late, again

"But there was no word and the veins did not rest easy in the wrists..."

ray bradbury, the next in line, the october country

The White Road

"I wish that you would visit me one day, in my house.

There are such sights I would show you."

My intended lowers her eyes, and, yes, she shivers.

Her father and his friends all hoot and cheer.

"That's never a story, Mr. Fox," chides a pale woman

in the corner of the room, her hair corn-fair,

her eyes the grey of cloud, meat on her bones,

she curves, and smiles crooked and amused.

"Madame, I am no storyteller," and I bow, and ask,

"Perhaps, you have a story for us?" I raise an eyebrow.

Her smile remains.

She nods, then stands, her lips move:

"A girl from the town, a plain girl, was betrayed by her lover,

a scholar. So when her blood stopped flowing,

and her belly swole beyond disguising,

she went to him, and wept hot tears. He stroked her hair,

swore that they would marry, that they would run,

in the night,

together,

to his aunt. She believed him;

even though she had seen the glances in the hall

he gave to his master's daughter,

who was fair, and rich, she believed him.

Or she believed what she believed.

"There was something sly about his smile,

his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something

that sent her early to their trysting place,

beneath the oak, beside the thornbush,

something that made her climb the tree and wait.

Climb a tree, and in her condition.

Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light,

carrying a bag,

from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife.

He worked with a will, beside the thornbush,

beneath the oaken tree,

he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave,

that old song...

shall I sing it for you, now, good folk?"

She pauses, and as a one we clap and holloa-or almost as a one:

My intended, her hair so dark, her cheeks so pink,

her lips so red,

seems distracted.

The fair girl (who is she? A guest of the inn, I hazard) sings:

"A fox went out on a shiny night

And he begged for the moon to give him light

For he'd many miles to go that night

Before he'd reach his den-O!

Den-O! Den-O!

He'd many miles to go that night, before he'd reach is den-O."

Her voice was sweet and fine, but the voice of my intended is finer.

"And when her grave was dug-

A small hole it was, for she was a little thing,

even big with child she was a little thing-

he walked below her, back and forth,

rehearsing her hearsing, thus:

-Good evening, my pigsnie, my love,

my, but you look a treat in the moon's light,

mother of my child-to-be. Come, let me hold you.

And he'd embrace the midnight air with one hand,

and with the other, holding his short but wicked knife,

he'd stab and stab the dark.

"She trembled in her oak above him. Breathed so softly,

but still she shook. And once he looked up, and said,

-Owls, I'll wager, and another time, fie! is that a cat

up there? Here puss... But she was still,

bethought herself a branch, a leaf, a twig. At dawn

he took his mattock, spade and knife, and left

all grumbling and gudgeoned of his prey.

"They found her later wandering, her wits

had left her. There were oak leaves in her hair

and she sang,

'The bough did bend

The bough did break

I saw the hole

The fox did make

'We swore to love

We swore to marry

I saw the blade

The fox did carry'

"They say that her babe, when it was born,

had a fox's paw on her and not a hand.

Fear is the sculptress, midwives claim. The scholar fled."

And she sits down, to general applause.

The smile twitches, hides about her lips: I know it's there,

it waits in her grey eyes. She stares at me, amused.

"I read that in the Orient foxes follow priests and scholars,

in disguise as women, houses, mountains, gods, processions,

always discovered by their tails- " so I begin,

but my intended's father intercedes.

"Speaking of tales-my dear, you said you had a tale?"

My intended flushes. There are no rose petals,

save for her cheeks. She nods, and says:

"My story, father? My story is the story of a dream I dreamed."

Her voice is so quiet and soft, we hush ourselves to hear,

outside the inn just the night sounds: an owl hoots,

but, as the old folk say, I live too near the wood

to be frightened by an owl.

She looks at me.

"You, sir. In my dream you rode to me, and called,

–Come to my house, my sweet, away down the White Road.

