HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

16 H .P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R
“I don’t want. I can’t; I’d like to, but I can’t. And I forget a
lot, y’know?” His tongue turned awkwardly in his mouth, scraping
against blackened teeth. “When you come, you remind me.
And I don’t want to forget. So please come. To remind me.”
“Jas . . . ”
“Lemme finish. Other deaders, they don’t remember
squat. Who they were, and they tell me, they tell, ‘How do you
know you even have a brother? Who can know such a thing?
You can’t remember about the alivers.’ But I do, because of
you. I’m lucky—everyone else, they’re alone. But not me, not
me.”
“All right, Jas.” My voice shook a bit, but I didn’t think
he’d noticed. “I’ll come more often. But now I need to know
about those men.”
“Why?”
I hesitated; not that I mistrusted Jas, but the deaders had
loyalty to their own kind, not to the alivers—even if they were
kin. “They might know something that is of interest to me.”
Jas shook his head. “You’re still dealing in secrets.
Dangerous trade.”
“I know. I almost had my hand broken the other day.”
Jas sat up. “Like the man you’re looking for.”
I felt a chill, and it didn’t come from the icebox. “I thought
his hand was missing.”
“They broke it first, then cut it off, then slit his throat.” Jas
spoke with relish. I noticed it before; the deaders seemed to
enjoy the details of death.
“Who?”
Jas shrugged. “The Areti goons, who else? I sure hope they
don’t want anything from you; they and the deaders have been
fighting for no one remembers how long.”
“You know why?”
He nodded. “Every deader knows. It’s about a curse, and
a cherrystone.”
“Areti’s cherrystone?”
His lungs whistled a bit—the sound that signified laughter.
“Is that what she’d been telling you? No, that’s ours. It’s our
curse, see, and we’re keeping it, Areti or not.” Jas stood.
“C’mon. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
I stepped toward the door, but Jas shook his head. “It’s
too warm out. We’ll go the other way.”
He creaked and groaned, but bent down enough to touch
the earthen floor. He groped around in the dirt.
“Can I give you a hand?”
“Sure.” He pointed out a bronze ring mounted on a wooden
trapdoor, hidden under a layer of dirt. I never noticed that it
was there.
I pulled on the ring, and as the dust and grime cloud settled,
I saw a rickety ladder leading downwards. “Where does it
go?”
“To other houses… everywhere. It’s nicer to travel underground,
cooler.”
That explained the scant traffic on the surface. I let Jas
descend, and followed him. It wasn’t nearly as dark as I had
expected—strange fluorescent creatures darted to and fro
among the weakly glowing walls of the tunnel, and sick, gangly
dead man’s birches illuminated the way with their dead light.
D
There were ladders everywhere, and the deaders too—the
underground seemed a much more animated place than the
surface. I mimicked Jas’ shambling gait, eager not to attract
attention. “Should I even be here?” I asked Jas.
He stopped and mulled it over for a moment. “Don’t see
why not. You’ll move here, sooner or later. As long as you
don’t hurt the deaders, you’re all right.”
I was moved that he never even considered the possibility
of my betrayal; then again, perhaps it was one of the deaders’
limitations. Just as they forgot their relatives, so perhaps they
lost their understanding of the ways of the living.
He led me deeper into the labyrinth. The passersby grew
less frequent, and the light—weaker. I could not discern the
direction, but guessed that we were close to the river once I
noticed drops of moisture seeping along the support beams
through the earthen walls.
He stopped and looked around, as if getting his bearings.
Then, he sat down on the earthen floor.
“What now?”
“Now we wait,” he said.
We didn’t wait for long. I did suspect before that the deaders
could communicate with each other through some unfathomable
means. Soon, four deaders showed up, then three
more. All of the newcomers sat down on the floor and
remained quiet, as more of them kept arriving.
There were all kinds of them there—young and old, and
even one child. Some were dead long enough to lose most of
their skin and flesh—at least two hundred years; others were
quite fresh. Even the girl I met earlier showed up; I noticed
with a pang of guilt that the purple bruise on her forehead was
spreading. Despite my repeated application of the wintergreen
ointment, the air grew putrid with their smell, and my heart was
uneasy. There I was, underground, surrounded by a throng of
deaders. If they turned on me, I would never be able to fight
through them—or find my way back to the surface. The trust I
attributed to Jas was actually mine.
* * *