Copyright © 2020 by Charles Tyra

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Cosmic Horror Monthly

www.cosmic-horror.net

Greetings dear reader,

Thank you for joining us for our debut issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly. We’ve got quite the installment put together for you.

First, an old man’s forgotten treasures combine with genetic replication technology for a nightmare you won’t soon forget in Sequence. Then, an entity beyond the scope of time must reassert dominance over a much younger form of life in The Secret Tell. We learn the consequences of desiring that which has been forbidden and the sound of a voice from beyond the grave in Beyond the Green Garden and Bells respectively. Nearing the end, we learn of a malevolence dark enough to keep any parent up at night in Tonight, Nobody Sleeps before paying homage to those that brought us here with an old tale called The Voice in the Night.

So, turn the lights down low and keep the snacks nearby. Fret not over that relentless scratching, knocking, and banging in the night. It’s just the deep ones clambering for a bedtime story. Oblige them, would you?

C.R.

*~*~*

Sequence

By: Nick Olivo

“Fuckin’ A, seriously? You ordered the fisherman’s special again, Zach?” Gino asked as the automatic doors closed behind him. “Never thought I’d miss the smell of industrial antiseptic.”

Zach peeled a thick strand of seaweed from a dinged up wooden crate and tossed it into a bin marked ‘incinerate.’ Chunks of rotted wood and small scraps of oceanic flora dotted the stainless-steel worktable, and the typically pristine, sterile environment of their workroom reeked of low tide.

“Salvage brought this in last night,” Zach said, breathing though his mouth as much as possible. “Cargo ship went down last month, took them a couple of weeks to find it, they did, now here we are.” Zach scooped up the tablet with the work order on it from the table. The cold light from the overhead fluorescents reflected off its screen, sending a white afterimage streaking through his vision. He blinked it away and passed the tablet to Gino, who took it as he tucked his smokes and lighter into his lab coat pocket.

“So, lemme guess,” Gino said. “Now they want one of those fancy DNA scans.”

“Yep. Any object that has DNA-encoding will be replicated, anything that doesn’t goes to Pam in Payables for reimbursement.” Zach put on a fake smile and did his best impression of the corporate spokesman. “Here at Ashton & Smith Insurance, we’re committed to getting your treasured possessions back to you as quickly as possible.”

“Ya know, my uncle Carlo used to make a mint scamming insurance companies. He’d have a hard time doing it today. If even just a tiny piece of a precious trinket gets recovered, they send it to us, boom, they’ve got it back.”

Zach shook his head. “Seriously, Gino? You’re looking at this from the crime angle? He pointed at the tablet Gino held. “There’s DNA in that thing with its manufacturing data encoded into it. All the specs, all the schematics, all the data you’d need to reproduce it. We pop it onto a replicator, and we’ve got another one,” Zach snapped his fingers, “like that. This is easily the coolest technology that’s been developed in our lifetime, don’t you feel just a little bit excited about working with it?”

“Bro, this is just a job. I punch in, I do work, I punch out, they give me money every other Thursday. This isn’t anything thrilling for me. I didn’t get all stoked about this stuff in school like you did.”
Zach had studied all the concepts at the university enthusiastically, but had washed out of the program when he couldn’t keep up with the math part of the curriculum.

Realizing he may have hit a sore spot, Gino changed the subject. “So what are we looking at?” he asked, fishing through the crate.

Zach snapped back from the classrooms, from the shoulder-slumping failures in calculus and trigonometry. “The manifest lists a bunch of antiques—tribal masks, statuettes, ceremonial weapons—some old guy’s collection of weird shit. The whole shipment was heading from London to Boston when the boat went down.”

Gino frowned. “Christ, Zach, DNA encoding just started, what, ten—fifteen years ago? Nothing in here is going to be replicable.”

Zach switched back to his corporate voice. “It’s company policy to check every item for the possibility of replication, thereby preserving our customer’s property and keeping premium costs low.”
Gino sighed. “All right, I’ll fire up the scanner.” He wrinkled his nose as he added, “Think I’ll grab a can of air freshener too.”

*~*~*

“Item eighty-five,” Zach said. “Some sort of ceremonial knife with a broken blade.” He set the wavy bladed dagger onto the scan plate.

Gino was seated at the scanning terminal, elbow propped on the table, head resting on his hand. He pressed a button. The scan plate flashed red three times. “No DNA replication data detected,” he said flatly, placing the knife into a plastic bin.

Zach ticked a box on the tablet and brought up the next item. “Item eighty-six. Shattered pottery fragments.” Onto the scanner. Button press. Three red flashes.

“No DNA replication data detected,” Gino said around a yawn, before the scan had given its first flash.

Zach ticked the box and reached back into the crate. “Item eighty-seven. A broken statuette of a...” Zach trailed off as he tried to classify what he was looking at.  
Gino turned to Zach, idly pulling his lighter out of his pocket and flipping the flame on and off. “That a dog?”

“Maybe? The head’s missing, but I think the paws are too big for a dog. Might be a lion?” Zach pursed his lips. “We’ll just say it’s a quadruped.”

“Whatever,” Gino said, setting his lighter down on the desk and taking the statuette from Zach. “All right, scanning and no DNA de—”

Gino and Zach both stared at the solid green light coming off the scan plate.

“It has DNA.” Gino said in disbelief. “How does it have DNA?”

Zach regarded the stone statuette. It was a dull green, flecked with red. He cast his mind back to geology class trying to place the mineral. Bloodstone? Yeah, that was it. To Gino he said, “Dunno. Is the scanner on the fritz?”

Gino took one of the items that had registered as negative before and rescanned it. Three red flashes. He put the broken dog statuette back on the plate. Solid green again. “Scanner’s working just fine.”
Zach was already typing on the tablet. “Quadruped statuette tests positive, replication will be performed.”

*~*~*

Zach had seen pictures of early 3D printers in his science textbooks—many of them could only create plastic items a foot or so in size. The behemoth machine that sat in the replication room could make stuff as big as a car and from virtually any material. He keyed a code into the pad to the left of the door and a hissing sound came from the mechanism. “Doors are locked,” he said as he ticked a box on the pre-print checklist. In his corporate voice, he added, “Nothing will interfere with the recovery of the customer’s dear treasures.”

Gino grunted and turned on the main power switch while Zach checked the connections to the raw materials tank.

“Still can’t get over how this thing can just pull raw atoms out of nowhere and turn them into shit.”

“Trace element recombination,” Zach said, quoting a physics textbook he’d practically memorized. “Anything into anything. And it all saves the company money.”

“Maybe we could have it print us some gold bars,” Gino said with a grin.

“That’s currency manipulation, and the last guys who tried that wound up in jail for life,” Zach replied. He rapped his knuckles against the metal of the tank. “Tank’s good to go.”

“This shouldn’t take long, maybe two minutes, something that small?”

Zach set the statuette on the replication panel. A green light appeared on the monitor to his left, along with a progress bar showing the DNA read process. “Probably less than that. We’ll replicate it, send in the final paperwork, and then we’re outta here for the night.”

“You’re speaking my language. Gonna clock out, head down to the club, aw yeah.” He did a sort of dance move in his chair. “You?”

“I’ve got some reading I need to do.” He’d found a math book online that claimed it had teaching techniques specifically created for people who struggled with math. The free sample chapters alone had clarified radical equations and logarithms, concepts that once mystified him.

Gino smirked at him. “Life of the party, aintcha, Zach?”

Zach only shrugged in response. If he could just get a grip on the math stuff, then maybe he could be the person designing these machines instead of just running them. All those things he’d memorized—element names, physical concepts, the whole shebang—he’d finally be able to really use them, finally able to become an honest-to-god scientist.

“DNA sequence read and ready for replication,” came a woman’s voice from the computer.
Zach pressed the print button. Names of chemicals and molecules scrolled across the screen faster than he could read – all the stuff the machine needed to recreate the item. The array of print heads descended from the ceiling, spun into their necessary configuration and began laying down the first layer of material.

“Hold up,” Gino said after a few seconds. “What’s it doing?”

On the screen, NaCl was displayed in a box marked “Currently Printing.”

“It’s printing salt,” Zach replied. “A circle of salt.”

“The hell for?”

Zach tapped the escape sequence a few times, trying to cancel the print. The keys were getting warm under his fingers. “No idea. Maybe the sequence is corrupted. Yow!” The keys were now painfully hot to the touch. Sparks shot out of the connections to the monitor, and the display shifted from a crisp, full color image to a sickly yellow one. The overhead lights dimmed, then went out.

The backup lights came on a few seconds later. The replication machine seemed unaffected by the brown out, the print heads whirring as they laid down more material.

“Phase one complete,” the computer cooed. “Phase two commencing.”

On the print bed, a circle of salt about six feet in diameter had been drawn, and the Currently Printing box flickered on screen long enough for Zach to read the words calcium carbonate.

Chalk? Zach wondered. What’s it need chalk for?

The print heads shifted their configuration, making small, quick, precise movements. “What’s it doing now?” Gino asked.

“Looks like it’s writing letters.”

“Fuck language is that?”

“No idea.” Zach stared at the monitor, yellow glyphs appearing onscreen mere moments before the replication machine drew them on the print bed. They weren’t letters from any alphabet he’d seen. Something about them reminded him of alchemical symbols he’d seen in a paper that documented Isaac Newton’s search for the secret of transmuting lead into gold.

The image on screen blurred, then vanished as the monitor rendered only horizontal lines of yellow. Zach slapped the side of the monitor a few times to no avail.

The printer needed less than fifteen seconds to complete the ring of symbols within the salt, and then the computer chirped, “Phase three commencing.” Its voice distorted and warbled as it added, “Ia, ia, cethenful tai sha.”

“Fuckin’ A, Zach, shut it down!” Gino’s voice was shrill.
Zack dashed to the main power switch across the room and wrenched it down. The printer heads kept spinning. “You suck,” he whispered to the switch.

Gino ran to the doors, which refused to acknowledge his existence. “Help, open up!” He stabbed at the dead keypad next to the door, trying code after code.

“Gino, take a breath!” Zach called as he ran back to the terminal and pounded on the keyboard. An “Append to Print” dialog appeared, then vanished. No, I don’t want to add to the thing, I want to stop it. More sparks erupted from the monitor terminal. “Gino, try your cell—call Joey down in maintenance.”

