by S. T. Joshi
Gas giants are mostly hydrogen, of course. But life will out, and so will intelligence. The harder creatures, the fungal-crustacean Mi-Go, learned to communicate with one another across long distances, over the roar of the endless storms of Tyche, with a form of hypersonic communication that bordered on telepathy. The mind was elevated to the center of Mi-Go civilization. But they were a lonely race. The only other form of life on the planet was the gasbag jellyfish in which they lived, like Escherichia coli in the hot guts of an Earth mammal. People used to think the Earth was alive and called her Gaia, worshipping her in mud-soaked and blood-drenched pagan rites. But imagine knowing that the thing in which you lived was alive, and without any form of intelligence. How lonely would you be, if you couldn’t even pretend that you were anything other than a speck in a blob floating along on the chaotic and deadly winds of a planet hidden a quarter of a light-year from its sun? Lonely enough, indeed. So the Mi-Go reached out to find new life, new minds. And they’ve been collecting us for quite a while. Such a long while.
Lenore and Walt found out what they wanted to know, just as I did back in ’77. Of course, there’s no such thing as a “brain canister”—someone was probably eating too much expired pork brains from rusty cans when he came up with such a ludicrous idea. The mind is nothing but a system of electrochemical responses embedded in a network of cells and gaps. Easy to copy, to record onto a new medium. Like the medium of a gasbag membrane. And that’s where we are now. I’m here. Lenore is here, and so is Walt. In our new “body” we’re immortal and the constant focus of the attentions of the Mi-Go. It took me such a long time to learn to communicate with them, but they’re patient. Long-lived anyway, though I’ve had a dozen generations die, and absorbed them. They spirited me away from my human body; it’s only fair that I gain my sustenance from breaking down their corpses, from eating them. The Mi-Go have even picked up the idea of religion from the human minds they study—death is a quaint ritual now. They tear their dead apart and smear their innards against my inner membrane to encourage decomposition and ingestion. And they sing when they do it. The Mi-Go also go to war. Gasbag against gasbag.
In fact, I killed Walt and Lenore just now. Now is a relative term, I admit. Time’s very different out here, with our 6000-year solar revolutions and endless, changeless lives. Of course we go to war. We’re human, and we have nothing else to do but fight over the only commodity we have—our lives, our selves, our memories. And the Mi-Go live to please. I liked Walt and Lenore. They were like me. Homo sapiens sapiens, Anglophones, Americans. They drove cars and drank tonic, as I did. Walked across the Miskatonic University quad on crisp winter nights, the snow like mounds of sparkling diamonds on either side of the cobblestone paths. It’s been such a long time since I’d “met” someone so much like me. I barely recognize most of the “humans” encoded upon the medium of a gasbag’s membrane I come across these days. It’s been three million years. The Green Mountains of Vermont have long since fallen to dust, but there’s still a little something on the spot of the Akeley Farm, a few feet above sea level, that attracts the tiny, hairless, and half-witted daughter species as different from my human life as Australopithecus afarensis is. It was so good to encounter the gasbags encoded with Walt and Lenore, to have my Mi-Go tear into them, to drink their memories and for a moment remember what it was like to have limbs, to breathe air, to say words I know with a human jaw.
I hope I find some more like them soon. Soon is a relative term. But I’m patient, and old.
* * *
The Abject
RICHARD GAVIN
Richard Gavin is one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed horror writers. His books include Omens (Mythos Books, 2007), The Darkly Splendid Realm (Dark Regions Press, 2009), and Charnel Wine: Memento Mori Edition (Dark Regions Press, 2010). His nonfiction writings have appeared in Rue Morgue, Dead Reckonings, Starfire Journal, and on his blog, “At Fear’s Altar” (www.richardgavin.net). Gavin lives in Ontario with his beloved wife and their brood.
* * *
1.
EARTH’S END WAS ONLY MOMENTS AWAY, YET SHE STILL had nothing to say to him.
