Cthulhurotica (22 page)

“I was sent here from Ithaqua Holdings in Innsmouth.”

I leaned slightly forward and raised an eyebrow, still hanging on my last question.

The woman appeared puzzled by this motion. Then, apparently realizing her fault, she grimaced slightly and reached out to shake my hand.

“You may call me Anna,” she said.

I thanked her and accepted her handshake. Her fingers were as cold as river stones, but her eyes were marvelously deep and inviting.

Feeling quite a bit better about having some attractive company in this strange inventory, I called for Barnabas to make some tea and we went to work.

Although Anna was certainly possessed of odd demeanor and not one to make casual conversation, the following three days were most productive. Anna explained that the strange books and relics about the estate were tied to Dr. Whateley’s interest in the arcane study of something called
cosmicism
. I couldn’t comprehend any of what the artifacts suggested – and I didn’t care. My interest was only in making certain that they all made the inventory and the final report, so that I could leave the Whateley estate forever.

We worked from very early in the morning until late in the evening. Anna was perfectly capable of dictating the details on each and every item with extraordinary efficiency. I followed along dutifully behind her, taking my notes, checking items off my list. While Anna moved about the rooms and was distracted by the work at hand, I would occasionally sneak glances at her legs, the bare flesh at her neckline, and the slight curve of her hips.

At the end of the fourth day, I was genuinely satisfied with the rate at which the inventory was progressing. Our work would be completed in less than a week. Happy to be on track with our deadline, I invited Anna to join me for a late dinner on the balcony of the fourth floor library. This was Dr. Whateley’s private library and the balcony commanded a marvelous view of the river. Looking down some ninety feet below the balcony, we could see the base of the hill where the waters pooled up into a deep, dark lake.

Barnabas was good enough to serve us upstairs and we dined on the balcony overlooking the slow-churning waters below. It was a light meal of toasted bread with butter, a tomato salad, and whole grilled sardines. To round out our celebratory meal, Barnabas selected a lovely little bottle of white wine from down in the locked cellar.

Anna said little during our meal and made a small effort to push her food around the plate without actually eating anything. She refused her wine and took only small sips of water from her glass. At that point, satisfied with her talents in cataloging the mysterious assets about the house, I didn’t personally care if she was a lagging conversationalist or a picky eater. The Whateley job was moving along swimmingly and I was soon to be homeward-bound again.

But, what I did find mildly disquieting was her strongly-focused attention on the roiling waters below the balcony. She listened intently, as if the gurgling Miskatonic spoke to her directly and gave up all its little secrets.

As Anna was quietly preoccupied with the sounds of the water, I spent my time listening to the hauntingly beautiful chatter of the whippoorwills in the night and watching the dim flashes of fireflies in the distant brush. After our strange, quiet little dinner, I excused myself and went promptly to bed.

In the stillness of the countryside, I am a nervous sleeper. However, the wine I consumed with dinner had a profound effect on me and I fell easily into a deep slumber and dreamt of floating naked along the dark waters of the Miskatonic under the cover of the tall trees above.

In fact, my sleep was so deep that I didn’t hear the door to my room open in the night. I heard no creaking from the old wooden floor beneath her bare feet. Nor did I feel the bedclothes move as she crawled her way toward me. I only woke when I felt her cold hand pressing against my bare chest.

I awoke with a start, my heart immediately racing. Anna sat on her knees next to me. I assumed that something was terribly wrong.

“What is it, Anna?” I asked with a nervous tremble to my voice. I felt hot, my ears burned.

She said nothing. I stared at her until my eyes adjusted to the dark. Anna was wearing a thin cotton slip nightgown, untied, open to her navel. Her eyes were large and insistent. And she was dripping wet from head to toe. I could smell the dank water from the river on her body and on her breath. I could clearly see the skin of her belly and breasts through the wet nightshirt. Her nipples were as pale as the rest of her flesh. They would have been undetectable but for the fact that they were stiffly pressed against the nightshirt that clung wet to her body.

I couldn’t breathe. My heart thumped in my chest. My brow went slick with sweat. But I didn’t move; I was captive to those dark eyes.

“Why are you so wet?” I asked. “Where have you been? The river?”

Anna said nothing in reply. With her hand firmly on my chest, she rose on her knees and let her nightgown slowly fall from her shoulders, slide down past her slender waist, and drop to her knees.

I took a quick breath and stared at Anna’s beautiful nude form.

Her body was pale and thin, with skin like alabaster. She had small firm breasts and beautifully long limbs. Her belly was smooth and flat. Her waist was tiny, with pronounced hip bones at the edges. Below her navel was a small patch of pubic hair that was so light in color it was almost imperceptible against the cleft of her sex.

As she drew breaths, her ribs showed through her flesh – but her thinness was not unattractive. No, she was captivating and desirable and hovering naked over my body in the soft moonlight that played through the folds of the curtains on the east window.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said, hardly able to find a voice above a whisper.

Anna slid her hand down my chest and pulled the sheets below my waist – exposing me. My stomach fluttered. My breath came in short gasps. As she straddled my hips, she turned her head to one side and back again, letting her hair sway in wet tangles about her neck and shoulders. I felt her cold buttocks and pubis against my abdomen.

I was nervous, shaking slightly, and beginning to feel a little ill. In all my twenty-six years, I had little experience with women on the whole – and no experience with naked women at all.

Anna’s cold hands slid up my stomach and over my bare chest. Her unnaturally cool touch was comforting on my hot, tense body. Her eyes were wide and her gaze intense. The way that she held herself aloft over my body, married with her silence and expressionless gaze, made me think that she was in a kind of trance. But before I could doubt that she was fully aware of her acts, Anna leaned down, only inches from my face, and spoke.

