Gothic Lovecraft Read online

  Without more ado, a tangled cage of purple bars lit up atop the mattress, enmeshing Goodman Brown. And in a trice, both man and glowing shape were gone, apart from gloating laughter and the tangy whiff that lingers after lightning strikes.

  Wide-eyed Archfiend had no opportunity to poke at blankets with his staff or curse unsportingly; for in the darkness at his feet, incisors as of monstrous rodent punched through tough boot leather, or at least the illusion of leather, to puncture devilish ankle. In thorough disarray, the corrupter expelled an astounded, disgraceful shout and fled the bedchamber, clouting its door wide open without a backward glance.

  Faith, throughout the colloquy, had eavesdropped at the door, nursing hopes she dared not articulate. These had gone to ashes, though, during the course of harrowing narrative. She cowered away as visitor burst forth and bolted from the house, and she hurried to the Goodman’s bedside and let slip one forlorn moan at discovering him expired, eyes toward the ceiling and mouth agape, as if he’d never departed.

  Sorrow’s burden immediately bowed her neck and shoulders; she lamented inconsolably for herself and him, fathoming their doom was worse than damnation, each of them now irrevocably alone without the solace of hell as well as heaven, of any eternal order’s surety. Nothing but inchoate void awaited, and she on the brink. And thus upon her tombstone, as on his, no hopeful verse was carved, for her dying hour had been gloomier than his.

  Square of the Inquisition

  Lois H. Gresh

  The knife grazes my neck, and Eliseo cracks a smile. His eyes shift from black to empty.

  I know better than to struggle. I have no choice but to let him have his way.

  My vision blurs, my heart beats faster, and I don’t let myself breathe. If my neck moves, if it so much as flinches, the knife could plunge and kill me, and indeed, it would be a gruesome death.

  Eliseo straddles me, his knees on the floor. The weight of his body presses me to the rough stone. Eliseo loves this time. It calms him. He draws strength from me.

  He bows his head. All I see are his lips, a gash of red, and his face, a broken smear of mottled flesh as if the Inquisitors have beaten him close to death. But they haven’t touched him. Not yet. As long as Eliseo slays el toros for their entertainment, the Inquisitors consider him divino Judío, a divine Jew, one not yet ready for torture in the cells beneath mine.

  Chains rattle, and a woman shrieks as guards slap her and snarl insults. A child whimpers. A prison door slams, and now, a whoosh of air and the rise of mold. My eyes water, and my nose itches. I need to sneeze.

  Eliseo’s head jerks up. He must hear the chains and the guards. Saliva drools from his mouth down his chin. His lips draw back, exposing his teeth. Sharp points.

  And then he roars, and it’s the sound a bull makes when it races toward him.

  I flinch, and through tears I see bloody meat on hooks. A carcass dangles over me, the ribs exposed, the fat jiggling, the bones cracked at odd angles. I see Eliseo’s torso, and what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

  His grip tightens on the knife. His voice lowers. “They’re coming. It’s too soon.”

  And that’s when I sneeze, and Eliseo slips, stares at me in horror as his hand jerks and plunges the knife into my neck. First I gurgle, then I choke. I can’t swallow. Fear crystallizes in Eliseo’s eyes, a fear that I may die and leave him alone.

  My limbs twitch. My stomach trembles. The blood is hot in my throat, the pain fierce. I gag and cough, gasp for air.

  This could be the end.

  Yet death itself doesn’t matter. We all die. It’s how we go that matters. I don’t want to die in pain, yet I wouldn’t mind dying. If anything, it will be a relief. A way to escape the Inquisitor’s jail between St. Joseph Church and the Muro Judío.

  Eliseo jumps to his feet. Torches light the corridor walls beyond my cell. Eliseo’s knife glistens. Strips of red and blue cloth flutter from the long handle. This particular bandero is sacred to him. It’s the first of several he’ll thrust into the shoulders and back of the bull.

  I clutch my black skirt, lift the folds, and press the coarse cloth to my neck. I try to stem the flow of blood.

  “What’s happening here?” A guard’s face looms into view, red from torch flames. Bloodshot eyes, dim from whiskey, scan the naked Eliseo, then dip to me, still on the floor. Fatty jowls wobble. While Eliseo is small and thin, the guard and his three companions are larded like bloated pigs.

