Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (9 page)

“And I have no desire to hinder your departure,” Shuri soothed. “As a matter of fact, it is my intention to leave soon also. Tomorrow, I hope. Will that be suitables?”

“That would be fine,” said Darlene, relieved.

“Well, then, if I may be shown to my room?” Shuri said, getting up.

Later in the evening, Darlene found herself in her uncle’s study, a small room at the back of the house that had once been what folks used to call a mud room. Windows all around allowed-in plenty of sunlight during the day and cool breezes on hot nights. She had already gone through the desk, and found little to explain where her uncle’s money had gone to, or why he’d decided to pay her way through college when it seemed he may have had so little. There were, however, lots of odds and ends: correspondence to antiquarians and scientists around the country, bills of sale for books and art objects, even a notebook that her uncle obviously used to record what he learned about Dunwich history. But nothing about her, or the family they both had shared.

Suddenly, the telephone resting on the desk buzzed and she picked it up.

“Cobb residence.”

“Darlene?”

“Bill!”

“You don’t sound happy to hear from me.”

“I’m neither happy nor unhappy. How’d you get this number?”

“That doesn’t matter, I’m calling to find out if you’ve had a change of heart.”

Darlene sighed. “I…no, I haven’t had time to even think about it.”

“Well, I’ve decided not give up on you yet. I can be a pretty persistent guy when I want to.”

“That’s fine, Bill, but if you’re going to be obnoxious about it, then forget it.”

“I’ll take that response as a positive one, then.”

“Take it any way you want to but right now I have to say good night.”

Darlene returned the receiver to its cradle…
The nerve of Bill calling me here
…then noticed that the message indicator light on the telephone was blinking. Pressing the replay button, she waited a few seconds before the first message came on. There were a number of them, most inconsequential, and one even featured the voice of her uncle talking to a travel agent. Listening, she learned that her uncle had made all the arrangements for Shuri’s visit as well as paying for his trip. No wonder he had no money left in his accounts!

But the real surprise followed with the final recording. It happened when her uncle apparently waited too long to answer the telephone and the following conversation was automatically recorded by the answering machine.

“…are much eager to make transaction,” said a voice whose accent was similar to Shuri’s.

“No less than I am,” replied her uncle. “Is the book complete?”

“Yes,” said the person on the other end of the line. “Many of my peoples work on different parts of book according to different knowledges. Then a translation must be made from Elder Tongue to Inglaise…English…but be warned…much knowledges secret, untold, until puts in book. Must be kept secrets lest the High Lama of Leng learn of it. Many years has my peoples kept work secrets. Must not be careless now.”

“I realize that and agree with you completely regarding the need for secrecy,” replied her uncle. “I have been preparing for this trade for almost ten years, and now that the time draws close, I have no intention of letting anything ruin it.”

“Many years, yes, many years have the Tcho Tcho endured without the blessings of our mother, Shub-Niggurath. There are no more younglings to continue our traditions, and those of us who yet live grow older. A new Goat-Mother we needs to restore the blessings of fertility that flow from the goat of a thousand young…”

“Yes, yes; you will soon have yourselves a new goat-mother. All has been prepared. As I promised, the candidate will be here when the time comes. Just make sure your man brings the essence of the Black Lotus with him…and the book as well.”

“He will have both.”

“Good, then I’ll look forward to your emissary’s arrival.”

Darlene stood transfixed, lost in thought as her mind tried to make sense of what she’d heard. It was only with the click of the answering machine as it completed its rewind cycle that she was jolted back to an awareness of her present surroundings.

What had her uncle been up to? A trade of some kind for sure, obviously involving the packed ring binder presented to her by Shuri earlier in the evening. But the trade her uncle had had in mind, it sounded as if it had to do with a person rather than a thing like one of the statuettes stored around the house. But who? By the way he had spoken, it sounded as if whoever it was that he had in mind would be here in time for Shuri’s arrival. Whitney? He hardly fit a female-oriented role evoked by such phrases as “goat-mother,” fertility, and the restoration of “younglings.” Then a cold realization swept over her, as she stood in the room where perhaps her uncle had first devised and then executed what occurred to her as a cold-blooded and calculated plot that could only have been aimed at herself.

But that was impossible, ridiculous!
she thought. Her common-sense, asserting itself, refused to accept the conclusion the facts as she knew them seemed to indicate. Her uncle, sensitive to her desperation to escape the stultifying, small-town world of Dean’s Corners, and perhaps sympathetic to her desires to widen her knowledge, had generously paid for a full four years of college. He had left her his house and all his possessions upon his death. He’d invited her to visit this time because he knew he was ill and wanted to see her once more before he died. That was all there was to it.

But then, there was the telephone conversation she’d just heard. It was her uncle’s voice, clearly involved with an arrangement with someone that involved trading a “candidate” for “goat-mother” for some secret knowledge contained in a book especially compiled for him. He had assured the speaker on the other end of the line that the “candidate” would be at the house when the delivery of the book was made. Since Shuri’s arrival, that included only Whitney and herself. What did it all mean? Reluctantly, her mind began offering an alternate explanation for her uncle’s past generosity: what if he’d planned on putting her into his debt. Not asking for anything in return, but expecting to some day play on her sense of obligation to lure her to his home when the time came to make the transaction?

