Unholy Dimensions (16 page)

I decided that night to grow daring, as I earlier mentioned. I took TV star Alyssa Milano out to dinner.

I half expected her to make a scene; eat the lobster's shell, so to speak, like Darryl Hannah's mermaid in
Splash.
She was, however, quite well behaved, and ate her meal slowly and delicately. I thought my commands at her, and I had told the waitress my date was deaf. It was extremely gratifying to note the looks of men at neighboring tables, stealing glimpses when their own women were looking elsewhere. Alyssa was gorgeous in the dress I had bought her for the occasion. Thus far, my women had had to wear my robes, pajamas, my T-shirts and sweat pants and the like. I would have to do more shopping. Anyway, the night was a success. I took her to a movie after and held her warm hand throughout it. She squeezed my hand from time to time.

The phone was ringing when I got back. I knew I should answer it, but I just didn't want to be disturbed.

The next day Alyssa melted and blurred, reshaped into a new woman before my eyes. It was inevitable, this one. Though I didn't know all the particulars of her body when naked, I knew the outer shape and her face and lovely curly blonde hair by heart. The shoggoth had no problem manufacturing Susan for me perfectly.

Susan remained with me for nine days straight. During that time I didn't call up another form once. In fact, I never did again. I think that if I had had the strength to keep to one form, Susan would have been it, even over Helena. But I doubt that any man could have had such power at his disposal and been content with only one woman. Such is human greed and hunger, as I have said.

Susan would
wrap her legs across my lower back, as I had often dreamed, her putty face twisted in expressions of ecstasy which might not have been absolutely accurate, but judging from the creature's learning from porn flicks and its knowledge of Susan's common expressions, probably were dead on target. From its original miasmic soup of stinks it could isolate and fine-tune subtle and pleasing smells, even to the shampoo in her hair. Her skin smelled like skin, not of the black mass's fishy rot. She smelled musky under her arms, and sweated slickly with the exertion of our love-making. She had prickly gold hairs on her legs, as I had spied on Susan in shorts. Her breath came out hot and human on my vulnerable neck. Other than her acted breathing, however, she never made a sound. I could go deep inside her body, push my tongue in her mouth. And elsewhere if I wanted...but I wasn't ready for that yet.

It was a humid August day, our last day together, and school was nearing...my last year of pre- med. I dreaded going back to school, now. I resented the distraction...the intrusion. We lay naked on the sheets, a fan blowing on us, dozing to the low radio murmurs. That was how Cavel found us when he let himself in.

He had been trying to call, I'd learn in a few minutes, had asked the landladies for my key, concerned. But at the moment he was hissing swears and crossing the room toward us. No, no, I told him, sitting up. Susan sat up, too. Cavel got a handful of my hair and cocked his fist back. I cried out the words
Marilyn Monroe
.

Now Cavel was swearing in the awe of sheer terror, as if the chanted curses would banish this creature which before his eyes transformed from his dominated girlfriend to his untouchable idol, Marilyn Monroe. It's a shoggoth, Cavel, I told him. Getting out of bed to take him by the arms, I began to tell him the story I'm telling you now. I don't think, despite his interest in those forbidden manuscripts, he really believed any of it until now. Fina
lly he calmed. I told Marilyn to make us some coffee. Cavel marveled. He laughed deliriously and squeezed my arm. Said my name several times. We could rule the world, you know that? he told me. We could rule the world with powers like these.

Cavel asked me to turn the creature back into Susan. I asked him why, in a groan, but he persisted. I
passed the order on, and he daringly stood within several feet of the creature to watch the shifting of plastic flesh, the reshaping of the subtlest details, called up from the photographic perfection of my subconscious memory. During this I dressed, then we three sat at the table. Cavel's eyes twinkled at me. I felt eerily as I did when I sat with Cavel and the real Susan. And he felt it too. Why Susan? he asked me now. Huh, buddy? All the girls you can have, and you want your best friend's girl? I stammered, stuttered. I was just playing around. Every man wants to make love to his friend's girlfriend just once, right?

I'll forgive you for it, he promised. And I won't tell anyone about all this. On certain conditions. You and I will explore the powers of the manuscripts further -- together. I have all I want, I told him. I don't, he said. But we'll go into that more, later. Sue is away this weekend visiting her folks, and I want to borrow your friend for company. After all, every man wants to make love to his friend's girlfriend just once, right?

I pleaded with him. I raised my voice, trembling. Susan meekly, resignedly watched us, like the real Sue. Prepared to be dominated again. But hadn't I dominated her, too, just as Cavel always had? Hadn't I selfishly exploited her? Enslaved her?

In the end he was too strong for me. All my new found confidence fled. I could barely stand, I was so defeated. So humiliated. But I instructed Sue to go with Cavel for several days. To do whatever he said. She nodded. God, Cavel said. And then they left. And I cried at the table.

After two days, it was Cavel who didn't answer my calls. That night there was a thunder storm. A pounding at my door. I opened it, and there stood Susan. Hair plastered. Clothing plastered. Susan's clothing. I said her name. She didn't respond. My God, I thought. I took her in.

It was in the papers the next day. Some of my questions about the extent of the creature's free will were answered. It had chosen to disobey my commands. It had rebelled. It hadn't done as Cavel had ordered. And it had hurt people. Cavel was found in his apartment by his sister -- beheaded, his naked body smeared with an odd slime. The head had not been recovered.

