The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Book 267: Mammoth Books

by Paula Guran

Genres: General Fiction; Short Stories; Horror; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections

Synopsis

For more than 80 years H. P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of horror and supernatural fiction with his dark vision of humankind's insignificant place in a vast, uncaring cosmos. At the time of his death in 1937, Lovecraft was virtually unknown, but from early cult status his readership expanded exponentially; his nightmarish visions laying down roots in the collective imagination of his readers. Now this master of the macabre is accepted as part of the literary mainstream, as an American author of note, and the impact of his work on modern popular culture - in literature, film, television, music, the graphic arts, gaming and theatre - has been profound. As Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, the shadow of H. P. Lovecraft 'underlies almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.' Today, Lovecraft's themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history remain not only viable motifs for modern speculative fiction, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal. This outstanding anthology of original stories - from both established award-winning authors and exciting new voices - collects tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft from authors who do not merely imitate, but reimagine, re-energize, and renew the best of his concepts in ways relevant to today's readers, to create fresh new fiction that explores our modern fears and nightmares. From the depths of R'lyeh to the heights of the Mountains of Madness, some of today's best weird fiction writers traverse terrain created by Lovecraft and create new eldritch geographies to explore . . . With stories by: Laird Barron, Nadia Bulkin, Amanda Downum, Ruthanna Emrys, Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Lisa L. Hannett, Brian Hodge, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, Yoon Ha Lee, Usman T. Malik, Helen Marshall, Silvia Moreno, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Veronica Schanoes, Michael Shea, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, Sandra McDonald, Damien Angelica Walters, Don Webb, Michael Wehunt and A.C. Wise Praise for the editor: 'For fans of Lovecraftian fiction and well-wrought horror' - Library Journal 'Guran smartly selects stories that evoke the spirit of Lovecraft's work without mimicking its style.' - Publishers Weekly 'It's a pretty impressive line-up, with nary a clunker to be found. . . . You don't have to be a Lovecraft fan to enjoy this anthology... You'll find alienation, inhumanity, desperation, cruelty, insanity, hopelessness and despair, all set against the backdrop of a vast, unknowable universe filled with vile, indifferent monstrosities. You'll also find beauty, hope, redemption, and the struggle for survival. What more can you ask for?' - Tor.com 'I highly recommend this collection... If you have even the slightest interest in contemporary horror fiction, you'll want to try this one on for size!' - BookGuide

Release date: April 14, 2016

Publisher: Robinson

Print pages: 497

Sample

This anthology has little to do specifically with Cthulhu and everything to do with “new Lovecraftian fiction.” But Cthulhu and the “Cthulhu Mythos” (more properly the “Lovecraft Mythos”) has become a brand name recognizable far beyond genre in every facet of popular culture: mainstream literature, gaming, television, film, art, music; even crochet patterns, clothing, jewelry, toys, children’s books, and endless other tentacled products . . . so one does what one can to sell books!

But, to answer the question posed . . . H. P. Lovecraft invented Cthulhu in 1926. The entity makes his first appearance in Lovecraft’s short story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. A small bas-relief of the creature is described in the story as:

“[A]sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.”

“Dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,” immured underwater in the “nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh . . . built in measureless eons behind history” by the Great Old Ones, “vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars” to Earth. Cthulhu is a priest to these ancient aliens, but is also worshipped as a deity by some humans as are the loathsome invaders from space. Such devotion is based in superstitious ignorance, age-old familial ties, the promise of power, or the need to hedge their human bet: the Old Ones are supposed to return (or perhaps arise) someday . . . and that will be the end of humanity as a whole.

Since the name Cthulhu was, according to Lovecraft, “invented by beings whose vocal organs were not like man’s . . . hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats,” and the author himself provided several varying pronunciations, there’s no “right” way to pronounce the name.

Cthulhu is, really, a symbol of “the vast unknowable cosmos in which all human history and aspirations are as nothing.” [S. T. Joshi, The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos]. And this is an important concept in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.

[Note: Much of the following is self-plagiarized from previous introductory essays.]

H. P. Lovecraft was, according to Fritz Leiber, “the Copernicus of the horror story,” and can be credited with at least being a father of weird fiction, if not its only sire.

Born in 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was little known to the general public while alive and never saw a book of his work professionally published.

