Susan would wrap her legs across my lower back, as I had often dreamed, her putty face twisted in expressions of ecstasy which might not have been absolutely accurate, but judging from the creature's learning from porn flicks and its knowledge of Susan's common expressions, probably were dead on target. From its original miasmic soup of stinks it could isolate and fine-tune subtle and pleasing smells, even to the shampoo in her hair. Her skin smelled like skin, not of the black mass's fishy rot. She smelled musky under her arms, and sweated slickly with the exertion of our love-making. She had prickly gold hairs on her legs, as I had spied on Susan in shorts. Her breath came out hot and human on my vulnerable neck. Other than her acted breathing, however, she never made a sound. I could go deep inside her body, push my tongue in her mouth. And elsewhere if I wanted...but I wasn't ready for that yet.
It was a humid August day, our last day together, and school was nearing...my last year of pre- med. I dreaded going back to school, now. I resented the distraction...the intrusion. We lay naked on the sheets, a fan blowing on us, dozing to the low radio murmurs. That was how Cavel found us when he let himself in.
He had been trying to call, I'd learn in a few minutes, had asked the landladies for my key, concerned. But at the moment he was hissing swears and crossing the room toward us. No, no, I told him, sitting up. Susan sat up, too. Cavel got a handful of my hair and cocked his fist back. I cried out the words Marilyn Monroe.
Now Cavel was swearing in the awe of sheer terror, as if the chanted curses would banish this creature which before his eyes transformed from his dominated girlfriend to his untouchable idol, Marilyn Monroe. It's a shoggoth, Cavel, I told him. Getting out of bed to take him by the arms, I began to tell him the story I'm telling you now. I don't think, despite his interest in those forbidden manuscripts, he really believed any of it until now. Finally he calmed. I told Marilyn to make us some coffee. Cavel marveled. He laughed deliriously and squeezed my arm. Said my name several times. We could rule the world, you know that? he told me. We could rule the world with powers like these.
Cavel asked me to turn the creature back into Susan. I asked him why, in a groan, but he persisted. I passed the order on, and he daringly stood within several feet of the creature to watch the shifting of plastic flesh, the reshaping of the subtlest details, called up from the photographic perfection of my subconscious memory. During this I dressed, then we three sat at the table. Cavel's eyes twinkled at me. I felt eerily as I did when I sat with Cavel and the real Susan. And he felt it too. Why Susan? he asked me now. Huh, buddy? All the girls you can have, and you want your best friend's girl? I stammered, stuttered. I was just playing around. Every man wants to make love to his friend's girlfriend just once, right?
I'll forgive you for it, he promised. And I won't tell anyone about all this. On certain conditions. You and I will explore the powers of the manuscripts further -- together. I have all I want, I told him. I don't, he said. But we'll go into that more, later. Sue is away this weekend visiting her folks, and I want to borrow your friend for company. After all, every man wants to make love to his friend's girlfriend just once, right?
I pleaded with him. I raised my voice, trembling. Susan meekly, resignedly watched us, like the real Sue. Prepared to be dominated again. But hadn't I dominated her, too, just as Cavel always had? Hadn't I selfishly exploited her? Enslaved her?
In the end he was too strong for me. All my new found confidence fled. I could barely stand, I was so defeated. So humiliated. But I instructed Sue to go with Cavel for several days. To do whatever he said. She nodded. God, Cavel said. And then they left. And I cried at the table.
After two days, it was Cavel who didn't answer my calls. That night there was a thunder storm. A pounding at my door. I opened it, and there stood Susan. Hair plastered. Clothing plastered. Susan's clothing. I said her name. She didn't respond. My God, I thought. I took her in.
It was in the papers the next day. Some of my questions about the extent of the creature's free will were answered. It had chosen to disobey my commands. It had rebelled. It hadn't done as Cavel had ordered. And it had hurt people. Cavel was found in his apartment by his sister -- beheaded, his naked body smeared with an odd slime. The head had not been recovered.
