New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird Part 15

"All across the wide northern sky there was a glow, cold and mysterious, as far removed as you could imagine from the world of men and their paltry little hopes and fears. The aurora was so vivid that night, you might have read a newspaper by it. All the better to see whatever's coming, we thought; at least it can't creep up on us and take us unawares, not in this light.

"Somewhere in the very pit of the night, just when the body's at its weariest and wants only to drop down and sleep, an uncanny sort of stillness fell across the snowed-up river bed. What was left of the wind dropped entirely, and the only sound beneath the frozen far-off stars seemed to come from the creaking of the stove round which we sat, the cracking and spitting of the logs that burned inside it. A few of us looked round at each other; all of us felt it now, the heightened expectation, the heightened fear. Without words, as quietly as we could, we moved away from the stove and took up our places at the barricade.

"I remember-so clearly!-how it felt, crouching behind that mess of planks and packing-cases, waiting to see what might show its head above the snow-banks. A couple of times I thought I saw something, away out beyond the bounds of night vision. Even under the greenish radiance of the aurora I couldn't be sure: was that something moving? Could it be? One time Joe McRudd discharged his rifle, and scared us all to h.e.l.l. 'Sorry,' he mouthed, when we'd all regained our senses. He cleared his throat. 'Thought I saw sump'n creepin' round out there.'

" 'Save your ammo,' grunted Sam Tibbets, not even bothering to look at poor Joe. 'Keep your nerve.' That was all. Directly after that it was upon us.

"It came from the only direction we hadn't reckoned on: overhead. There was a thump on the roof of the cabin, and then a splintering as the boards were wrenched off directly above our heads. It caused a general confusion: everyone jumped and panicked, and no one really knew what was happening. Joe McRudd's rifle went off again; some of the other fellows shot as well, I don't know what at. Before I could react, Sam Tibbets was s.n.a.t.c.hed up from alongside me-something had him fast around the head and was dragging him off of his feet, up towards the hole in the roof.

"I grabbed him around the waist, but it was no use: I felt my own feet lifting clear of the floor as Sam was hoisted ever upward. He was trying to call out, but whatever had s.n.a.t.c.hed him was laying tight hold around the whole of his head and neck, and all I could hear was a m.u.f.fled roar of anger and pain-fear, too, I guess. It was as if he was being lynched, hung off a high bough and left to swing there while he throttled. I called to the rest of them to help, to hang on to us: a couple of them laid ahold of my legs and heaved, and for a moment we thought we had him. Then there came an awful sound, like something out of a butcher's shop, and suddenly we were all sprawled on the floor of the cabin, with Sam Tibbets' headless body lying dead weight on top of us.

"I don't remember exactly how the next few seconds panned out. All I remember was being soaked with Sam's blood: the heat of it, the force with which it gushed from his truncated neck, the bitter metallic stink. The fellows told me afterwards that I was screaming like a banshee on my hands and knees, but I know I wasn't the only one. Jake the Indian brought me out of it: he dragged me away from the shambles in the middle of the room and slapped me a couple times till I quit bawling. As if coming round from a dream I goggled at him slack-mouthed; then I came to myself in a dreadful sort of recollection. Before he could stop me, I'd grabbed the big hunting-knife from its sheath at his waist and pushed him out of the way.

"By climbing up on top of the hot stove, I just about managed to reach the hole in the roof. I had Jake's knife between my teeth like the last of the Mohicans; I was covered all over in Sam Tibbets' blood, and I was filled with the urge to vengeance, nothing else. I hoisted myself up so my head and shoulders were through the hole. With my elbows planted on the snow-covered s.h.i.+ngles, I looked around.

"It was crouched by the farther end of the roof like a big old sack of guts, mumbling on something. Sam's head. I made some sort of a noise, and it looked up: I mean, the thick squabby part on top of it suddenly grew long like an elephant's trunk, and one furious red eye glared out at me from its tip. The noise it made: good G.o.d, I never heard the like. It d.a.m.n near deafened me, even out in the open; it went ringing through my head like the last trump.

