Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking (11 page)

She took the snow globe to the counter at the back of the store, where she again encountered the weird-looking proprietor. He smiled when he saw her. “Ah, Madame, I’m glad you have graced us with another visit,” he purred. “And I see your eye is as good as ever, as you have in your hands the latest masterpiece crafted by Patient O.T.”

“I think I like this one even better than the first one I purchased,” Daphne confessed. “It’s got kind of an evocative title.”

“Ah, yes, I believe it’s a reference to one of the Prophecies of Nostradamus,” he said. “Or perhaps to a song title off the Coil album
Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. I
. Who knows? Patient O.T. is an eccentric chap.”

“A little bird told me he used to have a snow globe business in this very building,” Daphne said as she set the snow globe down next to the register. “And that he was sent to Saddleworth because he was caught feeding the local populace to a pet alligator he kept in the basement.”

“You know how people around here like to exaggerate stories,” he replied, waving one of his puppet hands in a dismissive manner. “That’s what happens when one lives in a small city such as this, where not a great deal of interest happens. I’m willing to bet that this so-called alligator was probably nothing more than a Gila monster with an overactive pituitary gland. When I took over this establishment, I initiated a correspondence with Patient O.T., and he swore to me that he never killed anyone, that he had purchased the bones from a mysterious local artisan for use in one of his snow globes, not being aware that they belonged to people who had been murdered. If Patient O.T. is guilty of anything, it’s naivety. But I can see by the look on your face that you remain skeptical, so I won’t try to convince you otherwise. Would you like to purchase that snow globe?”

“Yeah… so what do you need, more blood?”

“Let me consult the updated pricing sheet,” he said. He looked at the dusty list, then said, “The price that Patient O.T. set for this snow globe is: three locks of your hair. Does that sound like a fair deal?”

“Sure, hair grows back,” Daphne shrugged. “Can I borrow a pair of scissors?”

After the proprietor had supplied her with some scissors, she cut off three locks of her hair and handed them over to him. The proprietor thanked her and placed the locks in a Ziploc bag. After wrapping up her new snow globe in a parcel and handing it over to her, he said, “Thanks again for your business, Madame Broadmoor. In the future, would you like to be alerted as to when new snow globes by Patient O.T. become available?”

“That would be great, actually, it would save me needless trips,” Daphne smiled. “Let me give you my cellphone number and e-mail address.”

After giving away her phone number and e-mail, Daphne left the emporium, her new purchase in hand. She drove home, wondering as she did so what Patient O.T.’s next snow globe would look like.

III

Over the following weeks, Daphne purchased three other snow globes created by Patient O.T. as they became available at Kirkbride’s Curios. Like the first two snow globes she had purchased, these new ones were visually very impressive to look at, and quite evocative in the mysterious atmosphere they instilled in her mind as she gazed into their glass-enclosed worlds. One of them was
The Revolting Science of God
, and the interior of the snow globe was done up to resemble a cosmic scene set in outer space, with stars and spiral-armed galaxies and glowing planets and falling meteors. Set within the center of this starry tableaux was a large floating goddess with the head of an ant, four breasts, eight arms, her legs folded in the Lotus meditation position, and a crown of sparkling jewels on her head. Standing in front of this odd-looking idol was the figurine of a tiny man shielding his face from her insectile visage. This snow globe had cost Daphne a few drops of her saliva.

Another of the snow globes was called
Funeral Music for St. Gulik
, and it depicted a typically wintry setting, one adorned with a large black cockroach whose body had been preserved via taxidermy. This cockroach stood upright in the center of the landscape of snow, next to a small Gothic-looking church whose rose window above the front doors had been replaced with an eye. Pressed up against the windows of the church were the faces of a number of tiny figurines, expressions of horror and loathing on their countenances. The price for this snow globe had been a clipping from one of her fingernails. After purchasing this one, Daphne idly wondered what the cost of future snow globes would be. She hoped they would never require urine, fecal matter, or nasal mucus, because that would just be gross.

