Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time (21 page)

“When I arrived at our destination, however, I found that it was not my fate to remain in the navy, for my sea captain promptly clapped me in irons and sold me as a white slave, likely due to my being an indifferent sailor and more likely to start riots among the men than help to settle them. I was bought by a plantation owner who went by the name of Thistlewood. This man got what labour he could out of me for several years, until I managed to escape to Port Royal with only the clothes on my back and a bit of food I’d stolen. There, I lived in a manner I shan’t alarm you by describing, and only say that having done one murder, it was easy to repeat the crime for hire until I had enough coin to buy passage back to England – but, as I said earlier, when I returned home, I found every living person known to me dead or gone, except those with long memories who recalled enough of my character to kick me away from their doorsteps like a dog.”

Rosemary could not but be profoundly moved by such a tale and she felt her dormant heart begin to warm anew with sympathy for this stranger. She assured him that he should have some work on her estate. Valentine was so overcome that he took Rosemary’s hand in his – but their mutual felicity was interrupted by Mr. Villein, who chose that inopportune moment to enter Rosemary’s chambers uninvited.

“What is the meaning of this treachery?” cried Mr. Villein, for though he often engaged in infidelities, the notion that his bride might do the same did not sit well with him, being that he was a jealous man by nature. “Release my wife, foul vagabond!”

“Wife!” exclaimed Valentine, his yellowish complexion turning grey. “How is it that I return home, only to find myself betrayed by one whom I thought harboured love for me?”

It would be impossible to guess whether Rosemary or Mr. Villein was more confused by this ejaculation, but neither had time to linger in a state of wonder for very long. The man withdrew a veritable cannon of a flintlock and cast off his wretched, threadbare overcoat to reveal that beneath it, he wore a rich, emerald-green brocade vest threaded through with designs wrought in gold and silver. His breeches were of the finest satin. When he looked down his nose at them like a lord, instead of lowering his eyes like a cottar’s son, they saw he had all the bearing of a gentleman of high rank. Recognizing him at last, Rosemary shrieked. Mr. Villein paled and took a step back. Though strangely altered by time, the man was unmistakably Basil Vincent, Lord Calipash, returned at last to reclaim by force what should have been his by right of birth!

IV

The conclusion, detailing the reunion of the Ivybridge Twins – an account of the singular manner in which Rosemary defeated the gangrene that threatened her continued good health – what the author hopes the reader will take away from this Infernal History.

“
You!” cried Mr. Villein in alarm. “How
dare
you? How
can
you? They said the navy would keep you at least a decade in the service of this country!”

“
They
?” demanded Rosemary. “Who?”

“The press gang!” blustered Mr. Villein. “For the sum I paid them, I’ll have them –”

But the Infernal Twins never discovered what Mr. Villein’s intentions were regarding the unsatisfactory press gang, for Rosemary, overcome with grief and rage, snatched the flintlock pistol out of Basil’s grasp and shot Mr. Villein through the throat. A fountain of blood gushed forth from just above Mr. Villein’s cravat-pin, soaking his waistcoat and then the carpet, as he gasped his surprise and fell down on the ground.

“Basil,” she said. “Basil, I’m so – I didn’t –”

“You
married
him?”

“It was all Mother’s doing,” said Rosemary, rather hurt by his tone.

“But –”

“You were gone,” she snapped, “and lest Mr. Villein marry some common slut and turn Mother and myself out of our house ....”

Even with such reasonable excuses, it was some time before Rosemary could adequately cajole Basil out of his peevish humor. Indeed, only when Rosemary asked if Basil had lived as a monk during the years of their estrangement did he glower at her as he had used to do and embraced her. They sat companionably together then and Basil gave her a truer account of his absence from Calipash Manor:

“The carven ivory head which our loathsome former tutor bequeathed unto me on the 15th anniversary of my birth was the instrument, strangely, of both my undoing and my salvation,” said Basil. “Mr. Villein lied to me that I was the manifestation of the old god which it represents – indeed, I believe now that his intention was take me away from you so that he might have you for his own; that I, like my father before me, would be driven to suicide by the whispered secrets of that divine entity. Little did he know that, while I am not some sort of fleshly incarnation of that deity, I was born with the capacity to understand His whispered will and walk along the sacred paths that were more often trod when His worship was better known to our race.

