“Where’re we headed, Halla?” Big Willie asked, sounding completely normal and unperturbed. Jim realized Big Willie wouldn’t be able or willing to save them from whatever they were headed toward.
“Just keep walking straight ahead,” Halla replied, her voice seeming both right behind them and somehow very far away at the same time.
Big Willie complied, still dragging Jim and, from what Jim could tell from the sounds, Lee as well. As Jim listened for any clue as to what they were heading into, all the horrible noises from the earlier part of the journey started up again. The sounds started low, but quickly surged louder to become a cacophony of pure horror. Jim lost control of his bladder and couldn’t even feel embarrassed by it.
Nothing impeded them as they walked through the living darkness, but Jim could feel it winding over his body, going into his mouth, ears, and nostrils, sliding under his clothes to cover his skin. The darkness stroked his body inside and out; he could feel it working its way through his lungs and stomach, moving into his groin, flowing with his blood.
Jim wanted to scream or cry, do something, anything, to make this stop. But he had no will now. Big Willie let go of his arm, but Jim kept moving forward, propelled by the darkness that had wrapped itself around him.
His vision became clearer. He could see shapes now, some of them human, some of them looking like animals he’d never seen before. Jim used all his will and turned his head to look at Big Willie and Lee. They looked the way they always had to him, until Lee turned his head and looked at Jim as well.
Jim was glad he couldn’t scream. Lee’s face was gone, replaced by a mass of writhing, black tentacles, each with what looked like an eye at the end of them. Jim couldn’t count how many tentacles there were, but as he forced his eyes down he could see that Lee’s body wasn’t right, didn’t look normal under his clothes. It was undulating in ways impossible to humans, and as he watched in horror, Lee’s body ripped through the cloth and Jim saw odd beaks, flailing limbs that had more in common with a grasshopper than a man, and slime, what seemed like a trough-full of slime, oozing from all parts of what had been Lee.
He didn’t know how he got the courage to look at Big Willie, but he managed it somehow. Big Willie looked the same as he always had. Jim felt so thankful he almost cried.
Then his hearing started to shift like his vision had. The sounds he hadn’t been able to recognize became comprehensible. He could hear women screaming and crying again, much louder and closer than before. The laughter was still there, but it sounded normal and right. The chittering became words. At first, Jim was so relieved he forgot about whatever Lee had turned into and just rejoiced that things were heading back to normal.
But his joy faded quickly as he began to understand what was being said.
We bring you a sacrifice, Great Nez-testen, father of us all. We will go forth and multiply and spread your desecration to the world. Your corruption will multiply across the land, until all the world belongs to you.
Jim’s vision cleared fully, and he saw they were in a room bigger than any he could have imagined. At the far end from them sat a throne, larger than the biggest building he’d ever seen. In front of it was an altar wider than the Mississippi. He could see bodies on it and realized this was where the women were. He saw whites, Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, even some Negresses. All the women were naked, all tied down with their legs spread as wide as possible. A day before Jim would have thought he’d found paradise. But now he felt no pleasure watching them, just pure fear.
Halla was suddenly with them again, and she pointed to what had once been Lee. “You. Go find the others and join them.”
The monstrosity shuffled off to the right and, as Jim’s eyes followed it, he saw it go to a bubbling pool at least ten feet in diameter. The liquid in it was a viscous green, and there were odd and horrible shapes bobbing in it. The thing that had been Lee slipped into the liquid without hesitation. It gave an unearthly scream—of pain, Jim was sure—and as he watched it sank as the liquid burped and boiled around it.
Jim saw something come up to the surface. It was a man’s torso, burned from acid. What was left of the face was a caricature of pain and terror. Jim turned away quickly. It had reminded him of Hefé, and he knew in his gut that all the others had ended up in that pot.
Jim heard a crashing boom, as if someone had dropped a locomotive. He looked toward the sound as a huge creature moved out of the shadows behind the throne. At first all he could see were the legs, brown and goatlike, if a goat were fifty feet tall, with huge cloven hooves. The creature sat down, and Jim could see that its torso was made up of what looked like thousands of large maggots, all moving so that the body was never truly still. In place of arms it had eight masses of tentacles, four on each side.
