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coffeewritesfiction · 7 months

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A Meeting at the Sow's Ear - a Cthulhu Mythos Short Story

"Evening to you, too, Mr. O'Tipp," I said and I felt the tightness of my words on my tongue. Nathan O'Tipp smiled wider. He looks like a fine man until he smiles. Looks like he should be wandering a Hollywood studio, him with his perfect fair skin and his nice suits. But when he smiles, it stretches too wide, and his eyes have got a shine to them that I've never seen anyone else have. Even when the darkness hides everything else, I see his eyes, almost the same shade as my own. No, there's not a drop of human or humanity in him. I hope he doesn't know I know. "Come out of the dark, Harbinger," he said. "Let me get a better look at you. You are such a treasure to me, I can't let anyone else break you."

Part of the Pharaoh Syndicate Investigations series - a reupload with some edits

CW: blood, discussions of homicide, Prohibition and all that implies, body horror, mild trans/homophobia early on,

Arkham, 1931

Overhead the stars walked the sky like restless strangers, and the fat moon lounged back and watched us all. But it’d missed the fun. Before sunset, I shot two people for the contents of a dirty old bag. Now I walked with that bag down the street to Dad's house. No idea who's Dad he is. He may give me an allowance, but he sure ain't no family of mine.

From five houses down I heard it, one of the favored songbirds singing like it was still 1926. Closer I got, the reason why I heard her became obvious - they’d opened half the windows on the Sow’s Ear. No point hiding it from the coppers anymore. The boss owned them too.

Part of the ‘contract’ with my old boss and the new one took my name. Like the new boss said, I didn't need it anymore. I liked that name. I chose that name. I still use it with one single person. But for everyone else, I'm the Harbinger. And that means I’m whoever the boss wants me to be.

He don't know about this, so don't let me catch you calling me shit like Gumshoe or Dick Dickless. I get enough of that bull from my coworkers. If you wanna call me anything, call me by my real name.

My name was Lazarus, once. I'm 23 years old, pretty sure. I was born a woman. Not long ago, I was an investigator at Keller and Queens Detective Agency. Now I serve a monster pretending to be human. I don't think he knows I know that. I hope he doesn’t know I know that.

There are two speakeasies in town, and until I got my new job, I'd never been to either of them. I was a good citizen once upon a time. One of the speakeasies is run by a cult. The other is a cult. I'll let you guess which one I go to. Only real difference is who's at the center of it anyway.

The Sow's Ear is the center of the boss's operations in a part of Arkham nice people like to forget about. Pretty sure he lives above it. So what? Times are hard. Not a bad place to live anyway. Cute little spot, two stories, looks like all the others in town. Customers come in through the back, employees in the front. Somebody put a sign up for the Women's Christian Temperance Movement by the front door years ago. Boss must've thought it was funny. Now it's as worn and dirty as everything else in the city.

Adds to the charm, I guess.

I got one solid knock in on the door before it cracked open, and two glaring eyes met my own.

"What's the password?" The man spat out.

This was the dumbest part of the whole thing. He knew who I was, and I knew who he was. But old Lyman didn't like me much, and he took every opportunity to try and screw me over.

With a huff, I let the words out.

"Kynyarle keh-urak ghottu."

No, I don't know what that means either.

Lyman stared at me. He pulled away from the door.

"Tell Mr. O'Tipp his dyke is back," he said to someone on the other side.

The door swung open. I caught a glimpse of Lyman's back vanishing into the bar. I ground my teeth. Some men take it real personal, when you don't stick between the lines. I told myself again, I'll get him back for all the shit he'd put me through.

But the bag.

I closed the door behind me, adjusted my sweaty grip on my cargo. The stairs sat right in front of the door. Up I went into the maw.

Always felt like the steps were gonna collapse under me, with how they creaked and groaned underfoot. I go up and down them least once a week, mostly more, but the old wood hated me like everybody else. Not a single fucking picture hung on the wall to distract me, either.

