“What did you get out of it?” she demands. “Money? Power? The people thought you provided the true Inca way. They ate your special Wakapathtay stew, thinking it medicine that kept them from turning into monsters. A terrible thought hits her. “They paid you to watch those fights, didn’t they? They paid you in hopes you would protect them from becoming freaks. Just like Narya, who cooked your guinea pig so the Inca gods, through you, wouldn’t turn her into a monstrosity.”
He sputters. She knows that she’s right. Money. Greed. Lies. Extortion. The human way.
“You’re so common,” she spits.
“And you,” he manages, “what are you that’s so special?”
She knew the answer as soon as she entered the Sacred Cave. It was in the old, old air. Now, she sucks in a deep breath, and heat races through her limbs and into her brain.
“I’m an ancient,” she says. “I’m the Inca before there was an Inca. I’m beyond known time. I’m . . .” she pauses. “I’m the Old One.” Her words are in the ancient Quechua language but with their original pronunciations. “Q’ulsi pertaggen cantatro’f’l Cthulhu fh’thagn. Q’ulsi perhagen n’cree’b’f’w’l.”
“You’re nothing! You’re an orphan!” he snarls.
“No,” she says quietly. “I’m not an orphan. I’m not a qzwck’l’zhadst. You see, I never had parents. People found me as a baby. Who were my parents, Maras? Do you know? Does anyone know?”
He’s beyond answering. Behind his eyes lurks madness.
She has him on the edge.
“You see, Maras, I never fit in. I never cared about being alive. Death was nothing to me. I’ve been biding my time, waiting for the right moment. I never understood until now.”
A thread slinks from the bottom of the spider god’s abdomen. Maras shrinks back, eyes bulging.
Let him think she’s brought the spider god back to life. Let him think it’s going to devour him or spin him, dead, into a web. What does she care?
These creatures are irrelevant. Maras, Cisco and Luis, Bachue and Cava, Narya, the villagers—
All of them, irrelevant.
No more fighting. No more alpaca stew. They will all turn to pots.
They’re all going on the shelf. Forever.
Her way is the only way. Inca before there was Inca . . . Old One. The sky will hold nothing but tarnished clouds. The world will groan. The Sacred Cave will be hers. The Others will come, and together, they’ll spend eternity here.
Damien Angelica Walters
With “Umbilicus” Damien Angelica Walters “wanted to subvert the traditional mythos by writing a Lovecraftian story based on the maiden, mother, and crone archetype instead of an entity like Cthulhu. I asked myself: What if Cthulhu wasn’t the only deity who slumbered beneath the waves? What would happen if another, older, deity woke, determined to take her rightful place? What might she unleash upon the world?”
Her work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Cassilda’s Song, Nightmare, Black Static, and Apex. Sing Me Your Scars, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2015 from Apex Publications, and Paper Tigers, a novel, in 2016 from Dark House Press.
Umbilicus
Tess places the last of Emily’s clothes in a box, seals it with a strip of packing tape, and brushes her hands on her shorts. Stripped of the profusion of books and games and art supplies, Emily’s room is a ghost.
The box goes into a corner in the living room with the other things earmarked for donation. In her own bedroom, she stands before the wall papered with newspaper clippings, notes, torn pages from old books, and turns away just as quickly, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.
The small air-conditioning unit in the window growls like a cat that swallowed a dozen angry hornets; a similar sound sticks in her throat. Everyone has to say goodbye eventually, her mother said once from a hospital bed, three weeks before her heart failed for the last time.
With her mouth set in a thin line, Tess begins to remove the thumb tacks, letting the paper seesaw to the floor, catching glimpses of the pictures — a school photo with an awkward smile, her own face caught in grief’s contortion, a stretch of beach — and the words — depression in children, somnambulism, unexplained juvenile behavior — and the headlines — Suicide? . . . Not Sleepwalking, Her Mother Says . . . Body Not Found, Presumed Dead . . . Presumed Dead . . . Presumed Dead . . .
She drops the thumbtacks from her palm onto her dresser and rips the clippings free, tearing them into pieces before she lets them go. When the wall is nothing more than a study of pinprick holes in plaster and the floor a mess of tattered white, she grabs a dustpan and brush and a garbage bag. Sweeps everything in, refusing to pause even when Emily’s face appears.
Utter madness to try and find reason in the unexplainable, and Tess knew, without a doubt, she’d never find an answer. Let the doctors claim Emily was depressed — ignoring everything Tess told them to the contrary — and committed suicide, but they weren’t there that night. They didn’t see what happened, the way the ocean receded—
(the shape in the water)
—the way Emily kept walking, murmuring a word too low for Tess to discern.
She pulls a face. Ties a knot in the bag. Emily was only seven years old; the word suicide wasn’t even in her vocabulary.
Tess tosses the bag near the front door on her way into the kitchen to wash her hands. On the living room television, a commercial is listing side effects for a medicine to treat high cholesterol, side effects the stuff of nightmares. Background noise, its only purpose to swallow the silence.
“Mommy?”
The voice is muffled, but Tess would know it anywhere. She whirls around, soap bubbles dripping from her fingers, her heart racing madness in the bone-cage of her ribs, and pads into the living room.
“Mommy?”
Now it’s coming from behind; Tess races back into the kitchen. “Emily?”
Nothing but the rush of water, then she hears another voice, too low to decipher, speaking under — inside — the water. Her stomach clenches.
Not possible, not possible at all — Emily is gone and all the pennies in the world tossed into a fountain won’t bring her back — but Tess grips the edge of the sink hard enough to hurt. “Emily?” she whispers.
Only water splashing on stainless steel answers. Reason kicks in; Tess turns the faucet off and steps back from the sink, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Through tears, she glares at the boxes piled in the corner — a sandcastle built by sorrow’s hands.
From the kitchen window, she can see a small playground just beyond the parking lot. Two children are on the jungle gym, their mothers sitting on a nearby bench. Occam’s Razor, Tess thinks. Sound travels in odd ways.
With one hand in her pocket and the other clutching Emily’s favorite teddy bear, Tess takes the narrow pathway leading to the beach. Her apartment, the second floor of a converted house, is far away from the tourist trade, and the night is quiet and calm.
The soft whisper of her footsteps in the sand is masked by the susurration of the night waves kissing the shore. Once upon a time she loved the ocean, loved the feel of sand on her skin, loved the sound and smell of the surf — it’s the reason she moved to Ocean City the summer after her nineteenth birthday, why she stayed after David took off, leaving her with no warning, no money, and three-month old Emily — but now it’s a thing to be tolerated, endured.