"Some part of its belly opened itself up, and Sam Tibbets' head was gone with a terrible sucking crunch. Then all those tentacles that fringed the trunk suddenly came to life, writhing and flailing like a stinging jellyfish. One of them caught in my clothing-I slashed out at it with Jake's knife, but I might as well have tried to cut a steel hawser. It had me fast; it was like being caught in a death-hold. The thing let rip a revolting sort of belch, and started to haul me in, and I had just enough time to feel the entire sum of my courage vanish in a wink as fear, total and absolute, rushed in to fill up every inch of my being. It's a h.e.l.l of a thing, to lose all self-respect that way: to know that the last thing you'll feel before death is nothing but abject, craven panic. G.o.d, let me die like a man, I prayed, as the thing dragged me up out of the hole towards its gulping maw-that glaring gorgon's eye- "It was Jake down below contrived to save my life. He grabbed me by the ankles and swung on them like a church bell, and there came a sharp rip as my coat came to pieces at the seams. It didn't have proper hold of me, only by the fabric, you see: that was what saved me, that and the Chinee tailor back in San Francisco who'd scrimped on the thread when he put that old pea-coat together. I went sliding back through the hole on the roof, while the thing struggled to regain its balance on the icy s.h.i.+ngles. It let out another of those blood-freezing hollers, and then I was laying on top of Jake, in amidst all of the blood and the panic down below.

"All of the breath had gotten knocked out of me by the fall, and the same for Jake, who was underneath me, remember. The two of us were pretty much hors de combat for a while; plus, I dare say I wouldn't have been much use even with breath in my lungs, not after the jolt I'd took up on the roof. I was aware that the rest of the fellows were running round like crazy, firing into the rafters and yelling fit to raise Cain. For myself, right then, I figured old Harvey Tibbets'd had the best idea, digging himself a hole-or trying to. I knew if it wanted to come down and try conclusions, we none of us stood a chance in h.e.l.l, guns or no guns. I thought it was all up with us still, and to this day I don't know why it wasn't.

"Because after a while, in amongst all the raving and the letting-off of guns and the war-whoops and hollers and what have you, it gradually dawned on the fellows that there was no movement from up on the roof. Nothing coming through the hole at us, no fresh attack; no sound of creaking timbers, even-though I doubt we'd have heard it, we were making so much noise ourselves. In the end a couple of men ran outside to look up on the roof: nothing there, they yelled, and I thought to myself, no, of course not. It won't show itself so easy. I figured it had only gone to earth for a while, that it would pick us off one by one when we weren't expecting it.

"Then one of them happened to look upwards-I mean straight up, towards the sky. What he saw up there made him let out such a shout, it brought us all out of that broke-up shambles of a cabin. We joined him out in the snow: I remember us all standing there, staring up into the heavens as if G.o.d in all his glory was coming down and the final judgement was upon us.

"Silhouetted against the wraithlike flux of the aurora, the thing was ascending into the night sky. It had wings, but they didn't seem to be lifting it, or even bearing its weight; it was as if it simply rose through the air the way a jellyfish rises through the water. That sound-that terrible piercing howl-echoed all across the wide expanse of the landscape, from mountain to lake sh.o.r.e, through all the sleeping trees, and I swear every beast that heard it must have trembled in its lair; must have whined and cowered and crept to the back of its cave and prayed to whatever rough G.o.ds had made it, Lord, let this danger pa.s.s.

"Up it rose, till we could hardly make it out against the green-wreathed stars. Then, there came one last throb of phosph.o.r.escence, bright as day-and it was as if a circuit burned out, somewhere in the sky. The aurora vanished, simple as that; and in the brief interval while our eyes adjusted to the paler starlight, I believe we all screamed, like children pitched headlong into the dark.

"As soon as we could see what we were doing again, we lost no time in getting out of that hateful place. Without waiting to bury our dead-poor Sam Tibbets-we beat a retreat back to Dawson, and there was never a band of pilgrims more relieved to see the sun come up. It shone off the frozen river in bright clean rainbows of ice; it showed us the dirty old log cabins we called home, and we wept with joy at the sight. Exhausted as I was, and scared too, and bewildered at all I'd seen, I believed we might be safe at last. Until the night came; that first night, and all the other nights that followed through that long Canadian winter.

