David Barbour - Shadows Bend

Glory realized it was not a baby she held in her arms, but something like an obscene mockery of a squid. In the first wave of utter repulsion, she felt compelled to dash the thing against the wall, but she could not. It was hungry and crying, huge tears welling up in those ghastly round eyes. Its tentacles twitched weakly, and it made that wet mewling sound again. Despite her repulsion, and then to her horror, Glory felt a tingling in her breasts as her milk began to let down; the front of her slip grew wet. The thing in her arms must have smelled the milk, because it mewled with greater urgency, flailing its limbs about, drawing them apart to reveal its tiny mouth-a jaundice-colored beak at the center of the mass of tentacles. She could not help herself. It was an infant in her arms, and whether it was a changeling in Gabriel’s place or the thing that her own baby had become, it was hungry, in need of nurture, and she exposed her breast, now beaded with white drops of milk, and pulled the thing to nurse. The tiny beak opened wide and clamped down on her nipple. Glory cried out in pain and gritted her teeth as the creature began its urgent sucking. Tears streamed down her face, obscuring her vision, but still, she held the creature, crying with the unimaginable mixture of loathing, love, and physical agony.

When she opened her eyes, they shone a blank red in the cold light, glittering only momentarily as her tears purged themselves on her cheeks. Glory stood up stiffly, her head swiveling slowly toward her right where, from the periphery of the wall, the figures of the two odd men appeared like shadows materializing into three-dimensional shapes. Even when they had taken full form, there was something about the light that made them seem faceted like the compound eyes of a giant fly.

Howard and Lovecraft lay crumpled in fetal positions on the cold stone floor, their limbs twitching randomly as their minds unhinged in the world of their nightmares. Glory moved stiffly toward Lovecraft, and at the wordless command of the odd men, she reached for the pulsing Artifact clenched in his hand.

As Glory leaned over to pry Lovecraft’s fingers apart, her last tear trickled down her cheek and splashed on his upper lip. By some instinct that still moved in him, Lovecraft’s tongue slowly emerged and tasted the salty teardrop; his body stopped its random contractions and calmed.

Glory moved slowly and purposefully, the Artifact held out in her hand as if to keep her balance as she walked toward the slot at the center of the gate.

LOVECRAFT OPENED HIS EYES but remained in his posture for a moment as he recovered his bearings. His mind was clear now-exceptionally clear-and his thoughts raced at an incredible speed. Somehow Glory’s tear had snapped him out of the spiraling abyss of dementia into which he had been plunging. What was in that tear? he thought. Was there some alchemical healing property in a droplet of salty water from a human eye? Or was it merely that the tear had triggered a familiar idiosyncrasy that momentarily focused his mind and released it from its unfettered demons? He felt an urgent need to ponder this question, but for the moment Lovecraft quickly assessed the situation and rolled into a crouching position over Howard’s gibbering form.

The odd men seemed transfixed for the moment, watching Glory approach the gate, and so Lovecraft shook Howard, then slapped him once, twice, three times to help free him from the nightmares that were nearly visible in his half-open eyes. Lovecraft slapped him again and again, and finally, palms stinging, in desperation at his own weakness, he picked up a fist-sized stone and lifted it above his head. Just as he was about to bring the stone down to strike, a spark seemed to leap across Howard’s eyes, and he blinked.

“Whoa!” said Howard, forcefully grabbing Lovecraft’s poised wrist.

“Whoa there, HP! Ain’t no call to brain me with no rock.”

“Bob,” Lovecraft said in relief. “The odd men. We’ve got to stop Glory before—”

BUT IT WAS too late.

Glory had already placed the Artifact in its slot. The light changed once again, growing colder and more stable. The Artifact itself dimmed, as if it were expending its energies into the gate that now let out a low, guttural animal-like sound.

Lovecraft and Howard leaped onto their feet only to shudder and nearly fall again as the sound increased in volume until it suddenly was a deafening roar that seemed to issue from everywhere at once. By the time they had raised their hands to cover their ears, the sound had stopped, and they were left with a loud ringing in their heads.

“What in the Sam Hill is happening?” Howard cried out. It was hardly necessary to ask, because the answer was obviously before them. But the mere act of talking offered them a solace-an illusion that they were doing something when in actuality they were all but helpless.

“You’ve read my stories,” said Lovecraft.

“Yeah.”

Lovecraft watched with solemn resignation as his fiction turned to fact before his eyes. “That, my good friend, is what is happening.”

Howard stared as the great doors cracked open for the first time in thousands of years and exhaled a foul, whistling gust of wet and stagnant air. It was so humid that they could see the brownish vapor beginning to form, and in a moment, as the full force of the exhalation reached them, they grimaced in disgust, engulfed in the fetid and fishy odor.

Glory, her task done, quietly collapsed where she stood, as if her body had suddenly lost all animation. In the same instant, the two odd men became more palpable and solid.

Howard motioned to Lovecraft, and the two of them rushed forward to reach Glory before the odd men decided to move.

“We’ve got to shut that damned door!” said Howard. “You pull the Artifact out while I help Glory.”

“Bob, according to the book, it’s too late!”

“We gotta do something!” Howard rushed forward toward Glory.

Just then, the two odd men dematerialized and reappeared standing over Glory. Howard was hardly halfway there.

“Tekeli-li!” said the larger shadow.

A puzzled expression crossed Howard’s face. He hesitated momentarily.

“Tekeli-li!” said the other shadow.

“Oh, my God!” cried Lovecraft. “It’s true. It’s true!”

“Tekeli-li!” the odd men said in unison, and they leaped forward.

No human power could have stopped them, but as they attacked, and Lovecraft’s will melted before them, some primitive fury awoke in Howard. His vision went red, and a battle madness came over him, leaving him unrestrained as only those without hope can be. He met the odd men’s onslaught head-on, grabbing their shadowy limbs with all his animal strength, ripping at their torsos, digging rigid fingers into their strange papery flesh.

Howard’s grip held firm in one odd man, but the other literally tore away from him, leaving pieces of himself dangling in Howard’s clenched fist. The nearness of death woke a frenzy in him, and Howard fought like a mortally wounded beast. He had no illusion of winning the fight, but intended only to expend all his fury and hatred-everything hateful he had ever felt for anyone, all the anger and resentment toward the world he had lived with until now-he extinguished on the odd man.

There was little resistance. The odd man’s body seemed to absorb all the physical and emotional intensity Howard could produce; it grew thick and heavy, as if it were waterlogged, and then it began to press upon Howard from every direction though it engaged him from the front. Howard struggled with a new fury, but felt his strength beginning to flag. It could not last much longer.

Lovecraft was pressed against a wall of stone by the other odd man’s unnatural weight. He felt as if the darkness itself were crushing the breath from his lungs; his vision began to dim. With his last remaining energy and will, he reached into his trouser pocket and, producing his flint dagger, brought it up and around with all his might into the odd man’s left eye. Lovecraft collapsed, fully expecting, even in his diminished state, that he was dead, but then, unexpectedly, there came a peculiar sound from above him. The pressure on his chest and lungs relented, and Lovecraft opened his eyes to see the odd man rearing back, clutching at the mangled shadows where once his eye had been. Part of his face seemed to have become smoke, and it was curling away, leaving an eerie, flat black convolution of tissue where the eye socket should have been. Lovecraft quickly grabbed a stone and smashed it into the odd man’s head. When the form fell, he lifted another, larger stone and bashed its skull until it did not move again.