As the jeep negotiated the rugged mountain road, Petra caught herself meshing her hands across her middle in a protective gesture. When she remembered this was unnecessary she crumpled inside and allowed her arms to drop.
“Jee-zus!” Tad blurted as they bounced over a pernicious pothole. After the next hairpin turn the steepness of the incline forced Tad to fumblingly jerk the gearshift into second, first. He thudded his foot down on the accelerator. “Do me a favour, call Charlie and ask how much farther it is. I’m afraid this thing’s going to fall apart around us if we don’t get there soon.”
Petra reached for her purse and began the quest for her cell phone.
Charlie’s hello was a peep beneath the rumble of engines and the roar of the open jeep windows.
“Hey,” Petra cried. “How much farther is this place? Tad’s getting a bit nervous.” She pressed the phone hard against her ear. “Charlie says you should chill out.” She hoped her tone was not too gleeful; just enough to jab at Tad’s already ornery mood. “He also said to tell you the End is nigh.”
As she snapped the phone shut, Petra heard Tad mutter something she was sure was an insult.
“First a flight from Providence to Vancouver”—as he ranted, Tad moved his hand in prima donna sweeps—“now a four-hour drive up this mountain range. Your friends really know how to show their guests a good time.”
A dozen retorts, ranging from witty to outright caustic, swam through Petra’s mind. Certain that whatever reply she chose would be the wrong one, she opted to look silently out at the sycamores and yews, which were reduced to grey-green smears as the vehicle rattled past them.
2.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW? YOU MADE IT!” CHARLIE WAS dragging a plastic cooler out of his jeep while Douglas stood fidgeting with the clasps of a large backpack.
“No thanks to your lead,” Tad called as he exited the second jeep, “or this deathtrap you stuck us with.”
“Hey, go easy on her,” Charlie replied. “That jeep took a hell of a beating when Doug and I drove through the Badlands a few years ago. Besides, what’s to complain about? It got you here, didn’t it?”
“Barely.”
Gravel crunched beneath the soles of Petra’s runners as she crossed the tiny roadside inlet where the vehicles were parked. Charlie’s description of their destination as “breathtaking” and “out of this world” had clearly been hyperbole, for as she surveyed the tall, pervasive hemlock trees, Petra saw only common woodlands. The boughs all seemed to mesh, forming a spider’s skein, or perhaps a shroud, above her.
Craning her head back, shielding her eyes, Petra discovered that the sky was only visible in shards. She felt foolish lugging the small amateur’s telescope along in its cheap plastic case.
“So this is it, huh?” Tad’s hands gripped his hips, and his mouth was bent in a sneer of dissatisfaction.
Douglas shook his head. “No, this isn’t it. This is just the entrance to the Crawlspace. We won’t reach Earth’s End for another hour, maybe two.”
“Two hours!” Tad cried.
“Maybe less. It depends on how fast you can walk.”
“Why don’t we just drive up there?”
“Because we’d need a road to do that,” Douglas explained. He grinned and added, “The mouth of the Crawlspace here is as close to Earth’s End as you can get by vehicle.”
Douglas stepped over a corroded iron chain that drooped across a thin footpath. A battered sign warned NO TRESPASSING. NATURAL REGENERATION IN PROGRESS. DEPT. OF AGROFORESTRY, but the faintness of the text rendered the warning inconsequential.
3.
TWO YEARS AGO PETRA HAD BEEN SINGLE AND HAD sacrificed her days for slave’s wages at an independent book and magazine shop in Providence. Tad had been one of her regular customers. The store sat kitty-corner to the financial planning firm where he wa
s employed, and three or four times a week Tad would escape his desk in order to pay a lunch-hour visit to Petra’s store, usually for a newspaper but occasionally a paperback potboiler. His shyness was mild enough to be endearing.
Four months of lingering and small talk elapsed before they had their first date. It was Petra who’d done the asking.
They went to a screening of Picnic at Hanging Rock at the Columbus Theater and then for coffee at a quaint diner that had art deco fixtures and a live jazz trio every Thursday. By Christmas that year they were living together.
