Black Wings Of Cthulhu: Volume Two Part 1

Black Wings of Cthulhu.

(Volume Two).

S.T. Joshi.

Introduction.

S. T. JOSHI.

WHAT DEFINES A "LOVECRAFTIAN" STORY? THIS SEEMINGLY simple question is in fact full of ambiguities, perplexities, and paradoxes, for the term could encompa.s.s everything from the most slavish of pastiches that seek (usually unsuccessfully) to mimic Lovecraft's dense and flamboyant prose and mechanically replicate his G.o.ds, characters, and places, to tales that allusively draw upon Lovecraft's core themes and imagery, to parodies ranging from the affectionate (Fritz Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars") to the faintly malicious (Arthur C. Clarke's "At the Mountains of Murkiness"). My goal in the Black Wings series has been to avoid the first at all costs and to foster the second and, to a lesser degree, the third. The days when August Derleth or Brian Lumley could invent a new G.o.d or "forbidden book" and therefore declare themselves as working "in the Lovecraft tradition" are long over. What is now needed is a more searching, penetrating infusion of Lovecraftian elements that can work seamlessly with the author's own style and outlook.

That being said, it becomes vital for both writers and readers to understand the essence of the Lovecraftian universe, and the literary tools he used to convey his aesthetic and philosophical principles. One of the great triumphs of modern Lovecraft scholarship has been to demonstrate that Lovecraft was an intensely serious writer who, as his letters and essays suggest, continually grappled with the central questions of philosophy and sought to suggest answers to them by means of horror fiction. What is our place in the cosmos? Does a G.o.d or G.o.ds exist? What is the ultimate fate of the human species? These and other "big" questions are perennially addressed in Lovecraft's fiction, and in a manner that conveys his "cosmic" sensibility-a sensibility that keenly etches humankind's transience and fragility in a boundless universe that lacks a guiding purpose or direction. At the same time, Lovecraft's intense devotion to his native soil made him something of a regionalist who vivified the history and topography of Providence, Rhode Island, and all of New England, establishing a foundation of una.s.sailable reality from which his cosmic speculations could take wing.

How contemporary writers have adapted these and other central ideas and motifs into their own work is well demonstrated by the tales in this volume. Cosmic indifferentism is at the heart of Melanie Tem's "Dahlias," which does not require explicit horror, or the supernatural, to convey its effects. The uniquely topographical, even archaeological horror that we find in such a tale as At the Mountains of Madness is powerfully demonstrated in Richard Gavin's "The Abject" and Donald Tyson's "The Skinless Face." Tom Fletcher in some sense draws upon the claustrophobic horror that Lovecraft created in "The Dreams in the Witch House" in his unnerving tale, "View." Nicholas Royle's "The Other Man" is a searching and terrifying meditation on the theme of ident.i.ty, a theme is that found in such of Lovecraft's tales as "The Outsider" and "The Shadow out of Time."

Alien incursion is at the heart of many Lovecraft tales, and John Langan ("Bloom") and Jonathan Thomas ("The King of Cat Swamp") ring very different but equally engaging changes on this complex theme. Thomas's story is a clear nod, both in setting and in character, to Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," as are, in a very different manner, Jason C. Eckhardt's "And the Sea Gave Up the Dead" and Brian Evenson's "The Wilc.o.x Remainder"; Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Houndwife" is a tip of the hat to "The Hound," and Nick Mamatas's "Dead Media" plays a riff on "The Whisperer in Darkness." But in all these cases, subtle character development of a sort that Lovecraft generally did not favour raises these tales far above the level of pastiche. A rent in the very fabric of the universe is at the heart of Darrell Schweitzer's inextricable fusion of fantasy and horror, "The Clockwork King, the Queen of Gla.s.s, and the Man with the Hundred Knives," while Steve Rasnic Tem's "Waiting at the Crossroads Motel" fuses setting and character in a tale whose cosmic backdrop is thoroughly Lovecraftian.

One of the most interesting developments in recent years-perhaps inspired by the mountains of information on Lovecraft's daily life and character that have emerged through the publication of his letters-is the degree to which Lovecraft himself has become a character, even an icon, in fiction. In very different ways, John Shirley's "When Death Wakes Me to Myself" and Rick Dakan's "Correlated Discontents" draws upon Lovecraft's own personal idiosyncrasies to convey terror and weirdness. The proliferation of Lovecraft's work in the media-especially film and television-is at the heart of Don Webb's "Casting Call" and Chet Williamson's "Appointed," tales that skirt the borderland of parody while remaining chillingly terrifying. Jason V Brock takes on Lovecraft's voluminous letter-writing directly with an epistolary tale that suggests far more than it tells.

