The Dark Rites of Cthulhu (11 page)

“Curwen, ‘thy great learning hath driven thee mad.’”

“Ah, that is what I like so much about you, sir! Ever a jest at the ready! But I am quite serious. Let me prove it to you. Read on.”

What harm could it do? When nothing transpired, I should at least gain some particular notion of the manner of my host’s dementia. Presumably he should fancy to behold some spectre of his own fevered imagination. Then I must play along as best I could, humouring the madman as convincingly as I might till I could manage a diplomatic departure. So I took the paper from his hand and scanned the strange syllables. I will not boast if I remind the reader of my competence in the biblical languages as well as a passable knowledge of several modern European tongues. But I had never beheld the like of these. They did not appear to be phonetic interpretations of words in any familiar language, but were foreign altogether. Nevertheless, I began.

As soon as I had enunciated the first complete line, I found my concentration distracted by a sudden change in the room’s temperature, which was now quite cold. I looked up at Curwen, who seemed in no whit surprised. He did betray a slight grin, nothing more. As I found my place and continued, he listened patiently, stopping me once or twice to correct my pronunciation. He said he might have recited the formula for me to imitate but that he wanted the results of the chant to be in answer to my intonation, not his.

Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE-L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH

I got through it, finally, with passable accuracy. Or so I must have, for there were indeed results. As Curwen clapped his hands with childlike glee, a fumarole of mephitic smoke began to spread and swirl in the room between us, as the spilled powder sublimated directly into the air. Within the slow cyclone a definite outline began to distinguish itself. The unwholesome odor subsided in direct proportion to the increasing solidification of the human form before me. Naturally the whole business was most impressive, but I was not carried away by superstitious credulity. Instead my amazement consisted in admiration for the fantastic ingenuity of Curwen’s showmanship. The ancients were quite familiar with all the tricks still performed by charlatans and entertainers of our own day, and I imagined that Curwen was demonstrating some striking  spectacle salvaged from one of the ancient documents he had acquired. On this I hastened to congratulate him, but he was having none of it. He began to exclaim, I thought a trifle sarcastically, “He is risen! He is risen indeed!”

A scrawny figure of a man stood shivering before us. He was about five feet tall and without a stitch of clothing. His drawn face bore bloodstains, while his beard and hair were matted and shaggy. His extremities showed raw wounds. He stood unevenly, one leg being plainly shorter than the other, though not by much. I thought of the Russian Orthodox cross, with its slanted bottom rung, denoting their tradition, apocryphal I should judge, that the Saviour was a cripple. And at once I recognized that I was taking seriously Curwen’s blasphemous claim to be retrieving our Lord Jesus Christ from the mists of the past. Consciously, of course, I knew the whole thing for imposture, and I pitied this poor stooge of Curwen and the physical suffering he had plainly been put through in preparation for the present farce.

“Dr. Checkley, do you not know your Lord?”

“I have never seen a portrait of him not the product of an artist’s fancy.”

“I charge you, Sir: do not squander this unparalleled opportunity! Have you no questions for the very Son of God? If so, you are a rare clergyman!”

I felt I was being made a fool of, but I thought to turn the tables. I did address the discomfited man, but I did so in the Aramaic tongue. I calculated that Curwen had expected me to forget myself and to speak my accustomed English, as if this “Jesus” should understand and reply in kind. Here is the translated sense of my question.

“What is your name, my poor friend? And how came you to suffer so?” I expected the man to stare blankly, uncertain how to proceed now that I had departed from the plan Curwen had designed.

But he answered me in the Aramaic. At first I thought he mispronounced the ancient words, but then I realized that my own pronunciation was derived from the speech of modern Syrians, and that this strange man must be speaking in the ancient accents. I was dumbfounded. Now everything looked completely different to me. The challenges to my thinking and to my composure were dramatic indeed. But this is what he said, again in translation.

“I am called Jehoshua, son of Joseph the Nazarene. I have suffered many things and climbed up the cross of Tiberius. The sun above me became black as sackcloth, and with it my eyes darkened, and I gave up my spirit. All this was mere moments ago. How came I to be here? In this cold place?”

Curwen had stepped away to retrieve a shapeless garment from a heap in the corner. He draped it about the chilled form. The man nodded in gratitude. For his part, Curwen motioned me onward, urging me to continue.

“Why, O Jehoshua, did men crucify you?”

“I wrought wonders once I bound the powers of Baal-Zebul, prince of demons. I bent them to do my will, and so I healed many sick and possessed. I was one of many, and my rivals gave false witness against me to the prefect of Rome.”