  I hate them. I hate them all.

  The hate burns in me worse than the pain.

  Eliseo backs against the wall. His ribs jut over a concave stomach. He’s breathing heavily. “Nothing’s happening, nothing. Take me to the Square. Take me, I tell you, take me while Martina’s blood still flows.

  The guard laughs, and the sound rolls down the corridor and reverberates off the metal doors at the far end. I shiver. His friends emit nervous chuckles. “Have you killed the Jewess, then? Have you denied me the pleasure of torturing her into submission?” He steps into the cell, and Eliseo’s body stiffens.

  These guards, these men—if you can call them that— they are evil. They inflict pain, they watch us suffer, and they enjoy it. In the name of religion they condemn, torture, and murder innocent people. They murder the elderly. They murder the pregnant. They murder the babies. They feel justified.

  A screaming rises around me in the cells. It is as if the other condemned can smell my death before it happens.

  I hear my heart beating in my ears. I can’t turn it off. I’m lightheaded, my vision still blurred, and as the bully hoists me to my feet, I stagger and his hand cracks me hard across the face. I reel and fall against Eliseo, who grabs me with his one free hand and steadies me. His arm slinks around my waist, and he holds me up.

  His eyes brim with compassion. My cheek stings. Blood froths on my lips. I gurgle. The knife dipped slightly into my throat and stopped at my wind pipe. After what I have suffered at the hands of the Inquisitors, this pain is a mere prick.

  Nobody here understands. These bullies, these beasts of the Inquisition do not understand that I am no more Jewish than they are.

  I am different, that is all.

  So is Eliseo. He just doesn’t know it yet.

  The guard grabs my arm and yanks me into the corridor. “The crowd grows restless,” he snarls. “The bishop wants your blood. The people need to see what happens to those who refuse to believe in the true God.”

  I lurch, and the nails jiggle and clank all over me. For months, they have driven hundreds of nails into my arms, my thighs, my breasts, my sides. Only my head and back are free. This way Eliseo can straddle me, push me to the floor, and perform his pre-bullfighting ritual. We both know that if Eliseo doesn’t massacre the bulls, the bishop and his priests will kill everyone in the Jewish Quarter. It’s a game to them, that’s all, a bloody horrible game.

  Eliseo says, “Give me one more minute with Martina. Come on. I need it to give you a good show.”

  “No more waiting, Jew. I told you, the bishop is screaming for blood, Jew pig blood, and the crowd is restless.”

  “He’ll get all the blood he wants, but please, I need one more minute with the girl.”

  “Filthy Jews. All the same. Blood, lust, sex, greed. You disgust me, all of you,” says the guard, and his companions grunt in agreement. Their boots scratch against stone. They are anxious to see Eliseo fight the bull, hoping that he fails so they can watch the beast shred his flesh and rip him to pieces. Then they will torture every last man, woman, and child in the cells. They want to do this, they look forward to it. Anything less will disappoint them, and as usual, they will take out their disappointment on their prisoners.

  We cannot win, no matter what we do.

  Eliseo begs. “I’ve never lost a fight, not i n a ll these years, so give me the girl for a few seconds more. If you deny the bishop the slaughter of el toro, he’ll want your blood.”

  “Fuck you, Jew. The bishop never wants our blood. But go o
n, pig, take your precious few moments with the girl and then die.” The guards shuffle into the dark. The torches recede. We have little time, Eliseo and I. We drag back into the cell, and he swings the door shut.

  His free hand brushes across the nails jutting from my left arm. He hisses into my ear, low so the guards won’t hear. The hissing slides like a snake over the beating of my heart, still loud in my ears. The words aren’t human; not Spanish, not Ladino, not Hebrew. “Q’ulsi’kattum q’ablitum u kashshaptu u q’ulsi mushiti kattum.”

  I quiver. Eliseo speaks my language. Ecstasy swells and crashes through my broken body. I float out of myself, flit into the reek of mold, human excrement, and dead rats. Everything sizzles at my touch. Everything smells fragrant. If I could just stay here in this place where Eliseo has sent me, I would finally be free of the Inquisitors, the bullfights, all of it. My flesh would die, and it wouldn’t even matter how.

