They’d conduct a thorough search, find the basement, and what happened after that was anyone’s guess.
But it didn’t quite work out that way. When I arrived, I decided to take one last look, still not quite convinced that this wasn’t all some elaborate hallucination. As soon as I turned the key, the trunk popped open, forced from within. Two arms tumbled out onto the ground and one snagged my pants cuff and held on until I kicked it with the other foot. I backed away, decided discretion was the better part, and went to retrieve my own car. I never called the cops.
There’s not much more to tell. I delivered the photographs to Brenda, along with an invoice, but did not tell her what else I’d discovered. She called me back a few days later to say that Parmenter had vanished, his house had burned to the ground, and the company had no place to send its checks.
That was almost a year ago and no one has seen Parmenter since. But over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy. Private detectives often develop a kind of sixth sense and I was sure I was being watched. I spent a lot of time looking into my rearview mirror, installed a security camera at my house, and paid attention to my surroundings when I walked on the street, but I never spotted anything out of the ordinary.
Until this morning. In among today’s various bills and junk mail was a small package with no return address. Curious, I found a knife and cut through the tape. Inside was a small, rather fancy cardboard box. I opened it and discovered that it contained a single, ordinary looking replica of a human eye.
That was startling enough in itself, but then the most unexpected thing happened.
It winked at me.
Good Breeding
LUCIEN SOULBAN
This was the face of Armageddon, the calculated end of the world: Towering piles of human bodies strewn about in enormous, crushing heaps; corpses hung from skeins of veins suspended between gutted skyscrapers; cadavers entombed inside burnt-out husks of vehicles on melted freeways.
Yet for some, the gaiety carried a depressing undertone. And not for the reasons most people expected.
A long, deep sigh—smelling vaguely of rotted fish—escaped from Ka’thulu the Gorger. The ring of tentacles around his puckered, alien mouth fluttered briefly, like so many party favors, before growing still.
“What’s the matter?” Shebboth asked. The antennae atop his carapace-covered head twitched, more this way than that.
“They’re all gone.” Ka’thulu poked the corpses in the street with an uprooted lamppost for emphasis. Nothing stirred in the way that dead bodies are best at.
“But we won, right?” Shebboth asked. “That’s what He-Who-Really-Shouldn’t-Be-Named said.”
“Who? Hastur?”
A flash and a pop filled the air, and a handful of winged Byakhee appeared; a dash of bird, a dab of insect, and a pinch of bat thrown in as though Hastur made them during a pique of indecision. The creatures searched for whoever dared utter their master’s name, then (puzzled) they vanished.
“You shouldn’t say His name.”
“Who, Hastur?”
Byakhee appeared again, this time eyeing the two great giants in displeasure. They disappeared once more.
“Yes!” Shebboth hissed. “He doesn’t like it when—”
“You say Hastur?”
Byakhee appeared and promptly vanished.
“Stop it, will you?!”
“Yeah, yeah . . . so old Nameless said that, huh?” Gorger asked. He picked up a blackened SUV between two spike-like fingers and studied the corpses inside. Head shaking, regret, perhaps, he tossed it away. The crash drew up a few faces from the rubble, sharp-toothed beasts studying them with the curiosity of startled groundhogs; then their fish eyes went glassy with disinterest and their heads popped back down. “And what did we win?”
“The war!”
“Some war.”
“Wasn’t it, though? We set the trap, then bam!”
“Bam? After eons, waiting ‘For the Stars to
But it didn’t quite work out that way. When I arrived, I decided to take one last look, still not quite convinced that this wasn’t all some elaborate hallucination. As soon as I turned the key, the trunk popped open, forced from within. Two arms tumbled out onto the ground and one snagged my pants cuff and held on until I kicked it with the other foot. I backed away, decided discretion was the better part, and went to retrieve my own car. I never called the cops.
There’s not much more to tell. I delivered the photographs to Brenda, along with an invoice, but did not tell her what else I’d discovered. She called me back a few days later to say that Parmenter had vanished, his house had burned to the ground, and the company had no place to send its checks.
That was almost a year ago and no one has seen Parmenter since. But over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy. Private detectives often develop a kind of sixth sense and I was sure I was being watched. I spent a lot of time looking into my rearview mirror, installed a security camera at my house, and paid attention to my surroundings when I walked on the street, but I never spotted anything out of the ordinary.
Until this morning. In among today’s various bills and junk mail was a small package with no return address. Curious, I found a knife and cut through the tape. Inside was a small, rather fancy cardboard box. I opened it and discovered that it contained a single, ordinary looking replica of a human eye.
That was startling enough in itself, but then the most unexpected thing happened.
It winked at me.
Good Breeding
LUCIEN SOULBAN
This was the face of Armageddon, the calculated end of the world: Towering piles of human bodies strewn about in enormous, crushing heaps; corpses hung from skeins of veins suspended between gutted skyscrapers; cadavers entombed inside burnt-out husks of vehicles on melted freeways.
Yet for some, the gaiety carried a depressing undertone. And not for the reasons most people expected.
A long, deep sigh—smelling vaguely of rotted fish—escaped from Ka’thulu the Gorger. The ring of tentacles around his puckered, alien mouth fluttered briefly, like so many party favors, before growing still.
“What’s the matter?” Shebboth asked. The antennae atop his carapace-covered head twitched, more this way than that.
“They’re all gone.” Ka’thulu poked the corpses in the street with an uprooted lamppost for emphasis. Nothing stirred in the way that dead bodies are best at.
“But we won, right?” Shebboth asked. “That’s what He-Who-Really-Shouldn’t-Be-Named said.”
“Who? Hastur?”
A flash and a pop filled the air, and a handful of winged Byakhee appeared; a dash of bird, a dab of insect, and a pinch of bat thrown in as though Hastur made them during a pique of indecision. The creatures searched for whoever dared utter their master’s name, then (puzzled) they vanished.
“You shouldn’t say His name.”
“Who, Hastur?”
Byakhee appeared again, this time eyeing the two great giants in displeasure. They disappeared once more.
“Yes!” Shebboth hissed. “He doesn’t like it when—”
“You say Hastur?”
Byakhee appeared and promptly vanished.
“Stop it, will you?!”
“Yeah, yeah . . . so old Nameless said that, huh?” Gorger asked. He picked up a blackened SUV between two spike-like fingers and studied the corpses inside. Head shaking, regret, perhaps, he tossed it away. The crash drew up a few faces from the rubble, sharp-toothed beasts studying them with the curiosity of startled groundhogs; then their fish eyes went glassy with disinterest and their heads popped back down. “And what did we win?”
“The war!”
“Some war.”
“Wasn’t it, though? We set the trap, then bam!”
“Bam? After eons, waiting ‘For the Stars to
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