His father, probably a victim of untreated syphilis, went mad before his son reached the age of three. The elder Lovecraft died in an insane asylum in 1898. (It is highly doubtful that Lovecraft was aware of his father’s disease.)

Young Howard was raised by his mother; two of her sisters; and his maternal grandfather, a successful Providence, Rhode Island, businessman. His controlling mother smothered him with maternal affection, while also inflicting devastating emotional cruelty.

Sickly (probably due more to psychological factors than physical ailments) and precocious, Lovecraft read the Arabian Nights and Grimm’s Fairy Tales at an early age, then developed an intense interest in ancient Greece and Rome. His grandfather often entertained him with tales in the gothic mode and Lovecraft started writing around the age of six or seven.

Lovecraft started school in 1889, but attended erratically due to his supposed ill health. After his grandfather’s death in 1904, the family – already financially challenged – was even less well off. Lovecraft and his mother moved to a far less comfortable domicile and the adolescent Howard no longer had access to his grandfather’s extensive library. He attended a public high school, but a physical and mental breakdown kept him from graduating.

He became reclusive, rarely venturing out during the day; at night, he walked the streets of Providence, drinking in its atmosphere.

He read, studied astronomy, and, in his early twenties, began writing poetry, essays, short stories, and eventually longer works. He also began reading Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and pulp magazines like The Argosy, The Cavalier, and All-Story Magazine.

Lovecraft became involved in amateur writing and publishing, a salvation of sorts. Lovecraft himself wrote: “In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended to me, I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be . . .”

His story, “The Alchemist” (written in 1908 when he was eighteen), was published in United Amateur in 1916. Other stories soon appeared in other amateur publications.

Lovecraft’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919 and was admitted to the same hospital in which her husband had died. Her death, in 1921, was the result of a bungled gall bladder operation.

“The Horror at Martin’s Beach” was published in the November 1923 issue of Weird Tales, which became a regular market for his stories. He also began writing letters at an astoundingly prolific pace to a continuously broadening group of correspondents.

Shortly thereafter, Lovecraft met Sonia Haft Greene – a Russian Jew seven years his senior – at a writers’ convention. They married in 1924. As The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by John Clute and John Grant, puts it, “. . . the marriage lasted only until 1926, breaking up largely because HPL disliked sex; the fact that she was Jewish and he was prone to anti-Semitic rants cannot have helped.” After two years of married life in New York City (which he abhorred and where he became an even more intolerant racist) he returned to his beloved Providence.

In the next decade, he traveled widely around the eastern seaboard, wrote what is considered to be his finest fiction, and continued his immense – estimated at 100,000 letters – correspondence through which he often nurtured young writers.

Outside of letters and essays, his complete works eventually totaled fifty-odd short stories, four short novels, about two dozen collaborations or ghost-written pieces, and countless poems. Lovecraft never really managed to make a living. Most of his small livelihood came from re-writing or ghostwriting for others. He died, alone and broke, of intestinal cancer on 15 March 1937, and was buried at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence. Forty years later a stone was erected to mark the spot by his admirers. It reads: “I am Providence.”

Lovecraft’s literary significance today can be at least partially credited to this network with other contemporary writers. Letter writing was the “social media” of his time, and he was a master of it. Although he seldom met those who became members of the “Lovecraft Circle” in person, he knew them well – just as, these days, we have friends we know only through the Internet.

H. P. Lovecraft was probably the first author to create what we would now term an open-source fictional universe that any writer could make use of. Other authors, with Lovecraft’s blessing, began superficially referencing his dabblers in the arcane, mentioning his unhallowed imaginary New England towns and their strange citizens, writing of cosmic horror, alluding to his godlike ancient extraterrestrials with strange names, and citing his fictional forbidden books of the occult (primarily the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred): the Lovecraft Mythos – or, rather, anti-mythology – was born.

There were certainly “better” writers of science fiction and fantasy of roughly the same era – like Algernon Blackwood, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Olaf Stapledon – whose work may be influential, but is now mostly ignored by the general public. Lovecraft’s survival, current popularity, and the subgenre of “Lovecraftian fiction” is due in great part to his willingness to share his creations. His concepts were interesting, attracted other writers, and ultimately other artists.

Lovecraft’s universe was fluid: the “Great Old Ones” and other elements merely serving his theme of the irrelevance of humanity to the cosmic horrors that exist in the universe. As S. T. Joshi wrote: “Lovecraft’s imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator’s developing personality and altering interests . . . there was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated . . . the essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude.”