"The nights were bad, you see. I took to sleeping in the daytime, when I could, and once it got dark I'd sit with Jake and the rest of the men in a private room at the back of one of the saloons, playing cards and drinking through to sun-up, very deliberately not talking about what we'd been through that evening. I was never really any good after that; not till I made it out of Dawson with the first thaw. Another season of that, and I'd have ended up a rummy in the streets of Skagway, telling tall tales for the price of a pint of hooch. Some of the men had heard of a fresh strike in Alaska, up on the shale banks at Nome-me, I'd lost heart, and could only think of getting home to San Francisco, where such things as we'd seen up on the roof of the cabin couldn't be. Or that's what I thought back then. What do you think, Mr. Fenwick?"

For a second I thought he just wanted me to pa.s.s judgment on his tale-to say yes, I believe you, or hold on a minute, are you sure about that? Then I realized the import of his words. "You mean that thing down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, don't you?" I said, slowly, almost reluctantly, and he nodded. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, and after a moment or two I shut it again.

"It looks every inch a match," Keith said, through his hands. He sighed, and leaned back in his chair, staring up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling. "It was like some sort of d.a.m.nable optical illusion-didn't you get that?-the longer you looked at that black void, the more it seemed as if the creature was projected into the empty s.p.a.ce." With hands that trembled hardly at all, he lit up another cigar.

"A thing can't come to life after so long," I a.s.serted, without a fraction of the confidence that had illuminated Keith's entire narrative. "Nothing of this earth-" and there I stopped, remembering what the Indian Jake had had to say on that subject.

"-Could last so long trapped inside a layer of coal," finished Keith, helpfully. "It's bituminous coal hereabouts; laid down during the Carboniferous age. That's, what? Three hundred million years ago, give or take a few million. Imagine the world back then, Fenwick: the way it looked, the way things were all across the land. Dense humid forests; sodden bogs and peat swamps. The stink of rot, of decomposition; of new life forming, down amongst the muck and the decay. The first creatures had just crawled up out of the warm slimy seas, lizards and snails and mollusks, is all. Trilobites and dragonflies. Nothing much bigger than a crawdad. And then they arrived.

"G.o.d, they would have been lords of the earth, Fenwick! They could still be now, if-" He broke off, and his hands went once more to his thin eager face. "If enough of them got turned up." His voice was m.u.f.fled somewhat, but in another way it was remarkably clear-clear-headed, at least.

"Three hundred million years." I was having trouble with the concept-you could say that. Yes, you could certainly say that the concept was troubling me. "You're saying that a thing-a thing-"

"Not of this earth," put in Keith helpfully.

"Whatever-could keep alive for so long, under such incredible pressure; no air, no sustenance . . . why, it's fantastic."

"It's fantastic, all right," said Keith, and for the first time there was a hint of impatience in his deep even voice. "I thought I made it clear this wasn't a tale you'd hear every day. But look at the facts. These miners here-they didn't find a fossil, a chunk of rock! No more than the Tibbets found a fossil up there in the Klondike. Set aside your preconceptions, Fenwick. I had to. Look at the facts."

"That's just what I aim to do," I said. "Tomorrow, when we get a look at this d.a.m.n stupid whoosit of theirs."

And on that note, though with a deal more talk thereafter, we agreed to leave it; and I went up to bed with a head full of questions and misgivings. The brandy helped me get off to sleep, in the end. If I dreamed, I'm glad to say I don't remember it. And in any case- There are many less-than-pleasant ways to be woken from even the most fitful of slumbers, I guess: but let the voice of experience a.s.sure you that there's no more absolute way of rousing a fellow than the sound of a monstrous siren going off in what sounds like the next room down the corridor. I was practically thrown out of bed and into the corridor, where I b.u.mped into Keith. He was already dressed; or more probably hadn't been to bed yet.

"Accident at the mine," I croaked. By this time I'd managed to remember where the h.e.l.l I was, or just about.

"Maybe," was all Keith would say. "Get your pants on, newspaperman."

