[anthology] Darrell Schweitzer (ed) - Cthulhu's Reign Read online

  Yet the stairs don’t stop Cthulhu from taking us one by one to play with. And then to discard, vilely and agonisingly used. Maybe beyond any agonies caused by human torturers, since I believe its tendrils can reach into our brains to push the buttons of pain. For we must eat. And Cthulhu feeds its pets.

  After half a week of hunger for us, our water-bearers of the day sighted a small heap of dead fish and fruits on a path they used. Was that bait? Iain McKinnon darted ahead bravely to scoop the food into his empty vase, and survived. He returned for the rest of the rations, and survived.

  On the following day, a pile of raw meat and vegetables was further away. Subsequently, some cheeses and salamis were outside the house-size version of the Pantheon of Rome. Presently we needed to hunt through statued galleries of the cemetery to find wherever our food might be. On all expeditions, near or far, we carried forks—the gardening, not the dining, kind—to defend ourselves and each other, however feebly.

  A week passed before, half way along a gallery, Iain Mackinnon trod on a patch of the strongest of glues of the same colour as the flagstones. He couldn’t wrench his sneakers free. As he stopped to untie the trainers, so that Katie Drummond and Paul Goldman and Jack Ballantyne could then try to jump him out of that stickiness, k-thoooo-loooo, thoooo-loooo, towering Cthulhu came. The tines and blades of the gardening tools jerked down to clang against the flagstones as if a powerful magnetic field dragged them. It was, said Paul afterwards, like some bizarre salute to a potentate, the lowering—then the necessary letting go—of swords. Katie could only scream and wave her arms at the advancing entity. Neither she nor Paul nor Jack were going to throw themselves bodily at that monster. One of its feet seemed to suck the glue back into itself as its arm-tentacles immobilized and lifted the Scots student who bellowed, then tried vainly to bite at face-tentacles . . . as he was rushed away. The forks and spade were no longer fastened to the flagstones. Snatching them up, for what use those might be, the trio did give chase led by Katie, but when they rounded a corner the next gallery was empty except for mournful statues. Thus they related when they returned to our labyrinth—carrying the day’s food, yes; Katie having to be commanded and cajoled by Paul Goldman, for what else could they do, what else?

  That night we all heard the thin, piercing screams, for what seemed hours, dying away, starting again. Henkel had to restrain Katie. Of course no one slept. The next day the hideous mess that had been Iain Mackinnon lay on the space outside the Pantheon. He almost seemed to have been turned inside-out by an insane vivisection.

  It was . . . slippery to bury him in a copse as close nearby as we could. Pastor Jimmy Garrett managed to say words and quote parts of the Bible that weren’t excessively evangelistic; and I noticed that his hair, now lank and stringy where it had been lovingly tended and conditioned before, was falling out after these weeks. So hair doesn’t always just go dramatically white overnight with shock.

  Katie begged our field marshal to strangle her; she promised not to struggle. Then she begged the taciturn German translator, Hans-Ulrich. Of course nobody would strangle her. In due course, might suicide by assistance become easier to contemplate?

  No one went to fetch food for four days. Eventually hunger pangs prevailed. The instinct for survival is so strong. Katie didn’t try to smash her head against the hard stone that was all around us, even though we had no sedatives, only some painkillers and stomach settlers in a couple of the women’s shoulder bags, and a few tampons, soon used. Most bags including mine had been left aboard the bus for our brief stroll into Staglieno.

  As time wore on, Zsuzsa was taken similarly, and Selma Strandberg and Nellie van Oven and Wim Ruyslinck and Hans-Ulrich. The monster only rarely resorted to glue, preferring the direct approach. Nevertheless, not each far sortie resulted in a victim. Cthulhu preferred to fool us that by luck or at random we might return safely. Hence the rabbits would scurry to snatch their suppers.

  No one spotted another lens in the prevailing mist, supposing that the original lens was designed for us to see. Of course we didn’t venture outdoors more than was essential—oh, the crushing endless fearful misery, even though for distraction we took turns telling our life stories. I think there was only one lens, and that it showed a memory of our world just before the Cthulhu creatures arrived, not an image of normality continuing in some parallel reality that might even be reachable. Nor did anyone stumble upon a mini- monster to stab and slash and crush.