“Open your mouth to me,” she said.

I drew a breath and paused. “I – I don’t understand,” I replied nervously.

Anna moved closer still. Her wet hair fell cold against my warm neck and shoulders. I could feel her nipples, small and hard, pressed against my chest. She caressed my ear with her soft, cool lips as she spoke again.

“The mouth is the opening to the whole of the body,” she said. “Open your mouth to me.”

Anna slid her hands up to my temples and held my perspiring head in her cool palms. Her mouth was now hovering over my lips. Slowly, obediently, I opened my mouth. And for the first time since we met – I saw Anna smile.

Anna’s knees closed quickly against my hips, holding me firm. With a swift movement, she rotated her hands and pressed her thumbs into my cheeks and held my jaw painfully open. I jerked once in surprise and went tense. Anna opened her mouth frighteningly-wide and leaned forward. Her tongue extended and her eyes snapped shut.

What happened next, I could scarcely believe; from Anna’s mouth and tongue ran a foul, stinging, salty fluid that filled my mouth and ran cold down my throat. It tasted of bile and seawater and dark venom. It burned the back of my throat and made my lips numb.

Anna clutched my jaw tighter and held it in place, as I swallowed and choked and spattered both our faces with remnants of the vile liquid.

As I writhed under her naked body and gagged, Anna sat up quickly, drew a long screeching breath and released me. I arched my back and tossed her to the edge of the bed. She rolled on to her knees again and perched herself at the corner of the bed. She stared at me with eager eyes and a wide, toothy grin.

Wild with terror and confusion, I opened my mouth to shout at her. Only a garbled croaking sound came from my throat. My neck and jaw went numb.

Anna leaned forward. Her horrific smile frightened me further.

“Don’t try to speak,” she commanded. “It works quickly.”

I clutched my throat and struggled to sit up. I lost feeling in my feet and fingertips. Anna moved in closer.

“Relax, Mr. Combs,” she said with a soft voice. “You can’t fight against fate.”

Naked, unable to scream, and rapidly losing feeling throughout my body, I tried to kick myself free of the remaining covers tangled around my legs. I pushed myself off the bed and landed hard on my back with a crash.

I was still tangled in a pile of sheets on the floor when Anna crept to the edge of the bed and peered down at me.

“You’re almost ready,” she said with a smile. “Your fear will soon subside and then you will know the wonder and the glory I’ve prepared for you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing. I was still breathing, still functioning internally, but I could no longer move my limbs. My body was paralyzed.

Anna disappeared from view. I heard her leave the bed, cross the floor and open the door to the room. When she returned and appeared around the edge of the bed, she was in her wet nightgown again. Behind her came a shuffle of other footsteps and I saw Barnabas, two unknown men and three unknown women appear over my naked body.

They reached down and lifted me up by my arms and legs. Unable to move or speak, I was carried out of the room, down through the house, and through the open cellar door.

They carried me down a series of winding stone steps. The air was chilly and reeked from the dank odor of the Miskatonic and the moldering stench of something quite old. My mind raced in a panic of confusion and fear – but I came to no answers.

When we reached the bottom of the steps, we passed through an iron door into a cavernous substructure that featured a rectangular stone altar ringed by seven seats.

As they carted my body across the room, I saw beyond the altar to a great pool of bubbling and churning water. We were below the Whateley house, deep inside the steep hill, where an ancient foundation met the dark waters from the river.

I was laid out on the altar, my head nearest the water, eyes open and forward. The walls and ceiling were covered in the same dark runes and symbols that I saw on the robe in the trunk.

Anna, Barnabas, and the five strangers took their seats and began to softly chant in a ghastly, guttural language more horrible than I could imagine ever issuing from a human mouth.

As their voices grew louder, so did the bubbling and gurgling of the waters behind me. The chanting grew to a fevered crescendo of unholy anticipation. With a great burst of spray and a terrific roar, something massive ejected from the waters behind me. I saw the seven of them leap eagerly from their seats. Anna ran forward, her eyes fixed on something tall and commanding. Her demented chanting changed and became something akin to growls and squeals from an animal not of this earth. She no longer sounded human and I doubted then that she was ever truly human.

As she approached the altar, she began calling again and again to something with a name that could not be written in any language or repeated with a human tongue. My mind reeled and swam and screamed out for answers – but found none.

Only when I caught sight of that horrific palate – a giant, gaping mouth of swirling tentacles and thorns – did my sanity succumb to madness and collapse under the weight of the horrors in the gullet of the beast from below the dark waters of the Miskatonic.

Anna
Galen Dara

Clint Collins
THE SUMMONED

Had I known of the nightmare to follow, I would have never allowed Pamela into the hallway.

The shouts of Henry Wilcox, a fellow student at the Rhode Island School of Design, drew me and other residents of the Fleur-de-Lys Building to his door late one evening. His anguished cries and constant gibberish, though there was the repetition of certain unintelligible phrases, emboldened us to knock and inquire as to his health. Realizing he was delirious, we opened his unlocked door and found him in bed, feverish and muttering.

Since his family lived in town, the boys and I thought it best to dress Henry and get him there immediately for proper care. His slender arms were draped upon my shoulders and those of another student and as we left his room I saw Pamela in her robe, an expression of concern on her face. A talented sculptress, she shared many of the same classes with Henry. Pamela had long been the object of my affections and at one point early last semester, when she moved into the building, I was concerned the blonde and bobbed beauty might attract his attention. Thankfully, Henry had eyes only for his strange sculptures and never gave Pamela a second look.