Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“Like the one that got the dinosaurs?” he asked. “Not really. It doesn’t seem like something that happens very often, and I’m not in a position to do anything about it in any case.”

“Very logical.” I drew up my knees, watched him pass back and forth across the screen as he made French toast. “Suppose you could do something. Or thought you could?”

“You mean like a desperate space mission to steer a comet away from Earth? Yeah, I would worry about that. I worry when there’s something I can try, and it matters if I screw up.” He smiled gently. “You’ve got to pick your battles — there’s only so much worry to go around.”

“Unless you’re me.”

“Even for you, gorgeous.”

Later, I realized that I hadn’t asked if he’d rather be in a position to try something, even if he thought he’d screw up, or whether he’d rather do work he was better at, and not have to look.

On the first day of classes, humidity spilled over the banks of the sky into a spectacular thunderstorm. I eased my car around puddles half-grown into lakes, breathing slowly through the constant strobe of lightning. I arrived ten minutes late, suit soaked through in spite of my umbrella. The AC set me shivering, but Sherise and the other librarians were talking and laughing in the staff room and one of them tossed me a giant beach towel.

Sherise nodded at me and said, “We’re gonna get slammed even with the rain, so you know. And there are still a dozen professors who need pinning to the wall ’til they hand over their reserve lists.” By the time I got the last math professor to confess the identity of his textbook, and started on the English department, umbrellas filled the foyer and students swirled through the reading room.

Most of the morning’s reference questions were about what I’d expected. Students wanted their course reserves and panicked about their first day’s homework and didn’t know how to manage the catalogue. But a lot of them seemed to realize they were in sacred space. I saw a dozen conflicting rituals. People blew kisses to the statues, or stood under the trompe l’oeil ceiling with arms raised. One student fussed at my desk for five minutes while I grew increasingly exasperated, then asked hesitantly if I could leave her offering “for the loa Epiphany” after the library closed. She slipped me a sandwich bag filled with cookies and tiny slips of calligraphed poetry, then wanted to know whether we’d fixed the PYTHIAS bugs over the summer.

After the students cleared out at last, I stayed at my desk for a few minutes trying to catch my breath. Even the allegories seemed tired. Determination’s spear might have drooped a little, unless it just pointed at where some student had annoyed her. I got up and started to put the reference section back in order, then went to give Epiphany her cookies. In the wall below each statue, just above eye level, were little niches that I’d never noticed before. They were easier to spot now, as plenty of people hadn’t bothered with an intermediary for their offerings. There were flowers and pebbles, photos, cupcakes, a thankfully unlit candle, tiny jars of liquor that I was just going to assume came from faculty. I stuck the baggie in the appropriate spot.

“Hey,” I told Epiphany. I still wasn’t sure about talking with them, but ignoring them didn’t seem wise, and the students knew the place better than I did. “Long day. Keep safe, okay?” I felt her attention on me, and knew that safety didn’t interest her at all — not to give, and not to receive. I trembled: equal parts awe and anxiety, both uncomfortable. Her companions seemed to perk up, their notice sharpening. The air brightened with storm-tinged ozone, and my ears ached as if I’d gone up too fast in an elevator. I felt again the urge to kneel. But I’d spent the day doing my job, and doing it mostly right.

I looked around, found myself alone in the reading room. “I’m not just going to do what you want,” I said. No response. I shivered.

“I’m not ignoring you,” I went on. Then, swallowing. “I’m not running away, yet. But we’re going to work together on this, or it’s all going to fall apart.”

Still no response — maybe Sherise would have been able to hear one — but the pressure lifted a little. My ears popped, painfully.

“That’s better,” I said. I kept the shakes out of my voice, knowing I would pay later — if not through some screw-up here, then through breaking down when I got home and thought too hard about the whole thing. But then, I’d have paid that price whatever I did. “All right. Was there something you wanted to show me?”

I left through Epiphany’s door, and followed the pulse of my little galaxy out into the stacks.

Laird Barronis the author of several books, including The Croning , Occultation , and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All . His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York. Slate has aptly said of his short fiction: “Relentlessly readable, highly atmospheric, sharply and often arrestingly written — Barron’s prose style resembles, by turns, a high-flown Jim Thompson mixed with a pulp Barry Hannah — and situated in a dizzying assortment of precision-built worlds.”

As for his contribution to this anthology, Barron explains: “Lovecraft’s fiction covers a broader spectrum than many people realize. It’s important to keep his versatility in mind when tilling this particular patch of earth for a themed anthology. ‘A Clutch’ isn’t meant to emulate Lovecraft, but rather to respond to certain elements of his work — black magic, corruption, ancient secrets best left buried, and lurking doom. I filtered these elements through my own conception of a weird tale. Crack the shell and have a look.”

The man on the straw bed was done for, for sure. The young woman saw it plainly in his knotted muscles, heard it in his wet and ragged coughs. Moss lung, the wise women called the malady. Woodcutters, such as her uncle, risked it by hewing into fungi-encrusted cedars and firs. He gleamed with sweat. Three white hens clucked and fluffed themselves on their rack near his naked feet. The dog grumbled by the hearth, lost in a dream of the hunt.

“I am dying,” her uncle said. “Come near. You took me in and gave me shelter. Allowed me to call you daughter . . . You are a precious ornament to my worthless life. O my sweet fair one! Scrubber of pots, burner of suppers, nurse to wounded forest creatures, radiant of heart, and pure of virtue!” He relapsed, head lolling.

The woman ignored him until she finished stoking the fire. She gathered her skirts and came to kneel at his side. She laid her hand upon his brow. Hot as a skillet. It wouldn’t be long. Death whetted his culling knife out in the night gloom, ready to cut another soul off at the knees. She uncorked a bottle of whiskey and dribbled it over the man’s scabrous lips until he gagged.

“My parents are dead these nine years. You have stood in their place. You have cut the wood and killed the wolves. You were my father’s blood returned home at our darkest hour. O Uncle, of course you may call me daughter.”

“Uncle. Yes, uncle. That was the story.” The man tugged her sleeve. He seemed to gather his innermost reserves, for his expression smoothed and he spoke with a cold, uncharacteristic serenity. “The moon will roll like the bloody hub of a chariot through the branches of the crying sycamores. On nights such as this when the wind roars in the trees and the hearth coals glow like the eyes of the Black Dog itself, you and the whiskey are a comfort. The cottage seems so rude, the candle glow of our souls so feeble, yet from your cheerful mien I draw courage. You resemble so much your mother now, Creator rest her.