It was crazy, but it was the only explanation that made sense. But with her uncle dead, the deal would be off, right? There was no way Shuri and his people could collect on the deal. Yes, that was it. In the morning, she’d give Shuri’s book back to him and tell him that whatever arrangement there was with her uncle was canceled.

Determined to go through with her plan first thing in the morning, Darlene was headed to her bedroom when she remembered she’d left the binder in the living room. For safe keeping, she decided to take it with her for the night.

A noise woke her up. Raising herself onto an elbow Darlene listened, but heard only the familiar sounds an old house makes at night and outside, the lonely calls of solitary birds unable to sleep. Leaving her bed, she went to the open window and pressed her face close to the screen. Outside, all was quiet except for the soft susurration of the evening breeze among the forest trees. A few clouds, shining in the moonlight, scudded across a sky filled with stars and atop Sabbat Hill, there was once again the glow of light. Was it sounds from the kids partying on the hill that she heard? Glancing at the alarm clock she saw that was almost 3 a.m. — pretty late for teenagers to be out in the woods, guzzling beer.

Turning back to the bed, her eyes fell on the binder she had left on her bedroom dresser. Suddenly curious, she picked it up and began thumbing through the pages. She was a little surprised to find that it was all handwritten, not printed from a machine, and each “chapter” had obviously been written by different hands. Unwilling to go so far as to turn on her bedroom lamp she brought the book to the window to read by moonlight, but soon realized the subject was incomprehensible: filled with such wild tales and conflicting facts as to be expected from primitive folklore. Who was this Nyarlathotep for instance? In some places it seemed to be a place and others a living being and in one place, it was actually identified as some kind of traveling showman! Then, like the better-known Atlantis, there were places of a frankly fabulous nature such as “the Plateaus of Leng and Sung,” “Sarkomand,” “Yuggoth” and “Kadath.” Why her uncle thought such a collection of fairy tales important enough to go to the lengths he did to get them, she couldn’t understand. If, of course, her suspicions had any validity. Well, it wouldn’t do any harm to cancel her uncle’s deal with Shuri’s people just in case. Certainly, she had no use for the book. Crawling back under the covers, she was soon asleep again. The glow in the hills subsided, soon to be replaced by the glow of morning.

Darlene unlocked her bedroom door, which she had taken the precaution of latching the night before, and headed for the bathroom located on the ground floor of the house. She noticed Shuri’s room was empty, the bed neatly made, almost as if he hadn’t slept in it. A half-hour later, after returning to her room to complete her toilet, she descended the narrow stairwell at the back of the house to the kitchen. Shuri was there ahead of her, sipping tea at the table.

“Good mornings, Miss,” he said, his face seeming puffier than it did the day before.

“Good morning, Mr. Shuri,” Darlene replied, stepping off the final stair. “You’re up early.”

“Was up before suns. Have taken walks in hills. Very beautiful countryside heres,” he gestured with his cup. “The tea Mr. Whitney left on stove is very good, will you joins me?”

“Oh, Mr. Whitney is here already?” asked Darlene, taking a cup down from the cupboard.

“Oh, yes. Was here early. Fix tea for Shuri. Said he had to go to markets to buy things for lunch.”

Darlene poured the still-steaming tea into her cup and sat at the table across from her guest.

“Mr. Shuri, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” she began, sipping at her tea. It had a peculiar aroma that smelled familiar and she wondered idly what kind of blend it was?

“No needs for more talk,” said Shuri, looking all the more diminutive in slacks and shirt. His feet, unable to reach the floor from the chair he was sitting on, were shod incongruously in a pair of Addidas running shoes. “I brings book as promised, now receive what uncles traded for.”

“Well, that’s just it,” said Darlene, with a sudden flash of what she could only describe as displacement; as if for a moment, time had stopped for her as the rest of the world continued to rush by. “My uncle has died and left me with all he owned, including the responsibility for whatever debts and obligations he made while living. Although I may be legally bound to pay some of them from his estate, I’m not liable for other, less-formal agreements.”

“Ah, buts you see, Miss Cobb,” said Shuri, setting down his tea and slipping from his chair, “I am similarly bounds by the law of my owns people, the Tcho Tcho People.”

“That may be true…but…” said Darlene, setting her own cup down with a feeling of increasing lethargy. Again, it seemed to her as if everything around her was hurtling into the future even as she stood like a rock in a rushing stream, forcing water around her but never yielding. Outside, she thought she could see the sun climbing toward noontime and the clouds racing past the summit of Sabbat Hill…then it came to her as if from long ago…the familiar smell of the tea…it was on Sabbat Hill that she’d encountered it before…the fire that had been put out…the blackened remains… “The laws in Burma don’t necessarily…apply in the…United…”