Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time (17 page)

He ran past the slaver and then stopped. The revelers became aware of what had occurred and shouted their alarm. He hated himself for this but ….

Another shot fired. Iyapo ducked from the whizzing bullet as he desperately untied William from the stake. With two people to catch, the
afiti
would have to split into two hunting parties. A slim chance but a chance, nonetheless. He wasn’t releasing the white man out of sympathy.

William slapped Iyapo on the back. “Let’s get out of here before they roast us, too.”

Both slaver and Iyapo ran through the throng of
afiti
. William grabbed a javelin and used it to cut a small swath for himself and Iyapo. Iyapo swung his chains overhead, keeping the swooping owls away from them. As soon as they entered the forest, they separated, followed no more by
afiti
because their god rumbled angrily in the temple. Unbound by Lumo’s words, their god arose from the temple and punished its worshipers.

Iyapo heard strangled cries from the City of Witches. He ran deeper into the forest until the cries disappeared in the forest canopy. When he felt safe, Iyapo stopped to rest against a thick tree. He closed his eyes, listened to his own breathing, the forest sounds, and the cool breeze that tickled his sweaty skin. The lulling sounds of the forest relaxed his muscles and he slumped onto the forest floor, drifting slowly to sleep.

He heard a gun cock. Startled, Iyapo jumped up to face a small group of white men, rifles aimed at his head. Captain William Marsh pushed through, still carrying the javelin that had saved them from the
afiti
.

“This is the one,” he said to his men.

“You ain’t never said where John was,” one man said.

“He got stupid. A lion killed him. C’mon back to the boat!” Captain William shoved Iyapo with the javelin. The other men grabbed his chains and kicked him forward. They mumbled that they had never seen a lion in this part of Africa.

Iyapo looked behind his shoulder. Captain Marsh walked fast, looking all around like a scared monkey. Iyapo knew, no matter what the Captain might say, that Lumo and his god would follow him and the white man to wherever they journeyed.

Regina Allen lives
in upstate New York, where she is attending college full-time in a nursing program and works at a hospital as a patient care associate. When not studying or working, she writes speculative fiction, reads everything she can get her hands on and researches the strangest theories born out of her dreams. She is currently working on a science fiction short story and a novel.

The author speaks:
Years ago, I researched American slavery and African kingdoms because I love history and was keenly interested in African mythologies and legends. The result was “City of Witches” and other short stories centered on the main character.

AHUIZOTL

Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas 

F
urious, the sea bellows, tearing the sails of the San Cristóbal, protests with roars of foam, yells like a woman in labour, cries like an abandoned child ....
Those were the words I managed to make out in the last, demented babbles of a Moorish youth who, with eyes popping out, threw himself overboard during the storm that lashed the ship taking me to meet my brother’s corpse.

Unlike the other passengers of the San Cristóbal, I did not embark for New Spain looking for fortune, but to stand face to face with misfortune and to bid goodbye to the last family member I had left. My brother, Fernando Villaplana, sailed in the year 1511 of Our Lord, being but a teenager. He had the fancy of becoming rich, gaining fame and possessing everything that our orphanhood had denied us. I remember seeing him, with eyes ablaze and hair uncombed, when he told me this before parting, as if the wind had already started flinging him towards those unknown lands full of wonder and danger, like the ones told in the
Amadís
. I knew from a letter of his that he had participated in the expedition commanded by Don Diego de Velázquez to the island of Cuba and that, a few years later, together with more than five hundred men, he joined the troops of Hernán Cortés to explore other lands and reclaim them in the name of His Majesty. After this, I had no news of him until, nearly thirty years after his parting, I received a letter from a friar named ‘Juan de los Ángeles’.

With beautiful and tight lettering, the friar told me how they had found Fernando’s corpse at the edge of the lake of Texcoco: “His skin was wet and slippery like that of a fish, but he did not squirm searching for the comfort of water; he remained still, as if asleep. He appeared to have no bruises or signs of violence. It was only up close that we realized his eyes, teeth and nails had been torn out with much care. ‘
Ahuizotl! Ahuizotl!
’ cried an Indian who kept us company and, drooling like a rabid dog, refused to help us carry the deceased.”