But their pantomime of married life began to erode all too quickly, and Petra did not even have wedding day memories to cling to as the watershed of their happiness.
A promotion resulted in an almost exponential increase in Tad’s hours at the office. With her meagre financial contributions rendered unnecessary, Petra quit her job. Tad bought a house for her to rattle around in and stew over her fear that day by tedious day she was becoming her mother; someone whose life had always seemed to Petra to be little more than a thirty-yearlong stifled scream.
Her only salvation came in the form of lazy daydreaming on the living room sofa. She would fantasize about fashioning one of the upper bedrooms with a crib, a brightly coloured rocking chair, a herd of cartoon zoo animals dangling from a ceiling mobile.
After sharing her fantasies with Tad during afterglow one night, he’d told her they would talk about kids when the timing was better. Timing had always been of great importance to Tad, always.
That night had marked the first in a running stream of recurring nightmares for Petra. These unsettling dreams differed widely in aspect but were unwavering in theme: she would always be held captive by her past. Some nights she would find herself at a party, cornered by several of her ex-boyfriends, all of whom took great pleasure passing a telephone between them and sharing with Tad all the mistakes and embarrassing things she’d done throughout her life. Other nights she would dream of wandering her childhood home, which would be rotted and haunted by the anguished ghost of her mother.
The nightmare where her father, afflicted with something akin to rabies, chased her down an endless stairway, shouting “Run! Run! I’m coming!” was particularly indelible and had led to more than one bout of insomnia.
4.
THE CRAWLSPACE WAS A WINDING TRAIL DOMED BY fat vines and greenery. The flora was so dense that it actually knitted together, transforming the footpath into a tight, humid tunnel. The growth pressed so near to the ground that those who were foolish enough to roam the Crawlspace had to stoop while they trod its arduously sheer incline.
Charlie and Douglas led the way. They each had large packs strapped to their backs and were lugging the plastic cooler between them. The pair of them were demonstrably more experienced at hiking than Petra, who was practically speed-walking just to keep them in sight. Tad lagged at the tail end of their party. Petra glanced back to note his sweaty, scarlet-coloured complexion and wondered whether it was due to exertion or rage.
“We’re nearing the peak,” Charlie shouted, “so you need to watch yourselves. Once you cross over the top, this path drops downward. It’s steep as hell, so get ready to run.”
“Running, too?” Tad hollered. “This just keeps getting better.”
“You can always roll down the decline if you want,” Douglas suggested without looking back.
Petra couldn’t resist stealing a glimpse of her lover’s expression, which flaunted the impotent fury of a punctured pride.
The remainder of the upward trudge was effected wordlessly until Charlie called, “Okay, this is it!” Then he and Douglas dipped over the summit and vanished.
When Petra reached the thin ledge, the tunnel of flora became an echo chamber. The low-end thumping of Charlie and Douglas footing full-tilt down the path was contrasted by a high hushing sound, akin to the whirring one hears inside a conch shell.
“Go, go!” Tad ordered as he came up just behind her.
Petra stepped over and began her descent. It felt as though the world had switched on its axis and begun to spin wildly, hurling everything forward and down, forward and down. The overgrowth extended even lower, constricting the tunnel into an airless pipe. The terrain became horrifically uneven; thick vines and chunky rocks jutting up here and there like booby-traps in the soil. Terrified that she might stumble, possibly fracture her skull, Petra began to scream. Behind her came the sound of laughter.
Seconds later she saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Daylight glimmered at the far mouth of the Crawlspace, brilliant as a struck match-head. By now the thudding of footsteps had stopped, or perhaps had been drowned out by the rushing sound, which was almost deafening.
Petra reached the aperture and came rocketing out onto a plateau of slick flat rock. The sunlight was so radiant that for a beat she thought the world had been consumed in waves of white fire. Her eyes instinctively squinted shut as she ran. Every stomp against the stone jarred her from her soles to her skull.
