Around Eldritch Corners

by Christine Morgan

Genres: Short Stories; Horror

Synopsis

With strange aeons... where twin suns sink and towers rise behind the moon... in dark and lonely places when the stars are right... from the deadly light amidst black seas of infinity... unto a world which now trembles...

Yes, it's cosmic, it's mythos, it's Lovecraftian/Chambersian, it's overwrought language and indescribable horrors. But it's also twisted takes and irreverent pastiches, with weird kids and lovelorn sequels. It's ancient times, different histories, and distant futures. It's cats and cults and candles, odd architecture, mysterious tomes.

It's a collection of sixteen stories by Splatterpunk Award-winning author Christine Morgan, inviting you to take a peek...

AROUND ELDRITCH CORNERS

 

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Release date: September 17, 2024

Publisher: Word Horde

Print pages: 296

Sample

THE ARKHAM-TOWN MUSICIANS

 

 

Now, it happened that there were, in the village of Dunwich, a series of strange events and dark atrocities, centering primarily around the Whateley family, and culminating on that most dreadful night when an inhuman voice shouted an unspeakable name from the height of Sentinel Hill.

But this is not an accounting of those events.

For it happened that there was, also, a poor and humble farmer who had been on occasion in the employ of the Whateleys. His cattle, in the end, met the same grim fate as most others near-abouts—missing at best, sore-ridden and sucked dry of every drop of their blood at the worst.

The farmer himself, left further impoverished and shaken all but to madness by what he had witnessed and the tumult following, soon drank himself to an early grave. He was by no means the only Dunwich resident to do so.

What went forgotten was that the humble farmer had also, for many years, kept as well as his cattle a few donkeys to help with his labors in the fields.

Or, a breed of creatures that might have been donkeys once… might have begun as donkeys… but had, over time… changed.

Whether it was from feeding off what grew in Dunwich, or whether something else had responsibility, some hideous cross-breeding that introduced unnatural bloodlines, perhaps as a result of the arts of which old Wizard Whateley was said to have been a practitioner, the farmer could not know. Nor did he care to guess.

Only one of these creatures was left behind when the farmer died. Though he did not altogether resemble a donkey, it was as a donkey he thought of himself. And so, as a donkey he shall be called.

After all, he did the work of a donkey. He had the general shape of a donkey, with four strong legs that reached the ground in addition to the myriad centipedal limbs protruding in rippling rows from either side. Where his skin was not mottled pinkish-yellow, the hide was as coarse and grey-brown as any other donkey. If the two long whiplike tentacles that sprouted from his withers were unusual, bristling with hair and ending in reddish sucker-mouths, his tail and stiff mane and upstanding ears were perfectly ordinary. And if the end of his muzzle splayed out into fleshy pink tendrils such as might be found on a star-nosed mole, what of it?

He was still a donkey, hale and healthy and hearty, and proud.

But, in time, the donkey had grazed the grass of his pen down to bare stubble, which seemed disinclined to grow back. He had long since finished the oats and corn stored in the hay-shed where he slept. It occurred to the donkey that he could not stay here much longer on his own.

“Dunwich is

done-for,” said the donkey, and brayed a laugh at his joke. But he quickly sobered. “And what of myself, then? My master is dead, and his masters as well. Hard-working though I am, I doubt I would find much welcome among the neighbors. They would not take me in even for all my tireless strength. I am a donkey, yes. But I am, after all, no ordinary donkey.”

He kicked down the fence of ramshackle wooden sticks and freed himself into the wider world. There, he found more grass, brown and sour and dry.

“For that matter,” he said, “why should I want to go on toiling at thankless work on a farm? Why should I plod in the mud, pull a plow, draw a wagon? Did I not just say how I was, to be sure, no ordinary donkey? Why, then, should I labor as one?”

The donkey ambled at his leisure through the blighted fields. He glanced about with interest at the domed hills surrounding Dunwich, and peered down toward the dark, tangled hollow of the glen.

