Letters to Lovecraft Read online

  They move with the slumping, quivering gait of broken animatronics in some sideshow spookhouse. Mindless brute creatures, their puppet strings extending unbroken into the black abyss of the heavens, toward which they cast their scripted prayers and their rote imaginings.

  I always felt apart from the world, never like I belonged. I always thought that this was a defect in me, that I was a round peg in society’s square hole, but now I know the truth. The other entities that inhabit this world, the others I thought of as peers and friends, coworkers and family, are in fact simple automatons, eking out a pointless existence at the behest of invisible masters they will never know or understand. The only exceptions are myself and those like me. Finally, I see us as we truly are, as well. Not the plastic flesh that we wear to blend in with the puppets, but our true forms, bulbous and many eyed, squirming and creeping and flying, sending out our own ghostly light. Each of us different, each of us truly unique, as the staggering mannequins only imagine themselves to be, but we are bound together, siblings in our difference from that mimic rout.

  And when the day comes that the marionette throng sees us for what we truly are, we will seem as monstrous to them as they now seem to me. And though they are mindless things, they unconsciously abhor that which reminds them of their sameness, and so when they know us they will turn on us like the maenads who tore apart Orpheus, and, like that ancient poet, we will be rent asunder and destroyed, though even the rocks and trees refuse to strike us.

  I know that this is the fate which awaits me. I see it each time I venture out of my apartment. I see the hatred there, in their blank faces on the bus and at the grocers. They hate me for my difference, even though they don’t yet know it, and one day soon they will unmake me.

  Curtains. Applause.

  Dana’s apartment, a month before that. A nice enough place, but small. The apartment of a student, maybe someone working her way through medical school, or law school. Light blue walls, white trim. It’s dark. The only sources of illumination are the cold morgue light that comes in through the blinds, and the cone of yellow made by a small bedside lamp. A digital clock on the same bedside table says that it’s three in the morning.

  Dana is in bed, the phone pressed to her ear. Her glasses are off, lying on the table next to some change and her keys. It looks like maybe she got in late. There’s a jacket draped over a chair at her desk, a pair of jeans in a pile on the floor next to it, though the room is otherwise neat. The dimly lit spines of the books that line her headboard aren’t the kinds of things that Gordon writes. Not even a Stephen King novel to be found. Dashiell Hammett, Truman Capote, James Bond.

  We can hear Gordon’s voice from the other side of the line.

  GORDON: Dana, listen, I’m sorry I woke you.

  DANA: You said that already.

  GORDON: Yeah. Look, it’s just, I need someone to talk to. Need to talk to someone.

  DANA: Isn’t Conner around?

  GORDON: He’s out of town. He didn’t answer. Look, I know you don’t care about this stuff, but, please, Dana, just let me talk, okay?

  Dana flops back onto the bed, switching the phone so that it’s pressed to her other ear. She pulls the blanket up to her shoulders, closes her eyes.

  DANA: Sure, bro. Go ahead and talk. I’ll mumble now and then, so that you know I’m only half-asleep.

  GORDON: Okay, so you’re familiar with the concept of the muse, right?

  DANA: “In spite of Virtue and the Muse…”

  GORDON: Right, sure. But what if we’ve had it backward all this time? What if there’s no external muse, what if instead it works the other way around?

  DANA: Conner really is the better person for you to bounce story ideas off of, kid.

  GORDON: This isn’t a story idea. I mean, it’s also that, kind of, it’s been in all my stories lately, but it’s just… just an idea idea. Just hear me out, okay?

  DANA: Mmkay.

  GORDON: Okay, so, what if instead of something else making us write, we’re making something by writing. Not just making up fictional characters and worlds and whatever, but actually making something real. I mean, imagination, that’s a kind of energy, right? And energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

  DANA: That’s matter…

  GORDON: Whatever. Anyway, energy doesn’t just dissipate. It goes somewhere, does something. It changes things, makes things happen, right? Imagination is a kind of radioactivity. It throws off sparks, hurls out bits of itself that get into everything around it, causes mutations. Or hell, maybe it isn’t anything like science at all. Maybe it’s an evocation, a magic spell. Maybe you put the right words down in the right order, and you call something up from somewhere, conjure something. Or maybe there’s no difference, really, magic spell or radiation. Black mewling god at the center of the universe or the spark of creativity in the human brain. Maybe it’s all one and the same.

