David Barbour - Shadows Bend

Glory wedged herself in between her sister and the battered door, and she brought the razor down hard on the creature’s forearm, cutting a deep gash into its reptilian flesh. There was an earsplitting shriek that drowned out Beatrice’s own cries of pain, and the claws opened, letting her fall to the floor in a trail of blood.

Beatrice was already in shock. Glory tried to help her up, but she was a deadweight, and Glory had to struggle with all her might to lift , her sister enough to push her into the tub with Archie.

With the flames growing in intensity behind it, the enraged demon began pounding at the door with its other hand, splintering what wood remained. Glory pushed at the tiny window above the showerhead—it would only swing out partway. “Archie, listen to me. I’m going to put you out the window, and I want you to run as fast as you can to the neighbors and get help, okay?”

Archie sobbed a barely intelligible, “Okay.”

Glory lifted him up and tried to shove him headfirst through the crack just as the creature reduced the last of the door into splinters with one final blow from its uninjured arm. It was all going to end momentarily. Glory struggled in vain, and she realized that Archie was stuck halfway through the window. Exhausted and in tears, she let his legs go and turned defiantly, razor extended, to face the creature one last time. But to her surprise, it was gone.

She heard a window shattering in the bedroom. Already she could feel the blast of heat coming from the burning house. If they couldn’t get through the bathroom window, they’d have to run down the hallway now, before the flames grew any worse. How was she going to drag Beatrice and make it through the fire? She turned to pull Archie back in, but even as she touched him, he was suddenly yanked out of the window by an unseen force on the outside.

“Archie!” Glory dropped the razor and lifted herself up to the tiny window, expecting to see the hellish, winged creature spiriting her nephew away, but what she saw instead, against the windswept night sky, was Lovecraft awkwardly holding the sobbing boy in his arms. Glory screamed again, this time in relief. She saw Lovecraft cringe.

“Calm yourself, boy,” said Lovecraft, and then to Glory in the matter-of-fact tone she had grown to love, “The cavalry has arrived.”

Still braced in the window frame, Glory turned her head and saw Howard’s form silhouetted heroically in the bathroom doorway, gun in hand, his back to the flames. At that moment he could have been one of his own swashbuckling heroes.

“Come on, Glory. We’ve got to go,” said Howard.

“My sister’s hurt.” Glory gave a quick wave to comfort Archie out side and dropped from the window into the tub.

Howard tucked his pistol in his belt, lifted Beatrice, and threw her over his shoulder. “Follow me now.” He led Glory into the bedroom and out the shattered window into the night, illuminated by the rippling light of the flames that consumed the house.

BEATRICE LAY SEDATED and bandaged in a metal-frame bed, her breath heaving regularly, a little wheeze issuing from her nose with each exhalation. Her face appeared drawn, tired, and relaxed the way faces look after a long ordeal. In the cushioned seat at the side of the bed her neighbor, old Mrs. Appleton, sat drowsing, with Archie asleep in her arms.

Glory had just had her cuts and scrapes bandaged downstairs. As she handed Mrs. Appleton the envelope containing the note she had written to Beatrice, she noticed, for some reason, that the paper she had thought white at first was actually a subtle cream color when juxtaposed next. to the bleached white bandages on her hand. “Please give this to Beatrice when she wakes up,” she said. “It explains why I had to leave so suddenly.”

“You really should stay, you know.”

“I know, Mrs. Appleton. I’m very sorry to have appeared out of nowhere like this just to leave her life in a shambles. But I don’t have much choice at the moment, especially if I want her and Archie to be safe.”

“You called the police?”

“It’s better this way, Mrs. Appleton.”

“If you say so, dear.” She took the envelope and slipped it between the two flower vases on the bedside table. “If you say so.”

Glory gently kissed her sleeping sister and her nephew. At the door she paused to look back. White on white on white. Everything white, but no shade was the same as another. A cacophony of white. She turned away and walked slowly down the hall to where Lovecraft and Howard were waiting for her. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll be less ready if we wait any longer.”