Why it killed Susan also I can only speculate. Did she come in on them, and act in such a way as to alarm the creature? Or...I know this is stupid, but...might it have been jealous of her?
That night I told it I was sending it back. It looked at me strangely. I explained my reasoning to it. I didn't tell it I was angry for what it had done to poor Susan. I couldn't be, not really. I had done that.
We made love one last time, and then we took our places. It by our bed, me on the mysterious fraternity symbol. I couldn't remember the descending incantation, so I activated the tape recorder in my hands.
I regretted, as I watched it standing there watching me, not embracing it. Squeezing its hand as I had in the movie theater. But it was too late; the tape was underway. It waited. But it made no attempt to change into its actual form. It apparently waited until it was home. I'd like to think I know why...
Did my subconscious give it one final command? It tortures me not to know. Am I fooling myself to believe that – just before the naked figure vanished without fanfare, leaving me alone in that huge room, the sofa bed folded away – it was of the creature's own volition when she smiled dreamily at me, and mouthed the words, “Good bye”?
The Ice Ship
The men of the whaling schooner Scylla
Had witnessed a strange thing only the previous night
The great pale mass beneath Antarctic waters
Had taken two harpoons before sliding from sight
But the last thing observed of the silent leviathan
Was a nest of thrashing arms, serpentine and glowing white.
And now the Scylla's men met another weird vision
Though once this vessel must have resembled their own
A schooner slowly emerged from behind a looming iceberg
Its ice-caked masts and lines like a framework of bare bone
Snow lay heavy on her deck and the sails were stirring rags
She drifted like an apparition, and her hull gave a creaking groan.
The men were afraid to explore her but the captain led the way
They rowed out to the spectral craft through a broken icy flow
She towered above the little boat like a palace made of crystal
A howling wind blew across her deck in swirling ghosts of snow
One by one they boarded her, and shivered at more than the cold
And the captain himself hesitated, before leading the rest below.
The ship's inside was a mausoleum that spoke of decades gone
But they found the corpses of the crew preserved by the frigid air
Like a cargo in themselves waiting long to reach their port
And in his cabin at his desk her captain sat with frozen stare
His log lay open and its words perplexed the Scylla's men:
"She is no mermaid but a siren and pure evil, however fair."
One of the men yelled and the others rushed to the next room
There was a bed and on it a woman's naked body had been bound
The captain began to remark upon the life-like color of her flesh
When she lifted her head from the pillow and at them smiled around
"Free me from these chains," she whispered straight into their minds
"And I will grant you pleasures, as few live men have ever found."
But the men had seen those corpses and hurried up the stairs
Fled back to the Scylla without even learning the vessel's name
They returned later only long enough to pour precious kerosene
There are some stories even seamen won't give a legend's fame
None would ever tell how the siren pleaded in their skulls
As they sailed away, and watched the ice ship melt in
flame.
Servile
The man who opened the door startled Gabrielle, so that she drew back her rapping knuckles as if a snake had bitten her hand. For one thing, he was a stranger, and for another he was striking in appearance. He was a black man, and literally that; he had the darker skin of an African who had not had his genes diluted by a single corpuscle of white blood. He was bald, and wore large dark glasses with lenses so opaque she wondered if he were blind. His black suit was expensive, and lent further impact to his tall, muscular frame. Gabrielle was not prejudiced -- the man was an impressive, if dramatic, vision -- but she had not been expecting anything like him at this familiar door.
“Hello,” she stammered uncertainly in her British accent. “I’m Gabrielle Rumsey? Mrs. Wallace is expecting me?”
The black man stepped aside like a human door, with neither a word nor gesture. Gabrielle hesitated a moment, and then entered the house of her former employ. As she remembered it, the interior was dark and necessitated several seconds for her vision to adjust, as if she had entered one of the ancient tombs Dianna Wallace explored. Or, rather, had once explored.