She thought she might have run forever, when a barrier suddenly knocked against her midsection, blasting the wind from her lungs. Falling forward, Petra opened her eyes to see Charlie holding her. Her face was reflected in the black plates of his sunglasses. She resembled, she thought, a feral daughter, with her scorched-looking complexion and wild, sweat-drenched mane.
“Careful,” Charlie said; “a few more paces and you’d have gone right over.”
Once her eyes grew accustomed to the glare, Petra surveyed her surroundings. The ocean below refracted the sunlight into a measureless cobweb of diamond-glints.
“Kind of makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?”
Petra hadn’t even heard Douglas moving up behind her, and she flinched at the sound of his voice.
“And a little jumpy too, apparently,” she chirped.
“Please don’t joke about being jumpy when you’re standing by a nine-hundred-metre drop.”
“I’m no good at measuring, but I’ll take your word for it. God… this place…”
“Yeah, it’s pretty neat. I used to come up here a lot when I first moved here. Charlie introduced me to it. He’s been coming to Earth’s End since he was a teenager. Not to party or anything like that, usually just to think.”
“I’m guessing there weren’t too many beer bashes on a cliff like this.”
“Or none that lived to tell about it.”
Even with his smile to temper it, Petra found Douglas’s statement unnervingly cold. She wondered if he sensed her discomfort, for he quickly changed topics.
“When you stand with your back to the escarpment you can understand why this place has always been known as Earth’s End. There doesn’t seem to be anything out there but water and sky. Go on and stare out there for a bit. It’s eerie.”
Petra heeded and focused her attention on the expanse before her, doing her utmost to shut out the rock and greenery that braced her. Douglas was right: from this vantage the world seemed as distant, as fleeting as a childhood fever dream. She felt as though she was floating among the varying shades of blue, expanding and soaring through both the great empty sky and unbottomed water at once.
But with this, Petra felt the sky lose its comforting lustre. It revealed all the openness and emptiness of the cosmos. The dark ocean and the ghost-pale foam of its breakers suggested a bottomless pit brimming with damned spirits.
There was nothing here, nothing.
Petra’s realization of this was palpable, irrefutable. She had reached the omega point and wondered if she could ever return to the life she’d known back on Earth.
But a lengthier study of the vast expanse revealed an incongruity in the distance, a dark blip that disrupted the vacuum of blue.
Jutting up from the Pacific, looking much like a Stone Age dagger or a granite lingam, was a mountain. It was only nominally shorter than the cliff at Earth’s End, but was far thinner, almost needlelike. It put Petra in mind of a stalagmite instead of a proper mountain.
<
br /> “What’s that?” Petra mumbled.
“That,” Charlie began, his voice almost boastful as he pointed to the distant rock, “is a story unto itself.”
5.
THE WORLD, FOR ALL ITS SIZE AND BUSTLE, NEVER seemed able (or perhaps willing) to clear a path for Petra to follow. From her earliest childhood recollections of rural Dunwich to her all-grown-up-now life in Providence, she had invariably been the Outsider. Never able to pinpoint the reason for her feeling a few degrees off from the rest of humanity, Petra’s childhood was one of lush interior experiences, which she cultivated in order to shield herself from the cold, sterile routines of school and home.
She’d met Douglas when they were students in the same first-year English literature class at Brown University. She was hoping to get an English degree, but Douglas was only taking the lit. class as a breather from his engineering courses. He was (Petra came to appreciate) as ill-suited to the world as she was.
“Sometimes,” he used to tell her, “it seems like the only way I can make any headway in life is to listen to my instinct and then do the exact opposite. How crazy is that?”
They got on right away.
Twice they’d attempted to nudge their friendship into something amorous, and both tries resulted in giggly, physically awkward evenings that ended with the pair of them trading secrets in the dark.
The summer between their first and second year of university, Douglas came to accept fully that he was gay. The night he shared this fact with Petra he had taken her for a long walk on Buttonwoods Beach. Standing on the wet sands, under a cold moon, Petra felt thrilled for him but a little sad for herself. Douglas seemed to have found his path, leaving her to bob listlessly alone.
