Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (12 page)

“Call me Mia,” the girl said. My voice sounded higher and sweeter than I'd thought it actually did. Like hearing myself recorded. Mia let go of my hand and I fell backwards, all the strength out of me. I was left crumpled on the floor, barely able to move.

That's not me
. It didn't matter what I thought—it looked like me, down to the swollen scratch on my neck where I'd been bitten by a mosquito last night. It was me. Without any actual me-ness inside it.

The Mia-Sullivan-thing dusted its hands down its new body and frowned momentarily before its face brightened. “Excellent.” Flushed with an eager light, it stepped toward the portal and brushed its fingers down the thinning veil. The grey mist parted, rolling back to reveal the onion-dome building clearly. From what I could tell the portal had opened in a doorway in a narrow street. It was shaded, and humid air seemed to seep into Tor's little room.

“Mundus,” Mia-Sullivan said. “Oh, you beauty.” And stepped through.

§

Now I walk the Long Road in a skin that is prettier than any I have ever owned. Sullivan's face and voice plastered over me. I walk it alone. Except for the mute Butcher Boys, who recognize something in me, some sea-side speck of a city they half-remember. They cannot talk to me, and no-one else will. With my pretty-Jesus face, with my long artist's hands, I am not welcome in Jarry. I try to follow the caravans of the Dreamers, hoping that one of them will dream me a way back home, but the years crawl past and I have forgotten the shapes of the kelp language and the spell I want to draw me once more to my ocean.

I walk the purgatory ring-road between the sound of the sea and the promise of a stranger heaven, my phone held out before me, waiting for some signal to shine in its black face. But I already know the dream is ended.

01011010 01100101 01110010 01101111

None of the four women and men assembled in the octagonal conference room were present when the chamber below the southwestern flanks of Arsia Mons, more than one hundred meters below the extinct caldera, was opened. Not one among them are field, though all have been trained for field work. They are each kept safe from the dirt and grime, from ionizing radiation, pathogens, the hazards of low gravity and decompression. The various perks of their position within the Conglomerate include this sanctuary. They keep their hands clean. They do not have to spend long hours in decontamination or worry about cave-ins. Here in their ivory tower, they gather twice daily to examine and discuss the fruits of their numerous subordinates' daily labors. On Mars, there are no Sundays off or holidays. On Mars, there are no unions and precious little in the way of safety regulations.

“I’m guessing we still don't know how the security protocols were breached,” says the woman at the head of the long table molded from the same translucent Makroclear as the visors of the SAS walkabouts worn by the field scientists. Her name is Sayles, Chief Warrant Officer Tine Sayles, and she speaks with only the faintest hint of an Australian accent. Sayles makes no attempt to hide the salt-and-pepper of her long dreadlocked hair. Her clothing is immaculate, stylish, shipped all the way from the finest shops of the Carousel du Louvre and Dry Manhattan.

“Not an inkling,” replies the man on her left. “It was a clean inbound hit. Whoever made the slice, the crackers left nothing whatsoever behind. So there’s not much hope of a backtrace. Access Control is still double-shifting, but, you ask me, I think the best news we’re going to get is that the mesh suffered no permanent damage.”

“It’s a goddamn PR nightmare,” mutters the man to the right of Sayles, and it may be he’s muttering only to himself. “
That’s
what it is, and who gives a shit
how
the worm got through. It got in, and it got out again, and even
if
the crackers are found, nothing’s going to undo the damage.” The man is the youngest of the bunch, the true color of his eyes concealed behind turquoise contact lenses. On Earth, he oversaw digs in Pakistan and the Zagros Mountains of Iran; on Mars, he’s never even left HQ. He was born in Turkey on the final day of the bloody Ekmek Savaşları.

The fourth and final member of the Division is a slight woman in a banana-yellow suit. Her name is Emily Liang. Centered perfectly between her eyes is a tattoo she got while still in college—the kanji
兵
—because she’d intended to sign up with the US Navy after graduation, but instead took a prestigious research position at Yale Geology. She stares at the headlines scrolling by on the feed suspended above the translucent table.