There are such sights as I would show you.

I asked how I would find your house, down the white chalk road,

for it's a long road, and a dark one, under trees

that make the light all green and gold when the sun is high,

but shade the road at other times. At night

it's pitch-black; there is no moonlight on the White Road...

"And you said, Mister Fox-and this is most curious, but dreams

are treacherous and curious and dark-

that you would cut the throat of a sow-pig,

and you would walk her home behind your fine black stallion.

You smiled,

smiled, Mister Fox, with your red lips and your green eyes,

eyes that could snare a maiden's soul, and your yellow teeth,

which could eat her heart- "

"God forbid," I smiled. All eyes were on me, then, not her,

though hers was the story. Eyes, such eyes.

"So, in my dream, it became my fancy to visit your great house,

as you had often entreated me to do,

to walk its glades and paths, to see the pools,

the statues you had brought from Greece, the yews,

the poplar-walk, the grotto, and the bower.

And, as this was but a dream, I did not wish

to take a chaperone

-some withered, juiceless prune

who would not appreciate your house, Mister Fox; who

would not appreciate your pale skin,

nor your green eyes,

nor your engaging ways.

"So I rode the white chalk road, following the red blood path,

on Betsy, my filly. The trees above were green.

A dozen miles straight, and then the blood

led me off across meadows, over ditches, down a gravel path,

(but now I needed sharp eyes to catch the blood-

a drip, a drop: the pig must have been dead as anything)

and I reined my filly in front of a house.

And such a house. A Palladian delight, immense,

a landscape of its own, windows, columns,

a white stone monument to verticality, expansive.

"There was a sculpture in the garden, before the house,

a Spartan child, stolen fox half-concealed in its robe,

the fox biting the child's stomach, gnawing the vitals away,

the stoic child bravely saying nothing-

what could it say, cold marble that it was?

There was pain in its eyes, and it stood

upon a plinth upon which were carved eight words.

I walked around it and I read:

Be bold,

Be bold,

but not too bold.

"I tethered little Betsy in the stables,

between a dozen night black stallions

each with blood and madness in his eyes.

I saw no one.

I walked to the front of the house, and up the great steps.

The huge doors were locked fast,

no servants came to greet me, when I knocked.

In my dream (for do not forget, Mister Fox, that this was my dream.

You look so pale) the house fascinated me,

the kind of curiosity (you know this,

Mister Fox, I see it in your eyes) that kills cats.

"I found a door, a small one, off the latch,

and pushed my way inside.

Walked corridors, lined with oak, with shelves,

with busts, with trinkets,

I walked, my feet silent on the scarlet carpet,

until I reached the great hall.

It was there again, in red stones that glittered,

set into the white marble of the floor,

it said:

Be bold,

be bold,

but not too bold

Or else your life's blood

shall run cold.

"There were stairs, wide, carpeted in scarlet,

off the great hall,

and I walked up them, silently, silently.

Oak doors: and now

I was in a dining room, or so I am convinced,

for the remnants of a grisly supper

were abandoned, cold and fly-buzzed.

Here was a half-chewed hand, there, crisped and picked,

a face, a woman's face, who must in life, I fear,

have looked like me."

"Heaven defend us all from such dark dreams," her father cried.

"Can such things be?"

"It is not so," I assured him. The fair woman's smile

glittered behind her grey eyes. People

need assurances.

"Behind the supper room was a room,

a huge room, this inn would fit in that room,

piled promiscuously with rings and bracelets,

necklaces, pearl drops, ball gowns, fur wraps,

lace petticoats, silks and satins. Ladies' boots,

and muffs, and bonnets: a treasure cave and dressing room-

diamonds and rubies underneath my feet.

"Beyond that room I knew myself in Hell.

In my dream...

I saw many heads. The heads of young women. I saw a wall

on which dismembered limbs were nailed.

A heap of breasts. The piles of guts, of livers, lights,

the eyes, the...