By the time we made it out into the street people were milling around in their nights.h.i.+rts, asking each other was there trouble up to the mine. For a while no one seemed to know, and everyone expected the worst; then, we saw the Mayor's Ford barreling down main street, and Keith practically flung himself in the way of it. Before Kronke or any of his stooges could complain, we were scrambling into the rumble seat and pumping them for information.

"Had us a report of some trouble, up on Peck's Ridge," was all Kronke would say. He looked gray with panic; the flesh practically hung off his face.

"Peck's Ridge?" We'd heard that place name before, of course. "Isn't that where Lamar Tibbs lives?" The mayor didn't answer at first; Keith leaned forwards and gripped his shoulder. "Tibbs? The man who found the creature?"

"Up near there," Kronke said, shaking loose his arm. H tried to regain some of his mayoral authority: " 'Tain't rightly speaking none of your business anyways, mister-"

"Drop that," Keith said impatiently. "Drop that straightaway, or else I'll make sure you come across as the biggest hick in all creation when the story makes it into the papers. How's that gonna play with the voters come election time, Mr. Kronke?"

The two men stared angrily at each other, but there was only ever going to be one winner of that contest. After a second Kronke told his chauffeur "Drive on," and we were off, away down main street heading out of town, up into the hill country.

That was some drive, all right. The middle of the night, and not a light showing in all that desolate stretch; only the headlamps of the car on the ribbon of road ahead. Trees crowding close to the track, and between their ghostly lit-up trunks only the blackness of the forest. Overhead, a canopy of branches, and no starlight, no sliver of the moon; it felt as if we were going down into the ground as much as climbing, as if we'd entered some miner's tunnel lined with wooden props, heading clear down to the Carboniferous.

Alongside me on the rumble, Keith sat, hands clenched on the back of the seat in front. He was willing the automobile on, it seemed to me, the way a jockey pushes his horse along in the home straight. His old man's mop of hair showed up very white in the near darkness, but that didn't fool me any: underneath it all was still the dreamer he'd always been and would remain, the thirty-year-old who'd walked out on his safe job with Mr. Hearst and headed up north to the Klondike on nothing more than a notion and a chance. Hero wors.h.i.+p? I should say so.

Maybe seven or eight miles out of town, we saw light up ahead: fire. The Ford swung round and down a trail so narrow, the branches plucked at our sleeves and we had to cover our faces from their lash, and then we came out into a natural dip between two high sides of hills, with a farmhouse and outbuildings down the bottom of the hollow. All h.e.l.l was breaking loose down there.

People were running back and forth between the main house and the outhouses, the farthest of which was well ablaze. You could hear the screams of animals trapped in the sheds; I couldn't be sure there weren't the cries of people in there too.

Before we even came to a halt, an old man in bib overalls came running up, crying out unintelligibly. "Was it you phoned?" Kronke bellowed at him above the tumult. Whether he expected any answer, I don't know. It was clear the fellow was raving mad, for the time being at least. Keith pa.s.sed him over to Kronke's buddies, who were very pointedly not setting foot outside the automobile, and beckoned me follow him down towards the house. Kronke hung back, unwilling to leave the safety of the car; why he'd even bothered coming out there in the first place was hard to say. Perhaps he thought it was his chance to get the whoosit back, on behalf of the mining company. Perhaps-I think this is not unlikely, myself-perhaps there was always some sort of a trip planned for that night, Kronke and a few men armed with pistols, up to Peck's Ridge on company business. Well, they might have had a chance at that, I guess, had things only panned out just a little differently.

Down by the sheds Keith managed to get a hold of one of the people fighting the fire; a teenager, no more, in a plaid s.h.i.+rt and patched drawers. "What's going on here?" he yelled.

"They're trapped!" the kid hollered back, his eyes round with panic. "Uncle Jesse and Uncle Vern! In there! They were a-watchin' over it!"

"Watching over what?" The kid tried to shake free, but Keith had him tight. "Were they keeping guard? What over?"

"Over Pap's thing!" The kid made to break loose again, without success. "That what Pap found, down to the mine! Lemme go, mister-"

"Your pap Lamar Tibbs?" Keith was implacable. I felt for the youngster, I did. But I wanted to know as well.

