The Book of Cthulhu 2 Page 9

  George apologized, said he had to be going, and hung up.

  On the drive back from Dr. Gowers’ office, Nancy sat in the back seat with Melissa. The child seemed unusually excited: her pale forehead was beaded with sweat, and she watched the ocean with great intensity.

  “Did you like Dr. Gowers?” Nancy asked. “He liked you. He wants to see you again, you know.”

  Melissa nodded. “He is a nice one.” She frowned. “But he doesn’t understand the real words either. No one here does.”

  George glanced over his shoulder at the girl. You are an odd ducky, he thought.

  A large, midday sun brightened the air and made the ocean glitter as though scaled. They were in a stretch of sand dunes and sea oats and high, wind-driven waves and, except for an occasional lumbering trailer truck, they seemed alone in this world of sleek, eternal forms.

  Then Melissa began to cough. The coughing increased in volume, developed a quick, hysterical note.

  “Pull over!” Nancy shouted, clutching the child.

  George swung the car off the highway and hit the brakes. Gravel pinged against metal, the car fishtailed and lurched to a stop. George was out of the car instantly, in time to catch his daughter and the child in her arms as they came hurtling from the back seat. Melissa’s face was red and her small chest heaved. Nancy had her arms around the girl’s chest. “Melissa!” Nancy was shouting. “Melissa!”

  Nancy jerked the child upwards and back. Melissa’s body convulsed. Her breathing was labored, a broken whistle fluttering in her throat.

  She shuddered and began to vomit. A hot, green odor, the smell of stagnant tidal pools, assaulted George. Nancy knelt beside Melissa, wiping the child’s wet hair from her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, honey,” she said. “You got something stuck in your throat. It’s all right now. You’re all right.”

  The child jumped up and ran down the beach.

  “Melissa!” Nancy screamed, scrambling to her feet and pursuing the girl. George ran after them, fear hissing in him like some power line down in a storm, writhing and spewing sparks.

  In her blue dress and knee socks—shoes left behind on the beach now—Melissa splashed into the ocean, arms pumping.

  Out of the corner of his eye, George saw Steve come into view. He raced past George, past Nancy, moving with a frenzied pinwheeling of arms. “I got her, I got her, I got her,” he chanted.

  Don’t, George thought. Please don’t.

  The beach was littered with debris, old ocean-polished bottles, driftwood, seaweed, shattered conch shells. It was a rough ocean, still reverberating to the recent storm.

  Steve had almost reached Melissa. George could see him reach out to clutch her shoulder.

  Then something rose up in the water. It towered over man and child, and as the ocean fell away from it, it revealed smooth surfaces that glittered and writhed. The world was bathed with light, and George saw it plain. And yet, he could not later recall much detail. It was as though his mind refused entry to this monstrous thing, substituting other images—maggots winking from the eye sockets of some dead animal, flesh growing on a ruined structure of rusted metal—and while, in memory, those images were horrible enough and would not let him sleep, another part of his mind shrank from the knowledge that he had confronted something more hideous and ancient than his reason could acknowledge.

  What happened next, happened in an instant. Steve staggered backwards and Melissa turned and ran sideways to the waves.

  A greater wave, detached from the logic of the rolling ocean, sped over Steve, engulfing him, and he was gone, while Melissa continued to splash through the tide, now turning and running shoreward. The beast-thing was gone, and the old pattern of waves reasserted itself. Then Steve resurfaced, and with a lurch of understanding, as though the unnatural wave had struck at George’s mind and left him dazed, he watched the head bob in the water, roll sickeningly, bounce on the crest of a second wave, and disappear.

  Melissa lay face down on the wet sand, and Nancy raced to her, grabbed her up in her arms, and turned to her father.

  “Where’s Steve?” she shouted over the crash of the surf.

  You didn’t see then, George thought. Thank God.

  “Where’s Steve,” she shouted again.

  George came up to his daughter and embraced her. His touch triggered racking sobs, and he held her tighter, the child Melissa between them.