The fact that writers of such different stripes have chosen to work, however tangentially, in the Lovecraftian idiom is a testament to the vibrancy and eternal relevance of his central themes and concerns. As he memorably wrote, "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." But it is the very purpose of the writer of fiction to venture, in imagination, beyond that placid island, and very often the result is a harrowing sense of our appalling isolation in the cosmic drift. Lovecraft himself spent a lifetime seeking to probe beyond the limitations of the human senses toward the vast cosmos-at-large, and it is evident that a growing cadre of writers are eager to follow him.

S. T. Joshi.

When Death Wakes Me to Myself.

JOHN SHIRLEY.

John Shirley is the author of numerous novels, collections of stories-including the Bram Stoker Award-winning "Black b.u.t.terflies"-and scripts. His screenplays include The Crow. His newest novels are Demons (Del Rey, 2007), Black Gla.s.s (Elder Signs Press, 2008), Bleak History (Simon & Schuster, 2009), Bioshock: Rapture (Tor, 2011), and Everything Is Broken (Prime Books, 2011).

SOMEONE'S BROKEN INTO THE HOUSE, DOCTOR."

Fyodor saw no fear in Leah's gray eyes. But he'd never seen her afraid, and she'd worked closely with him in psychiatrics for almost eight years-ever since he'd finished his internship. She brushed auburn hair from her pale forehead, adjusted her gla.s.ses, and went on, "The window latch is broken in your office-and I think I heard someone moving around down in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Did you call the police?" Fyodor asked, glancing toward the bas.e.m.e.nt door. His mouth felt dry.

They stood in the front hallway of the old house, by the open arch to the waiting room. "I did. I was about to call you, when you walked in."

They didn't speak for a long moment, both of them listening for the burglar. Wintry morning light angled through the bay windows of the waiting room, casting intricate shadows from the lace curtains across the braided rug. A dog barked down the street; a foghorn hooted. Just the sounds of Providence, Rhode Island...

Then a peal of happy laughter rippled up through the hardwood floorboards. It cut short so abruptly he wondered if he'd really understood the sound. "That sound like laughter to you?"

"Yes." She glanced at the window. "The police are in no hurry..."

"You should wait out front, Leah." He was thinking he should try to see to it that whoever this was, they weren't setting a fire, vandalizing, doing serious damage to the house. He was negotiating to buy it, planning to expand it into a suite of offices with various health services-especially bad timing for vandalism. It was a big house, built in 1825, most of it not in use at the moment. The ground-floor den was ideal for receiving patients; the front living room had been converted into a waiting room.

Fyodor took a step through the archway, into the hall-and then the bas.e.m.e.nt door burst open. A slender young man stood there, a few paces away, holding a bottle in his hand, toothy grin fading. "Oh! I seem to have lost all track of time. How indiscreet of me," said the young man, in an accent that sounded Deep South. He wore a neat dark suit with a rather antiquated blazer, thin blue tie, starched white shirt, silver cufflinks, polished black shoes. His fingernails were immaculately manicured, his straight black hair neatly combed back. Fyodor noted all this with a professional detachment, but also a little surprise-he'd expected the burglar to be scruffier, more like the sullen young men he sometimes counseled at Juvenile Detention. The young man's dark brown eyes met his-the gaze was frank, the smile seemed genuine. Still, the strict neatness might place him in a recognizable spectrum of personality disorders.

"You seem lost," Fyodor said-gesturing, with his hand at his side, for Leah to go outside. Foolish protective instinct-she was athletic, probably more formidable in a fight than he was. "In fact, young man, you seem to have lost your way right through one of our windows..."

"Ah, yes." His mouth twitched. "But look what I found for you, Dr. Cheski!" He raised the dusty bottle in his hand. It was an old, unlabeled wine bottle. "I never used to drink. I wanted to take it up, starting with something old and fine. I want a new life. I desire to do things differently. Live! I bet you didn't know there was any wine down there."

Fyodor blinked. "Um... in fact..." In fact he didn't think there was any wine in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

A siren wailed, grew louder-and cut short. Radio voices echoed, heavy boot-steps came up the walk, and the young man, sighing, put the bottle on the floor and walked past Fyodor to open the front door. He waved genially at the policemen.

"Gentlemen," said the young man, "I believe you are here for me. I'm told that my name is Roman Carl Boxer."

CARRYING THE DUSTY WINE BOTTLE, FYODOR DESCENDED the bas.e.m.e.nt steps, wondering if this Roman Carl Boxer could have been a patient, someone he'd consulted on, at some point. The face wasn't familiar, but perhaps he'd been disheveled and heavily acned before. I'm told that my name is Roman Carl Boxer. Interesting way to put it.