The kid nodded, and Keith had one more question. "Where is he?"

"I don't know!" screamed the boy. "I DON'T KNOW!" Keith was so shocked at the ferocity of it, the sheer volume, that he let him go. The kid stood there for a second, surprised himself I guess, then shook himself all over like a dog coming out of the creek and ran off towards the burning barn. We followed on behind.

Some of the men had formed a chain, and were pa.s.sing buckets of water up from the pump. The fellows nearest the door were emptying the buckets into the smoke and flames; Keith brushed straight past them and was inside before anyone could stop him. I went to follow him, but one of the men in the doorway grabbed me. "It's gonna come down!" he yelled in my ear: I was just about to holler after Keith when he appeared through the smoke, coughing and staggering. "It's not in there," he wheezed, soon as he could talk. Then there came a mighty creaking and splintering, and we all sprang back as the roof collapsed in a roaring billow of sparks.

"It's gone," Keith insisted, as we stood and watched the barn burn out from a safe distance. "But it was there, though." I was about to ask him what he meant, how he could have known that, when a stocky little man came running up from the house shouting, and interrupted me.

"You see anything of Vern and Jesse in there, mister?" His face was blackened, eyes white and staring; I learned later they'd dragged him out of the barn once already, half-dead from the smoke. "It's my brothers-I'm Lamar Tibbs."

Keith nodded. The man was about to ask the next, the obvious, question, but I guess Keith's expression told him what he wanted to know. Tibbs' own features crumpled up, and he bowed his head.

After a little while he said: "It all up with them?" Keith nodded again. "Fire?"

"Before the fire," Keith said. The miner looked up, and he went on: "They were over in the far corner. They weren't burned any." I think he meant it kindly; that was the way Tibbs took it, not knowing any better then. But Keith's eyes were flinty hard, and I for one had my misgivings.

"Was it that thing caused it?" Tibbs' voice was all but inaudible. "That thing I brung up from the mine?"

"I believe so." Keith's voice sounded calm enough, the more so if you couldn't take a cue from his face. "It's not there any more: it looks to have busted out the back before the roof went."

That got Tibbs' attention. "You sure?"

"Can't be certain that's the way it got out," said Keith, picking his words with care. "It wasn't in there when the roof fell in, though-that, I'm sure of."

Tibbs looked hard at Keith, who stared levelly back at him. What he saw seemed to make his mind up. "Wait there, mister," he said shortly, and started back towards the house. Over his shoulder, he shouted: "You in the mood for a dawg hunt?"

I began to say something, but Keith stopped me with a upraised hand. "What about you, Mr. Fenwick? You in the mood for a dawg hunt, sir?"

What could I say? Understanding that no matter what, Keith would go through with it, I nodded miserably. Then there was no more time to think: Tibbs was running back from the house with three of the mangiest, meanest-looking yaller hounds you ever saw in your life. The chase was on.

The dogs picked up a trail directly we got round the back of the barn. They s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably-as if they were pa.s.sing peach pits, as Keith memorably put it later that same night-and set off at a good fast clip into the trees. Tibbs had them on the end of a short leash, and it was all he could do to keep up the pace. Keith loped along after him, and I brought up the rear. A few of Tibbs' relatives from back in the yard joined in-thankfully, they'd thought to bring along lanterns. There were a half-dozen of us in all.

"I thought it was a goner," panted Tibbs from up in front. He'd pegged Keith for a straight shooter more or less from the beginning, that was clear: I suppose it was watching Keith dive straight into that burning barn had done it. I doubt it came easy for him to trust anyone much, outside of his extended family circle, but he d.a.m.n near deferred to Horton Keith. "We'd been blastin' on the big new seam, see: I swung my hammer at a big ol' chunk of coal fell out the roof, 'bout the size of a barrel-the fall musta cracked it some, 'cause one lick from me was all it took. That chunk split wide open like a hick'ry nut, clean in two-an' there it was, the whoosit, older than Methuselah. Fitted in there like a hand inside a glove, it did."