“I believe once Mr. Villein saw that I was only mildly troubled by these new visions, he concocted a plot to be rid of me in a less arcane manner. The night before you discovered my absence, he let himself into my chambers and put a spell upon me while I slept that made me subject to his diabolical will. I awoke a prisoner of his desire, and he bade me rise and do as he wished. Dearest sister, I tell you now that you did not detect a forgery in my note, for it was written by none other than myself. After I had penned the false missive, Mr. Villein bade me follow him down to Ivybridge, whereupon he put a pint of ale before me and compelled me, via his fell hold upon me, to act in the manner of a drunken commoner, brawling with the local boys until the constable was called and I was thrown in jail. Not recognizing me, due to my long isolation, my sentence was as I told you – that of forced conscription into the navy.

“To a certain point, my tale as I told it to you whilst in the character of the scoundrel Valentine was true – I suffered much on my voyage to Jamaica and was subsequently sold as a slave. What I did not tell you was the astonishing manner of my escape from that abominable plantation. My master hated me, likely because he instinctively sensed his inferiority to my person. My manners mark me as a noble individual, even when clad in rags, and being that he was a low sort who was considered a gentleman due to his profession rather than his birth, my master gave to me the most dangerous and disgusting tasks. One of his favourite degradations was to station me at the small dock where the little coracles were tied up, so that I could be given the catches of fish to clean them, constantly subjected to wasp stings and cuts and other indignities of that sort.

“Yet, it was this task that liberated me, for one afternoon, I arrived at the dock to see the fishermen in a tizzy, as one had the good fortune of catching a dolphin. The creature was still alive, incredibly, and I heard its voice in my mind as clearly as I heard their celebration.
Save me and I shall save you
, it said unto me in that language that has always marked me as bacchant to the god of which I earlier spoke. I picked up a large stick to use as a cudgel and beat the fisherfolk away from their catch, telling them to get back to work, as the cetacean was of no use to our master. He should want snapper or jackfish for his dinner rather than oily porpoise flesh. They heeded me, for they were a little afraid of me – often, as you might imagine, dear sister, bad things would happen to those who chose to cross me in some way – and I heaved the dolphin back into the sea. At first, I thought it swam away and that it had merely been sun-madness that had earlier made me hear its voice, but then, after the fishermen had paddled out of sight, the dolphin surfaced with a bulging leather satchel clutched in its beak. It contained gold and jewels that my new friend told me were gathered from shipwrecks on the ocean floor, and that I should use this wealth to outfit myself as a gentleman and buy passage back to England. The creature’s only caveat was that, upon my arrival, I must once again visit the sea and return to one of its kin the ivory head, as our tutor had not, as it turns out, been given the object. Rather, it seems that Mr. Villein defiled an ancient holy place near Delphi during his travels in Greece by stealing the artifact away from its proper alcove.

“I agreed to these terms and, after waiting at the docks for a little longer so I might poison the fish it was my duty to clean, and thus enact a paltry revenge upon my tyrannical master, hastened back to Devonshire. I knew nothing of your situation, but feared much. Upon returning home, I assumed the persona of Valentine as a way of ascertaining if, in my absence, your sentiments had changed toward your long-absent brother and the manner in which we were accustomed to living with one another. Seeing your heart go out to such a picaroon assured me of your constancy and I regret very much that I earlier so impugned your honour. But sister, now that you know of my distresses, you must tell me of yours – pray, how did you come to be married to Mr. Villein and so afflicted by the disease that I see nibbles away at your perfect flesh?”

Rosemary then recounted what has already been recorded here, and she and Basil resolved upon a course of action that shall comprise the
denouement
of this chronicle. Both were determined that the gangrenous affliction should not claim Rosemary, but until Lady Calipash, wondering why her daughter did not come down to dinner, intruded into the parlour where the siblings colluded, they could not see how. The idea occurred to the Twins when Lady Calipash’s alarm at seeing Mr. Villein’s corpse upon the carpet was so tremendous that she began to scream. Basil, fearing they should be overheard and the murder discovered before they had concocted an adequate reason for his unfortunate death, caught Lady Calipash by the neck when she would not calm herself. As he wrapped his fingers about her throat, Basil noticed the softness of his mother’s skin, and, looking deeply into her fearful eyes, saw that she was still a handsome creature of not five-and-thirty.