Gino’s eyes were huge as he fumbled his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, yeah. Joey’s a good idea.” With shaking fingers, he tapped out Joey’s number. “C’mon, bro, pick up.”

The voice that answered wasn’t Joey’s. “Gino Esposito,” it said. The voice was old, ancient. And deep. The kind of voice that belonged to someone who’d seen everything—who knew everything. It was loud enough that Zach flinched back from it, even though he was seven feet from the phone.

Gino stood frozen, phone raised, eyes locked on the print bed. Blood began to run from his ears and the whites of his eyes filled with black. “It’s coming for us, Zach,” he whispered in a flat voice. “It’s coming.”

Zach ran to the window, looked down the ten floors to the dark street below. His breathing was coming in short gasps and he forced himself to slow down. The window. They could go out the window. The window didn’t open because OSHA or some bullshit, but fuck that. He grabbed the chair and slammed it against the glass. It rebounded and cracked him in the forehead.

Stars exploded in his vision as he hit the floor. “Gino, give me a hand,” Zach said as he struggled to his feet. Gino stood mesmerized, phone still raised.

The print heads whirred and spun, and Zach saw paws the size of dinner plates had been printed, and legs as thick as his waist were rapidly being assembled.

A part of him, the part that had always been fascinated by science, noted the gray-green hues of the skin, the five toes, each ending in a claw, the redundant layers of muscle being affixed to the bone.

A more frantic, more primal part of him took control then and started screaming. Whatever this was, it was several dozen notches above him on the food chain and he needed to get out now.

He slammed his fists against the door, pulled at the center seam, bending his nails backwards as he fought to get purchase.

Nothing.

The print heads were spinning again, reconfiguring themselves, building a structure to support the torso as it was added. Thin lines of molybdenum spiderwebbed across the print bed creating a sort of shelf for the starting layers of the torso.

Zach grabbed the phone from the desk. The line was nothing but crackling static, and beneath that, a faint, deep voice. “Zachary Tyler,” it said.

Zach flung the phone away. And now, impossibly, the torso was done, a hulking frame covered in corded muscle and a thick hide. The detached part of Zach mused that the statuette hadn’t really done this thing justice.

He turned back to the flickering monitor. The elements in the tank were depleting at an extraordinarily fast rate. Maybe the machine would run out of atomic material? Whatever this was, it needed a lot of complicated molecules. No, he realized, the tank wouldn’t run out, but maybe he could cut the supply of material going to the replicator. Hurling himself forward, he grabbed at the pipe leading from the tank. It was nearly three inches around and freezing cold to the touch. Too cold. He cried out as he pulled his hands away, leaving bits of his palms frozen to the pipe.

He staggered back to the terminal, mashing the keyboard. The “Append to Print” dialog displayed again. A desperate thought occurred to him, and he managed to type H twice and click OK before the box vanished behind wavy yellow lines.

With the torso done, the neck was materializing before his eyes. Zach didn’t want to see its head, didn’t want to see its face, but couldn’t tear his gaze away. He stood, hands bloodied and hair disheveled, staring at the spot where he knew its eyes would be. They were printed mere moments later. And as he gazed into those eight red eyes, he heard its voice, the voice from the phone, clearly in his mind.

“Gino Esposito. Zachary Tyler. Release me.”

A wave of… something crashed against Zach’s mind, and the world spun. He staggered and managed to catch himself on the edge of the desk. Something warm and wet ran from his ears and his hand came away red when he touched his neck.

Closer to the beast, Gino moved forward, eyes blank, jaw slack, and scuffed the salt circle with his foot.

The fog cleared from Zach’s mind just as the beast lunged at Gino. The zoologist in Zach noted that nothing that big had any right being that fast, and that claws shouldn’t be able to rend flesh so easily. The teeth, which weren’t visible as the jaw and lips were printed, were like hundreds of needles. Gino’s screams only lasted a second.

Above the beast, the print heads continued their work, seeming to spin in empty air as they created what Zach appended.

The creature looked up, Gino’s entrails hanging from its mouth. “Zachary Tyler,” the voice came again. Zach fought back a scream as he snatched Gino’s lighter from the desk and snapped it open.

The replication room exploded in a ball of pale blue flame.

*~*~*

“Jesus, what a mess,” Cabe said as he and Kathy read through the incident report.

“I’ve heard of operator negligence before,” Kathy said, “but explosive levels of hydrogen being appended to a print? What were they thinking?”

Cabe shrugged. “Doubt we’ll find out. Security footage from that lab completely cut out just as they started the print process.” He closed the report and set it neatly aside. “And in the meantime, we need to finish processing the claim they were working on. Did anything survive the blast?”

“Just this,” Kathy said, holding up a four-legged statuette. “It’s broken, but it tests positive for DNA data.”

“Well then, let’s take it to replication station number two and get to work.”

End.

The Secret Tell

By: Michael Reyes

The ancestral symphony echoes, summoning me from the ocean’s depths. My form is thinner than air, memory longer than history. My kin’s ancient music calls me to land and I’m no longer just a thought dreaming life—but a presence from a purer age; gone, but not completely forgotten. I must reconnect with tradition, earth and hunger.

I soar beneath the breakers then coil onto the sand, willing to suffer the noonday sun for the haven of my lost tribe’s mound. We prefer the dark open spaces; the moon’s gleam is the only fire we need.

Long ago we shared land with men, as they built their walls with wattle and daub. My kith watched them emerge from the bowels of deep jungle: crawling, staggering, then striding along the day’s surface.

We were here long before them, walking on two legs while most creatures stumbled on four; then flying on sleek wings before humankind even contemplated the heavens.

Their love of light drove us away. Man stole the sun’s glare and took it into hours it did not belong. We punished them for this—hunted them for this, but to no avail.

We shed flesh when their King Scorpion settled near our ancient homeland; we retreated to the ocean’s darkness. We continued to stalk man, however; ravenous, preying upon his kind for centuries thereafter. Hunger was eventually transcended, yet we still hunted. Those of my kind who grew weary of slaughter floundered lethargically in archaic memory; others simply willed themselves out of existence.

After centuries, Man’s Empire of Light (and Excrement) extended beneath the waves. My small tribe was made even smaller, scattered along the dark crevices of the oceans’ most secluded regions.

Yet we remain creatures of the earth and its seasons. We savor the land and obey our call to shore… Drifting past the sun-bleached eyes of humanity and reuniting with our secret Tell is imperative.

It lay in Man’s plain sight by a shoal on a cold flat northern beach, a small circular mound of abalone, whalebone and sea glass. The music of my kith is etched across that sea glass, memories of each visitor inscribed along the abalone. We nestle and sleep inside of the whale’s bones; we’re comfortable there.

We remember it fondly when it was four-legged, and land bound. It’s a creature we often possess while in the ocean—we use their bodies to crest above the surface and taste the sky. Their bones anchor us to the special energy underneath the strand, the energy that sustains my lost tribe’s tell—my home now.

The music in this mound is deep but distant; it hasn’t been occupied for years. The memories of the others are still alive, however. I explore the impression of the most recent occupant and grow disturbed. Fear and dread saturate the abalone. I try to understand its nature, but I can’t. What should we fear? There is nothing on this planet older or more capable.

We’ve retained our power and freedom; the others have been captured and imprisoned in the temples of Man: stratified in their heavens, buried in their hells, hunted to extinction in those Lost Forests and spoken out of existence with that weapon Man calls Language; that virus of words, his unique plague upon enchantment. Humankind has exterminated or imprisoned most of this world’s magic. But not us.

We despise them and their Empire of Waste, which has haunted us even in our remote fastness. We truly abhor this pollution, which at times seems to take on a life of its own within our black estates.

But we do not fear Man and the things he creates; they’re fleeting and reprehensible. Nor the spirits he worships; they are merely our lost and imprisoned siblings, weak and piteous. Humankind’s dreams and nightmares do not move us, for they are simply the poorest memories of our illustrious history.

Our numbers are few, yet we remain the most potent of all beings. Still, as I curl inside of the whalebone and make myself at home, I feel a strange doubt—coupled with a tremendous sense of loneliness. What if I am the last of my kind? What if something stranger and more terrible than mere extinction has risen to supremacy in this new world? Has it finally destroyed my kith?

The thought is banished when the ecstasy of deep hunger washes over me. I stretch, then wait for my first meal.

I see the man’s aura flashing off his dull, fat body. He walks alone on the beach under the night sky. I unwind myself, glide away from my home—then enter him.

I see the world through his eyes. He has the low, unwavering vision of a swine at the trough. And yet he breathes, and yearns, and bleeds, and dies. The meat puppet’s mind is small; soul even smaller, yet he realizes something’s wrong. I compel him to be still—then feed on the life force he’s wasted for decades.

Exhilarated, I move his body to dance for hours on end along that dark shore. I swing him between death and life, madness and sanity, ecstasy and torture.

I spot the solitary woman walking along the beach and divide myself. I enter both man and woman and make them couple upon the freezing silt. The feeling is invigorating; I reform and jump between both bodies, riding the heat. I drain them until I’ve had my fill. The wretched sun rises as I leave both their breathless husks by the rolling waves.

I nestle inside the mound, exhausted and satisfied.

*~*~*

I take only a dozen more over the next two seasons. They will say the land is cursed and no longer traverse it if I go into frenzy.

I spend nights crawling the wind skyward then diving through the earth, riding those ancient currents so that I may observe and mourn the lost ones of my kingdom, prisoners in both Man’s paradise and hell. Most cannot even recognize me, so engrossed are they in the incessant devotions and mundane affairs of their parasitic captors.

They depress me. I look up to the stars and dream of traveling beyond them, but my kith cannot leave this world. The parasite known as Mankind will one day live among that firmament, and they will take their faith with them. My lost family, their slaves, will accompany that pilgrimage to the stars and beyond.

And I consider them prisoners. I doubt myself. This call to shore has been different. I’m well fed and strong, yet remain uncertain.

The summer’s first full moon rises, and I’m sure something is leering out at me from the deep. A truly alien presence; intelligent and scrutinizing. I believe it hungers for me yet cannot act at this juncture. There is some sort of barrier, it is forbidden from approaching my tell. The powers of this entity appear nascent but growing.

I put the thought out of mind.