“No, indeed,” he told himself, “I am meant for greater and better things than this. I shall go forth from Dunwich to make my own way in the world! Perhaps I might become a musician. Yes! Yes, and why not?”

Here, he hee-hawed at the top of his voice, and found the sound pleasing. He stamped time with a hoof, and when he slid his hairy wither-tentacles one against the other, they gave off shrill, rasping notes like violin strings or a grasshopper’s legs.

“Why not?” he cried again. “But these country-villages are no place for such a celebrity as I am bound to be. In Arkham-Town, however, I surely will find my fortune and fame!”

So saying, and very satisfied with his plan, the donkey set out.

Past scattered houses that wore a uniform aspect of desolate age and squalor, he went, and past the huddled cluster of the village itself until he reached the tenebrous tunnel of a covered bridge where his hoofbeats clop-clopped with hollow echoes.

The road then curved, dusty and sometimes flanked by crumbling walls of briar-bordered stone, through a landscape of sloping rock-strewn meadows, luxuriant weeds and brambles. In forest belts, the trees loomed too large and whippoorwills chattered. Chimney-ruins and ancient

rough-hewn columns poked up through the undergrowth. At boggy places, fireflies danced in abnormal profusion to the strident but dissonant croaking of bull-frogs.

“They,” said the donkey, scoffing with a snort, “are no musicians, that is to be sure!”

He brayed forth his own song, shaming the bull-frogs into silence from their raucous rhythms. He trotted over yet more crude wooden bridges of dubious safety, which traversed deep gorges and ravines.

Not far ahead, knew the donkey, was the junction where Old Dunwich Road met Aylesbury Pike. And only a short while further on from there were the crossroads by Dean’s Corners.

Ahead, at a spot where water trickled from a cleft boulder to form a pool by the edge of the road, the donkey saw a figure hunched over and lapping at the water. It seemed to him to be some sort of dog, or at least as much dog as he himself was donkey. In truth, the donkey had not known many dogs before; they had been scarce in Dunwich and unwelcome, for it was said they always set off with a terrific baying in pursuit of Lavinia Whateley’s strange son.

This dog, if dog it was, had corpse-colored fur and loose skin that fell in rugose folds and wrinkles. His hind paws were paws proper, but his front ones gripped the rocks at the edge of the pool with long, narrow fingers. His face, when he raised his head, was oddly squashed of countenance, with an immense dripping scoop-shovel of jaw from which arose yellowish tusks.

“Good afternoon!” said the donkey, greeting the dog in all good manners and politeness. “How do you fare on this day, Brother Dog?”

“Wretchedly,” the dog replied, giving its head such a shake that its jowls wobbled and droplets of water sprayed about.

“Wretchedly?” the donkey cried. “What a shame! Do you not have your freedom?”

“Oh, I have my freedom,” grumbled the dog in a growl. “I, who was a huntsman’s most faithful companion, I, who might have run pack-mates with the Hounds of Tindalos, I have all the freedom anyone could ever have, 

 and two extra!”

“Then how is it you seem so displeased? I have only just gained my freedom, and could not be happier!”

“I’m sure that is fine and well for donkeys,” the dog said. “But I did not gain my freedom. Neither did I choose it. I was, as I said, a huntsman’s most faithful companion. Long years I went by his side into the dark woods. I faced any beast of the forest without fear, even the young of the Black Goat! I was ever loyal, and stalwart, and true!”

The donkey tipped his head, the centipedal limbs waving all down his sides in consternation. “Did your master, the hunstman, die? Mine did—”

“No.” The dog snarled, grinding his yellow tusks against his sharp upper teeth. “He married. And his wife, you see, could not stand the sight of me in the house any longer. She feared what I might do to the children. As if I—I!—would bring them any harm!”

“The huntsman did not send you away!” said the donkey, aghast.