When I finished reading the epistle assuring me of a grave on sacred ground for my brother, I did not know if my unease sprang from the way in which events were narrated or the fact that I had read that name written by an unknown hand: ‘Elena Villaplana’. Letter by letter, the maroon ink on the paper from New Spain returned me to the moment in which Fernando, dragged by the wind, had left me at the door of the convent of the Jerónimas so he could follow his dreams by the sea. From then on, I was Ágata de la Inmaculada Concepción; nevertheless, with the devastating news crumpling between my hands and tears in my eyes, the Elena inside me yelled, “
Ahuizotl! Ahuizotl!
” and forced me to head towards the murky waters of the New World.

The preparations for my departure happened in a mist, as in a dream, as though I were staring beneath the water. I remember little of what happened before I found myself kneeling next to the mast, praying and commending new souls to God during such a hard trial. It was then that the young Moor came running – drenched, he seemed black and slippery, and with his eyes so ominously open, he resembled a grotesque fish. He screamed strange words, perhaps in a strange tongue. I was only able to distinguish a few in Spanish before he threw himself overboard and disappeared amidst the foam.

A couple of weeks later, we arrived at the port of San Juan, which is also called ‘Ulúa’, for they say that the natives of the islet where the fortress-port is located howled at the sea, “
Chlúha! Chlúa!
” Words that the Spaniards understood as the actual name of the place. The crew was tired. It was agreed we would spend the night in an improvised camp on the beach and, at first light, would continue towards our destination, la Villa de la Veracruz. It was a relief to rest upon firm and warm sand, so that I fell asleep almost at once. Nevertheless, my sleep was restless; I dreamt that a huge figure emerged from the sea. On the shore, little animals the size of a dog greeted it, wagging their long tails that seemed to finish upon a hand. Waves crashed with strength and brought in their waters human corpses. Some seemed like abominations between man and fish, or seemed to have been turned inside out, and their guts were showing. The little creatures devoured, with much care, the eyes, teeth and nails of the corpses dragged by the sea for the satisfaction of the monstrous figure.

I awoke, bathed in sweat and trembling uncontrollably. I tried to commend myself to the Archangel Saint Michael, but the abominable images of the dream continued to haunt me in the darkness of moonless night. I don’t know how long I was victim of this terror, but, still drenched with fear, I noticed suddenly that not far from me there were lights dancing in the palm trees. I approached them, thinking that it was a gathering of some of the mariners and it would do me well to sit before a fire. But no sailor was there: a group of strangely dressed Indians danced around a nest of palm leaves, inside which there stood a small stone figurine, no bigger than a fist. They sang in an odd tongue, but repeated constantly “
Chlúha! Chlúa! Dagoatl! Dagoatl!
” and howled like dogs, their cries increasing. The sailors from the San Cristóbal were awakened by the howling and, enraged, frightened them off by force. Soon, morning broke and I saw something shining amidst the sand removed by the dance of the Indians. It was a small stone figurine of a black-and-bright crystal, the obsidian stone they employ in the realm of the Indies to make knives. It represented the silhouette of a man with huge eyes and tiny, pointy ears. The hands, adhered to the body, resembled those of a frog and it might have had a tail that had broken off. I could not stop thinking about Fernando as I looked into the wide, large eyes of the figurine, so I took it with me.

The end of the trip was short and calm. We arrived at the Villa de la Veracruz at midday, thus I decided to leave immediately towards the city of México-Tenochtitlán, where, thanks to a letter from the Mother Superior, I would be received by the newly established convent of the Jerónimas of New Spain. The roads were tortuous and the mist did not allow me to see the mountains surrounding us. Sometimes, you could hear howls like the ones of the natives of the port of San Juan; the driver told us it was the coyotes from the mountain and that we should not be afraid. Nevertheless, I felt a drop of cold water stream down my side, until it reached the pocket of my habit, and it incremented the weight of the black figurine until I was slouching.