“Sister,” he began, but Rosemary had already anticipated his mind and agreed that she should immediately switch her consciousness with Lady Calipash’s by means of witchcraft she and Basil had long ago learned (and occasionally utilized in their youthful lovemaking) from the donkey-headed eel-creature they had conjured, and henceforth inhabit her own mother’s skin. This was done directly. After securely locking Rosemary’s former body (now occupied by their terrified mother) into the family crypt, along with Mr. Villein’s corpse, mother and prodigal son, rather than brother and sister, had the carriage made ready and they drove to the head of the River Plym, whereupon Basil summoned one of the aquatic priests of his god and handed over the relic that has figured so prominently in their narrative.

To conclude, the author hopes that readers of this History will find this account entirely mortifying and disgusting, and seek to avoid modeling any part of his or her behaviour upon that of the Infernal Ivybridge Twins – though, to be fair, it must be recorded that, for all the duration of their cacodemoniacal lives, the Twins preserved the tenderest affection for each other. Still, there has never been found anywhere in the world a less-worthy man or woman than they and, until the moonless night when the Twins decided to join the ranks of the cetaceous worshipers of their unholy deity – Lord Calipash being called thence, his sister long-missing her former amphibious wanderings – there was not a neighbour, a tenant, or a servant who did not rue the day they came into the company of Basil and Rosemary.

Molly
Tanzer
is the managing editor of
Lightspeed
and
Fantasy Magazine
. Her fiction has been published in
Running with the Pack
,
Crossed Genres
, and
Palimpsest
. The account of her adventures going minigolfing with zombie polka band The Widow’s Bane appeared in the September 2010 issue of
Strange Horizons
. Please visit her any time at her website, http://mollytanzer.com

The author speaks:
I wish I had a better story about how I came to write “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins”, but basically, I was watching 
Barry Lyndon
 and thought to myself, “I would really like to write a picaresque but about incestuous twin necromancers.” Later that evening, I got out my copy of
Tom Jones
to peruse for a bit for inspiration and right there on the first page, there’s this line: “The Tortoise … besides the delicious
Calipash
and
Calipee
, contains many different kinds of Food ....” The explanatory note told me that
calipash
was “[A] gelatinous, greenish substance lying beneath the upper shell of a turtle” and it seemed an appropriately disgusting family name, with nice, aquatic resonance for the Lovecraftian element I knew I wanted to incorporate. I desired the story to have a similar feel to many of the 18th century novels I studied while getting my Master’s degree; setting the action in that time period led me to think of Neoclassicism, which led me to consider the bizarre, Apollonian elements of “The Temple”, and somehow, in the end, all that randomness became “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins”. Let this serve as a cautionary tale to all considering a degree in the Humanities ....

BLACK LEAVES

Mason Ian Bundschuh 

I
n 1838, Lars Levi Læstadius went among the Sami to record the legends and myths of the last indigenous people of northern Europe. Their memory stretched back five thousand years, into a time when science was not the god of the age; when what was in the darkness of night and in the mists of the deep forests was not tame or mindless Nature; when things walked that now are called ‘superstitions’.

In his travels, Læstadius teased out from the secretive Sami all that he could and, when he returned, fevered and hollowed out, like a man who had been stranded alone on a ship adrift, he presented his findings as a series of treaties. But cold logic and the scientific method were already solving all mysteries; what use had anyone for the mad ramblings of savages? Those who had commissioned it quietly hid his manuscript.

Over the next 159 years, a piece was lost here, or sold to a private collector there, until in 1997, the last remaining known portions were published. But it did not contain all that Læstadius recorded during his cold years in the land of the Sami.

These words come from the darkness carried by the reciting of the elders and were taught to me by Etuva, who heard it from Pathu Sharp-Nose.

We were on the hunt, swift and silent through the trees, our prey quickly losing ground. But it escaped us in a gorge where no escape should be found. Our spears came up empty. Beyond the brambles where it disappeared, there was a dark passageway in the mountain where a hidden spring had carved a tunnel deep through the stone.

Into it we went, sharpened ash before us, moss-wet rocks on either side. We followed a winding path so narrow even the women among us could not walk abreast. Long we walked; the light waned and grew dim. When the sun had almost been forgotten, we came out once again into the daylight. This was a great joy.

We stood in a vast bowl surrounded by unbroken cliffs footed by tumbled scree, our way hard in the loose stone. In the center grew a great forest, old and strong. We marked our passageway with a cairn and put red blood-palms to the capstone to seal it.

