Now I Lay Me Down

Two young men, certainly brothers, stand near the crest of a low hill overlooking a clear, rapid stream. Across the stream, through the mix of pine and leafless hardwoods, a cluster of low structures can be vaguely discerned, drab and silent in the distance. The younger and larger of the two brothers, tall and solid with a mass of unruly brown hair and the beginnings of an unkempt brown beard, stands with the still smoking barrel of a Remington Model 870 pointed to the ground. The other, almost as tall, but slender and well muscled with longer, darker hair and a full black beard, stands with a Browning Safari BAR at the ready. He looks back towards his brother with a hardened expression and a slight hint of moisture in his eyes. There before them, amidst a few languidly swirling sweetgum leaves, lies an older man, almost completely bald with a full, grey beard and one milky blue eye that seemed to be staring at the low, slate colored sky. The other eye is missing, along with much of the left side of the man’s large, round head.

“Well, he finally went zombie on us”, said the younger man. “Put up a pretty good fight, though. It’s been three days since he was bitten; he lasted longer than most. It’s funny, but I haven’t seen the Old Man move that fast in years. He almost got me. That’s why I was off center,” he finished with a sheepish grin.

The older brother betrayed no appreciation of the younger man’s humor. “I told you we should have put him down last night when he was delirious. He wouldn’t have known, and it would have been safer for us. It might be worth remembering that he was bitten by what was left of a child. After everything we’ve been through, he was betrayed by his own pointless empathy. Feelings cloud your judgment. You have got to start understanding that your sentimentality is going to get us killed.”

The younger man looked at his brother with a fraternal mixture of contempt and amusement. “What’s going to get us killed is the total collapse of human civilization and hordes of hygiene-challenged corpses running amuck in every corner of the globe. A modicum of human feeling is probably not going to alter that equation dramatically. Besides, he deserved to expire in his sleep; he’s had a rough few years.”

“If we’re going to survive this, we are going to have to be extraordinarily cautious,“ lectured the older brother, ignoring his sibling’s effort at levity. “The Old Man’s gone and we can only rely on each other now. I don’t intend to become dinner for these putrid abominations because you’re grabassing around or don’t have the spine to do what’s necessary.”

The younger man formulated a clever retort, but before he could give expression to it he was struck by the realization of the weight of responsibility that his older brother must now feel. He sensed that in this moment, in timeless human tradition, the structure of the clan had shifted to accommodate the new reality. The ease with which his brother had assumed both the heavy burden and implied power of leadership was at the same time comforting and annoying. “You’ll shit your drawers long before I will, dude,” was all he could manage. “What now?”

“I guess we should do something with the Old Man’s body first. It wouldn’t be right to just leave him lying out here.”

“He wouldn’t want to be buried,” the younger man responded, his eyes clouding, contradicting his tone. “He was claustrophobic. He would probably have found it comforting to that know he was going to be sitting out under the stars being eaten by something other than former acquaintances. If we had a lounge chair we could set him in it with his legs up, a TV remote in one hand and a beer can in the other. Homo paternicus at eternal rest in his natural environment.”

The older brother finally relented and allowed himself a subtle ironic grin, in addition to the luxury of a single tear which streaked down from his right eye into the wiry tangle of his beard. “It’s getting late. We better do what we’re going top do and find some shelter. We don’t want to be out here when it gets dark.”

Monument

The rust colored dust spewed from the rear tires of the old truck like an avalanche of finely ground paprika as it sped past the gate up the dirt track to the impressive house. Henry Ford could scarcely have foreseen the success of his mass production techniques in this particular instance, but he was dead and had nothing more to be proud of. Like its driver, the truck seemed to be pushing 50 and was solidly built with the scars of a few errors in judgment to add to its character. Faded and gray, an ironically coincidental homage to the driver’s hair, it rolled to a stop just as it approached the porch where another, younger man sat sipping a can of Coke. The dust hung in the air, undecided.

The sun was already dropping low in the west and reflected violently off the older man’s sun glasses as he rose from the driver’s seat. His face betrayed his irritation and the sweat seemed to sizzle on his forehead. He resented having been summoned. He didn’t think much of the younger man and couldn’t resist thinking on how far below the legendary accomplishments of the father and grandfather this son had fallen, but he also knew the world was not the same these days and accomplishments were more difficult to come by.

“Good to see you Mayor” began the younger man. “I appreciate you taking the time to stop by. I know you are a busy man.” There was a distinctly patronizing tone to the greeting.

“Never too busy to see the man who owns the world” the older man replied with a sneer. “Perhaps you could spare me the small talk, Alan, and explain what gives you the right to demand my presence.”

“Come on, Mayor. I haven’t demanded anything. I just told Regina that it was important that we talk soon. You have been avoiding this discussion for a week now because you don’t want to cooperate, but you know I can get the Council to overrule you, if necessary. I was hoping to avoid that.”

“I know that you think you can still run everything like your family did for all those decades, but the mills are gone, Alan, the economy is in shambles and nobody gives a rat’s ass how many acres of bone dry dirt you own. People in this town can’t make ends meet anymore and your arrogant insistence that we spend money nobody can afford and time that no one has for frivolous indulgences that matter only to you is, quite frankly, disgusting.”

