Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “I’m not sure about that. I don’t understand what is going on. Why do we have to stay? We’ve always run.”

  April shook her head, then fell back on the bed and wrapped herself around one of her giant carnival-prize stuffed animals.

  “This is the event horizon, Preston. Nothing escapes this city. We are past the point of turning back. We made the decision so long ago that I can’t even remember when that was.”

  “What?”

  A knock. Light but not hesitant. Unfamiliar. I gave April a hard look, but she ignored me, pressing her face to the pillow.

  “You can go,” April said, her voice muffled. “I’m not going out today.”

  I got up from the bed without saying anything. Holly was waiting at the door. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t seem angry either.

  “Are you still working for me today, Preston?”

  I spared a glance back to the bedroom, where April lay curled in a ball in the center of the bed. There was no reaction, though she must have heard us talking. I was not in the mood to play cipher.

  “If you still want me to, I am. I want to get out anyway,” I lied. “Let me grab my jacket.”

  I hustled back into the bedroom to collect my effects. April did not move, did not acknowledge my presence. She didn’t say anything at all until I was halfway out the door.

  “The sheets still smell like her,” April said neutrally, laying with her back to me. “Get some new ones, will you?”

  I left without saying a word.

  ***

  Holly was walking so fast that I could barely keep up. It seemed she was as eager to get away from Kadath as I was. After racing after her for a couple of blocks, though, I got tired of it.

  “Hey!” I called out to the rapidly receding back of her sundress. “Is there any chance at all that you might slow down a bit? Maybe tell me what got you so pissed off?”

  Holly stalked back toward me, freezing me in place on the cracked sidewalk in front of the empty windows of Leng Street. I wished that I had just let her be.

  “What pissed me off,” Holly snapped, mouth twitching, “was finding Jenny Frost sleeping inside the same building I live in, that’s what, Preston! Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?”

  “Well, yeah,” I admitted, shifting from one foot to the other. “No offense intended Holly, but I don’t take orders from anybody, not even people I like. And I needed help. Help only Jenny Frost was in a position to provide. Pardon me for not bleeding to death on the sidewalk.”

  Holly looked angry for a moment, then she just laughed, and the tension broke like glass around us.

  “Okay, okay. You didn’t have to take her home with you, though.”

  “I don’t like the rain,” I said honestly. “And I owed her. You really hate her that much?”

  Holly had to think it over. We navigated the traffic lights as Leng Street slowly merged with the more active commercial district adjoining downtown. As always, I wondered how Holly didn’t break an ankle walking in those shoes. As the streets got more crowded, she took my arm for support. Fortunately, she picked my good side, as the other was stiff and sore, and I was walking with a bit of a limp myself.

  “I don’t hate Jenny Frost,” Holly admitted, jarring me back to our earlier conversation. “I’m afraid of her. That isn’t exactly right, either. I have an idea of what she and Fenrir came here to do, and it frightens me. You in her debt – well, that worries me, too.”

  “Fenrir? You mean her dog? Don’t tell me he talks, too…”

  “Of course not,” Holly huffed. “He isn’t a dog at all, though. You might think of him as someone who fell into Jenny Frost’s debt. An object lesson.”

  “The dog fell into her debt? C’mon, Holly. You’re playing with me.”

  Holly’s smile was mysterious, like everything else about her. I mulled it over while we walked, glad the sun had decided to come out. It felt good to be outside, next to a legitimately beautiful woman. I did my best to turn my thoughts away from April and whatever waited for me back at the apartment.

  “I guess I get your point.” Actually, I didn’t get it at all. “But I was hurt and I had to get back to April. She wasn’t safe.”

  “You weren’t safe,” Holly corrected. “April was inside the Estates. She was perfectly safe.”

  “If you knew who was after us, you wouldn't be so sure,” I said darkly, kicking a discarded aluminum can in frustration, scattering a group of resentful pigeons who had gathered to eat popcorn beneath a statue of a horrible fish-man thing.

  Holly led me to a park bench in sight of the statue and sat down. I hesitated a moment, then took the seat beside her. The flowering vines that flourished at the Estates wrapped around the wrought-iron bench, and their aroma was almost stifling.

  “Then you should take this opportunity to tell me all about it,” Holly said, patting my leg and smiling encouragingly. “You will feel better, and maybe I can help you.”

  At that moment I wasn’t really feeling like help. Kim, Sumire, Dawes, Holly and even Jenny, they had all been falling all over themselves to help me. As far as I could see, it had all turned out to be a double-edged sword. Unless I had been misreading their intentions from the start.

  “Maybe later,” I lied. “What are we doing out here anyway, Holly? Last time I followed your instructions, I ended up in a hotel room with bunch of guys who seemed to know an awful lot about me. I’m feeling just a touch suspicious at the moment.”

