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Index
When Jessamine had been alive, the amorphous, cat-sized ball of tentacles and eyes that she had named ‘Squidgy’ had been in her arms, on her lap, or at her side; since the catastrophe that had killed her and all of Arkham, Massachusetts, Squidgy hadn’t let anyone touch him, and he’d also gotten bigger. Sometimes he was angry, angry enough to lash out at anything within reach—
But he never did.
Mommy taught him that it was important to understand your power, and to never, ever strike out at somebody smaller than you.
Everyone was smaller than Squidgy.
And, anyway, these were Mommy’s family. She had only met them at the wedding, but they had made her so happy, and made her feel so safe, and Squidgy couldn’t hurt them.
There were so few people that had made Mommy feel happy and safe.
But keeping himself from lashing out was so hard, it took all the meagre strength he had left, leaving nothing for anything else.
But Mommy’s Family tried anyway. They were kind, like Mommy. They tried. They sat near him, and they read to him from Mommy’s books that she used to read to him, and they tried to counsel him, and he came to know them, even though he could not bring himself to say anything, because everything reminded him of Mommy, he reminded himself of Mommy.
They called it Grief. They said it was something that did not heal exactly, but it changed, and that there was no hurry, that they would remain, and keep offering anything they could.
Squidgy often wished he had also died, with Mommy and her husband. He wasn’t ever sure why he felt that would have helped.
And then someone new came into his room, someone that echoed with a voice he understood, though he had only heard the language in his deepest dreams.
Aix had expected a flurry of confusing and overstimulating introductions, but when Victoria arrived, there was only a very tall, pallid man who answered the door with a sepulchral rumble. Victoria smiled at him.
‘Hello, Coffin! This is Mr Aix.’
‘Miss Victoria. Mr Aix.’ Coffin rumbled, and opened the door for them. Aix waited for Victoria to wheel in, then followed; they’d foregone their rollator, not only because of still feeling weird about using it, like they was somehow ‘faking’ even though that made very little sense, but also because they only really needed it to sit when there were no chairs in easy reach, and since staying with the Blackstones, they’d never needed to be in such situations.
They sat down on a lovely red velvet chair by a fireplace in the foyer, which was magnificently preserved from years of continuous use and maintaining, and looked around. The manor was a Second Empire house that had spared no expense either in the architecture or the furnishings, all exquisitely-carved old oak and sumptuous wallpaper in the sort of layers of era that said people with the same taste had lived here continuously for two centuries. The fireplace had a magnificent Art Nouveau style Mouth Of Hell figural fireback and mantel, which Aix had always coveted, and the chair they were in was immensely comfortable.
There was a soft keening that echoed weirdly from all around them, and Victoria startled.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, trying not to sound too excited. ‘That was Squidgy. Come on, he must be reacting to you.’
She started down the hall—Aix noticed that there had been one thing that had obviously been remodelled about the house: there were no longer any thresholds between rooms, or steps. Instead, the floors had all been re-done seamlessly to flatten the grading or incorporate shallow ramps, and there was no Victorian clutter of furniture in the hallway, only paintings of gothic nightscapes, or portraiture of ancestors, mounted on the walls in relatively simple frames that were fastened un-historically flush to the wallpaper. It spoke quietly of love and respect for Victoria, and for anyone else that might need extra-clear pathways to move. It was welcoming.
‘He hasn’t said anything in years, you understand,’ Victoria went on, as Aix followed her down the wide hallway, to an elevator behind the stairs, made to be of a piece with the house, even though elevators didn’t exist during the Second Empire era. It spoke, again, quietly of love and care, in the way that so many things about Victoria—and her family—already did.
Victoria opened the elevator, going in and closing the grate, then the door, pulling the lever down.
‘I thought he might find you interesting,’ Victoria said. ‘He’s been utterly silent with grief for my entire lifetime, and longer. Now… now, I don’t want to expect anything of him, but we’ve got to at least see him, and give him a chance to converse with you.’ The elevator stopped one floor down as she finished speaking.
This time, Aix opened the elevator for her. It opened to a dark basement that smelled of damp and dust, and Aix felt strangely unafraid. Soft lamps with their shades pointing their light to reflect off the wall lit up in the four corners of the room, so it was dim but visible. It revealed a dark but clean stone room, and wrought-iron railing surrounding a void in the floor. From the reflections off the walls, and the sound of water, it was a pool.