The younger man smiled condescendingly. “Well, Mayor, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but I think you will find that there are still a lot of people that remember what my family has done for this town. My grandfather donated the land where City Hall sits. My family gave the land for most of this city’s parks. The library would never have been built without our contributions, not to mention the taxes we have paid, the jobs we have provided and the leadership we have exercised all these years. This town would be less than the ass end of nowhere that it is now if my family hadn’t spent generations trying to make something of it. It is hardly my fault apocalypse has bad timing”

The Mayor had heard this speech a dozen times before; it was trotted out every time Alan didn’t get his way and he was sick of it. He had too many responsibilities to waste more time listening to a history lesson. History had taken a new track and these things didn’t matter anymore.

“Alan, your father and grandfather did these things, not you. Their names are on everything in town. What more do you want?”

“I want people to remember” said the younger man, “while there is still someone left who can remember. I know we’ve been through some difficult times lately, but that is not a reason to forget the past. In fact, it’s all the more reason to honor the people who spent their lives putting their blood and sweat into making this a place people could be proud of. You act like remembering how things used to be is some sort of weakness. We’re in a down cycle right now, but this will not last forever, and when things turn, the years my family has put into this town will provide a solid foundation to build on.”

The older man stood silent, realizing that he would lose this battle like he had lost so many others over the years. Alan’s family still owned the imagination of the town no matter how worthless a possession it had become, and he would not prevail against the weight of history, not now, not ever.

“Alan, you know that what you are asking is wrong. You grandfather has only been dead a week. It’s a little early to be canonizing him. If your father were still living, he would probably shoot you.”

“But he’s not still alive, Mayor, and the responsibility falls to me. You know what needs to be done.”

*********************************************

The younger man drove his silver BMW into the center of the town’s small business district. He still had an office on the second floor of one of the few modern buildings, but he seldom visited it. Business had been slow for years now, and the government’s economic development and repopulation programs had not reached such out of the way places. He had some investments in larger cities, but he didn’t like to travel anymore. It wasn’t safe.

He turned the corner and pulled into the parking lot of the State Court Building which bore his grandfather’s name. Although the Court still held some impromptu trials there, it was now mostly vacant, but it was still the most impressive structure in the town, red brick and white marble and four massive Doric columns supporting the portico above the entrance. He walked around to the front.

His grandfather was there, as he knew he would be, standing almost still under the shade of the canopy contributed by the local funeral home. He was dressed in his best Armani suit and looked every inch the Southern gentleman of leisure that he had been. The younger man grinned at the thought that his grandfather was finally immune to the oppressive summer heat and would never mop his brow again. The old man stared blankly with metallic gray eyes, but he shuffled his feet and seemed to turn his head in his grandson’s direction. Unfortunately they had insisted that he be tethered to a stake in the ground, against the younger man’s wishes, but Grandpa had no teeth now and he wasn’t going anywhere. He had built this town, given it his life, and he wasn’t going to leave it now that it really needed him, now that he was dead.

No, I am not obsessed with flesh-eating zombies. That would be juvenile. It is the chilling metaphor I crave. The poem is titled, Beyond the Seas of Dead.

Whether the wrath of God

or arrogance of man

only the soulless remain to ponder

how the plague began,

If divine fury revealed in everlasting curse

or experimentation gone wrong

which should be worse?

Of this, the empty streets cannot decide

nor the million muted footfalls of the ravenous tide

insight, wisdom or answers provide,

Dark city spires rise black against the day’s waning gray

the rock and iron palaces of the infected

commercial tombs accumulate the dust

 of civilization’s duties neglected,

And I hide amidst broken, useless luxuries and colorful plastic bags,

empty cans and Tommy Hilfiger rags

slinking from the mindless shambling swarm

to find a safe, dry place, if not always warm,

And so yes I am the heroic resistance,

humanity’s last glorious stand

fueled by bleak and selfish persistence

or tempting delusion of salvation at hand,

But there will be no happy ending

no cavalry rescue in a blazing hail of lead

no way of ever defending

against these armies of the dead,

On they wander without purpose or plan

these aimless, carnivorous successors

to the legacy of man,

And though sometimes still I think of you

or conjure the sound of your soft voice

the private lies that comfort me

are no longer a believable choice,

for I have seen no living now

for months and months on end

and there are no further faint hopes to hold,

no messages to send,

And you are not safely hidden somewhere

beyond the seas of dead

but merely another living corpse

with angry blankness in your head,

When this first began flippantly I told myself

I am not beaten

until I am eaten

but I lost long ago to these relentless mockeries of death

and though still I draw breath

I do not live,

And if now they are more pus than flesh

and more fetid rot than pus

you and I were always them

and they are simply us,

And though I hide from these zombie hordes

and am surely now deranged

they have only replaced our more earthly lords

and nothing much has changed,

But to the end I walk through the valley

seeking my daily bread,

no hope of ever defending

against these armies of the dead

Precautions

James was eleven years old. He already knew numbers were important. His sister, Melanie, had been sick for three days. She had a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. They lived six miles from downtown in a two-story house at 1476 Crescent Terrace. Melanie was eight-years old, but she had a birthday in 17 days and would be nine. James’ parents were in their forties and had been married for almost 20 years. His father was an actuary, which James knew had quite a bit to do with numbers. His mother was a librarian and had worked at the same city library for seven years. It was 63 days until Christmas and it had been three weeks since the dead began returning.

