Letters from Outside

Short shorts and fragments by divers hands

There are things in space and time that lurk just beyond what our memories hold. They are always less than a hairs' breadth away, lurking to pounce upon the unwary. An unintentional motion, a stray, unwanted idea, may suddenly come to furious life of its own volition.

This is the world we live in. Time and space have dimensions both many and manifold, and what our five poor senses tell us is happening may not be exactly the truth.

Sometimes such inhabitants can be glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, moving too swiftly or too slowly to be seen, occupying unusual dimensions while still retaining a familiar form in the bandwidths that are available to hairless apes.

Beyond such perception may lie the shrieking eldritch horrors that are spoken of only in the faintest of whispers, and behind securely locked doors.

At times, normal sane people like you and I may come into contact with an idea or an event or a person that is a representative of such chaotic visitors.

A look through the veil behind such eyes for a peep at the Outside can be instructive, and is definitely one that will make you stronger, provided you survive the experience.

Those from Outside are generally to be avoided. They are at best indifferent to one's welfare, and the worst thing that can happen to you is to be noticed by Them.

All universes are connected at some point. Those from Outside inhabit these connections, seeking a way in.

The following are just such encounters with the Outside. They had to happen in some universe to be depicted here. Didn't they? The stars must be right somewhere...

The Black Traveler

Duane Pesice

So I heard over in England they had this gas a few years ago, called time gas. The time gas supposedly regressed people backward psychologically, through their childhoods and beyond. They were meting it out in measured doses, which people paid for, and that worked fine until they found a huge untapped vein of it and regressed everyone within a hundred-mile vicinity way back past the dinosaurs.

Never did find an antidote, and now I understand they've grouped all these people together in hospitals, paid for by the company that extracts and distributes the time gas. They're still in business.

It could have been worse.

Larger reservoirs of the gas have been found and tapped.

The reason I bring that up is because one of those veins is just a few miles from here. They're just getting around to tapping it, might be doing it right now. It does smell kinda funny...

Oh, you didn't know that?

Sorry to be the first to tell you. Have you tried this gas?

Uh-huh. I see. Quite the bike, eh? I suppose it would be nice to go back to childhood for a little bit. You say they're really accurate with this stuff? They can put you right on the dot, the moment you want to relive?

Oh, it's expensive. I bet it is.

What was that about the people? Oh, they keep disappearing from their hospital beds? What can you do about that? I don't think anyone has a time machine to go chasing around after them, do they? That's the only way I can think of, the place they must be going. I mean, they have to be physically traveling in time, don't they? Can you think of anywhere else they're going?

Boy, it's dark in this bar. Hey, can I get ya a beer?

Sure, no problem. Hey, Mike-get this guy a Guinness, on me, willya? Thanks a lot, Mike.

So, you were saying?

Wow, that's really something. You think that these people are able to navigate space and time in straight lines, not curved ones like we do. What an angle.

Angle, jeez. I crack me up.

Sorry. That's a real headful.

What? Oh, you work for the company? I thought you knew a lot. C'mon, gimme some inside. What's it really like to travel backward in time? Not the company line, your own words.

Really. I gotta try that stuff, no doubt about it.

Yeah? You got some on ya. Hey, thanks. This stuff is safe, right? You know what you're doing? Just kidding. I can tell you know all about it.

Just inhale...okay.

Great. So where'd you say you were from? Don't take this wrong, but we don't often get people in here that have skin as dark as yours. I mean you're coal black, guy.

You got a cloven hoof? Only joshing.

Hey, that's nice. I'm beginning to feel it. You sure you didn't give me too much? What do you mean you gave the same to everybody? What kind of a name is Nyarlathotep anyway?

Better try some beer. I don't know how much longer that bartender is gonna let me stay. He keeps looking at me like he knows I don't have ID.

Hey, thanks, Mister Black. I appreciate it, I'll deliver the papers on time every day.

Oh, Suzy, oh, that's right. Me too, first time. It's okay.

Did you see the newest Red Sonja? Boy can that guy draw girls. I wisht I could draw like that.

Yes, we're learning how to divide. I can multiply up to ten. Ten times ten times ten is eleventy hundred.

Mister, can I please have a cookie? Please please. Thank You!

No, I'm four.

*dark* in here, *damp*, *warm*.