I must soon return to the ocean, my time on land is nearly over. My voice joins my tribe’s ancient symphony, and I revel in our days of glory in the flesh, lived out under a night sky purer than Man’s.

*~*~*

The tide rides in close to the shoal, caressing my tell as the moon hugs the earth, perigean.

I sense the child before seeing it. His aura is fresh and invigorating. The same can’t be said of those who escort him to my land.

They carry him unconscious onto the shore, and the sorcery their souls conspire to is blacker than the night sky my clan once ruled under. I’ve not encountered men of this type in centuries.

An unfamiliar presence—dangerous and powerful, accompanies them. I sense no elemental powers, no trace of any agent of heaven or hell overseeing this ritual. Yet the strength of their sorcery is undeniable, and confounding. They create a terrible hunger in me and I restrain myself with great effort from going berserk.

Some of the humans detect my presence. They shoot furtive glances at the shoal. I watch as they place the child in the center of a crude circle. They chant in unison and attempt to command eldritch forces in a twisted tongue.

I don’t understand it. Their words of magic are not the centuries old corruption of my kith’s lost dialect. No, this is something else. It is an essence of anti-nature, of corrupted progress and soulless annihilation. The magic they conjure is alive.

The waves rise, as does their chanting, and I feel myself becoming—unfastened. I’m the focus of this ritual. They’re trying to rip me away from the tell.

A challenge, then. Good. I haven’t had one since the pyramids of my true homeland last experienced a deluge.

I snap and unwind myself toward them. I try to project into the nearest man but can’t. I try another, then another, to no avail. Their energy is protected, my gateways are blocked. I can’t find a way inside of these meat puppets. That’s impossible.

They are neither adorned with sigils nor wards from my halcyon era. No. They are covered in humanity’s detritus, those products of excess that mark their blighted existence upon this planet.

The oils that contaminate the ocean, the vapors that suffocate the sky, those synthetics that choke the earth. These are the things they are clothed in, physically and spiritually.

The waves crash and their hymns become guttural screams. They are trying to pull me inside of that circle, inside of the child. I fight, wail aloud, and some begin to stammer in fear.

I nearly force my way inside of one but I feel those eyes watching me from beneath the waves. Its vision is becoming clearer, more focused. I lose control and whirl inside of the child with a thud.

They stop chanting. I look through his eyes and know fear once again—powerlessness. The assembled gaze at me silently, and with some word of authority their leader demands that I stand.

I rise on stubby, unsure legs. He commands me to bow, then pirouette, in a slow arc.  

I do.

The toxic waves of power that crash over me are revolting. Generations of filth and pollution, funneled through some newly ascending master. Humanity’s only true sorcery, perfected across centuries of abuse against the world that spawned and nurtured them.

In a flash I realize that I too have been imprisoned in a hell of their own making. My freedom has been an illusion. They demand my name. My anger grows.

We have never revealed our true name across eons of existence. This is one potent source of our power. We have of course taken many forms to hunt and feed upon mortals: animating the bodies of their dead, transforming nature’s simple creatures into instruments of our wrath… These constructs have been named, but not our true essence. Our true nature is unassailable.

They demand my name again—and with great effort, I answer with silence.

They scream and wail in anguish as the sea beats against the shore. It is rising fast. One foolishly steps inside the circle. And he is mine.

I open the child’s mouth and spit a stream of fire, quickly dressing my enemy in flame. The others break their coven and scurry. I run out of the circle on small weak legs, away from the vicious tide.

I force my way out of the child’s body and leave it crumpled on the sand. The group screams in terror and I revel. I take the form of one of my kith’s earliest and favorite creatures; the winged serpent. I then ram inside these heathens of the sun. I feed gluttonously. What real power could they hope to have against me? Their strength is potent, yet remains nascent and unfocused.

Their leader screams wildly as the tide rises. I stop myself from having him when I see it emerge from the waves and slowly drag itself to shore.

This conjuration truly is a creature of their own making: formed of debris, pollutants and synthetics. A thing fashioned after man and in his form, yet larger by several dozen feet, and covered in pitch black petrol and a crown of burning trash. Its eyeless face considers us. Its huge, cavernous mouth drops open, spilling out heaps of excrement and detritus.

The stench of it is unfathomable. The moon and stars refuse to cast their light upon this abomination. How long will the shadows tolerate its presence?

The leader falls to his knees. The ravaged somehow find the strength to crawl to this New God and kneel.

Mankind has finally succeeded in creating a god in his own image. I can hear his slaves in both heaven and hell wail. Their sobs rock the earth and tear the heavens. They have been forsaken.

The true Son of Man looks upon his followers, then me. It hungers for us all.

“You are the Firstborn, my lord! The New Father of a race that will take us beyond this world! I offer this impure spirit of the earth for sustenance! It trembles before you!”

With one smooth motion of its giant hand the abomination sends the acolyte’s head skyward. The godling vomits its manna upon the other followers, bile burning them to ash.

I quake with fear. The Son of Man knows this, and lurches toward me.

I must find and warn the scattered members of my tribe.

The godling reaches for me. I barely avoid its clutches.

The Son of Man detects my Tell.

It crushes my heritage underfoot, then vomits excrement upon it.

I scream in anger as the symphony ends. An essence of myself fades. I flee while the abomination’s back is turned, and spring beneath the waves.

I must find the others in my kith…If any remain. I must tell them. There is something else here, from a darkness blacker than ours. The very soul of humanity itself has taken flesh…And it hungers.

End.

Artist: Toeken (https://atoekeneffort.weebly.com/)

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Beyond the Green Garden

By: Tim Jeffreys

Shirina couldn’t help but see herself and her husband through the eyes of the middle-aged man sitting in the hotel lobby lounge chair. He was watching closely as they entered. It made Shirina feel a bit self-conscious about what they were wearing. That morning, Ben had insisted on dressing in shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops despite the grey skies and drizzle they’d woken up to back in England; whilst she had been anxious to put on her new yellow daisy-patterned sundress, hat, and sunglass. She laughed as Ben mock-struggled with their suitcase when it caught in the glass doors. Ben laughed too, faux-scolded her and play-slapped her bottom for not helping, making her shriek. Then he draped his free arm around her waist as they approached the reception desk. The greying, forlorn-looking man sitting watching them looked so despondent that Shirina could only imagine how to his eyes, she and Ben must have appeared to glow.

She looked over her shoulder at the man as Ben tried out his Portuguese on the receptionist. The man still watched them in a half-disinterested way but it was clear whatever thoughts he had were turned inward.

“Hello,” she said.

The man shifted in the chair, focused his eyes, and nodded his head to her in response.

“We just got married,” Shirina said, trying to excuse the radiance she imagined herself and Ben exuded, as if it were something that had to be apologised for. “Are you here on holiday too?”

“I’m waiting for my wife,” the man said.

“Where is she? Getting ready, I suppose?”

“No, she went out into the garden.”

“Oh,” Shirina said, turning to her husband. “Did you hear that, there’s a garden.”

The receptionist raised her eyes and gave Shirina a hard look. “Not for you.”

“Sorry?”

“Is closed.”

“Oh. But that man just said his wife is…”

“For you is closed,” the receptionist said, using the tone of one who didn’t want to be argued with.

“That’s a shame.”

“Is five minute walk to beach,” the woman said. “We have pool, games room, tennis court. You will find plenty to do. Is lovely here. Lots of young couples like yourselves, yes? Newlyweds, like you. Very lively hotel. You have the honeymoon suite.” She gave Shirina an efficient smile as she handed a pass key across the desk to her. “Top floor. Enjoy your stay.” 

Searching for the lift, they took a wrong turn and ended up in a gloomy dead-end corridor. Retracing their steps, they passed a set of double doors above which a sign read, ‘O JARDIM’. Shirina, who had picked up some Spanish during her gap year in Costa Rica volunteering for sea turtle conservation, recognised ‘Jardim’ as being similar to the Spanish word ‘Jardin,’ which meant garden.

“It must be through there,” she said to Ben.

“What?”

“The garden that man was talking about.”

“Garden? Really? I’m going to have a look,” Ben said. Then before Shirina could stop him, he strode over to the doors and twisted the handle.

“Locked,” he said. He rattled the handle with both hands to be sure.

Shirina grimaced. “Don’t.”

“What?”

She glanced back towards the lobby. “She said we’re not allowed.”

“But it’s locked.”

“Leave it alone. You’ll get us in trouble.”

She saw a familiar devilish look on Ben’s face. It was a look he got whenever he had been forbidden from doing something.

“Maybe there’s another way in.”

Shirina swatted at him, saying in a hushed voice, “Just forget about it. If it’s closed, it’s closed.”

“Didn’t that man say his wife was out in the garden?”

“Yes,” Shirina said. “But he must be mistaken.”

*~*~*

Shirina was struck by how modern the hotel was. So much glass and chrome. And what the receptionist had told them appeared to be true; the hotel did seem to be mainly occupied by young couples. They passed a few of them as they walked the corridors. Tall bronzed men on the arms of petit blondes, or dark-eyed, dark-skinned girls with their muscular beaus, all walking along with a youthful luminosity of their own. When Ben finally found their room, situated at the very end of the third-floor corridor, Shirina coo-ed with delight.

“I still feel bad that your Dad’s paying for all this,” she said.

Ben stood over the bed, grinning at two towels, each having been twisted into the shape of a swan. “Don’t be. He can afford it. And anyway, he loves throwing his money around.”

“And you?” she said, closing the door and joining him by the bed. “What do you like?”

He turned to her, grinned then caught her by the waist and pulled her down onto the mattress, flattening the towel-swans. “I like you.”

*~*~*

Though she didn’t want to admit it to Ben, within a week Shirina was bored of the beach. She lay on her side, her head propped on one hand, using one finger to flick tiny pebbles she found in the sand. Her shoulders ached with sunburn. She was bored of sex too. Ben was insatiable; he wanted to do it three or four times a day. She liked that he couldn’t keep his hands off her, but she couldn’t help feeling they were overdoing it. The previous day, after she’d eaten too much at lunch and gone back to their room to lie down, she’d pushed his hands away when she felt them sliding up her thighs.

“We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us,” she’d snapped. “We don’t need to do it until we’re sore.”

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on your honeymoon?” Ben said.

She laughed at him.