  And what if the boy’s head rolls to our feet on the crest of the next wave? George thought, and the thought moved him to action. “Let’s get Melissa back to the car,” he said, taking the child from his daughter’s arms.

  It was a painful march back to the car, and George was convinced that at any moment either or both of his charges would bolt. He reached the car and helped his daughter into the back seat. She was shaking violently.

  “Hold Melissa,” he said, passing the child to her. “Don’t let her go, Nancy.”

  George pulled away from them and closed the car door. He turned then, refusing to look at the ocean as he did so. He looked down, stared for a moment at what was undoubtedly a wet clump of matted seaweed, and knew, with irrational certainty, that Melissa had choked on this same seaweed, had knelt here on the ground and painfully coughed it up.

  He told the police that Melissa had run into the waves and that Steve had pursued her and drowned. This was all he could tell them—someday he hoped he would truly believe that it was all there was to tell. Thank god his daughter had not seen. And he realized then, with shame, that it was not even his daughter’s feelings that were foremost in his mind but rather the relief, the immense relief, of knowing that what he had seen was not going to be corroborated and that with time and effort, he might really believe it was an illusion, the moment’s horror, the tricks light plays with water.

  He took the police back to where it had happened. But he would not go down to the tide. He waited in the police car while they walked along the beach.

  If they returned with Steve’s head, what would he say? Oh yes, a big wave decapitated Steve. Didn’t I mention that? Well, I meant to.

  But they found nothing.

  * * *

  Back at the hotel, George sat at the kitchen table and drank a beer. He was not a drinker, but it seemed to help. “Where’s Nancy?” he asked.

  “Upstairs,” Mrs. Hume said. “She’s sleeping with the child. She wouldn’t let me take Melissa. I tried to take the child and I thought… I thought my own daughter was going to attack me, hit me. Did she think I would hurt Melissa? What did she think?”

  George studied his beer, shook his head sadly to indicate the absence of all conjecture.

  Mrs. Hume dried her hands on the dish towel and, ducking her head, removed her apron. “Romner Psychiatric called. A doctor Melrose.”

  George looked up. “Is he releasing Mrs. Franklin?” Please come and get your daughter, George thought. I have a daughter of my own. Oh how he wanted to see the last of them.

  “Not just yet. No. But he wanted to know about the family’s visits every year. Dr. Melrose thought there might have been something different about that first year. He feels there is some sort of trauma associated with it.”

  George Hume shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary as I recall.”

  Mrs. Hume put a hand to her cheek. “Oh, but it was different. Don’t you remember, George? They came earlier, with all the crowds, and they left abruptly. They had paid for two weeks, but they were gone on the third day. I remember being surprised when they returned the next year—and I thought then that it must have been the crowds they hated and that’s why they came so late from then on.”

  “Well…” Her husband closed his eyes. “I can’t say that I actually remember the first time.”

  His wife shook her head. “What can I expect from a man who can’t remember his own wedding anniversary? That Melissa was just a tot back then, a little mite in a red bathing suit. Now that I think of it, she hasn’t worn a bathing suit since.”

 
; Before going to bed, George stopped at the door to his daughter’s room. He pushed the door open carefully and peered in. She slept as she always slept, sprawled on her back, mouth open. She had always fallen asleep abruptly, in disarray, gunned down by the sandman. Tonight she was aided by the doctor’s sedatives. The child Melissa snuggled next to her, and for one brief moment the small form seemed sinister and parasitic, as though attached to his daughter, drawing sustenance there.

  “Come to bed,” his wife said, and George joined her under the covers.

  “It’s just that she wants to protect the girl,” George said. “All she has, you know. She’s just seen her boyfriend drown, and this… I think it gives her purpose.”

  Mrs. Hume understood that this was in answer to the earlier question and she nodded her head. “Yes, I know dear. But is it healthy? I’ve a bad feeling about it.”

  “I know,” George said.

  * * *

  The shrill ringing of the phone woke him. “Who is it?” his wife was asking as he fumbled in the dark for the receiver.