.this space vacant.

the angles intersect a point beyond the next curve. if fast, can avoid hounds and enter next segment.

not fast enough.

nice doggie.

Frieze in Blue and White

Duane Pesice

Colin opened a door.

It was a stout wooden door, with old-fashioned brass hinges.

Colin thought it led to a shop that had a good line on figurines for game-playing.

That it did, but the shop also held certain "extras" that Colin hadn't been aware of previously.

The wizened shopkeeper welcomed Colin inside with a hearty croak, calling to him "come in, come in, you'll catch your death of cold out there."

Indeed the snow swept in behind Colin, whitening the mat that lay just inside the door.

Colin was panting from the cold and the exertion required to open the door.

When Colin was quite through steaming over there before the door, he entered the shop itself.

The proprietor rubbed his hands together briskly.

Colin understood and did likewise. The friction warmed his hands and the time it took helped to thaw the rest of him out.

There was still a little ringing in his ears, but just a little.

Colin had walked a long way in he snow and cold to visit this shop, just for twenty bucks' worth of plastic statuettes.

The pieces were for a game he played, a role-playing game involving characters from books by a writer named Lovecraft, and some others who had followed his lead.

These figures were grotesque, and the particular ones that the gnarled old shopkeeper had were of stone.

Colin examined them closely, turning them over and over. He thought that they were the cleverest mockups of the Great Old Ones he had ever seen, even down to the greenish stone as described in those tales.

There were even a few he'd never seen before. The statuette of Yog-Sothoth, for example, not of stone, but of blown glass, a series of transparent bubbles, each of which held a single red eye, was particularly impressive. Though it was glass, the sculpture did not look fragile, and the touch seemed to confirm that. The surface of this piece was more akin to Mylar than glass, like a petrified bubble from a childhood toy.

There was a big box full of these.

Colin's eyes just about popped out of his head.

He almost stuttered. "How much," he said, "how much for these, all of these..."

"Twenty dollars," came the reply he'd been waiting for. "They gotta go, and go today. I'm closing the shop after this business day and retiring."

Colin couldn't get the money out fast enough. "Wait until the guys see these!" he crowed.

The shopkeeper merely smiled his skeletal little smile and watched Colin leave. He waved goodbye with his leathery hand and then vanished just as soon as the door closed.

Colin called a taxi from the donut shop next door, enjoying a strong cuppa and a Boston Creme while he waited.

The box sat on the seat beside him. There weren't any other people there to register an objection.

The waitress brought Colin a second cup of coffee, eyed his parcel incuriously, and moved on.

Presently the vehicle arrived, and Colin clambered into the back seat, gave his address.

They moved on through the winter night.

The driver was just as curious as the waitress, paid no mind whatsoever to the contents of the package, which Colin was dying to have to explain to someone.

"Okay if I smoke?" He asked.

"Yeah, go ahead, but crack a window, willya?" Came the rejoinder.

Colin obliged the man, enjoyed his cigarette while taking a closer look at the blue figure of Ithaqua.

"God," he said. "That's the best depiction of Ithaqua I've ever seen.

A blast of frigid air from the chill night forced Colin to drop his cigarette on the floor of the cab.

The second blast sucked him right out of his clothes, out the window and into the air, cigarette and all...

The driver didn't even look. He thumbed the toggle to roll up the window and drove on.

"Some things are better left unsaid," he cracked, a wicked grin briefly crossing his unlovely features.

LETTERS LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME

James Ambuehl

(Found pressed between the pages of a crumbling pulp magazine, and edited by James Ambuehl)

Dear Two-Gun,

I eagerly awaited your latest piece of eldritch grue, "The Hoofed Thing," but now, having perused it at last, I'm sorry to say I find it sorely lacking. Such a piece should truly resonate with the eldritch gibberings of the cosmically-vast Outer Dark, yet . . . it falls flat. Surely, the brunt of this frank criticism I humbly offer falls upon the spawn of the nether-hell's method of demise. Come on, Two-Gun . . . hacking it to pieces with a Crusader's broadsword?!?

Yrs from dim, hoary Yuggoth,

Ech-Pi-El

Dear H. P.,

You son-of-a-bitch!