Watching him now, diligently building a castle in the sand like a five-year-old, she felt a twinge of guilt. His tirelessness, his limitless enthusiasm was what she loved about him. People had said they were too young to get married, but she’d known as soon as she met Ben that she’d found the right man. Reaching out a hand, she stroked her fingers through the golden hairs on his calf.

“Do you think you’ll always want me?” she asked. “Even when I’m old and fat?”

Ben glanced up, one corner of his mouth cocked in a crooked smile. “Of course, I will. We’re soulmates.”

“You’ll never want anyone else?”

Ben lay down beside her and kissed her. “There’s no one better. Not for me.”

“You’re sweet.”

Sitting up, he looked at his watch. “Should we head back to the hotel? It’s almost lunch time.”

Shirina didn’t have to be asked twice. At once she stood and began rolling up her beach towel. Ben gathered up the rest of their belongings and was off plodding up the sand before she could get her sundress on. Perhaps he’s just as bored of the beach as I am, Shirina thought. And we still have a week left to go.

When they got back to the hotel, Shirina saw the forlorn middle-aged man sitting in a chair in the lobby, just as he had on the day of their arrival.

“Still waiting for your wife?” Shirina said to him, trying for an amiable tone.

But the man, in a dispirited way, said: “Yes. She’s out in the garden.”

“Still?”

The reception desk was unmanned, so Ben went behind it to retrieve their room pass. He made a face at Shirina when she told him off.

“You’re such a child sometimes,” she said.

“You’re a child.” He slapped her backside, making her whoop.

“Don’t.” Shirina was still aware of the man watching them.

On their way to the lift, they somehow ended up in that same dead-end corridor. Ben halted. “Look,” he said. He pointed towards the double doors with the sign above that said, ‘O JARDIM’. One of the doors was standing slightly ajar. Not ajar enough to see what was beyond, apart from a thin strip of bright light, but very clearly unlocked and open.

“Come on,” Ben said. He dumped the bag and beach umbrella to one side of the doors.

“Wait,” Shirina said. But Ben was already yanking open the doors and allowing sunlight to flood the dark corridor. Shielding her eyes with one hand, Shirina heard Ben draw a sharp breath. Already he was stepping through into the brightness beyond.

“Ben…”

“Look at this.”

“We shouldn’t…”

It took a few seconds for Shirina’s eyes to adjust, but even then, she still couldn’t believe what she saw. Beyond the double doors was a lush expanse of greenery. A few stone steps led down into the garden from where they stood, before the land rose in a moderate slope. Shirina blinked. She couldn’t remember seeing a garden so beautiful in all her twenty-five years. A variety of trees filled her vision with different shades of green, and there were all kinds of flowers growing in abundance all the way up the slope. A stream cut diagonally across the hillside, tumbling at points in little waterfalls over a step. Shirina was drawn forward, almost against her own will, marveling at everything about her, and discovered a paved path with yellow and white flowers growing to either side of it. A fat bumblebee buzzed over the heads of the flowers, and she thought she saw something furry moving amongst the undergrowth. A cat? She continued along the path until she reached a spot where the stream pooled.

“Oh, Ben,” she said, dipping her hands in the cool, clear water. “It’s magical.”

Ben looked towards a cluster of ferns. He pointed. “I saw something. A deer, I think.”

“Ben…look at this place.”

They ran on along the twisting path, giggling like children and delighting in everything they encountered. There were several stone statues of men, women and children, some half-hidden by bushes and branches. There were other figures too, topiary figures, who stood by the side of the path, surprising them.

When they reached the top of the hill, they saw that the slope fell more steeply on the other side to a long grassy meadow planted with widely spaced oaks. The stream widened into a river as it wound between the oaks on its way to whatever lay beyond the horizon. The tall oaks were mirrored in the glassy surface of the water. Shirina looked at Ben. Her mouth hung open. She couldn’t speak. Then she noticed there were figures in the landscape below. A child, whether boy or girl it was hard to tell from this distance, sat waist-deep in the river at the curve of a bend. Nearby, a woman sprawled naked in the dappled shade under one of the oaks. She was turned to them, her body fully on display, as if she’d been waiting. Another naked woman sat in the grass a little further along the river’s banks. She too appeared to be looking back at them with an air of anticipation. Shirina glanced at Ben, hoping he hadn’t noticed either of the women. But he was staring.

Further away, just discernible, a naked man leaned against the trunks of one of the trees. There were other figures beyond him, sitting in a circle in the centre of the meadow, but they were too far away to be identified as men or women.

Managing to shake off the stunned inertia that had rooted her to the spot, Shirina roused herself and took hold of Ben’s hand.

“Let’s go back.”

Ben turned his head. His jaw worked. His eyes were wide. He pointed into the valley below. “Down there…those people. Women. Women and…”

“Let’s go back. We shouldn’t be in here.” With some effort, she turned and began leading him by the hand back the way they’d come. He stumbled, resisting.

“Did you see them? They were…”

“Let’s go back. We’re not allowed in here.” She tugged harder at his hand. “Ben…?”

They found the paved path again and walked in a daze back to the door through which they’d exited the hotel. Once they were back inside, and stood waiting for the lift, everything seemed so absurdly functional and normal and dull that Shirina thought she must have imagined the garden. Ben kept glancing over his shoulder, a confused look on his face. Whenever she caught his eyes, his mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but then he’d shake his head and look away.

When they returned to the ground floor after showering and dressing for lunch, Ben insisted he wanted to see the garden again but to Shirina’s relief the double doors leading out to the garden were now closed. She said nothing as Ben stood looking at the doors. She knew he wanted to try the handle, see if the doors were locked, but something prevented him. Perhaps fear? But what was there to be afraid of? She had to take his hand and lead him away.

They were mostly silent throughout lunch, avoiding each other’s gaze. Returning to their room, Shirina felt Ben’s hands on her before they were even inside the door. She didn’t resist when he ushered her towards the bed. Afterwards, he still seemed restless. It was as if some heat had gotten into him. She pretended to sleep and watched him through her eyelashes as he got up from the bed and paced about the room. He went to the window several times. He looked at her with some deliberation clear in his expression. After a while, he began to get dressed. Then without a word he went to the door and opened it. He stood in the door space for a few seconds. She wanted to say something, stop him, but before the words were out of her mouth, the door had closed softly behind him.

*~*~*

When Shirina woke, she called out for Ben but there was no response. The silence of the room disturbed her. A dream remained fresh in her memory as she stumbled into the ensuite bathroom to throw water on her face, a dream in which she and Ben had walked in the garden behind the hotel. She’d dreamt of how they had reached the crest of that lush green hill and looked down into the valley below and saw the women and children sprawled out naked by the river. She held onto Ben’s hand as they stood there. Then one of the women raised herself and made a beckoning gesture. Ben had looked at Shirina, and Shirina could see in his eyes that he was asking permission.

“No,” she’d said, shaking her head. “No. You’re my husband.”

But the woman continued to beckon, and Ben let go of Shirina’s hand and started picking his way down the hillside, moving cautiously at first before breaking into a run. He didn’t look back.

“Ben!” she’d called after him. “Ben! What are you doing?”

It was at this point that she woke.

The dream left her with a dull ache in her chest.

Not wanting to believe that Ben had returned to the garden, she hoped to find him somewhere in the hotel. Perhaps he was in the bar having a drink, but when she went there she couldn’t find him amongst the early drinkers. The thought nagged. Could he have really gone out there again, into that garden, without her? She went to the reception desk, but again, nobody manned it. The middle-aged man was in his usual seat in the hotel lobby. Shirina approached him, thinking if anyone had seen Ben it would be him, ever watchful.

“Have you seen my husband?”

The man blinked and roused himself. “Husband?”

“My husband, Ben. Tall, blond-haired guy. You’ve seen us together.”

The man shook his head.

Shirina sighed. She was about to walk away when she halted and looked again at the man. She realised in that moment that he was the only guest at the hotel she’d encountered who looked older than thirty. That’s if he was a guest at the hotel. All he ever did was sit there in that same chair in the lobby.

“Still waiting for your wife, are you?”

“She’s out in the garden,” the man said.

“Why don’t you go and get her?”

The man’s eyes widened. He shook his head again, said, “No. No. I couldn’t.”

“Is there something you’re afraid of out there?”

His eyes narrowed. “Your husband hasn’t gone out in the garden, has he?”

“He might have. What do I do?”

The man cast his eyes around the empty seats surrounding him. “Wait. You’ve just got to wait.”

Now it was Shirina’s turn to shake her head. “I can’t do that. I can’t. I have to find him.”

Leaving the man, she crossed the lobby and entered the dead-end corridor which led to the entrance to the garden. The doors were closed. She thought how much of a relief it would be to find they were locked. If they were locked Ben couldn’t be out in the garden. He’d have to be somewhere else—either he’d gone for a walk, or he was out by the pool, or perhaps someone had invited him for a game of tennis or…or…

Her hand shook as she reached for the handle and turned it, hoping for resistance. But the handle turned easily, and she was able to swing the door open with minimal effort. Sunlight flooded in from outside. She could feel the warmth of it on her face. After glancing back towards the lobby, biting at her lip, she stepped through and let the doors swing closed behind her.

It must have been later than she thought, because it was twilight in the garden. The sky was full of pink light along the crest of the hill, and the trees had turned to silhouettes. As she picked her way along the paved path, something black flitted across her vision—a bat, she thought. She ducked her head. The only sound was the flow of water in the stream, splashing as it cascaded over the little waterfalls.

She became aware of how alive everything was around her. The leaves seemed to breath, and she had an odd sensation that the flowers were watching her. In fact, she felt as if the whole garden was aware of her presence. Half-way up the slope of the hill, she caught a movement in her peripheral vision, alarmed, she twisted her head around. Ten feet or so from the path, a topiary figure of a man stood amongst a bed of purple flowers. Though the figure had no face, the head was angled towards her as if looking over his shoulder at her. She was sure that a moment ago, when she’d first noticed the figure, the head had been turned another way, facing back towards the hotel in the same direction the body was angled. She froze and stared at the figure, her breath caught, as if she were daring it to move again. No, she thought then, shaking her head, No. I imagined it. It didn’t move. I’m being silly. How could it move?