Into the mirk we went, our hearts were filled with curiosity and daring. This place was surely a place of power, a place to find one’s destiny. We came at length to the center of the forest, as best we could tell. It was a clearing on a low hill, empty and barren but for eight dead trees standing in the dusty center – a circle of ancient grey wood twisted into gruesome shapes. None of us would touch these trees, for each had the feel of a tortured thing.

The day had grown long. Not one of us wished to be close to this profane ground at nightfall. We went back into the forest and grew excited at the sudden smell of cook-smoke. Ash-needles at the ready, we advanced through the woods, winding closer to the smoke of man. We came to a small clearing, in the midst of which stood a rundown cabin of strange angles. It had many doors, but few windows, and seemed mostly to be made of corridors. Not a soul we found. The house was still and empty. But the fading smell of a cook fire would not leave us, so we made camp.

There was a dread in the air that increased with the darkening dusk. Even we would not risk a night outside under the strange trees. Into the house that was not a house we moved. Choosing a room where we could build a fire and guard the door, we dared to sleep with only a single watch.

In the morning, we saw that we had not been left alone. Our man Pitu was dead in the doorway. Teeth had been laid into him. Of the red water that is life to men, there was none left. His axe was in his hand; a strange muddy ichor smeared it. We knew it would mean death to stay in that valley any longer. Its curse lay over us like a shadow on our hearts.

Back through the forest we rushed to find the cairn that marked our way, but of the marked pile there was no trace. We circled the steep cliffs of the valley, looking for our narrow entrance, but the wall was unbroken, the cairn gone.

Our empty stomachs forced us to cut into the forest for game. Birds and deer were plentiful. Passing through the forest, we came across several more ruins. Some were mere stone jumbles with long-rotted timber. It was not long before we found ourselves back in the clearing at the center of the forest. Though none of us knew we’d gone so far into the woods. We had been brought back to this place against our will.

The stunted trees still stood in the clearing, though in the lowering sunlight there seemed a ghastly tinge to their limbs. There were now wilted, dark, leaves creeping from the repulsive branches. On one branch, a fresh axe-cut gleamed pale against the grey bark.

The sun was in its last watch and we knew that we had to flee. Into the silent woods we rushed, to circle the towering stone wall and find our way home. But we grew disoriented – I know not how. We could not find the edge of the forest and night was now upon us. Whatever thing hunted in this place, it had surely set its face against us. We made a ring of fire, the center well-stocked with tinder. We would make our stand and shake our spears at whatever appeared.

The night came on us with terror. The woods were not empty; we were not alone. Dark shapes passed under the eaves beyond the firelight. May we all face death in battle instead of the cold, stalking dread that we faced that night.

No star flew in the sky, no moon, or even the silvery outlines of the edges of clouds. All was rustling, restless dark. We kept the fire high, but knew its protection was as thin as stalks of dried grass. If we made it through this night, we’d not last another.

Then the singing started, cold and cruel – as if it were the maddening moon herself given voice. No words we could understand, but the song struck us dumb. We all felt the pull, the call of the empty hunger from beyond the fire. Each of us fought to stay within the protecting circle of flames. Our woman Ela yielded. Out of the ring of her clan she passed, though we called and shouted after her. Her eyes were already dead. The singing stopped. Now we heard only a slow, wet rattling and then nothing. The silence was worse.

Morning came and we still stood at our dwindling fires, spears still raised, though our hearts were grim. The sun could not warm us. Once again, we headed to the circling cliffs, searching for our cairn and the way out. But the stone wall remained unbroken. The trap was set and closed.

Sleep could not be kept from us any longer if we were to survive another night. Our man Melethu took the watch and we laid down our heads.

To us came troubled dreams – an image of a little girl who sat on a stool against the heavy doorway of a dirty hut. She sang softly at the night beyond. The night wanted to get in, but the girl sang so that it could not pass. The girl turned to us, stared at us and pointed towards the door. Her mouth opened, but only song came out. Eventually, she took a breath and said in a strange tongue, “They want blood and warmth, for they have none of their own.” The sulking silence of the hungry night beyond the door erupted in a noise too terrible to describe. Hurriedly, the girl began singing again, but it was too late.

We were now awake and the terrible noises had not stopped; nor was it still the hours of the day. The darkness of dusk had long since filled the whole sky.