  The night ward clerk was calling from Romner Psychiatric. She apologized for calling at such a late hour, but there might be cause for concern. Better safe than I sorry, etc. Mrs. Franklin had apparently—well, had definitely—left the hospital. Should she return to the hotel, the hospital should be notified immediately.

  George Hume thanked her, hung up the phone, and got out of bed. He pulled on his trousers, tugged a sweatshirt over his head.

  “Where are you going?” his wife called after him.

  “I won’t be but a minute,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  The floor was cold, the boards groaning under his bare feet. Slowly, with a certainty born of dread, expecting the empty bed, expecting the worst, he pushed open the door.

  Nancy lay sleeping soundly.

  The child was gone. Nancy lay as though still sheltering that small, mysterious form.

  George pulled his head back and closed the door. He turned and hurried down the hall. He stopped on the stairs, willed his heart to silence, slowed his breathing. “Melissa,” he whispered. No answer.

  He ran down the stairs. The front doors were wide open. He ran out into the moonlight and down to the beach.

  The beach itself was empty and chill; an unrelenting wind blew in from the ocean. The moon shone overhead as though carved from milky ice.

  He saw them then, standing far out on the pier, mother and daughter, black shadows against the moon-gray clouds that bloomed on the horizon.

  Dear God, George thought. What does she intend to do?

  “Melissa!” George shouted, and began to run.

  He was out of breath when he reached them. Mother and daughter regarded him coolly, having turned to watch his progress down the pier.

  “Melissa,” George gasped. “Are you all right?”

  Melissa was wearing a pink nightgown and holding her mother’s hand. It was her mother who spoke: “We are beyond your concern. Mr. Hume. My husband is dead, and without him the contract cannot be renewed.”

  Mrs. Franklin’s eyes were lit with some extraordinary emotion and the wind, rougher and threatening to unbalance them all, made her hair quiver like a dark flame.

  “You have your own daughter, Mr. Hume. That is a fine and wonderful thing. You have never watched your daughter die, watched her fade to utter stillness, dying on her back in the sand, sand on her lips, her eyelids; children are so untidy, even dying. It is an unholy and terrible thing to witness.”

  The pier groaned and a loud crack heralded a sudden tilting of the world. George fell to his knees. A long sliver of wood entered the palm of his hand, and he tried to keep from pitching forward.

  Mrs. Franklin, still standing, shouted over the wind. “We came here every year to renew the bargain. Oh, it is not a good bargain. Our daughter is never with us entirely. But you would know, any parent would know, that love will take whatever it can scavenge, any small compromise. Anything less utter and awful than the grave.”

  There were tears running down Mrs. Franklin’s face now, silver tracks. “This year I was greedy. I wanted Melissa back, all of her. And I thought, I am her mother. I have the first claim to her. So I demanded—demanded—that my husband set it all to rights. ‘Tell them we have come here for the last year,’ I said. And my husband allowed his love for me to override his reason. He did as I asked.”

  Melissa, who seemed oblivious to her mother’s voice, turned away and spoke into the darkness of the waters. Her words were in no language George Hume had ever heard, and they were greeted with a loud, rasping bellow that thrummed in the wood planks of the pier.

  Then came the sound of wood splintering, and the pier abruptly tilted. George’s hands gathered more spiky wooden needles as he slid forward. He heard himself scream, but the sound was torn away by the renewed force of the wind and a hideous roaring that accompanied the gale.

  Looking up, George saw Melissa kneeling at the edge of the pier. Her mother was gone.

  “Melissa!” George screamed, stumbling forward. “Don’t move,”

  But the child was standing up, wobbling, her nightgown flapping behind her.

  George leapt forward, caught the child, felt a momentary flare of hope, and then they both were hurtling forward and the pier was gone.

  They plummeted toward the ocean, through a blackness defined by an inhuman sound, a sound that must have been the first sound God heard when He woke at the dawn of eternity.