It was with eager mitts I clutched your latest rip-roaring yarn using my own Conan -- and having him meet up with your own Azathoth in the ruins of that citadel of ancient Acheron was a stroke of genius! But jeez, to have him faint in the heat of the fray! And worse yet, goddammitt, you didn't have to kill Conan, did you?!?

Yours contemplating a lynching,

Robert E. Howard

Inchoate and stillborn

Duane Pesice

Faintly, so faintly, a tiny buzzing began, there amid the dark stars that existed in an uneasy compromise with each other. They jittered in their places as the arrival began.

Universes collided as greedy singularities devoured the very gates to the planes contained within other singularities, and were lost. One by one, the burning stars winked out. With the darkness came heat, heat sufficient to rekindle those dreaming stars, and the surfaces of those singularities blazed with color as they assumed their former aspect. The colors twined like mating serpents, descending vertically as heavy metals ran like dye into the fabric of reality and emerged as a congeries of metallic spheres.

Behind the spheres, the gate remained open long enough for several other inhabitants of that plane to emerge and commence an exploration of the new universe as the spheroid being began to whirl about itself. They played catch with the stars until that palled, while new spheres spun from the unimaginably huge dervish and were hurled vast distances across empty space. The gate closed, then opened again, briefly, and a dozen more came in from Outside before it closed of its own accord, for the last time.The spherical being swallowed the gate, contained it within a singularity that was just part of its material substance.

Another singularity collapsed in upon itself, and chance arrived in a burst of nuclear fire, silently. The spheres whirled briefly according to several differently planes of the ecliptic, formed a disk, rotated too quickly to discern and disappeared. The white dwarf that was the embodiment of the random grew impossibly large, and developed a corona of indigo flares. A flare would detach and depart occasionally. Smaller stars morphed into the aspect of this being's retinue, a coterie of amorphous and constantly fluxing blobs of indeterminate color, whose exhalations combined with the awesome gravity of the god of entropy to form an atmosphere of dark matter, wherein they played on pipes and drums, the dissonant melody constantly changing keys and tempi, the drums booming according to the whim of the players with no relation to the course of the melody.

These beings were so large that the attempt to play a note took a thousand years to accomplish, there where the relative speed of light was not a constant, and time was not the determinant factor of existence. Their pandemonium was of such volume as to bulge the event horizon surrounding the lord of chaos, though it was contained. The young stars revealed by their light the presence of a large darkness in the foreground, which extruded tentacles and penetrated the gravity well of entropy, extracting raw materials and a small portion of the chaotic energy, then moving away more swiftly than a thought, maintaining its own relative duration in the midst of the random. This being followed the spheroid entity into the universe, hurling pips of the stolen substance in all directions as it traveled, sowing the seeds of life throughout the new universe until the energy ceased to flow.

The other beings from Outside traveled whither they would, some banding together, some moving off alone into the universe. One in particular took as an aspect the unchanging material of an inverted dark star, and this luminous white singularity became the guardian of stasis, repeating the actions of the lord of improbablity, introducing order into areas of the universe. Galaxies were born, died, were reborn, and life began. The new beings rose, powerful, and joined the ranks of the firstborn, allied with those from Outside in myriad ways. The being that was a negation conveyed the thoughts of each to each other, using the living waves of the spherelord to maintain a constant flow of information to the minds of the Lords of All. He existed between order and the random, serving only his own dark desire, innately the equal in power of the lords of chance and of the static, rivaled only by the God of the Globes, who was the all-in-one, and the one-in-all, and kept for his own information the tidings of what had been, what was, and what would be and also knew the way through the gate, for he was the keeper of the gate and the key to the gate at once.

This absence of light, this crawling chaos, this embodiment of paradox, ventured into the young universe, and named the things, being the keeper of communication.

The entities that arrived through the gate were indentified to each other. The Lord of Entropy named himself AZATHOTH, and that title was conferred to each.

The Lord of the Spheres assumed the description YOG-SOTHOTH. Others followed, naming themselves, so that they would be known by those legends to the new entities they were still borning, and to the masses of protoplasm that were yet to open eyes on the new worlds. Some of these beings were Great Cthulhu, son of the world Xoth, which was torn asunder by his birth pangs, and Hastur, hybrid of an entity from Outside and the remnants of Xoth, a being so terrible that even these entities hesitated to invoke his title. The young worlds were rendered fecund by the Mother of ALL, Shub-Niggurath, from whose womb poured forth unceasing combinations of the building blocks for the new beings that would populate the spheres of the new universe, and these worlds were in turn visited by the POWERS that existed in those times.

