by Neil Gaiman
Abaddon. The angel of destruction dispatched by God to turn the Nile and all its waters to blood, and to kill the first-born male child in every Egyptian family. Abaddon’s hand was averted from the Children of Israel, who for this purpose smeared their doorposts with the blood of the paschal lamb. This substitution has frequently been considered a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Christ.
Am-mit, Ammit, “Devourer of the Dead.” This Egyptian goddess guarded the throne of Osiris in the underworld and feasted upon the souls of those whom Osiris condemned. She had the head of a crocodile and the forelegs of a lion. The remainder of her form was that of a hippopotamus, Figure l. Am-mit’s great temple at Henen-su (Herakleopolis) was destroyed by Octavian, who had its priests impaled.
An-uat, Anuat, “Lord of the Land (the Necropolis),” “Opener to the North.” Though frequently confused with Anubis—
The Nebraskan laid his book aside; the overhead light was not well adapted to reading in any case. He switched it off and lay down.
Staring up into the darkness, he pondered An-uat’s strange title, Opener to the North. Devourer of the Dead and Lord of the Land seemed clear enough. Or rather Lord of the Land seemed clear once Schmit explained that it referred to the necropolis. (That explanation was the source of his dream, obviously.) Why then had Schmit not explained Opener to the North? Presumably because he didn’t understand it either. Well, an opener was one who went before, the first to pass in a certain direction. He (or she) made it easier for others to follow, marking trails and so on. The Nile flowed north, so Anuat might have been thought of as the god who went before the Egyptians when they left their river to sail the Mediterranean. He himself had pictured An-uat in a boat earlier, for that matter, because there was supposed to be a celestial Nile. (Was it the Milky Way?) Because he had known that the Egyptians had believed there was a divine analog to the Nile along which Ra’s sun-boat journeyed. And of course the Milky Way actually was—really is in the most literal sense—the branching star-pool where the sun floats….
The jackal released the corpse it had dragged, coughed, and vomited, spewing carrion alive with worms. The Nebraskan picked up a stone fallen from one of the crumbling tombs, and flung it, striking the jackal just below the ear.
It rose upon its hind legs, and though its face remained that of a beast, its eyes were those of a man. “This is for you,” it said, and pointed toward the writhing mass. “Take it, and come to me.”
The Nebraskan knelt and plucked one of the worms from the reeking spew. It was pale, streaked, and splotched with scarlet, and woke in him a longing never felt before. In his mouth, it brought peace, health, love, and hunger for something he could not name.
Old Hop Thacker’s voice floated across infinite distance: “Don’t never shoot anythin’ without you’re dead sure what ’tis, young feller.”
Another worm and another, and each as good as the last.
“We will teach you,” the worms said, speaking from his own mouth. “Have we not come from the stars? Your own desire for them has wakened, Man of Earth.”
Hop Thacker’s voice: “Grave worms, do you see?”
“Come to me.”
The Nebraskan took the key from the drawer. It was only necessary to open the nearest tomb. The jackal pointed to the lock.
“If it’s hungered, it’ll suck on a live person, an’ he’s bound to fight or die.”
The end of the key scraped across the door, seeking the keyhole.
“Come to me, Man of Earth. Come quickly.”
Sarah’s voice had joined the old man’s, their words mingled and confused. She screamed, and the painted figures faded from the door of the tomb.
The key turned. Thacker stepped from the tomb. Behind him his father shouted, “Joe, boy! Joe!” And struck him with his cane. Blood streamed from Thacker’s torn scalp, but he did not look around.
“Fight him, young feller! You got to fight him!”
Someone switched on the light. The Nebraskan backed toward the bed.
“Pa, DON’T!” Sarah had the huge butcher knife. She lifted it higher than her father’s head and brought it down. He caught her wrist, revealing a long raking cut down his back as he spun about. The knife, and Sarah, fell to the floor.
The Nebraskan grabbed Thacker’s arm. “What is this!”
“It is love,” Thacker told him. “That is your word, Man of Earth. It is love.” No tongue showed between his parted lips; worms writhed there instead, and among the worms gleamed stars.