‘Hello, Squidge!’ Victoria called out jovially, as she left the elevator. ‘How’s tricks, old man?’
Victoria had locked her chair and pushed up to her feet, leaning on the railing and reaching out a hand toward a black tendril waving vaguely above the waterline. ‘I’ve brought a friend, they’ve found one of your cousins, I thought you might like to meet them.’
Aix leaned carefully on the railing, reaching out too. ‘Hi, Squidgy, I’m Aix,’ they said, quietly. ‘Grief’s an old friend of mine, too.’
The tendril felt wet, and very real, very solid, and very ordinary, just like any other animal. Their closest frame of reference Aix had in their experience was a snake, without bones, that had froggish skin. Gradually, Aix felt something that was like a bead sliding down the tendril, and when it reached near the tip, an eye opened.
‘Hey, starshine,’ Aix said, holding very still, speaking softly. ‘Can you do the mind-meld thing too, huh? You wanna see the cousin I’ve been flirting with?’
A sort of listless feeling, that Aix recognised was Squidgy’s emotion, not their own. ‘I know, buddy,’ Aix replied, ‘but I promise, distracting yourself, or being curious, isn’t gonna disrespect the memory of your lost loved one. Two conflicting ideas can exist at the same time. Example: right now, I’m a scared of this guy I met, but I’m also excited to meet him.’
Aix wasn’t sure if talking about the things they’d learned in dialectical therapy was the right thing to do, here; but then again, they’d never really known how to respond to the grief of other people.
Immense grief, and gratitude, and query. Aix reached out their other hand to stroke at the tendril wound around their hand and wrist gently. ‘Yeah,’ they said, ‘you can be grieving your loss, but also grateful for something else, such as…’ they took a stab in the dark, ‘the love and comfort of your family.’
The idea of family offering emotional comfort was as alien to Aix as the creature they were talking to, let alone the idea of being allowed to mourn openly; but that was why Aix was a goth, really—they knew the damage that the shame-borne closeting of death did to a community. They tried to clearly picture images of the various ways humans mourned their dead, and tried to imagine those ideas being offered to Squidgy, as a sort of empathy and possibly suggestion. ‘Humans do a lot of different things to ease the pain of grief,’ Aix said softly, ‘we call it mourning.’
They also tried to impress that they were only explaining because they had never been taught this, and didn’t want anybody feeling the pain of grieving without knowing what mourning was, or the different ways to do it.
And, without being able to help it, they also thought about how Big Guy had reacted to hearing about Squidgy—the idea that Squidgy had a kinsman that wanted to look in on him, to make sure he was all right, and perhaps would be able to help him by simply being of the same kind.
Aix woke up with a start and the smell of blood in their nose again, and the feeling of ice on the back of their neck. They were still in the basement, but sitting down in a wicker chair that hadn’t been there before, an ageless woman with a severe beauty Aix associated with their own Italian people pulling her long white hand away, an ice cube in it.
‘There we are,’ she said, in the kind of beautifully textured, low voice that could only be had after a woman reached a certain age. She offered a sensible black handkerchief that was hand-monogrammed with an S.
‘Ah jeez, I zoned out again?’ Aix muttered, their voice muffled by the handkerchief.
‘It’s perfectly understandable,’ she said, patting Aix’s arm the same way Victoria did. ‘It seems you were just what dear Cousin Squidgy needed to renew his interest in the world. We’re all very grateful for that.’
Squidgy keened softly, a feeling of concern and apology directed toward Aix; and Aix reflected that, once again, it wasn’t an otherworldly sound at all, it sounded like a perfectly normal animal noise, like a whale of some kind, not alien at all. Lovecraft, you over-civilised dumbass, Aix thought to themself for the nth time.
‘Um, thank you. Where’s Victoria?’ Aix asked, worried, then felt guilty. ‘Sorry. I’m Aix, you probably know that.’
‘Sitrinne Averay,’ she said. ‘Victoria is upstairs. She roused before you did; shall we to the dining room?’