Yet she couldn’t help looking back when she neared the top of the hill. For a moment, she was sure that the statues and the topiary figures were in a different position than they had been a moment ago. She thought of a game she’d played as a child, a game called Sly Fox, where one person had to stand at one end of the garden and be the Sly Fox and the other players would creep up on them and aim to tag them. But if the child being the Sly Fox turned around, the others would have to freeze. Freeze like statues. Just like these statues. Just like…

She shook the thought from her mind. Ridiculous. Though, it was hard for her to turn her back on the statues and topiary figures. In her mind’s eyes she saw them coming to life the moment she put her back to them. She saw them beginning to creep up the slope in her wake. A cold shiver went down her spine at the thought, but she refused to look back, dismissing the thought once more as ridiculous.

Another thought persisted.

There’s something wrong here. There’s something wrong here in this garden. This isn’t normal. It doesn’t feel right.

Her heart began to beat fast. She was scared, realizing what she might see in the valley on the other side of the hill. Reaching the top of the slope, she scanned the meadow below. It was hard to see much of anything in the diminishing light, so she scrutinised the area thoroughly before deciding it was unpopulated.

Maybe I should go back. Ben isn’t out here. How could he be?

Something drew her onwards. She began picking her way down the hill into the valley. It was quiet under the oak trees. The grass was littered with leaves, and she saw a few more fall as she walked. Busy looking about her for any sign of life, she accidentally put one foot into the water. Her feet were bare apart from flip-flops and the shock of the icy water surprised her so much that she let out a little yell. Retracting her foot, she turned on the spot with a sudden sense that her cry had disturbed something. She was acutely aware that she was no longer alone.

“Hello?” she tried. “Is someone there?”

Now, there was no denying it, her heart hammered and she was finding it hard to breath. She tried to convince herself she had to return to the hotel. A horrible thought came swiftly: What if they had locked the double doors? What if she couldn’t get back inside?

She’d begun walking back towards the hill, when she stopped, sure that she had heard breathy laughter. She turned her head to the trees on either side of her. There was a rustle of ferns, and then something leapt out at her. She screamed and ran. She had only gone a short distance when she realised she was running the wrong way, heading deeper into the meadow and away from the safety of the hotel. She could hear the hot, heavy breathing of her pursuer. Whatever it was, it laughed as it chased her, as if this were a game. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she screamed again, behind her was a small, naked, malicious-looking man. He had a hairy face and body, and on his head, what looked like horns. She glanced back again to be sure. Yes, they were definitely horns. Even more alarming, she noticed too that he had a large, protuberant erection; a ridiculous thing that bobbed as he ran and was pointed straight at her. She screamed and ran harder. She could hear the quick thud of his feet—hooves? Why did it sound like hooves? Then there was his grunting laughter. She could almost feel his hairy hands snatching at her back.

She thought she heard him grunting words. “C’mere. Hey, girlie, c’mere.”

“Leave me alone!” she wailed. “Leave me alone! Please.”

She sobbed now, hoping that this was all some kind of nightmare, and that in a moment, she’d wake up. She’d wake up in the hotel bed with Ben beside her.

It was unclear how long she ran through that seemingly endless meadow, but at some point she realised she could no longer hear the nasty little man or whatever it was behind her. Without slowing, she looked around and saw that he was gone. After checking all around her, she stopped and doubled over, panting for breath, keeping one eye out for the awful little man’s re-appearance.

Righting herself, she looked around again. It was now almost full dark, and all she saw about her was flat meadow. Which way was the hill? The garden? The hotel? She had no idea. She began walking in what she hoped was the right direction. She was trembling and couldn’t prevent herself from giving off a low, querulous moan.

Something defiant asserted itself then. She took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her face, and raised herself upright. I have to get out of this, she thought. I have to get out of here. I’m finally going to start my dream-job in web-design soon. And I want a house, and children. A long life. I want to be happy. I want to get out of here. She kept this internal monologue going, reminding herself of normal things and of what she planned to do with her life. Scanning the ground at her feet, she noticed a large flat stone and bent to pick it up. She smiled to herself, weighing the stone in her hand. If that funny little man comes near me again, I’ll smash his fucking skull. She knew she was most likely not going to find her way back to the hotel until daylight, but she kept walking, turning as she did, wary of staying too still.

She’d only been walking a little while when she became aware of a noise. It sounded like a jet engine passing overhead. She looked up to find it but realized the noise was coming from somewhere else, somewhere on the ground. Following the sound, she came to a spot where the ground banked downwards. Her mouth fell open. At the bottom of that slope, where the horizon should have been, there was a great, black, swirling hole, a hellish pit of churning clouds. She could feel the pit sucking at her as she stood there, the wind pulling at her clothes and hair. Then, on a sand bank in front of the pit, she noticed the outline of a figure, just a shape, a silhouette. She didn’t know how—perhaps something in the figure’s stance—but she knew this figure was Ben. She began to rush forward, calling his name, but the sucking wind from the pit took her voice and drug it down into its spiraling bowels. She felt the pull of it grow stronger the nearer she got. Looking into those dark, churning depths made her head feel light. By the time she reached the sand bank, the pull was almost enough to lift her off her feet, and she was sure that at any moment she would be heaved screaming into the void.

“Ben!” she yelled. “Ben!” But it was useless. The wind from the earthly maelstrom was now a deafening roar.

She ran to him and grasped hold of his arm. He was just standing there, on the edge of that sand bank, staring mesmerised into that fathomless pit of spiraling darkness. She had to shake him out of his trance.

“Ben! What are you doing?” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

He looked at her as if he didn’t recognise her. His face showed nothing. But he didn’t resist when she began to lead him away. All she wanted to do was get him away from that hole before they were both swept up from the ground and sucked into its depths. When she could no longer feel the pull of the wind or hear the churning of the pit, Shirina realised she was crying. She still gripped the large flat stone tightly and she was more than ready to smash it down on the head of anyone or anything that tried to get in her way.

The dark of night surrounded them, and the garden was nearly silent. Shirina led Ben by the hand towards the sound of the river. It was the only guide they had. They could follow that back to the garden and back to the hotel, that’s if they could just work out which way they were supposed to go. A full moon now sat high in the sky, like a white bulb, and by its dim light they could at least see the ground around them. Shirina looked to Ben’s face. His eyes were glazed and staring. His expression was stamped with incomprehension. She waved a hand in front of it trying to bring him to his senses.

“Ben?” she said in a soothing voice. “Ben, are you all right?”

His eyes focused on her. His lips moved. “It…it just waits there.”

“What?”

“It just waits. It waits there. At the end of all this.” He threw out his arms to indicate the surroundings. “It just waits. That darkness. That—that pit.”

“We have to get back,” she said. “We’re on our honeymoon, remember?” She tried to laugh but it sounded choked and off-kilter, crazed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. “We’ll have to come back.”

She stopped walking and her eyes searched his face. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

He shrugged, dropped his head and glanced away.

They followed the shimmer of moonlight on the surface of the river, avoiding the dark outlines of the oak trees. Dead leaves crunched under their feet. How can the leaves be falling? How can it be autumn? Wasn’t it summer in that garden? Wasn’t everything ripe and blooming in that garden? And yet here in this meadow, the oaks are already shedding their leaves. How can that be?

Her heart leapt when she saw a rise ahead of them. She threw down the stone, grabbed hold of Ben’s hand and began to run. Together, they scrambled up the slope and even in moon’s sallow glow they recognised the lush garden before them. They hurried through it unmolested and before long they were at the double doors and finding them – thank God! Oh, thank God! - unlocked and stepping back into the hotel. Shirina could hear the dull thud of music from the bar. She had to take a moment to adjust. This, she told herself, was reality. This…this was normal. What was out there, in that garden, that was…something else. That was some kind of dream. They had wandered into a dream, a fantasy.

When they walked through to the lobby, there was no one there, no one at the reception desk; just that middle-aged man in his usual chair, sitting up now and looking at them in query. Hopeful. Shirina wondered what he saw now when he looked at them. Was it still that youthful glow, or had that been dulled, tainted somehow? She wanted to say something, to comfort him, but all she could do was shrug and shake her head, unsure why she was doing it. She watched him sink back into his reverie.

*~*~*

The next morning, she woke fully dressed in the hotel bed. She couldn’t remember anything beyond arriving back at the hotel. Dead leaves were stuck to her feet and her dress was torn at the hem. She looked at her face in the bathroom mirror. There were more leaves tangled in her hair, and her cheeks were grimy with dirt and the tracks of tears. She noticed too, something she hadn’t seen before. In her fringe, there was a thread of grey. Just a single silver strand.

Ben called to her from the bedroom. She went to him. He was propped up on his elbows, squinting against the light, looking lost and baffled.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It was a dream, that’s all.”

He cocked his head at this but said nothing. There was something new in his eyes. She noticed something she was sure hadn’t been there before, something old. Sitting down on the bed, she stroked the fingers of one hand across his forearm.

“Don’t ever think about leaving me,” she said.

Ben shifted his gaze and didn’t reply.

End.

The Idiot God

By: Scott Couturier

The Idiot God, struck mad with machinations,

dumbed by the din of Time winding down.

Throne coated in crabbed arcane notations,

fiery brow fraught, lips fixed in marmoreal frown.

Above swirl storm-clouds of psychoses’ creation,

lightning lancing thunderless to deadened thews.

Below, the cosmoses of Creator’s ideation

learn the stupefied silence of their sire to rue.

Opaline eyes fixed on the void beyond void,

babbling dumb words to worlds inchoate, eager

to encompass any demiurgic urge devoid

of dotard’s pathos: pining for Archimedes’ lever!

But no sensible will this ill deity portends:

only Eternity of barren, sickly stupor,

endless beginnings without any ends.

The stars weep tears of flame at Divine torpor.

BELLS

By Megan M. Davies-Ostrom

Rachel propped herself up and studied the bell her step-mother, Eleanor, had placed on the bedside table.

Rachel liked the sound of bells. Throaty church bells, strident dinner bells, and the sweet little bell on Miss Kitty’s collar that chimed as she came running for the milk Cook put out each morning. She especially liked the bells in the mausoleums in the old family graveyard beyond the garden and long-handled silver bells like the one Eleanor had just given her. Those reminded her of Mother.