“‘Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King,’” she says and chews the tip of a stylus.

“What?” asks Sayles, leaning slightly towards Dr. Liang. “What did you say?”

Liang points at the news crawl. “All these press comparisons between the Jeanne temple and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen,” she replies. “I’m surprised none of the casters have decided to run with the Curse of the Pharaohs angle. The deaths of Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon and the others who financed the excavation and opened the tomb. Now, wanna talk about drumming up ratings? That would do the trick.”

“Right now,” says Sayles, “I think they’re plenty enough happy with talk of aliens.”

“Still, she’s right. Pissing off the Gods of the Red Planet,” says the man on Sayles’ left, after permitting himself a quiet, brittle sort of laughter. His name is Jack Doran, and he’s a Conglomerate man, through and through. One of the cut-and-dried, petri-custom-grown for the job under the IVF program instituted in 2152 after all those chatty androids proved unreliable. “Here we are, arrogantly angering the very God of War. What would the wrath of the Kings of Egypt be by comparison?”

No one answers the question, which all four understand is entirely rhetorical, and neither do any of the other three laugh. There’s maybe half a minute’s worth of silence, and then CWO Sayles sighs and says, “So we put this mess behind us, and we get on with the work. The work is all that matters.”

There’s a general murmur of agreement from her colleagues. Still, Doran points out there will be a formal inquiry; there's simply no way around that.

“We cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sayles tells him. Sayles is given to clichés. “Right now, we stay focused on what Exploratory’s bringing up from the temple.”

Emily isn’t comfortable with the assumption that the discovery below the skylight
is
a temple, and she’s said so repeatedly. But, as Sayles might tell her, now is not the time to beat a dead horse, so Liang doesn’t press the matter.

Sayles motions to the greenish stone artifacts arranged in a neat circle at the center of the table, each one supported on its own molded pedestal of Makroclear. Then she uses the same hand to shut off the feed above the table.

“This morning I received a directive to switch our attention from the general layout and architecture of the tomb to particular relics recovered from the site.”

“And it came from—?” asks the man with turquoise contact lenses. His name is Kağan Çetinkaya.

“Not that the directive’s provenance actually matters, but it came from Dominic in corporate. Now, can I continue?”

“Please do,” he says. He and Liang exchange scowls that are not missed by Sayles.

“As you know from the reports, all seven of these were recovered a week ago from niches in the north wall of Tier Four, Quadrant Twenty-Seven. One of the chief ways, of course, that they are remarkable is that none were the least bit dusty. Another is that each is carved from porphyry, which as you should also know has, surprisingly, yet to be discovered onworld by the survey’s teams. It certainly should be here somewhere, given the requisite dynamothermal metasomatism certainly occurred at various times in the past. Indeed, preliminary isotopic analyses indicate the rock is native, and I’ve been asked to set aside the fact that porphyry deposits have not yet been located.”

Liang adds, “And the sculptures are being considered as a priori evidence that they eventually will be found.”

“Precisely,” continues Sayles. “Plus, we’ve covered the petrological curiosities exhibited by the constituent talc, chlorites, and amphiboles, relative to terran porphyry. Deviations from the expected refractive index, pleochromism, specific gravity, diaphaneity, and etcetera. Old news. But. Now, look at them a moment, and afterwards I’m going to stress some of the highlights from today’s dossier.”

“Look at them? What the hell for? Have they changed since yesterday?" asks Çetinkaya. "Because, if not, I’ve seen enough of the damn things to last me a lifetime."

“Kağan, trust me,” Sayles tells him “Your previous reactions have been duly noted and logged. Now, shut up and look at them anyway.”

“You having bad dreams again?” Liang asks Çetinkaya.

"Fuck you," he mutters.

But he does as he's been told—they all do as they’ve been told—and sit silently staring at the objects from the tomb. After five minutes Sayles breaks the silence.

“Excellent. Now, have a look at the briefing, second page.”

Liang, Doran, and Çetinkaya each pull up page two. Doran is the first to speak, and he only whispers “Extraordinary.”

