Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Read Free Page B

Shouldn’t really come as a surprise. But no, I don’t think the numbers are changing.”
    “But your big machine says that they are.”
    “Then the big machine must be wrong.”
    “Tested that, have you?”

    ♦

    She was in the dream again. This time, a basement. Above, there was no house, just the carved out area of the basement, as if the house had been sheared off the top. Wind played across the open gap of the shear, a harsh moaning sound.
    And the sky was black.
    She walked up the steps – stone, flagged – that led up to the city (was the city there? she was dreaming again, she knew that she was dreaming again) and looked out across it.
    This time, she wasn’t alone. Figures, a dozen of them. (Did she know one? The closest looked familiar...) They were staggered across the distance, across the ruined street (cracks a foot deep crazing the surface of the road) and facing towards (don’t look there, you mustn’t look there) where?
    No. She wouldn’t look that way.
    Rebecca turned the other way.
    And there it was, above her. Huge, impenetrable, indefinite, darkness against the darkness (were those eyes?) slipping in and out of her vision (a suggestion of blackness against the black, but worse, somehow) and then she felt it look at her, and it knew that she was there.
    This time, she woke him by screaming.

    ♦

    She was unsticking the pins, removing the threads, taking down the remnants of Glay’s spiderweb of data, when Paul knocked on the door.
    “Busy?” he asked. “I thought we could get lunch.”
    “Just getting rid of – ” She gestured at the tangle of thread criss-crossing the room. “– well, this.”
    He came carefully in. “What is it?”
    “Glay’s idiosyncratic way of analysing the data coming from the supercollider.”
    “Looks like a star.”
    “What?” She threaded herself to the door.
    “Look. There.”
    And it did. The red threads criss-crossed themselves into a seven-pointed star, off to one side of the room. She ducked her head; the jumble of threads shifted into noise again.
    “Is it supposed to do that?” Paul asked.
    “I don’t know. I think he kind of... lost it at the end. But he was talking about stars.”
    “So why’s it a star?”
    “I don’t know!”
    He stopped dead, looked at her.
    She sighed. “Sorry. It’s just – well, the dreams.”
    “It’s all right.” He opened his arms, an offering.
    She went inside to be held for a moment. “Look, I didn’t mean to snap. Let’s do lunch.”
    He squeezed her. “Sure.”
    As they left the room, she asked, “What made you think of lunch today, anyway? I wasn’t expecting you.”
    “Ah, I talked to Eleanor on the satphone earlier. She said – can you believe this – she said the natives were restless. I think she thought she was being funny.”
    “Ha. So she’s out sleeping in the jungle and we’re the ones having scary dreams. Ironic.”
    “I asked her about the gods. She told me they weren’t really gods at all. They were the things that existed before the gods did. And that they’d return again.”
    “That’s... spooky.”
    She closed the door behind them as they left. It locked with a satisfying click.

    ♦

    When she returned to the office the door was open. Just a crack. But open.
    “Professor?” said Rebecca. “Professor Glay?”
    It had to be him. He must have come back. Maybe he was feeling better.
    She pushed the door open the rest of the way. All of her undone work had been re-done. The threads she’d removed put back in place, and more added. Red string, crossing and re-crossing the office.
    There was a star in the centre of the room.
    She moved slowly across the threshold. As her point of view changed, a different star appeared. Five points. Three points. Six points. As she moved through the room and one parallaxed away, another would come into existence, formed by strings that had previously seemed to have no connection.
    The room was empty but for the stars, born of the