With all his strength, the Nebraskan drove his right fist into those lips. Thacker’s head was slammed back by the blow; pain shot along the Nebraskan’s arm. He swung again, with his left this time, and his wrist was caught as Sarah’s had been. He tried to back away; struggled to pull free. The high old-fashioned bed blocked his legs at the knees.
Thacker bent above him, his torn lips parted and bleeding, his eyes filled with such pain as the Nebraskan had never seen. The jackal spoke: “Open to me.”
“Yes,” the Nebraskan told it. “Yes, I will.” He had never known before that he possessed a soul, but he felt it rush into his throat.
Thacker’s eyes rolled upward. His mouth gaped, disclosing for an instant the slime-sheathed, tentacled thing within. Half falling, half rolling, he slumped upon the bed.
For a second that felt much longer, Thacker’s father stood over him with trembling hands. A step backward, and the older Mr. Thacker fell as well-fell horribly and awkwardly, his head striking the floor with a distinct crack. “Grandpa!” Sarah knelt beside him.
The Nebraskan rose. The worn brown handle of the butcher knife protruded from Thacker’s back. A little blood, less than the Nebraskan would have expected, trickled down the smooth old wood to form a crimson pool on the sheet.
“Help me with him, Mr. Cooper. He’s got to go to bed.” The Nebraskan nodded and lifted the only living Mr. Thacker onto his feet. “How do you feel?”
“Shaky,” the old man admitted. “Real shaky.”
The Nebraskan put the old man’s right arm about his own neck and picked him up. “I can carry him,” he said. “You’ll have to show me his bedroom.”
“Most times Joe was just like always.” The old man’s voice was a whisper, as faint and far as it had been in the dream-city of the dead. “That’s what you got to understand. Near all the time, an’ when-when he did, they was dead, do you see? Dead or near to it. Didn’t do a lot of harm.”
The Nebraskan nodded.
Sarah, in a threadbare white nightgown that might have been her mother’s once, was already in the hall, stumbling and racked with sobs.
“Then you come. An’ Joe, he made us. Said I had to keep on talkin’ an’ she had to ask you fer supper.”
“You told me that story to warn me,” the Nebraskan said. The old man nodded feebly as they entered his bedroom . “I thought I was bein’ slick. It was true, though, ’cept ’twasn’t Cooper, nor Creech neither.”
“I understand,” the Nebraskan said. He laid the old man on his bed and pulled up a blanket.
“I kilt him didn’t I? I kilt my boy Joe.”
“It wasn’t you, Grandpa.” Sarah had found a man’s bandana, no doubt in one of her grandfather’s drawers; she blew her nose into it. “That’s what they’ll say.”
The Nebraskan turned on his heel. “We’ve got to find that thing and kill it. I should have done that first.” Before he had completed the thought, he was hurrying back toward the room that had been his.
He rolled Thacker over as far as the knife handle permitted and lifted his legs onto the bed. Thacker’s jaw hung slack; his tongue and palate were thinly coated with a clear glutinous gel that carried a faint smell of ammonia; otherwise his mouth was perfectly normal.
“It’s a spirit,” Sarah told the Nebraskan from the doorway. “It’ll go into Grandpa now, ’cause he killed it. That’s what he always said.”
The Nebraskan straightened up, turning to face her. “It’s a living creature, someth
ing like a cuttlefish, and it came here from—” He waved the thought aside. “It doesn’t really matter. It landed in North Africa, or at least I think it must have, and if I’m right, it was eaten by a jackal. They’ll eat just about anything, from what I’ve read. It survived inside the jackal as a sort of intestinal parasite. Long ago, it transmitted itself to a man, somehow.”
Sarah was looking down at her father, no longer listening. “He’s restin’ now, Mr. Cooper. He shot the old soul-sucker in the woods one day. That’s what Grandpa tells, and he hasn’t had no rest since, but he’s peaceful now. I was only eight or ’bout that, and for a long time Grandpa was ’fraid he’d get me, only he never did.” With both her thumbs, she drew down the lids of the dead man’s eyes.
“Either it’s crawled away—” the Nebraskan began.
Abruptly, Sarah dropped to her knees beside her dead parent and kissed him.