It was about then that Aix realised the chair they were in was a wheelchair, a sort of compact version of the fancy one. They weren’t used to controlling one, and had long the impression they were difficult, too heavy and athletic for someone with loose joints like theirs; but they tried anyway, and found it was shockingly easy, not at all heavy. They looked back toward the pool.
‘Uh, see you round, hon,’ they said, softly, before following Mrs Averay to the elevator. ‘Is Victoria… okay?’ they asked.
‘She was more concerned about you, my dear. You’re newer to being a medium than she is.’ She opened the elevator’s doors once it stopped, and waited for Aix to wheel themself out into the hall, closing the door before leading him. She wore a hobble skirt, but despite that, her steps made her glide, and rather quickly too. Aix marvelled at it, but also wondered if it were vaguely supernatural.
‘I’m still not sure I am, though I suppose that counts as me Refusing The Call,’ Aix paused, and then realised that was a bit obscure. Something about Mrs Averay’ elegance and gothic beauty was making everything they said feel like it sounded stupid.
‘It’s quite sensible of you,’ she said in her breathy, low voice, ‘The sort of medium that views it as a blessing usually dies rather young.’
‘The whole “Sign of a true king is his reluctance to be king” trope?’
‘Exactement.’ She opened the carved wooden pocket doors to a dining room, Victoria sitting at the table with a few other people, many of whom shared features with her, and all of whom were wearing black in various forms. Aix felt suddenly shy, faced with all of these new people. There was a space right next to Victoria at the table, and Aix wheeled in next to her, glad they could be near the one person they knew.
‘So,’ Victoria said, as she passed Aix the bread basket, ‘your young man is Cthulhu.’
Aix paused, red glass goblet of water halfway to their mouth. ‘Helluvan opener,’ they commented. ‘How did you figure that out? I mean… I didn’t want to assume anything, and I never ask a strange being’s name.’
‘Squidgy showed me,’ Victoria said.
‘You’re quite impressive, old man!’ said a dapper man at the head of the table, as Mrs Averay sat down on the other end of the table. Aix’s knowledge of formalities identified him, from where he was sitting alone, as Gaspar Averay, the current patriarch; just like his wife, his age was unclear.
Aix knew they didn’t blush visibly, but they nonetheless felt the same emotion, looking at the patterns on their waterglass and not knowing what to say, not wanting to screw this up. ‘Well,’ they heard themself say, ‘I did cut five pounds of flesh off myself a few years ago and sacrificed it to Apollo.’
Because that’s in the realm of ‘not screwing this up’, Aix, argh.
The reaction, though, was enthusiastically positive.
‘I like this one, Vicky!’ said a raspy-voiced bald man across from Victoria. ‘Where did she find you?’ he asked Aix.
‘In a desert,’ Aix answered.
‘It is so refreshing to know there are young people in the world carrying on the old traditions,’ Sitrinne said. ‘More bouillabaisse, Atticus?’ she asked a man with large silver eyes and long red hair that looked damp.
‘Please,’ he said in the most beautiful voice Aix had ever heard.
Over the course of the meal, Aix learned everyone’s names and relations—though that was a little tricky, because Victoria had three parents, and—this being an old aristocratic family—two of them were cousins, which meant Mrs Averay was both her step-grandmother and her great-aunt. Aix was rather fascinated, though they knew enough not to actually say that.
Atticus, apparently, was a merrow old enough to remember the Great Interior Seaway. The bald man was his husband, Furfur Averay, who—along with his older brother Gaspar—was a pyrotech (as a hobby, of course—these were aristocrats, they didn’t work), and Aix happily spoke with them for a good while about such things, being that Aix’s father had been a pyrotech as well.
They were quite interested in Aix—in their name, in their powers, in almost anything they had to say. It was addictive, that kind of regard, because Aix had never had it, not like this. Not from people like this. They almost expected themself to burst into tears, but was glad when they didn’t.
After dinner, the secondary reason Victoria had brought them up here became apparent when they led Aix into an enormous library that took up the entirety of the five-storey tower. The only windows were four circular ones in the bell-shaped roof, the rest lit by bioluminescent blue lanterns.
