The Dark Rites of Cthulhu (33 page)

Two women frolicked on the bed. One was obviously Marsila, as evidenced by the full treatment of thick makeup and towering wig cackling from a mound of pillows. The other woman giggled and hopped out of bed, turning toward the door and revealing herself to be Auntie Drearia, explained to a barely listening Elias months ago while going through a book of portraits as Marsila’s sister who had taken up residence as a Duchess of some sprawling mountain fiefdom in the Balkans. She was naked and pale as a corpse, skin contrasting starkly with the black hair covering her head and pubic region. Elias felt his face burn, which quickly deepened when his father danced into view. He was dressed as a tart, in dramatic makeup and bawdy ball costume. He twirled and blew into a flute made of bone, browned from age, unleashing a discordant flurry of unrelated notes. It was the song of madness. Marsila sat up and clapped along, as if he was executing the tune exactly as taught. Abruptly, she slapped the flute away and punched him in the mouth. Nevill squealed with ecstasy, picked up his instrument with a bark, and then began playing again, dancing gaily around the room. 

In the crack of light, out in the hallway, Elias was gone.

Elias ran though the statuary, in the back estate grounds, each piece looming high in his path, ready to devour him. He stumbled to his knees and vomited.

He raised his face, wiped away tears from his eyes and flecks of dinner from his lips, and set his jaw. He got to his feet, adjusted his satchel, and walked with purpose toward the hill overlooking the old mill. Elias’ shadow loomed large behind him by the light of the full moon beaming from the blackness of a rare, crystal clear night sky.

A match struck and moved to each candle that flared to life in turn, illuminating the floor, where strange, geometric patterns inscribed with grainy chemicals circled both Elias, who was covered by a black robe and cowl, and the Half Made Thing, who sat across from each other.

Elias removed the hood of his robe, revealing his shaved head and face, absent hair, lashes, and eyebrows. Without these accents marking his features, he seemed to have no expression at all, and devolved into a wormlike appearance when he closed his eyes and lowered his chin. In a clear voice much stronger than his own, he spoke practiced phrases in a queer, forgotten language, watched by the Thing through two offset eyes bulging from that inverted teardrop protrusion that resembled a head.

“Th’sash nefmus, borelus klaav!” Elias intoned. “Nog ph’shagg, ph’shogg, ph’shugg soth pnokintanus!”

The candles flickered with a sudden breeze, then flared hotly, changing color, casting the room in various hues of blue, green, and finally a sickly yellow and seeped into every nook of the mill basement like a creeping mold.

Elias reached out both hands, adorned with malevolent glyphs, and placed them on the top of the Half Made Thing. 

“Ia!  Nog gnaiish, ‘fhalma, og ftaghu!!”

A rumbling from deep underground shook the foundation of the structure, sending ruined timber raining down from above, bouncing off the protective field erected around the two unhallowed circles.

“Ia!  Goka
gotha!  Nog vulgtm, bug uaah yihah!!”

The jaundiced air shimmered, bent like water. The stone walls slowly heaved outward without cracking, then violently sucked inward, imploding into a black abyss under the ground, clouded with huge, swirling shapes, all watching with an infinite number of eyes... 

Elias writhed, as the Half Made Thing bubbled. One crumbled as the other rose. The walls returned to stone. The outside was once again the inside. The candles guttered, sucking the light from the room and downing everything in a smothering darkness.

After several moments, the candles returned to life, casting normal light. The two figures had changed places in stature, as Elias was a quivering blob of flesh, his clothes shredded to rags, while the Half Made Thing towered above him, chest heaving, sucking in air, smelling, tasting the very atoms of this place and time...

The fully formed Thing was terrible and beautiful in its nakedness. A hulking, massive torso covered in mottled skin, powerful limbs, flexing hands. Its face was goatish, but also humanly handsome, its head topped with a crest of flowing tentacles, sweeping up like a mane of horns.

The Thing was fully made. Elias was now unmade by half. A Half Made Thing, to take the place of the other.

The newly made Thing looked down at the Half Made Elias, and cracked a cruel grin, exposing sharpened teeth. “It is done.”

The Thing stalked from the room, climbing a hidden stairway of stone worn smooth ten thousand years ago, walking upwards, bursting a buried doorway and emerging into the night air. Behind him, in the dank basement, the Half-Made Elias shook and gibbered out of a slimy mouth on the side of his bulbous shape. Tears of oily blood streaked from a lone, horrified eye.

The Thing stalked past the statuary, bowing slightly to each of the creatures depicted in stone. He pushed over a particular statue - one that looked exactly like him. The stones toppled into a mound as he strode onward, its hot breath steaming into the night air like a furnace vent.

In the study, Marsila sat with a drink in her hand, staring into the murky brown liquid, looking spent. Suddenly, she sat up straight and cocked her head to the side, her piggish eyes widening. After a moment, she turned to Nevill.

“What is it, dearie?” he said.