  And even as he fell, George felt the child wiggle in his arms. His arms encircled Melissa’s waist, felt bare flesh. Had he looked skyward, he would have seen the nightgown, a pink ghost shape, sailing toward the moon.

  But George Hume’s eyes saw, instead, the waiting ocean and under it, a shape, a moving network of cold, uncanny machinery, and whether it was a living thing of immense size, or a city, or a machine, was irrelevant. He knew only that it was ancient beyond any land-born thing.

  Still clutching the child he collided with the hard, cold back of the sea.

  George Hume had been raised in close proximity to the ocean. He had learned to swim almost as soon as he had learned to walk. The cold might kill him, would almost certainly kill him if he did not reach shore quickly—but that he did. During the swim toward shore he lost Melissa and in that moment he understood not to turn back, not to seek the child.

  He could not tell anyone how he knew a change had been irretrievably wrought and that there was no returning the girl to land. It was not something you could communicate—any more than you could communicate the dreadful ancient quality of the machinery under the sea.

  Nonetheless, George knew the moment Melissa was lost to him. It was a precise and memorable moment. It was the moment the child had wriggled, with strange new, sinewy strength, flicked her tail and slid effortlessly from his grasp.

  •

  Take Your Daughters to Work

  Livia Llewellyn

  Sadie smoothes down her long brown hair, then fastens a choker around her neck. She stares at herself in the mirror. Today her father is taking her to work, and she must be perfect. There will be other girls there, other daughters brought to work by their fathers. But her father runs the company, and so she sets the example. All who look on her must see perfection—otherwise, her father will be shamed.

  From the darkened master bedroom, weeping rises. Sadie adjusts the heavy gold at her throat—her mother gave it to her this morning. It’s been in the family at least a thousand years. She leans close to the mirror, and smiles.

  “Don’t worry,” she tells her quicksilver self. “You’ll do just fine.”

  The train station swells with the chatter of a thousand excited girls. Sadie walks slowly, her head held high. Her father’s fingers trace patterns in the air as they climb the metal steps to his private car, fathers and first-born daughters crowding into the rest. Beneath her feet, engines throb. A lurch and a thrust: now the city parts as the train flows inside.

  Sadie
perches on the stiff horsehair seat, watching rooftops sail past the elevated tracks. Young men in brown livery pour tea into porcelain cups, and Sadie remembers to hold her little finger out, like a lady. The tea is the color of the sky—sulphur tinged with whorls of cloudy grey. It is the color of the webbing between the young mens’ fingers, the color of milky pupils in their lidless eyes.

  “Will we see the ocean behind the factories? You promised.”

  Sadie’s father smiles.

  “I did indeed. You’ll see all the waters of the world.”

  Sadie sips her tea, touches her throat with nervous hands. Outside, the horizon rushes toward them, a forest of massive smokestacks pumping out fire and haze under a burnt orange sun. The liveried men bow and sway, strange words bursting in wet pops from their lips. Fire makes them nervous. Sadie understands. She’s nervous, too.

  Her father leads her to the observation car as they pass the first edges of the factory. Sadie stares in wonder at blackened brick rising all around her, at steel pipes tangled around cauldrons larger than her house. Red sparks float in the air like weightless rubies. The factory is the only ocean she’s ever seen, and it crashes against the city like a storm. Every year, another row of crumbling homes are eaten away. This is the way of the world, His way, her father has explained. If they cannot raise the old city with the old ways, they will bring it up from the deep, piece by piece, and the factory will rebuild it. Sadie cranes her neck, staring at thick columns blotting out the sky—she can see their fixed surfaces, but feels the walls bleeding through other dimensions, dragging a bit of her soul with them. Nauseous, she swallows hard.

  “Remember what I told you, Sadie?” Her father touches her lightly, and she turns away.

  “Never look directly at the edges,” she recites, and he gives her shoulder a quick squeeze.

  “That’s my girl.” He fingers the choker, moving the interlocking hydras into place. Two small rings hang down from either side, like gaping mouths. His fingers hook them, gently. “You’re the reason I work so hard. You’re our future. I know you’ll make me proud.”