"I know," Keith wheezed. For a man well into his fifties, he was keeping up pretty good, but Tibbs was setting a punis.h.i.+ng pace. "Seen it-back at the courthouse."

"You seen that? You seen the coal? Then you got a pretty good idea what we brung back here." He's got a better idea than that, maybe, I thought to myself, but I didn't say anything. For one thing, I doubt my aching lungs would have let me-nor yet my growing panic, which I was only just managing to keep in check.

"Anyhow, it was deader'n Abel slain by Cain-I'll swear to that, an' these men here'll back me up. You never seen a thing so dried out an' wrinkled-nor so ugly, neither. Jesus Christ, it made me sick to look at it!-but it was my prize, an' I swore it was goin' to make me a rich man. Me an' all my kin-" He choked up at that, and none of us pressed him; we ran on, was all, with the rustling thud of our footfalls through the brush warning the whole forest of our approach, probably.

The dogs were still straining hard after the scent, when all of a sudden they stopped and gathered round something underfoot, down by a little stand of dwarf sumac. I thought it was a rock at first: I couldn't see through the bodies of the hounds. It was Tibbs' cry that made me realize what it might be-that, and the story Keith had told me not half-a-dozen hours previously, rattling round my mind the way it had been ever since.

Tibbs couldn't pick it up, that roundish muddy thing the dogs had found. That was left to Horton Keith: he lifted it just a little, enough for one of the other men in the party to gasp and mutter "Jesse." Tibbs repeated the name a few times to himself, while Keith replaced the thing the way he found it and straightened up off his haunches. Then Tibbs gave it out in a howl that made the dogs back off, cower on their bellies in the leaf-rot as if they'd been whipped. I swear that sound went all the way through me. I hear it still, when I think about that night. It's bad, and I try not to do it too much, mostly because the next thing I think of is what I heard next-what we all heard, the sound that made us snap up our heads and turn in the direction of our otherworldly quarry.

You'll probably remember that Keith had already taken a stab at describing that sound. If you go back and look what he said, you'll see he compared it to the last trump, and all I can say is, standing out there in the middle of the forest, looking at each other in the lantern light, we all of us knew exactly what he meant. It turned my guts to water: I d.a.m.n near screamed myself.

It was so close; that was the thing. Just by the clarity, the lack of m.u.f.fling, you could tell it wasn't far off-five, maybe ten score of paces on through the trees, somewhere just over the next ridge. Tibbs got his senses back soonest of us all, or maybe he was so far gone then that sense had nothing to do with it: he was off and running, aiming to close down those hundred yards or so and get to grips with whatever cut down his brothers and took a trophy to boot. The dogs almost tripped him up; they were cowering in the dirt still, and there was no budging them. He flung down the leash and left them there.

It was Keith started after him, of course. And once Keith had gone, I couldn't not go myself. Then the rest of then followed on; all of which meant we were pretty strung out along the track. It may have saved Keith's life, that arrangement.

I heard Tibbs up ahead, cursing and panting; then, I heard a strange sort of a whizzing noise. I once stood at a wharf watching a cargo s.h.i.+p being unloaded, and one of the hawsers broke on the winching gear. The noise it made as it lashed through the air; that was what I heard. Whip-crack, quick and abrupt; and then I didn't hear Tibbs any more.

What I thought I heard was the sound of rain, pattering on the leaves and branches. I even felt a few drops of it on my face. Then one of the men in the rear caught up and shone his lantern up ahead. It lit first of all on Keith as he staggered back, hand to his mouth. Then, it lit on Tibbs.

At first it seemed like some sort of conjuror's trick. He was staggering too, like a stage drunk, only there was something about his head . . . At first your brain refused to believe it. Your eyes saw it, but your brain reported back, no, it's a man; men aren't made that way. It's a trick they do with mirrors; a slather of stage blood to dress it up, that's all. Then, inevitably, Tibbs lost his balance and fell backwards. Once he was down it became easier to deal with, in one way-easier to look at and trust your own eyes, at any rate. At last, you could look at it and see what there was to be seen. Which was this: Tibbs' head was gone, clean off at the neck.

