Wondering what she had been surviving on, since I no longer supplied breakfast, I opened the refrigerator in the small kitchen and saw stacked packages of meat. Pamela abhorred beef, and this was just another indication of her disturbed condition. Saddened at what had become of the woman I loved, I was all too eager to close the door upon that scene of madness and immediately sat down to write her family in Boston a long letter describing my concerns.
That night the chanting began as usual, but then nothing else. I began to fear that somehow, some way she discovered my intrusion and I waited for her angry knock or shout. But there was only silence on the other side of the wall.
In the morning she was gone. A fellow artist in the building, aware of my worries about Pamela, rapped on my door and told me he had just helped her into a taxi. She had needed assistance getting some luggage down the stairs, he explained. “My God, Richard,” he said, gripping my arm as I stood in the doorway. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
By the time I inquired if she had been seen at the train station, she was already gone. After hearing her description, the clerk at the ticket office told me she was on her way to New Orleans. He expressed concern that someone so heavy with child was traveling alone.
I soon followed and once in the city, after a few days’ investigation, learned she had taken a taxi to the French Quarter, specifically, Jackson Square. Her driver told me it seemed she was expected, as a small gathering bowed before her, giving her every courtesy, like some returned and exiled queen. Within a couple days, following no small expenditure from dwindling funds, I discovered from those lurking in shadows she had engaged the services of the very same sycophants, widely avoided as the most fanatic of cultists, to take her into the swamps south of New Orleans.
There is no time to lose as a reliable Creole, acquainted with the bayous, has agreed to take me to beyond where even the magic of the local voodoo fades, to where drums haunt the night.
If you are reading this message, the only conclusion to draw is I have failed to return with her and that Henry’s impossible monster, whether real or imagined, has claimed yet another soul.
The above was among the effects of Richard Wolfe, discovered in his room at Le Pavilion Hotel, New Orleans, 9 June, 1925.
Matthew Marovich
SENSE
She walked into my office like she owned the place, sweeping in with a presence that filled the room the way she filled out a dress. Mrs. Tabitha Barnes was beautiful; blonde hair fell down her shoulders and back like spun gold, and her skin was so pale and smooth it looked like fine china. The dress in question was red, tailored, and fit her like a second skin and she layered it with a fur-lined coat that did little to hide the body underneath. Fierce green eyes studied me as she took the seat across the desk from me. She’d called before to introduce herself and the job she was offering, but I wasn’t ready for her, not in the slightest.
I could tell you about the job she hired me for. Her husband, Professor James Barnes, had gone missing. A scientist working at Miskatonic University, he was an astronomer; three days before her call he’d vanished, never returning home from work. She wanted me to find him because she was worried he might be having an affair.
I could tell you about how from the moment the job started it went bad. The gorilla that kicked in my door had to turn sideways to enter, a mountain of a man wrapped in a grey trench coat, black gloves covered hands as big as Christmas hams. A black fedora was pulled low over his eyes so I could only see his broad, broken nose and his sneer as he glanced her way. The sound of my pistol firing as he reached for her was like a thunderclap, the bullet spinning him to the floor. I grabbed her hand and fled.
We ran down the hall and out of the building; my Packard was parked in the back alley. In my rear-view mirror I could see a reed-thin man in a black, pinstripe suit glaring at us from the doorway of my building as we pulled away. Just before we turned the corner onto the main street the thin man was joined by the gorilla from upstairs, who didn’t seem to care that he had a bloody hole staining his coat.
I demanded that Mrs. Barnes tell me who the men were.
She insisted she didn’t know.
As the adrenalin wore off I became aware of her. She had a grip on my right arm like she was drowning. Streetlights flashed across her as we drove away, briefly illuminating her wide eyes, the line of her throat; the scent of her perfume filled the car. I swallowed and shook myself, tearing my eyes away from her and back to the road. We fled to my apartment and she took the bed and fell asleep almost instantly; I slept on the couch.
The two men found us the next morning, starting a cat-and-mouse chase that would last days. The gorilla, still wearing the blood-stained, bullet-riddled trench coat, broke down my front door before stepping back for the smaller man. His voice was strange, reedy, almost buzzing, and sounded slightly out of synch with the movements of his mouth. His eyes were gray and flat, with a lifelessness that disturbed me as he demanded the return of the key. What key? It was at that moment that Mrs. Barnes walked into the room and, upon seeing the two men, screamed.
The scream distracted them so they didn’t notice my pistol as I pulled it out from under the cushion I’d used for a pillow. Three bullets to his chest toppled the short man but the larger man moved forward with startling speed, gripping my hand and crushing it; a twist of his wrist stripped the gun from my numbed fingers before he threw it out the window. We only escaped him because Mrs. Barnes splashed a kettle of hot water in his face. His roar of pain trailed off into the buzzing of flies.
Somehow, the thin man, glimpsed always from a distance after that, survived; the expression on his face was of barely contained rage. From what I saw of the large man’s face, it was a mass of pink and red blotches dotted with white blisters. I doubted there would be any more talking in the future.
All throughout the chase I was aware that Mrs. Barnes and I seemed to be circling each other like two planets, our paths slowly shrinking. There were times when we barely avoided touching each other, hands stopping a moment before contact, fluttering like pigeons over a statue. We spoke softly, almost in whispers, not for any fear of being heard but because it felt closer; a few times her breath brushed my cheek. A few times I slipped and called her by her first name, the shock of that intimacy as sudden as a glimpse of bare skin, her eyes widening at the familiarity. She would stand so near that I wondered what she’d feel like pressed against me, feeling her body against mine; I wondered if she thought that about me.
That is the story I want to tell you.
That is the only story that matters now.
It happened suddenly and without plan. We had just checked in to our fifth motel in three days, a seedy affair on the edge of the city. I’d turned around to ask her about the room when she stepped forward, running into me. My arms immediately went around her waist to keep her from falling and I reflexively pulled her against me. Mrs. Barnes’ eyes were wide and I could see the pulse in her neck jump, feel her heart begin to beat faster. As if in a daze I slowly lowered my face and she lifted her lips to meet mine. She tasted clean and rich, full-bodied. Our first kiss was electric.
The first time was not soft, not slow. Our moans and gasps were of restrained desire finally released. She stayed pressed against me as her tongue danced with mine, and when my hands took too long undoing my shirt she tore it open, the last two buttons bursting free. I pulled the blouse free of her slacks before throwing it across the room, baring an expanse of smooth, pale stomach. Her breasts were held close by a tasteful white bra; my fingers blindly worked the clasp behind her back so I could fill my hands with her soft skin as soon as the bra dropped away. When I took first one nipple, then the other, in my mouth and sucked she cried out; when her hand gripped me through my trousers I nearly came.