Mother had owned a little bell. It had sat on her bedside table next to her reading glasses and her beloved books. Later, when the books and glasses had gone out with the dustman, it had sat next to the silver spoon and the big bottles of tonic—Dr. Oliver Mundy’s Special Restorative Treatment and Mother Abigail’s Rejuvenating and Energizing Sipping Syrup—that father and Eleanor (she’d been Nurse Bolton then) administered every morning and every night.

Now, at fifteen, Rachel’s memories of her early childhood were hazy; a kaleidoscope of pinafores and petticoats, nursemaids and nannies, lazy afternoons in the sun-drenched gardens, and rainbow-hued tea-parties beneath the stained-glass windows in the library, her dolls all lined up in a row on the faded Turkish rug. Mother was faded too, like a dress washed too many times. The memories of her face had gone blurry round the edges. But Rachel remembered the warmth of her arms and the smell of her perfume—bergamot and lemon. And she remembered the bells.

*~*~*

Mother’s illness had been a long, slow one, dragging across the years of Rachel’s early childhood like watercolour paints across a canvas. Daily life had hobbled along beneath those thin, translucent hues, but it had been coloured, all the same. Rachel remembered it piecemeal now, and with no particular fright or sadness. She’d been very young, and from start to finish the whole thing had seemed somehow inevitable. Mostly, she remembered the bells.

She remembered there’d been arguments to start, raised voices in the drawing room and upstairs hall, days of simmering anger like storm clouds that burst suddenly into thunder and lightning, sending the whole household scurrying for shelter. Rachel hadn’t known what her parents were fighting about, back then. At the time it had seemed far removed from her little world, a war between distant gods in comparison to the earthly dramas of the nursery and the ongoing feud between Nanny and Cook. Cold dinners and burnt puddings were, after all, no laughing matter. But she’d known they argued, loudly and often. No one in the house could have missed it.

She had one clear memory of Mother from that time, sitting beside her on a bench in the garden, throwing bread-crumbs to the fish in the ornamental pond. Mother had been radiant in her tea-gown, but her face, usually bright and mobile, had been hard.

“Never trust them, Rachel, my darling,” Mother had said. “Never trust them when they say they love you as you are. They don’t mean it. What they mean to say is that they love what they imagine you to be. A romantic ideal, an illusion, a lie. They love the fiction of an intelligent wife, but reality’s a different matter. They’ll try to change you…it’s a battle no one wins.”

When the arguments stopped, things became even worse. The house had filled with a heavy, waiting silence; storm clouds amassing on the horizon. Rachel remembered the thickness of it, the bulk, filling the halls where servants crept on cat-quiet feet, drowning out all laughter and play. During those long, fraught weeks, Mother had spent her days in the gardens or the parlour, while Father paced endlessly round his study and the billiard room. The staff had huddled, whispering, in corners, and even Nanny and Cook had been on edge. Everyone, it seemed, had been waiting for the inevitable tempest.

Conciliation had come instead—a surprise to all save Father—carried high on wings of thoughtful notes, gifts of books and flowers, soft words, and winning smiles. Rachel remembered how light the house had felt then, how happy. She remembered Mother laughing again, flipping through her new books in the drawing room after dinner and reading passages aloud. She remembered Father being kind. He’d started bringing Mother tea—a very special blend he’d found in the city, just for her. For a while, things had been bright and lovely.

Then the dizzy spells had started, and the moments of sudden, inexplicable weakness. Rachel remembered hesitant, stumbling steps in the garden and pens dropped from fingers gone limp. There were tonics, brought home by Father. Tonics in coloured glass bottles with strange names and even stranger smells that had made Rachel wrinkle her nose and stick out her tongue. Nurse Bolton had arrived soon after and was installed in the spare bedroom next to Mother’s.

 “Medicine,” Nurse Bolton had said, when Rachel asked about the bottles, and why Mother needed so very many. “To make your mother well again. Don’t you want her to be well?”

Fainting, fatigue, headaches, and stomach pains had followed. Mother had retired to her bed, and the little silver bell, once used rarely, had begun to sing day and night. Help to rise, bathe, and dress—although rising and dressing soon stopped—help to visit the water-closet, eat, and drink. Help to sit up and see Rachel when Nanny brought her to visit. The little silver bell had become Mother’s voice; it’s delicate, tinkling chimes as familiar and beloved to Rachel as any human sound could be.

Mother had died when Rachel was nine. It was the silence she’d noticed first. No more chimes. No more little ringing bell. The house had echoed with its absence.

Rachel remembered that day, too. She remembered Father and Nurse Bolton had argued after lunch, huddled in the hall outside the library where no one should have been. Rachel had heard their sharp, whispered voices from her favourite spot behind the chesterfield, cross-legged on the Turkish rug with an atlas in her lap.

“It isn’t working,” Nurse Bolton had hissed.

“You have to be patient,” Father had snapped in reply. “These things take time.”

“Four years, Edward. It’s been four years. I think I’ve been patient enough, don’t you?”

Father had sworn under his breath. A few hours later, he’d gone to Mother’s rooms and stayed there for a very long time.

That same evening, Father had come to the nursery and sat on the little chair by the fireplace. Dark shadows creased the skin beneath his eyes, and his hands had chased each other like restless birds—clasping a knee, tweaking a cuff, brushing a thread from his sleeve—refusing to settle. His hair had been rumpled and his collar askew, and when he’d told Rachel that Mother was gone to a better place, she’d wondered where she’d gone. Maybe the seaside, or the Cotswolds, or maybe even India. She wondered if his disarray came from helping Mother set off on her voyage. After all, she wasn’t strong. She couldn’t have managed her luggage on her own. It was only when Nanny and Nelly, the upstairs maid, had started to cry that she’d realized he’d meant Mother was gone to Heaven and not on vacation, and then she’d cried too.

Father had taken Rachel out of the nursery. They’d walked down the hall to the warm, stale room, where he’d led her to the bedside and told her to say goodbye. Rachel remembered the smell that had lain under the sweet scent of lavender sachet and the astringent tonics—something sour and sweet, like fly-blown fruit or a forgotten chamber pot. She remembered Mother’s face, very pale and very thin, with spots of high colour on each bony cheek. She remembered the bruises on that slender neck. But most of all she remembered the bell, silent and still on the bedside table. It was the mute bell that had upset her the most.

Perhaps that’s why she hadn’t been scared when, the next night, after a hasty, ill-attended funeral and even faster interment, a bell had begun to ring. Not the little silver bell, which still sat unspeaking on the bedside table, but the other one; the one in the graveyard behind the gardens. The one in the mausoleum. The one Nanny had told her was, “for if the dead weren’t quite dead after all.”

It had rung all night. The whole house had awakened, everyone in a panic. Rachel had stood by the nursery window and looked over the garden to the graveyard beyond, while Nelly gasped and fanned herself with a copy of the Ladies Weekly Journal, and Nanny gulped the medicinal wine she kept hidden in the wardrobe. Out in the hall, Rachel had heard Father and Nurse Bolton, their voices shrill in the tolling, echoing darkness. Up and down the stairs they’d clattered, lighting lamps, cursing, and shouting, screaming at everyone to be quiet and calm down.

“It’s a trick of the wind; of putrefaction,” Father had bellowed, and Rachel had heard fear in his voice, tremors under iron.

“It’s nothing, nothing at all!” Nurse Bolton had shrieked, and Rachel had imagined her pulling at her hair, her face ugly with terror.

Rachel hadn’t been scared, because Rachel knew better. Mother’s voice was in the bell and in that mournful knelling. She was saying goodbye. Ringing accusations. Chiming promises.

By morning the bell had stopped.

*~*~*

Yes, Rachel had always loved bells, and this one from Eleanor was just like Mother’s. How soon they forget, Rachel thought as she traced its silhouette with loving eyes. How soon they think I forget. She could almost hear it already, a sweet chime on the very edge of earshot—a peal, a promise. Or maybe that was the other bell she was hearing. The one by the mausoleum.

“I’m so sorry you’re feeling unwell, Rachel,” Eleanor said, with a bright, brittle smile that stretched too far and showed too many teeth. “But if you drink some more of your special tea, I’m sure you’ll perk up soon. I’ll be back with some tonic to help you feel better. Just ring the little bell if you need anything.”

“I will, Eleanor,” Rachel promised, with a smile she hoped looked as weak and watery as her step-mother took her to be. “I just know I’ll feel better soon.”

When Eleanor was gone, she slipped from bed and poured the tea into the potted palm. The poor thing looked yellow and sickly, but that was hardly a surprise given the circumstances. Rachel padded to the window and looked across the garden to the mausoleums, where Mother’s other bell sang a vengeful song only she could hear.

“Soon,” she whispered, fingertips to glass. The bell tolled in agreement.

She returned to her bed and slid beneath the covers, reaching under her pillow with one hand to find the knife she’d hidden there earlier that morning while the house still slept. She plucked the little bell from the bedside table and gave it a ring, smiling at its silvery chime.

“I’ll feel better soon.”

End.

Tonight, Nobody Sleeps

By: Marc Shapiro

It hurt. It hurt like hell.

And it was a hurt that would not go away, as Karen had discovered in the hours since the blister of pain had burst in her head.

"God," she moaned as she dropped the book she was barely able to read and slammed her fists to the sides of her head. She held them tight to her temples, pressing hard against the migraine from hell. But the pain persisted, a blinding, pulsating, raw rub raging inside her skull.

Karen and headaches were not strangers. Too much coffee? Too much red meat? Bills? A full moon? She would get one at the drop of a hat. But this was more than the “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” type of skull bucking. This felt much deeper, more malignant.

Her hands fell to her lap and she buried her face in them. She rocked back and forth, allowing low sobs to escape.

Karen stood up from the living room couch and went to the kitchen. She turned on the tap and watched, glassy eyed, as water bubbled into the glass. She turned off the faucet and faced the kitchen table where a dozen bottles from as many drug stores stood at attention. She picked one up, the pain continued to stab.

Take two tablets every six hours. She took two an hour ago and the pain was still buffeting her brain. She picked up another bottle of extra strength something. Take two every four hours. Do not mix with other medication.

Death by overdose couldn't be any worse than this. Karen winced as she pried open the child-proof cap and downed two. She gulped down the water convulsively as a particularly sharp throbbing rocked her world. Karen's grip on the glass turned to steel, shattering it in a shower of glass that drew blood.

Karen made a halfhearted swipe at the shards before grabbing up a dish towel and moving, slowly and painfully, to the bathroom where she soaked it in cold water. A hot compress had not worked three hours ago. A cold one at the base of her neck might work now.