James’ parents had, he knew, been making quite an effort to, at first, conceal from him, and then minimize, the nature of the troubles in the city. They whispered constantly and tried to restrict access to the computers and televisions in the house, but even though James was only eleven, he already knew Mrs. Shorter, who lived three houses down, was an alcoholic who had had slept with some of the older boys in the neighborhood. Mr. Shorter was apparently a very hard worker, since he was seldom at home. James also knew Timmy McAfee had been sent away briefly twice for mental issues and that Rose Felton, who was only 16, was pregnant. James thought it was a bit unrealistic for his parents to think he could be kept from the knowledge that dead people were coming back to life and attacking their own friends and families.

Melanie was a very bright girl with dark hair and eyes. She played soccer and was quite good at it. She told James that she didn’t believe the stories people were telling about the new sickness, but since school had been cancelled indefinitely almost two weeks ago, she had been very quiet and avoided conversation, mostly keeping her nose stuck in Harriet the Spy and Stuart Little. Two days ago that very nose had begun to run with a clear discharge and her throat had gotten very sore. The next day she began to feel weak and very warm to her mother’s touch. On Tuesday, yesterday, she developed a fever of 101 and today it was worse. James’ parents had made him swear that he would not breathe a word to any living soul about Melanie being sick, and, while he didn’t quite understand why, he knew they were scared.

Late October was generally cool where James lived and sometimes it would even snow. Everybody was staying indoors now because of the things happening in the city. He hadn’t been allowed out to see any of his friends, except when he was with his parents, although he and Frank Blakemore, the kid who lived straight through his back yard, would signal each other with flashlights at night, maybe just to prove to each other that they were still alive. The libraries were closed and his mother stayed home, although James’ father still left the house each day, but James wasn’t sure if he was going to work, because he wasn’t wearing his coat and tie like he usually did. James’ mother still went next door to see Mary Welker sometimes, and she still went to the grocery store once every few days, but she hadn’t brought any milk the last time, although there had been plenty of soda cans and Chef Boyardee.

James knew that his father wanted to try and take Melanie to the doctor. Doctor Patel had been his and Melanie’s doctor probably since he had been born. She was very short for a doctor, hardly taller than James himself, and James felt she washed her hands somewhat more frequently than was actually called for, but she was nice in a serious sort of way. Apparently there was a problem with seeing the doctor, though. James’ father explained that almost all the doctors had been called to deal with the emergency developing in the city and that regular patients would have to wait. James wasn’t sure he quite understood this, since there were health units already patrolling the neighborhood. He saw them come by in their white vans that clearly said “Health Unit” right on the side of them, but his parents hadn’t flagged them down. Sometimes the vans were accompanied by the police, or even soldiers. James wasn’t sure why.

It was Wednesday night and Melanie wasn’t getting any better. She was having trouble keeping her food down, but for the moment she was sleeping. James’ parents, looking very tired were sitting on the front porch talking quietly. It was not terribly cold, although there was a rising wind coming from the northwest and it would soon bring a frigid chill. James knew that if not for their desire to keep secrets from him, they would be sitting on the warm couch in the living room. As they talked, Mr. Welker crossed over through the gap in the hedge from next door. James moved to the window to see if he could hear what was being said.

“What’s going on, Bob? Any news?” inquired James’ father.

“Not any good news, Jim. Mary tells me Melanie is sick.”

James’ father glared at his wife with a gaze more frigid than any northwest wind.

“She’s alright Bob. She’s just had a little bit of a sore throat for couple of days. Nothing unusual for this time of year.”

“That’s not what I hear. Mary says she’s running a high fever.”

“What would Mary know?” James’ father replied, his voice rising. “Doesn’t she have her own business to attend to?”

James saw that several more of the neighborhood men were beginning to gather. It was too soon for them to have been attracted by the raised voices; they had probably already planned to meet there at that exact time. None of them looked happy.

“Jim, you know what’s happening. We’re in a hell of a mess here. All sicknesses, no matter how minor, have to be reported. We have to take precautions.”

James had known Mr. Welker for as long as he could remember and he had climbed that big oak tree in Mr. Welker’s back yard maybe a million times. Mr. Welker always let him play with his dog, Spencer, because James didn’t have a dog of his own. James hardly recognized the man standing in his front yard now.

James’ mother tried to whisper, “Jim, I’m so sorry. I needed to try and get Melanie some medicine. I had nowhere else to turn.” But James’ father wasn’t listening. He was sizing up the growing crowd in his yard. There were now a dozen men with some of their wives hanging back behind them.