After I finally arrived at the convent and rested, I went to visit Friar Juan de los Ángeles at the Jesuit home. He was an old man and walked with difficulty. Even so, he wanted to take me to my brother’s grave, which was far off, in the atrium of a small chapel. As we walked together, he once more related the story of the discovery of the corpse, going into detail on the missing eyes, teeth and nails. The friar’s gaze seemed to grow empty every time he spoke of the appearance of Fernando’s skin, “moist and slippery, like a fish”. I tried to speak of something else, but he seemed engrossed, as though he did not know I was there. After a little while, we arrived at a small cemetery, where I prayed in silence. I carried no flowers to place next to the wooden cross, so I took out the figurine and decided to leave it by the grave, as a gift for my brother. Friar Juan de los Ángeles grew pale when he saw it, made the sign of the cross several times and began to scream, “The
Ahuizotl
! Have respect for the dead and take away from this sacred place the demon that murdered your brother. You, servant of the aquatic Satan, do not deserve to wear the habit with the figure of Our Lord!”

Not knowing what to do, I rushed away, disconcerted, through the cemetery.

Back at the convent I fell victim to feverish tremors, which kept me in bed for many days. I dreamt, over and over again, about the titanic figure emerging from the sea and on the beach, it was received with joy by the
ahuizotls
, who, imitating the screams of a birthing woman or the cry of an infant, devoured my brother over and over again, or made terrible necklaces of teeth and nails. One afternoon, when my fever seemed to have eased, a dark-skinned girl with black hair took me to walk by the edge of a river. The sun was sinking, revealing the intense brightness of a few stars, when the girl told me to wait, for she could hear something resembling a baby’s cry. I could not stop her. A dark, scaly hand rose from beneath the murky waters, pulled her hair and everything went black.

Days later, they found the dead girl. A little child told me her corpse glinted, like a horrible fish at the market. I resolved then to abandon New Spain forever and with it, my brother’s corpse and the terrible dreams.

I arrived at the port of Veracruz on a Thursday at dawn, the first rays from the sun greeting the sailors with hundreds of dead frogs and fish upon the sand. My ship was soon parting, but we managed to hear the screams from the coast; I felt a drop of cold water stream down my side, until it reached the pocket of my habit, and it incremented the weight of the black figurine until I was slouching. I held the figurine between my hands and, though I tried to pray, no words came out.

The waves rise until they resemble a mountain in the ocean that turns dark, like the skin of the
Ahuizotl
. Barely illuminated by the convulsive light of the candle, the obsidian figurine seems to glint by itself and I feel it coming: black, huge, stirring the ocean with its innumerable scales, its eyes eternally open. The scent of salt and blood drifts through the air. God help us.

Nelly Geraldine García-Rosa
s is a Mexican writer and a freelance copy editor. Her stories have been published in local independent magazines and small-press anthologies. When she’s not dreaming about cats or Cthulhu, she updates her lovecraftian/astronomical blog, “Desde R’lyeh ...” (
fascinantemente-freak.blogspot.com
), searching for scientific data about the time when the stars will be right.

The author speaks:
I decided to set the plot of “Ahuizotl” in early New Spain (a couple of decades after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire), because this period represented the primordial soup of the present Mexican idiosyncrasy. Aztec mythical creatures and gods, like the
ahuizotl
, were considered to be demons or diabolical beings by the Spaniards, so it was pretty interesting to “play” with the narrative, mixing that ancient lore with Lovecraftian Mythos and actual historical details.

AN IDOL FOR EMIKO

Travis Heermann

I

W
e all suspected that Emiko would give in soon. We had long prepared her “funeral” ceremony to signify her passage from this world to the other, but all these years, she had resisted.

The fishermen sometimes reported sighting her on her veranda, looking out over the Ariake Sea, a lone, hunched figure. They saw her waist-deep in surging froth, a bulwark against the tide, even in winter, head bowed under the weight of age and ugliness and stubbornness. She would have suffered less if she had listened to us.

