Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft (12 page)

There it was. Middle of the block between to the karate place and Hickerson’s Video and Game Rental. It had big plate glass windows. It wasn’t covered in slime; it looked normal. Maybe there was a healing book inside. He hated getting out of the truck. Nothing swooped or buzzed or squelched. The air smelled clean and hot. He left the motor running. He walked to the door. It was dark inside; faded reds and pinks dominated the window display. The Rising had happened in February, and many places still commemorated a faded Valentine’s, when Earth’s old lovers had come back. The door was locked. He got a cinderblock out of the back of the pickup and smashed the glass. All the jack-o’-lanterns had rolled closer to him while his attention had been elsewhere. Reality was melting; he would have to be quick. Dr. MacLeod had explained to them that the “Otherness” had to seep in through “liminal” things, Nat thought that “liminal” meant scary. He kicked two of them away from the door, grabbed a flashlight, and went in, careful not to slip on the broken glass. The store didn’t smell right—it didn’t have that acid tang of
Tia
Rebecca’s yellowing romances. It stank of fire and copper, but the books looked OK.

There it was. The Bible. It sat on a shelf beneath diet books, with other Bibles, and Books of Mormon and old Methodist hymnals. But it was big and black with gold lettering
Biblia Santa.
It had a nice heft in his hands, but as he picked it up something laughed in his head. Voices in the head weren’t unusual, but they made him miserable. Outside the shop the jack-o’-lanterns weren’t round or orange anymore; they were becoming one of those clear snot-looking things that seemed to have rusty machinery and mercury inside. They were dumb but fast. He grabbed some paperback novels and flung them on to the street. It formed several eyes that focused on the books and squelched off in their direction. Swallowing hard, he ran toward it, since he needed to get to his truck. It didn’t turn until he was inside. He threw the truck in reverse and pulled into the crossroad. It had sensed him. And shot out two long runners of snot to pull itself toward the backing Chevy. It grew mouths. Some yelled “Tekeli-li!” Others made the sound of the fire engines and turkey buzzards. One mimicked a reporter from Channel 42, “Tex DOT has no explanation of the mysterious slime on I-35.”

He turned his truck toward Doublesign. The creature was gaining speed. It had made some of the strands into tentacles that were holding on to his tailgate. He put the pedal to the metal. 40, 50, 60; at 75 the main mass couldn’t keep up, but there was about a gallon of the goo that had managed to plop itself in the bed of his truck. It was making little green eyes that looked like zits and little centipede legs to scuttle across the bed. It slimed its way up his back window and its little eyes just spun around. Two mouths formed, their voices were thin and high like a kid that has breathed in a helium ballon. One yelled, “Tekeli-li!” and the other said, “¡Si usted ve un soggotho escaparse!” Nat laughed: that was—what’s his name on KHHL out of Leander. Man, he was funny.

Before.

Yeah, before.

Nat tried to concentrate on his driving. He rolled his window up as far it would go. A tiny thick tendril was pushing itself against the window, a tiny eye forming at the tip. He didn’t want to take it into the village. He had some bug-spray, a Crip-blue bottle of Raid(r) Flying Insect Killer. He braked hard and leapt out the passenger side window and let the loathsome mass have it.
Jesús, Maria, y José.
It pulled itself into a dirty white ball and flung itself on the asphalt. It was rolling away. Some days you got the bear; for Steph’s sake he hoped the bear would never get him. Dr. MacLeod said that all life on earth came from the shoggoths. He said they never had gone away, just “hidden up the spiral staircase of DNA.” All the things that showed up three years ago were always here, most humans couldn’t smell them or hear them or see them. When that city had Risen in the Pacific, we could touch them and they could touch us.

The sky looked blue, hazy, but not dangerously so. The sun was white and some turkey buzzards were flying off to the west. The ground had grass and a few late-season bluebonnets on it. Guess it’s not against the law to pick them now. Nat gathered a few, and one Indian paintbrush for contrast. He put them in his truck, on the passenger’s side next to the Bible. He decided to open it, to look for cures. Father Murphy had disgusted him by suggesting that some
curandero
bullshit would be good against the Otherness. Real crosses and real rosaries hadn’t worked. At his worst moments Nat thought that the
campo santo
of the Church didn’t really work either. Some day They would come, some ally of the Thing in the Pacific. Doublesign was a small village. It couldn’t feed them the fear and misery they drank like wine.

He opened the Bible to find that it too was a trick.

The book had been hollowed out. There were no
curandero’
s herbs, no list of spells against the coming of the night. It was a little spiral-bound book from Lulu.com. The chapters made no sense to Nat:

Alles nahe werde fern—Everything near becomes distant. Goethe

As usual, Nat did not know who was tricking whom. The small black book with its thin simulated leather bindings had probably been one of those books college kids buy for a class. Juan had bought one for his Southwest Life and Literature class and another for his HVAC class at the community college. Juan had been working in Dallas when the Rising had occurred. Mama loved Juan better; he was the gang-free smart son. Nat smiled at his brother’s favorite joke, “What do you call two Mexicans playing basketball?” “Juan on Juan.” Nat started to throw the book away, but who was he to judge? Certainty went out of the world three years ago. Daymares and nightdreams were the scaffolding of reality now; parallel lines actually and loved ones walked into the sky. He opened the hollowed-out Bible, on the flyleaf someone had written two verses in heavy pencil:
Genesis 28:16-17 And Jacob awoke out of his sleep, and he said, Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. And he feared, and said, How terrible is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
And
Job 3:8 May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.

