Memories of Leng

Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except for perhaps the original characters. The horror of Lovecraft, the iron-thewed action of Howard and the wonder of Clark Ashton Smith all belong to their respective wordsmiths, with all other characters and creations belonging to theirs (except for my main characters, of course).

Synopsis: Joseph goes on the hunt under the shadow of fear, an eldritch sacrifice arrives amid rumors of tragedy… and new revelations about a member of the party emerge.

Spoonbill Village,

Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam

July 2, 2011

Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. "So, how do you like things so far?" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.

"Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant." Joseph thought on something. "I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude."

It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. "There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?"

"You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?" Joseph suddenly stopped. "What are they, anyway?"

Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. "When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about." Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.

Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. "How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates."

Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. "From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. "She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know."

"Really?" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.

"Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well." Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.

Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. "Why would you ask me if I knew…" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. "Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?"

Marie stopped as well. "It's not unknown to happen, you know." Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. "Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know." Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the "visitors" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.

Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. "Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me."

"Wait, those two… they're together?" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.

"Intimately so, yes." This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. "Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it."

Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. "And what did they say?" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.

If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.

Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'." He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. "The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine." With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. "Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen."

Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. "Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out."

And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. "Is that a Hotchkiss?" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.

"An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it." Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. "Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?"

"There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this." Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?

Where did they get all these guns?

b15 minutes Later/b

Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.

Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.

"And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there." Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.

"Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here." Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. "So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it." Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.

Tracy grinned bitterly. "I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan." Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. "I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat."

Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. "The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations."

Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. "I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look."

Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. "My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse." She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. "That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?" Tracy shrugged. "Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks."

Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. "Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak." The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.

"Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced." Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.

At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. "Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?"

Tracy shook her head. "No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey." Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. "Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide." She looked towards Marie. "Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all."

"You'd be surprised, actually." Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.

That evening

Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him "master of the pit" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.

Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.

He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.

When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.

As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. "What is it?" Marie asked her boyfriend.

Joseph sighed. "When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?"

"Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden." Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.

But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.

Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. "We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..." Here, he lowered his voice "One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled."

Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. "Is there anything else?" Marie asked quietly.

Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. "Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum."

Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. "Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce."

At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.