Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

by S. T. Joshi

  I looked at the book. "I read it already."

  "Read it again. You obviously didn't get the connection." He went back and starting petting the cat again. It was an all-black kitten whose name, if you dared to mention it in today's PC climate, could get you into a lot of trouble. "All the pigeons come home to roost," I thought.

  I took the herb/vitamin potion and chased it with one of Dr. Lyons's Miracle Cure. "Good for what ails ya!" I got dressed and left for work. On the way, I found the Hodgson buried deep into my coat pocket. He put it there. I put it there. Didn't matter. It was still there anyway.

  When I got to work, I saw Keziah Mason in the occult section, chuckling to herself as she read one of the New Age witchcraft books. She certainly didn't look like the young, trendy/sexy girls that are witches in today's movies and TV shows. Brown Jenkin was curling around her feet, looking up at her from time to time with a very hungry shine in his eyes. This was something new. Usually it's just Lovecraft, now other characters were coming to visit.

  oe lived virtually his entire life in poverty. He died in a gutter on a street in Baltimore. That tells you something right there. He never lived to see his work gain the celebrity it deserved. Neither did Lovecraft. Neither did Howard. Is there a pattern here?

  he last clear thing I remember from that afternoon at work was waiting on Nyarlathotep. I suppose it was only inevitable. With Keziah and Jenkin about, the Dark Man couldn't be far away. I was running the register when he came up. He put a couple of self-help books on the counter (two of those I'm Okay, You're Okay self-affirmation kind of things) and started fumbling for his wallet. This struck me as kind of funny as I couldn't imagine Nyarlathotep having a wallet. I wondered what would be inside it. Would he have a driver's license? From where? Kadath maybe? Snapshots of Keziah and Azathoth? Who did he want contacted in case of an emergency? And what was the wallet made out of? I started laughing which made him look up at me. The man was dark. I don't mean just your normal black man. Nyarlathotep was the antithesis of light. Then he smiled and I could smell his breath. It wasn't the stagnating breath of decay as I'd been expecting. It was sweet and cloying. It made you think of hot summer nights when the heat sticks to your skin and you can peel your sweat away in layers. My eyes closed and I went away.

  was in the Miskatonic Library with Lovecraft as Henry Armitage. We were looking at the dead thing that lay on the floor where the guard dog had killed it. The upper body was strange enough but it was below the torso that "sheer phantasy began." Wilbur Whateley had died in his attempt to steal the Necronomicon. "Why didn't he just buy a copy from a book dealer or something?" I said. Armitage glared at me.

  The game was afoot and I was standing in the open fields of Dunwich. Before me was the farmhouse of the Fryes, the poor, doomed Fryes. It was 3 a.m. but I could see everything as if it was high noon. Even from a distance I could hear their terrified conversation on the party line phone. I saw the trees near the house bend apart as the invisible thing came closer. I had expected it to be something like Godzilla rampaging through downtown Tokyo. That's what happens when you're a child of the media and you grow up watching a genre that consumes itself with such gusto.

  I heard the splintering of wood and looked up to see the top of the farmhouse cave in in the middle. The screams were horrible. Within seconds, the house was gone and the thing continued walking through the forest. "The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich."

  I made my way up to Sentinel Hill where the final confrontation would take place. I had walked this route before with Lovecraft/Armitage but this time felt different. I could feel the wind on my face. My body had form and substance where before it was only dust and mist. Sometimes I was Rice. Sometimes I was Morgan. And once, just once, there was a brief time when I could have sworn I was Armitage and I was spraying the spawn of Azathoth with the powder.

  Above me there was the usual half-face squirming in torment except, this time, it stopped. It looked straight at me, ignoring the other two. "And what do you think you're looking at?" it said before it went back to its part and obligingly disappeared. I almost expected it to say "I'm gonna keep my eye on you" before it left, but it didn't. Afterwards we went back to the circle of terrified townsfolk and Armitage went into his speech. "Watch the skies!" I mouthed behind him. "Watch the skies!" The townspeople looked at me as if perhaps the wrong thing had been sprayed with the powder on the hill.

  I regretted not seeing Old Wizard Whateley this trip. He was always a lot of fun to talk to, particularly if you got a few drinks into him.

  hen I awoke, I was in a hospital bed.

  I'd been in them before, of course, so this was no real strange thing to me, but it still wasn't a good sign. There was a strong coppery taste in my mouth. I knew that wasn't a good sign either. My finger was hooked into one of those machines and I could hear the heartbeat monitor behind me, happily beeping away. (I've always wondered why they put those things just out of your sight. As if watching your heartbeat might make it stop.) I felt weak and worn out. My clothes were gone and I was in the hospital gown. Lovecraft was sitting in the chair nearby.

  "Can you believe what they've done to my city?" he asked when he saw I was finally awake. "They tore up the bridge. Tore up that historic bridge to make room for more traffic and make the downtown more scenic." He pronounced scenic with an extra flourish of sarcasm.