  DANA: Look, Gordy, I can’t understand this kinda stuff when it isn’t three in the morning, okay?

  GORDON: I know, Dana. I just… I’m scared there’s something wrong with me.

  Dana smiles, though her eyes stay closed, and, when she speaks, she sounds a little more awake, a little more herself.

  DANA: There’s always been something wrong with you, bro. Have you talked to Dr. Sherman about this stuff?

  GORDON: Yeah, a little. But it usually works better when I write it down, channel it into the work, y’know?

  DANA: Or call me in the middle of the night?

  GORDON: Or that, yeah.

  There’s a moment of silence and the sound of the connection becomes audible, a distant crackling, like tinfoil being crumpled at the bottom of a mine. Dana starts to sit up in bed again, opens her eyes. Outside, the cicadas are singing.

  GORDON: Dana, I’m sorry.

  DANA: Don’t worry about it, kid.

  But the connection has already been broken, and the phone that Dana holds in her hand is now dead.

  from “The Congregation”

  by Gordon Phillips

  Comes now the Congregation, into this great space. They are of every shape and description, and they shine with their own inner light, like creatures of the deepest sea, like the algae that makes glowing waves upon the ocean at night, like fungus and fox fire and will-o’-the-wisps, like corpse candles and the flames of St. Elmo. They move in every way that a creature of the earth can move. They creep and scuttle, float and fly and drift and slither. Here the carapace of a crab, there the legs of a spider. Fins decorate backs, tails drag along the cold stone floors. Eye stalks waver in the darkness, and vestigial limbs grope at the air like antennae. Some are heavy and segmented, as many-legged and compound-eyed as insects. Others ooze like the cephalopod. Still others touch the ground not at all, but drift through the benighted atmosphere like jellyfish in a tidal pool. Each is different, no two the same, though they carry with them a similarity that is not of genus or of species but something else. A kinship of spirit, in the way that couples long married may come to resemble one another, or a pet grow to echo its master. They are alike only in their strangeness.

  As each one crosses in front of the altar, a momentary flicker can be discerned, a glimpse of some other body, some other place. Boxes buried in the ground, caged up in the dark. Not broken open, because the creatures can pass as wraiths when needed, for they are made of sterner stuff than the merely material world. One, a squat thing, crab-like and knurled with knobby eyes, brings with it an image of a cave somewhere in Mexico, and in that cave a body that is no longer truly a body, but an empty cocoon, like the husk that a cicada leaves behind on the bark of a tree.

  They gather in a great circle, this eldritch congregation. Though their speech is not the speech of men, their words not those of any earthly language, they make themselves understood to one another. Their ranks part open to admit another member to their gathering. Its form is as strange as any, and its inner light glows as bright. As it passes the altar, an image is shown of a box being
lowered into the earth, and then it creeps forward among them and is made welcome.

  The graveyard again. The lantern is sitting on Gordon’s headstone near where Conner’s jacket hangs, throwing its light into the hole that Dana and Conner are digging. It is getting deep now. Conner stands in the hole up to this shoulders, the shovel in his hands rising and falling like the head of a pump jack as he throws dirt onto the growing mound at the side of the grave.

  Dana sits on the edge of the pit, leaning against the headstone. The rain has stopped, and she’s smoking one of Conner’s cigarettes, even though she quit smoking six months ago. When she draws on the cigarette, the molten orange glow illuminates the lenses of her glasses, makes them opaque.

  DANA: How long do you think he knew?

  CONNER: That he had cancer?

  Dana nods, draws on the cigarette, holds the smoke in her mouth so long that she coughs a bit when she finally blows it out, taking the cigarette from her lips and offering it to Conner, who wipes his wet mouth on his shirtsleeves. He takes it from her, pulls on it, and hands it back.