  Eliseo continues to mutter, and I rise higher and higher. How does he know these words? I have heard of human cults, those who worship us and know the correct incantations. Poor Eliseo, he is one of them, nothing but flesh, and flesh is so insignificant.

  Why do they all care so much about their flesh? Why does it matter if their flesh withers and dies? Isn’t it the soul, the essence of a being, that matters the most? Why don’t they see that?

  Most likely, Eliseo’s flesh will die today. Whether he kills the bull or not, the bishop will put him to death. I feel it. I know it. The guards will drag him to the chambers beneath mine, where they will put him on the rack, hang him by his wrists, and flog him with spiked chains. They will proclaim him a Jew and gouge out his eyes while they hack off his penis with a ragged, rusty knife. They will laugh at his misery and humiliation. So amusing. He will sink into the dirt and the dust, just another man that nobody remembers.

  Then they will hammer another nail into my body to mark his murder. Soon after, they will bring me a new matador, some poor slob with no hope of surviving a fight with the beast, and they will tell me that I must help him, too.

  How many have I helped in this way? How many have they murdered? Christians, Jews, the few remaining Moors, even their own, the Catholics: the Inquisitors spare no one.

  “Give me strength,” whispers Eliseo. “Only you can save me. Please, Martina, save me. Give me salvation.”

  What he asks is impossible. I cannot save him. I cannot give him salvation. I don’t even know what that means.

  “I must don my clothes and fight. Give me something, Martina, before they return.”

  I am above him, below him, around him. I am not squarely in the flesh. His name for me, Martina, is a human construct. It is not attached to the real me, the one beyond the flesh

  “Please.” His tears glisten in the faint light. “Don’t you remember what they did to my family?”

  How can I ever forget?

  I dwelt on the wrong side of the wall that severed the Jewish Quarter from the rest of the city. Eliseo was a barely believing Christian who sold pots to the Jews. When the Inquisitors came, they raped his wife and tortured her until she confessed that he was a converso, a secret Jew.

  “They sawed off my wife’s limbs, one by one.” Eliseo is crying softly now. His hands cover his face and muffle his words. “They raped her remains. They left her in the filth, her head and torso, until she bled out. Then they went after my children, all five of them, the youngest only two, the oldest only seven. Don’t you remember, Martina?”

  Conversos, all of them, the blood of the father coursing through their veins. The Inquisitors had no mercy. Even I cannot bear to remember what they did to Eliseo’s children.

  From outside the jail, the crowd roars for blood. There must be a thousand of them out there, bloodthirsty, waiting for the spectacle of man versus beast.

  Eliseo is one of my kind. He deserves better than this sorry human death. Hoarsely, for it is hard to speak human words outside of human flesh, I whisper, “Finish what you started. If you want any hope of salvation, then utter the words.” This is a slight lie, yet I will give him what I can.

  I want—

  no, I need—

  the bliss of being me, and if Eliseo knows the incantation, then let him chant it—

  let him chant!—

  for haven’t I given him enough wins during the past few months? Haven’t I?

  Hope flicks in his eyes, a brief hope that rapidly dies. He looks unsure, as if he doesn’t believe me, but then he intones, “Dweller in Darkness, Thing That Cannot Be, ja’ru’stra kruh-muh, Martina Who Is Not Martina, ja’ru’stra kruh-muh.”

  “Not good enough,” I say. “Do it right or not at all.”

  He squints at the translucent palpitations, the mists, the undefined glory that is me. This time, his voice is strong. “Q’weerilpuman-kwat-an-q’ulsi’kattum u q’ulsi kattum.”

  The trebles, the dips in tone, the ripples of the syllables: all perfectly chanted to trigger things in me that I cannot ignore. For a moment, I forget that he is there, as I effervesce and expand, float around and over him.

  I drift and coalesce, enjoying the freedom, and then I shift myself back into Martina’s flesh.

  “Salvation?” he says.

  I regret my earlier lie. I am not cruel. I just want to be me. But I do not have time to answer Eliseo because the guards are back. The light widens on the walls, then penetrates the cell. I fall to the floor.

