The Book of Cthulhu 2

Objects from the

Gilman-Waite Collection

Ann K. Schwader

It was the strange appearance of the gold and coral sculptures—their ethereal moon-white luster—that first drew Wayland’s eyes to the museum poster. Objects From the Gilman-Waite Collection, its formal script announced. Unique cultural art-forms of Pohnpei.

The poster copy continued with a Scientific and Cultural Facilities District note, plus heartier thanks to the Manuxet Seafood Corporation for additional funds, but he was distracted by the sculptures themselves. Arranged on sea-green velvet with a tasteful scattering of shells, they still exuded a feeling he could only describe as otherworldly.

Yet, at the same time, their design seemed oddly familiar. He felt certain he had never been to this museum before—nor to any other displaying Objects from this particular Collection. Gilman and Waite were equally mysterious. But Manuxet? Was that where his déjà vu came in?

Wayland stepped closer to the poster, trying to decide. The museum lobby was almost deserted this afternoon. The desk attendant, a plain-faced older woman, sat silently at her terminal.

Just as well. He had no other hope of amusement, stranded by business obligations in this glorified cow town he had never visited before and was not eager to see again. Purchasing admission, he headed for the elevator and was soon navigating a maze of display rooms on one of the upper floors, searching for the Objects that had so intrigued him.

He finally located a small placard by one entryway: Gilman-Waite, with an even smaller notation forbidding photography. Wayland peered inside.

Aside from low-wattage spotlights illuminating various cases and signage, the narrow room was almost dark. And, apparently, deserted. A faint labored hissing came from one corner. Approaching cautiously, he was relieved—and slightly ashamed—to discover a dehumidifier, the first he had noticed in this building.

It too had a placard. This one warned how important it was not to turn the machine off, as excess humidity could endanger the Objects.

Wayland snorted. This high desert climate had kept his throat miserably dry all day. Still, the air here did seem moister than it had elsewhere in the museum. The thick shadowy carpet clung to his feet as he turned to read the nearest Object’s label.

RITUAL(?) ARMLET. Circa 18?? C.E., gold with coral embellishment. Embellishment wasn’t the word he’d have chosen. This coral mimicked the exact shade of pallid flesh—down to delicate blue vein-shadows, running through it by some trick of the light. Partially encased by the strange whitish gold, it twisted and writhed through the armlet’s design. Rather than accenting the precious metal, the coral appeared enslaved—even tormented—by it.

Wayland’s breath caught as he examined the goldwork more closely. What he had taken at first for arabesques now appeared as lithe, androgynous figures. The cast of their features disturbed him, though it took a few moments to see why. They echoed the armlet’s aquatic flora and fauna: bulging eyes and piscine faces, gill-slitted throats and shimmering suggestions of scales on shoulder and thigh. Spread fingers and toes revealed membranes as they wound through their strange environment, occupied in ways he did not care to consider.

He began examining the armlet’s shape instead. It seemed intended for a woman, but its wearer would have to be oddly muscled indeed to carry it comfortably on her bicep.

The strain and twist of muscles under slick cold skin, almost slipping from his grasp as she struggled…

“May I help you, sir?”

Wayland started. The young woman standing only a few feet from his elbow wore a docent’s badge. Its white plastic and her pale face bobbed in the dimness.

“I was wondering about the provenance of this piece,” he said. “Even if the artist is unknown, shouldn’t there be a tribal group or something?”

The wide dark eyes in that face stared at him, unblinking.

“Assigning such a label would add little to your experience of these Objects. This exhibit’s intent is to help viewers appreciate them purely as art.”

Eyes wider than human and darker than night ocean, boring into his soul…

Something in the back of Wayland’s mind shuddered. “Purely as art,” he echoed, feeling another unwelcome twinge of déjà vu.

Even if he let himself remember clearly what had happened that night, this couldn’t be her. It had been over fifteen years since that drunken, disastrous party back East. The townie girl one of his buddies had set him up with wouldn’t be a girl any more. She’d be nearly his age, and look older.

The docent gave him a sympathetic glance. “Perhaps you missed the first placard by the door.”

As she indicated it, he had an urge to bolt for the corridor, with its bright lights and desiccated air. If anything, the atmosphere here felt even moister than it had a few minutes ago. A faint whiff of decay rose from the carpet as he returned to read the sign he’d overlooked.

Aside from another nice fat thank you to the Manuxet Seafood Corporation, it didn’t say much. There was even some question about these Objects being from Pohnpei, as they represented “a design tradition divergent from all documented native cultures of that region.” The ritual aspect of many of the Objects was speculative, though Wayland had no doubts. There was too much reverence in the postures of some of the armlet’s aquatic figures.

The placard didn’t explain what was being reverenced.

Reading on more carefully, Wayland learned that most of the Objects had been brought to America early in the nineteenth century by one O. Marsh, a New England trading captain. How they wound up in the Gilman-Waite Collection was not noted. Instead, the placard quoted several local art critics, some of them specialists in native art of the Pacific region. To a man—or woman—they praised the exhibit’s “vibrant energy” and “mythic overtones,” without specifying which myths.