She received her answer upon purchasing the third new snow globe: this one had required just a few more drops of her blood, and a smaller amount than she had given for the first snow globe she had purchased. This snow globe, which was called
Burrowers Beneath
, was filled with a great deal of soil, and built up on the surface of this soil were a number of structures that resembled the houses designed by the ancient Pueblo people. Meanwhile, below the surface of the soil, there were what looked like three large white tentacles that, even though they were stuck in place, still seemed to wriggle and undulate with a mind of their own, as if they could burst forth to the surface at any second.

As time went by, her collection of Patient O.T.’s snow globes was beginning to consume more and more space on the mantle of her fireplace. She found herself spending a great deal of time standing before this fireplace and gazing into each of the snow globes. It was as if she had a small number of tiny parallel universes at her fingertips, each one encased in glass and water, containing a fragment of some creepy elfland, a DNA sample of a Dadaistic heaven. Daphne tried to imagine how she would appear to the miniscule inhabitants of these glass-encased galaxies. Most likely all they would be able to perceive of her was a gigantic eyeball, perhaps belonging to some malevolent demiurge. Was that why so many of the figurines entombed in Patient O.T.’s snow globes had expressions of the most profound horror on their plastic faces? Was it because they could see a glimpse of God that is veiled from our own eyes, and that this God was one of madness and morbidity? Daphne was grateful that these tiny tortured souls weren’t cursed with consciousness, as then their suffering would be too ghastly to consider: they’d be doomed to a horror that never ended, trapped eternally on the borderland of death but never reaching the bliss of non-existence: frozen in Hell. 

A few days after purchasing
Burrowers Beneath
, Daphne had to pay another visit to Duncan’s Drugs to buy some more food for her hamster. She walked into the store on another typically sweltering summer day, only this time she was the only person inside the store, aside from old Duncan at the register. Daphne headed to the back of the store to pick up the hamster food, and as she walked to the back she listened to the song playing on the drug store’s sound system: Gwen Stefani’s “Early Winter.” Suddenly, the ground began to shake beneath her feet, and it was as if the whole world began to rumble around her. Losing her balance, Daphne fell to the ground and lay still, where she covered the back of her head with her hands. In her confusion, she thought,
are we having an earthquake?
Finally, after a minute or so the rumbling began to lessen, then stopped entirely, and the earth ceased shaking. Daphne slowly got to her feet and looked around the drugstore. To her surprise, not a single object had fallen off the shelves, despite the massive tremors that had just taken place.

Daphne rushed over to Duncan, a panicked expression on her face. He looked up at her blandly, not fazed at all. “Duncan, did you just feel that?” Daphne cried excitedly. “I think we had an earthquake!”

“Daphne, what are you talking about?” Duncan asked. “I didn’t feel anything at all. Are you okay?”

“But I felt the whole world start to shake just now,” Daphne said, breaking into a sweat. “It was so bad I lost my balance and fell.”

“Maybe you fainted from the heat?” Duncan suggested. “It
is
very hot outside, after all. Look, Daphne, if there had been an earthquake just now, there’s no way my shelves would look this good. They’d have spilled their contents all over the floor, right?”

“But I didn’t faint… I was conscious the whole time,” Daphne said haltingly.

“Maybe you should just go home and get some rest,” Duncan said kindly. “Do you want me to call someone to give you a ride home?”

“No… no, I’ll be okay,” Daphne said after a pause. “I’m fine now.”

“Are you sure?” Duncan asked, still concerned.

“I’m sure,” Daphne said. “Thanks for asking, though.”

“No problem,” Duncan said.

Daphne decided to buy the hamster food some other time. She left the drugstore, still feeling confused. What the hell had just happened back there, anyway? How could Duncan not have felt those tremors? Had it been possible that the tremors were all in her head? But that couldn’t be: they had been so powerful they had knocked her off her feet.