And still they spoke, those entities, putting the names to their aspects, until at last the crawling chaos conferred his own title, which was Nyarlathotep, and the dance of time and existence began then, with the discord of the courts of chaos ever providing a counterpoint to the everpresent silence of the anonymous sentinels of stasis.

Nyarlathotep was the messenger, adding his own revisions to the messages, following a path only he knew of, conveying information and disinformation equally, the father of lies, the mother of truth, embodying all that was apposite. He was the Other that always exists between two choices.

Conversation Occuring in a New England Cemetery

This is a fictional piece by

Richard D. Magrath

. Please bear in mind the author has never been to Providence, never read Lovecraft's letters or knows much about the Lovecraft Circle. All innacuracies are therefore artistic license.

Dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft and those who continue to write Cthulhu Mythos stories.

"March 15 1938. It was neither coincidence nor some well-planned mourning that made today the last day of my week-long visit to P., but instead the crude attempt at capturing a similiar sense of leaving as my friend must have felt upon leaving the cold city. Maybe I thought if I did this I would finally stop expecting a letter, franked in Rhode Island and addressed in a spidery script that somehow didn't seem to foil the US Postal Service to fall through my letter box. I did not have a plan nor a human companion to my sojourn, but instead I let the bitter March wind to be my guide around this oft-imagined but dreamily distant city. I found it on the verge of modernisation, sweeping away the established and the historic institutions and with them my late correspondant.

I left at a quarter to eight antemeridian and followed the road (the name escapes me now, if I ever did notice it) down and westward until I saw the low, tree-verged walls that I always think a signature of New England cemeteries. L----- had once given me directions in a telegram, given from wherever he was staying at the time, which I clumsily left behind me at the station, though I remembered his directions to the grave amongst the crumbling masonry field which would serve as the only presence of Lovecraft on the Earth.

As I approached the coldly Christian statue, the side wind became so strong it started hurting me, or was that just because seeing the cold tomb I saw the last Chapter of the Cthulhu Mythos, the last adventure of Randolph Carter and the last strange verse from the Necronomicon all at once. Not even H.P. Lovecraft can write fantastic weird tales and horror when six feet of dirt is pressing down on him. To my right, beneath an old oak tree (though it must be said that I do not know trees and therefore assume all large trees to be oaks unless told otherwise) I glanced a grey-coated and grey-faced fellow standing in front of no particular marking. I assumed that he was paused in heavy contemplation having recently payed his respects to some deceased friend or relative - perhaps how the biting wind was slowly ebbing his life away, until he returned to the living, the forever remembered and sat himself beside the fire.

I am afraid that his presence weighed on my mind, and I began to doubt the appropriateness of what i was doing - paying respects to a man I had never actually met. But, I told myself in memory of the night before, when I had sat in my spartan colonial room gazing at the shining brilliance of Weird Tales and Amazing Stories, and told myself I should have made time to see the church upon which the eldritch Starry Wisdom temple is based upon. And I had reread the letters to me where he told me about writing The Haunter of the Dark and At the Mountains of Madness, and for that night he was more alive to me than many other men I may meet, and in the morning I wept.

And so I left my last, unposted letter on the wet grass and I turned to leave. I jostled the arm of the grey man who may have turned to leave but now looked at me with suprisingly non-malevolent intensity.

There was a silent pause as he drew in a throaty breath.

'So... you knew Grandpa, eh?'

I paused. I had not expected this. Should I ask him a question? I chose not to, but did so the same.

'So you are a relative of Mister Lovcraft?'

Did he grin wryly? 'No suh.' I realised he was not from New England. 'I...' a pause as he adopted a more churchyard tone of voice. 'I just came to pay my, uh, respects to Mister Lovecraft also. May I too ask how you, uh, knew him also?'

'I didn't... I didn't really know him. Not really. We wrote letters.'

'Well you know suh, that's how I and a lot of other fellas got to know the Old Gent too. Could really spin a mean tale, eh?'