What I really hate? The fact it's on purpose. The fact the bastard didn't need any message sent saying I was here. The fact he had my footsteps memorized the very first day we met.

I won't let him get to me, I said to myself, I lied to myself.

At the top of the stairs he has a velvet curtain hiding his little home away from home. Expensive, purple, golden gild and soft under my tired hand. I lifted it aside and walked into the shadows waiting for me. Heard the music nice and loud now, a voice deep and sweet blessing my ears. Not from the hallway in front of me, that led to his office. It came from the right. From the balcony that overlooked the speakeasy below.

Two golden cats in the antique Egyptian style stood by on either side of the entry. Framing the view, more purple curtains, held back by golden chains. Between them, looking out over the dancing, thriving crowd… him.

As I watched him, me in the shadows and him in the light, he looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled.

"My personal investigator returns," he said. He folded his arms behind his back, took a step forward as he turned all the way to face me. "Once again you've cheated death, haven't you?"

I set my jaw, didn't look down where his eyes settled on my body. Didn't have time to wash out the blood before I headed here. Didn't want to tell him how much of that blood was mine.

"Evening to you, too, Mr. O'Tipp," I said and I felt the tightness of my words on my tongue.

Nathan O'Tipp smiled wider. He looks like a fine man until he smiles. Looks like he should be wandering a Hollywood studio, him with his perfect fair skin and his nice suits. But when he smiles, it stretches too wide, and his eyes have got a shine to them that I've never seen anyone else have. Even when the darkness hides everything else, I see his eyes, almost the same shade as my own. No, there's not a drop of human or humanity in him. I hope he doesn't know I know.

"Come out of the dark, Harbinger," he said. "Let me get a better look at you. You are such a treasure to me, I can't let anyone else break you."

I ground my teeth, but didn't hesitate. Oh, I knew from experience what happened if you hesitated. Over the music I heard my shoes click on the tile. I walked to him and watched his smile grow even wider.

"That's my boy," he said. His hand gestured to the view beyond his balcony. "What a lovely night, isn't it? Beautiful summer, with all her life and bounty, rejoicing in her brilliance as she has for centuries."

Over the railing, there lay a different world. A little softer, a little dimmer, the glitz and gems a touch tarnished, but still beautiful like the dresses on the ladies. People dancing and gambling and kissing and drinking, like the world wasn't dying slow beyond these walls.

God, the people, it caught me dead even in that moment. More shades of skin filled the room than I had ever seen before coming to this city. I thought I was more sophisticated than people wanted to believe, when I left that miserable place. Thought I'd impress people with how much I knew even if I was from Alabama. But nothing like this existed back there. The police would rather burn the whole place down with everyone inside than let white and black blend together. I guess I thought the whole country was like that, whether I liked it or not.

But Arkham was different. Arkham was… better. It sure taught me a lot of lessons. Biggest one is, I don't know as much as I think.

"It is lovely, sir," I said. At the sound of the last word, my grip tightened on the bag.

In the light his eyes did not quite shine but something dark and cruel glowed through his expression.

"I do love how you call me that," he said. He said, like I had any choice but to do so. "It's so much better than your previous defiance."

He must have seen how I fought the rage down, how my fists shook and trembled the bag. He must have, I saw it in the dark twist of his smile.

I wasn't just a detective back at the old agency. I was in charge of the entire investigation into O'Tipp and his tricks. I hunted him, and he hunted me. So many nights I spent on him, staking out his territory, talking to witnesses, finding the clues that could unlock whatever terrible dirty secrets he held.

And I lost. I didn't even know it was a game, that I was never a threat to him, that he was enjoying the hunt. I lost and he won, he won me and my sister, too. Now I'm gonna be working for this bastard for the rest of my life.

And I know, he's going to enjoy every second of it.

Mr. O'Tipp gestured with a finger, guiding me away from the view below. I watched the muscles of his face tighten with hunger or anticipation as he looked at the bag in my hand.