The black man closed the door, and then held out one large hand to Gabrielle. For a beat she stared at it, afraid to touch it. But he wasn’t offering his hand to be shaken, she realized, feeling foolish; he was offering to take her bag. With a nervous smile she handed it to him, and as she did so noticed something odd about his hand...something that had subliminally caused her moment of apprehension. The man’s palm was as coal black as the top of his hand. She concluded that some Africans must not have lighter pigmentation on their palms. Perhaps it was a regional thing, a tribal characteristic.
She followed the man through the house, to Dianna’s office at its far end. Gabrielle’s unease had lessened now that she accepted the stranger as a servant and not some intruder, but there were other causes of unease that she did not expect to be so easily dismissed.
The servant opened the office door, and again stepped aside to grant Gabrielle entrance. She crossed the threshold, and gently he closed the door behind her, disappearing with her bag.
Dianna Wallace was slumped forward across the front of her desk, her head resting on crossed arms. She had returned to this country recently after having narrowly cheated death abroad. For a strange, desperate moment Gabrielle was afraid that Dianna had succumbed to death after all, here in her office -- but she heard a faint intake of breath and realized her former employer was in a deep doze. Even from this distance, Gabrielle was shocked at Dianna’s appearance. It had only been three years since Gabrielle had so abruptly left, but in that time Dianna seemed to have aged twenty years. Her handsome, strong-jawed face was haggard and lined; her once long, thick black hair was short and choppy like a boy’s, streaked with gray.
And Gabrielle knew that it was in a wheelchair that Dianna was seated behind her expansive desk.
Gabrielle glanced about the room, not yet having ventured another step forward, partly afraid to wake Dianna. It hadn’t changed much; it was an office, a study, a library whose walls were built-in book shelves full to overflowing, as if the room was in fact constructed from books alone. They were even stacked in the corners, covered several chairs.
The shades and curtains were drawn, but Gabrielle could still make out the artifacts that hung on those portions of the wall, and which stood on those sections of shelf, that the books had not claimed. There were Egyptian canopic urns, topped with the heads of animal-headed gods. Paleolithic hand axes, early Bronze Age daggers, a gallery of masks: a green-skinned woman from India, a narrow face with a six-pointed star in its forehead from Nigeria, masks from Sri Lanka, the Eskimos, the Cherokee. Their leering eyes, whether painted or empty holes, all made Gabrielle uncomfortable.
Yes, Dianna had taken souvenirs from her many travels, her many adventures as archaeologist, anthropologist, author. But her most recent, her last souvenir had been a bullet in the spine from an unknown source while on a trip to Tibet. Now her legs were of less practical value to her than these hollow visages on the walls.
But there had been some artifacts added in the past few years that Gabrielle had never seen. Most noticeably, to either side of the broad desk a sturdy table had been set. And atop these flanking tables were identical plain stone cubes. The stone was of an odd pale violet color, which almost seemed faintly phosphorescent. At last, Gabrielle took a number of steps further into the murky room. The cube on the right proved to be a basin, hollowed out from a single block of stone, but empty. The cube on the left, though of identical size and form, served as a pedestal for an odd sculpture. Gabrielle drew even closer to this table for a better inspection.
The sculpture was carved from a black stone as glossy as obsidian. It was an icon, a figure, a monster of some kind. The creature was like some perverse genetic splicing of a wild boar, a frog and an obese human male. Gabrielle found its incredible detail impressive, particularly if it had been rendered somehow from volcanic glass, but its realism made it far more unsettling than the abstracted masks around her. She found the icon repellent.
And yet it was mesmerizing. The hybrid’s eyes were closed as if in sleep, and Gabrielle knew she was letting her imagination become far too agitated when she thought she saw the travesty’s gross belly rise with a deep intake of breath. She timidly reached out to touch the thing...as much to break her self-induced spell as to see if the sculpture was as glossy as it looked.
“Don’t touch it!” a voice cried out.
Gabrielle withdrew her hand sharply for the second time that afternoon, her heart rocketing in her chest. She whirled to see Dianna’s eyes upon her. They were wide and darting, as if she had just been startled, herself.