  Monster? More like a baneful sadistic god, if it could multiply itself on different scales all across the world! If it weren’t simply this cemetery of Staglieno that had been abstracted from ordinary reality by a potent entity from another universe that could conjure up illusions . . .

  Nor did every abducted victim scream through the night. Maybe a tongue was removed first of all.

  “Each person lost,” said Garrett one day, “is a sacrifice to it. A human sacrifice. As in pagan antiquity. But worse. I think it’s . . . rationing out its sacrifices. Or maybe it’s like a serial killer who gets satisfied for a while until the head of steam builds up again.”

  Garrett frequently goes outside to keep watch, from the top of the steps to the Pantheon. Thomas Henkel doesn’t object to what might seem to be a desire for martyrdom on the evangelist’s part—at least, until martyrdom actually commences. Any additional information is valuable in our field marshal’s blue eyes, sometimes cool, sometimes almost twinkly. I think we’re all losing our sanity somewhat, or else we no longer remember what sanity is or was.

  And I accompany Garrett, despite a dark look of mistrust from ex-beauty queen Mary-Sue.

  “I quite often see him walking in the garden,” Garrett tells me. “That’s to say, it walking in this cemetery. I’m still a witness of the Lord’s, whatever has happened.”

  I feel more sympathetic to the evangelist now than at any previous time. He’s trying to cope without ranting nonsense.

  “Look, Sally.”

  And there is the Cthulhu thing in the distance, pacing slowly, rollingly, as I imagine a sailor newly on land after a very long voyage. On our land, of which Cthulhu has taken possession. The Cthulhu thing turns, aware of our scrutiny, and once more I experience the sensation, thoooo-looo thoooo-loooo, that it’s staring directly into my eyes, into my mind which may seem very simple to it, like a seashell with a soft little body inside.

  Rudolfo gone. Paul gone. Dionijs Ruyslinck gone. Anders Strandberg gone, to join his wife, as it were. And Angela Henkel gone—our field marshal needed to send her out voluntarily more than once to bring food back, otherwise he might have seemed to be protecting her, thus impairing his authority. The available pool of foodbringers is diminishing all the time. What an unbalanced game of chess, wherein pawn after pawn is removed from one side only when we make a wrong move, as is inevitable. Despite Thomas Henkel’s laudable pretensions, our side only consists of sacrificial pawns, no king or knight or queen.

  All the cut flowers in vases died long ago, but rain falls frequently and suddenly to lubricate the cemetery, whereupon Cthulhu walks in those heavy showers to lubricate itself, wafting its face tentacles. What does the creature muse about? Maybe it had a million years previously to muse, and now it amuses itself. Creator and creature are quite similar words.

  I total the days scratched by me, as Henkel’s adjutant, on the wall in five-bar gates. Does a week of five days, rather than seven, make the time pass more quickly, even though that system produces more weeks? Look: we survivors have lived for twenty-three weeks by now. August should be the current month, although the temperature stays much the same as that mild April day of our imprisonment; the brightish oval wavery yellow shape which we sometimes see above the mist, and which moves across the sky, should be much hotter by now if it’s the same sun we knew.

  The piles of food put out, or materialized, in unpredictable places for us pets to find grow smaller in proportion to our diminishing numbers; Cthulhu is keeping tally. It plays like the wicked boy inflat
ing a frog with a straw through its anus until the poor creature explodes. Or pulling the legs off a spider one by one to test its balance. Only much more so.

  Discarded playthings are sometimes still alive when we reach them, maybe without teeth, or with a tiny worm swimming in a single gaping double-yolked eye, gibbering softly, leaking, no longer seeming human; we dispatch those with a spade blow, those of us who remain.

  Our leader has gone; Thomas Henkel is taken. So am I in command now, promoted from adjutant on the disastrous field of battle, or rather of massacre? The others seem to expect this, and I can’t reasonably demur. Jimmy Garrett blesses me.

  Garrett is taken, to meet his new master, intimately.