She sat down on the toilet, her head slumped forward. After a moment there was a slight, pleasurable numbness beneath the towel. This was promising. A razor blade slice across the inside of her skull, followed by rumbling thunder, dashed her hopes.

Karen rose, staggered, and saved a nasty fall by grabbing onto the edge of the sink. It was the worst one yet, a crushing beastly bite, like a demented earwig chowing down on her brain.

What had she done to deserve this?

She regained her balance, took a deep breath and walked back through the hallway. Past the bedroom door. Where Phil lay, sawing wood like a lumberjack laying waste to a rainforest.

A neck massage and a reminder that it was probably PMS. That was Phil's answer for everything. I love you, Phil, but if this were truly PMS—I'd run to the kitchen! I'd come back with a carving knife! I'd castrate you in your sleep, force-feed you your balls and bury the bloody blade in your skull!

Karen sighed, smiled and blew her dozing hulk a kiss. I love you, Phil. Pleasant dreams.

She moved gingerly on her brain-wracked journey. She dreaded the next stop. She took a deep breath and looked into her daughter Cheryl's room. The pink ruffled curtains. Wall decorations that ran the gamut from Big Bird to Mötley Crüe. And finally, her teddy bear. Biff lay tucked into the corner of the bed, which was always made. It was too much.

Karen broke into an uncontrollable wave of sobs. The roaring fire in her head magnified with each tear. Part of the anguish was the pain. Part of it was the realization that, in the sense that a mother never stops loving a daughter, Cheryl was gone forever.

She turned away and returned to the living room where the memory of her daughter faded as the punching against the inside of her head increased. She paced. She sat. She smashed her head against a wall.

The sound of a car moving slowly down the street interrupted her agony. Karen went to the window and peered out the corner of a shade as something big and black on wheels pulled up alongside the curb. The driver's side door opened and a demon with greasy long hair forked by black horns, dressed in leather and chains, fiendish and depraved, got out. It lurched to the passenger side and, with an appendage seeming more claw than hand, snatched the door open, reached in and dragged Cheryl out, her clothes torn to rags, and flung her to the pavement.

Karen's eyes grew wide. She bit her finger to stifle a scream. The pain in her head rose like a mushroom cloud in the aftermath of a nuclear blast. She tried her hardest to blink away the atrocity in front of her.

She opened her eyes to that nice young boy, Jim, blonde hair parted to one side, wearing a suit that was a half-size too big on him, opening the car door and helping her now fully clothed daughter from a sensible American compact. Karen glanced instinctively at the clock on the mantle. Curfew was 11 pm. The clock said 10:45.

The pain in her head dropped a notch.

Karen moved back into the shadows as Jim walked her daughter to the porch. Her pain suddenly returned as she blinked in the nightmare of the demon pawing at Cheryl's breasts while savagely kissing her mouth. She blinked again—back to the reality of Jim giving her daughter a peck on the cheek.

Karen's pain went flatline.

She forced a smile as she started back into the bedroom. The better to not get caught being a parent.

Then she heard the blasphemy come innocently from Cheryl's mouth.

"Next Friday? Yeah. That would be neat."

As if making its own date with Karen, the pain inside her head jumped up and bit her one more time.

End.

The Voice in the Night

By: William Hope Hodgson

Originally Published in 1907

It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea.

With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will—my friend, and the master of our little craft—was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin.

Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise.

It came again—a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

“Hullo!” I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. “What are you? What do you want?”

“You need not be afraid,” answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. “I am only an old—man.”

The pause sounded odd, but it was only afterward that it came back to me with any significance.

“Why don’t you come alongside, then?” I queried somewhat snappishly; for I liked not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken.

“I—I—can’t. It wouldn’t be safe. I——” The voice broke off, and there was silence.

“What do you mean?” I asked, growing more and more astonished. “What’s not safe? Where are you?”

I listened for a moment; but there came no answer. And then, a sudden indefinite suspicion, of I knew not what, coming to me, I stepped swiftly to the binnacle and took out the lighted lamp. At the same time, I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken Will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash, as though someone had dipped oars abruptly. Yet I cannot say with certainty that I saw anything; save, it seemed to me, that with the first flash of the light there had been something upon the waters, where now there was nothing.

“Hullo, there!” I called. “What foolery is this?”

But there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night.

Then I heard Will’s voice from the direction of the after scuttle:

“What’s up, George?”

“Come here, Will!” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, coming across the deck.

I told him the queer thing that had happened. He put several questions; then, after a moment’s silence, he raised his hands to his lips and hailed:

“Boat, ahoy!”

From a long distance away there came back to us a faint reply, and my companion repeated his call. Presently, after a short period of silence, there grew on our hearing the muffled sound of oars, at which Will hailed again.

This time there was a reply: “Put away the light.”

“I’m damned if I will,” I muttered; but Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks.

“Come nearer,” he said, and the oar strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half dozen fathoms distant, they again ceased.

“Come alongside!” exclaimed Will. “There’s nothing to be frightened of aboard here.”

“Promise that you will not show the light?”

“What’s to do with you,” I burst out, “that you’re so infernally afraid of the light?”

“Because—” began the voice, and stopped short.

“Because what?” I asked quickly.

Will put his hand on my shoulder. “Shut up a minute, old man,” he said, in a low voice. “Let me tackle him.”

He leaned more over the rail.

“See here, mister,” he said, “this is a pretty queer business, you coming upon us like this, right out in the middle of the blessed Pacific. How are we to know what sort of a hanky-panky trick you’re up to? You say there’s only one of you. How are we to know, unless we get a squint at you—eh? What’s your objection to the light, anyway?”

As he finished, I heard the noise of the oars again, and then the voice came; but now from a greater distance, and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic.

“I am sorry—sorry! I would not have troubled you, only I am hungry, and—so is she.”

The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was borne to us.

“Stop!” sang out Will. “I don’t want to drive you away. Come back! We’ll keep the light hidden, if you don’t like it.”

He turned to me:

“It’s a damned queer rig, this; but I think there’s nothing to be afraid of?”

There was a question in his tone, and I replied.

“No, I think the poor devil’s been wrecked around here, and gone crazy.”

The sound of the oars drew nearer.

“Shove that lamp back in the binnacle,” said Will; then he leaned over the rail and listened. I replaced the lamp and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant.

“Won’t you come alongside now?” asked Will in an even voice. “I have had the lamp put back in the binnacle.”

“I—I cannot,” replied the voice. “I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you for the— the provisions.”

“That’s all right,” said Will, and hesitated. “You’re welcome to as much grub as you can take—” Again he hesitated.

“You are very good!” exclaimed the voice. “May God, Who understands everything, reward you—” It broke off huskily.

“The—the lady?” said Will abruptly. “Is she—”

“I have left her behind upon the island,” came the voice.

“What island?” I cut in.

“I know not its name,” returned the voice. “I would to God—” it began, and checked itself as suddenly.

“Could we not send a boat for her?” asked Will at this point.

“No!” said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. “My God! No!” There was a moment’s pause; then it added, in a tone which seemed a merited reproach:

“It was because of our want I ventured—because her agony tortured me.”

“I am a forgetful brute!” exclaimed Will. “Just wait a minute, whoever you are, and I will bring you up something at once.”

In a couple of minutes he was back again, and his arms were full of various edibles. He paused at the rail.

“Can’t you come alongside for them?” he asked.

“No—I dare not,” replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving—as though the owner hushed a mortal desire. It came to me then in a flash that the poor old creature out there in the darkness was suffering for actual need for that which Will held in his arms; and yet, because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our schooner and receiving it. And with the lightning-like conviction there came the knowledge that the Invisible was not mad, but sanely facing some intolerable horror.

“Damn it, Will!” I said, full of many feelings, over which predominated a vast sympathy. “Get a box. We must float off the stuff to him in it.”

This we did, propelling it away from the vessel, out into the darkness, by means of a boat hook. In a minute a slight cry from the Invisible came to us, and we knew that he had secured the box.

A little later he called out a farewell to us, and so heartful a blessing, that I am sure we were the better for it. Then, without more ado, we heard the ply of oars across the darkness.

“Pretty soon off,” remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury.

“Wait,” I replied. “I think somehow he’ll come back. He must have been badly needing that food.”

“And the lady,” said Will. For a moment he was silent; then he continued:

“It’s the queerest thing ever I’ve tumbled across since I’ve been fishing.”

“Yes,” I said, and fell to pondering.

And so the time slipped away—an hour, another, and still Will stayed with me; for the queer adventure had knocked all desire for sleep out of him.

The third hour was three parts through when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean.

“Listen!” said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice.

“He’s coming, just as I thought,” I muttered.

The dipping of the oars grew nearer, and I noted that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed.

They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

“That you?” asked Will.

“Yes,” replied the voice. “I left you suddenly, but—but there was great need.”

“The lady?” questioned Will.

“The—lady is grateful now on earth. She will be more grateful soon in—in heaven.”

Will began to make some reply, in a puzzled voice; but became confused, and broke off short. I said nothing. I was wondering at the curious pauses, and, apart from my wonder, I was full of a great sympathy.

The voice continued:

“We—she and I, have talked, as we shared the result of God’s tenderness and yours—”

Will interposed; but without coherence.

“I beg of you not to—to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night,” said the voice. “Be sure that it has not escaped His notice.”

It stopped, and there was a full minute’s silence. Then it came again:

“We have spoken together upon that which—which has befallen us. We had thought to go out, without telling anyone of the terror which has come into our—lives. She is with me in believing that tonight’s happenings are under a special ruling, and that it is God’s wish that we should tell to you all that we have suffered since—since—”

“Yes?” said Will softly.

“Since the sinking of the Albatross.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “She left Newcastle for ’Frisco some six months ago, and hasn’t been heard of since.”

“Yes” answered the voice. “But some few degrees to the North of the line, she was caught in a terrible storm, and dismasted. When the day came, it was found that she was leaking badly, and, presently, it falling to a calm, the sailors took to the boats, leaving—leaving a young lady—my fiancée—and myself upon the wreck.

“We were below, gathering together a few of our belongings, when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came up upon the decks, we saw them only as small shapes afar off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft. Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold, including a quantity of water and some ship’s biscuit. Then, the vessel being very deep in the water, we got ourselves onto the raft and pushed off.