  “That wasn’t an informative and helpful experience? Would you have preferred to have them watching you and April from the shadows?”

  “I would have preferred that you warn me about what I was getting into before I ended up tied to a chair.”

  Holly appeared genuinely surprised and horrified. I had to look away. Otherwise, she might have seen me blush.

  “I promise you that I had no idea anything like that would happen. I am not omniscient, Preston. Josh told me someone was watching the Estates, that they were looking for you and April. I told you about it because it seemed like the right thing to do. Was I wrong?”

  I shook my head. Holly really had me wrapped around her finger. One moist-eyed apology and I was full of warmth and guilt.

  “No, not wrong. I just got in deeper than I expected.”

  “If you needed help, why didn’t you ask for it? Did you think that I wouldn’t help you, Preston? That all of us wouldn’t?”

  Holly put one hand on my cheek and looked into my eyes, but I knew she saw nothing there. If eyes are the windows to the soul then mine have been broken and then boarded over. Eventually she gave up, sighed theatrically, and started to root through her tiny purse.

  “You will realize how badly you need us, Preston, but first things first…”

  The package she pulled out from her ornate little purse was larger than the purse itself – I am almost certain of it, though I am well aware how impossible that was. It was not fancy; a stiff fragment of parchment wrapped in butcher paper, closed with red twine, as long as my hand, and roughly cylindrical.

  “Don’t open it,” Holly warned.

  “Okay,” I said, shoved the package in my pocket. “When do I open it?”

  “You don’t. I hope that you won’t need it at all, but if it becomes necessary, give it to April and ask her to read it aloud. Let’s have some tea, shall we?”

  I shook my head and followed her across the park over to her favorite coffee house. She had a brief, hushed conversation with the girl at the counter which culminated in Holly passing a folded envelope to the girl. I think it was the first time I had seen Holly pay for anything.

  I barely let her sit down. I have no idea what was wrong with me.

  “Are you going to tell me what we are doing today, or what?”

  “Hush till tea,” Holly commanded. “After tea, all will be revealed.”

  “O-okay, then…”

  We sat in silence, contented on her part, impatient on mine. The tea arrived f
ive minutes later. There were two little metal pots, two white china cups that the waitress placed in front of each of us, with an array of sugar, honey, and lemon slices. Holly inspected both teapots carefully, then pushed one toward me and kept the other. I shifted in my wooden chair, which was too hard, and tried not to show my frustration.

  “Holly, I was wondering…”

  “Shut up, Preston,” Holly said sweetly.

  I sighed and reached for the teapot. She smacked my hand away before it made it to the lid.

  “It has to steep.”

  “Damn it,” I snapped, rubbing my completely uninjured hand. “What is wrong with everyone today?”

  “Preston,” Holly said seriously, rearranging the powdered-sugar covered biscuits in front of her. “I need to know. Are you trying to get something? Or are you trying not to lose something?”

  “What do you mean? What something?”

  Holly sighed as if I was being difficult.

  “When it comes to April and your invisible enemies, who seem awfully visible lately,” she said, taking the lid from my tea and inspecting it, before careful pouring me a cup. “Are you trying to gain something from them? Or are you trying not to lose something to them?”

  I gave it some thought, sipping the tea cautiously. It was scalding hot and tasted of evergreens, moss, and a flower that was maddeningly familiar.

  “I am not going to lose her,” I said, not long after I had arrived at the conclusion myself.

  “That’s good,” Holly said approvingly, the bangles on her earrings jangling as she poured her own tea. “If you were trying to get something, then I couldn’t help you. The Kadath Estates would not offer you sanctuary. We are a last resort for those fighting to keep what belongs to them. This is a form of strength in of itself. We fight much harder when we have something to protect. What we lose, Preston, are the things we never considered ours to begin with.”

  “That’s comforting, if a bit nonsensical,” I observed, remembering to blow on my tea this time. The second sip was both cooler and less bitter than the first. “Like most philosophy.”

  “That’s the problem with Jenny Frost, of course,” Holly said, the name sounded out with obvious distaste. “She has nothing to lose. All she does is take what belongs to others. That’s why the Estates won’t help her.”

  “Hating her guts doesn’t play into that at all?”

  Holly’s smile was full of the pity reserved for the terminally foolish.

  “She kills people for the money in their pockets, Preston. There was this girl a few months ago, a friend of Sumire’s from the University who felt sorry for Jenny. She started doing her favors, let her spend the night in her apartment and fed her and what have you. Like taking in a stray cat. I’m sure Jenny was lovely, until the point that poor girl made some sort of mistake.”

  “What mistake?”

  I had finished the tea in the small porcelain cup, but Holly was kind enough to refill it for me.

