“Two packets,” says Anne, a quaver in her voice.
And Cthulhu comes.
for her.
At least there’s no distant screaming tonight. Maybe a tough tentacle is down her throat, no doubt allowing her to breathe, though, as she writhes.
Jack and I don’t catch sight of Anne’s corpse anywhere on today’s search for more food. This takes us hours, but there are no birds to steal. Finally, we find what we seek upon the simple marble tomb of Mazzini’s mother, within a railed little garden in front of the squat Doric columns supporting the massive architrave carved with the name of the great Italian patriot, wrapped over by creeper-clad rocks — for the atrium and then the crypt beyond, very dark within, burrow into the hillside in this part of the wild woodland. Paradoxically, quite close to our sanctuary, almost the last place we think to look.
On his mother’s tomb by a towering tree: a single plate of white pasta scattered with clams. Brought from where, and how?
“Ladies first?” enquires Jack with an effort at humour.
Together we advance into the little railed garden.
A soft stirring sound from within the mausoleum.
k-thoooo-looo
comes.
I do hear the shrieks tonight, and try to stopper my ears. Maybe I should jam into my ears the long-expired Pope candles. The scene repeats in my mind: stooping to pass under the architrave, the tentacled monster had surveyed us. No point in fleeing; we knew it could catch us.
Heads or tails, male or female, Jack or me?
Then Cthulhu had swooped upon Jack and swept him away howling back inside that mausoleum. Is it so shameful that I seized the plate of pasta and clams and ran off with it?
So I’m all alone in the labyrinth now; and I’m hungry. Does something really special await the solitary, and female, survivor?
Maybe a boiled lobster, and no evil consequences on this particular occasion.
I’m in the gallery where a boy and his sister, hair and clothing perfectly rendered, are witnessing the departure of their mother’s soul to heaven — the bronze door of the sepulcher above is already half-closed as the boy gestures upward, his other arm tenderly embracing his sister. Beside the children’s feet lie a big bar of nut chocolate and an overripe banana. Chocolate! Immediately I’m tearing off the paper and silver foil, and biting into the sweetness.
But for the sudden assault of stench, I almost fail to notice Cthulhu coming until it is upon me, entangling me, its suckers tearing off slacks and shirt and underwear. The suffocating smell is of sewers and rotting fish.
Face tentacles sliding into my ears, thoooo-loooo thoooo-loooo, arm tentacles probing my anus, my cunt.
A storm of ecstasy like a blinding enveloping light! A momentary shaft of terrible agony as if I’m burned alive!
The ectasy again! I would crawl begging to the beast for this, like those rats that burn off their paws by pressing a red-hot plate that stimulates the pleasure centers in their brains.
Cthulhu is. calibrating me as, yes, it copulates with some organ or tentacle or other.
And I’m alive, lying naked and used — for how long? — upon flagstones bearing names of the dead. Alive. So violated but alive. Cthulhu has gone, though leaving his odor upon me.
At the tomb of Mazzini it must have been choosing whether its bride should be an Australian youth or me.
And what is a bride but a receptacle for seed?
A movement. What?
The statue of the boy has lowered its arm and removed his hand from his sister’s shoulder. She turns and steps down, and he copies her. The chiaroscuro of dust still remains on these nineteenth-century children as they step towards me, as I roll with difficulty on to my hands and knees so as to press myself up from the floor, and haul my aching abused self upright. The children remain marble, yet that marble has become a flexible, mobile parody of what it represented so faithfully for a century and more. Those clothes of theirs wouldn’t come off them, I know that — the bodies are as one flesh with the garments. The boy and girl pause, looking up at me now.
Confused words come from their softened mouths.
Not Italian words, no.
Words with a Swedish lilt, I’m almost sure.
The voices of Anders and Selma Strandberg, the bank manager and his wife.
“. help us. ”
“. how small we. ”
“. where we been. ”
“. what we. ”
“. hurt. ”
“. hurt. ”
Within half an hour a score of statues have found me, arriving slowly, step by step.
The pious little old proletarian peasant woman, long-skirted, aproned and shawled, whom Gabriella had said sold peanuts all her life to save up for a statue of herself in Staglieno — she still carries strings of inedible peanuts as if those are rosaries.
The tall young swoony woman, nude to the waist, now detached from the grasp of the veiled skeleton.
A suited businessman, crumpled bowler hat in hand.
More children, dressed like miniature adults.
Some of the minds in the statues seem insane from the experiments they suffered. Others are very confused. Two can only speak in what must be Hungarian.
Eating or drinking is plainly impossible for them. Do they envy or resent my chocolate? Impossible to tell. Will their minds emerge more, and maybe heal, as time passes?
For what capricious purpose have we been reunited? So that a score of animated statues can provide company while something grows inside me — until at last I give birth surrounded by mobile dusty marble people, in a reverse of their previous roles as mourners at death-bed scenes. How often will Cthulhu play with me stinkingly again.?
Jack is the brightest of the children. He knows how his father died, and how he himself died. And how, but for me, he would now be bearing spawn in his belly.
SANCTUARY
Don Webb
It was the third year after the Aeon of Cthulhu had begun. The second year after Nat’s wife had walked off into the sky, and the three weeks since he driven into Austin to raid a drugstore for antidepressants and vitamins. It was noon; three years ago he would have been at Precision Tune scanning cars whose “Check Engine” light had come on. Now, since it was noon, he would be walking across the street to Tacos Arrandas #3 with Willie, Juan, and Mike. The chicken flautas with sour cream would be pretty good right now with a cerveza. Someone was crying in the Church, but someone was always crying. They would quiet down. Everyone sat upright at Santa Cruz during the day, unless they were praying. If they weren’t out growing vegetables, they stayed here. There were non-Catholics here — Mr. Jones, over there, with his black shiny face, he had been some sort of Baptist minister. The once — fat blonde lady who taught science had been an atheist — what was that word they used in Mr. G’s class?Her hypothesis must have proven wrong. There were gods; mainly they ate us.
Nat hated the Church except for Jesus. Jesus never looked too good to Nat growing up, stuck on that damn cross, couldn’t help anybody, could he? He used to make stupid jokes with the cholos he hung out with: “Why can’t Jesus eat M&Ms? ’Cause they fall through the holes in his hands.” They would tell him that he was going to hell. Guess they were right about that. He still carried his baby-blue rosary from back in the day. It seemed like those from Below didn’t give a shit about colors.