Lovecraft never used the term “Cthulhu Mythos” himself. (He was known to refer to his “mythos” as the Arkham Cycle – named for the main fictional town in his world – or, flippantly, as Yog-Sothothery – after Yog-Sothoth, a cosmic entity of his invention made only of “congeries of iridescent globes.”) The term “Cthulhu Mythos” was probably invented by August Derleth or Clark Ashton Smith after Lovecraft’s death. They and others also added their own flourishes and inventions to the mythology, sometimes muddling things with non-Lovecraftian concepts and attempts at categorization.

Derleth misused Lovecraft’s name to promote his own work, and tried to change Lovecraft’s universe into one that included hope and a struggle between good and evil. This accommodated Derleth’s Christian worldview, but was at odds with Lovecraft’s depiction of a bleak, amoral universe. However, to his credit, Derleth – with Donald Wandrei – also founded Arkham House expressly to publish Lovecraft’s work and to bring it to the attention of the public. Without it, Lovecraft may never have had a legacy.

Authors like Robert Bloch (now best known as the author of Psycho), Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), and younger writers such as Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber, and Ramsey Campbell all romped within the Lovecraftian milieu and added elements to it. Later writers with no direct connection to Lovecraft joined in as well.

Lovecraft’s best works were atmospheric tales that, to quote Stefan Dziemianowicz, “strove to express a horror rooted in humanity’s limited understanding of the universe and humankind’s arrogant overconfidence in its significance in the cosmic scheme.” Lovecraft felt such stories conveyed “the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large.”

S.T. Joshi identifies four broad components of the Lovecraft Mythos:

 

• A fictional New England topography. (This eventually became a richly complex, historically grounded – if fictional – region.)

• A growing library of “forbidden” books and manuscripts. (Rare tomes or texts holding secrets too dangerous to know.)

• A diverse array of extraterrestrial “gods” or entities. (Often symbols of the “unknowability or an infinite cosmos, or sometimes the inexorable forces of chaos and entropy.”)

• A sense of cosmicism. (The universe is indifferent, chaotic, and humans are utterly meaningless nonentities within it.)

 

A fifth element – a scholarly protagonist or narrator – is not unique to Lovecraft, but is another identifiable motif.

Although Lovecraft occasionally attempted to emulate writers of supernatural fiction, his truly influential work differed fundamentally from such earlier fiction.

In his introduction to At the Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition, China Miéville points out: “Traditionally genre horror is concerned with the irruption of dreadful forces into a comforting status quo – one which the protagonist scrambles to preserve. By contrast, Lovecraft’s horror is not one of intrusion but of realization. The world has always been implacably bleak; the horror lies in us acknowledging the fact.”

“Lovecraft’s stories were noticeably devoid of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other traditional supernatural monsters appearing in the work of his pulp contemporaries,” noted Stefan Dziemianowicz in a Publishers Weekly article. “Though written in a somewhat mannered gothic style and prose empurpled with words like ‘eldritch’ and ‘squamous,’ his atmospheric tales strove to express a horror rooted in humanity’s limited understanding of the universe and humankind’s arrogant overconfidence in its significance in the cosmic scheme.”

We also must acknowledge how H. P. Lovecraft’s personal beliefs tie in to his work. Lovecraft – as evidenced in his fiction, poetry, essays, and letters – was racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic. He may not have hated women (misogyny), but he does seem to have feared them (gynophobia). His abhorrence of sexuality and physicality went beyond the Puritanical.

The author’s prejudices have often been brushed aside as “typical” for a man of his era. Yes, Lovecraft lived an age when racism was more overt and racial segregation was the law, but Lovecraft’s prejudice seems, at the very least, somewhat more pronounced than many of his contemporaries.

To again quote Miéville (from published correspondence):

[The]depth and viciousness of Lovecraft’s racism is known to me . . . It goes further, in my opinion, than “merely” being a racist – I follow Michel Houellebecq (in this and in no other arena!) [Note: Houellebecq is the author of H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, 2005]in thinking that Lovecraft’s oeuvre, his work itself, is inspired by and deeply structured with race hatred. As Houellebecq said, it is racism itself that raises in Lovecraft a “poetic trance.” He was a bilious anti-Semite (though one who married a Jew, because, if you please, he granted that she was “assimilated”), and if you read stories like “The Horror at Red Hook,” the bile you will see towards people of color, of all kinds (with particular sneering contempt for African-Americans unless they were suitably Polite and therefore were patricianly granted the soubriquet “Negro”) and the mixed communities of New York and, above all . . . “miscegenation” are extended and toxic.