Sometimes, the fishermen even claimed to see her out there, with her idiot son huddled next to her, his spindly arms and lumpen features like a pale, crumpled spider. Of course, that was impossible.

When Taro was alive, those two had kept to themselves, secluded in that decrepit house with the portion of once-resplendent tiled roof now collapsed in disrepair, that house which had once belonged to the proud Otomo clan. Before Taro’s crimes, he would sometimes answer the door and gaze up at the visitor, all slack face and watery eyes, tongue licking absently at cracked lips. He would croak something to his mother and she would shout back from the depths of the house to send the visitor away.

The nail that sticks up must be pounded down, as the saying goes, and ever since the village had grown prosperous, Emiko had been like a jagged splinter hiding in a freshly polished floor.

Her grandfather came from old samurai blood, but after Tokugawa’s rise to power, much of the Otomo clan had been scattered like leaves in an autumn wind. Emiko’s grandfather had been one of those leaves. To proclaim his loyalty to the new Shogunate – and escape likely execution – he had given up his swords for the life of a
nori
-farmer, but he had kept the family’s ancestral property. A farmer’s livelihood had not been sufficient to maintain such a house.

When Emiko was little, her family weathered those starveling years like the rest of us. Fields blighted by war and drought. Fisheries disappearing like schools of smelt into the cerulean depths. Even the offshore crop of
nori
refused to grow. The village’s
nori
was sought throughout the domain for its quality and even in lean times, the
nori
-farmers had always been able to sustain themselves. Then the Shogunate imposed crushing taxes to refill its coffers after decades of war. Small villages like ours staggered under the weight. Perhaps we had been cursed. The priest purified the village again and again, without improvement, until finally, he departed. We discussed bringing an augurer from Yedo, but there was no money to pay such a person. The
onmyouji
were all well-employed as the shogun and his samurai lords worked to consolidate their power. The tax collector, Takehisa, came and demanded more than we could give. He berated us, “Work harder! Fish more!” We could not, and he took his due anyway, and we starved.

Along with many of us, Emiko prayed to the gods and Buddhas for the village’s survival. The old shrine to Fugen, reachable only by an arduous trek across treacherous tide pools, up the boulder-strewn cliff side, was too difficult for many of us, but Emiko went. A portion of the shrine was devoted to mothers praying for bountiful milk, festooned with cloth effigies of opulent breasts. She and her friend Haruka would pray together and sometimes, sit for hours and look out over the sea.

After Emiko’s shame, the village women said, “What does
she
think she’s doing up there? Her dugs are withered. Her womb is a shriveled persimmon.” Even before the flower of her youth had decayed, they said, “No man will ever marry her again after what happened.”

Even after Taro was gone, she offered
sake
and rice balls to the shrine. Even just before the end, a fisherman spoke of seeing her up there: a corpulent, hunched figure, nearly hairless, kneeling, pasty hands clasped against her forehead, as if her breasts would ever again swell with milk.

It had not always been so with Emiko. A precocious child, youngest of six who survived, inquisitive, thoughtful, bright-eyed, tousle-haired, giggling, a joy amidst the village during the hard times. She and Haruka. This adventurous duo had often left behind Emiko’s younger sister, Yukiko, bereft and wailing, but that was the nature of children.

Yasuhiro had wept when he sent Haruka away with the hairy barbarians, but this father’s selfless act saved us all.

Soon after that, the fish returned – strange though they were – and rains blew in from the sea to replenish the fields. The sea gave us gold and beautiful stones. The Portuguese came every year to trade for our fish and jewelry. But that was when Emiko’s troubles started.

Only Emiko blamed Yasuhiro for what he had done; everyone else kept their reproach rightfully to themselves. Haruka’s family, also of old samurai blood, was among the first to prosper. Their fishing boats rode low in the water, laden with catch, and their coffers brimmed with strange, golden
ryo
from the sea.