Worst of all was the head. It swayed on a thick, long neck and looked for all the world like a giant rattlesnake, complete with long fangs that dripped a loathsome green ichor. But it was the thing’s eyes that were the most horrible. They looked like a human’s, only they gleamed with more intelligence and malice than any human had ever managed. And they were looking right at Jim. Jim knew without asking that this was Nez-testen.
Halla leapt up onto the altar, and now Jim could see that her boots had become goat-legs, just like the giant creature’s. She bowed to it and then spoke. “Father, I bring you the last ingredients for your next batch.”
The monster that was her father nodded its head. “Which one will do the honors?” he asked, his voice a thundering, garbled hiss.
Halla turned around and looked at Jim and Big Willie. She smiled her odd smile, and Jim realized she was more terrifying to him than even her father. She jumped back down, landing on her goat legs, her eyes glowing orange.
“This one,” she said, pointing to Jim. “The other one is stronger and more necessary as an ingredient.”
With that, Nez-testen reached out a tentacled limb and grabbed Big Willie. Jim took one last look at his former leader. Big Willie was smiling. “Thank you, master, for this honor,” he said, just before Nez-testen plunged his head into the boiling pool. Big Willie’s limbs and body thrashed for a few moments and then went still. Nez-testen let go and the last of Big Willie sank under as the liquid boiled around him.
Nez-testen made a swirling movement with this set of tentacles and the liquid began to spin, just as if it were being stirred.
“What happens to me?” Jim managed to whisper, as he dragged his eyes away from the horrible brew and looked back at Halla.
She gave him her same odd smile again. “Now you will receive my thanks. You will become the vessel through which my father will create my next batch of siblings. You will enjoy all your willing women,” she said with an evil chuckle as she gestured to the altar. “At least, the part of you that will remain will do so. After all, my father must be represented to your world with outward beauty. And,” she added, “your essence will stay with me, forever, to help me find more just like you.”
She leaned forward and kissed him, her tongue becoming long and snake-like as it entered his mouth. He could feel it moving down his throat, pulling his insides out until his body was just a shell. Then her tongue moved upwards. The last thing Jim saw was her glowing eyes and he knew there was a worse place than Hell, and that he would dwell in it forever.
* * *
Halla took the shell of Jim’s body and had it drink from the stew the other members of his gang had created. When it was full she led it to the altar and had it start its important work. When it emptied, she led it back to the stewpot, over and over again.
It was tedious, particularly because the women couldn’t be shut up. They had to remain physically unharmed until they were each properly impregnated. Then they would be silenced quickly, as their bodies exploded into seven new fully-formed adult beings, beautiful and enticing new sisters for Halla to teach and train and lead. New sisters to find the evil men of this world and bring their essences back to Great Nez-testen.
She could feel Jim’s brain inside her, nestled next to the others’. She enjoyed the way they moved, just the way the ones inside her father moved, frantically trying to escape, forever unable to do so. One day Halla knew she would have claimed so many that her torso would look just like her father’s. Then she would be ready to sit next to him, on her own throne, as his equal.
But not just now. Just now she had to finish this latest batch and then trade seven horses to the local Apache tribes in exchange for whatever women they had kidnapped for her in the last few months.
Then she would go out and see who else wanted to earn her thanks.
(
FOR JACK LONDON AND LAIRD BARRON
)
A
MAN WHO IS ABOUT TO DIE IS NOT LIKELY TO BE VERY ELEGANT
in his last words: being in a hurry to sum up his whole life, he tends to make them rigorously concise.
—Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter”
All my treasures …
On his knees. Ice-muzzled.
Shivering cracked lips struggling with the word. “Lost.”
Acute white snow. Shapeless, shifting.
A day with no sun or cloud. White, crushing light with its glaring fire. No fissure to there or free in this funeral. No pattern of charity.
COLD
. Thicker than granite under zero, or New England winter.