"How much did it cost?" He stepped into the shadows, his long fingers tracing the dangling chains on the wall.

I looked away from him. O'Tipp didn't mean cash.

"Two." I mumbled the word.

"Oh?" He glanced back at me.

Details. He wanted details. I forced myself to inhale.

"The first bled out, I think." I couldn't have saved the poor bastard even if I knew how. "Took a bullet to the chest." Took my bullet to the chest. "The other was guarding… It." Nausea curled inside my stomach. It. The thing in the bag. "I shot him in the back of the head. Like you told me to."

"Good boy," O'Tipp said, and the light cast a shadow on his face, like the skin were paper and the flesh were a mask. "Did you look into the bag?"

I closed my eyes. I couldn't force the memory down. How my fingers curled around the box-like shape within the burlap, only for my flesh to sink into something cold and beating like a pulse beneath them.

"No, sir," I said

"But you're sure it's the right thing?"

I did not open my eyes. I could not handle the thought of seeing the smile I heard. I could not help but think that if I opened my eyes, the face looking at me would not be human anymore.

"Very much so, sir."

"My dear Harbinger," O'Tipp said, "Where is your curiosity? Wouldn't you like to see what you've brought me?"

Now I opened my eyes, and they opened wider than I wanted them to.

"Definitely not, sir."

He stood in front of the door to his office, smiling at me. I looked at his eyes to fight the thought of too many teeth.

"A pity," O'Tipp said. "It would have been better for you if you'd been willing to… expand your knowledge of the world."

My stomach sank with understanding.

"But!" He beamed at me, like a father gazing proud at his offspring. "That makes it more fun for me. Come on then."

He opened the door. Numb, I followed.

A strange little otherworld, Nathan O'Tipp's office is. A little antique and ancient, a lot of books and papers. Globes on the shelves of bookcases stacked to the ceiling. Star charts papering the exposed walls. Nonsense maps full of nonsense places. The world beyond the window, hidden by the same curtains he used everywhere else, golden tacks pinning down the fabric so not a drop of sunlight could fall inside. Furniture in all types of wood, light, dark, painted, lacquered, raw.

His empty desk waited for us.

I don't even remember when he took the bag from me. He rested it on the desk, and the fabric sunk way, way down. The same boxy shape, thick as my wrist, and yet the fabric darkened around the edges of it, wet.

O'Tipp breathed in, and exhaled a light chuckle.

He raised a hand, looked at me. With care, he removed the glove from each finger, one at a time, and let it drop to the floor.

"Don't look away," he whispered, and I knew that was an order.

His hand rested on the flat surface of the bag, and sank down. The fabric and the thing beneath it shivered like disturbed water.

My throat locked up. I did not look away.

"Yes," O'Tipp said, eyes locked on the bag. "You’re the real thing, aren't you?" He nodded his head, looked up at me, and I saw it exposed bare to me, the disconnect between what I knew of reality, and what he knew of it.

"Don't," I mumbled.

"I've been waiting years to find this," he said. "And it came into my grasp so easily. I did not even need to negotiate with their god to do it." O'Tipp leaned over the desk towards me. "Dagon will be furious to know I have this. This sick creation, somewhere between science and witchcraft - the creation of a mind as brilliant as our own beloved Keziah Mason!"

"Please let me leave," I thought, I mumbled.

"You are a miracle worker, you know that, boy? You are, undoubtedly, my favorite curse upon this tiny planet. And this book?"

His wet fingers gripped the cord on the bag. With one pull, the bag opened, releasing a smell I've never forgotten.

"It’s mine now. Mine just as much as you and she are."

Without ceremony or care, O'Tipp snatched the bottom of the bag and upended it. Something green, or something black, something both and neither and iridescent tumbled down. It hit the wood with a crack like a breaking bone, the sick smack of flesh falling from a height it could not survive.