Bigotry is part of Lovecraft’s fiction. Miscegenation, racial impurity, ethnic xenophobia, “mental, moral and physical degeneration” due to inbreeding, interbreeding with non-human creatures – spawn of degenerate women who consorted with the abhorrent – these were all integral to the fiction Lovecraft produced. Yes, we must consider the context: Lovecraft lived during what was probably the nadir of race relations and height of white supremacy in the US. But whether these were prevalent views of his day is beside the point: H. P. Lovecraft chose to make them horrors to be feared in his fiction, to alarm and distress the primarily male, supposedly “superior” possessors of light-skinned Nordic genes. One must assume Lovecraft never considered anyone else as a potential reader.

Just because we recognize Lovecraft’s racism does not mean we must deny his influence or reject his work, but we must acknowledge and condemn his bigotry. In fact, to be cognizant of his prejudices is necessary to understand his fiction.

Elizabeth Bear – an author who has written a number of New Lovecraftian gems and feels Lovecraft’s views are “revolting” – reminds us: “Authors are read, beloved, and remembered, not for what they do wrong, but for what they do right, and what Lovecraft does right is so incredibly effective. He’s a master of mood, of sweeping blasted vistas of despair and the bone-soaking cold of space. He has at his command a worldview that the average human being, drunk on our own specieswide egocentrism, finds compelling for its sheer contrariness.”

What I term “New Lovecraftian” fiction seldom attempts (although it does occasionally) to emulate Lovecraft’s writing style – a style that’s faults are, admittedly, many. Written with a fresh appreciation of Lovecraft’s universe, its writers do not imitate; they reimagine, reenergize, renew, re-set, respond to, and make Lovecraftian concepts relevant for today.

New Lovecraftian fiction sometimes simply has fun with what are now well-established genre themes. Authors often intentionally subvert Lovecraft’s bigotry while still paying tribute to his imagination. New Lovecraftians frequently take Lovecraft’s view of fragile humans alone in a vast uncaring cosmos where neither a good god nor an evil devil exist, let alone are concerned with them, and devise highly effective modern fiction. But there are other themes to choose from as well.

You’ll find a variety of Lovecraftian inspiration here. But you need not take that from me: each story in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu is prefaced with an authorial explanation of their tale’s Lovecraftian inspiration.

Here, of course. But elsewhere, too. (I’ve compiled two volumes of reprints of twenty-first-century New Lovecraftian fiction myself.) There are so many fine examples of both fairly recent short stories and novels, they are far too numerous to mention . . . both with and without “Cthulhu” in the title.

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

– H. P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (1937)

Persistently,

Paula Guran

Summer Solstice 2015

“If we pare back Lovecraft’s stories,” notes Lisa L. Hannett, “pruning the dense prose, tossing out the objectionable elements, what we’re left with are the tantalizing bits: the sea and the stars, the greatest heights and depths of this world of ours. ‘In Syllables of Elder Seas’ explores our tiny, cramped place within the cosmos, and our inability to ever really get out. And on each page – of this piece, and also Lovecraft’s fiction more broadly – there’s the sense that HPL himself is hunkered down beside us, pressed small by the weight of so many limitations.”

Hannett has had over sixty short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, was published by CZP in 2015.

To pass the wet hours crammed in his bottle, Aitch counts cylinders.

Tonight, only those he can actually see get tallied: not the darkened hurricane lamp dangling on its chain, not the perforated lid screwed tight on his jar. With some effort Aitch can tilt his head back, turn it side to side, but down is impossible with bent knees wedged under his chin. No points for his short thighs, his shorter shins, his cramped toes. He looks forward, left, right. Starts with what’s closest. An easy ten: thin shadow fingers lifted out of the brine. Bobbing on the breath-rippled solution is another: a sealed, thumb-length leather tube, strung from a cord around his neck. Aitch worries the pouch in his cold grip, its familiar squish comforting. The caul that had helmeted him at birth is preserved inside – to protect him, Mother had promised, from drowning.

