Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (15 page)

Intimidation accomplished
, Chase thinks.
So all we have to do is get through this as quickly and as painlessly as possible, with no casualties on our side.

“There are some unsettling rumors—” Smith begins, but Chase interrupts him.

“—trickling out to the alphas that there’s something amiss with the data gathered by the suits the day B Team chopped the temple.”

“And you’re here, wasting our precious time, to ascertain the truth,” adds Max, tugging at a stray thread on the left sleeve of his black sweater.

“Pretty much the case,” Smith nods.

“Whatever we tell you, that’s going straight back upstairs, and never mind the usual protocol, or am I wrong, Mr. John
Mitchell
Smith?” Chase asks him.

“You don’t have to be such an ass about this.”

“We don’t like people looking over our shoulders,” says Dylan. Her sweater is identical to Max’s; both have the blue and yellow Conglomerate logo stitched over the right breast, and both have seen better days. They only wear the damned things because they’re free. “Especially not when the voyeurs in question are benighted snoops like yourself.”

“But…” Smith begins, trails off, then starts again. “But you are aware that your report was due yesterday, and that was because Exped needed it yesterday.”

“The Exped Four need to get laid more often,” chuckles Max, then rotates his chair towards one of the monitors.

“Now, now,” says Chase. “Be a good drone and show Mr. Smith what he’s come to see.” Then she turns to Smith. “So that he will fully appreciate why we’ve not yet finished our report. And, by the way, Mr. Smith, when’s the last time we were tardy?”

Smith scratches his forehead a moment, then replies, “I’ve no recollection of you ever having been late, Dr. Greco.”

“Which ought to clue you in, right there. Max, punch up Yamashita’s feed, will you, and let’s get this inquisition off the pad. Oh, and keep it skeletal, and begin a few ticks before the incongruities register.”

“I assure you, it’s no inquisition,” Mr. Smith says, sounding at least a little taken aback. “It’s only an informal visit.”

“Whatever. Now, I’m assuming you might know the basics of how all this works, yeah? The skinbags are grown with an absolutely brilliant data acquisition and storage network, scooping up and saving—for us—almost every scrap of sensory and mental input experienced by the host. The network, it can read your mind, right? Plus, it sees what you see, hears what you hear, tastes what you taste, and so forth. Guy back in Canada thought this thing up, he’s a billion-trillionaire fifty times over, I’m sure.”

“I know the basics,” says Smith.

“Smart boy that you are,” Chase laughs and glances at Max. “Okay, so what you’re about to see on Max’s screen, that’s the visual and auditory skimmed off Dr. Yamashita’s ASA. He’s the team geologist. We’re cutting all the tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and mnemonic stuff because,
a
, I don’t feel like rigging you up in the box, and
b
, you haven’t been conditioned, so that much charge would likely fry your brain like bacon. And we don’t want that, now do we?”

“Hell, no. Not with budget reviews on the horizon,” Dylan says, watching as the laser grid on Max’s console sputters to life and projects a single beam of light towards the ceiling. In a few seconds it’s unfolded—a phenomenon that never fails to remind Chase of the blooming of a rose or some other flower—into a three-dimensional scene, as seen from Yamashita’s POV, recorded inside the temple. The scene hangs about half a meter above Max’s head, and a hoop of constantly changing data encircles the bottom of the image, running counterclockwise around the projection.

“Now, you pay close attention, John
Mitchell
Smith,” says Chase, pulling the Chupa Chup from her mouth with a distinct
pop
.

He doesn’t reply.

The image clearly shows the anteroom, and Yamashita has just turned towards the niches set into one wall. Sazerac saw them first and has called everyone’s attention to them. Lights cut through the darkness and play across the smooth grey basalt walls. This is Smith’s first glimpse at the carvings tucked into each niche, and he immediately wishes his briefing had been just a bit more thorough. To say the things are grotesque is an understatement. Each one is clearly meant to represent some manner of organism, whether actual or imaginary, and all seem highly stylized in the same fashion as the bas-reliefs on the temple doorway and its surrounding columns and friezes. Yamashita’s light lingers on something that reminds Smith of a raven perched on a cube. A lizard-like reptile is frozen in the act of slithering from between its claws, attempting to escape down the side of the base facing the geologist. Yamashita then turns to the next niche on his right, and this time the carving resembles nothing so much as an octopus with the feet of a hippopotamus and the folded wings of a bat.