“Oh, no,” said the dog. “He offered to, but that was not sufficient for her. What if it comes back? she said to him. Even if you led it far into the woods and left it, it could find its way! And so, he, the huntsman, my own trusted master, took up an axe and made to split open my skull!”

At this, the donkey gaped, then snuffled a breath so that the fleshy tendrils at his muzzle flapped and wriggled. “What did you do?”

“What could I but run? I would not have bitten him, despite his murderous intentions. So, now, here I am, with no home and nowhere to go.”

“It is well that we found each other then,” the donkey said. “For I am on my way to Arkham-Town, where I mean to become a famous musician. With a voice such as yours, so rumbling and resonant, you must make a fine singer yourself.”

The dog considered this for a moment, and agreed that a famous musician sounded to him like a fine thing to be. They fell in most readily together, and 

soon reached Aylesbury Pike.

The air took on a fresher fragrance, bereft of the odour of mould so prevalent in Dunwich. Wildlife scampered unseen in damp drifts of fallen leaves. The day was crisp, the sky clear, though heavy clouds built over the hills. They saw no riders or wagons or other traffic, no one at all, until they came to the crossroads.

There, a signpost pointed in the direction of Dean’s Corner, a sleepy but tidy and well-kept little village. Another arrow indicated Aylesbury itself, the distant smokestacks of mills and factories lost in a murky haze.

Most interesting of all, however, was the small mound of recently-turned earth where the roads met, marked with a rough wooden cross jutting up askew at an angle. But it was not the cross, nor the grave, that interested donkey and dog so much as what sat nearby.

It was a cat, large and queenly, of regal bearing. Her sleek coat was of many colors—umber, cream, russet, mahogany and gold. Her eyes were brilliant emeralds. She had a tail like a plume, and gloriously long, curling whiskers. Around her neck, on a silken ribbon, hung a bauble of Egyptian design.

The donkey greeted her as politely as he had done the dog. “Good afternoon, Sister Cat! How do you fare on this day?”

She gave a great yawn, showing ivory teeth. She gave a great stretch, back arching, needle-claws digging into the dirt. Then she sat primly again, licked her forepaw, and smoothed her curled whiskers.

“I am in great distress and despair, Brother Donkey,” she replied. “Your companion does not mean to give chase, I should hope. I’ll scratch him to the bone, if he does.”

The dog grumbled. “I am a hunter, no chaser of cats.”

“Good,” said the cat. “For I am a cat of Ulthar, and will bring deadly punishment on any who try to do me mischief.”

“We mean no such thing,” the donkey assured her. “Brother Dog and I are merely traveling to Arkham-Town. But what do you do here? Whose grave is that you sit beside?”

“That of my mistress.”

“She must have been tiny,” observed the dog.

“It is only her head.”

“Her head?” cried the 

donkey. “Where is the rest of her?”

“I will tell you,” said the cat. “My mistress was, on her mother’s side, kin to the Whateleys of Dunwich. Do you know of them?”

“Indeed,” the donkey said. “I came from there.”

“Well, after what happened there, her neighbors decided that she must be a witch. They set upon her, and beat her to death with sticks and with staves. Then they used the blade of a shovel to chop her head from her neck. Her body, they threw into the river. And her head, they buried here at the crossroads, so that even if her spirit somehow returned, it would be unable to find its way home.”

“Barbaric!” the donkey declared, and the dog woofed his agreement of this assessment.

“They would have done the same to me, if they could,” the cat went on, “for all it is forbidden to kill any cat of Ulthar. But I eluded them, and avenged my mistress.”

“How so?” asked the dog. “You are only a cat.”

Her ear flicked disdainfully. “I caught yuggoth-mice, which feast upon the pallid mushrooms in the deep groves. I carried their slick, bloated corpses to the village, and dropped one into each well and rain-cistern.”

At that, the dog and the donkey exchanged an impressed look. Clearly, the cat was not one with whom to be trifled.

“And what will you do now?” the donkey asked her.