We both smiled mutally for a long enough time to know each other was a Lovecraft fan, but as the death-wind rose up I shakily intruded 'I just can't see it all ending like this.'

'Yeah. It's a god damned tragedy.'

I saw my mistake and felt my disrespect, but the man quickly added with a knowing air:

'You really mean the stories though don't cha? Wondern' whether Starkweather an' Moore are ever gonna get to Antarctica or such?'

'There was so much.... I feel there was just so much left unsaid. Things that should have been said. It's the end and only half the book's finished.'

He had an answer to this. He didn't pause. 'Hey, y'know big stories, stories like this don't end in graveyards. Some stories do, most do, but not big ones and not where so many people have been left with something. More'n heav'n an' earth an' H.P. Lovecraft an' so on."

'So you're going to continue his work?'

'Yes suh! You read Call o' th' Klooloo?'

I nearly took this chance to bring up the pronunciation of Cthulhu, but scolded myself as it was obvious he was about to tell me something much more important. 'Of course y' have. Well, it's like that, we're like the Cthulhu Cult, we're gonna keep tellin' the story in our own words, in our own ways, no use copyin' the Old Gent - unless y' think you can write better'n he can of course! Don't you worry though, we're not gonna mess it all up. H.P. said he wanted people to use his ideas for themselves, and Conan Doyle said that he didn't mind if people married Holmes or killed him off, an' any critic'll tell y' Lovecraft wasn't nearly as good a writer as Doyle.'

It was with this he bid farewell and he was gone. I watched him walk out of the gates and down a street opposite of where I'd originally come from. I had realised before then, as soon in fact as he placed his battered trilby on his head, tipped it, and removed it respectfully once more that he had told me all the answers I wanted about Lovecraft's writing but I was still tempted to run after him and ask his so many questions - where was Exham? who was the 'hero' of The Dunwich Horror? - but I didn't. Maybe I was just still impressed with him. Maybe I knew I'd rather have my own answers than his. I picked up the cold letter from the grass and tore it open with an unsuitably large knife. I had intended to send the ill Lovecraft a story idea of mine I had had one night after waking up on the lake's edge and not being able to tell the stars in the sky from their reflections in the water. From this I had drawn quite a macabre and Lovecraftian plot, and I suppose I thought he would have been impressed with it, and would have helped me rewrite it like with In the Walls of Eryx. I resealed the envelope and buried it under the thin dirt. I stashed the draft story in my coat pocket. I would work on it on the train tonight.

EVERYBODY KNOWS MY NAME . . .

by James Ambuehl

Shit, man, what the fuck am I doing writing in this here journal? I should be hanging with my homeys, five by five, kickin' it and firin' it up. But as I sit in front of the FISH-BOWL here in Innsmouth, waiting to play tonight, before heading over for the gig tomorrow at the Arkham Municipal Auditorium, I look out on Devil's Reef and I feel such a strong sense of longing, a powerful vibe of peace.

The big-wigs didn't want me to play the 'Mouth, much less the local bowling alley . . . but I gotta keep it real, dig?

Man, this journal writin' shit sucks! I should focus my thoughts, channel 'em all into a song. But fuck it. I do what the fuck I want. I'm all about contradictions. That's why I can mix it up to ole Hank, Chuck D., and even Ronnie van Z. Shit, Holmes, even Ozzy! Yo, yo, lookee here: this Motor City shit's gotta stop here and now. _Innsmouth's_ my home, man, and I just gotta tell it like it is. And fuck this 'Devil without a cause' shit; I got your cause right here, motherfucker! They say 'Man was not meant to know, but fuck that X-FILES shit, man. They gotta know the truth, and I'm just the motherfucker to tell 'em too.

I'm gonna be layin' it down to the Old Ones tonight, showin' 'em all I'm the Real McCoy. They ain't never seen Old School like I'll be showin' 'em tonight! 'Everybody knows my name'? Shit. I'm gonna tell 'em my _real_ name, gonna show 'em who I really am tonight! Fuck yeah!

The mask is coming off tonight, time to rip off the latex and let the face-tendrils fly free! Let it all hang out . . . When those house lights come on, and the opening bars to "Bawitdaba" are layin' down, it's gonna be me in all my tentacled glory, comin' out swingin' and singin': '

My name is Squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid . . . Squid Rock!'

THE END