Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“It’s the music. It thins what’s around you, lets you see beyond it.”

I had read and watched enough science fiction to think I understood what Jude was talking about. “You mean to another dimension?”

“Sure,” he said. “Dimension, plane, iteration, it’s all just a way of saying someplace else. Someplace more essential than all of this.” He waved his hand to take in the cars, the parking lot, the college, us.

“How— who are these guys? The Subterraneans? How did they do this?”

“I don’t know. There are rumors, but they’re pretty ridiculous. A lot of bands have messed around with occult material, usually as an occasion for some depraved sex. Fucking Jimmy Page and his sex magic. This is different. These guys are into some crazy mathematics, stuff that goes all the way back to Pythagoras and his followers. What they tried wasn’t a complete success. Most of the people I’ve handed the tape to played it once and ignored it. A few became obsessed with it. Like I said, though, you’re the first to see anything.”

“Have you?” I said. “You have, haven’t you?”

“Twice. Both times, I saw a city. It was huge, spread out along the shore of an ocean for as far as I could see. The buildings looked Greek, or Roman. A lot of them were in ruins, which made the place seem old, ancient. But there were people walking its streets, so I knew it wasn’t abandoned. The ocean was immense. Its water was black. Its waves were half as tall as some of the buildings.”

“Where is it?” I said. “Do you know what it’s called?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I spoke to a folklorist over at SUNY Huguenot. He’d heard of the city. He said it was called the Black City — also the Spindle. He thought it was another version of Hell. He was the one who told me about the Watch, the guys in the bird masks. Said you did not want to attract their attention.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t spell it out. I’m guessing a fate worse than death.”

“Oh.”

“They’re coming here, you know.”

For a second, I thought Jude was referring to the Watch, then I understood he meant the band. “Here? Where?”

“They’re playing a show at The Last Chance. Late June, I forget the exact date.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Are you kidding? You have to come, too.”

“Me?”

“Look at the effect a recording of their material had on you. Imagine what hearing it live could do.”

“I don’t know.” To be honest, I was as worried by the prospect of what your grandparents would say as I was any further visions. Depending on their moods, they had a way of making a request to do something new sound as if it were a personal injury to them.

“You cannot be serious,” Jude said. “You’re standing on the verge of . . .” He threw up his hands.

“Of what?”

“Does it matter?” he said. “Really? Does it? Even if this place is a district in Hell, isn’t that more than you’re ever going to find, here?”

I was religious enough for his example to give me pause, but I understood and sympathized with the underlying sentiment. It was what I responded to in The Subterraneans’ music in the first place, in so much of the music I liked to listen to, the sense that there was more, to what was outside and to what was inside me. “Let me see,” I said.

As it turned out, your grandparents raised no objection to my attending the concert. They ran through the standard questions: Where was it? When was it? Who was I going with? Who was this band? All of which I answered to their satisfaction. Their biggest concern was that I understood I would still have to wake up for church the next morning. I said I did. Having cleared this hurdle, my principle dilemma was whether to invite Adrienne — the girl from the track team, with whom I’d been going out for a couple of weeks. On the one hand, I wasn’t sure what I might be exposing her to. On the other hand, she might be angry at not being invited to a concert with me. Yes, my priorities were not what they should have been. I decided to play the tape for her and let her decide for herself. The expression she made when the first note of the first song burst from my car’s speakers told me her decision before the song was done: this was not her kind of music. I could have insisted she listen to the remainder of the cassette, but I was relieved she hadn’t liked the band and didn’t press the issue. It meant I could attend the show with her consent, and without having to worry about her.

This left Jude and myself to be concerned about. Not only did The Subterraneans’ music continue to form the soundtrack to my life, to the extent that whatever was taking place around me seemed to occur less for its own sake and more as an illustration, however obscure, of the lyrics of the moment, but I experienced a second vision. It occurred while I was lying on my bed, reading for school ( Waiting for Godot ). The earplug was in my right ear, the cassette nearing its mid-point. Beyond the foot of the bed, where my desk was jammed against the wall, the air darkened, wavered, as if a sheet of black water was descending from the ceiling to the floor. I put down my book and sat up. A figure stepped forward, almost through the water. It was one of the Watch. This close, it was enormous, nearer eight feet than seven, wider than my narrow bed. The beak on the bird mask shone sharp as a scimitar; the glass eyes were black and empty. The mask left uncovered the figure’s mouth and jaw, white as fungus. Its body was hidden by a heavy cape covered with overlapping metal feathers, or maybe they were scales. A long moment passed, during which my heart did not beat, before the figure and its watery aperture faded from view. Once I could see my desk again, my heart began hammering so hard I was afraid I was going to vomit. Jude’s words, “As long as they didn’t see you,” sounded in my ears, temporarily drowning out The Subterraneans. What if the Watch saw you? What if one of its members stood at the foot of your bed and leveled the glass eyes of its mask at you? What did that mean?

Nothing good, obviously, something Jude confirmed when I called him. I asked him what the SUNY professor had said about the Watch. Not much, it seemed. According to him, the Watch dealt with invaders to the City. Don’t worry, Jude said, I was probably fine. I said I didn’t feel fine. “They’re trying to scare you,” he said.

“Well, they succeeded,” I said. “I’m thinking maybe we should give the show a miss.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “We have to go.”

“Did you not just hear the story I told you?”

“What do you think is going to happen if you stay home?” Jude said. “Do you think everything’s going to go back to normal? You are inside the music now. We both are.”

“And what do you think is going to happen if we go?” I said. “If the music has us, then how will going to its source help us?”

“Listening to the tape started something,” Jude said. “It isn’t complete. That’s why we’re catching glimpses of the other place, instead of seeing it whole. If we’re in the presence of the actual music, it might finish the process.”

As far as logic went, Jude’s argument left a lot to be desired. But so did the entire situation. In the end, I decided to attend the concert, after all.

It may have occurred to you to wonder why I didn’t share any of this with my parents. As your mom and Steve, Liz and I have done with you, throughout my childhood and adolescence, your grandparents routinely assured me that I could always come to them, there was nothing I couldn’t tell them, no matter how bad. I think they meant it, too. The times I had taken them up on their advice, though, had gone less than swimmingly. When I struggled with math or science, your grandfather, who was something of a math prodigy, couldn’t understand how what was in front of me wasn’t perfectly clear, and had trouble finding the words to explain it to me. When I brought home a failing grade, my protests that I had tried my best were dismissed, because if I had tried my best, then I wouldn’t have failed. When I complained of being teased by other kids in school, my parents asked me why I was letting it bother me. From the distance of years — not to mention, the perspective I gained raising you and your little brother — I understand and appreciate that they were doing the best they could, as do most parents. At the time, however, it meant there was no serious chance of me approaching them about what was happening to me. What would I have said? I couldn’t stop listening to this tape? I was seeing tall men dressed as birds?