The many-colored cat uttered a sigh. “With no warm hearth to curl up by? With no mistress to put down dishes of milk? I have been sitting here all this day, asking myself that very same thing.”

“Why, then! You must accompany us to Arkham-Town! Brother Dog and I are on our way there to become famous musicians. We have definite need of a soprano!”

“Famous musicians?” The cat preened. “I should like that very much, I think! Yes. Let us be off at once!”

So they were off at once. Though, as the cat had to frequently stop to wash her face or groom her magnificent coat, they made rather less good time than

they otherwise might have done.

It was coming on toward dusk when they first heard the eerie, warbling cries. The noises sounded something like the hoot of a barn-owl, something like the dawn-crowing of a rooster, and something like nothing ever voiced by the throat of any earthly creature.

Along the road there ran a ragged line of stout old fenceposts, the fence itself now long gone. Atop one of these, the unlikely trio saw as they drew closer, perched the source of the cries, holding on by the grip of scabrous orange-brown talons. Matted-looking feathers stuck out in uneven clumps from black, rubbery flesh. A stinger-tipped tail waved from its hind end and it flapped wings of leathery membrane for balance.

Where a face should have been found, there was none, nor mouth, nor beak. How it therefore uttered such a voluble and incessant din, they were at a loss to wonder.

The donkey attempted several times to hail the winged creature as they approached, but it must not have heard, for it paid no notice until suddenly and with a tremendous start of surprise it broke off mid-crow.

As mouthless and faceless as it was, that it was eyeless also came as no shock, yet somehow it seemed to fix them with a piercing stare. Upon closer inspection, its aspect was that which might result had a chicken been mated with a night-gaunt. A reddish coxcomb on its head suggested it was male.

“Good evening,” the donkey said. “How do you fare this day, Brother…?”

“Rooster,” came the answer provided. “Or, near enough, for such have I lived as. And this day, Brother Donkey, I do not fare well at all, thank you for your polite inquiry.”

“Why do you crow so full-lunged at this hour?” asked the dog. “The sun has all but gone down.”

The rooster’s leathery wings hitched in a helpless shrug. “What else can I do? What else have I known? I crow because I can, because I can do nothing else, and because it is only by purest good fortune I am still able to crow! Another day might have seen me silenced once and for

 all!”

They of course asked him how so, and what he meant by that, and why. To this, the rooster gladly responded.

“Until yesterday,” he said, “I belonged to a chicken-farmer who lived in the hollow. Such a brute he was, in-bred, degenerate of nature and intelligence! He, not realizing my true nature, mistook me for a common cock and put me in with his hens. My presence alone so terrified them that, from thenceforth, they would lay far more than the usual number of rare double-yolked eggs.”

No one chose to reply further to his remark as to his true nature, only musing to themselves that their initial supposition must in fact be not far from the case.

“Such eggs, of course, fetch a fine price at market,” the rooster went on. “As for myself, it was no unpleasant living… I had, of course, as many fresh-laid eggs to eat as I wanted, and the occasional pullet or cockerel when I fancied warm blood and tender meat. I was required to do nothing more than crow with the dawn, and drive off any intruding foxes to the hen-yard—which, believe me, was no difficulty at all.”

“No, it would not be,” said the dog. “Foxes are slink-thieves and cowards. You must have scared them stark-white.”

“Then, yesterday, the farmer’s brother came visiting. A brute no less ill- and in-bred, though possessed of a slightly craftier cunning. When the oddity of the double-yolked eggs was mentioned at supper, boasted of at supper, this brother devised a notion to increase their profits even more. They resolved to rent their prize rooster around to other farms, sure that their neighbors would pay handsomely to share in the bounty.”

“Ah,” said the cat with an air of understanding. “The other farmers, however, might have recognized your night-gaunt lineage.”

“Precisely so, Sister Cat. My neck would have been wrung in a trice. I made my escape this morning, before sunrise and without crowing, while the farmer

 and his brother slept. I only paused here to rest my wings, when the thought came to me that I had no other prospects and would likely not survive the night. I commenced, therefore, crowing for all I was worth, so as to get some final use from my voice.”