The bas.e.m.e.nt was a box of cracked concrete, smelling of mildew; a little water had leaked into a farther corner. A naked light bulb glowed in the cobwebbed ceiling, bright enough to throw stark shadows from what looked like rodent droppings, off to his left. To the right were his crates of old files, recently stored here-they seemed undisturbed. He saw no wine bottles. He could smell dirt and damp concrete. A few scuffs marked the dust coating the floor.

Fyodor started to turn back-it was not a pleasant place to be-but he decided to look more closely at the files. There was confidential patient information in those crates. If this kid had gotten into them...

He crossed to the files, confirmed they seemed undisturbed-then saw the hole in the floor, in the farther corner. A small shiny crowbar, the price sticker still on it, lay close beside the hole. His view of it had been blocked by the crates.

He crouched by the hole-almost two feet square-and saw that a trapdoor of concrete and wood had been removed to lean against the wall. He could make out a number of dark bottles, down inside it, in wooden slots. Wine bottles.

One slot was empty. The bottle he'd brought with him fit precisely in that slot.

A WEEK LATER.

"Deal's done," Fyodor said, with some excitement, as he came into the waiting room. He took off his damp coat, hanging it up, sniffling, his nose stinging from the cold, wet wind. "I own the building! Me and the bank do, anyway."

"That's great!" Leah said, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a prim smile. She was hanging a picture on the waiting room wall. It was a print of a Turner seascape: vague, harmless proto-Impressionism in gold and umber and subtle blues; a choice that suggested sophistication, and soothing to psychiatric patients. Still, some psychiatric patients were capable of feeling threatened by anything.

Leah stepped back from the painting, and nodded.

Fyodor thought it was hanging just slightly crooked, but he knew it would irritate her if he straightened it-though she'd only show the irritation as a faint flicker around her mouth. Surprising how well he'd gotten to know her, and, at the same time, how impersonal their relationship was. A professional distance was appropriate. But it didn't feel appropriate somehow, with Leah...

"That police detective called," she said, straightening the painting herself. "Asking if we're going to come to the arraignment for that burglar."

"I'm not inclined to press charges."

"Really? They've let him out on bail, you know. He might come back."

"I don't want to start my new practice here by prosecuting the first mentally ill person I run into." He went to the bay windows and looked out at the wet streets, the barren tree limbs of the gnarled, blackened elm in the front yard. Leafless tree limbs always made him think of nerve endings.

"He hasn't actually been diagnosed..."

"He was confused enough to climb in through a window, ignore everything of value, go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and dig about."

"Did you have that wine looked at? The stuff he found downstairs?"

Fyodor nodded. "Hal checked it out. Italian wine, from the early twentieth century, shipped direct from some vineyard-and not improved with age. Gone quite vinegary, he told me." How had Roman Boxer known the wine was there? It seemed to have been sealed up for decades.

Something else bothered him about the incident, something he couldn't quite define, a feeling there was something he should recognize about Roman Boxer... just out of reach.

"Oh-you got approval for limited testing of SEQ10. The letter's on your desk. There are some regulatory hoops but..."

SEQ10. They'd been waiting almost a year. Things were coming together.

He turned to face Leah, feeling a sudden rush of warmth for her. It was good to have her on his team. She was always a bit prim, reserved, her wit dry, her feelings controlled. But sometimes...

"And," she said a little reluctantly, going to the waiting room desk, "your mom called."

She pa.s.sed him the message. "Please call. The psycho Psych Tech is at it again."

His mother: the fly in the ointment, ranting about the psychiatric technician she imagined was persecuting her in the state hospital. But then she was the reason he'd gotten into psychiatry. Her mania, her fits of amnesia. His own a.n.a.lyst had suggested she was also some of the reason he tended to be rather reserved, wound tight-compensating for his mother's flamboyance. She was flamboyant on the upswings, almost catatonic on the downswings-p.r.o.ne to amnesia. Firm self-control helped him deal with either extreme. And her intervals of amnesia had prompted his interest in SEQ10.

The doorbell rang, and he went to his office to await the first patient of the day. But his first patient wasn't the first person to arrive. Instead, Leah ushered in a small middle-aged woman with penciled eyebrows, dark red lipstick, a little too much rouge, her black hair tightly caught up in a bun. She wore a pink slicker, her rose-colored umbrella dripping on the carpet as she said, "I know I shouldn't come without an appointment, Doctor Cheski..." Her cadences tripped rapidly, her voice chirpy, the movements of her head, as she looked back and forth between Fyodor and Leah, seemed birdlike. "But he was so insistent-my son Roman. He said I had to see him here or not at all, and then he hung up on me. G.o.d knows he's been a lot of trouble to you already. Has he gotten here yet?"

"Here? Today?" Fyodor looked at Leah. She shrugged and shook her head.

"He said he'd be upstairs..."

There was a thump from the ceiling. Squeaking footsteps; brisk pacing, back and forth.

