Paula Guran: The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

From the shelf-top vantage, looking out over the village, Aitch lets loose his imagination. A raging ocean — yes, the Aunts appreciated those pastel-flecked swells. Bizarre golden treasure, twinkling on the reef; they’d almost smiled at that one. Misshapen creatures emerging from the deeps, gills fluttering in dank air, webbed fingers flapping. Hordes of spine-crested mermaids crossing the pebbled shore. Tentacled men bent on ascending the lighthouse. Oh, how the chanting had soared, the evening he’d produced that lurid vision!

Next day, the seas are calm as the Aunts have always pretended. The waters are clear and barren. Activity on the wharves is sedate. Finding little inspiration outside, Aitch scours the library’s collection of artwork. Displacing the cylinders he lately hasn’t needed to count, he copies imprints of fire-fueled airships soaring past the sun. Pyramids inscribed with illegible messages. Vines strangling strongholds. Crumbling ruins.

There’s no release in making these copies. No butterflies in his belly. No urgency. For a while, he abandons the crayons and simply reads.

Around dusk, the Aunts deliver a jug of metal-tinged water, a bowl of spirulina flakes, and a shrimp cake. One changes the chamber pot, the other the sheets. Toying with his pendant, Aitch stands with his back pressed to the farthest bookcase, as the latest batch of drawings is swept up and inspected.

A frown on the left. Expression neutral on the right.

“Have you napped this afternoon?”

Aitch shakes his head.

The Aunts exchange glances.

“So you’ve been sleeping well these past nights?”

“Yes, Aunt. Extremely well, thank you.”

Another unreadable interchange.

“Indeed.”

Unsure how to respond, Aitch shrinks under the tight-lipped scrutiny. Instinctively he inches away, stopping short as he collides with the largest empty jar. Glass resonates as it strikes the neighboring bottle; a solemn church bell summoning dawdlers inside. Aitch swallows hard, willing the sound to ebb.

Shhhhh , he silently pleads. Don’t remind them . His back is only now beginning to truly unkink, his ankles and hips barely straightening . . .

“I have been very good,” he says aloud, voice breaking.

“Indeed,” says the left, unconvinced.

“Indeed,” repeats the right, taking the latest sketches and her sister by the arm. “We expect no less, Aitch.

As if to reassure, this Aunt leaves a lantern — and the door unlocked behind her.

The Aunts aren’t impressed with the juvenile horrors Aitch has created. The haunted house with its gambrel roof, widow’s walk, broken panes of stained glass. Their hands twitch, ready to scrunch the bone-filled pits seething with rats. They sneer at the Arctic tundra made by crushing white chalk over a dark ground. If they were prone to laughter, they would have guffawed at the giant penguin.

The Aunts do not laugh.

“You were right,” says one.

With the slightest nod, the other acknowledges her sister’s deferral. “Like attracts like, blood calls to blood, element to element. The message is meaningless if not spoken fluently, fluidly .”

“Agreed,” comes the reply. “His strength is undeniably liquid.”

Immediately, she reaches into the front pouch of an apron cinched around her gaunt waist. She pulls out a rag and a sloshing cylinder.

Against his will, Aitch feels the count starting anew.

One: the vial in their hands. Two: the Aunt dousing the cloth. Three: the Aunt pinning him with eyes, with hands, with nails. Two: the Aunt grabbing . . . Three: the Aunt holding . . .

“No,” he cries, attempting to wriggle free, thrashing. Arms throbbing in their brutal grip. Legs quivering. Piss dribbling. Backed against the seventh jar, he whips his head from side to side until it is trapped. Fingers gouge his cheeks, piercing flesh, turning his face. “No,” Aitch moans, pulse hot and throbbing. Tears stinging.

Cold wetness smothers him silent, fabric pinched around his nose, palmed against his mouth. Aitch tries to hold his breath, tastes bile. Scentless fumes seep between his lips, infiltrate his nostrils. His body sags against the gaping bottle.

“Mother,” he sobs, falling into the black nothingness of defeat.

He rouses in near-darkness. Chin on knees, feet twisted numb, joints screaming. Breath hollow in his ears, waves splashing. The slow rhythm of strange verses intoned. Inside the jar, the air is close, humid, and reeks of glue. Overhead, all the tiny stars in Aitch’s sky have been plugged, the metal lid sealed to its tracks. Through the glass, he sees the room blearily. Moonlight streaming. Bookshelves. No cot now, no table, no chamber pot. No tools . The door thrown wide, taunting.

No escape but into sleep.

“I’m a good boy,” he mumbles, the Aunts pulling him on his harness and leash, yanking him off the wharf, plunging into the water. Their spindle-fins clawing, clamping, dragging him down, down, further down. Diving, songs bubbling from their gills. Descending at a strangling pace. Flippers kicking, kicking for the ocean floor.

Release me, Aitch thinks, the silent cry echoed from the abyss stretching for miles below. Release me—

Busy singing, the Aunts don’t hear him. They don’t listen — he knows, he’s sure — they never have. They don’t believe he will stay if not forced.

The time has come , they seem to chant, alighting on the chasm’s precipice. Clouds of silt stir as they land, lifeless grit caught by the current, tossed out over the void. The time has come , they demand, but the words are crooned with a lullaby cadence, mesmerizing and slow. Wake , they say, leading Aitch to the precipice, slicing at his neck until it bleeds. Holding fast, binding him in long ropes of dead-man’s bootlaces. Wake , they repeat, floating the boy-bundle over the edge, pushing down as serpentine shadows writhe up .

Release me —

Aitch flails, spasms shaking his body so ferociously the bottle quakes. He throws his head violently back, forward, back, smashing it again and again to rid it of the voice — that soul-rending voice! — still slicing through his sleep-fevered mind, still pulsating through his heart.

Release me —

The jar pitches as he pounds his spine against its walls, as he huffs and grunts, using shoulders and arms and ribs and skull, his only weapons, his only tools . Thrashing and rocking, building momentum, leaning into it, tipping . An audible crack as glass meets floorboards, but it’s merely a weakening, not a break, not a shatter. Brine sloshes and for a moment he’s submerged, he’s back in the nightmare, he’s drowning. As Aitch gasps, sputters, sucks in salty gutfuls, instinct takes over. He contorts his torso, flexes, and flips. Mother’s talisman finds its way into his mouth; teeth clenched, he concentrates, holds his breath. Focuses on rotating, revolving, building up speed. Rolling, the bottle radiates great corkscrews of sound, faster and faster, like a fisherman’s copper coin spinning on the docks. Faster and faster across the planks, light refracting, a dizzying kaleidoscope of water. Faster and faster, until it smashes to a stop.

Candles topple from the bookshelf; wax cylinders crash onto glass, encouraging the jar’s new split to widen. Bracing with his forearms, the boy heaves . A high-pitched whine as the structure around him weakens, pinging as it cracks. With a sharp squeal, the container shatters. The water level and jagged shards fall, slicing and stinging. Aitch weeps as blood courses into his limbs — and out of them.

Lurching onto all fours, he grinds the pads of his fingers into the bottle’s wreckage until the red trickle becomes a steady flow. Without pencil or paper, he has no other means by which to record the vibrant images flooding his vision, the instructions, the dark mariner’s pleas. The Aunts will want to know every foreign word, every primeval beat. He smears every note, every glyph, every incoherent medley, until his head is light, his hands raw.