“I’m gettin’ mighty hungry,” Howard said. “I could use a bite to eat and a pot fulla coffee. Whataya say, HP?”
Lovecraft stopped his scritching and folded his pencil stump into his journal for the umpteenth time. “I concur with your sentiments, particularly regarding the hot coffee.”
“What you writin’ there this time?”
“Some notes. I wanted not to forget the specifics of my dream. The Artifact has pained me since we were in the proximity of the odd men, Bob. I believe their influence is what precipitated my dream about our hapless passenger.”
“You dreamt about Glory? Why don’t ya tell me about it? Keep me awake, for God’s sake. I’m feelin’ a bit like a cat in the sun.”
“It was a dream of unusual vividness, much like the night terrors that haunted my childhood,” Lovecraft began. He recounted, as much as he remembered, the details of his dream, but out of his own shame he could not mention the erotic charge he had felt, or the sheer vividness of the sensory details. Instead he emphasized the direness of his feelings, the sense of urgency, and the psychic connection he seemed to have with Glory. “Perhaps it is irrational for me to draw such a conclusion, but I believe this was more of a vision than a dream. It had a certain numinous quality to it. It was foreshadowing something I dare not imagine.”
Howard quietly chewed it over before he answered. “You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have believed you before I saw that odd fellow. When you told me about that man on the bus I figured you added a shot or two from your tall tales. Even with the bugs in my house. But when I saw that face, I had to give it to ya, HP.”
“I don’t know whether to be honored or insulted,” Lovecraft replied with a smile.
Howard reached over and thumped him on the chest with the back of his hand, and Lovecraft doubled over, an involuntary puff of air escaping his lungs. The two men laughed as both recovered from the shock.
“We got good imaginations,” said Howard. “How do ya explain those faces? I never even read about such a thing.”
“I suppose we could explain that phenomenon just as well by pretending to fictionalize it. Perhaps those creatures are only partially in this dimension and what we are perceiving is some oscillation between our dimensions. I dare not even imagine what must be on the other side.”
“You do enough of it in your Cthulhu yarns.”
“No, I do not. I go only as far as to insinuate those unspeakable details to allow them resonance in the reader’s mind.”
“Well, there you go,” said Howard, motioning with his head to a roadside diner. “Let’s fill this tank and our bellies, eh? Won’t be another outpost for a while.”
“For your heroic role today, I shall purchase you a cup of coffee,” Lovecraft declared.
“Mighty generous of ya, buddy.” Howard slowed down to pull off the highway, checking his rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed. Even at this distance from Vernon, he had the nagging feeling that the dead black sedan was nearby.
THE GAS STATION attendant was a half-blood, bronzed and angular, and his gray-black coveralls appeared to be more grease than fabric. He wiped his oil-blackened hands on the startlingly clean rag that protruded from his back pocket and approached the Chevy, in which he saw the unlikely trio of disheveled travelers. The driver’s face was stained with dust washed into pale rivulet patterns by the sweat that dripped from under the brim of his hat, and in the passenger seat, the pale, gourd-jawed man in his dingy white suit glanced about with the bulging eyes of a fish. In the backseat, as he approached, he saw what he thought was a fiery red animal pelt-perhaps the fur of an exotic fox-but it was a white woman, puffy and unconscious with sleep. “A hatted bear, a pale fish, and a sleeping red horse will come your way,” the old shaman had said to him. “You must let me know when they arrive, for those who come after will be witches.” He recalled the old man’s words as if they were being whispered to him now, with the force of urgency and dread.
“Check the oil, sir?” the attendant asked the hatted bear man. “Suppose so,” said Howard.
The attendant gave the pale fish man a lingering once-over as he got out of the passenger seat, and Lovecraft returned the favor, equally fascinated.
“What’re you gawkin’ at, Chief?” said Howard.
“Ah, nothing, sir. Check your tires?”
“Yeah, why don’tcha.”
Howard motioned Lovecraft over to the diner and leaned into the back, where Glory was still asleep, looking feverish and uncomfortable in the heat. It took a long time to wake her out of her thick slumber, and when she finally opened her eyes, she burst into tears.
“What’s the matter?” Howard asked. “How are ya feeling, Miss?”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I feel like shit. I must look like shit.”
“I’d have to disagree with ya there,” Howard said with a smile.“I doubt you could ever look like shit.”
Glory rubbed her face, quickly felt her hair, and checked her breath against her palm. “I had the most terrible nightmares,” she said. “I dreamt those gentlemen back there were murdering my baby.”
“You have a baby?”
Glory was silent for a moment, as if she were considering what to say. “No. I lost my baby a while back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Howard said.
It was a reply Glory had heard too many times; it surprised her now to hear the sincerity in his voice. She followed Howard to the diner and excused herself to go to the ladies’ room to freshen up. She still felt disoriented; though she could remember everything that had happened since she had gotten out at Vernon, she still had an odd dislocated feeling as if she were waking in an unfamiliar room.
His fingers curled around the trigger handle of the gas pump, the attendant watched the red horse woman disappear into the ladies’ room, her mane so red it seemed to bum the air. Under his breath he repeated the names of the figures to himself: hatted bear man, pale fish man, red horse woman. They had come from the east and they were pursuing. the sun across the land, into the house. of night. He would report this to the old shaman, he thought, repeating the story to himself until it became a soft chant. Unconsciously, with his free hand, he fingered the beaded medicine pouch he wore around his neck. Evil times were coming. The time of the gourd of ashes was nearly upon the earth.
“I’M TELLIN’ YA I didn’t like the way he was lookin’ at you,”
Howard said, glancing in the rearview mirror at the lights of the diner receding in the darkness. “Put a little firewater into a half-breed like him and he can’t control his animal lust for white women.”
“The man is likely the product of such an unfortunate coupling,”
Lovecraft added.
“What are you two saying?” Glory said incredulously from the back. “His father raped his mother? Where do you boys get ideas like that?”
“I assure you it is not due to our overabundance of imagination,” said Lovecraft. “The inferior races and classes have a proclivity for hypergamy, and when that is not a legitimate possibility, they may resort to force.”
“When they can get away with it,” Howard added. “It’s the duty of the Aryan frontiersman to protect his womenfolk from that sort.”
The two men looked approvingly at each other. Rather smugly,
Glory thought from their silhouettes. “I can’t believe you boys,” she said. “What makes an Indian any different from you except the color of his skin?”