Wayland doubted they had a clue either. Turning away, he headed for one of the largest cases, gleaming under a spotlight in the center of the room. It held a single tall Object cushioned on green velvet.

To his relief, this one had no coral. It appeared to be a highly baroque sculpture—or at least, it did until he read its label.

RITUAL(?) TIARA OR HEADPIECE. Circa 18?? C.E., gold.

Which is clearly impossible. The “gold” looked even paler and more lustrous than it had in the armlet, suggesting (at best) some odd precious-metal alloy.

Odder still was the tiara’s shape. Though it did seem intended to be worn around something, that something could not be a human skull. The base was all wrong: more elliptical than round, with accommodations for odd bumps and hollows. It was also much too narrow even for a woman’s head—though the design suggested femininity.

He looked closer, trying to figure out why.

Cigarette smoke and liquor and beer, far too much beer, mingled with the tang of female sweat. With that shining, baby-silk curtain of hair, obscuring half her face as he pulled her down onto his lap. Even then, he’d felt her muscles resisting . ..

Wayland swallowed hard. Where had that come from? Surely not from these intricately entwined aquatic motifs—though there was something suggestive in all that twining. Suggestive and malignant, as though the lightless, sightless couplings of deep ocean denizens had been frozen in gold forever, survivals of another eon.

And where exactly had that eon passed? Like the Objects on the poster downstairs, this tiara reflected no familiar artistic tradition. Its craftsmanship was exquisite, but by whose standards? Another sensibility—another aesthetic entirely—had formed this piece.

As if reading his thoughts, the docent reappeared at his elbow.

“The ceremonial feeling of this Object is particularly strong, isn’t it?” Her voice was muted and liquid, tinged with some accent he hadn’t noticed before. “Let the design draw your eye upwards…engage with the flow of the piece. It makes all the difference.”

Suppressing a cynical comment, Wayland tried it. At first, he didn’t notice much difference: the design did “flow” towards its delicate apex above the center of the wearer’s forehead, but…

He gasped at a stab of nausea.

What he had taken for several motifs intertwining at irregular intervals was actually one motif, or rather one entity. One grotesque entity. Its face was mercifully obscured by other design elements, but he could still trace the body as it twisted through what had first seemed a stylized undersea forest.

He didn’t need the docent’s encouragement to know what he was really looking at.

Taste of the ocean on her lips…deep night ocean…primal salts and darkness and undying secrets. All the beer and smoke in the world couldn’t wash it away. And when he’d brushed back that curtain of hair and looked into her eyes for the first and only time, he’d seen that she wasn’t young at all, no matter what her body said against his.

Not a drunken, ignorant little townie he’d managed to steer into a convenient bedroom. Not an easy score. What stared back at him was ancient and cunning, inhuman…

Wayland turned away. Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck as he moved on to another Object, hoping the docent didn’t follow. The room was dank with shadows, but he could still see (imagine, only imagine) those faint lines on the skin of her throat, just above her collar.

Like gills.

Maybe I ought to leave right now, he thought as his feet propelled him through the clinging strands of carpet. The humidity or the lighting or something is getting to me.

Then he stopped and drew a deep breath. Get a grip. These Objects gleaming faintly in their cases (had there been so many, earlier?) were on display as art. Not as triggers for unpleasant recollections, and certainly not as prods for a neglected conscience. He had come here to pass an afternoon admiring some bizarre bits of goldwork, period.

Still, he avoided reading any more labels. The docent was right: if these were true art-forms, he shouldn’t need to. Their craftsmanship and design should speak for themselves.

Faint gleam of gold around one skinny wrist as he pushed her backwards…as he grabbed both those wrists with one hand and pulled them over her head…

He started bypassing Objects with coral in them. The material was too disturbing, triggering fragmentary memories as his eyes slid away. Wayland made himself pause before each of the other cases, though, trying to limit his observations to pure aesthetics.

It wasn’t easy. The style of these pieces—mostly jewelry or small figurines—had a cumulative effect on the imagination. Engaging with the design flow of a single Object sent ice prickles down his spine. Watching that same flow twist and twine between Objects did something else entirely. He became aware how relentlessly aquatic it was, ebbing and pulsing in an ageless rhythm which was subtly wrong. Offbeat from any human rhythm, even that of his heart.

“You’re beginning to feel it now, aren’t you?”

Wayland flinched. The docent’s face, isolated by the general murkiness, floated near his left shoulder. She resembled a swimmer emerging from night water, her eyes bulging with exertion. Lips parted to breathe, revealing…

…white white teeth, tinier and sharper and way too many more than any girl’s…laughing silently at him even as he did what he’d done in anger. What he would deny doing at all later, and later still make himself forget…

“Yes.”

The word emerged without volition. It too floated in the dark between them, confirming something hidden beyond language.

Wayland stared past her at the next case. Staggered glass shelves held half a dozen small white-gold figurines. Any pattern here—of those shelves or of the Objects themselves—would have to be human, the work of some museum employee. Safe.

That security lasted all of two seconds as he took in the details of the topmost statuette.