The experiments of explorers uprooting history, over. Shattered by the wolf, by greed. Running from the cascade of devils.
No way back. No out. This or there, the same blindfold of pure
WHITE
.
Two sled dogs, good dogs, dead. Two more that would not dominate distance with faithful resolution. Petrified.
Didn’t even remember their names.
Not much longer for the other eight.
His canvas saturated, too.
Ice.
Cold—curved, rough. Snarling.
Thaw a myth no exertion could break.
Not another step. Cold, hard as iron and steel, sank its fangs into panting, closed the circle. Trotting a behavior of instincts that won’t spread over the ground again.
A country without inches or light, or a map that held transit to reason.
Snow falls.
Snow drifts.
What is blown swirls, blinds.
Snow, a great beast, a concrete bulk, comes and keeps coming.
The whiteness. Conqueror flag. Its teeth shred sure as the hard end of an .8-gauge.
WHITENESS
. Windowless. No Christmas lawn spread before him. A dance of madness all around.
Dream scenes.
The vase empty of forget-me-nots in the mirror
…
Heaven handwritten on a map of the city
…
2 a.m. small talk and Girl Scout cookies
… Rubbing his chest with his good hand, trying to make moments and miles imaginable.
Had there been stars, the soft vocabulary of believing? A moon that enlarged evening as it emerged from ink-stained clouds? Weather that had cleared and allowed you to see morning after the tramp of your offending huff? Other men, talking over coffee—tucking in small complaints, and laughing? Was there still a painting of a waterfall robed in gold over the fireplace in his father’s study back home?
“Lost.” Nothing else will fit into his mouth.
Home.
Memories he used to live in: Little white house with its little white porch and windows recounting framed pleasures to the flower beds—late September, the compelling treat of orange, the new king of colors. On the porch, on his elbows and knees, knowing harvest was coming, tossing peanuts to the squirrels. Grinning at the fat one he called Bozo, the one who was happy to bounce from peanut to peanut.
Was there—
Order? Something in the oven? Intentions that paid off?
In another universe perhaps. The one that was not swept clean by this broadside, something with appeal and crafted with habits and landings that didn’t plant you in misery, where luck and laughter were pals. Some other place, a stable harbor where you remembered to take your umbrella and didn’t sell yourself down the river. A place with a quiet sunset …
If he could step away could he find the strength to still yearn?
Those times; experiments and collisions, cutting the weeds and grass, discarding the growth in the mirror, the aftershave, the kiss of her picture, surveying mouths for lies or comforts, the magic of a gift accepted, bourbon, playing cards, blue on the other side of the kitchen window—
Plucked away from the velocity of his dreams by the soft firm voice coming from the window. “Edward, it’s time for dinner.” Warm rolls with dinner and her eyes …
Nic’s too. He’d lost her picture in the pull of impossible weather, gust and gone. Lost sight of Nicolette’s genteel angel song.
He should have remained in that place, should have stopped and thought things out. Thought it stricken and dulled. Thought the mundane foolish, iron that struck down amusements. Might have anchored his bones to being there if Nic stayed. Might? But aim lost its territory … Got ready to go, display his nature for investigations. Decided he’d had enough of his own cross-examinations, brushed troubled ends off his shoulders, set out for joining.
Went to school—lit and history, and geology, they’d told him it was the easiest science. Didn’t fit, didn’t get afire. Yawned, took the Cs. Left quickly. Didn’t turn to see the doors close on the myths he no longer carried. Went to sea. Lay in his bunk, rocked and rocked, and read
Moby-Dick
as a joke. Thought of Grandpa’s chatty fish stories, dreamed of Nantucket sleighrides, sea ivory and terrible monsters. Sang with his mates. Found surprises and memories.
Sailed.
Astonished by flawless stars the first weeks. Stared in the depths for exhibitions of grandeur. Saw the sea. Day after day. Vast. Endless … No Tuesdays no Fridays. No harbor.
Toil with the nets. Rock in his bunk. Expectations trimmed. Laughter too.
Felt small in the wide.
Drank some, no cure pushed back the cold revelation.