“Jim,” said Mr. Welker, “we could have called this in. Out of respect for you and your family, we decided to handle it ourselves. Just bring Melanie out and if she is ok we can all go about our business with no harm done.”

James’ father stood up and walked down the front steps to stand in front of the crowd of men. James had never thought of his father as a particularly large man, but he looked tiny and alone now with his back to the window.

“Look,” he began, “we’ve all known each other for years. A lot of us have shared the better part of our lives with each other here in this neighborhood. I know something terrible is happening to our world, but Melanie is just a child; she just has a bad cold. She’s not going to turn into a monster. Are you going to kill an innocent child because she has a cold?”

The crowd of men stared downward as James’ father spoke, but they showed no signs of retreating.

“Jim,” replied Mr. Welker “we all share your concern for your child, but everyone here has already lost a friend or family member to this disease. Most of us don’t know how many may be already affected because we can hardly get through to anybody. You know what the signs of the sickness are and you know that Melanie may have it. We can’t take the chance of her dying and going on a rampage.”

“We’ll tie her down!” James’ mother shouted from the porch, looking as if she had just discovered the cure for cancer. “We’ll tie her down until she gets better!”

Mr. Welker ignored the outburst and did not look at James’ mother. “You know how this thing spreads, Jim. You know what has to be done. You have a wife and a son still to take care of. Don’t make this worse than it has to be.”

James’ father made a move as if to run back towards the house, but three of the neighbors were on him before he could completely turn. Though he struggled, James could see his father was no match for the three larger men. They were probably not actuaries, thought James. “Drag him over to my house and hold him there until we resolve this” hollered Mr. Welker. James’ mother began to scream.

Three more of the men pushed past his mother into the house and headed upstairs, with Mr. Welker in the lead. They must have seen James standing there by the window, but they ignored him. James’ mother tried to follow them up the stairs, but the last man shoved her back and she collapsed on the last step and sat there, suddenly quiet. James thought to comfort her, but the look on her face held him back.

The men returned with Melanie wrapped in a blanket and hurried back out to the porch. James could hear Mr. Welker talking. “She’s almost unconscious. Her sheets were soaked with sweat, but she’s shivering and seems cool to the touch. This little girl is very ill. I can’t say for sure what it is, but we just can’t afford to take any chances.”

“Maybe we should call a health unit” volunteered one of the other men.

“And what,” responded Mr. Welker sarcastically “have all of us dragged off to a quarantine camp for having come in contact with her? You want to explain that to your wife and kids, if and when they ever see you again?”

James suddenly felt a deep sense of loneliness and acutely missed his sister for the first time in his life, even though he had just seen her go out the door. He went and sat by his mother on the stairs. She was pale and trembling.

“I need to fix supper” she said, but she made no move to go. James was confused; they had already eaten supper.

A few moments later James heard two tremendous thumps, like a giant stomping in the front yard. They were not at all like the pops and cracks he had heard coming from the direction of the city for the last few nights. He sat there with his mother as she rocked back and forth, saying nothing. A fire now flickered in the front yard and the smell of the burning flesh seeped into the house even before his father returned home.

The Education of Wilson Mayfair

Wilson Mayfair stood in front of the surprisingly sad looking Hummelstown brownstone at

at 1890 Phillips Avenue. The brass plaque on the door clearly read “Davis, Driscoll, Reynolds, Cthulhu and Stein; Attorneys at Law”, but the shabby appearance of the building and the general decay of the neighborhood was completely out of keeping with the reputation of Arkham, Massachusetts’s most prominent law firm. The street was oddly quiet for the middle of the business day and there was a dampness and persistent hint of ichor, even though the sun shone brightly and it was many miles to the harbor. There was something disturbingly noisome about the appearance of the structure, Wilson thought; while his eyes reported the clean, square lines of modern architecture, his mind perceived impossible angles and primitive cyclopean scale, and without reason he began to form the obsessive idea that the building was actually not there at all, but was rather some maliciously disguised portal to eternal torment and damnation.

Pushing open the heavy wooden door and passing the threshold did nothing to relieve his sense of some eldritch influence; the lobby that greeted him was cavernous, with an unseemly opulence that wholly belied the building’s exterior appearance. Everywhere were fixtures of ambiguous metallic alloy with reflections of unnatural depth. Even the murky polished marble floor gave the impression one was suspended above an infinitely deep pit, with only the good graces of one’s host preventing a plunge into the bottomless void. Much of the furniture was made from curious squamous leather that seemed to slither away from the periphery of his vision as he moved past. The walls of the lobby were covered with oversized, brooding portraits of grimly visaged men with strangely familiar names like Erich Zann, Arthur Jermyn and Charles Dexter Ward. A massive chandelier comprised of some painfully reflective crystal hung like a lurking doom over the center of the lobby and its dancing refractions contributed to the impression that the floor was dissolving and might fall away at any moment. At the far end of the lobby, dwarfed by its surroundings, rested a heavy desk of polished black wood, behind which sat the receptionist.