“There’s something outside.”

The back door creaked open. Nevill, holding a flintlock rifle in one hand and a lantern in the other, crept outside and squinted into the blackness. A rustling of grass came from outside the circle of light. He raised his lantern. “Who goes there?”

The silhouette of the Thing emerged from the veil of night and stood in front of Nevill.

“It is I.”

Nevill’s jaw dropped, as did the lantern. Before it had even landed on the wet turf, the Thing was on top of him, ripping off his limbs, eating flesh. Marsila stood in the doorway, a stout shadow against the inside light.

The Thing, finished with Nevill and drenched in gore, stalked toward the woman and grabbed her.  Marsila screamed. The Thing snatched the wig from her head, exposing two tiny goat-like horns sprouting from amid her nest of tangled, greasy black hair. The Thing wrapped its clawed hands around her neck and brought her face to its mouth. She screamed again, cut off by its mouth over hers, kissing her roughly,
blood smearing away the thick makeup, exposing the seams of a fleshy mask that began to loosen over her actual skin, which was spotted and scaly underneath.

In the pre-dawn gloom, the front door opened slowly on its own, and two heavily robed figures, one stumpy and round, the other towering and thick, emerged from the house, knocking over the turnip jack o’ lanterns as they passed. The dark green carriage waited for them, and the two massive mares stamped their feet on the cobblestones dampened by the mist that had returned, pushed into the land from the frigid North Sea. 

The mismatched pair entered the carriage, closed the door, and drew the curtains tight. The hooded driver grinned under his cowl, cracked the reigns, and piloted the carriage up the driveway. 

It turned onto the lone dirt road, heading north as it wound up into the fog-shrouded hills, where the sheep huddled, far away from the road and the house and the mill and the Half Made Thing dwelling in the basement, waiting for the sun that promised never to come.

I.

Let us sing, let us sing

Of the Half Made Thing,

Driven mad from its half birth.

Through enchantment twas born

In half-human form

A creature not fit for this earth.

Pulled from the gloom,

And locked in a room,

The Half Made Thing did wait.

Feasting on rats

Horseflies and bats

His hunger would never abate.

For it longed to taste flesh

Spoiled rotten or fresh

Hewn from the bones of a man.

So whisper it would

Like Elder Things could

And formulated its nefarious plan.

II.

One day, says a legend

Came a boy, aged eleven

Newly arrived from the city.

He crept over hill

Found the old mill

And discovered something not pretty.

He spied a chewed bone

And heard a low moan

Whilst boyish heart raced with fright.

And there in the corner

Huddled a shape quite abnormal

That made truly a horrible sight.

The boy almost screamed

But the thing suddenly leaned

Toward the newly arrived lad by the door.

Then the boy surely knew

That nightmares were true

And was curious to learn so much more.

For this boy was a dreamer

A high thinking schemer

And knew he found something quite grand.

As this was a creature

Not a dime novel feature

But alive and sniffing his hand.

The Half Made thing snuffled

Twisted and shuffled,

As it tried to move on unfinished pegs

But the wizard that made it

Beat, slashed and flayed it

And only half made it down to its legs.

Its skin was half on

Its organs half gone

Its mouth only opening to one side

Teeth framed a snout

And fluids drained out

Yet the thing had only half died.

The boy at the time

Paid it no mind

That the Half Made Thing seemed to know him

For how could he
guess

That this creature, this mess

Was one of his own creations so grim.

Now this wretched beast

Only lived on to feast

But of this boy it made not a snack.

As somewhere in deep

A feeling did creep

That a new master had finally come back.

The boy became mage

And so turned a page

As sanity started to flee.

Because in the end

Enemy becomes friend

For the wizard is actually me.

III.

So now I do sing

Of this once Half Made Thing

Fully formed into a whole.

And learned once did I

That mouth, teeth, and eye

Don’t mean a thing possesses a soul.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with twenty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with recent sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Buzzy Mag among others. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he plays guitar, drinks beer, and dreams of fortune and glory.

T.E. Grau is an author of dark fiction whose work has been featured in over a dozen anthologies, including
The Children of Old Leech
,
Tales of Jack the Ripper
,
The Best of The Horror Society 2013
,
Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk, Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, Mark of the Beast, World War Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, Dead But Dreaming 2
,
The Aklonomicon
, and
Horror for the Holidays
, among others; and such magazines, literary journals, and audio platforms as
LA Weekly
,
The Fog Horn
,
Lore
,
Tales To Terrify
,
The Teeming Brain
,
Eschatology Journal
, and
Lovecraft eZine
.  His two chapbooks,
The Mission
and
The Lost Aklo Stories
, will be published in early 2014 by Dunhams Manor Press.  In the editorial realm, he currently serves as Fiction Editor of
Strange Aeons
magazine.  T.E. Grau lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, and can be found in the ether at
The Cosmicomicon
(
cosmicomicon.blogspot.com
).