  Eliseo yanks up the tight pants, dons the red coat with the bright buttons: these are the clothes they make him wear when he fights the bulls. “Fuck you,” he grates, angry at me. “I gave you what you want. Fuck you that you won’t save me from them.”

  How dare he be angry! What did he expect? “What people do in the name of religion,” I say, “they do to themselves.”

  Locks clink. The guards swagger into the cell and grab us. Rats scamper into holes.

  And now, smelly beards scrape my cheeks, while in front of me two guards shove Eliseo down the corridor. A fist grabs my hair and yanks back my neck, and the guards have that harsh laughter they get when they are about to see a bloodfest in God’s honor. I kick and punch, but it does no good. They shove me down the corridor, too.

  We pass the cells of half-dead men, women, and children. Some groan; they have given up all hope. Some beg; these are the fools. The younger ones cry.

  As we near the stairs leading from this hellhole into the Square of the Inquisition, the outside light nearly blinds me. I squeeze shut my eyes, and Gothic arches burn neon red against my lids. I trip on the last stair, my eyes fly open, and I see the gold-encrusted arches of the jail entry. I see the painting of Christ upon his cross. I see marble in three tones stretched high to the vaulted ceiling. Gold scepters, gold baby Jesus, gold gold gold. And outside, blood blood blood.

  The guards lift me and fling me into the Square of the Inquisition. All around me, people scream and laugh at me, at the nails that hold my black black dress to my black black body.

  The sun blazes down, and sweat courses down my back. Heat prickles my breasts.

  They throw Eliseo to the dirt next to me. He scrabbles up, points his bandero at me, and says, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

  These are the words that bring forth the best in me, the worst in me.

  This time, I do what Eliseo thinks he wants.

  The ancient words come easily to my lips. They puff out, symbols of strange geometries that no man knows. They encircle Eliseo. They mingle, then bind and form nails that plunge into him, and they pierce his body as the nails pierce mine. They drill arches over his eyes. Drill a mustache where moments ago, there was none. Drill a beard.

  I have never reacted this strongly to Eliseo; but then, he has never uttered the ultimate words. I suppose he never felt he needed them before now. His usual incantations and rituals were cut short this time. He must fear that this time, he might die.

  “Converso! Converso!” They’re chanting now, these people of the Lord.
It is a crime punishable by death to convert to their religion, yet it is also an equal crime not to convert. Everything is a crime to these people. Children huddle closer to their mothers. Men’s faces, all red, howl for Eliseo’s blood. The soldiers hold them back. A scuffle to my right, and a soldier’s arm swings up, then down, and I do not even hear the screams of the dying man who tried to break into the center of the Square. The crowd recedes like a giant wave sucked to sea. A murmur swells, and the bishop stands, arms out, beseeching them all to grow quiet.

  Eliseo’s eyes do not seem to focus on much of anything. He is on his feet, swaying as if to a rhythm nobody hears. His limbs tremble. I feel the beat of his heart. It ripples through the air, through my air, and I feel Eliseo and his confusion. He turns, totters, stares down at me, still on the dirt. His eyes widen. He knows. Then his eyes go blank again.

  I scrabble to my feet, back away from him as the bishop says, “Let all who are here witness the defeat of those who will not accept Catholicism, the one pure religion, as their own. Let all who are here witness the defeat of this converso and his”—a pause, and the gnarled old man turns to me and spits—“concubine.”

  I almost laugh. I am no concubine. But the people laugh, not at the bishop, but rather at me and Elisio with the nails driven into our flesh. I hear the muttering all around the Square: converso, torture, execution, death, and ha ha ha, won’t this be grand?

  I shift into the center of the Square, swivel, and stare at them all. A thousand people who hate others. A thousand people who hate themselves. They are crammed along the continuous balcony on all four sides of the Square. They are crammed beneath the buttresses of the jail entrance and the Gothic arches that hold up the balcony. These are ugly people, as ugly as the guards in the jail, as ugly as the Inquisitors and their Executioners.

  Do they not know that, once we are gone, they will be next? Can they not see it? For man knows no end to hate and cruelty.