  "Where am I?" My bed was encircled by one of those curtains but, because of the lack of noise, I could tell I wasn't in an emergency ward. It was still somewhat light out, so I knew it was daytime but I didn't know what day.

  "You're in Rhode Island Hospital. It's attached to Jane Brown, you know. I went and looked in at the room where I died. There's a nurses' station there now. Everything changes."

  I pulled the cord and buzzed for the nurse.

  A large woman in a white uniform came a few minutes later. She explained that I had been unconscious for the last few days after I'd come into the emergency room by ambulance. "You've had an attack," she said and Dr. Lyons had me admitted. She'd alert him that I was awake and left the room after giving me some more medication. "Painkillers," she said, but she didn't bother to tell me what kind.

  Inspector Legrasse walked by my door and waved at Lovecraft. He was dragging along some half-crazed swamp dweller behind him.

  A little while later, Dr. Lyons came in but he looked an awful lot like Jeffrey Coombs from Re-Animator.

  "Mike," he said.

  "Dr. Lyons," I replied in my best Jack Webb voice. "Where's Bill Gannon? I heard he got arrested for wife beating."

  He looked at me as if I was some sort of test bug. "What?"

  "Nothing. Just a bad TV reference. What am I doing here?"

  Dr. Lyons pulled up a chair. "You had an attack."

  "What kind of an attack?"

  He sat there for a moment, searching for the right words. "You were at work. Do you remember that?"

  I nodded yes.

  "You were waiting on a customer. He was a black gentleman. In the middle of the transaction you began screaming and yelling for him to leave you alone. In fact, I'm told that you actually said that the man should 'take his old witch away and stop haunting you.' Sound familiar?"

  "No. Not at all. I really did that?"

  "I'm afraid so. A few of your co-workers tried to get you to calm down, but you went into a spasm and blacked out. You've been here for two days."

  I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but all I could see were those weird dimensional things from From Beyond circling his head.

  "What happened?"

  "The tumor is growing. It's pressing on the part of your brain that covers motor functions and memory. I don't know what's happening to it. It almost seems as if something is making it grow faster." He paused for a moment. "Michael, you're experiencing hallucinations."

  "Oh?"

  "It's not unusual, given the tumor's location. But I admit that I didn't think this would happen so quickly."

  Dr.
Lyons/Herbert West stood up so he would appear more impressive.

  "Michael, you need to have the operation."

  "We've gone over that before."

  "I know. You don't have the money or insurance. But we'll find a way, Michael. You've got to do this."

  I looked at him. It was easier to just go along.

  "Okay. Sure."

  "Good. I've got you set up for the operation in two days. We'll keep you here and keep an eye on you until then. Okay?"

  I nodded.

  "All right. Just rest easy. I'll be back later."

  After he left, I lay there for about ten minutes. Then I got up, got dressed, and left. Lovecraft followed me out. No one stopped me. It seemed that no one took any notice of me, and I wondered if they saw me at all or if it was just the way things are in Rhode Island.

  I took the bus home.

  There was only one message on my machine. It was from my boss. "Michael . . . um, I'm sorry to have to say this but we're going to have to let you go. I hope you understand. We just can't have any more scenes like today. I know you have problems but, legally, we can't afford the risk. Sorry. We'll mail you your last paycheck. Um . . . so you don't really need to come back. Okay? Hope everything works out for you. Bye."

  I took an extra dose of the herb/vitamin potion and laid down in bed.

  "So now what are you going to do?" asked Lovecraft.

  I didn't say anything.

  Lovecraft was standing near the window. There wasn't much of a view to see. He had on one of his father's old suits. It fitted him pretty well but was still a little loose in the shoulders. I wasn't sure if it was one of the suits that got stolen while he was in New York.

  "You know," I finally said, "I've read both of the biographies. Joshi's and de Camp's."

  He grimaced.

  "At least Joshi took the time to try and understand the era," he responded. "De Camp lived through some of it and he still couldn't understand how it affected me."

  "They never said much about your death. About how you felt as you lay there in that bed at Jane Brown."

  He turned to look at me. For some reason, his lantern jaw looked more solid. I could almost swear that his chin was reflecting the light.

  "Go to sleep, Michael." It was the first time I had heard him refer to me by name.

  I went to sleep.

  Professor Wilmarth/Lovecraft was talking about the black stone. Akeley had sent it through the mail and it had disappeared. I took out the stone from Machen's "Novel of the Black Seal" and showed it to him. He was interested but disappointed. "Yes, but it's not quite what we're looking for." He played the record for me and I listened to that strange otherworldly voice.

  "To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And He shall put on the semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that hides, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock . . . ."

  It was not surprising that it was my voice speaking on the record.

  Wilmarth/Lovecraft took no notice.