“Ugly fucking shit,” says Chase Greco, then puts the lollipop back into her mouth.

Yamashita and Sazerac are talking, and Smith also recognizes the voice of Morgan, the team’s wet link. Sazerac clearly says, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Clay. Let’s use the claw.” Clay has stepped into frame, and she’s ignoring Peter Sazerac, laying the palm of her bio-suit on the polished head of the raven creature.

“Fine. Screw code,” grumbles Sazerac.

“It feels odd,” Clay says, sounding as though she’s speaking more to herself than to the rest of her team. “Oily. It feels oily.”

And then she pulls her hand away and steps back, and Yamashita’s recording shows Morgan squeezing in between Sazerac and Clay. He carefully uses the three-pronged collection claw to lift the raven from its niche and transfer it to a plastic container. He looks sternly at Morgan, admonishing her for deviating from procedure.

“It felt oily,” is all she says.

Sazerac, a moment later, sighs and says, “We’d best pull back. I want a sweeper in here before we go any further.”

“You’re shittin’ me,” Mary Nzeogwu (archeologist) complains. “And wait a week for the results?”

“Mary, we need to know what to expect up ahead, all right? We’re not going to argue about this.”

There are a few more exchanges between team members, but nothing of consequence. And then Yamashita has another look at the bat-winged octopotamus before turning away from the niches and exiting the anteroom with the others.

“She didn’t stab him,” Smith says, unable to take his eyes off the display. “What the
fuck
, Chase. Clay didn’t fucking stab him.”

Chase removes the Chupa Chup from her mouth again, licks it once, and nods. “Not according to Yamashita’s feed, no, she did not.”

“Then why the hell—?”

“Oh, you haven’t seen nothing yet, John
Mitchell
Smith. Just you wait. Max, let’s have Morgan’s feed. Try not to foul your panties, Mr. Smith.”

He watches as the scene plays out again, this time from Josiah Morgan’s perspective. A lot of what he sees is the same—the walls, the niches, the hideous carvings—but most of the dialogue is different, though only subtly so. When Morgan steps forward with the claw, Clay turns on him, plunging the five-inch shard of stone into his thigh, and the feed immediately ends.

“No way,” Smith says. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Max is already playing Sazerac’s feed. Again, similarities. Again, differences. This time, the feed ends with Sazerac lifting the sculpture from its niche, holding it a moment while Morgan asks just what sort of idiot he is, and Yamashita curses in a mixture of Japanese and Spanish. Clay asks if she can hold the thing, but then Sazerac is depositing it safely in Morgan’s box. Sazerac holds a hand up in front of his face, and it gleams with a distinctly iridescent film.

“What are you people playing at?” Smith asks.

“Wanna keep going?” asks Dylan, trading him a question for a question.

“But she stabbed him. Clay, she stabbed Sazerac. We know that. She’s even admitted doing it. Obviously, there were malfunctions in the suits.”

Dylan shakes his head. “No, man. We ran diagnostics on the suits, combed them each five times over, nanometer by nanometer. The suits are up to spec.”

“So," says Chase, "you see how we do have a problem, now don’t we, Mr. John
Mitchell
Smith? And I assume, having witnessed this apparent paradox, you’ve come to grasp why we’ll be somewhat longer than we usually require to produce a coherent report for Exped.”

“No,” he says, and, at first, Chase looks angry and confused.

But then Smith adds, “Purge the files. Purge all of it. And I mean irrecoverable, spic and span, and no private copies for yourselves, you understand me?
Nothing
. Erase the whole goddamn mess. No one needs to see that.
I
didn’t need to see that.”

Max looks even more baffled than Chase, and he peers over his shoulder at Smith. “You’re fucking kidding, right? Whatever happened down there, it’s going to fucking turn physics on its— ”

“
Purge the files
,” Smith says again. “Are you deaf?” And then he stands and walks quickly back across the catwalk, leaving the three hanging above the sensory module. When Smith is gone, they stare silently at one another for a time, make backups for themselves, then begin the rigorous purge sequence.