Then he glanced away, dry-mouthed, for the exit.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

Damn. The docent was still there, goggling at him in the murk. She had remarkably ugly eyes: puglike or maybe froglike, with a flat, cold curiosity.

“Just wondering what time it was getting to be,” he lied. “Seems like I’ve been here a while, and it’s a pretty intense experience.”

She nodded. “There’s one larger piece you ought to see, though. Its design flow is…extraordinary. A multi-figure grouping with complex mythic structure, and the finest coral work in this exhibit.”

Sweat broke on his forehead as she mentioned the coral. Still, there was no turning away from those eyes—or their unspoken challenge. Wayland disliked women who challenged him. Fists clenched at his sides, he asked where this marvelous piece was and why it didn’t appear on the exhibit posters.

The docent shrugged and gestured left toward a deep alcove.

Wayland scowled, annoyed at having overlooked it himself. Without thanking her, he headed for that oblong of darker shadow, trying to ignore his shoes squishing in the carpet.

Wet carpet and damp air, despite the prominent warning on that dehumidifier. Worse, the carpet exuded an unpleasant vegetative smell, like something long dead on a beach. Was the curator an idiot? After he saw this “complex mythic structure,” he was heading downstairs to complain.

The alcove was longer than it had looked from outside—and darker. He squinted around for any sign of another large display case.

When his foot hit the tiny switch concealed by the carpet, it took him a few seconds to connect that click with the rising light up ahead. Not a spotlight, exactly, but a series of tiny recessed spots, each illuminating the target briefly before winking out again. The flickering effect resembled candles seen through water.

Long twining shadows swayed to that same rhythm on all the walls. They urged his attention forward, to the very end of what now seemed more tunnel than alcove.

Wayland gasped.

He’d been wrong about the display case. No glass glinted between him and this last, largest Object. Despite the unmistakable value of the strange whitish gold—and the coral’s fleshy masses—it stood unprotected on a block of dark stone. Raw and unpolished, that base drew the viewer’s full attention upward.

As promised, the sculpture was a multi-figure grouping. And certainly mythic, since it depicted a ritual sacrifice about to begin.

The entity Wayland had first recognized as a design element—the design element—in the misshapen tiara seemed to be the object of that sacrifice. Surging up from the rough stone, it curved its shining, sleek-muscled, and utterly inhuman body over the ritual’s participants. Arms twisted and supple as seaweed spread wide, ending in long-fingered hands with delicate webbing between the digits. Polished black coral nails scythed out from each of those digits. And its face…

Her face…

“You’re allowed to touch this one.” The docent’s voice behind him was muted but insistent, her odd accent stronger in the alcove’s hush. “In fact, you’re encouraged to. It will enhance your appreciation of the design flow.”

Even as some desperate bit of Wayland’s consciousness recoiled, he felt his feet propelling him forward. Strands of carpet clung to his ankles as he reached the base of the massive sculpture.

“If you can reach that high,” her soft voice continued, “the textural quality of the hair is quite extraordinary.”

Wayland didn’t want to reach that high. Even from here, gazing straight ahead, he could see thick ropy strands coiling down from the entity’s shoulders. Shifting light from the ceiling spots added an illusion of motion, making individual strands “flow” around the bodies of the ritualists—all female, he noted automatically. Female and either naked or getting there.

But not human. Not even remotely, despite the yammering of his hormones.

“And the sensual flow of precious metal, those flawless additions of coral…”

Wayland’s hands trembled. He remembered these feelings: desire and rage and disgust all at once, the strong hot undertow of temptation. He didn’t want to touch this sculpture. He didn’t even want to stand close to it, yet he was already here—already reaching out for the nearest gleaming gold-white form.

The taste of cheap beer and cigarette smoke filled his mouth. The docent’s voice beside him was her voice now, as his nightmares remembered it.

“I’ll see you again,” she’d whispered as he left her. At the time, half drunk himself and hoping she was worse off, he’d forced a smile. Even muttered something back, though he had no intention of revisiting that decrepit Massachusetts college town.

“That’s right. You have to touch the design flow to experience it.”

The docent’s smile flashed white in the alcove’s wavering illumination. White and sharp. As Wayland recoiled from her, turning for the exit (but where?), his left ankle twisted in the sodden carpet. He felt himself tumbling backwards, though he didn’t have far to fall. He’d already been close enough to brush one golden thigh with his fingertips.

“Iä, Hydra Mother!”

Wayland’s last coherent thought was that there had been no placard, so how the hell did she know what this sculpture depicted? Then he was falling, flowing, inexorably toward its center, where a moment ago there had been only an empty carved slab. The rest of the figures swayed outward to envelop him, then closed again into their circle which turned as the stars must…forever and forever…towards the rightness of Her dead and dreaming lord’s return.

Wayland’s scream froze deep in his lungs. His flesh writhed as the sea-change took it, turning meat to blue-veined coral—living, feeling coral—of a uniquely disturbing hue. Spread-eagled upon the sacrificial platform, bound ankle and wrist with fetters of pale oceanic gold, that material awaited only the descent of Her priestess’s gutting hook, forged in the image of the Mother’s own smallest claw.

The wait was not long.

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