Emiko’s family was also among the first. One day, her father flaunted a strange, golden coin in the marketplace. No one would accept it for payment – it was too much – so he just tucked it into his purse with a smug grin. He soon promised Emiko to Haruka’s older brother, Ryuichi, but Emiko refused.

Her poor parents were frantic – afraid that she had been kidnapped by
ronin
brigands – the night she ran away to Omuta village. Word came back from Omuta a few days later that she had married a man named ‘Kenta’, a woodcrafter’s son. She had met Kenta on the family’s trips to Omuta to sell their
nori
and buy supplies with their newfound gold. Marriage to a tradesman was a decline in station that the son of a samurai would not accept. Takeyo and her other three brothers brought her home. The hearts of some went out to her, with her eyes bloodshot from weeping, downcast from shame, brow furrowed from anger, cheek swollen.

She would never speak of what they had done to her ‘husband’, but Kenta never came to claim her. In those days, she often was seen turning a yearning gaze down the road toward Omuta.

Later that year, the sea claimed the first of us, among them Emiko’s parents and two of her brothers. It all happened so fast, we could only watch them go.

In spite of Emiko’s shame, Ryuichi’s family reasserted their proposal. In hopes of forcing her to submit, Takeyo agreed. Bruises on her arms and face bespoke a struggle of wills within the old Otomo house. Nevertheless, Emiko’s stubborn refusal outraged Ryuichi and his family, and most of the village. Ryuichi’s family had changed all of our fortunes. Who was she to be so selfish and disloyal? Takeyo could hardly be expected to support her forever. Emiko was still comely. Ryuichi swore he would one day take her to wife, even after the next shameful incident.

One evening, she ran through the village, gasping, eyes wide with madness, babbling to everyone about what she had seen coming out of the sea. No one could believe – then – such a wild story, especially coming from her.

Two years passed, three, with Ryuichi pressing his fruitless pledge for Emiko’s hand. It happened one midwinter night, with a cold rain that threatened snow. Takeyo and Ryuichi were drinking
shochu
in the
izakaya
, gorging themselves on the new kind of fish that had appeared in our nets in such abundance. Emiko was home alone; her younger sister Yukiko had just been married to Chiba, the fisherman Yoba’s son. Ryuichi and Takeyo exchanged pointed glances, after which, Ryuichi politely excused himself.

Later that night, Ryuichi ran screaming through the village – even though his legs had gnarled and he had bloated somewhat by this time – as if an
oni
were snarling at his heels. Some said he clutched his trousers about his waist with one hand, the other wrist bleeding or broken. Others said that he strode through town like the well-to-do man he was.

Emiko sought solace with Yukiko, but Chiba scorned Emiko for having brought all this trouble on herself. He forbade Yukiko from seeing her. Yukiko had enough worries, a house to tend, a plentiful catch to cure for market, without troubling herself over so difficult and stubborn a person.

Ryuichi avoided Emiko, especially when she grew large with child. She never implied that he should claim the child. Taro’s birth came in the hottest part of summer. Takeyo relegated her to a decrepit wing of the property to prevent the blood of the birth from tainting the rest of the house. The village children stole out there and peeked through decaying walls into Emiko’s sequestered world, bringing back stories of the pale, blue-veined, croaking infant who suckled and slurped at her breast.

II

Years later, after Taro was able to shamble beside her, she journeyed again to Omuta. When she returned, she faced from us a mix of disapproval and curiosity. Had she found Kenta? Would he be coming to join her? Did he still want her now that she had an idiot bastard to raise?

Only Yukiko would Emiko speak to. Emiko sobbed as she told of Kenta. The villagers in Omuta told her that he spoke often of Takeyo being “not right,” of “some darkness behind Takeyo’s eyes,” something that had shaken Kenta to the depths of his belly. He wanted away from Omuta, from being too close to the sea. Worse, he ceased practicing his trade, drank up all the family’s money, and drowned in his own vomit. Village gossip condemned his weakness. Why would any woman want such a spineless man? Why would any man want such a shamed woman?