Wilson approached slowly, trying to clear his head of the macabre and phantastic impressions. Surely it was nothing more than the anxiety of his first day on the job. Having just completed his second year at Miskatonic University’s Alhazred Law School, Wilson had been awarded one of the few highly coveted internships with Davis, Driscoll, Reynolds, Cthulhu and Stein, and a successful summer would virtually guarantee him an offer of a prestigious position following graduation; making a good first impression was critical.

“Hello, I’m Wilson Mayfair. I’m here to see Mr. Stein.”

The receptionist eyed him suspiciously. Wilson’s first fancy from a distance had been that the young lady was quite fetching, but upon close examination some clearly unusual familial traits became manifest. Her dark hair was lustrous, but seemed to sprout from entirely too far down her neck, a fact almost successfully concealed by its extraordinary length. Her deep brown eyes were piercing from a distance, but set too far apart, giving a decidedly ichthyic appearance. Her inviting smile revealed teeth that were at once brilliant white but asymmetrical, and Wilson had the distinct impression that there was another row of them growing behind. As she lay down her perfectly sharpened pencil and reached for the phone, Wilson noticed with uneasily concealed distress that all of her fingers, though beautifully manicured, were of the same length.

“I’ll inform Mr. Stein you are here. Please have a seat.”

The receptionist motioned him not to the plush, reptilian chesterfield, but to an uncomfortable looking high back chair against the wall to the left. Hanging above the chair in a massive and ornate gilded frame was a portrait of a man. The brass plaque on the wall below the picture read “Juan Romero”, but Wilson’s mind silently urged “Montezuma” upon his consciousness. Even when he was seated with his back to the picture, he had an acute sense that the man in the portrait had fixed him with an unhealthy leer. To break the spell, Wilson peered surreptitiously at the receptionist. There was definitely something alluring about her, even with her litany of minor deformations. Oddly, she held the incongruously modern phone to her ear, but seemed not to respond to, nor participate in, any conversation; in fact she seemed entranced. Viewing her, Wilson began to form a distinct impression that there were the vestiges of gills rippling along her pale, slender neck. Surely the Absinthe from the end-of-term party was still affecting his mind. He had thought to ask for a glass of water when he felt a presence beside him.

Abraham Stein was anything but what Wilson had expected. Though he was of average height, he was healthily solid and his youthful vigor surely belied his age. He had a thick, unruly shock of straw-colored hair and a gleaming smile. His eyes were crystal blue and every feature was perfectly proportioned. As Stein extended his powerful hand, Wilson could not escape the feeling he was being greeted by a perfectly crafted marionette under the control of some sinister force.

“Mr. Mayfair! I am extraordinarily pleased to finally make your acquaintance.” Stein shook his hand enthusiastically. “Professor Bhagobt has told me so many wonderful things about you. We are so gratified that you have chosen to spend your summer with us.”

“Thank you Mr. Stein. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be associated with such a prestigious group of attorneys. I hope I will be able to do my small part to contribute to your firm’s success during my tenure.”

“Of that I have no doubt. Please follow me and I’ll introduce you to our staff. Of course you have met Aurelia. She is the principle upon which we are all organized.” Wilson was puzzled by the statement, but his attention was drawn back to the receptionist. She was no longer holding the phone, but simply stared at him with the blankness of infinity in her eyes. He felt an inexplicably empty longing despite the unnatural appearance of the woman. He suddenly realized he had been devoting entirely too much effort to his studies.

“Let us proceed to the inner sanctum, Mr. Mayfair.” Stein smiled benevolently and indicated a door behind the receptionist’s desk which Wilson had somehow escaped his noticed. Wilson could not decide if the frame of the door was tilted to the left or the right, or perhaps twisted like a helix; the handsome oak door seemed to transmogrify as it swung upon its hinges, passing through a maddening sequence of dimensions until it stood fully open revealing a narrow, wood-paneled hallway that appeared to spiral away in the distance.

Stein patiently waited for Wilson to proceed. He seemed to have no cognizance of the building’s bizarre architecture or of Wilson’s rising anxiety. “The intern’s offices are here at the end of the hallway to the left. Our partners’ offices are to the far end of the hall. The breakroom is here on the right.” Stein motioned Wilson into the first space in the entire building that appeared normal. There was a spotless ceramic double sink surrounded by an immaculate rose marble countertop supplemented by a plethora of modern accessories, including a sparkling stainless steel cappuccino machine. Wilson silently breathed a sigh of relief; perhaps, he thought, he was just over-worked and stressed by the new circumstances. His heartbeat had almost returned to a regular rhythm when he discerned a hint of salt water lurking beneath the scented smell of the disinfectant.

“You are to be the recipient of a great honor today”, Stein unexpectedly began as they returned to the corridor, suddenly urging Wilson rapidly down the hallway. Stein’s face had taken on a somnambular appearance, belying his abrupt exigency. Wilson began feeling faint, his mind unable to reconcile the sense of a whirling vortex with his eyes’ report of the perfectly level wooden floor. Stein stared fixedly ahead, but Wilson imagined he heard ‘Cthulhu’ repeated metrically as they raced forward. Stein’s grip strengthened until Wilson felt a scream of pain forming, but some uncanny force prevented it passing his lips. Wilson was on the verge of unconsciousness, when everything abruptly stopped.

