She Walks in Shadows (8 page)

She’d braided her hair around the crown of her head, so it looked like a coronet, and threaded crimson beebalm through it, bright as rubies, bright as blood.

He arrived at dusk and she’d had to keep calm, tamp down her relief. Lavinia watched as he hesitated at the edge of the yard, taking in his expression as he examined the lurching gambrel roof of the two-storied house, with its peeling paint and missing roof slates.

Lavinia left him to knock anxiously five or six times, before she stepped onto the porch, and gave him a cool smile and a chaste kiss on the cheek. He blushed, but it barely showed on his smooth, olive skin. He was so young, this cousin of hers, a good decade or more her junior, so well-raised. He’d brought flowers —
What a lamb!
— and not some common bunch either, not wildflowers picked from the roadside or garlands pilfered from the headstones of Dunwich’s bone orchard, like some had offered, trying to get into her knickers. No, it was a real bouquet, tied with a ribbon, a
proper
tribute! Lavinia’s heart sang in spite of itself.

She put the arrangement just inside the door and when he’d objected, “They need water,” she’d covered his mouth with her own to still further protest. When he’d grown quiet and hard, she broke away. Lavinia gathered up the brand she’d prepared earlier, one end wrapped around with hessian and soaked in pitch. She used the flint and steel to strike a spark and the flambeau burst into life.

Rist took the hand she offered and they set off towards Sentinel Hill, the flame dancing in the wind, throwing shapes and shadows before them, flashing in eyes that hid in the undergrowth and bushes on either side as they processed in silence.

The path was much easier than the one Rist had tried to blaze a few weeks before. Indeed, it seemed as if the foliage made a point of drawing back so as not to snag Lavinia’s ancient finery. He’d been worried sparks from the torch might fall onto her dress, turning her into a Roman candle, but the fire seemed respectful, too.

By the time they surmounted the summit, the flare was dwindling, almost spent, but Rist didn’t doubt that his cousin would have been able to negotiate the dark with her confident step and astonishing pink eyes. They entered the circle of standing stones with its table-like rock in the center. Lavinia didn’t waste any time, placing the dying brand on the mountain of kindling set closest to where the hill dropped steeply away, but still inside the stone ring.

She turned to face Rist, smiling as the balefire lit and leapt. Lavinia reached up and pulled the dress from her shoulders, sliding it slowly until she stood in a pool of sepia froth. She rolled her shoulders, making her breasts bounce a little.

Rist noticed only that, despite their heaviness, the bosoms still sat high, never having had a child to drag them down. He noticed only the tiny waist, the flaring lower hourglass of her hips, and the bushy white triangle at the junction of her sturdy legs. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice the malformations on her flanks, her hips, the myriad tiny eyes embedded there, blinking lashless lids in the flickering orange glow.

She gestured to the table-rock and watched as he disrobed clumsily, quickly, and came to her so she could maneuver him onto her, into her. He was a handsome boy, she thought, though one of the others, one of the shitty ones like Putnam or Wilmot or George, might have served better. Their natures might have been more fit for what was being done here this night. She did not regret having chosen him, though, as her first.

As the young man labored over her — in and out, in and out — the night sky gleamed, lightning tearing across the silvered black, the stars brightening. Nebulae formed and swirled, shot red and blue and purple like pinwheels, and a sort of ebony gold streamed into an enormous shape that was not a shape, that was form without form, with tentacles and eyes like Christmas lights which appeared then faded as fast as blinking. Rist reared up, unable to see what was occurring above and behind him, but sensing it. Though he couldn’t stop his rhythmic motion even if he’d wanted to, he tried to turn his head when he felt the cold fire that poured from the crack in the heavens touch his skin and seep in. Lavinia latched one hand to his jaw and held him there with a strength that, in hindsight, shouldn’t have surprised him.

“He must move through another,” crooned Lavinia. “Don’t be afraid, cousin. You’re greatly honoured to be his instrument, as I am to be the Lord’s vessel.”

The cold fire coursed in his veins, chasing Rist, or what was left of him, away; it was as though he fled through the tunnels of his body, until he was trapped in a corner of his own mind. Whatever had invaded him showed no mercy; it rushed in and slammed against the last of Rist just as he slammed into Lavinia, with no fear, only lust, the desire to achieve his end, to find its goal, to spill and soak the fertile soil.

In his last moments, Rist’s eyes darkened, took on the color of the stars and sky, the swirling vortexes of the nebulae above, and the being that had taken him showed its face for the first and last time to Lavinia. She felt her blood freeze, her limbs spasm, and, as the boy did his final duty, thought her heart was going to burst. Atop her, Rist disappeared, separated into his component parts, unable to contain any longer the thing that had breached and used him.

Lavinia lay, exhausted, simultaneously emptied and filled.

Her father appeared out of the shadows, old Wizard Whatley whose first name, if ever he’d had one, hadn’t never been Christian. Lavinia drew her legs together with difficulty, but remained where she was, breathless, aching.

“Yog-Sothoth might be key an’ gate, but he still needs a little he’p with the keyhole,” he said and guffawed heartily as he kicked at the young man’s pile of discarded clothes. Rist was utterly gone, returned to the dust that floated on this plane and the one beyond. “If this’un dun’t take, theys alwus another.”