No. I cannot say. And all around the flies were buzzing,

one low droning buzz.

-Bëelzebubzebubzebub they buzzed. I could not breathe,

I ran from there and sobbed against a wall."

"A fox's lair indeed," says the fair woman.

("It was not so," I mutter.)

"They are untidy creatures, so to litter,

about their dens the bones and skins and feathers

of their prey. The French call him Renard,

the Scottish, Tod."

"One cannot help one's name," says my intended's father.

He is almost panting now, they all are:

in the firelight, the fire's heat, lapping their ale.

The wall of the inn was hung with sporting prints.

She continues:

"From outside I heard a crash and a commotion.

I ran back the way I had come, along the red carpet,

down the wide staircase-too late!-the main door was opening!

I threw myself down the stairs-rolling, tumbling-

fetched up hopelessly beneath a table,

where I waited, shivered, prayed."

She points at me. "Yes, you, sir. You came in,

crashed open the door, staggered in, you sir,

dragging a young woman

by her red hair and by her throat.

Her hair was long and unconfined, she screamed and strove

to free herself. You laughed, deep in your throat,

were all a-sweat, and grinned from ear to ear."

She glares at me. The color's in her cheeks.

"You pulled a short old broadsword, Mister Fox, and as she screamed,

you slit her throat, again from ear to ear.

I listened to her bubbling, sighing, shrieking,

closed my eyes and prayed until she stopped.

And after much, much, much too long, she stopped.

"And I looked out. You smiled, held up your sword,

your hands agore-blood- "

"In your dream," I tell her.

"In my dream.

She lay there on the marble, as you sliced,

you hacked, you wrenched, you panted, and you stabbed.

You took her head from her shoulders,

thrust your tongue between her red wet lips.

You cut off her hands. Her pale white hands.

You sliced open her bodice, you removed each breast.

Then you began to sob and howl.

Of a sudden,

clutching her head, which you carried by the hair,

the flame red hair,

you ran up the stairs.

"As soon as you were out of sight,

I fled through the open door.

I rode my Betsy home, down the White Road."

All eyes upon me now. I put down my ale,

on the old wood of the table.

"It is not so,"

I told her,

told all of them.

"It was not so, and

God forbid

it should be so. It was

an evil dream. I wish such dreams

on no one."

"Before I fled the charnel house,

before I rode poor Betsy into a lather,

before we fled down the White Road,

the blood still red

(and was it a pig whose throat you slit, Mister Fox?),

before I came to my father's inn,

before I fell before them, speechless,

my father, brothers, friends- "

All honest farmers, fox-hunting men.

They are stamping their boots, their black boots.

" -before that, Mister Fox,

I seized from the floor, from the bloody floor,

her hand, Mister Fox. The hand of the woman

you hacked apart before my eyes."

"It is not so- "

"You Gilles de Rais. You monster."

"And God forbid it should be so!"

She smiles now, lacking mirth or warmth.

The brown hair curls around her face,

roses twining about a bower.

Two spots of red are burning on her cheeks.

"Behold, Mister Fox! Her hand! Her poor pale hand!"

She pulls it from her breasts (gently freckled,

I had dreamed of those breasts),

tosses it down upon the table.

It lies in front of me.

Her father, brothers, friends,

they stare at me hungrily,

and I pick up the small thing.

The hair was red indeed, and ranks. The pads and claws

were rough. One end was bloody

but the blood had dried.

"This is no hand," I tell them. But the first

fist knocks the wind from out of me,

an oaken cudgel hits my shoulder,

as I stagger,

the first black boot kicks me down onto the floor.

And then a rain of blows beats down on me,

I curl and mewl and pray and grip the paw

so tightly.

What if the hunters come?

What if they come?

Be bold, I whisper once, before I die.

But not too bold...

And then my tale is done.

by Neil Gaiman
via The Endicott Studio

“I Cthulhu,” a long-lost story by Neil Gaiman

or What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’ S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)?