Stein was looking at him with a mixture of humor and paternal concern as they stood before an innocuous seeming door nearly at the end of the maddening hallway. If not for the small brass plate which read simply “Cthulhu”, it might have been mistaken for a janitor’s closet. Though it was eerily quiet, Wilson’s head was still reeling.

“I see you have guessed the nature of your honor, Mr. Mayfair.  I can see how excited you are, as well you should be. Mr. Cthulhu never troubles himself with interns. In fact, he seldom even has time for me.” While Stein’s expression remained jovial, Wilson thought he heard a saddened inflection in his host’s voice. “You should indeed be excited and gratified. Mr. Cthulhu is a most impressive man. Most impressive.” Stein’s voice trailed off as he opened the door. Wilson had anticipated that Stein would precede him into the room, but he held back, as if fearful to cross the threshold.

“Please go in,” motioned Stein. “Cthulhu awaits you.”

Wilson slowly entered the room, first passing through a short, dimly lit hallway which appeared to be upholstered in some tough hide, like rhinoceros or elephant skin. Wilson thought how thoroughly unprofessional it was to have such poor lighting; in fact, it probably violated standards for workplace safety. The hallway terminated in an incongruously immense moldering stone arch which opened into what seemed a massive subterranean chamber, dank and unhealthy. Wilson was seized by an unfathomable dread and at that moment would have abandoned his education, career and all he held dear just to be elsewhere, but his feet defied him and continued carrying him through the enormous opening.

Certainly I am now completely mad, thought Wilson. The humble brownstone could not contain such a space as this. He had no recollection of having descended, yet his mind felt the unimaginable weight of the earth pressing on him from above and a blanket formed of the eons of moisture seeping into the cavern assaulted him on all sides. In the gloom, he was able to discern shapes slowly resolving themselves, looming structures like the cyclopean cities of some alien civilization. He tried to focus his eyes in the murky expanse and saw, bookshelves!

“I knew your father, Mr. Mayfair.”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was a calm, even tone which soothed Wilson’s ears, but reverberated in his chest. He took a further step forward and found himself standing in a cluttered, archaic office space bereft of any element of modern technology and insufficiently illuminated by a solitary banker’s lamp on the simple wooden desk, behind which sat a lumpy little man in a frayed suit with a worn fedora pulled low on his forehead, his eyes concealed by dark, horn-rimmed glasses. The man’s skin was waxy and seemed too large for his frame, hanging in folds about his chin and neck. Wilson could not determine if a smile or grimace played upon the man’s face.

“You knew my father, sir?”

“Oh, yes, very well. Please Mr. Mayfair, have a seat.” The man motioned him to a plush wing chair covered in a voluptuous, soft green leather. Wilson sat automatically, feeling like he was in the midst of an opium induced hallucinatory dream.

“My father died when I was very young. He was lost at sea, actually. I never really knew him. You were involved in marine commerce, sir?”

“Lost at sea. Very tragic, Mr. Mayfair. Yes, you might say I have some experience at sea-faring. Your father was a prideful man. I met him briefly before he died, but it wasn’t death that crushed him, it was the unbearable weight of his own pride. I often ask myself where you get this impulse, Mr. Mayfair.”

“Me, sir?”

“No, not you, young man. Your race; human beings.” The man gestured towards Wilson with a disturbingly claw-like hand.

“I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

“That is most likely Mr. Mayfair; very likely, but why have you chosen to pursue the law?”

Wilson was beginning to recover his composure, despite the surreal and horrific conditions of the interview. He was strangely drawn in by the man’s frank tone of indifference. “If the truth be known Mr. Cthulhu…” At the intonation of the name the man visibly shuddered, as if with sensual pleasure, “…I enjoy a good argument. I come from humble means and wish to pursue a career which affords me both prestige and material success. I do not want my children to repeat my circumstances.” Wilson could sense the man’s eyes examining him, although they were concealed by darkness and the fleshy, misshapen face betrayed no feeling.

“Gratification of ego and material gain. Very good, Mr. Mayfair. These are the only pure motives of man. It is better to confront your truth than varnish it with false doctrine, wouldn’t you say? In any event, this is the root of my antipathy to the Elder Gods and, by extension, humanity itself. To lie to others is a strategy; to lie to one’s self is madness, and madness is something I know well.”

Wilson was confused by the man’s references, but he felt the utmost cordiality was required by the circumstances. “Well, sir; I’m not a religious man, but I certainly understand the human capacity for self-deception.”

“Then, Mr. Mayfair, what would you say would be the most fatal harm that could be inflicted on a civilization? What would be the first brick in the foundation of human doom?”

Wilson had no idea where this conversation was going. The man passively awaited a response.

“A disease; some powerful virus, perhaps. Some unrecoverable damage to the food supply”

Wilson felt more than heard the laugh. It rolled through his head like a sarcastic shriek of terror. The uniform wall of bookshelves and the rows of antiquated books behind the man began to recede from his view as if he were moving rapidly away, but he felt and heard nothing. The man’s shadow began to grow and spread across the desk and over the faint lamp, merging with the darkness.