  “We never had a chance to ask,” Holly said brightly. “She was strangled with a pillow case and shoved under a mattress in a spare room. It was a week before anyone worried enough to check on her.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Do you, Preston? I doubt it. Not yet. But that is fine for now. You are about to see things as they really are, after all. Your tour guides should arrive any moment, and their timing should be perfect. Tell me… have you started to feel anything?”

  I set my empty teacup down. The sound when it rattled against the wooden table echoed in my head as if it were a vast, empty space. The light in the café was soft and defuse through the cloudy sky. All around the edges of Holly’s sundress little motes of light sparkled and danced.

  “Feel what, exactly?”

  My mouth was oddly dry. I accepted another cup of tea and drained it in one go. It did nothing to slake my sudden and intense thirst.

  “The drugs, Preston. Do you feel them yet?”

  “What drugs?”

  My voice came from somewhere very far away. My gaze rested on a point above her shoulder, to the right of her head, my vision pleasantly blurred. There was something there, if I let my eyes relax…

  “In the tea. You have taken quite a lot, Preston, and you have asked any number of questions. Are you ready for the answers?”

  ***

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “I am quite serious, Preston,” Professor Dawes assured me, holding up a lantern so that we could see where we were putting our feet. Actually, to me it looked as if he was holding several lanterns, but that is unimportant.

  “You too, Josh? Really?”

  “What?” Bringing up the rear, I would swear the Josh was having even more trouble navigating his way through the overgrown tunnel than I was, despite lofty claims about seeing in the dark. “Oh, that. For sure. Remember that thing I had you bring me?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Afraid so. Never been one for leaving the house, so I had to send you out for groceries.”

  I brushed my hands against my jeans, though it was far too late to rid myself of the residue from Josh’s parcel. The tunnel was short, so I had to duck my head to avoid the uneven stone ceiling. That didn’t seem to bother the Professor, who moved with deliberate patience. Josh swore and stumbled behind me, every sound reverberating in the echo chamber my head had become.

  “But… why? What’s the point?”

  “The point?” Josh gasped. “What kind of stupid question is that? Why do you eat vegetables?”

  “I don’t. Not very much.”

  “What my friend is trying to say,” Professor Dawes explained smoothly, from further up the luminous tunnel, “is that, as ghouls, we have as little choice about what we eat as you do.”

  I kicked a rock accidentally with the toe of my shoe, and the sound it made when it clattered down the tunnel was oddly metallic. My mouth was terribly dry, and my tongue felt too big to fit inside of it.

  “Haven’t you ever met a vegan? I just told you I don’t eat vegetables. Why don’t you try not eating people? Couldn’t you eat, I don’t know, pigs or something instead? I hear pork tastes a lot like human flesh.”

  “We don’t eat people, Preston,” Professor Dawes reminded gently, helping me stumble past what had become a sheer drop off on our left side, a shaft that emitted cool air from somewhere in the awful depths. “We eat corpses. We are no more a threat to the living than you are a threat to the cattle in the fields.”

  “I still say it’s gross.”

  “Fair enough.”

  At first, I thought I was hallucinating. Okay, I was hallucinating – but, initially I thought the bones rolling beneath my feet across the damp stone and moss were part of the hallucination. My vision swarmed with multi-colored points of light and I was hearing voices embedded in random sounds – the sounds of my feet scraping across the floor or Josh’s labored breathing. It seemed to be telling me something forbidden, something lewd and vile. Bones fit perfectly with the general ambience of the drug.

  “Fuck this,” I muttered. “Why is everyone always drugging me?”

  Bones rattled and cracked underfoot, sending up spurts of white dust with every step, breaking with a noise like dry twigs. I almost twisted my ankle on a skull that had lain there long enough to become wreathed in purple moss like an ornament. The drop to our left side had expanded to become enormous; a rift that descended indefinitely into subterranean dark. Air rushed from below in a powerfully cold stream, like a reversed waterfall. There were cries like those of vultures, but higher-pitched, with a disconcerting vibrato.

  Of course, all that could have been the drugs. I was so busy cursing Holly and her pharmacological intervention in my perceptions that I practically ran Professor Dawes off the edge of the precipice. The way he held me up was embarrassing, but only in retrospect. At the time I was focusing on not throwing up. It seemed to me as if that would spoil the mood.

  “There it is,” he said, using the hushed voice pe
ople reserve for churches and graveyards. “The Vale of P’nath.”

  I stared at blackness where terrible, formless things no doubt lurked. My mind was certainly eager to turn every snake into a shadow. Nevertheless, there was one little problem with the entire experience:

  Drugs don’t work that well on me.

  Oh, they do have an effect on me – I’m hardly immune. Feed me a tranquilizer and I will pass out. Fill me full of amphetamine and I will gnaw paint off the walls. Dose me with psilocybin and I will drool and stare at the pretty colors.