I said you could look at it; not for long, though. Instead I turned to Keith, who was pressed back up against a tree trunk, still with his hand to his mouth. He saw me, and he tried to speak, shaking his head all the while, but he couldn't find the words.

Then we both heard it together: a rustling in the branches above our head, the sound of something dropping. We both looked up at about the same time, and that was how I managed to spring back, and so avoid the thing hitting me smack on the crown of my head. It hit the ground good and hard, directly between the two of us: the soft mud underfoot took all the bounce off it, though. It rolled half of the way over, then stopped, so you couldn't really see its features. There was no mistaking it, though, even in the shaky lantern-light; I'd been looking at the back of Tibbs' head only a moment ago, hadn't I?

A dreadful realization dawned in Keith's eyes, and he looked back up. Instinctively I followed suit. I guess we saw about the same thing, though Keith had the experience to help him evaluate it. It was like this: The branches were close-meshed overhead, with hardly any night sky visible in between. What you could see was tinted a sickly sort of greenish hue: the way those modern city streetlights will turn the night a fuzzy, smoky orange, and block out all the stars. Through the treetops, something was ascending. I'd be a liar if I said I could recognize it; there was just no way to tell, not with all those shaking, rustling branches in the way. All I got was a general impression of size and shape; enough for me to stand in front of that slab of coal in the courthouse bas.e.m.e.nt the next day and say, yeah, it could have been; I guess. Keith was with me, and so far as he was concerned it was a deal more straightforward; but as I say, he had the benefit of prior acquaintance.

Up it went, up and up, till it broke clear of the canopy, and we had no way of knowing where to look. The sky gave one last unnatural throb of ghoulish green, as if it was turning itself inside out; and it was over. All that was left was the b.l.o.o.d.y carnage down below: Lamar Tibbs' body, that we dragged between us back to the farmhouse, and the bodies of his brothers covered up with a tarpaulin. One entire generation of a family, wiped out in the course of a single night.

What with the weeping and the wailing of the relatives, and the never-ending questions-most of them from that fat fool Kronke, who hadn't even the guts to get out of his d.a.m.n automobile-that business up on Peck's Ridge took us clear through dawn and into the afternoon of the next day to deal with. It stayed with us a good while longer than that, though; in fact, it's never really gone away. Ask either of my wives, who will surely survive me through having gotten rid of me, as soon as was humanly possible. They'll tell you how I used to come bolt upright in the middle of a nightmare, hands flailing desperately above my head, screaming at the ghosts of trees and branches, babbling about a sky gone wrong. Ask them how often it happened, and what good company I was in the days and weeks that followed. Yes, you could say it's stayed with me, my three days' visit down in Oram County.

I had the pleasure of Keith's acquaintance for a dozen more years in all, right up until the time he set off for the headwaters of the Amazon with the Collins Clarke archaeological party and never came back. Missing, presumed dead, all fifteen men and their native bearers; nothing was ever found of them, no overflights could even spot their last camp. Keith was well into his sixties by then, but there was never any question that he'd be joining the expedition, once he'd heard the rumors-the ruins up above Iquitos on the Ucayali, the strange carvings of beasts no one had ever seen before. He'd done his preparation in the library at Miskatonic with Clarke himself, cross-referencing the Indian tales with certain books and ill.u.s.trations-and with that slab of coal from the Oram County courthouse, one-half of which had made its way into the cabinets of the University's Restricted Collection. There was no stopping him: he was convinced he was on the right track at last. "But why put yourself in their way again?" I asked him. "With all you know; after all you've seen?" He never answered me straight out; there's only his last telegram, sent from Manaus, which I like to think holds, if not an answer, then a pointer at least, to the man and to the nature of his quest.

Dear Fenwick (it said): Finally found someplace worse than Skagway. And they say there's no such thing as progress. We set off tomorrow on our snipe hunt, not a moment too soon for all concerned. Wish you were here-on the strict understanding that we'd soon be somewhere else. With all best wishes from the new frontier, Your friend, Horton Keith.

My friend, Horton Keith.