  Suddenly, we jumped forward and I was in Akeley's cabin. Wilmarth/Lovecraft was talking to Akeley, who was sitting in the opposite chair and covered in his huge robe. Akeley was describing Yuggoth with its great cities of black stone. After awhile, Wilmarth/Lovecraft went to bed and I took his place.

  "So," Akeley said in that queer, disjointed voice, "what are you looking for?"

  "Not much," I answered. "It's just that I've always wondered— a lot of us have wondered—who are you really? Under that mask.

  Who are you? Are you one of the Fungi? Are you Nyarlathotep?"

  "Why don't you see for yourself?"

  I reached over and took off the mask. It was Lovecraft. "Of course," he said, "who else would it be?"

  never developed a taste for Clark Ashton Smith. I knew he was a good writer, but just something about his work never clicked with me. Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith were touted as Weird Tales' "three musketeers." And yet it was often said that Seabury Quinn was more popular with the readers than any of them. Lovecraft never got a cover. Guess Margaret Brundage just couldn't bring herself to paint Cthulhu and, after all, there were no half-naked damsels in distress in Lovecraft. Maybe he would have been more successful if there had been.

  he next few days passed strangely.

  I don't need to say that I didn't show up for the operation. Dr. Lyons called once, demanding to know where I was and why I didn't come in. He didn't call again. In fact, nobody called after a while. I got to the point where I had to pick up the phone and check it regularly to make sure it was still working.

  I stopped doing that when a thick, guttural voice came on the empty line and said, "YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!"

  The dreams went back and forth then. Sometimes I'd have them when I was sleeping. Sometimes I'd have them when I was awake. I'd be walking down Thayer Street and suddenly I'd be walking down a street in Arkham, heading for the Witch House.

  Were they real? Was anything real at this point? I remember all those stories where everyone knows that the dreams are real except for the dreamer. In Pet Sematary, the main character (whose name escapes me but he was played by Dale Midkiff in the movie, which wasn't a bad adaptation—King had suffered far worse) goes for a midnight walk with the spirit of the dead student. The student leads him down the path to the Pet Sematary and then tells him not to go beyond the wall. He might as well have put a big neon sign saying, "This way to the Wendigo's Zombie grounds." When he wakes up, he's stunned to find his feet covered with mud and sticks. When I read that, I wasn't overcome with fear. Of course the dream was real. Aren't they always? My first thought was, "Damn, that's gonna be hard to clean up."

  The dreams. Eventually the dreams are the only things that are real. In the dreams there's no cancer, only monsters, gods, demons, ghouls, and things you can grab and hold with your hands. Something you can fight and batter into submission. Ever try to grab a cancer?

  stopped eating after a while. Didn't know why I was bothering anyway. Everything tasted the same and had that metallic, coppery taste to it. Lovecraft approved of that. We talked a long time about things and only occasionally would something creep through the woods or the walls. I kept taking the herb/vitamin potion along with Dr. Lyons's medication until it ran out. The Hounds of Tindalos ran through every once in a while but stopped coming when I ran out of food to give them. The cats of Ulthar never bothered to come at all, preferring to stay on the moon until everything was over.

  "Am I dying?" I asked Lovecraft.

  "Maybe. Who knows? What is death? Don't ask me."

  "But you're dead."

  "Am I?"

  ...

  finally found the section in The Ghost Pirates that Lovecraft was talking about.

  The good ship had been plagued by the appearance of ghost pirates who are making away with the sailors. There were ghost ships following them through the mist. The narrator tries to explain what's happening:

  "Well, if we were in what I might call a healthy atmosphere, they would be quite beyond our power to see or feel, or anything. And the same with them; but the more we're like this, the more real and actual they could grow to us. See? That is, the more we should become able to appreciate their form of materialness. That's all. I can't make it any clearer."

  I was spending more time away. I couldn't remember what day it was or what month. The cable was shut off eventually, which was okay because the electricity followed shortly after. I lay in bed, fumbling through my mind. Things and places wandered through me until, eventually, I found myself spending less and less time in that small room in Rhode Island. When I was there, my head was one large hurt. I had begun to think of my brain as a big black stain. If I could lift my head and look in the mirror, I felt sure that my eyes would be completely black.

  Lovecraft accompanied me most of the time, but sometimes I was alone walking through the worlds. I was solid, with form and substance. Here, I was thin and ghostly. The people there welcomed me. They grabbed my hand,
slapped me on the back, and brought me along. Here, only Lovecraft stayed at my side and, eventually, I woke up and even he wasn't there anymore. He had moved beyond and to see him, I'd have to let myself drift away.

  I didn't float off like you hear in those near-death shows. I fell away from myself, sinking through the earth. I was going beyond and following old Joe Slater to that strange place that was a star far away that shone upon Olathoë aeons ago.

  The ground below me became a solid deck of a ship. I felt it move through the water as we raced forward into the strange and forbidding water where an island had suddenly appeared.

  Asenath looked at me through Edward Derby's eyes. I sent six bullets into his brain.