“It was later, when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some tide or current, which bore us from the ship at an angle; so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken masts remaining in view for a somewhat longer period. Then, towards evening, it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist, the weather remaining quiet.

“For four days we drifted through this strange haze, until, on the evening of the fourth day, there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance. Gradually it became plainer, and, somewhat after midnight, it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space. The raft was raised upon a swell several times, and then we were in smooth water, and the noise of the breakers was behind.

“When the morning came, we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon; but of this we noticed little at the time; for close before us, through the enshrouding mist, loomed the hull of a large sailing vessel. With one accord, we fell upon our knees and thanked God, for we thought that here was an end to our perils. We had much to learn.

“The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard; but none answered. Presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel, and seeing a rope hanging downward, I seized it and began to climb. Yet I had much ado to make my way up, because of a kind of grey, lichenous fungus that had seized upon the rope, and which blotched the side of the ship lividly.

“I reached the rail and clambered over it, onto the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered, in great patches, with grey masses, some of them rising into nodules several feet in height; but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship. I shouted; but none answered. Then I went to the door below the poop deck. I opened it, and peered in. There was a great smell of staleness, so that I knew in a moment that nothing living was within, and with the knowledge, I shut the door quickly; for I felt suddenly lonely.

“I went back to the side where I had scrambled up. My—my sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft. Seeing me look down, she called up to know whether there were any aboard of the ship. I replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long deserted, but that if she would wait a little I would see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck. Then we would make a search through the vessel together. A little later, on the opposite side of the decks, I found a rope side ladder. This I carried across, and a minute afterwards she was beside me.

“Together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship; but nowhere was there any sign of life. Here and there, within the cabins themselves, we came across odd patches of that queer fungus; but this, as my sweetheart said, could be cleansed away.

“In the end, having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty, we picked our ways to the bows, between the ugly grey nodules of that strange growth; and here we made a further search, which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves.

“This being now beyond any doubt, we returned to the stern of the ship and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Together we cleared out and cleaned two of the cabins; and after that I made examination whether there was anything eatable in the ship. This I soon found was so, and thanked God in my heart for His goodness. In addition to this I discovered the whereabouts of the fresh-water pump, and having fixed it, I found the water drinkable, though somewhat unpleasant to the taste.

“For several days we stayed aboard the ship, without attempting to get to the shore. We were busily engaged in making the place habitable. Yet even thus early we became aware that our lot was even less to be desired than might have been imagined; for though, as a first step, we scraped away the odd patches of growth that studded the floors and walls of the cabins and saloon, yet they returned almost to their original size within the space of twenty-four hours, which not only discouraged us but gave us a feeling of vague unease.

“Still we would nor admit ourselves beaten, so set to work afresh, and not only scraped away the fungus but soaked the places where it had been with carbolic, a can-full of which I had found in the pantry. Yet, by the end of the week the growth had returned in full strength, and, in addition, it had spread to other places, as though our touching it had allowed germs from it to travel elsewhere.

“On the seventh morning, my sweetheart woke to find a small patch of it growing on her pillow, close to her face. At that, she came to me, as soon as she could get her garments upon her. I was in the galley at the time lighting the fire for breakfast.

“ ‘Come here, John,’ she said, and led me aft. When I saw the thing upon her pillow I shuddered, and then and there we agreed to go right out of the ship and see whether we could not fare to make ourselves more comfortable ashore.

“Hurriedly we gathered together our few belongings, and even among these I found that the fungus had been at work, for one of her shawls had a little lump of it growing near one edge. I threw the whole thing over the side without saying anything to her.

“The raft was still alongside, but it was too clumsy to guide, and I lowered down a small boat that hung across the stern, and in this we made our way to the shore. Yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus, which had driven us from the ship, was growing riot. In places it rose into horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost to quiver, as with a quiet life, when the wind blew across them. Here and there it took on the forms of vast fingers, and in others it just spread out flat and smooth and treacherous. Odd places, it appeared as grotesque stunted trees, seeming extraordinarily kinked and gnarled—the whole quaking vilely at times.

“At first, it seemed to us that there was no single portion of the surrounding shore which was not hidden beneath the masses of the hideous lichen; yet, in this, I found we were mistaken; for somewhat later, coasting along the shore at a little distance, we descried a smooth white patch of what appeared to be fine sand, and there we landed. It was not sand. What it was I do not know. All that I have observed is that upon it the fungus will not grow; while everywhere else, save where the sand-like earth wanders oddly, path-wise, amid the grey desolation of the lichen, there is nothing but that loathsome greyness.

“It is difficult to make you understand how cheered we were to find one place that was absolutely free from the growth, and here we deposited our belongings. Then we went back to the ship for such things as it seemed to us we should need. Among other matters, I managed to bring ashore with me one of the ship’s sails, with which I constructed two small tents, which, though exceedingly rough-shaped, served the purposes for which they were intended. In these we lived and stored our various necessities, and thus for a matter of some four weeks all went smoothly and without particular unhappiness. Indeed, I may say with much happiness—for—for we were together.

“It was on the thumb of her right hand that the growth first showed. It was only a small circular spot, much like a little grey mole. My God! how the fear leaped to my heart when she showed me the place. We cleansed it, between us, washing it with carbolic and water. In the morning of the following day she showed her hand to me again. The grey warty thing had returned. For a little while we looked at one another in silence. Then, still wordless, we started again to remove it. In the midst of the operation she spoke suddenly.

“ ‘What’s that on the side of your face, dear?’ Her voice was sharp with anxiety. I put my hand up to feel.

“ ‘There! Under the hair by your ear. A little to the front a bit.’ My finger rested upon the place, and then I knew.

“ ‘Let us get your thumb done first,’ I said. And she submitted, only because she was afraid to touch me until it was cleansed. I finished washing and disinfecting her thumb, and then she turned to my face. After it was finished we sat together and talked awhile of many things; for there had come into our lives sudden, very terrible thoughts. We were, all at once, afraid of something worse than death. We spoke of loading the boat with provisions and water and making our way out onto the sea; yet we were helpless, for many causes, and—and the growth had attacked us already. We decided to stay. God would do with us what was His will. We would wait.

“A month, two months, three months passed and the places grew somewhat, and there had come others. Yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow, comparatively speaking.

“Occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed. There we found that the fungus grew persistently. One of the nodules on the main deck soon became as high as my head.

“We had now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island. We had realized that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans, with the things from which we were suffering.

“With this determination and knowledge in our minds we knew that we should have to husband our food and water; for we did not know, at that time, but that we should possibly live for many years.

“This reminds me that I have told you that I am an old man. Judged by years this is not so. But—but—”

He broke off; then continued somewhat abruptly:

“As I was saying, we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food. But we had no idea then how little food there was left of which to take care. It was a week later that I made the discovery that all the other bread tanks—which I had supposed full—were empty, and that (beyond odd tins of vegetables and meat, and some other matters) we had nothing on which to depend, but the bread in the tank which I had already opened.

“After learning this I bestirred myself to do what I could, and set to work at fishing in the lagoon; but with no success. At this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon, in the open sea.

“Here, at times, I caught odd fish, but so infrequently that they proved of but little help in keeping us from the hunger which threatened. It seemed to me that our deaths were likely to come by hunger, and not by the growth of the thing which had seized upon our bodies.

“We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. Then I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday, I came off from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left. In the mouth of her tent I saw my sweetheart sitting, eating something.

“ ‘What is it, my dear?’ I called out as I leaped ashore. Yet, on hearing my voice, she seemed confused, and, turning, slyly threw something toward the edge of the little clearing. It fell short, and a vague suspicion having arisen within me, I walked across and picked it up. It was a piece of the grey fungus.

“As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale; then a rose red.

“I felt strangely dazed and frightened.

“ ‘My dear! My dear!’ I said, and could say no more. Yet at my words she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the news that she had tried it the preceding day, and—and liked it. I got her to promise on her knees not to touch it again, however great our hunger. After she had promised, she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly, and that, until the moment of desire, she had experienced nothing toward it but the most extreme repulsion.

“Later in the day, feeling strangely restless and much shaken with the thing which I had discovered, I made my way along one of the twisted paths—formed by the white, sand-like substance—which led among the fungoid growth. I had, once before, ventured along there; but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought, I went much farther than hitherto.

“Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer hoarse sound on my left. Turning quickly I saw that there was movement among an extraordinarily shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily, as though it possessed life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branchlike arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses, and coming toward me. The head of the thing—a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed across my face. I gave out a frightened cry, and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them, and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus. Then more, and—more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring, the remembrance of the morning’s discovery swept into my mazed brain. It was sent by God. I dashed the fragment I held to the ground. Then, utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness, I made my way back to the little encampment.

“I think she knew, by some marvelous intuition which love must have given, so soon as she set eyes on me. Her quiet sympathy made it easier for me, and I told her of my sudden weakness, yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before. I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror.

“But, for myself, I had added an intolerable knowledge, to breed an incessant terror in my brain; for I doubted not but that I had seen the end of one of these men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon; and in that monstrous ending I had seen our own.

“Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was upon us; for, day by day, with monstrous rapidity, the fungoid growth took hold of our poor bodies. Nothing we could do would check it materially, and so—and so—we who had been human became—Well, it matters less each day. Only—only we had been man and maid!

“And day by day the fight is more dreadful, to withstand the hunger-lust for the terrible lichen.

“A week ago we ate the last of the biscuit, and since that time I have caught three fish. I was out here fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist. I hailed you. You know the rest, and may God, out of His great heart, bless you for your goodness to a—a couple of poor outcast souls.”

There was the dip of an oar—another. Then the voice came again, and for the last time, sounding through the slight surrounding mist, ghostly and mournful.

“God bless you! Good-bye!”

“Good-bye,” we shouted together hoarsely, our hearts full of many emotions.

I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was upon us.

The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea; pierced the mist dully, and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire. Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge—a great, grey nodding sponge— The oars continued to ply. They were grey—as was the boat—and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar. My gaze flashed back to the—head. It nodded forward as the oars went backward for the stroke. Then the oars were dipped, the boat shot out of the patch of light, and the—the thing went nodding into the mist.

End.

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