“Bobby!” Dr. Howard grabbed the door, which had knocked chips out of the wall, and was about to slam it shut again when the figure in the doorway removed its rectangular head and revealed itself to be a tall man in a white suit carrying a suitcase and a cane.
“How do you do?” said the stranger. “Howard Phillips Lovecraft. And you must be Dr. Isaac Howard.”
“W-what did you say, Mister?”
“I am a friend of your son, though I’m afraid only in epistolary fashion. I am here to see Robert E. Howard, if I may.”
“Why, come in,” said Dr. Howard, gathering his wits.
“My sincerest apologies for my uncivilized appearance,” said Lovecraft as he opened the screen door and stepped inside, scattering tiny beads of melting hail around him. “I’m afraid I’ve had the misfortune…” He dropped his suitcase and walking stick and, as they thumped to the floor, very slowly raised his hands.
“Who are you?”
Dr. Howard turned to see his son in the doorway of the study, cocking the hammer of the old single-action .45 he kept for occasions like this one. “Bobby, this stranger here says he’s a friend of yours,” said Dr. Howard.
“I asked you who you were,” said Howard. “I suggest you answer while you can, Mister.”
The man’s flesh seemed nearly blue against his soiled white clothes, and he seemed to have been out in the storm for quite a while, or perhaps he was terrified of the gun, because he was shivering so violently it seemed unlikely he could keep his hands up. He had an odd expression on his face, but Howard couldn’t tell if it was terror or some weird and maniacal amusement. His lips moved hesitantly for a split second, and then, in an entirely unconvincing attempt at a Southern drawl, he said, “Howdy there, Two-Gun Bob.”
Howard and his father looked at each other. The Doctor’s expression suggested he thought they had an escapee from some asylum, but Howard’s eyes suddenly went wide, and his jaw swung open. “Lovecraft!” he said. “How did-What in the Sam Hill are you doin’ out here?”
“I must speak with you immediately, Bob. It is a matter of the utmost importance, whose ramifications may be far more profound than we can guess.”
Howard motioned for him to put his hands down with a wave of the pistol, then thought better of it and carefully uncocked it. “You’re dyin’ of consumption, man, come in! Father, this is my good friend, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. HP for short.”
“Well, pleased to meet you,” said Dr. Howard, taking Lovecraft’s hand to give it a firm and rather quick shake. “My God, you’re cold as a snake in February! Get comfortable inside, and I’ll fetch you some hot coffee and a towel to dry off.”
Lovecraft joined Howard in the dim interior of the living room, where, despite the storm still rumbling outside, the air had retained a musty quality. Howard put his .45 down on the coffee table and took a captain’s chair, motioning for his friend to sit on the davenport. Lovecraft removed his hat, tapping off the small beads of hail still trapped on the brim, and placed it on the cushion to his left. He could see, immediately, that Mrs. Howard had been incapacitated for a long time. The room was obviously in need of a woman’s touch; it was littered with the evidence of men making do without the requisite feminine supervision: medical journals, general magazines, and even a few issues of recent pulp journals lay haphazardly in piles at the sides of the chairs in which Howard and his father habitually read them. Every surface needed dusting, the curtains hung subtly askew, telltale traces of ash lingered where an ashtray had been hastily moved, a pair of boots stood at attention under a chair.
“I apologize for the rude welcome, HP, but you can see for yourself that we weren’t exactly expectin’ guests.”
“I quite understand.”
“So what brings you to my neck of the woods? You say it’s important.”
“I’ve journeyed here, Bob, because I believe you are the only mortal alive whom I can trust to assist me without condemning, me as a madman. The most horrific events have transpired, and I do sincerely believe that even more evil things are in store.” Lovecraft hugged himself and shivered.
“Take off that wet coat, HP.”
Lovecraft removed his jacket just as Dr. Howard returned with a towel draped over one arm, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and a few mismatched pieces of a service. The aroma of fresh coffee made Lovecraft suddenly weak, and he slumped back on the davenport.
“It was already brewin’,” said Dr. Howard. “I say you’ll need plenty of it. You’ve got the look of hypothermia about you, HP.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Lovecraft dried himself with the towel and hunched over the steaming cup of coffee the Doctor poured for him.
“Sugar? I’m afraid we’re fresh outta cream.”
“Thank you,” Lovecraft said again, and while the Doctor poured for himself and his son, Lovecraft spooned one, two, three, four, five spoonfuls of sugar into his cup as the two men watched, spellbound.
“Like a little coffee with your sugar there, HP?”
“I admit I do like it rather on the sweet side.”
“You’ll have to excuse us makin’ do like this,” said Dr. Howard.
“But I’m afraid…”
“Father,” said Howard, “I already told HP about Ma’s condition. I don’t mean to be rude, but could you leave us alone for a while?”
“Go ON, GO ON, then,” Dr. Howard said, getting to his feet. “I’ll step upstairs and check on your mother. Lightnin’ musta woke her up anyhow.”
“How is she faring?” Lovecraft asked when the Doctor had left the room. “Your last report was laden with rather pessimistic sentiments.”
“She hasn’t gotten any better, HP, but I’m still hopin’ to God that she’ll pull through in the end.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lovecraft.
They sat in silence for a moment, sipping their coffee. It suddenly grew quiet outside, and Lovecraft realized that he had grown so accustomed to the roar of the hailstorm that it was only now, as the hard sounds of the icefall turned to the more soothing hiss of rain, that he noticed it again. Outside, the storm seemed to lull, though the rain was a hard one and lightning continued to flash periodically, farther and farther away.
“Flash floods,” said Howard. “There’ll be hell to pay when this freak storm’s over.”
“Indeed.” The heat of the syrupy coffee made Lovecraft sigh with relief.
“What is it, HP? You look like a harried man.”
“I’m afraid my mental faculties have been diminished,” said Lovecraft, at length. “I’ve had the most unpredictable and irregular flights of paranoiac fancy of late. I daresay I might have begun to believe the fantastic contents of my own fiction, so do bear with me if my imagination seems to have gotten rather out of hand.”
“All right,” said Howard. “Why don’t you start from the beginnin’?”
“Well,” said Lovecraft, “my current plight originated in my abode in Providence.” He poured himself more coffee and added another surprising quantity of sugar before he took a preliminary sip and, satisfied, began his long narrative.
2
“As YOU KNOW from our long correspondence, I am a man of semi invalid constitution and therefore while away the vast majority of my time in the confines of my humble domicile. I am nocturnal by habit, though I will occasionally compromise my odd daily routines to fit the needs of my visitors or hosts.
“A fortnight ago I received a package from my friend Samuel Loveman, whom I have mentioned to you on occasion. Periodically, he has presented me with various curios and artifacts for which he knows I will have some proclivity or fascination. Over the years he has given me such things as a Mayan statuette, an ushabti figurine from an ancient Egyptian tomb, and a wooden monkey from Bali. So it was with no surprise-indeed, it was with great delight-that I opened his most recent package to find, within, an item which I immediately recognized as a Kachina doll, a small rendition of one of the strange gods of the Hopi or the Navajo, I believe. I must confess that this particular type of Kachina was novel to me, but its stylized headdress and the features which had been depicted thereupon were startlingly familiar to my eye and would have been to anyone even passingly cognizant of my Cthulhuvian scribblings. This particular Kachina had the unmistakable squid like face and the distinct peripheral tentacles of one of the Old Ones of whom I write.