I.

Cthulhu, they call me. Great Cthulhu.

Nobody can pronounce it right.

Are you writing this down? Every word? Good. Where shall I start…mm?

Very well, then. The beginning. Write this down, Whateley.

I was spawned uncounted aeons ago, in the dark mists of Khhaa’yngnaiih (no, of course I don’t know how to spell it. Write it as it sounds), of nameless nightmare parents, under a gibbous moon. It wasn’t the moon of this planet, of course, it was a real moon. On some nights it filled over half the sky and as it rose you could watch the crimson blood drip and trickle down its bloated face, staining it red, until at its height it bathed the swamps and towers in a gory dead red light.

Those were the days.

Or rather the nights, on the whole. Our place had a sun of sorts, but it was old, even back then. I remember that on the night it finally exploded we all slithered down to the beach to watch. But I get ahead of myself.

I never knew my parents.

My father was consumed by my mother as soon as he had fertilized her and she, in her turn, was eaten by myself at my birth. That is my first memory, as it happens. Squirming my way out of my mother, the gamy taste of her still in my tentacles.

Don’t look so shocked, Whateley. I find you humans just as revolting.

Which reminds me, did they remember to feed the shoggoth? I thought I heard it gibbering.

I spent my first few thousand years in those swamps. I did not like this, of course, for I was the colour of a young trout and about four of your feet long. I spent most of my time creeping up on things and eating them and in my turn avoiding being crept up on and eaten.

So passed my youth.

And then one day – I believe it was a Tuesday – I discovered that there was more to life than food. (Sex? Of course not. I will not reach that stage until after my next estivation; your piddly little planet will long be cold by then). It was that Tuesday that my Uncle Hastur slithered down to my part of the swamp with his jaws fused.

It meant that he did not intend to dine that visit, and that we could talk.

Now that is a stupid question, even for you Whateley. I don’t use either of my mouths in communicating with you, do I? Very well then. One more question like that and I’ll find someone else to relate my memoirs to. And you will be feeding the shoggoth.

We are going out, said Hastur to me. Would you like to accompany us?

We? I asked him. Who’s we?

Myself, he said, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Tsathogghua , Ia ! Shub Niggurath, young Yuggoth and a few others. You know, he said, the boys. (I am freely translating for you here, Whateley, you understand. Most of them were a-, bi-, or trisexual, and old Ia! Shub Niggurath has at least a thousand young, or so it says. That branch of the family was always given to exaggeration). We are going out, he concluded, and we were wondering if you fancied some fun.

I did not answer him at once. To tell the truth I wasn’t all that fond of my cousins, and due to some particularly eldritch distortion of the planes I’ve always had a great deal of trouble seeing them clearly. They tend to get fuzzy around the edges, and some of them – Sabaoth is a case in point – have a great many edges.

But I was young, I craved excitement. ‘There has to be more to life than this!’ I would cry, as the delightfully foetid charnel smells of the swamp miasmatised around me, and overhead the ngau-ngau and zitadors whooped and skrarked. I said yes, as you have probably guessed, and I oozed after Hastur until we reached the meeting place.

As I remember we spent the next moon discussing where we were going. Azathoth had his hearts set on distant Shaggai, and Nyarlathotep had a thing about the Unspeakable Place (I can’t for the life of me think why. The last time I was there everything was shut). It was all the same to me, Whateley. Anywhere wet and somehow, subtly wrong and I feel at home. But Yog-Sothoth had the last word, as he always does, and we came to this plane.

You’ve met Yog-Sothoth, have you not, my little two-legged beastie?

I thought as much.

He opened the way for us to come here.

To be honest, I didn’t think much of it. Still don’t. If I’d known the trouble we were going to have I doubt I’d have bothered. But I was younger then.

As I remember our first stop was dim Carcosa. Scared the shit out of me, that place. These days I can look at your kind without a shudder, but all those people , without a scale or pseudopod between them, gave me the quivers.