  By now, those of us who remain are myself and Katie Drummond and Anne Gijsen and Alice Goldman and Jack Ballantyne. Four young women, one young man. Is a vile parody of Adam and Eve to be enacted? To my best knowledge no one has fucked anyone else since this all began, for mutual comfort. Stone floors, for a start; and who would sneak off into the softer sheltering groves? I think Anne and Dionijs came close, some time after brother Wim’s death, but they were too upset.

  Even though there’s supposed to be an instinct to propagate the race, in extremis . . . Can it be that we’re the only surviving human beings? Or are other iterations of Cthulhu playing variations on this vicious game all over the world? The latter seems more likely than that we should be the . . . privileged ones.

  thoooo-looo thoooo-loooo

  When we awake from dire dreams this morning, Katie is dead, apparently strangled, to judge by bruise marks. Of course we gave up posting guards weeks ago now.

  “If one of you doesn’t confess,” I say, “then we must assume that it can come here while we’re sleeping.”

  “Naw,” says Australian Jack, “that would be too merciful.”

  I wait for him to fess up.

  “It was me,” says Anne. “I go, I went, to judo classes in Holland. It’s a judo strangle.” She crossed her hands, back to back, grips an imaginary shirt or blouse collar, and rotates her wrists. “Pressure of the wrist bones on the carotid arteries. Unconscious in fifteen or twenty seconds, death in maybe a couple of minutes. Katie begged me. She was so scared.” Anne looks from face to face, almost expressionlessly. “Well. Does anyone else want this? If only,” she adds, “I could strangle myself.”

  “Yessss,” comes from Alice Goldman. “Yes, please . . .” Jack and I have kept quiet.

  Anne nods. “I shall not strangle more of you, though. No more of us. Only Alice. I don’t wish to leave myself alone.”

  “Do you want,” Jack asks Alice, “that we leave, then come back after a few minutes?”

  “No! Watch! Witness me!”

  In what sense, witness? Witness her being brave, of all things? Cowardly brave?

  Alice lies on her back across two slabs. “Like this?”

  Anne nods.

  “What if my blouse snaps?” Our clothes are by no means in tatters, merely very soiled.

  Anne advances on hands and knees, then she lowers herself beside Alice, one leg across her body as if to restrain her; and her reversed hands slide round the American girl’s neck as if lovingly.

  After several seconds Alice does slap her entire free arm upon the slab as if in submission at a judo contest, but only once. Her exposed feet drum a little, then are still.

  Anne remains pressed upon Alice for what seems a long time, before the young Dutchwoman rolls aside.

  “See,” she says, sitting up, “I can be a murderer too, just as well as the thing.”

  “I’d hardly say—” begins Jack.

  “Say nothing.”

  None of us wish to be left alone, so we all go out together to hunt for our food, or be hunted. Like an offering, we find two vacuum-packs of sliced mortadella sausage and half a dozen oranges on the step under a grandiose melancholy memorial attended by a kneeling, praying woman and a bearded man who stands respectfully with gaze downcast. That woman’s crocheted shawl is so intricate. Her ruffled cuffs, the teardrop the size of a lemon pip spilling upon the side of her nose . . . He, with a coat over his arm, clasping his hands before him, a couple of fingers loosely—though inseparably—holding a grey bowler hat. Midway between the petrified pair, our meal.

  “Two packets,” says Anne, a quaver in her voice.

  And Cthulhu comes . . .

  . . . for her.

  At least there’s no distant screaming tonight. Maybe a tough tentacle is down her throat, no doubt allowing her to breathe, though, as she writhes.

  Jack and I don’t catch sight of Anne’s corpse anywhere on today’s search for more food. This takes us hours, but there are no birds to steal. Finally, we find what we seek upon the simple marble tomb of Mazzini’s mother, within a railed little garden in front of the squat Doric columns supporting the massive architrave carved with the name of the great Italian patriot, wrapped over by creeper-clad rocks—for the atrium and then the crypt beyond, very dark within, burrow into the hillside in this part of the wild woodland. Paradoxically, quite close to our sanctuary, almost the last place we think to look.

  On his mother’s tomb by a towering tree: a single plate of white pasta scattered with clams. Brought from where, and how?

  “Ladies first?” enquires Jack with an effort at humour.

  Together we advance into the little railed garden.