  CONNER: He didn’t think he had cancer, you know that.

  DANA: So you think he really believed all that shit? That stuff in his stories, that stuff that he told us?

  CONNER: You think so, too. If we didn’t wonder, at least a little, we wouldn’t be out here in the asshole of midnight, digging up your brother’s grave.

  DANA: Touché.

  She stands up, brushing off the backs of her pants and taking another pull on the cigarette as she does so.

  DANA: Okay, Herbert West, I think it’s my turn to dig.

  But before she can begin to climb down into the hole, Conner’s shovel drops again, and, instead of sinking into the dirt with its usual quiet shunk, it raps like the fist of a midnight caller on the front door of Gordon’s coffin. The two share a glance, Conner standing in the sucking mud at the bottom of the grave, Dana looming above him, cast in chiaroscuro by the lantern’s light. In that look is the knowledge that this is the last opportunity for turning back. Dana puts her hand on the other shovel, and drops down into the damp earth at the side of the coffin. The smell is stronger now than it seemed before. Not a rotting smell, just the loamy scent of turned earth.

  They work in silence, and once the lid of the casket is clear, they both stand on either side, looking down at what they’ve uncovered.

  CONNER: This is it. Do you want to do the honors?

  Dana nods mutely. She grips a shovel in both hands, opens her fingers one at a time, then closes them again the same way, like a batter stepping up to the plate.

  DANA: So it’s just going to be his body in here, right? He won’t even be rotted much yet. He’ll probably smell like an old folks’ home, or something. That’s all we’re going to find, right?

  She looks at Conner, but it’s obvious that he doesn’t have anything to reassure her with. He reaches up, and, from the pocket of his leather jacket, he pulls out his father’s pistol.

  DANA: Okay, I’m going to do it. Are you ready?

  Conner nods, and Dana takes a deep breath. The casket comes open with a wrenching sound, like the lid of a crate being pried up. Conner and Dana are both breathing heavily now, almost panting. The rain has stopped. Their feet make squelching sounds as they shift in the dirt. In the trees around the graveyard, the cicadas have begun to call.

  DANA: Oh shit.

  The lantern tumbles from its perch above them, and the bulb shatters with a flash on the base of the headstone. Darkness rushes in behind it, and it’s hard to say if there’s a dim glow from the grave, or if it’s just the lingering image of the light on the rods and cones of your eyes. In the dark there’s a crack of thunder, maybe, or maybe it’s the sound of the pistol going off. The cicadas are screaming now.

  Curtains. Applause.

  One Last Meal, Before The End

  David Yale Ardanuy

  “Another amazingly potent though less artistically finished tale is ‘The Wendigo’, where we are confronted by horrible evidences of a vast forest daemon about which North Woods lumbermen whisper at evening. The manner in which certain footprints tell certain unbelievable things is really a marked triumph in craftsmanship.”

  Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” is one of the first western uses of the northern Native American legend, and a truly frightening tale of possession and subtle transformations. While I agree with Lovecraft on the quality of the work, it is worth pointing out that Algernon Blackwood uses the least grotesque aspects of the legend’s attributes, leaving out the most notorious elements of the myth: the cannibalism, bloodlust, and sorcery of the windigo. Lovecraft rightfully praises Blackwood’s tale, but fails to realize the actual scope of the mythology or the extreme terror the Native Americans’ held for both the spirit and the transformation of the windigo. Lovecraft describes the tale as “amazingly potent,” but disarms that statement by describing the myth as some ghost story that lumbermen swap around the dinner table. This description by Lovecraft is woefully slight when compared to the former mass belief among Algonquin, Ojibwa, and Cree Native populations, as well as its historical realization many times over. So, amazingly potent, yes, but poison and desserts can both be potent. The windigo myth is concentrated terror, and firmly rooted in the North American historic record.

  ♦

  February 22, 1799: Iron Knife trading post, twelve miles north of Lake Superior.