“Your voice would have much use if you joined our company!” the donkey said. “We three are musicians, going to Arkham-Town to seek our fortunes. With such a practiced throat and lungs as yours, I have every confidence you will be a great success!”

Without hesitation, the rooster gave his most ready and enthusiastic assent. Because his wings were still tired, he rode perched upon the donkey’s broad back.

The trio now a quartet, they resumed their travels, a jolly party in the highest of spirits. But such high spirits, it is sad to say, could not last long. The heavy clouds that had been building over the hills soon spread dark over the valley. Rain pattered down. The road went muddy.

The four quickly became miserable, the cat most of all. They trudged with heads down, squishing in mud, splashing in puddles. The donkey tried to keep them in cheer with glowing accounts of the fame and prosperity they would find in Arkham-Town.

“We will have a fine house,” he said. “A fine brick house with a slate-shingled roof. Rich cream for you, Sister Cat, instead of milk. Rich cream in a silver bowl, with a cushion by the fire! For you, Brother Dog, prime cuts of red beef, and all the ham-bones you can gnaw. I will have oat-mash with honey for breakfast, and a bed of softest new-mown alfalfa!”

“What of me?” asked the rooster, who, being able to fold his leathery wings over his head and ward off the rain, fared somewhat better—though no less miserably—than his other companions.

“Oh, whatever you should like!” said the donkey. “More eggs and hens, if that is your will. Sleeping until well past noon rather than having to wake to crow the dawn.”

In this manner, they went on a while further, until the dog with his keen hunting eyes spotted a glimmer as of light from a window, off in the distance. It appeared to come from within a stand of tall trees, and a narrow track led that way from the main road.

“Let us seek shelter,” said the cat, her proud fur coat soaked and bedraggled.

“Yes, perhaps it is 

 an inn,” the dog said. “We might find lodging there.”

“We’ll sing for our supper,” said the rooster.

Since the rain was growing steadier, and no other options presented themselves, the donkey wasted no time in agreeing. Single-file along the narrow track they proceeded, wending through the woods, catching yet more tantalizing glimpses of warmly lit and beckoning windows.

Upon reaching the building nestled amid the trees, they discovered it to be not an inn but a quaint little farmhouse, old-fashioned, neglected, and in some need of repair. Its barn had collapsed, its garden was weedy and overgrown. The roof sagged, cracks ran up and down the wall-plaster, and the lights that had guided them hither shone through missing shutter-slats over windows lacking glass panes. But, to the wet and weary travelers, it might as well have been a king’s palace.

Low sounds as of chanting came from within. Moving shadows sometimes passed in front of the windows, blotting out the light… which, by its flicker and hue they judged to be candle-glow.

“Sister Cat, you are stealthy, and Brother Rooster, you can fly,” said the donkey. “Go see what’s what, then come back to us.”

They did as he directed, returning shortly with the news. Instead of the elderly farmer and his wife that might have been expected in such a place, several people—a dozen or more—crowded the house’s single main room.

“They wear robes,” reported the rooster.

“And carry candles and chalices,” said the cat.

“Their leader is a bald man with a wispy grey beard like that of a goat.”

“He holds a book with a Greater Sigil branded into the leather.”

“And stands at a round stone altar.”

“Lined with chalk, and sprinkled with ashes and salt,” the cat concluded.

The donkey’s wither-tentacles twined about each other with a bristly rasp. “Aha!”

he cried. “Cultists! They’ve remade this old farmhouse into their church! How splendid! Do they have a church-choir?”

“None. Only the chanting.” A fat raindrop struck the cat on the nose and she flinched. “We must do something!”

“Indeed we must, and indeed we shall!” The donkey started for the nearest window, from which one shutter hung by a hinge and the other was missing altogether. “You stand upon my back, Brother Dog, ...