The man shook his head with understandable confusion, as if to clear his mind. I hated to pester him further, but I must admit I was seriously intrigued. “But if you were the Son of God, why stoop to sorcery?”

His eyes had cleared and now fixed upon me firmly. “Amen, I say to you, my Father vouchsafed me the power wherewith I bound Satan to despoil him of his goods.”

“We have believed that you conquered death and rose from the grave, but it seems you did not, at least not until now.”

His voice was acquiring a firmer tone. My own voice began to catch as I could no longer maintain a skeptical detachment. Good Lord, suppose Curwen had actually done what he claimed?

“My Father liveth, and all are alive to him.”

“Bear with me, O Image of Jehoshua, and I will ask of you one question more. Did you come forth from the Godhead? Are you of a single nature with the heavenly Father? Mankind has shed blood over that question.”

“You say that I am. Man, open your mind to understand the deep things of God, for he whom you call your God is a veritable Ocean of Light, and from him has wave after wave of angels gone forth to crash against the shore of crude matter. If you would seek my Father’s kingdom, you must go up from earth and scale the Outer Spheres. The dark angels of Achamoth, who is also Azathoth, ever keep the gates. If you would surmount them, you must work the Grey Rite…’”

Just here Joseph Curwen interrupted our exchange, blasphemously silencing him who I was now on the verge of accepting as the very Word of God.

“Have I not given you a great gift, Dr. Checkley? Now you know what no Christian souls have known since the persecution of the ancient heretics! The churchmen of old were considerably less tolerant than you, kind sir. But you need not fear persecution for speaking the truth you now know, for you shall not know it for long. Are you feeling well, my friend?”

I took stock of my sensations and found that, in the excitement of the conversation just past, I had not noticed the entire ebbing of my physical strength. Indeed, I was virtually paralyzed! I tried to answer him but heard my own slurring speech. I realize now that Curwen must have poisoned me in some surreptitious manner, perhaps using some gas invisible to the eye. I was beginning to grow drowsy, and I understood that I should before long lose any memory of what had transpired here. The gift Curwen had given me he was not going to let me keep. I am very surprised to have retained even this much for this long. I know that I have lost some of the precious secrets vouchsafed me by the man Jehoshua, but I have managed to record what little has not yet flown.

One last thing I recall seeing and hearing in that subterranean den. Curwen took hold of the man and shook him violently. “Tell me the Grey Rite! For I would storm the heavens! I shall be as the Most High!”

This, too, was in passable Aramaic, as was the response. “I bestow my mysteries upon those who are worthy of my mysteries.”

Whatever this Jehoshua might be that did not meet the eye of flesh, still, in the three dimensions that we occupy, he was a weak and wizened scarecrow; and it was with perfect ease that the doughtier Curwen seized and dragged him toward the wall, forcing him against the rough wood of the nearest bracing post. A blow to the poor man’s forehead sent him into a semi-stupor. As the hammering began, the room commenced to spin around me. All I heard of whatever next transpired was one sentence apiece from each man.

“Prophesy! Who struck
you!”

“Almighty, protect thy lamb!”

The Vessel

By Sam Stone

Brent Jefferson pulled his hat down over his face and hurried through the dark and narrow streets of the French Quarter. Rain pummelled his head and shoulders. It was 10pm and a curfew had been imposed, which meant that all blacks were to stay in their homes after 6pm. But the Confederate military weren’t interested in policing this area of New Orleans anymore. They had bigger fish to fry since the Federal Navy had opened fire on Fort Jackson. Jefferson knew it was only a matter of time before the Confederates fell and the Union Army broke through their defences to take over and occupy the city.

He knew he didn’t have long before he’d have to flee the town and take with him the woman he loved. His biggest dilemma was that Carly didn’t want to leave. She didn’t even want Jefferson in her life.

Rain water dripped from the rim of his hat as he paused to look up at the tall building ahead. His eyes sought and found Carly’s window. As usual she was sitting, semi-naked, flaunting her wares, even though on a night like this it was unlikely any trade would find its way into this dingy corner of the quarter. The soldiers were otherwise occupied, the local landowners were living in terror of losing their fine plantations, and the blacks were being whipped and locked up at night in desperate attempts to keep them from running away.

Times were changing and Jefferson knew that soon Carly’s white owner wouldn’t be able to force her to whore for him anymore. That was if the rumours of slaves being freed were entirely true. They only had the propaganda spun by the Confederates to back up any information on the war or the siege, but Jefferson suspected some of it was factual, if not all.

