Paula Guran: The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Taking a step back, Aitch considers what he’s made.

This work.

This message.

The Aunts are going to love it, he thinks. Hope and pride turn him toward the door, take him by the hand. Whispering the Aunts are going to love you , they lead him into the corridor, push him at the spiral stairs. Convince him to go and get them.

Alone outside the lighthouse’s lantern room, Aitch’s hands throb while his nerve shudders and dies.

Gas flames burn low within caged sconces, barely illuminating the narrow hallway. The ceiling is shadow-cloaked, held aloft by cobwebs and century-old beams. Darkness runs its fingers along Aitch’s bare back, tickling the nape of his neck. It ushers him across the short landing at the top of the stairs. He’d been so brave below, an artist drunk on revelation. Now he hesitates, facing a set of double doors that rattle as though desperate to break away from the jambs. Light pulsates out of two small circular windows centered at head-height, harsh yellow-white beams piercing the corridor, then fading. In the strange between-glow, Aitch feels exposed. He’s not brave at all. Not special. Just a barefoot boy in his smallclothes, dripping blood and fear.

Up here the chant is chilling, louder than ever, underscored by a wild howl.

On tiptoe, Aitch approaches. He peers through the left-hand opening, flinching each time the lantern turns its glaring irises his way. Inside the round chamber is strobed, observed in snatches. Polished timber counters ringing the central lamp, strewn with parchments, maps, rulers and compasses. Leather volumes stacked on a trestle table, on ledges, on the floor. Dozens of specimen jars, labeled and lidded. A hard bench on the right, a pillow and grey wool blanket folded at one end. Too many cylinders for Aitch to count: telescopes on tripods; brass spyglasses; plinths topped with crude wooden idols; fat pillar candles, flames full and guttering. All around, from floor to vaulted ceiling, Aitch’s drawings are pasted in indecipherable patterns on the grand windows. The pages whip and curl in the gale; now black holes in the night, now constellations.

To the left, the room’s easternmost glass is missing; its salt-rimed casement admits a fierce wailing. Framed in the gap, the Aunts sway. Starkly illuminated for a few blinding seconds, then silhouetted against the waning moon. Hair unbound, long tendrils undulating, storm-tossed. Aitch gasps, glimpsing the robes fluttering from their shoulders like wings. He’s sure, he remembers , the silken sheen of that fabric, the way it shimmers on a starlit May-Eve . . .

“Mother?” he whispers, though he knows she’s not there. Not now, not ever. The lamp spins and Aitch blinks a second too late. When sight returns, the Aunts have shifted position; they’re performing an irregular dance, their song changed to suit, lyrics guttural as a seal’s bark. As they step back, the bottom ledge of the window is revealed: a plank juts like a parched tongue from the lighthouse’s side. A hemp rope is firmly fastened around the board’s outermost end. Spilling into the chamber, it forms an immense snake-nest on the floor, spooling and coiling, eventually attached to the vessel lying at the Aunts’ feet.

Unlike its precursors, the eighth jar is not cylindrical, nor is it pure glass.

Six-sided, it is not flat-bottomed but pointed and arrow-tipped. Its facets are smooth and oblong, smoked mirrors chased with lead; each pane absorbs more light than it reflects. Aitch whimpers. He has seen its like before in the Aunts’ books — but not on this scale, not for this purpose.

It is a fishing plummet.

And he is to be the weight.

It’s an hour, at best, before the Aunts cease their invocations and find Aitch gone.

The sea is in turmoil as he flees. Legs pumping, he prays they didn’t hear the slap of his feet on the lighthouse stairs. The screech of the ground-level door opening, the thundering clang of it swinging shut. Breakers crash against the headland, spray soaking the pebbled path to the wharves, washing away the crimson trail spattered behind him. He looks down, always down, unsure which is more frightening: the ocean roaring, wild and vicious, or the roiling, boundless cloud-sea. The lighthouse, forever watching.

No matter how far he runs, Aitch feels the Aunts’ glare from above. At first their song keeps pace with his flight, but soon it outruns him. Picked up by many voices, the strange chorus is repeated, reverberating from reef to village and back. It surrounds Aitch as he sprints, urging him on, to break free—

I have , he wants to scream, but foul air burns his lungs, reeking of clams and grave-soil and rot. You are not a bird , he hears the Aunts say, clicking their tongues. You are not built for flying, but for swimming . . .

Whistling on the docks, a scattering of oil lamps flare to life. It is early yet for fishing, Aitch thinks, but takes some comfort in the men’s presence. The assured way they handle both oars and fire, rowing out to join their mates on the reef. Taking only their nets. Wearing flippers.

I’ll sail with them , Aitch thinks. They’ll take me away, back to the train, back to Mother . . .

“Help,” he breathes, dashing past stalls battened for the night. Too quiet, he tries again. Pitches his voice to out-sing the Aunts. “Help me!”

Clunking across weathered boards, he aims for the one berth he clearly remembers. An old sea-dog, an oyster, a puff-of-steam beard. “Captain Southwark,” he cries, startling a sharp-beaked carrion crow. The brig is moored midway down the jetty, a small fleet of rowboats ready at its stern. Under a tarp at the foot of its gangplank, a grizzled guard snoozes in a whiskey fug. Aitch thunders past him, halfway up the footbridge. Safety, he’s sure, awaits him on this ship. Fair passage, wind-bellied sails. The swiftest — the only — way home. “Captain—”

“Muffle it, swain. That screech of yers is fit to wake the dead. And far as I know, I en’t there yet.”

Aitch stops. Turns. Slowly descends and approaches the man emerging from under the mold-spotted canvas. “Captain Southwark?”

“Heard ye the first time, mate.” The old man stands and belches, then reaches up under his sweater to scratch his big belly. Plugging one nostril at a time, he leans over the railing and snorts into the water. Ablutions done, he pinches the bridge of his nose and speaks into his cupped hand. “What ye hollering for?”

For a minute, Aitch jibbers about tentacles and boy-weighted plummets and voices rising from the deeps. “The Aunts—”

“Always does things too fancy,” Southwark says. Clapping Aitch on the shoulder, his gaze drops to the talisman hanging round the boy’s neck. Thick, callused fingers inspect the leather pouch, then pat it gently against Aitch’s chest. “It’s their way or no way . . . Ye ken me, don’t ye?”

Aitch nods, relieved.

“Told them, didn’t I, to keep it simple. But those women . . .” Southwark pauses, slants an eyebrow. “They’s got a different take on simple , don’t they just?”

Aitch’s cheeks tighten and twitch, caught somewhere between a sob and a smile. “Can you take me home? Please?”

“’Bout time someone did.”

Grinning now, really grinning, Aitch makes for the brigantine, but again the captain stops him short. “Crew’s reveling,” he explains, steering the boy toward the last rowboat, guiding him under the railing and over the gunwale. “I’ll take care of yer me own self, won’t I.”

“Hurry,” Aitch says.

For a man of his bulk, Southwark is light on his feet. The dory hardly rocks as he boards; despite the choppy water, his stroke is smooth, their progress swift. Within moments the shoreline has fallen away, the wharves, the gold-littered reef. Southwark tilts his cap at the shadows chanting there, then puckers the billows around his mouth and begins trilling, picking up their funereal beat.