01000101 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100

BLACK SHIPS SOUTH OF HEAVEN

Two hours, twelve minutes, and thirteen seconds after Mr. Smith exists the sterile dome housing SysIn and all of Chase Greco’s miraculous toys, and two hours, eleven minutes, and fifty-seven seconds after she and her three compatriots reluctantly begin more or less complying with their orders, Mary Nzeogwu awakens from a dream of a hellish procession across Martian plains. In the dream, the creatures comprising the westerly parade were as clear as day, but their fearful symmetries begin, almost immediately, to fade from her conscious mind. What lingers is only the dread of knowing what she witnessed, and a sort of existential shock at her certainty that the nightmare and the discovery just beyond the doors of the temple are intrinsically and undoubtedly linked, one to the other, even if she can’t see how. Her mind’s eye has seen things beyond her ability to fully comprehend and, she knows, beyond her ability to bear.

She
can
still recall their titan feet and paws raising a pall the color of rust as they stomped along. And that she perceived a malevolent, triumphant joy in their every movement. She stood there alone, the howling wind tugging at her soft suit. The wind sang an old, old song she'd never heard, and yet she knew it was an old, old song.
Hey, Jude, don't be afraid…

They marched, and she watched and listened.

Somehow, the abominations were linked to what the team had found beneath Arsia Mons. No, not somehow. Not somehow at all. It was the likenesses of these creatures that whoever had carved the seven sculptures had been trying—and largely failing—to capture. Perhaps they'd failed on purpose, she thought. Perhaps it was better that way.

They were led by a rough approximation of the idol that Yamashita was calling the "octopotamus." The thing was so enormous its bulbous head seemed to scrape the sky. And she thought,
A mountain walked or stumbled
, her mind struggling to make sense of the spectacle. And Mary heard a second song then, a chant rising up from the parade:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
It wasn't any language she recognized; indeed, it was so guttural, it hardly seemed like a proper language at all.

Iä
!
Iä! Cthulhu!

Iä!
Iä! Shub-Niggurath!

As the Martian day faded to Martian twilight, she watched as they passed.

And she awoke, sweat-soaked and shivering; Mary
Nzeogwu
barely made it to the toilet before vomiting. By the time her belly was empty, most of the dream was hardly more than the dim echoes of memories.

She sits now before the mirror at the foot of her bed, staring back at her face, the cheekbones she inherited from her African mother and the blue eyes of her American father. There is an aspect of her face that has been altered by the dream, even if she can’t put her finger on it, something more than expression. Something physical. The holo flickering between her hands reminds her, each time she dares to glance at it, that her discharge has been denied. When she first received the news, Mary fleetingly entertained an attempt at faking a psychotic break, but the neuros would almost certainly have revealed the lie, and even if they had not she knows too much about what goes on in the ward to which Dr. Clay has already been confined to condemn herself to that fate. Mary Nzeogwu is not insane, even after what she’s seen below the volcano and what she's dreamt afterwards, and that’s the most damning fact of all.

Baby, you’re sure you want to do this?
she hears her mother ask.
You’re sure there’s not another option?

“Yeah, Momma. I’m sure.”

Maybe if you…

 —and—

Possibly…

—and—

Have you considered…

Mary has an answer at the ready for every one of the desperate suggestions she imagines her mother’s voice asking her to please, please consider.

“No, Momma. Nothing else will make it stop.”

Then, Baby, you do what you need to do. But do it fast. Don’t hurt. You’ve already hurt enough for two lifetimes.

“It’ll be quick. I’ve made sure it’ll be quick.”

A mountain walked or stumbled.

… don't be afraid, take a sad song…

Which is the truth. She’d already planned and prepared for the suicide before the dream. She’d only needed one last push. One final, gentle shove. On the table beside her bed is a thin-walled glass ampoule of potassium cyanide. No, it wouldn’t be painless, but it would be quick. She switches off the holo, sets the pad aside, and asks the computer to play Henryk Górecki’s
Symphony Number 3
, Opus 36, and she stops staring at her face in the mirror. Mary takes the cyanide from the table, and she listens to the music until the second movement has begun before she places it in her mouth and crushes it between her teeth.