Despite the driving rain, Carly was cooling herself with a fancy Chinese fan. Jefferson recognised it as the one he had given her when she still let him visit. It gave him a strange kind of hope. Even from below he could make out the slender lines of her coffee-coloured thighs, as she sat, one leg crossed over the other.

“She’s a whore, man. Why’d you even bother coming back here all the time,” said a voice from an open door a few feet away.

Jefferson turned to see his old friend Matthew, a former slave who had managed to buy his own freedom some years before. He now ran an illegal bootleg store from the basement of his small house.

“It’s not her fault,” Jefferson said. “You know that.”

Jefferson, Matthew and Carly had once belonged to the same plantation. The Beaugards had been cruel owners. Carly and Jefferson had wanted to be together, but fraternisation amongst the slaves wasn’t allowed on Beaugard land – not unless they wanted you to breed more slaves. When their relationship was discovered, Michel Beaugard sold Carly on to the whore house. By then Matthew had bought his freedom and he thought it the cruellest punishment ever to both Jefferson and Carly. He had tried to raise the money to buy Carly’s freedom from the pimp, but the white man wouldn’t deal with Matthew. He saw the potential in Carly’s half-caste looks and knew that the soldiers would like her. He would earn more from her by working her than by merely selling her on.

Even so, he kept Matthew dangling for a while: if the girl burned out quickly, he would probably let her friend buy her freedom. But Carly didn’t burn out. In fact she took to prostitution so well that she was soon the best girl in the house. She was capable of dealing with twice as many johns in one night as any of the other girls. They all left satisfied, and came back for more.

When Matthew realised he couldn’t help Carly, he helped Jefferson buy his freedom instead. Carly was some whorish princess now in an ivory tower that neither of them could climb.

“I don’t understand what happened,” Jefferson murmured as he stared up at her window.

“She weren’t never what you thought she was,” Matthew said.

Matthew invited Jefferson in out of the rain and handed him a glass of cheap brandy. Jefferson took off his wet coat and hat and sat down in a chair by the fire. The heat was welcome, but it couldn’t touch the cold that sat inside him.

“The city’s about to fall,” said Matthew. “It won’t be no bad thing for the likes of us. We have good times ahead. Carly will be freed then – if she wants to be.”

Jefferson shook his head. He knew what was likely to happen – what should happen – but wasn’t convinced the
white soldiers from the North would treat the blacks any different than they did in the South.

“You knows I got a job at the Pollitt Plantation,” Jefferson said.

Matthew nodded. The Pollitts were good white-folks who radically freed their slaves some years before. All of the blacks that worked the cotton plantation were paid. It meant that the Pollitts were infamous among the other landowners, but that they were also the only thriving farm in the area. There were no disputes or runaways, only happy families working, and living with the white landowners.

“The head house servant, Isaac, you know of him?”

“I knows him,” said Matthew. “He the houngan.”

“He says he can help me.”

“If anyone can. He can.”

Jefferson stared into the flames. Maybe Matthew was right. Maybe he should sit things out and see where it led. Carly would be free to make her own choices wouldn’t she? But then, Jefferson wondered, would she choose to remain working in the whorehouse anyway? She certainly didn’t look unhappy where she was.

Jefferson returned to the plantation and fell exhausted into his bed.

Despite the late hour, sleep was slow to come. Jefferson found himself tossing and turning, thinking about Carly and the hurtful way she had rejected him.

“I don’t need no black boy in my life when I can play with all these white ones. They worship me, Brent. They buys me jewels and clothes and all they want is something I find so easy to give,” she had said.

Jefferson knew that a life with him, the dream they once had of owning a ranch, would mean hard toil for both of them. But it surprised him that Carly found her new life to be so ‘easy’. She had always been so shy, so reserved, and now it appeared that she was completely the opposite. He tried not to think of her spreading herself for other men: it hurt too much. But sometimes, when he lay in his bed at night, he couldn’t believe she was the same woman he had loved so fiercely and risked so much for. Every scar on his back had been received because of his defiance, and his refusal to let her go and be used by the white overseers.

One time Beaugard’s men had beat him so badly he nearly died. Even now he couldn’t remember why they stopped.

He had a flash of Carly coming into the barn, the six overseers turned to look at her and Jefferson had blacked out cold. When he woke he’d found Carly pressing water to his lips, and felt the sting of salt on his back.

“You is such a fool sometimes,” she had said. “Always comin’ to defen’ my honour. You gon’ git yourself kil’.”

But it wasn’t cold, or distant. All her words were spoken with pride and love.