It was about then that Aix realised the house was without electricity entirely; it was so very quiet, and soothingly dark, and all they could think of was Victoria blandly saying that her aunt Jess and uncle Percy had both probably been autistic. Was… was this one of those families were everyone was autistic, and being otherwise was unusual?
‘The Star-People have been of interest to us since my dear sister Ophelia married that nice Blackstone boy,’ Mrs Averay said, pulling an old document from a large cedar map chest, Coffin clearing off the large old drafting table for her. It was an enormous piece of thick parchment, or possibly very good linen paper, and the diagram on it looked similar to, but wasn’t, a sephiroth. She spread it out, Atticus helping with the other end, and Coffin winding the table’s crank after they clipped it down so that Victoria and Aix could see it without having to stand.
There were circles, and neat handwriting of many different eras—Aix saw Spencerian, but also the less spidery Palmer and even D’nealian and copperplate, with the large names at the top of each circle in careful Italic script. It was breath-taking, even before taking into account the amount of knowledge it compiled.
‘This is a copy from Miskatonic’s archives,’ Victoria told Aix. ‘We’ve added to it, over the years.’ She got out a laser pointer from her jacket’s inside pocket and pointed out the circle marked ‘Cthulhu’, which did not have a symbol, like some of the other circles did. ‘We’ve never gotten a symbol for Cthulhu, though he’s spoken of a lot in various sources. The symbol on the chains…’ she pointed to the circle marked ‘Azathoth’, ‘It was that one.’
‘Yeah!’ Aix said, ‘yeah, it was wiggly, I didn’t remember that when I was drawing it. Wait… so he actually contacted you too?’
‘No, no,’ Victoria said, turning the laser off. ‘Squidgy showed me what you showed him of your memories. There’s things I could recognise—the statue with four arms, that looks like a Nazgûl? That’s Hastur.’
Aix narrowed their eyes a bit, puzzled. ‘Hastur’s a Christian demon, a… duke of Hell, isn’t he?’ Aix recalled this mostly from reading Good Omens.
‘Christians are little packrats, they steal from everything,’ Mrs Averay said, with a bit of cirrus in her tones.
‘I mean, true,’ Aix admitted, chuckling. ‘Lilith, Ba’al, Persephone… I guess it’s not weird that Hastur’s one of the Star-People. Gosh that sounds so poetic. Star-People. I wonder why there was a statue of him, though. What’s he about?’
‘He likes yellow, for some reason. Whether he’s related to Cthulhu, or is an enemy, or is even benevolent and set against the supposedly malicious Azathoth and his court, is never clear,’ Atticus said, always eager to teach.
‘Maybe he’s a Trickster god,’ Aix said thoughtfully, thinking of Loki. The pause that answered this told them it hadn’t been as easy a connection to make as they’d assumed. ‘…What?’
‘Nobody ever thought of that, before,’ Victoria said, with a faint smile in her voice.
‘Well—but—there’s always got to be a Trickster. Someone who shakes up the status quo, who pokes the Rules and questions authority. You can’t have a society without one of those, really.’ Aix didn’t know why they felt like they’d said something wrong and had to defend themself, exactly, other than having no other point of reference for how stating their opinion usually went.
Victoria touched Aix’s arm, gently. ‘You’re not in trouble, darling; I bought you here specifically because of your insight.’ It was clear to Victoria that poor Aix had likely never had anyone value their opinions, or consider them intellectually equal.
‘If Hastur is a Trickster entity, and is the statue facing Cthulhu in the temple entrance…’ Atticus said thoughtfully. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’
‘It could be a joke,’ Aix suggested. ‘I mean… let me back up: he’s there because somebody chained him up and was like, “…and you’re gonna stay tied up until you convince one of the humans to have sex with you”.’
‘Oh my,’ Mrs Averay said, arching a brow and giving the tiniest curve of smile, looking over the not-sephiroth.
‘It’s the final exam for his immersive foreign language degree or whatever.’
Victoria started laughing so hard she nearly fell out of her chair. Aix was pleased to be on a roll—making people laugh in this fashion was still somewhat novel and gender-affirming—but was still a little nervous making bawdy jokes in front of somebody like Sitrinne.
‘You shall have to be sure and pack your toy-box, then,’ Mrs Averay said, putting paid to that anxiety, with such timing that Aix burst out laughing.
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