But Lavinia knew there’d be no other, that her seducing days were over and all those suitors she’d turned from her door would not call again; congress with the unseen had its consequences. Her father couldn’t see her properly in the firelight. The dancing flames and shadows made it seem as though her face still had mobility, but she knew as surely as breathing that she’d suffered some sort of a stroke. One side of her face was numb and she couldn’t make it either smile nor frown, no matter how she tried. The pride she’d always taken in keeping her lips together to combat her weak chin so she didn’t look like the worst of the decayed Whatleys — like some inbred halfwit — would no longer be enough. Her left hand was clawed. Her left leg felt like a thick length of wood.

She’d followed the promise of the books, but who knew they’d tell only half-truths? Her days as she’d known them were over. Her hopes of escape were thoroughly dashed. Lavinia Whatley was going nowhere beyond the boundaries of her woods. Her father reached down to help her. She was shorter when she stood, unable to straighten properly. The weight of what had been planted inside her seemed heavy already, though she knew there were a good nine months between her and birth. Lavinia shifted her posture to accommodate it, slouched, slumped.

The
whip-poor-wills
sang a jaunty tune as father and daughter made their way down off Sentinel Hill.

THE ADVENTURER’S WIFE

Premee Mohamed

IT WAS NOT
till after the adventurer had been interred that we learned that the man had been married. My editor, Cheltenwick, did not even let the graveyard mud dry decently on his boots before he dispatched me to the widow’s house with instructions for a full interview, which I had no doubt he would embellish even more than his wont.

“Delicate sighs, Greene,” he said, hurrying me into a cab and pushing a fresh notebook into my hands. “A crystal-like droplet that rolls down her wan face. I want that, and a most particular description of the house, and don’t botch it up!”

“Do it your precious self, Wick-Dick!” I wished to shout, but it was too late and my career would be worth less than an apple-fed horsefart if I did botch this article. Henley Dorsett Penhallick had been a living legend for 50 years; any description of a life-imperiling venture or terrifying journey was known as a ‘Dorsett tale’ in these parts. One never knew of his comings and goings — he was either thousands of miles away, or hunkered in his house ignoring the doorknocker. Every few years, his publisher would release a booklet of his exploits, copied verbatim — at his insistence — complete with the spelling errors and lavish illustrations in his letters. I had seen a few around the newsroom, the long, elegant script tipped exaggeratedly over on its side, as if racing to get to its destination. I was quite sure he had never mentioned a wife. Everyone would have gone quite mad at such a discovery.

Indeed, I expected the house to be mobbed with reporters when I arrived, but the street was empty, thick oaks nodding absently in the heat. Did I have the right address? All I had had to go on was Cheltenwick’s scribbled note and a vague memory he had of visiting, once, to deliver a package.
A tall, reserved, gray house,
he had said.
A mass of ivy.

I could see the white curtains twitch as I came up the steps. I wondered if the widow could stand to stay in the empty house, or if she had gone to stay with family, as ladies often did after a death. My own mother had left us for a fortnight after her brother died and gone to stay with my aunts out west. When she returned, I recalled, nothing more had been said about it; it had been as if no death had occurred.

The widow answered the door herself, petite and slender in her weeds, face hidden behind a veil so thick I doubted she could see, black silk gloves covering small hands. I felt a wellspring of guilt for intruding on her grief, but Cheltenwick’s face hovered in my mind’s eye for a moment:
Don’t botch this up!

“Mrs. Penhallick,” I said, stymied for a moment simply by not having a face to address. “Please, allow me to ... let me say how very sorry I am for your loss. We all feel it keenly, I assure you. Er, my editor, Mr. Cheltenwick, corresponded occasionally with your husband and ... I ... I am so very sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said, voice muffled by the veil. “Mr …?”

“Oh!” I fumbled in my pockets for my card case. Finally, I found one, lone dog-eared card in my breast pocket and shamefacedly handed it to her. “Mr. Greene, madame. Of the Tribune.”

She studied it, then put her hand back to her side. “Of the Tribune.”

The question she hadn’t asked, or the invitation she did not wish to extend, hung in the air for a moment and I finally dipped my head and said, “I’ve ... been sent to interview you, Mrs. Penhallick, about your husband. May I please come in?”

There was another pause so long and painful that I almost walked down the steps again, but she eventually stepped away from the door and let me in. I scraped my boots so vigorously on the hedgehog that I nearly fell, and then the door was closing behind me and there was a tremendous smell of incense, old wood, and flowers. The parlor was filled with arrangements, hiding the outlines of several bookcases and a grand piano. A few had spilled out into the hallway, red-and-yellow roses and white lilies and chrysanthemums. Ahead of us, the staircase was graced with a wooden statue on each step — an elephant, a jaguar, matched tigers, a woman carrying a jug of water. Paintings and sketches papered the exposed wall above the railing. At the landing, there was an enormous world map covered in little flagged brass pins. It took all my strength not to run up the stairs and note them down; how many dozens, hundreds of places he had been!