It gurgled like a drowning animal. Water, dark and grimy, bubbled from the open hole of the spine.

And the smell. That goddamn smell. Like the sea became as stagnant as still water. The copper rot of an untreated open wound. Seaweed and fish left dead in the sun and storm.

And my voice shook as I spoke, as I recognized the thing by its shape.

"A book?" I said. "That's it? It's a book?"

O'Tipp pulled his other glove off with his teeth and I could have imagined it but before he tossed it aside, I saw holes in the fabric. Barehanded, he ran his fingers over the cover, and it rippled under his touch.

"A grimoire," he said, stroking the dark, slick surface. "Written by a stranger in a land far more obscure than any on the surface." His smile, his smile, there was nothing I knew of sanity in that smile. He looked to me and his mouth stretched wider.

"Have you ever been to Innsmouth?" He said, and did not wait, because he already knew the answer. "Quaint town with too many secrets. It's up north from here. The whole place was claimed by a cult worshiping a god that lives in the sea, so they say, until the federal agents burned it all down. So they all say. So all you need to know right now.” He tilted his head, the smile staying still. “Look at you, you're so pale. Have you never seen a book before?"

I said nothing. He seemed to like that.

"If you care to believe me," he said, "this-" his fingers tapped the surface of the book, sending waves through the flesh. "Was made from the body of one of those cultists.” He chuckled at me. “Oh, please don't faint, you still have to walk home. Don't be upset." His voice lowered. "This isn't made from a human."

I shouldn't have said it, but I couldn't look away from it. From him.

"Then what is it made of?"

"A Deep One. Skin, cartilage, preserved flesh - no scales, did you notice?"

I shook my head. His expression dripped with sarcastic, amused pity.

"Don't worry, I'll spare you the bookbinding lesson. It's a gruesome thing, so I've heard. But I'll show you one more thing."

Please don't, I thought.

"It still drips with sea water, did you notice?" His hand traced over the lock. A flick of the fingers and without a key, it opened. "But look inside…"

I didn't want to. I did.

The pages, bone white, dark letters of a language I'd never seen before. Bone white pages. Bone dry pages.

"Fascinating, isn't it? What horrors lie in this book, do you think, in that language I have yet to teach you?”

O'Tipp slammed the book shut. I stumbled back, and he laughed.

"Go home, my precious detective," he said. "You've done a wonderful job today. No need to come in for a while. Keziah and I are going to be very busy with my new prize. Enjoy a break - I’ll find you when I need you.”

Despite the way my veins pounded, so loud in my ears I barely heard anything else, I answered him.

"I know, sir."

His gaze hungered.

"Good boy."

I did not head home quickly. In fact, I did not leave the building quickly. No, I'll tell you the truth: I did not even go down the stairs for a good long while. I stepped from the office, the air chilling on my colorless face, and swayed. My body hit the wall. Somehow I did not fall despite the tremble in my legs, the sickness in my gut.

My eyes closed. I welcomed the dark, my mind not again showing me the hideous thing, the hideous, handsome man I served. The black swallowed me and I breathed in the air, ghosts of tobacco and perfume and alcohol wafting up from the floor below.

Again I thought of myself less than four months before, my bright eyes in the mirror, my determination throbbing within my soul. Again I thought of myself back then, and I thought, what nightmare was I hunting?

The office door opened.

“Oh! You’re still here!” O’Tipp said. “I was afraid I’d have to track you down.”

I did not want to do it. I opened my eyes and shifted towards him. His beaming smile, so paternal, churned my stomach anew.

“I almost forgot,” he said, stepping towards me. “Your allowance.”

His gloveless hand gripped my wrist, his other shoved something into my palm. Damp hands, hands far too warm for this night, far too warm for what he’d been handling.

“You’ve done excellent work today, my boy.” O’Tipp patted my cheek. “I’m proud of you.”

I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t have a choice but to speak.

“Thank you sir,” I whispered.