He drove on to Doublesign. Felix Washington stood on guard duty. He was the Rev. Jackie Jones’s uncle. Felix was a very popular man, and at seventy-eight certainly the oldest. He had been a jazz pianist in the day, played gigs in Austin as little as five years ago. He had also saved a coffee can full of marijuana seeds. It was good buzz and good for trading with some of the other little towns that still remained, like Thalia. He still tickled the ivories at the Kuntry Kitchen, and Nat had seen his name on yellowing posters for The Soft Machine and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. He liked to piss people off by saying, “Cthulhu ain’t no worse than white people.” Felix opened the gate and waved him on.

Nat drove to Santa Cruz. Father Murphy sat at the wooden picnic table near the entrance. He had his pocketknife out; he looked for all the world to be carving something in the rotten wood. He indicated that Nat should sit beside him.

Nat realized how angry he was. His heart pounded. The fat bastard had had him risk his life for a book. A book wasn’t going to solve their problems, certainly not the Bible. Hadn’t we seen hundreds of people using the Bible to lay It back in the sea? Who was this fat Irishman telling his family and friends what to do for the last two decades? He had preached against his cousin Cody’s queerness, so Cody had run off to Houston to live in the gay community there, sealing his death when the waves that came with the Rising wiped Houston off the globe. He denied the Mass of the Dead for the scores of suicides, saying the Rising was God’s test of our faith. As though the death of millions was a little algebra quiz. Nat wanted to start smashing him with the Bible—hit that red uneven face that always reminded him of a potato. Nat couldn’t sit.

“I brought your damned book.”

“Thank you, my son,” said Father Murphy.

“It’s hollow.”

“Many people find the Bible hollow these days.”

“No, I mean it is really hollow. You sent me there for nothing.” Nat took out the little book from inside and tossed it in front of Father Murphy. Murphy showed no surprise. Murphy continued his carving, some complicated sign.

“My son, when did you really know the human world was over?”

“Three years ago, like everyone else.” Nat wanted the guy to finish. He looked at the church door.

“Oh, she’s in there with the others. I am as good as my word. I understood the world was over when the bishop sent me here. I was sent to this little hellhole as a punishment. The Mother Church doesn’t like its priests to stick their dicks in altar boys’ cherubic little mouths. Did you know that? So they sent me here and I knew the world was over when I saw Christ’s face in there. All that look of suffering. He had been mutely telling the human infestation for years and years.”

Nat didn’t like it that he had had the same thought as this kid-fucker.

“You’re a fucking pedophile?” Nat felt his stomach heave.

“I never liked fucking them; anyway, age has taken care of that. Besides, I don’t really like brown boys as much as blond ones. Do you know why the Rising happened, my son?”

“Remember all those talking heads on TV?
When the stars are right,
they said. They know nothing. The great priest Cthulhu took a little nap, and a great deal of what is hidden by matter slept. We are the alarm clock. The shock. We figure out things, and as our tiny brains correlate the contents of our minds their shock, their agony at glimpsing the true cosmos sends out a nice jolt. There are so many things waiting to Waken still, roses in your garden wanting to sing weird songs, pebbles wanting to shoot forth stony blossoms. Human time is done.”

Nat wanted to hurt him. He would check on Stephanie, and he would tell some of the others first.

“Why did you want the book?’ asked Nat. “I know it is about bad things, but why now?”

“The collector of these little texts was special to Cthulhu. His moment of endarkenment actually impressed It. This little
Liber Damnatus
is dear.”

“You work for It.”

“I have always worked for It. Most humans do, and those that don’t serve as well. Hasn’t your good doctor explained the Octopus to you? Humans’ shock, their horror and, for a rare few, their ecstasy work for It. At this point all we can do that is meaningful in the world is to increase the aesthetic value of this blue marble of a planet for a Will older and better than our own. Humanity is its last decade will finally have a purpose.”

Nat took the hollowed shell of the Bible and smashed it as hard as he could against Father Murphy’s cheek. He knocked the priest off the bench onto the grass. Murphy just laughed. Nat stomped on his chest.

“Beautiful,” Father Murphy gasped. “Just beautiful. Oh, Loathly Lord freed from the Angles of the Water Abyss, I am but a shard of black rainbow to adorn the world to which you awaken.
Gurdjiatn Cthulhu gurdjiatn ekd szed mem-zem zmegnka!”

“Fuck you, asshole!” Nat left him. He needed to see Stephanie now.

“Look, my son, I am turning the other cheek.” Father Murphy rolled over. “I have made my garden beautiful for You. By the green star of Xoth I adore Thee, Domine.”

About twenty people knelt in the church. Stephanie was a couple of rows from the front. Candles flickered around the Virgin, and the noontime sunlight came through the stained glass, but the church seemed dark.

“
Calabaza,
are you OK? Stephanie, we need to go.”

She didn’t move from her prayer. No one moved. He ran to her, neglecting to genuflect as he passed the altar, even though the light burned signifying His presence. As he came up to her, her face confused him. She had the naughtiest smile ever, and her eyes were crossed. Then he realized that something slick and shiny was coating her face. He touched her. He flinched. She was cold and sticky. A little sob died in his throat. All of them. They had faces of idiocy or leering lust. Some fixative had been sprayed over their faces. Someone had fixed their hands into obscene gestures. Miss Abelard was chewing on a crucifix, Joel Sanchez was whacking off.