They took the stairs down to the parking lot in silence and got into the car.

“This may sound rather unfeeling,” Lovecraft said, as Howard pulled out into the street, “but I have been wondering why the Night Gaunt only toyed with you instead of simply killing you outright when it had the opportunity.”

“I don’t know,” Glory answered flatly. “And you’re right—it’s an unfeeling question, you bastard.”

“Then I beg your pardon.”

“You’ve got a lot of pardon to beg. You’re the one who’s gotten all of us into this.”

Lovecraft was silent.

“But I wanted to know, anyway,” Glory said in a moment. “How did you know I was in danger?”

Lovecraft didn’t reply, so it was Howard who answered. “HP had one of them weird visions. I wouldn’t have believed him, but he insisted.”

“Thank you,” said Glory. “You have my pardon.” She leaned forward and kissed Lovecraft on the cheek as Howard watched in the rearview mirror.

Lovecraft quickly turned red, simultaneously embarrassed and touched by Glory’s sincere and natural display of affection and gratitude. He mumbled a reply and turned his face toward the window. “Bob,” he said finally, “it is absolutely urgent that we reach Klarkash-Ton as soon as possible. I have the terrible presentiment that things will go very ill otherwise.”

“Yeah, HP. You and Glory just keep me awake, even if ya have to take turns pinchin’ me. I think we can hit his place in one long shot.”

“Thank you, Bob.”

THE TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT that evening, and by the time they had left the outskirts of Vegas and entered the empty desert, hardly a car was to be seen on the road. They drove on, making small talk, each of them not wanting to bring up the topics that would cause them to ‘ remember their fear or dwell on things unpleasant. Hours passed, and they began to climb the foothills of the range that separated the desert from the California Central Valley.

Howard checked the rearview mirror frequently, anxious that they , were being followed. He was relieved not to see the telltale headlights behind them, but then again, he knew that the odd men would hardly need to use headlights at night. For all he knew, their automobile was as weirdly constructed as the fabric of their suits. Did it even have an engine? Did it roll? Or was it some sort of organic monster that slithered its tire like belly across the pavement in mockery of a car?

Each time he thought of the black-clad men-and they appeared to him unbidden now-what came to Howard’s mind was the image of undertakers in a hearse. But these undertakers did not deal with the mortal bodily remains of a man; they had some greater sinister purpose behind them; they were probably the stealers of the human soul, waiting within a breath’s reach to snatch away a man’s spirit with a puff of air from his lungs. What was the word? The one that meant a sound with a puff of breath? The one that connected the air with speech and the soul? Lovecraft would know it-probably used it in a story recently.

Howard began tapping rhythmically at the wheel, blinking hard to keep awake. Soul, he thought. That’s a synonym for spirit. His father had told him again and again that what Ma needed was to keep her spirits up. The clogging in her lungs wasn’t getting any better, all that fluid and mucus building up. She could hardly breathe at night, and she had to sleep sitting up so high he didn’t see how she could get any rest. She had to stay happy, keep her spirits up, not give up her spirit. His mind was beginning to wander. A spirit was like a soul. A spirit. Aspirate. Aspiration-that was it! What a great word, full of lots of meanings. He had aspirations; he talked with aspirated sounds about his aspirations. He aspired to being the greatest writer of pulp fiction ever to live. A spire, like a tower. A tall, dark, spiral tower reaching up into the stars; a needlethin minaret scraping the belly of heaven. That was an image worth remembering for a Moorish story. A needlethin… and the image of the tower dissolved into a quick glimpse of a long, steel needle protruding from the shaft of what looked like a bicycle pump. An aspirator. That’s what it was-the horrible thing his father was using in his nightmare. His mother lying in bed with that needle jammed through her breast, shriveling as the stuff got sucked out of her clogged lung.