“An example of reasoning unto the obvious, Mr. Mayfair. I was hoping for better, but you are young.” A vast field of unfamiliar stars now filled the void behind the man, but his shadow had begun to block out even this. “The answer is loss of equity; the death of fairness. You can starve a people until they eat one another, Mr. Mayfair, but that will only ensure their physical demise, not their moral destruction. You can incinerate a civilization and all its works, but it will remain eternally lodged in the fabric of time with whatever merit it has achieved, but destroy faith in the moral order and you destroy meaning itself.”

Wilson fancied he saw the expansive outline of a pair of great, leathery black wings and felt the frigid thrust of air against his damp face as they flapped. The man was slumped back in the chair, lifeless, while a barely perceptible wriggle of ephemeral tentacles slurped voraciously around him and his voice arrived from every direction. The palpable sense of dread was returning to Wilson’s becalmed mind.

“You see, Mr. Mayfair, if you annihilate a culture’s faith in ultimate justice, you consume their soul and all that remains is the hollow shell of arrogant presumption; monuments to nothingness. We lawyers can twist the law into an unrecognizable farce, calculated to serve the interests of the powerful, until any thought of justice passes from this earth. I have escaped my watery exile and I shall have my revenge against the Elder Gods through the moral evisceration of their fragile human playthings. I shall prove to the humans that good and evil are smoke and shadows and that the Universe is beyond even indifference. They shall learn that the horror embodied in me is the only salvation against the horror of the ultimate truth!”

As the last word rumbled through his consciousness, Wilson found he sat in the comfortable green leather chair again, now before the small, bespeckled man behind the modest desk in a diminutive, simple office lined with rows of aged books, lit by clean, professional fluorescent tubes.

“And so that’s why Davis, Driscoll, Reynolds, Cthulhu and Stein have been here in Arkham for over 50 years now. I trust you will have a true adventure with us this summer, Mr. Mayfair. Before I forget, here’s the key to the executive washroom. Where has the afternoon gone? Please turn right back down the hallway. I have asked Aurelia to wait to show you out. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t shake your hand; I have a skin condition.”

A confounded Wilson found himself back in the hallway, which appeared completely normal in all respects. He traced his steps back to the heavy door that led to the lobby, and found it to be comprised of four 90 degree angles. Passing through the door, he saw Aurelia, now somehow hauntingly sad and vulnerable.

“Good night, Mr. Mayfair. I’ll show you to your office in the morning.”

Wilson thanked her and turned to leave, looking back one final time to find her fixing him with a wistful smile. Wilson thought to say something, but for the briefest moment he was sure that he saw the shadows of several rope-like things writhing beneath the desk and heard a revoltingly moist sucking sound such that he gagged on the words forming in his throat.

Roll Out the Barrels

The man in the worn easy chair was a man with a great deal on his mind. Present circumstances were as uncertain as any he had faced in his 58 years, and he didn’t much care for uncertainty. For a reason that stubbornly eluded him, his mind was drawn back to  the night he had been pulled over in Williamsburg, Iowa with that girl in his trunk. He regretted that night all those years before; he regretted his carelessness and the loss of innocent life. He regretted the fact that success breeds the expectation of success without necessarily inspiring repetition of the actions that bring success, but mostly he regretted that he had panicked and disposed of his prize before truly enjoying it.

He had been a wanderer in those days, not a nester like now; he really hadn’t even been on watch that night, just out connecting dots on the map. It had then been months since he had felt the beginning of that anxious tug that would build to an all-consuming urgency, but that night opportunity had surprised obsession when he pulled off Interstate 80 near midnight and saw her sitting on the cold concrete in front of Casey’s General Store. So many years as an apex predator had refined his perception of distress to an acute level, and he sensed the aura of death enveloping her even before he opened the car door. She was pale and slim and average and looked frightened and tired, and after kind words and coffee and her entire, pointlessly tragic life story they had been in his car on the way, she thought, to a friend’s place, a place where she could be warm and safe, at least for a while.

Things had departed from the script when she had started to squirm. He never could decide what had spooked her; his tone and facial expression had been consistent, his movements controlled, but sometimes prey will just sense the lurking predator, using some dormant primordial wisdom that informs anxiety to deliver a jolt of adrenaline an instant before the jaws snap shut. Unfortunately for the small, dark-haired girl, he was very unlike the predators with big jaws; for him, capture was just the beginning. He had punched her viciously twice below her right eye, probably not enough to damage her fragile brain, but enough to momentarily cloud her mind and, perhaps, dissuade any further resistance. She was quickly restrained with his ubiquitous duct tape and was in the hopeless darkness of the trunk before she completely regained consciousness. He was taking a moment to assess his situation and plan his pleasure when the Iowa State Trooper arrived.