To the left of his container, moonglow floats in from the room’s ocean-side porthole – the round window itself too high to view – illuminating a bank of bookcases lining the curved walls. On the floor, six glass vessels are now limned silver-blue: replicas in everything but size, perfect cylinders with threaded brass caps. Each slightly bigger than its predecessor, the largest slightly smaller than the one in which Aitch is currently squeezed. Seven in all.

Seven he’s counted a hundred, hundred times.

Seven months, or more, in each – he’s sure, he remembers – and he’s seven years old, at least.

The eighth will no doubt be coming soon, the rate he’s growing.

On the shelves, a regiment of forty-six candles are snuffed, stiff wax digits raised against shushing lips. He double-checks the number, though he played this game yesterday, and the day before that; the amount hasn’t changed since. The Aunts are frugal with supplies, stingy with any light but the one beacon they shine every night out to sea.

Sometimes Aitch adds that bright beam to his total.

Always, he includes the lighthouse.

He fidgets, as much as possible, a squirming heave in his guts, imagining the view from the Aunts’ lantern room above. The sheer drop from storm panes to ocean. The rocks below, jagged fangs primed to impale. The water’s maw stretching wide, frothing and lashing. Basalt waves gnawing the headland. Salt talons steadily gouging the cliffs, grabbing, yanking . . .

It’s hungry, he remembers saying, staring at the roiling expanse between the lighthouse and reef. Unblinking. Soon after, the Aunts stopped bringing him upstairs. It wants to swallow us.

Don’t be ridiculous, they’d answered, referring to charts on a counter girding the great spinning lamp, marking currents and tides. Eyes filled with stars and swells, ever vigilant. It’s bland as milk out there. Linensmooth sailing. Every seafarer’s delight.

Aitch didn’t think so, but the Aunts still hush him whenever he mentions it. They see calm where he sees squalls. Fair winds instead of hurricanes. Sweet gulls in place of carrion crows. When he’s unbottled and playing in his small chamber, they say he’s at work. Now his tools are scattered on the bare wood floor, next to the washstand: four sticks of brown Conté and nine violet pastels to replace the set he’s scribbled to stubs. These are toys, he tells them, not tools.

It’s like they’re not even listening.

When he draws his dreams, the Aunts interpret squares from his circles. Arrows and directions from houses. Submarines, they say, not the intended sharks. Chevrons and triangles and rampant squiggles – the language is his, he knows its true meaning, but the Aunts read into it whatever they want.

Quietly, Aitch wonders when Mother and Father will come to collect him.

Soon, the Aunts once assured him. Soon enough.

So many cylinders later, he has stopped asking.

Behind him, the door opens. Weird shadows stretch across the floor; yellow light catches in Aitch’s bottle, blinding. Bright semi-circles precede two identical women, tall and black as wicks. They totter in tight-buttoned boots, lanterns balanced on dull pewter salvers. Stovepipe hats erect on slicked heads. Ankle-length skirts binding legs close, blouses buttoned to the jaw. Aitch squints and blinks, following their progression. At a little table beside the narrow cot he rarely sleeps in, they stop and set down their trays.

“What a treat we have for you,” says the one on the left. Seventy? Seventy-one? Aitch has lost count, as he does every night at this point. Perhaps she’s cylinder seventy-two?

“A real treat,” agrees maybe-seventy-three. She retrieves a canteen from the bedside, pulls the cork, then thunks it down on Aitch’s lid. A few seconds later, a long straw scrapes through a puncture overhead; the Aunt pushes it, scratching his temple and cheek, down to his mouth. He drinks greedily, though the tea is weak and tastes of mud.

“Can I come out now?” Aitch asks, already knowing the answer. It hasn’t been long enough, they’ll say, only a few days. “Please?”

“Be good.”

“A few minor aches now for an eternity of joy.”

Through the holes, the women slip eight, nine, ten tiny pellets (eighty-one? eighty-two? eighty-four?) and wait for Aitch to consume them. The things bloat almost instantly. Yesterday, it was bloodworm capsules. The day before, it was kelp and compressed carrot. Other times, squid meal. Chaff and shrimp. The Aunts’ idea of delicious.

Despite himself, Aitch submerges as far as he can and begins to eat the sodden pills. Mid-chew, he presses his face to the glass. Distorts his features. Bugs his eyes. Squashes his nose until snot oozes. Scrunches his brow. Splays hands beside his cheeks and stretches his tongue until it hurts. Gobbets tumble from his mouth, plopping into the brine. If he is hideous, he thinks, the Aunts will no doubt see beauty. Maybe he’ll even earn a laugh, or a smile.