When at last the Nebraskan backed out of the room, the dead man and the living woman remained locked in that kiss, her face ecstatic, her fingers tangled in the dead man’s hair. Two full days later, after the Nebraskan had crossed the Mississippi, he still saw that kiss in shadows beside the road.
∇
To Live and Die in Arkham
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Arkham. A nice upscale college town. Just the right shops and bars and restaurants, grills, and cafes, if you have Money—a name helps too. If you don’t, there’s the other side of town—the side always twitching with things from the inside of Midnight. The city fathers and the police call it, The Downside. Drugs, and cheap street whores workin’ the dreamless corners by pool halls and gin joints and open sewers the city fathers call abandoned buildings where the homeless hide and hungry eyes that will take your cigarettes and your wallet and your watch and your life if you can’t walk fast enough or if you’re a plain John Q. Citizen who is not supposed to be roamin’ the cold blocks. That’s the side Albert Bergin had come to. He needed something done and this was the place to find fixers and doers of just about anything, if you have the money or the juice. $200 just for the name and directions to the door. Like anyone needs them, you just follow the rot. But Professor Bergin wasn’t looking for some tail or blow… He had a task that needed to be performed, he called it an old score, and for that he needed someone who knew The Game and how it’s played on The Bottom.
“You want him tits-up maggot food. What’d he do? Fuck yer wife while you were at some sin-posium fucking your secretary in the ass?” Will laughed. His 9 didn’t.
“He is in possession of an article of mine and I want it back.”
“Can’t blame a hound for not returnin’ good pussy. Can ya, Fuckhead? She give good head?”
“I’m not married.” Professor Albert Bergin sat rail straight. No smile.
“With that face and that gut I’m not surprised. They got this thing called walking nowdays. Ya might try it. Maybe you’ll meet some fat bitch who wants a mercy fuck?”
“Could we skip the… bullshit?”
“Ah. Now yer talkin’. Get yer thing and get it back to you and kill the fuck—Just like that… That’s hard cash. You prepared to soak me in it?”
“I have money.”
“I can see that, but are you willing to part with it? Your jones itch that much?”
“If need be.”
“It need be.”
“How much?”
“Details, then you get the bill. If you can pay, I play. If you can’t. You’ve wasted my expensive time and you pay in other ways. Or you can lay a grand on me right this fuckin’ minute and blow. Pick a door, fuckhead.”
“I will pay 25,000 dollars.”
“You’ll pay what I tell you… If I do it. And I get half upfront. Now, get on with it.”
“Professor Daniel Washington…”
Will skipped his regular info gathering. Spreading around cash would be a waste with these bookworm types. He’d follow the guy for a day or two and sit outside his house and see what he did at night. Besides, once Professor Washington showed up on a slab and the cops started digging, Will’s name would pop up as a person of interest if he inquired about Washington’s name or the address. Better to keep this as far under the radar as he could.
All the prim and proper Miskatonic U crowd had their paper reps and little else, he figured. An old boys and ignored pussies clique, who at the end of the day wanted what everyone else wanted, they just took a deep breath and stayed hush-hush about it.
“Sinful Suzie” Jaymes, 5’ 6”, 109 lbs., Green/Blonde, 38D [so her doctor said after cashing her check for 10 grand]-25-36, she was a favorite of lawyers, investment suits, and bookworms. Will hit the The Treasure Chest looking for Suzie. They’d been on and off half a dozen times in the past few years and the straights really lost it for her. She came on like a librarian turned feral and if you had the cash she had the ass, many of her clients said it could start a revolution, or she had any other part your kink required.
Lap dances in your home. Blow jobs in your car. Bubble baths or spankings in hotel rooms, you pick it she pretty much did it, just so as you paid up before the ride.
Will bought her a drink and asked if either Washington or Bergin were on her dick list. Washington was a no go to both the name and the photo, but Bergin was known. Some of the girls said he was heavy handed. A real Mr. Wham-BAM!. He’d spread around some big money to cover the scars he’d left on a couple of girls.
“He’s been in here sniffing around, but never looked at me. Never looked at any of the girls with big tits. Likes ’em skinny and young I hear. Your mark is a hardcore power-tripper. No fuckin’, only head. You peel, dance around a little, and give. He gets. You’ve met the type.”