He had been distracted with his thoughts and, he had to admit, careless. The blue lights rhythmically illuminated the interior of his car before he sensed the unwelcome presence, but he had not managed to remain free to pursue his satisfaction all those many years by being paralyzed by the unexpected; he always had a plan. He got out and stood by the car facing the pulsating lights. He knew this would put the patrolman on his guard, but this disadvantage was offset by the freedom it gave him to maneuver. The trooper emerged from his car, gradually rising to his full height and walking forward, looking for all the world like a massive corn-fed golem backlit by a field of stars. Standing next to his car with the girl, his girl, in the trunk, the man watched the trooper advance, calculating all the possible outcomes, and waited.

The trooper sized him up momentarily and asked what he was doing out there in the dark, stopped by the side of the road. He responded that he had gotten lost trying to get back to the Interstate after buying gas and had pulled over to get his bearings. He knew that the trooper didn’t believe him, but he didn’t care. He knew that just because the trooper didn’t believe he was lost didn’t mean that the trooper thought he had a girl bound with duct tape in the trunk. Did he have a driver’s license? Why of course he did, and here it was. Where was he headed? Lincoln, actually, to visit a friend working at the University of Nebraska. The trooper didn’t appear to be investigating anything in particular and seemed to be losing interest in the process. The man began to believe this would pass without further incident, when the girl, his girl, decided to make some noise.

The trooper turned only slightly, surprised by the muffled thump from the car. The man had anticipated this eventuality and moved with the dispassionate necessity born of years of life as an invisible horror, preying on the weak and the foolish. The blade was in his hand and wielded horizontally to slide between the ribs. He closed the small distance between himself and the trooper in one, swift lunge and all six-inches of the blade were buried in the upper left of the trooper’s back before he could react. The rest of the struggle was brief, the outcome decided. He stood contemplating the fallen giant, the trooper looking for all the world like a drunken Hawkeye fan, slumped against the car in his blue clothes with their bright yellow patches. The man took no pleasure in the trooper’s death; the patrolman had been, after all, just doing his job and was probably a decent enough fellow, maybe even with a family, but the man would not allow himself to be discovered and confined. He had to be able to find them and see the dread in their eyes. It was the only thing that could feed him, that could make him whole. The man quickly but calmly replaced his tag with one of the many concealed in the car, and searched for a place to dispose of his possession, who was now a dangerous liability. Law enforcement did not take kindly to the death of one of their own, and the effort to identify him would be intense. Later, he separately disposed of a few items, located Interstate 80, and headed east.

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The man shifted uneasily in his easy chair. He was surprised at himself for being so affected by the memory. It would be quiet an irony if he was developing some humanity at this late stage; now, when no one could be saved. Over the years the man had moved often, but as he aged, he had longed to settle and eventually he found a permanent home. Naturally, he sought seclusion, but not so much that he made his cautious disassociation from society apparent. He was careful not to be an outsider; he made certain to ritually greet his few neighbors, to make routine appearances in the small town and to explain his frequent absences by visits to a family he could never have endured. He pursued his pleasure with a methodical caution and a calculated randomness. Over the years, dozens made their way to him, the wretched refuse of broken families, failed romances and unrealized dreams. Each had learned how thin the veneer of human civility was, how easily hidden the depth of his need could be; each had come to know true dread as the last sensation of their conscious minds.

Somewhere along his twisted path the man had reached the point where he could no longer endure to leave them discarded in lonely, silent places. Eventually, they began to come to rest with him, in his home. They filled the empty spaces beneath the floors; they luxuriated under the carefully tended beds of marigolds and lilac. He was always at a project; there was never an air of neglect or any indication that his attention was anywhere but on his modest home with its large yard bordering on the deep woods that stretched for miles. Over the years he added a garage, then a shed, with neat, concrete foundations, and of late he had begun to fill them with blue plastic 55 gallon barrels, made, he noted with humor, from completely recycled components. He had gotten them for $79.95 each from a local farm supply retailer and had already acquired sixteen, although five were still empty. He had been in no hurry; life was good and there was time enough.

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The man sat in his worn easy chair focusing on the scrolling message from the Emergency Alert System. His healthy dinner sat untouched on the adjacent table. The events that had unfolded over the past few days had at first intrigued him, and later concerned him, but he found himself then, as always, incapable of true fright. The quest for this quality, so lacking in himself, had been at the root of his being for as long as he could remember. He had fed from the dread of his victims as surely as a spider nourished itself from the visceral soup of a fly. Now, he catalogued the grainy images from the television and listened to the endlessly repeated and mostly ignorant speculation and jealously absorbed the terror of the stream of witnesses and supposed victims. The plague, the virus, the judgment of God had struck the world and science and reason were insufficient to understand it or check its advance. Violence on an unimaginable scale was the new rule and the structure of society itself was in jeopardy. His few neighbors had fled to alleged safety, but he had remained, initially by choice, but now by absence of choice. He did not believe in God or the Devil or the rising of the dead, and he had on several recent occasions thought to venture out to assess the situation for himself, but he had been persuaded otherwise by the sound of containers tumbling in his garage, the random thumping on his doors and the incessant scraping on the underside of the pine planks of his carefully polished floor.