Leah put a hand to her mouth and laughed nervously. Quite uncharacteristic of her. "Oh my gosh, he's broken into the house again."

Roman's mother looked back and forth between them. "Not again! I thought he'd made an appointment! He said he didn't trust anyone else... He barely knows me, you see..." Her lips trembled.

Leah's brows knit. "Did you-give him up for adoption?"

Another thump came from above. They all looked at the ceiling. "No-o," Mrs. Boxer said, slowly. "No, he... claims to not remember growing up with us. With his own family! I show him photographs-he says they're 'sort of familiar.' But he says it's like it didn't happen to him. I don't really understand what he means." She sighed and went quickly on, "He just keeps wandering around Providence-looking for something... but he won't say what."

Fyodor knew he should call the police. But when Leah went to the phone, he said, "Wait, Leah." Claims to not remember growing up with us. With his own family.

SEQ10 was a hypnotic drug for treating, among other things, hysterical amnesia.

Fyodor looked at Mrs. Boxer. She had some very high-quality jewelry; new pumps, sensible but elegant. A rather showy diamond bulked on her wedding ring. She had money, after all. She could pay for therapy. Insurance wouldn't cover SEQ10.

Fyodor took a deep breath, and, wiping his clammy palms on his trousers, went up the stairs.

He found Roman in the guest room right over the office. Roman was sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed, nervously turning a gla.s.s of wine in both hands, around and around-he'd put the wine in a water tumbler from the upstairs bathroom.

"Brought your own wine this time, I see," Fyodor said.

"Yes. A California Merlot. Still trying to learn how to drink." Roman smiled apologetically. He wore the same suit as last time. Neat as a pin. "Strange sensation, alcohol." After a moment he added, "Sorry about the door. No one was here when I came. I needed to get in."

Fyodor grunted. He planned to rent the room out as an office, and now this guy was damaging it-the door to the outside stairs stood open, the wood about the lock splintered. There was a large screwdriver on the bedside table.

"Why?" Fyodor asked. "I mean-why the urgency about getting in? Why not make an appointment?"

Roman swirled his wine. "I'm... looking for something here. I just-couldn't wait. I don't know why."

IT WAS AN EVENING SESSION, AFTER FYODOR WOULD normally have gone home. Roman's mother had already had the broken door replaced and paid a large advance on the therapy. And Roman was more interesting than most of Fyodor's patients.

Leaning back on the leather easy chair in Fyodor's office, Roman seemed bemused. Occasionally, he smoothed the lines of his jacket.

"Your mother gave me some background on you," Fyodor said. "Maybe you can tell me what seems true or untrue to you."

He read aloud from his notes.

Roman was twenty-one. An only child, he'd had night terrors until he was nine, with intermittent bedwetting. Father pa.s.sed on when he was thirteen. They weren't close. Roman had difficulty keeping friends but was likable, and elderly people loved him. He loved cats, but his mother made him stop adopting them after he acc.u.mulated four. One died, and he gave it an elaborate burial ritual. Good student in high school, at first, friends mostly with girls-but no girlfriends. Not terribly interested in s.e.x. Bad last year in high school when some sort of Internet bullying took a more personal form. Reluctant to talk about it. Refused to attend the school. Finished with home schooling, GED. Two years of college, attendance quite patchy. Autodidact for the most part. Tendency to have unusual difficulty with cold weather. No close friends "except in books."

"All that sound right to you, Roman?" Fyodor asked, getting his laptop into word processing mode.

Roman looked vaguely about him. "Not very flattering, is it? Sounds like someone I knew-but it doesn't feel like it happened to me personally. Apparently it's me."

Fyodor typed in his laptop, Possible dissociation due to unacceptable self-image.

"But since last year-your memories seem like... you?"

"Yes-since last year. All that seems real. I can't remember anything before that unless somebody reminds me, and then it's... like remembering an old television episode. Except I can't really remember those either..."

Roman's eyes kept wandering to the Victorian fixture hanging from the ceiling. "That fixture's been here a hundred years."

"I would have thought it's older than that, really, as this house was built in the early nineteenth century," Fyodor said absently, adjusting his laptop to make sure Roman couldn't see what he was typing.

"No," Roman said firmly. "Installed early twentieth century. But it was made in the nineteenth."

Fyodor made a note: Possible grandiosity? Faux expertise syndrome? "Your mother says you feel your name is not Roman. Although she showed you a birth certificate. Do you feel the birth certificate is..."

"Is faked, unreal-part of a conspiracy?" Roman chuckled. "Not at all! What I said was, I feel my name is not Roman. I answer to it for simplicity's sake. And as for what my name really is-I truly don't know. Roman Boxer is correct-and incorrect. But don't waste your time asking why that is, I don't have an answer for you."

"And this started when you took a walk on a beach..."