Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (55 page)
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Authors: S.T. Joshi
is involvement is essential: belatedly, Susie realizes this. Suddenly the undermind bursts through.
What do you expect from my child?
demands Sarah Susan.
"He must tend to his mission," answers the usurper in a goatish bleat. "He must . . . he must devote his energies to the Thousand Unborn. And usher in the Dawn of the Thousand Young."
He is too frail, he will collapse.
Susie feels the ideation of her son brush against her cheek, licking teardrops. It is odorless, breath-textured. Inexplicably, it smiles as it slithers through the bars of the window, a slow silvery comet staining the air with a trail of luminous symbols, viscid geometries, larval letterforms.
Breathing is no longer necessary: Susie realizes this belatedly. When her body is discovered her mouth is open. In repose she appears to be glancing out the window. At midnight the sky of Providence is tinctured with hues of the morgue and the stars. To the eyes of the dead this is a scroll of endless night . . . with symbols and the language of Time etched on the aethers, magically descriptive, cosmic in implication.
Black Wings
Copyright © 2010 & 2011 by the individual contributors
Introduction
Copyright © 2010 & 2011 by S. T. Joshi
Cover Art
Copyright © 2010 & 2011 by Jason Van Hollander
Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd. in May 2010. This electronic version published in February 2011 by PS by arrangement with the authors. All rights reserved by the authors. The rights of each contributor to be identified as author of their work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-848631-39-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book was typeset using fonts from the HPLHS Prop Fonts Collection (
http://www.cthulhulives.org
).
Design & Layout by Michael Smith
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