  A soft stirring sound from within the mausoleum.

  k-thoooo-looo

  comes.

  I do hear the shrieks tonight, and try to stopper my ears. Maybe I should jam into my ears the long-expired Pope candles. The scene repeats in my mind: stooping to pass under the architrave, the tentacled monster had surveyed us. No point in fleeing; we knew it could catch us.

  Heads or tails, male or female, Jack or me?

  Then Cthulhu had swooped upon Jack and swept him away howling back inside that mausoleum. Is it so shameful that I seized the plate of pasta and clams and ran off with it?

  So I’m all alone in the labyrinth now; and I’m hungry. Does something really special await the solitary, and female, survivor?

  Maybe a boiled lobster, and no evil consequences on this particular occasion . . .

  I’m in the gallery where a boy and his sister, hair and clothing perfectly rendered, are witnessing the departure of their mother’s soul to heaven—the bronze door of the sepulcher above is already half-closed as the boy gestures upward, his other arm tenderly embracing his sister. Beside the children’s feet lie a big bar of nut chocolate and an overripe banana. Chocolate! Immediately I’m tearing off the paper and silver foil, and biting into the sweetness.

  But for the sudden assault of stench, I almost fail to notice Cthulhu coming until it is upon me, entangling me, its suckers tearing off slacks and shirt and underwear. The suffocating smell is of sewers and rotting fish.

  Face tentacles sliding into my ears, thoooo-loooo thoooo-loooo, arm tentacles probing my anus, my cunt.

  A storm of ecstasy like a blinding enveloping light! A momentary shaft of terrible agony as if I’m burned alive!

  The ectasy again! I would crawl begging to the beast for this, like those rats that burn off their paws by pressing a red-hot plate that stimulates the pleasure centers in their brains.

  Cthulhu is . . . calibrating me as, yes, it copulates with some organ or tentacle or other.

  And I’m alive, lying naked and used—for how long?—upon flagstones bearing names of the dead. Alive. So violated but alive. Cthulhu has gone, though leaving his odor upon me.

  At the tomb of Mazzini it must have been choosing whether its bride should be an Australian youth or me . . .

  And what is a bride but a receptacle for seed?

  A movement. What?

  The statue of the boy has lowered its arm and removed his hand from his sister’s shoulder. She turns and steps down, and he copies her. The chiaroscuro of dust still remains on these nineteenth-century children as they step towards me, as I roll with difficulty
on to my hands and knees so as to press myself up from the floor, and haul my aching abused self upright. The children remain marble, yet that marble has become a flexible, mobile parody of what it represented so faithfully for a century and more. Those clothes of theirs wouldn’t come off them, I know that—the bodies are as one flesh with the garments. The boy and girl pause, looking up at me now.

  Confused words come from their softened mouths.

  Not Italian words, no.

  Words with a Swedish lilt, I’m almost sure . . .

  The voices of Anders and Selma Strandberg, the bank manager and his wife . . .

  “. . . help us . . .”

  “. . . how small we . . .”

  “. . . where we been . . .”

  “. . . what we . . .”

  “. . . hurt . . .”

  “. . . hurt . . .”

  Within half an hour a score of statues have found me, arriving slowly, step by step.

  The pious little old proletarian peasant woman, long-skirted, aproned and shawled, whom Gabriella had said sold peanuts all her life to save up for a statue of herself in Staglieno—she still carries strings of inedible peanuts as if those are rosaries.

  The tall young swoony woman, nude to the waist, now detached from the grasp of the veiled skeleton.

  A suited businessman, crumpled bowler hat in hand.

  More children, dressed like miniature adults . . .

  Some of the minds in the statues seem insane from the experiments they suffered. Others are very confused. Two can only speak in what must be Hungarian.

  Eating or drinking is plainly impossible for them. Do they envy or resent my chocolate? Impossible to tell. Will their minds emerge more, and maybe heal, as time passes?

  For what capricious purpose have we been reunited? So that a score of animated statues can provide company while something grows inside me—until at last I give birth surrounded by mobile dusty marble people, in a reverse of their previous roles as mourners at death-bed scenes. How often will Cthulhu play with me stinkingly again . . . ?