A nagging fear in the back of her mind compelled her to enter Kirkbride’s Curios. Once inside the shop she went straight to the proprietor, who nodded at her when he saw her approach.

“Ah, Madame, I’m sorry but there are no new snow globes from Patient O.T. available today,” he said in an apologetic tone.

“That’s okay,” Daphne said. “I just have a quick question for you. Am I the only person in this town who has ever purchased snow globes made by Patient O.T.? Or have there been other customers?”

“Oh, I’ve been selling them for years now,” the proprietor said. “Don’t you remember that day you first came in here, when I told you they were one of our most popular items? As I recall, prior to your interest in them the last two people I sold snow globes to were a young man named Peter and some old gentleman, whose name I forget.”

“Was it Gabriel?” Daphne asked, her blood turning cold.

“Might have been,” the proprietor shrugged. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Daphne said, almost to herself. Without another word, she turned and left the emporium. She stood outside in the hot sun, almost overwhelmed by the intense heat.
You’re not going insane,
she told herself.
You’re not going insane.

A second later she saw a snowflake drift down from the sky and land right in front of her feet. She stared down at it. Despite the fact it was over ninety degrees outside, the snowflake didn’t melt.

***

That night Daphne had a dream in which her oneiric self was standing before the buildings that made up the Saddleworth Clinic. In the dream it was the dead of night, and a horned moon hung in the sky, like the mocking Cheshire Cat smile of some enormous and otherwise invisible demon, one that was resting its head upon the sky as if it were a pillow. The air all around Daphne was filled with snowflakes, but these flakes weren’t falling: rather they were frozen in place, as if someone had hit the PAUSE button to the procession of time.

The cottages of the Clinic seemed to be calling out to her, beckoning for her to enter them. So she entered the one that was closest to her. Inside, she found that the interior of the building was in complete disarray: the floors of the hallways were strewn with shards of glass and trash of all shapes and sizes, and the surface of almost every appliance or machine was covered with either rust or dust. The walls weren’t in much better shape, as the paint had peeled off of most of them. In some places there were even holes in the walls, and from these holes Daphne could hear what sounded like muffled snuffling noises, and the muted ticking of monstrous subterranean clocks, clocks buried beneath the earth long ago and ticking down the hours till Megiddo Time. Odd music was playing incongruously in the background, Burning Star Core’s “Nyarlathotep,” which further added to Daphen’s sense of disorientation. 

This building was inhabited by a small number of doctors and patients, though none of these people seemed to acknowledge Daphne’s presence among them. The doctors were all dressed in soiled lab coats, their heads encased in dirty glass fishbowls, the scratched glass distorting the appearance of their haggard and weary faces. As they shuffled through the dark and lonely corridors of the Clinic, seemingly aimless in their peregrinations and utterly without a final destination in mind, they made notations on pieces of paper attached to the clipboards that all of them seemed to carry. At one point in the dream, one of these doctors strolled by Daphne, and she took a glance at what the doctor had written down. But it was just nonsense: “I’m a Labour party candidate and I’m okay - I prescribe phenoxymethylpenicillin to blowlamps all night and I teleport circuit boards all day.”

The patients were just as strange. Most of them were either clad in togas or completely nude, and they were all wearing exotic headgear of some sorts: Daphne spotted funeral veils, bejeweled turbans, crowns of thorns and crowns of grass… she even noticed one patient wearing a black fez. Many of them were stationed in their rooms, rooms that had no doors and whose windows were bereft of glass. As she walked by these rooms, Daphne peered into each one. One room was utterly without furniture of any sort, and in the center of this room there was a large mound of skulls arranged in a vaguely pyramidal shape, with a small family of crows crouched atop it at various places. In the northwest corner of the room a naked patient was trying in vain to hide herself from sight, her bare body shivering from the cold wind that seemed to blow at all times through the halls of that lonely Lupanare.