Carly was smart. She could read and write but she kept this mostly to herself, even though Jefferson knew about it.

“My daddy was a white man,” she had told him. “He let me learn with his other chil’ren sometimes.”

“What happen to him?” Jefferson said.

“Uprisin’. He had a taste for black flesh. Some of the men on the farm didn’t like him messin’ with their wives. The overseers beat the rebels down but by then they’d slit his throat. His widow sent me to the auction the very next day.”

“She wanted you gone…” Jefferson said. He had taken her hand and kissed it to show how bad he felt for her.

“Yessir. She always hate how he paraded me around the house. How he bought me nice things, just like his other chil’ren, even though my skin was still too dark for him to ever admit I was his. She took all those fine presents back, too. Sent me out in rags.”

Jefferson had always felt Carly was a lady but Beaugard’s men had treated her like fresh meat from the start. It didn’t matter how you were brought up. All that mattered was the colour of your skin.

“Jefferson …”

Jefferson jumped awake to find Isaac standing by his bedside. The Pollitts’ manservant was a large man, and his dark silhouette was an unnerving sight.

“You want to help your woman still?” asked Isaac.

“Yes.”

“You knows the sacrifice you has to pay?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me. The congregation is waitin’.”

Jefferson pulled himself from his sweat-soaked bed as he heard the drums pick up in the distance. He didn’t ask what it meant. Even though he had been born on American soil, he knew something of the old ways by instinct. They
all did.

He followed Isaac from his small shack and out towards the edge of the land. It was still night, but the dawn was tinting the sky and Jefferson could see the big old white house that belonged to the Pollitts up on the horizon. Nothing stirred over there. If the white family heard the drums they showed no sign of it.

“Isaac, how come the Pollitts free you all?” Jefferson asked as they plunged into the dense forest that formed a part of the plantation.

“That is ’tween me an’
Massa Pollitt,” Isaac said.

Jefferson swallowed any further questions and quelled his curiosity as Isaac led him into a wide clearing just as the Sun began to chase the night away.

They began a ritual, a dance of sorts, while Isaac, clad in a long white robe, shook a tall staff, covered in bone shards tied on with cord. The bones rattled together in rhythm with the drums. Jefferson saw no one playing them though, and even here the sound seemed distant, but part of the ceremony.

Bare-chested, Jefferson kneeled by a blood-soaked altar while a young woman danced forward holding a live chicken. Within moments Isaac had taken the bird, cut its throat and splashed the still-warm blood all over Jefferson’s face and chest. The rest of the blood was drained off into a round bowl.

As the last twitches of the bird ceased, Isaac stared down into the bowl and began to talk in the old tongue.

Jefferson listened to the lilting language, unable to recognise a word because his parents had never been allowed to speak it on Beaugard’s land.

“I sees somethin’ here …” Isaac said.

“What you see?” asked Jefferson.

“I sees Carly. She…
No
!”

Isaac’s sudden gasp brought Jefferson to his feet. He looked into the bowl that Isaac held and for a moment he thought he saw Carly’s face in the blood, only it didn’t seem like her at all. She held the same, cruel, sneering expression she had worn when she sent him away the last time. There was a darkness crowded around her. Carly’s lips moved, even though Jefferson heard no sound. A huge monstrous bulk appeared to be gathering momentum from the words she spoke.

Isaac abruptly tipped the blood out of the bowl and the vision was lost.

“What was it?” Jefferson said.

“You don’t wan’ to know what I seen. She ain’t no good Jefferson. She into some bad voodoo. Somethin’ like I never seen ’fore.”

“You said you’d help me,” Jefferson said.

“I can’t. I never would have said so if I knowed what was goin’ on …”

“Tell me what to do,” Jefferson said.

“She gone to you,” Isaac said. “You best for’git her.”

No matter how much Jefferson pleaded, Isaac wouldn’t change his mind. He sent the gathered congregation of semi-naked men and women away. And all evidence of their ceremony was
removed, including the remains of the dead bird.

A few hours later the same people stood side by side with him in the cotton field, but no one spoke of the ritual.

The failed ceremony made Jefferson even more determined to save Carly. If something bad, some form of black magic, was responsible for the change in her, then maybe he could help. Maybe he should just steal her away, out of the city, as he had planned to do the night before.

When the work day ended, Jefferson gathered his possessions, his freedom papers and the small amount of money he had managed to save and set off from the plantation for the last time.

New Orleans town was in chaos.

“What’s happenin’?” Jefferson asked as he saw a group of slaves running from the dock.