Why it killed Susan also I can only speculate. Did she come in on them, and act in such a way as to alarm the creature? Or...I know this is stupid, but...might it have been jealous of her?

That night I told it I was sending it back. It looked at me strangely. I explained my reasoning to it. I didn't tell it I was angry for what it had done to poor Susan. I couldn't be, not really.
I
had done that.

We made love one last time, and then we took our places. It by our bed, me on the mysterious fraternity symbol. I couldn't remember the descending incantation, so I activated the tape recorder in my hands.

I regretted, as I watched it standing there watching me, not embracing it. Squeezing its hand as I had in the movie theater. But it was too late; the tape was underway. It waited. But it made no attempt to change into its actual form. It apparently waited until it was home. I'd like to think I know why...

Did my subconscious give it one final command? It tortures me not to know. Am I fooling myself to believe that – just before the naked figure vanished without fanfare, leaving me alone in that huge room, the sofa bed folded away – it was of the creature's own volition when she
smiled dreamily at me, and mouthed the words, “Good bye”?

The Ice Ship

The
men of the whaling schooner
Scylla

Had witnessed a strange thing only the previous night

The great pale mass beneath Antarctic waters

Had taken two harpoons before sliding from sight

But the last thing observed of the silent leviathan

Was a nest of thrashing arms, serpentine and glowing white.

And now the
Scylla
's men met another weird vision

Though once this vessel must have resembled their own

A schooner slowly emerged from behind a looming iceberg

Its ice-caked masts and lines like a framework of bare bone

Snow lay heavy on her deck and the sails were stirring rags

She drifted like an apparition, and her hull gave a creaking groan.

The men were afraid to explore her but the captain led the way

They rowed out to the spectral craft through a broken icy flow

She towered above the little boat like a palace made of crystal

A howling wind blew across her deck in swirling ghosts of snow

One by one they boarded her, and shivered at more than the cold

And the captain himself hesitated, before leading the rest below.

The ship's inside was a mausoleum that spoke of decades gone

But they found the corpses of the crew preserved by the frigid air

Like a cargo in themselves waiting long to reach their port

And in his cabin at his desk her captain sat with frozen stare

His log lay open and its words perplexed the
Scylla
's men:

"
She
is no mermaid but a siren and pure evil, however fair."

One of the men yelled and the others rushed to the next room

There was a bed and on it a woman's naked body had been bound

The captain began to remark upon the life-like color of her flesh

When she lifted her head from the pillow and at them smiled around

"Free me from these chains," she whispered straight into their minds

"And I will grant you pleasures, as few live men have ever found."

But the men had seen those corpses and hurried up the stairs

Fled back to the
Scylla
without even learning the vessel's name

They returned later only long enough to pour precious kerosene

There are some stories even seamen won't give a legend's fame

None would ever tell how the siren pleaded in their skulls

As they sailed away, and watched the ice ship melt in flame.

Servile

The
man who opened the door startled Gabrielle, so that she drew back her rapping knuckles as if a snake had bitten her hand. For one thing, he was a stranger, and for another he was striking in appearance. He was a black man, and literally that; he had the darker skin of an African who had not had his genes diluted by a single corpuscle of white blood. He was bald, and wore large dark glasses with lenses so opaque she wondered if he were blind. His black suit was expensive, and lent further impact to his tall, muscular frame. Gabrielle was not prejudiced -- the man was an impressive, if dramatic, vision -- but she had not been expecting anything like him at this familiar door.

“Hello,” she stammered uncertainly in her British accent. “I’m Gabrielle Rumsey? Mrs. Wallace is expecting me?”

The black man stepped aside like a human door, with neither a word nor gesture. Gabrielle hesitated a moment, and then entered the house of her former employ. As she remembered it, the interior was dark and necessitated several seconds for her vision to adjust, as if she had entered one of the ancient tombs Dianna Wallace explored. Or, rather, had once explored.

The black man closed the door, and then held out one large hand to Gabrielle. For a beat she stared at it, afraid to touch it. But he wasn’t offering his hand to be shaken, she realized, feeling foolish; he was offering to take her bag. With a nervous smile she handed it to him, and as she did so noticed something odd about his hand...something that had subliminally caused her moment of apprehension. The man’s palm was as coal black as the top of his hand. She concluded that some Africans must not have lighter pigmentation on their palms. Perhaps it was a regional thing, a tribal characteristic.

She followed the man through the house, to Dianna’s office at its far end. Gabrielle’s unease had lessened now that she accepted the stranger as a servant and not some intruder, but there were other causes of unease that she did not expect to be so easily dismissed.

The servant opened the office door, and again stepped aside to grant Gabrielle entrance. She crossed the threshold, and gently he closed the door behind her, disappearing with her bag.

Dianna Wallace was slumped forward across the front of her desk, her head resting on crossed arms. She had returned to this country recently after having narrowly cheated death abroad. For a strange, desperate moment Gabrielle was afraid that Dianna had succumbed to death after all, here in her office -- but she heard a faint intake of breath and realized her former employer was in a deep doze. Even from this distance, Gabrielle was shocked at Dianna’s appearance. It had only been three years since Gabrielle had so abruptly left, but in that time Dianna seemed to have aged twenty years. Her handsome, strong-jawed face was haggard and lined; her once long, thick black hair was short and choppy like a boy’s, streaked with gray.

And Gabrielle knew that it was in a wheelchair that Dianna was seated behind her expansive desk.