Will had. Fuckin’ pussy scumbags. They’d bounce a woman around—fists or whatever else was handy when they popped, but didn’t have the balls to even talk hard to other men. Fit his assessment of Bergin.
He left her a C-note and told her he’d call her.
He hit the street. Time to circle the target’s nest and see how to play this out.
Will got all the formal paperwork on the S. French Hill St. property of Daniel Washington from the bureaucracy first then cased the house. Two floors, open access from the back and sides, and a botanical garden’s worth of trees and deep, tall scrubs all around. Almost the perfect place for a quick and quiet in and out.
1 P.M. Sunny. A model afternoon on a model street. He walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. He had his line ready should need arise. Waited. Played it casual. Looked in windows—bookcases and bookcases and bookcases. Suppressed a laugh examining the lock.
It’s a wonder these idiots have indoor plumbing.
Assholes, so deep into their books and lectures and papers they didn’t know how to lock up and lock down properly. Not that it really mattered, no one wanted to rob these academic types, their houses were full of books and books and books—like anyone was going to pay good money for Professor Hilary Shitfart’s Memoirs of Some Dead Old Fuck From East Boring as Hell or Sir Ralph Fuckface’s A Case Study of the Glories of 28 Quiet Sundays in Solitude, and art crap you couldn’t pawn easily, not in New England. No expensive TVs, no DVD players, no iPods, bullshit laptops, and next to no jewelry. And tryin’ to dump big heavy antiques in this part of the state was a sure fire 3 to 5, the way the Staties were all over the market. Fuck robbin’ ’em, they spent their whole lives in their minds.
Tomorrow night. If he was home. If he was alone…
Will rang the bell. Daniel Washington answered. Will’s gun backed the older man up.
“Sit yer fuckin’ ass in that chair and don’t say a word. When I ask you a question, you answer, then shut the fuck up. Got it?”
“Yes.” Thin, weak, frightened as his eyes. “Good. If you move or talk you die.”
Washington nodded.
Will looked around the room… He froze. There was a photograph of his mother on the mantle and one on the desk. Expensive frames. Dusted though most of the other th
ings in the room were not.
“Where did you get the pictures?”
“I had them taken nearly thirty years ago.”
“Why?”
“I was going to ask Seton to marry me.”
His mother’s name on the lips of this stranger. The gun was moving right to left. Finger and trigger hungry to talk.
“Keep talking.”
“Do you know her?”
“I ask the fucking questions, Asshole.”
“I was a student at M. U. Seton worked in the diner on Boundary near St. Mary’s. We were in love.”
“What happened?”
“Why are you so interested? Did you—”
“I said, I ask the questions.”
“There was a terrible—She died.”
“I know that.”
Daniel Washington looked at the man. He had her eyes. Her coloring. Could this somehow be her child?
How could he be?
“If you want to live you’ll tell me everything you can about you and her. Start right fucking now.”
“We were young and in love. I was a poor student working my way through my second year at M. U. We dated for almost a year. One night on her way home from work she was savagely attacked near Hangman’s Hill. Beaten, raped, and horribly scarred by her attacker. I went to the hospital several times to see her, but she wouldn’t see me. A nurse told me her face was horrible to look at.”
Will remembered her face, and the black veil she hid it under. He’d been four, maybe five. Remembered coming out of his bedroom in the small flat and seeing her crying before the mirror. He’d screamed. She closed the bathroom door.
“Two weeks after the attack I received a letter from Seton saying telling me to leave her alone. I went to her rooming house but her landlady said she’d moved away. I couldn’t find her… Back then I had very limited resources. Several years later I heard she died. That’s about all I know.”
Will knew the back end of her story. She scrubbed floors for a living. Drank gin straight from the bottle. And tried to never touch him. She didn’t abuse him, but she couldn’t stand to touch him. She didn’t like to talk to him either. When he was eight she slit her wrists in the tub with a broken gin bottle and he went to the orphanage. After that he went to jail and back to jail and back to jail… From the age of eight until seventeen days after his twenty-fourth birthday he was locked up.