“Fuck all,” Çetinkaya says and looks at Tine Sayles. “What
is
this bullshit. Is this some sort of joke, payback from corporate over the security leak?”

“We had nothing to do with the leak,” Liang says, speaking almost as softly as had Jack Doran.

“You think the swells give two shits who was responsible?”

“The Board has many fine qualities,” Sayles chimes in, “but I haven’t found a sense of humor to number among them. The report’s genuine. You can check the references if you think otherwise. A shame one of you isn’t an art historian.”

Jack Doran laughs again and magnifies one of the images in the dossier. “They’re almost indistinguishable.”

“To be precise,” says Sayles, “if you check Table 7, you’ll see that laser sweeps turned up mean deviations of less than .052 percent on every one of them, which is, in and of itself, rather remarkable.”

“I don’t care. I’m not buying any of this,” Çetinkaya declares and pushes his chair away from the table, turning to look out one of the clear walls at the vast expanse of the Tharsis. He gazes in the direction of Arsia Mons and the cavern skylights, mercifully much too far away from HQ to see with the naked, unaugmented eye.

Liang shakes her head, more in amazement than disbelief. Since the discovery of the temple, she's learned to accept an awful lot of strange shit. “You’re asking us to believe a man carved essentially identical versions of these things two and a half centuries ago on Earth.”

“No. For now, I’m only asking you to consider this… anomaly.”

“Anomaly,” mutters Çetinkaya. “I need a drink.”

 Liang extends her right hand, actually reaching for the artifact designated KSZ7812, though handling the objects is strictly forbidden. Her fingers stop only millimeters from receiving a painful shock from the electric barrier encircling the seven pedestals. She pulls her arm back, stares a moment at her fingers, then begins reading the dossier more closely.

“We’ll reconvene after lunch,” says CWO Sayles and stands up. But she’s the only one of the four who leaves the octagonal room.

01001111 01101110 01100101

Excerpt from TXO Brief TM/ex2/ Sol 298/Nevada 28-7-2141:

EYES ONLY/CTS

RE: recoveries KSZ7818-KSZ7814 (T4/Q27)

Fr: “THE QUIRKY QUIXOTIC KINGDOM OF HENRY CLEWS JR.” [Lannie Goodman, The
Sienese Shredder
, 2007]—

{=In the complex cosmology of the world according to Clews, this particular species is the fallen aristocrat of the roaring twenties—a debauched alcoholic gambler, portrayed as a smirking hippo head with half-closed eyes whose curvaceously feminine body of feathers is supported by hideous clawed legs.

Typically, Henry Clews’ thinly disguised pun on “hypo-critter” reflects the autodidactic artist’s approach to all his creations, whether sculpture or literary drama––the use of wit and neologisms to spin out his complex web of personal obsessions. As a renegade from the stultifying 1890s high society of “Old New York” (as described by his contemporary, Edith Wharton), Clews evolves from an erratically brilliant prankster and college flunky into a self-appointed philosopher on the moral weaknesses of humanity. Both childlike and vituperative, Clews reigns with wicked glee over his own private Eden within the fortressed walls of La Napoule, which he recreates stone by stone, engendering an entire family of modern gargoyle demons and spirits.

These creatures, carved in precious blocks of pink, grey and green porphyry, also reappear in the columns of the cloister, the walnut arches of the dining room, and various other unexpected nooks and crannies all over the castle. Reminiscent of the hybrid animal kingdoms of Hieronymus Bosch, Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss, they comprise a stylized mix of cultures and species: Oriental, Hindu, Inca and African-featured cross-breeds of fish, crustaceans, birds, reptiles, monkeys and predatory beasts. Among the zoomorphic cast of characters, for example, are the
Shug
(a parrot with elephant feet and a lizard’s tail); the
Og of Octopi
(a long-tentacled half bird, half octopus); the
Shat of Snakes
; the
Doodles of Dukes
; the friendly
Gilk of La Napoule
; the wrinkled
Goohoo of Frogs
; the
Gamanyune
, bird of illomen; and the ubiquitous
Jins
, laughing gnomes who haunt the chateau.=}