The stone was biting cold in her hand but she held it against the pain, studying the curves and lines that turned like a Möbius strip across the oval space where a face should have been. The pattern seemed to shift under her gaze. Uncomfortable, Dana put the figure back and tucked her hand underneath her arm to warm it again.
She turned away from the vines and the idol, and examined a shelf of books that stood below the room’s single window. The languages of the titles eluded her. She pulled out a massive folio, examining the dark leather cover embossed with vines and beasts. It was spongy, and warm. She didn’t want to open it.
She slid the heavy volume back and pulled out the one beside it. This one was beautiful, an octavo bound in stained, deep yellow silk with a winding silver pattern embroidered on the cover. She ran her fingers over the threads, and pulled them quickly away. Something in the design had slithered under her touch.
Wary now but drawn in, she opened the book and leafed through the heavy pages. Tucked between the leaves near the beginning was a sheet of lined notepaper covered in sharp blue lettering.
C.M. trans. Polyglot Lat. and Arab., some Grk., Germ.?.—Lord of the Wood, Black Goat of the Wood, Mother of the Wood and the Stars, Black Goat with a thousand young—incantation? Mother of Winter, End of the Sun, Ever Their praises, and abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
Without thinking, she folded the sheet and put it in her pocket.
She flipped more pages. The words shimmered and turned, unreadable. She blinked, clapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. Still, her hand lingered on it. She wanted it. She pulled it out again and slid it into her purse.
She looked around, suddenly furtive. The sinking sun cut through the window above her in a wide pale beam, catching in her eyes, making her wince. The room seemed to close around her. Something could see her here. She knew it under her skin
She stepped to the door, and listened only a moment before pattering fast down the stairs. At the bottom the world filled with the thin radio music again, and Davey gave no sign of having seen her as she fled.
Days melted into days. Josh and Claire were often out. They did not ask her to come. Without them, Dana kept to the house. The days were too chilly and the town too empty for her to want to wander alone.
She spent her hours reading in the living room with the husk of Joe for company. He deteriorated slowly, like a great wet cake sinking in on itself. Sometimes he sighed, but otherwise he made no sound. As far as Dana could tell Joe never left the living room. She didn’t want to be near him, but felt safer if she could watch him.
She finished the novel she had brought with her, and the magazines she found in the house. One dusky afternoon she pulled out the yellow silk book from where she had hidden it in her empty duffle bag under the bed.
She settled back in the living room and paged through it slowly, then got out the sheet of notebook paper. She tried to match it to a passage, but the language in the book was nothing she could grasp. She read the translation over, softly, aloud, her lips bending over the stranger syllables, her tongue halting at the sounds.
“Lord of the Wood, Black Goat of the Wood, Mother of the Wood and the Stars, Black Goat with a thousand young—Mother of Winter, End of the Sun, Ever Their praises, and abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!—”
Joe moaned and leaned toward her, reaching. The hand he raised looked eaten away, the skin grey and peeling. Dana shrieked and leapt up, the book falling from her lap.
Claire stood in the doorway. She smiled, her lips wet.
“It’s all right,” Claire said. “Don’t let him bother you.”
“He doesn’t,” Dana said, gathering herself again.
“Josh, I mean” Claire said. She went to smooth the blanket over Joe’s misshapen lap, pressing him back into the chair. “There now,” she said to him.
She came over to stand beside Dana. She glanced down at the book on the floor, then up into Dana’s eyes. “Josh knows what he has to do, and he doesn’t want to do it. Family is hard, sometimes.”
She lifted Dana’s hand in her own, turned it over.
“Look,” Claire said, pressing her finger against Dana’s palm. “Do you see what’s written there?”
“No,” Dana said, pulling her hand back.
Joe snorted wetly in his chair, falling to one side. Claire moved to straighten him.
“I think you will,” Claire said, bending to tend her father.
The evening was cold and still. Dana had talked Josh into leaving the house with her, to show her the quiet town. He had grown up here, after all. There were only six streets, and most of the small houses that lined them were dark. Some of the lighted ones were decorated with ghosts and plastic skulls.
“The way you talked, I always thought Newbrook was bigger,” she said as they looped past the nursing home back to the main road. Her breath hung white in the air. “There can’t be many trick or treaters. There’s nobody here.”
Josh smiled. “There are some,” he said. “The town clears out after tourist season.”
His voice dropped. “But twenty, thirty years ago, we lost a lot of people. They went...elsewhere.”
“I guess that happens to a lot of small towns. The economy changes and it’s hard to stay.”
“Things do change, but our traditions…they make us,” Josh said, and fell silent.
They strolled past Davey’s, and Dana laughed with sudden bravado.
“You know there’s some weird shrine in there?” she said, keeping her voice low.
Josh stared at her, no humor in his eyes. He stopped walking.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Dana looked at him.
“Above the shop. Upstairs, there’s a shrine set up. Fertility goddess, I think. And a collection of old occult books. I couldn’t read them. Someone started to translate them and—”
“Why were you upstairs at all?” Josh hissed at her. “Did anyone see you?”
She stepped back.
“I was just goofing around.”
“What is wrong with you?.”
Dana blinked back sudden tears. She looked at her feet, then up over Josh’s shoulder at the side of Davey’s building. The narrow attic window was lit with a dim yellow glow. Shadows moved across the light. She wondered who was up there.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He pushed past her. “We have to go home now,” he said.
He was trembling. She realized he was scared.
She followed him into the soft blue night, back up the road.
She heard him leave the house before dawn. She heard low voices from outside, then the crush of gravel under wheels. She rolled over and willed herself back to sleep.
Claire woke her before noon, standing over her, watching until Dana opened her eyes.
“I haven’t been a good host,” Claire said. “I’ve left you to your own devices all this time.”
Dana blinked and sat up on the edge of the bed, pulling the blankets around her. She was groggy and pliant, beginning to feel unmoored in this empty town.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve found stuff to do.”
Claire sat beside her, her grey eyes huge. Dana could feel the heat from Claire’s skin.
“Where’s Josh?”
“Around,” Claire said. “But I have something for you.”
Dana opened the twist of paper Claire handed her. Inside lay a tangled clutch of roots, grey with dirt.
Claire grinned. Dana nodded, closing her fingers around it.