Our man Melethu was beyond raising alarm. Our woman Hma rushed towards the knot of rags that had been Melethu, spear down. But to us it appeared that long limbs reached down from the very trees above and snatched her from our sight. Only her bodiless screams drifted down over us.

Madness came over us as dark shapes rushed among us. Our spears struck blindly. It was only the accidental stumbling into the near-dead fire by our woman Hallaf that spared us. Sparks and light flared over the scene of blood and carnage, there was a rush, and we were once again alone. There were only the two of us now: man and woman, as it was in the beginning. But Hallaf was wounded direly.

Piling wood and brush high on the fire, we sang songs over the dead then waited grimly for the dawn, back to back. Death was impatient to devour us. We would hold off for several hours more. The sun finally rose in the East, filling the bowl of the valley with sanity again. We were but two, but we were two of the battle clan. We would seek out death for a fight.

Pushing into the underbrush, we headed deeper into the woods. Finally we came to that accursed clearing where stood the ancient withered trees. Full terrible they drank from the fresh-dug earth; dark-red sap oozed from gouges in their grey trunks, gouges made by spears. Crows perched on the wormy branches. Their wilted leaves trembled in the midmorning light. We had no doubt of what lay buried at the feet of these terrible trees.

Apart from the cries of battle and shouts of war, none of us had spoken for days. None of us had dared to break the silence of the hunt. But now, the horror of this place washed over us: we were no longer on the hunt; we were the hunted.

Our woman Hallaf, the last besides the teller of this tale, lifted her spear to the gnarled wood of the cursed tree. The vile boughs skittered as though a bitter wind blew through them. A memory of a dream brought forth words of dread: “They want blood and warmth, for they have none of their own.”

We took our hand-axes from our belts.

The sap ran thick and red from wounds, as blade bit into wood. We raised our hands swiftly, hewing the rotting trunks unceasingly. The branches shuddered; the crows screamed as with the voices of the damned, but still, our iron bit deep into the splintering flesh. One by one, we toppled the awful trees. The stench of gore rose over the stony clearing.

Our work was not done.

Stacking the stinking wood over the bleeding stumps, we piled the pyre high, that not even the roots would escape the fire. Every fallen branch on the edge of the ring of trees, every swath of dry grass, was added to the heap till the sun was well past its zenith. With flint and iron, we made a spark. With breath and tinder, it turned to a flame. With stacks of wood, it burned in a blaze. The bubbling limbs hissed and steamed – a thousand voices of pain. Fire licked at the devil’s bark, blackened the vile branches.

Our grim task done, we stumbled back through the cool woods away from the carnage of that cursed grove. Our stiffening wounds slowed us. Breaking through the outer trees, we faced the tall, circling wall of stone. Here, our woman Hallaf could go no further. Her wounds were very great. She died there in the sunlight of the stony slope, out from under the deceiving shade of that place. Falling softly, without a word, she died.

Now there is no more we; there is only I. The last left of those who passed into this valley. I am now alone.

It was almost evening when I found the passage in the stone. We had passed this place several times. Each time, it had been hidden from us. I did not dare stay in that place one more night. I would rather pass through the narrow tunnel in darkness than see the cold stars from within the valley again.

I alone left that grove. I alone returned. We were broken apart there and I shall never go back, even to bury Hallaf, whom I loved.

Novelist and short-stor
y writer Mason Ian Bundschuh was raised in Hawaii, educated in England and dwells in Las Vegas, where he occupies his time messing with helicopters, reading Old English and rocking with his band Atlas Takes Aim. He also jams a mean ukulele and surfs ... but not in Las Vegas. You can find him at
www.MasonBundschuh.com

The author speaks
: The Sami were the last hunter and gatherers of Europe, an archaic anomaly left over from the Ice Age; but very little is known of them, and their primitive mythology and religion. I’d been reading the
Kalevala
(which were Finnish oral traditions collected in the 19th century) and was intrigued by the description of the Sami as an alien, mysterious and somewhat fantastical race who worked strange rites in the inhospitable wilderness of the north. One man had gone among the Sami to preserve their secrets – that part of my tale is true, as is the strange fact that his manuscript was suppressed and then lost. My imagination took over when I asked myself what the Sami may have known that was so horrible that scientific and enlightened men would hide it from the world.