry-red pout as I scrambled into a hastily vacated seat on the other side of her. “Ya’ll party?” Mar-Lyna inquired.
The opening band was some indie outfit I’d never heard of but Mar-Lyna and the guys nodded their heads along as the musicians squealed through their set. One of the boys at the end of the group went woooooo and stood with his hand raised in a devil’s sign. I think his name was David or something. Jerking her head in his direction, Mar-Lyna rolled her eyes at me and mouthed, Loser.
The opening act finally finished and she snuggled in closer to Alex, the guy she’d sat beside and batted her eyes. She was casting her spell, throwing her sparkly little net over him and he was mesmerized, hanging on her every word.
“Mar-Lyna!” I elbowed her and she brushed me off. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore. Remember what happened last time?” She ignored me even more elaborately than usual but I could see the rapt expression on Alex’s face.
It wasn’t her fault exactly, the things Mar-Lyna did. Nobody was around much to tell either of us what to do.
Our mothers were half-sisters from the same mother, the two youngest of a vast and complicated family with a tendency towards inbreeding. I had a wrinkled snapshot of the two of them up to their waists in the waves and laughing showing their teeth but they had very little to do with one another these days. My mama had found a spiritually higher path, playing organ for prayer meeting at the Holiness Church. Mar-Lyna’s mama was out greeting sailors at the base and spreading hospitality. Or at least that’s what she called it. Since her last boyfriend ran off and she lost her job at the Undercurrent she’s been doing that a lot. She just shrugs, grabs her little pocketbook on her way out the door and says, Hon, a girl’s gotta get by.
I sighed and settled into my seat. Laser lights swooped through the crowd and as each section was highlighted cheers erupted and bodies moved in waves. When the lasers swept over us I felt a gurgle in my stomach. After the Southern Comfort and pills I felt a little woozy. I stood up trying to catch Mar-Lyna’s attention but she had her back to me, her gaze on Mr. Excellent Hair. “S’cuse me,” I mumbled as I brushed past them. “I’ll be right back.”
As I climbed the stairs to the exit there was a rush of excitement at some movement onstage and I struggled against the tide of people running back to their seats. Someone sloshed a beer on me. Guitars growled behind me and the crowd roared approval. Ladies and Gentleman, the Demons of Darkness, the Gods of Noise, the Beast With Five Heads! My heart sank as the opening chords cranked up. It was all so awesome. And I was stumbling toward the empty Ladies’ Room gagging with my hands over my mouth. I made it just in time too. Everything came up: liquor, funny pills, plus some other stuff. Brrrrrr. I looked sickly green around the gills when I finally emerged from the stall. I arranged my hair, studying the effect with narrowed eyes and rinsed my mouth at the sink and put on some more lip-glo
ss. My mascara had run so I dabbed at it with a tissue.
I wondered if they missed me. A sob of self-pity bubbled up out of me. Mar-Lyna always got the cute guys. Her mama said that she was coming into her womanly powers. Me, I was still an ugly dork, always conscious of trying to fit in. When, if ever, would I come into my womanly powers? With a huge wet, shuddering sigh I emerged from the restroom and ran full force into someone’s large hard arm.
“OW. What the fuck? What’re you doing here?” My nose throbbed. Was it spurting blood? “Look what you did!”
It was David, the Loser Guy from the edge of the group. “I followed you to make sure you were alright. Are you . . . ?”
“Of course I’m okay. What do you mean, you followed me?” I aimed an offended flick of my bony leather-jacketed shoulder in his direction. “Weirdo. Do I look like I need help?”
He shrugged, hunching over me slightly because he was so tall. Muffled music boomed from inside. “Come on, you’re missing all the good stuff. My friend won backstage passes for after the concert. We might be able to get you girls in.”
Not a jock, not the cool dude Mar-Lyna was plastered onto, but one of loser David’s friends.
We made our way back. My least favorite song, Backside of the Planet was playing so maybe I hadn’t missed that much. Halfway to our seats David placed his hand at my back as if to guide me. I bounced the two-fingered party sign at Mar-Lyna and she shot me a crabby look as David and I slid past the jocks, her and Mr. Hair. He introduced me to his pals by name, which surprised me because I didn’t think he knew it. His friends nodded and smiled at me and offered me a surreptitious toke. I sighed, slid down into my seat and turned my attention to the spectacle onstage.
***
There he was out front and center, tight black leather pants accentuating his manhood. Dirty blonde hair streamed behind as he pranced across the stage; smoke and flames billowing around him. He was holding the huge microphone so close to his lips that he threatened to swallow it. By this point in the concert his eyeliner had just begun to run and the effect was one of a highly assertive and debauched barbarian.
A Lonely and Curious Country Page 10