The Aunts watch and wait, and do not laugh.

They never tell him he’s special, the way he’s sure, he remembers, Mother and Father did. They never give him red wine in etched crystal goblets. They never bundle him into handsome four-in-hands, never let jolly horses clip-clop him along to the mayor’s very own private soirées. They never dress him in long satin robes, robes that match theirs, robes that shimmer like precious gems under starlight. They never sing nor dance around him on the shoreline. They never tell him tales, drunk on midnight and comets, of frolicking in a May Eve sea.

Now that Mother and Father are many months and many train rides away, Aitch recalls them through the green-tinted glass of his container. Features warped, wide-set eyes with no lids, pinprick nostrils, drooped and toothless mouths . . . Not quite what they had been, what they are. But he still feels the gentle trace of Mother’s fingertip along his caul scars. The feathered breeze of her breath as she kissed the stripes and ridges along his hairline, the raised dots beside his ears. The salmon-sharp tang of her skin.

We won’t be long after you, Father had said, obviously using the Aunts’ definition of soon.

What skies were above when you were born, Mother had said, voice thick with pride. Such old constellations! Such perfect alignments.

Draping the lucky talisman over his head, she’d promised he wouldn’t drown.

You are so special, she’d said, then sent him away. You are so special, Aitch.

No, he thinks, chill water splashing as he shakes, realigning his thoughts. No, she didn’t call him by letter. That’s his guardians’ method of address. Aitch. The initial a reflection of distance, a refusal of intimacy. No names, they’d said. They were the Aunts; he was barely a fragment of himself, a snippet of prayer uttered in syllables, sputters and remote stops. Nonsense jumbled together, he thinks. Nonsense kept apart.

Aitch had been complete with Mother and Father. He had made sense.

He’s sure he remembers what that was like.

Underwater, Aitch’s heart beats loud, a deep thrum-thrumming to accompany the chanting.

Satisfied that he’d eaten, the Aunts had withdrawn measuring tapes from their skirt pockets, held them up against the tank. Muttering, they’d made notes, given instructions, the routine now stale as the stench of his fish breath. Stretch, stretch child, extend that spine; Aitch had straightened until crown scraped lid, cropped blond hair poking through perforations. Lower those shoulders. Expose that neck. Show us those hands. Turn – painfully – this way and that.

Once they’d finished, pencils and implements and lamps and stern heels retreated. Within minutes, the air in Aitch’s quarters thickens with a familiar hypnotic drone. Unintelligible words repeat from above and, it seems, from below. The endless chorus building, echoing, spinning out of the lighthouse while he weeps, cramped and shivering. Marinating in dark noise.

He begins to nod. Skull clunks against glass; he wilts forward, then clunks back again. Cold leaches, lulls. Dreams beckon him down, down, further down. Ancient fishhook voices snag Aitch’s untethered, innermost self and jerk it from his fragile, prune-skinned shell. They haul so quickly he can’t resist the vertiginous whoosh. Bubbles scream past his ears; he plummets into a realm of coral-toothed beasts, razor-edged fins, pearl-eyed hunters that track by vibration, by liquid scent. Powerless, he is zipped around streets paved with sailors’ bones. Weed-strewn buildings, barnacled castles, fossilized carcasses. Down, down into caverns crawling with neon cilia, through steam-spewing pipes, along an eel-path, a sculpin-trench, a giant isopod ravine. Further down, the canyon gaping before him, night after night, seemingly boundless, and yet pressure builds as he draws closer, lung-crushing, bone-breaking pressure, he can’t swim, he can’t move, he is confined in infinite space, he is suppressed, held under, release me, suffocating, he needs to break free . . .

The bottle rattles as Aitch jolts awake. Pulse choking, whole body trembling. Runny nose dangerously close to the brine.

I won’t drown, he thinks, necklace seized in fist, head cocked. The chant is still tumbling from verse to verse, the Aunts’ voices fervent but steady. Lately, they’ve kept him jarred for longer and longer, until he is grey and blue, the pinkie between his legs completely retracted. Not a peachy little boy anymore, not a good boy. A salamander. A jelly-limbed axolotl. A creature designed to crawl.

He waits, listens.

The song’s crescendo is hours off yet.

Plenty of time, Aitch thinks, feeling numbly o