“I’m sorry, Dianna,” Gabrielle stammered. “I...just never saw that piece before.”
Dianna Wallace pushed herself as erect in her wheelchair as she could manage. She had composed her wild look, and even offered a wan smile, a shadow of her former grin. “I’m sorry, hon, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s one of my most recent finds. He’s called Tsathoggua.”
“He looks like a sitting hog,” Gabrielle joked, in regard to the name. “Is he some kind of god?”
“Compared to us he is,” Dianna said, her smile taking on an odd taint. “You look enchanting, Gaby, as always. And don’t waste your time telling me I look good. I know I don’t.”
“You don’t,” the petite young woman admitted, her lips pursed in an unhappy pout that she knew brought out the protective instinct in men, but it was a pout that men often inspired themselves.
“I’m so glad you agreed to come back. I need you now more than I ever did before. Back when you were a house-sitter, not a baby-sitter. I know you were reluctant...”
Gabrielle couldn’t explain to Dianna the nature of her reluctance. The woman had suffered enough. Instead, she lied, “I just wasn’t sure I could offer you the care you need. I’m a housekeeper, and I’ve been a nanny...but don’t you think a private nurse is what you need most?”
“I need my little Gaby back”
Gabrielle smiled shyly, and diverted the embarrassing compliment by asking, “Who is the guy with shades who showed me in?”
Dianna smoothed back her disheveled hair with both hands, turning her eyes to the curtained windows. “His name is Smith. He helps move me around, runs errands for me in my research, serves as a watchdog in case my would-be assassin has friends in the states, who don’t realize that the nature of my research is benign. He won’t be in your way, Gaby...you’ll run the house as you see fit. But he is a mute, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Who would want to kill you in Tibet, Dianna?” Gabrielle asked, coming close to her employer and taking her hand. “Don’t they have any leads?”
“I was following an esoteric path of study, hon,” Dianna replied softly, squeezing the young woman’s small hand as if she were a child. “Something I had never even heard rumors of before. A kind of ancient cult. And the sniper proved to me that the
cult still exists, and takes its religion very seriously.”
“And what religion is that?”
“The worship of the Dreaming One.”
“Who is the Dreaming One?"
“Tsathoggua.”
Gabrielle glanced behind her again at that fat toad/warthog/human, seated like some obscene Buddha atop the block of violet stone.
“They were trying to kill me, but they didn’t. I can’t explore the way I once did...but I’ve found a way that’s even more exciting. It’s like exploring the bottom of the ocean, exploring space. And better than either. More frightening. More exhilarating...”
Gabrielle thought Dianna was referring to her involved computer set-up, which dominated most of the desk top. The internet, the web that now linked a world it had taken bygone explorers months, years to traverse.
“I’m glad you haven’t let this stop you,” the young woman said awkwardly, trying not to sound patronizing. “You have the right kind of attitude to fight this...”
“I can’t fight what’s happened to my body. And I don’t care to. My mind is free. I can still dream.” Dianna’s eyes had taken on a kind of wildness again, and it was unnerving. She had always been obsessive about her work, and Gabrielle had always admired her for that. But this seemed different. This was the look of a zealot. A fanatic. As if she had joined some strange sort of cult, herself.
Gabrielle squeezed the woman’s hand again. “Can I get you some tea?”
“Yes, darling, that would be wonderful. That ass of a husband of mine can’t even boil water to save his life.”
A flicker went through Gabrielle’s face at the mention of Mr. Wallace, but her smile only faltered a second. “I’ll go make you a pot.”
“It’s good to have you back here, my little Gaby,” Dianna told her.
“It’s good to be back,” Gabrielle replied, only half truthfully.
Gabrielle was setting out a tray to bring to Dianna when she sensed a presence enter into the kitchen behind her. The flesh of her nape prickled, and she turned -- expecting to see the mute bodyguard Smith looming there. Instead, it was someone who unsettled her even more. A handsome white man, bearded, with longish dark hair and a wide grin. Kevin Wallace held a glass of liquor in his hand. He didn’t care for tea.
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