  ♦

  The day started as every other had for the past few weeks, dark and freezing. The old pine boards of the wall, dryer than any Jesuit tract, concealed the cabin’s outer logs and the merciless cold beyond. Placing another log in the iron stove to warm the room, I recall I cut my hand on an especially jagged piece of wood. Yes, I remember it, not the pain, but the taste. Oh, and what a taste it was… or rather, what it became later in my memory, at least. I remember the events perfectly, lest you doubt my mind, it is the memory of… other things that has changed. The taste of beef, venison, fowl, is as ash, now, and they bring on a great sickness if consumed. Human blood is unspeakably delicious to me now, and it is difficult to resist the urge to drink from my own arm. I digress, forgive me, I will return to these matters later.

  As I was explaining, that wound marks the beginning of the destruction of my life, and my soul. A moment later my boss, the trading post manager Sabian Ruelle, came in from his chambers.

  “Morning Andre,” Sabian said. “Colder than a witch’s tit, it is. How about you making us some coffee?”

  I asked him how he slept, I recall. A few moments later we were drinking coffee and discussing the burn of our tobacco pipes, enjoying one of the few pleasures available in the region.

  The main door resounded with a series of loud bangs, which startled me into spilling my coffee all over my hand. I remember again tasting the splinter wound as I put my burnt finger in my mouth. How delectable the memory is… pray, pray, forgive me… But yes, Sabian opened the door and a snow covered Indian burst in.

  That Indian was an Algonquin called George Red Foot, a good trapper and well liked in the region for his fairness in dealings amongst the other tribes. He carried a solemn and fearful expression along with his load of furs and bags.

  “Sabian, I am here to trade my furs, I am leaving,” he blurted out, clearly in a great hurry to start the exchange.

  “Why are you here so soon?” Sabian asked. “The season’s not over, and those furs will hardly fetch more than your current debt to this post.”

  To this his expression hardened, and George said, “I will do just fine. When I leave here I will be alive to work again somewhere else.”

  “What is threatening you, George?” Sabian raised an eye at me, as though I might shed some light on this Indian’s panic. “Other Indians? Early bears?”

  “My partner Francois has frozen inside.” This George said with such severity that even though I did not understand his meaning, not then, a chill ran down my spine.

  His queer phrasing stirred up a d
eep worry in my breast, and I asked, “How did he catch his death? Falling through the river?”

  At this George’s expression changed into a mask of stark terror. “He is not dead, his… his heart has frozen.” His voice dropping to a whisper, he said, “He has joined with the Ice and become windigo.”

  “Windigo?” I said, and George hissed at me:

  “Do not speak it out loud, ever, or it will know you. It will come for its due.”

  “Andre, start weighing out this fur,” Sabian said as he directed George over to the stove. Offering some tobacco, he said softly but still loud enough for me to hear. “What’s really going on, George? You can’t seriously mean to take off in the dead of winter!”

  “Francois is gone now,” George said softly. “I am moving on as soon as you pay me for my furs. My wife Moon Bird is waiting for me outside right now.”

  “All weighed out, sir,” I called over.

  Sabian gave George his shrewdest stare, one he often gave me when bluffing at cards, and said, “Francois owes this post a great debt of furs, George. If you would collect them for me before leaving the area, I would pay you one-third of their value.”

  George’s already unhappy expression soured considerably. “You would pay me to kill myself? How generous the white man becomes when he requires the death of the Indian.”

  “What are you on about?” Sabian asked, taken aback. “I have only been fair with you, and every other Indian in the region. If you really believe your partner is a mortal danger to you, why don’t Andre and I take you back to his cabin, so we can all settle this matter together? Surely the three of us would be the equal of one demented old man!”

  “I wouldn’t go back if you had three hundred men.” He stated this flatly, with resigned conviction, and moved to the front desk where I worked. He received his trade value in tobacco, corn meal, black powder and shot, then walked to the door. He paused there, and, looking back at me over his bundle of supplies, said, “Do not go there for the furs, Andre. They are lost now, as lost as Francois and his debt to this post. It is better that you leave, too, before death finds you. Or worse. You may have forgotten your people and ways, but the spirits have not.”