The King in Yellow was the first I ever got on with.

The tatterdemallion king. You don’t know of him? Necronomicon page seven hundred and four (of the complete edition) hints at his existence, and I think that idiot Prinn mentions him in De Vermis Mysteriis . And then there’s Chambers, of course.

Lovely fellow, once I got used to him.

He was the one who first gave me the idea.

What the unspeakable hells is there to do in this dreary dimension? I asked him.

He laughed. When I first came here, he said, a mere colour out of space, I asked myself the same question. Then I discovered the fun one can get in conquering these odd worlds, subjugating the inhabitants, getting them to fear and worship you. It’s a real laugh.

Of course, the Old Ones don’t like it.

The old ones? I asked.

No, he said, Old Ones. It’s capitalized. Funny chaps. Like great starfish-headed barrels, with filmy great wings that they fly through space with.

Fly through space? Fly? I was shocked. I didn’t think anybody flew these days. Why bother when one can sluggle, eh? I could see why they called them the old ones. Pardon, Old Ones.

What do these Old Ones do? I asked the King.

(I’ll tell you all about sluggling later, Whateley. Pointless, though. You lack wnaisngh’ang. Although perhaps badminton equipment would do almost as well). (Where was I? Oh yes).

What do these Old Ones do, I asked the King.

Nothing much, he explained. They just don’t like anybody else doing it.

I undulated, writhing my tentacles as if to say “I have met such beings in my time”, but fear the message was lost on the King.

Do you know of any places ripe for conquering? I asked him.

He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of a small and dreary patch of stars. There’s one over there that you might like, he told me. It’s called Earth. Bit off the beaten track, but lots of room to move.

Silly bugger.

That’s all for now, Whateley.

Tell someone to feed the shoggoth on your way out.

II.

Is it time already, Whateley?

Don’t be silly. I know that I sent for you. My memory is as good as it ever was.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fthagn.

You know what that means, don’t you?

In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

A justified exaggeration, that; I haven’t been feeling too well recently.

It was a joke, one-head, a joke. Are you writing all this down? Good. Keep writing. I know where we got up to yesterday.

R’lyeh.

Earth.

That’s an example of the way that languages change, the meanings of words. Fuzziness. I can’t stand it. Once on a time R’lyeh was the Earth, or at least the part of it that I ran, the wet bits at the start. Now it’s just my little house here, latitude 47 ° 9’ south, longitude 126 ° 43’ west.

Or the Old Ones. They call us the Old Ones now. Or the Great Old Ones, as if there were no difference between us and the barrel boys.

Fuzziness.

So I came to Earth, and in those days it was a lot wetter than it is today. A wonderful place it was, the seas as rich as soup and I got on wonderfully with the people. Dagon and the boys (I use the word literally this time). We all lived in the water in those far-off times, and before you could say Cthulhu fthagn I had them building and slaving and cooking. And being cooked, of course.

Which reminds me, there was something I meant to tell you. A true story.

There was a ship, a-sailing on the seas. On a Pacific cruise. And on this ship was a magician, a conjurer, whose function was to entertain the passengers. And there was this parrot on the ship.

Every time the magician did a trick the parrot would ruin it. How? He’d tell them how it was done, that’s how. ‘He put it up his sleeve’, the parrot would squawk. Or ‘he’s stacked the deck’ or ‘it’s got a false bottom’.

The magician didn’t like it.

Finally the time came for him to do his biggest trick.

He announced it.

He rolled up his sleeves.

He waved his arms.

At that moment the ship bucked and smashed over to one side.

Sunken R’lyeh had risen beneath them. Hordes of my servants, loathsome fish-men, swarmed over the sides, seized the passengers and crew and dragged them beneath the waves.

R’lyeh sank below the waters once more, awaiting that time when dread Cthulhu shall rise and reign once more.

