David Barbour - Shadows Bend

“English 300,” said Glory. “My Romantic and Lake Poets course junior year. Professor Brismann had us read Coleridge, De Quincey, and then you.”

“‘Kubla Khan,’ Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and obviously my ‘Hashish Eater’? That’s quite an honor to be placed in such fine company. I’ll have to thank your Professor Brismann.”

“She didn’t like ‘The Hashish Eater’ all that much. She called it an enjambment of Keats and Coleridge. Her point was that the tradition was getting watered down, but I disagreed. Always thought De Quincey was a windbag and Coleridge… well, I guess ‘Kubla Khan’ was his best mostly because he never finished it.”

“Or so the story goes.”

“You’re not an opium addict, are you?”

In answer to that, Smith took a gulp of sherry. “Should I be taken aback? Or should I explain the long trajectory of poetry dedicated to the idea of dreams and hallucinations? I see myself as growing out of the British influence on Americans like Hawthorne and Poe. I’ve had my sips of absinthe and laudanum, but they could never rule my life the way imagination has.”

“I envy you.” She quoted a few lines from “The Hashish Eater,” but then recalled something more immediate. “I kiss thy mouth, which has the savour and perfume of fruit made moist with spray from a magic fountain,” she recited, “in the secret paradise that we alone shall find; a paradise whence they that come shall nevermore depart, for the waters thereof are Lethe, and the fruit is the fruit of the tree of Life.”

She paused. “That’s how the world seems to me sometimes on the brighter days.”

“For me, at all times. Here’s to the milk of paradise.” He threw back the rest of his sherry, spilling a little on his collar, where it stained the fabric like lipstick. “Tell me,” he said. “How is it that you joined this party?”

Glory swirled her sherry around in her glass before taking another sip. “Bob rescued me from some ruffians, and then the two of them offered me a ride to Vegas to my sister’s place,” she began. It took a while and a few more glasses of sherry to give Smith all the details of the trip and answer his sometimes pointed questions. “And what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” she asked when she was done. “I would have expected someone like you to be living in San Francisco or Chicago or New York.”

“This is where I belong,” said Smith. “I find the seclusion does me good, and I would never think of leaving my parents in their old age. The quiet and the physical work suit me, and it allows me to enjoy company like yours.”

“Oh, you are so shameless.”

“And you?”

“I lost my shame a long time ago,” said Glory. When she turned to give him her femme fatale look, Smith was standing behind her on her right side. All she had to do was lean her head back and open her lips to his warm, sherry-soaked kiss.

The Necronomicon still lay open on the desk.

IT WASN’T UNTIL nearly dinnertime that Howard and Lovecraft woke from their thick sleep. Each had had restless nightmares, and their rise into consciousness seemed instant and simultaneous, accompanied by an odd thumping sound like the slamming of a door. Fortunately, they recalled nothing of their dreams, their senses overwhelmed by the smell of cooking from Smith’s rustic woodstove.

By the time they had taken their turns outside in the bathroom and managed, as well as they could, to make themselves presentable, Glory and Smith had prepared dinner in the kitchen. They all sat down to a meal that was unexpectedly formal. Lovecraft couldn’t help but notice the truly awful condition of his rumpled suit, and Howard, accustomed to eating his own improvised meals with his father, felt distinctly awkward. But there were no complaints. The dinner was a simple fare of steak and mashed potatoes with vegetables and garnish, and both Lovecraft and Howard ate ravenously, hardly pausing to make conversation through their full mouths.

It was after he had eaten that Lovecraft realized that if it were not for him and Howard, the meal might have been a romantic candlelit dinner between Smith and Glory. He had not commented on her change of clothes, but he had hardly failed to notice. Howard was a little less observant, but he, too, could feel the chemistry between Glory and Smith in the air, and he often glowered at Smith from under his brooding brow.

They all complimented Glory for the meal, and while she prepared coffee, they got down to the business at hand. Lovecraft and Howard, took turns relating the details of their journey, interrupting each other to add details, embellishments, insights. Often they did not fully agree with each other, arguing a point of fact or adding something the other should have noticed. Smith found it a little confusing, particularly because Howard’s style was to narrate the gist of the action while Lovecraft had a tendency to take his time laying the background for the events, often not getting to the point until Howard expressed his impatience. It was altogether unbelievable.

“If the both of you didn’t look so wretched, I’d believe you were out to hoax me,” said Smith. “I know you’re both storytellers, and I know you have no reason to be making all this up, but it all exceeds the realm of plausibility.”

“I can corroborate some of what they said,” Glory replied for them. “Half the things I’ve seen I wouldn’t believe, either.”

Lovecraft added more sugar to his coffee-so much that Smith wondered why his spoon didn’t simply stand upright in the cup. “Since you are suddenly such a skeptic, Clark, let me reveal to you a piece of physical evidence that might sway your opinion in our favor.” He produced his satchel and opened it on the table, and from one of its compartments, he withdrew the Kachina doll.

Smith held the doll and turned it back and forth in his hands before he passed it to Glory. “Quite interesting,” he said. “I don’t know much about Southwestern Indian lore, so I can’t say much about this doll. Wait a moment.” He left them for a few moments and returned from his study with a small carving, which he placed on the table. It was one that Glory had not seen with the others; she put the Kachina next to it for comparison and heard a sharp intake of breath from both Lovecraft and Howard.

“My God,” said Howard. “Did HP describe it to you before we came?”

“No. The image came to me in a dream.” Smith’s carving was only half the size of the Kachina-it was only a bust-but the face bore a startling resemblance to the odd features of the doll. “It’s been my experience that coincidences like this one are meaningful,” he said.

Lovecraft gulped his coffee. “Bring the book, Clark. I want to see that page you copied for me earlier.”

Smith excused himself again, and this time he returned with the black-wrapped bundle and unfolded it in the middle of the table, revealing the book, simultaneously filling the entire kitchen with a dank, musty odor they had not noticed earlier. He turned the pages until he reached the symbols he had copied.

Lovecraft reached gingerly into his watch pocket, producing the Artifact with a slight wince of pain. He placed it on top of the of the open page and there, juxtaposed next to the pictogram, the Artifact began to pulse with its sinister glow. It was bright enough to see even in the diffuse sunlight that illuminated the room.

“My God,” whispered Glory, involuntarily drawing back.

Smith did the opposite, reaching for the Artifact until his fingers hovered just above it. There, he changed his mind and let his hand rest on the open pages of the book instead. “Tell me, HP, what do you suppose all this means? My impulse is to take this as corroboration of the Cthulhu Mythos—to some significant degree.”