"Young Derby's odd genius developed remarkably, and in his eighteenth year his collected nightmare-lyrics made a real sensation when issued under the t.i.tle Azathoth and Other Horrors. He was a close correspondent of the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey, who wrote The People of the Monolith and died screaming in a madhouse in 1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary."

"The Thing on the Doorstep" H.P. Lovecraft (1933).

* THE FUNGAL STAIN *

W.H. Pugmire.

"Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss . . . "

-Thomas Moore.

I.

I was leaning against a window in a cramped bookstore, holding aloft a candlestick to scan a volume of Justin Geoffrey (drinking in his cosmic madness), when I noticed a figure hovering in the fog outside. Strange, isn't it, the play of shadow and light that dances in a pool of fog? I saw this person, this woman, and at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks. Her face seemed all wrong, more b.e.s.t.i.a.l than human. And the way she lifted her curious mouth so as to drink in the evening air was most unnatural. She lowered her face and looked toward my window, drawn perhaps by the glow of my candle's flame. Her lips curled into an uncanny smile, and as I watched the movement of her mouth the fog thickened and veiled her face.

I returned to my book, listening, and heard the shop's door open. A sudden chill rushed past me, and entrails of mist mingled with surrounding shadow; and out of this she approached the place where I stood. Glancing sideways, I watched her pretend to study t.i.tles. Closing my book, I reached to return it to its shelf. Her hand touched mine as she took the book from my grasp.

"This is rare," she said, smiling. "He had such a wonderful sense of place, don't you think?"

I laughed. "He wrote of a landscape of nightmare."

"Exquisitely so," she replied, and then quoted from memory the following verse: "And in the village where it stands, That place where Time had shrugged and pa.s.sed it by, I found deep-etched in sod and on black stone My mortal name."

Nodding to her, I blew out my candle, took it to the dealer's desk, and stepped outside into misty night. The air had turned surprisingly chilly, and I pulled the collar of my coat closer to my neck. I had no idea where I wanted to go, knew only that I wasn't in the mood for social chatter. I wanted to take in the ancient charm of Kingsport, this town where I was staying for a time. I stood for a while, watching a street lamp glow in encircling fog, when I heard footsteps on the bookstore's porch. She stopped at the bottom step and looked around, nodding when she noticed me. I leaned awkwardly on one foot and then the other, then stopped at the noise of musical humming. Her odd song issued as mist from her unmoving mouth, and the thickening fog met and mingled with her exhalation. Something in her song beguiled me, and with an almost unconscious motion I began to creep toward her. I watched as I slowly walked, and saw the shadows of her face darken, distorting features. Soon there was nothing but her indistinct form, and the twin pin-p.r.i.c.ks that were her diamond eyes. I thought they queerly smiled, those eyes, as finally the fog entombed her. I reached the place where she had stood, but I was alone.

I had decided, the next evening, to attend Poetry Night at the Pennywhistle Cafe, a truly bohemian establishment. Here one could find the loud rebels who hung their unruly art on walls and stood on tables so to declaim their bitter odes. Now and then, however, one could encounter that especially sensitive artist, those dreamers whose souls seemed as quaint as Kingport's eldest lane. I liked to think of myself as such a bard, and I considered my vision quite singular. It had been some time since I had attended the weekly doings. I had, however, recently composed a new poem. Thus I braved the evening's chill and took a bus to that section of town known as The Hollow, then scuttled from the bus to the small building that housed the cafe. The turnout was okay, and I nodded to several casual acquaintances. Five makes.h.i.+ft rows had been formed with folding wooden chairs, and I took my usual place in the third row.

The evening's feature poet was a homeless woman whose appearance was quite pathetic. Yet one forgot her stained clothes and missing teeth when she began to recite her work. Unlike many of the poseurs who had more ego than talent, this woman's poetry came from some authentic place in her unhappy soul. She read for fifteen minutes, and then the cafe's owner, who always acted as master of ceremonies, invited the rest of us to approach the podium and recite our work. I listened as two friends went forward and dramatically performed, then I arose and stepped to the podium. My reading went well, even though I was somewhat startled to see a certain figure standing near the back. As I returned to my chair, she came forward, familiar book in hand, and stood before us.