Alone, above the foul waters, the magician – overlooked by my little batrachian boobies, for which they paid heavily – floated, clinging to a spar, all alone. And then, far above him he noticed a small green shape. It came lower, finally perching on a lump of nearby driftwood, and he saw it was the parrot.

The parrot cocked its head to one side and squinted up at the magician.

‘Alright,’ it says, ‘I give up. How did you do it?’

Of course it’s a true story, Whateley.

Would black Cthulhu, who slimed out of the dark stars when your most eldritch nightmares were suckling at their mothers’ pseudomammaria, who waits for the time that the stars come right to come forth from his tomb-palace, revive the faithful and resume his rule, who waits to teach anew the high and luscious pleasures of death and revelry, would he lie to you?

Sure I would.

Shut up Whateley, I’m talking. I don’t care where you heard it before.

We had fun in those days, carnage and destruction, sacrifice and damnation, ichor and slime and ooze, and foul and nameless games. Food and fun. It was one long party, and everybody loved it except those who found themselves impaled on wooden stakes between a chunk of cheese and pineapple.

Oh, there were giants on the earth in those days.

It couldn’t last for ever.

Down from the skies they came, with filmy wings and rules and regulations and routines and Dho-Hna knows how many forms to be filled out in quintuplicate. Banal little bureaucruds, the lot of them. You could see it just looking at them: Five-pointed heads – every one you looked at had five points, arms whatever, on their heads (which I might add were always in the same place). None of them had the imagination to grow three arms or six, or one hundred and two. Five, every time.

No offence meant.

We didn’t get on.

They didn’t like my party.

They rapped on the walls (metaphorically). We paid no attention. Then they got mean. Argued. Bitched. Fought.

Okay, we said, you want the sea, you can have the sea. Lock, stock, and starfish-headed barrel. We moved onto the land – it was pretty swampy back then – and we built Gargantuan monolithic structures that dwarfed the mountains.

You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue.

But those pointy-headed killjoys couldn’t leave well enough alone. They tried to move the planet nearer the sun – or was it further away? I never actually asked them. Next thing I knew we were under the sea again.

You had to laugh.

The city of the Old Ones got it in the neck. They hated the dry and the cold, as did their creatures. All of a sudden they were in the Antarctic, dry as a bone and cold as the lost plains of thrice-accursed Leng.

Here endeth the lesson for today, Whateley.

And will you please get somebody to feed that blasted shoggoth?

III.

(Professors Armitage and Wilmarth are both convinced that not less than three pages are missing from the manuscript at this point, citing the text and length. I concur.)

The stars changed, Whateley.

Imagine your body cut away from your head, leaving you a lump of flesh on a chill marble slab, blinking and choking. That was what it was like. The party was over.

It killed us.

So we wait here below.

Dreadful, eh?

Not at all. I don’t give a nameless dread. I can wait.

I sit here, dead and dreaming, watching the ant-empires of man rise and fall, tower and crumble.

One day – perhaps it will come tomorrow, perhaps in more tomorrows than your feeble mind can encompass – the stars will be rightly conjoined in the heavens, and the time of destruction shall be upon us: I shall rise from the deep and I shall have dominion over the world once more.

Riot and revel, blood-food and foulness, eternal twilight and nightmare and the screams of the dead and the not-dead and the chant of the faithful.

And after?

I shall leave this plane, when this world is a cold cinder orbitting a lightless sun. I shall return to my own place, where the blood drips nightly down the face of a moon that bulges like the eye of a drowned sailor, and I shall estivate.

Then I shall mate, and in the end I shall feel a stirring within me, and I shall feel my little one eating its way out into the light.

Um.

Are you writing this all down, Whateley?

Good.

Well, that’s all. The end. Narrative concluded.

Guess what we’re going to do now? That’s right.

We’re going to feed the shoggoth.

© Neil Gaiman 1986

there resides a queen fair and fierce..

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