Emiko stopped eating any fish and kept herself removed from her brothers, making her quarters with Taro in the decrepit wing of the house. Takeyo, even with his wealth of new gold, kept her in poverty.

Against this ocean of troubles, Emiko burned incense and supplicated herself at the feet of the cliff-top Fugen for hours a day, with little Taro picking at the detritus clinging to the cliff-top, gnawing at bits of lichen, leaping and gibbering at the gulls dipping in the sea breeze.

Yukiko had the village’s new goldsmith fashion the idol for Emiko, a fine image of Fugen, with a translucent, oily-green stone embedded in its belly. The stone was found on the beach amidst a small scattering of other, brightly coloured stones that appeared one morning after the ebb of the tide.

But they were not just stones. Pearls, rubies, sapphires, and others none could identify. The children who found them divided them up as pretty trinkets and took them home, unsuspecting of their worth. Soon, many of us wore fine new clothes and built larger houses.

Emiko refused to share in this prosperity or take part in its celebration. The greater the size of the catch or the more plentiful the rain on the fields, the more she spurned our society.

Among the children, she became “Ugly Old Emiko”, even though she was hardly old. They sometimes hid outside the house and taunted Taro when Emiko was away. When Taro charged them like an enraged monkey, they fled, and Taro withdrew and sulked, his yellow eyes scheming hatred. When Emiko was within, they clattered stones across the roof or lobbed them into the garden until she came out and raged at them. They left the carcasses of birds, fish, and small forest creatures near the house, or thrown onto the roof, or stuffed into crannies, cursing the place with the perpetual miasma of death. Some children, in their furtive peekings and lurkings, spoke of little Taro discovering these unpleasant gifts and hiding with them, devouring them, crunching the little bones and gnawing desiccated flesh and dry feathers and sunken eyes with his protuberant yellow teeth. Some called these tales unbelievable – what human being would do such a thing? – while others just shrugged, as if such behaviour were perfectly understandable from a boy of his lineage. His father had been among the first to embrace the changes.

The Shogun’s tax collector, Takehisa, once encountered Taro on the path into the forest. The warrior’s disdainful gaze must have soured at the sight of the boy’s sallow, moist-looking skin, matted hair and soiled loincloth. Taro would have been about ten years old, then. Takehisa related later, over cups with the village constable in the
izakaya
, that the boy had reeked of death and shit and the sea. The boy’s feral grin had unnerved Takehisa more than he would ever admit, especially after Taro approached tentatively and licked the samurai’s hand. Tasting him. Takehisa spurned the boy with his foot, hand on his hilt to draw. Some mad, mute, animal look in the boy’s eye, like a shark’s, stayed the samurai’s blade.

Emiko would sometimes venture from the house to retrieve her errant son, occasionally even apologizing for his behaviour. She dragged him back home with her iron grip, deaf to his bleating and mewling.

She encountered Takehisa once in the street, during one of her retrievals. The samurai demanded the year’s taxes from her within the week and she faced him with wrath, heedless that he could cut her down with impunity, or have her thrown into the street, left to beg for the same scraps her son found. Her beleaguered face, waxy from lack of sunlight, furrowed with anger. “What taxes can you expect from me? I have nothing! The entire village is crawling with gold! Fish practically jump into the boats. Jewels enough to ransom ten emperors wash onto the beach as if a hundred treasure ships had sunk offshore! When I was a girl, there was barely a bowl of rice to share among the entire village! And now!” She rolled her watery eyes. “You, with your new, golden fittings on your scabbard and fine, silken clothes, brought all the way from Yedo. You can find more than my share of ‘taxes’ just by taking a walk across the sand on a morning. I’ll have none of it!”

The samurai blustered and protested, but, with infinite rudeness, she turned her back without bowing, clenched her son’s hand, and left Takehisa standing there in his fume.

Emiko wore the same threadbare
kimono
every day for years, bought the most meager supplies of cheap millet, and ate vegetables that only she would grow. To spite her stubbornness, Takeyo and his brother, when their time came, dragged their sack full of gold with them into the sea.