As his eyes narrowed and his smile darkened, I almost thought - I don’t know what I thought. But he said nothing more. He stepped away, his hand lingering on my skin, and that was the last thing I truly knew before his office door slammed shut.

I could have left then, when my legs recovered their strength. I could have fled, and run down the street, and never looked back. And yet within my disjointed soul, I understood something almost instinctive - I should not be alone right now, not after that.

My feet carried me to the balcony. I sat on the floor, and watched the people below.

To be part of society and yet apart from it. Yes, I knew that very well, as my cruel grandparents taught me, as I knew now as a different kind of man. A separation from humanity, a barrier put between me and anyone that could have, in another life, loved me. Yes, I understood that. Perhaps it helped me understand them.

How happy they all were, down there. How sweet the woman, a different one now, sang her songs of love and loss. How the people moved between tables, greeting friends. How they clinked their fancy drinks in fancier glasses together.

A sample of humanity, together. All those colors of clothes and hair and skin, together. Like the world beyond did not exist, like there was not an even bigger nightmare lurking at the edges of the horrors we all pretended not to think about.

A Deep One. A living thing that was not human. Something below the surface of the ocean waves. A god. A cult - another damned cult, of course there would be. Could I not escape them? A small amount of distance allowed me to think of it more. So long as I did not picture the book, I could wonder about it. What was a Deep One? What kind of a life did a thing like that have? Did it have a family? Did it have friends? Did it feel love, as humans did?

Was it still alive, even as a book?

In my soul, I ached. Not for the dead, but for me, taken from my home just as the book was.

My gaze drifted, my thoughts eased to a crawl. Down there, down on the floor, I saw him. I did not truly understand what I saw, but I did, I saw him, and he saw me. I let myself blink, focus, in time to see his lips curl into a smile. Dark skin, red clothes, sharp eyes.

He knew me. I knew him. No one else might understand. No one else could understand, I think, that little jolt of electricity that surged within me. That little taste of… hope, perhaps. He knew me, he knew of me, I knew him, knew of him. That brilliant man with his glittering grin. We were both born women. We were both skilled in our fields despite our ages. We were both connected to this nightmare in ways others could not understand.

I tilted my hat to him. He raised his glass to me.

As he disappeared into the crowd, I left.

The city struggled through the night, and the old blood had wrecked my vest. I buttoned up my jacket over it. I’d survived another mission, somehow, by that monster I am bound to serve. There’s a lot of ways to die in this town, and not all of them involve a bullet.

I was so tired of thinking about that. That money he gave me rested heavy in my pocket.

Little detour and then, to home I went. To the Witch House, where I’d lived since arriving in Arkham. O’Tipp bought it too, along with me. Sure enough, on that battered old porch, they waited for me. The old gate creaked as I shoved it open. A set of bright eyes behind round glasses looked up from the book she’d been reading aloud. Sadie, my partner in crime, my sister in soul, Sadie, jumped from her chair.

“Lazarus!” Her arms wrapped around me and I hugged her tight right back, and the grin that formed threatened to split my face in two. “You’re alright!”

Couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.

“Well, mostly,” I said.

On the porch, the other woman hadn’t moved, rocking back and forth in her chair. Her hands in her lap, her hair fallen past the bandages over her eyes, her focus all on me. She smiled, and I could taste the hope that radiated from her.

“I got a surprise for you guys,” I said, and reached into my pocket.

I can imagine what O’Tipp would say, spending so much of my allowance on candy like a child. But what did I care about his thoughts? It was more than a snack for my two favorite girls, it was an offering for their happiness. For my happiness. What was the point of going through this nightmare, if you couldn’t be happy every now and then?

Overhead the fat moon sat and watched it all. I settled into one of the chairs, let myself relax for the first time since the sun rose that morning. Soon, the others who lived in this ancient building would return, and we all could rest for the first time in hours. But underneath the sound of the summer night and my sister’s voice, I heard the pages turning.

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