Earth and Sun, Moon and Stars

by Rudi Dornemann

Great Aunt Marion’s daughter has been selling the land off lot by lot since the early 90’s. Fortunately, there isn’t a house on the prescribed spot — not much anyone can do with a ravine that steep and muddy. Which is good, since the will is very detailed and very clear that we have follow Marion’s instructions exactly.

We had to climb over a fence, but we’re used to that from past years. I turned around by habit, soon as I was over, caught the bag of masks Annette threw over. Roy caught the bundle of robes.

Glenna tapped her watch. We started up the leaf-crunching path.

The cauldron was still there; which was good, since it had been a hassle lugging it in the first year after the fence.

I always plan to review my lines for weeks ahead of time. I never wind up reading it until the night before, and stay up late cramming. It works. Once we start, the words just flow.

On the drive up, Roy passed around a script he found online, a different version than the one in the yellow-paged paperbacks Marion left us. The words seemed pretty much the same, some phrases a little old-fashioned and too poetic. The illustrations showed the moon short like Glenna, like Marion, while the sun had Annette’s height and her way of looking elegant even robed and masked. Our books just had words.
Glenna nodded at the exact moment of sunset.

“I wait, invisible,” said Roy. It’s a good thing he just stands in the cauldron and doesn’t go anywhere, since his mask is a silver-speckled black plate, with no holes even for his eyes.

“In the west, I lay down, ” said Annette, crouching with a swirl of velvet.

“While I, in the east, stand up,” said Glenna. She mimed her arms in a crescent like the internet woodcut.
I had a frozen, mind-blank moment, like I always do, then the words came off my tongue, reliable as ever: “The spheres reel in motion, but I am still. I watch all, and nod slumberward.”

Not the usual words, I realized, but the new/old internet version.

“Damn,” said Glenna.

The cauldron cracked with a sound like a gong, and Roy was gone. We heard car alarms, dogs howling, and people shouting in all those new houses. Above us, the sky was full of unfamiliar stars.

Bah, bah black goat

by David

I scream
the musical breath of trees
their limb-rending dance

That dang thousand-legged monster, squatting in the woods out past Coaling. Been there since the tornado went through, or maybe the storm released it from some Paleolithic prison. Started small, at any rate, and the first I saw of it was a peculiar letter to the newspaper from some feller lived out that way. Not really a letter, it was a haiku. Kind of disturbing. I remember thinking he must have been on some kind of hallucinogen. I had a professional interest; trained as a forester at Auburn, though I work as a real estate appraiser now. So I drove out there on my next day off, those winding roads, overhung with trees, they make Midwesterners claustrophobic. Not me, but something about the woods that day did make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I parked out by Lake Lurleen and walked the trail that goes all the way around. It’s been closed since the tornado; part of it got blown away, they claim. The trees tossed in a stiff breeze that didn’t penetrate to ground level. I didn’t see any washouts, the path was clear, but I did hear distant shouting, or singing; maybe chanting, carried on that unfelt wind. I struck off uphill into the woods, but never did find where the sound was coming from. Started to get dark and I began to hear things shuffling in the leaves. Sounded too big to be coons or possums. I got spooked, headed back home.

oak-leaf crown
on her belly the ebon
hoof and snout of God

It all fell apart after that. The freakish weather, people cleared out or disappeared, something happening in the woods west of the lake, two deputies gone out to investigate but they never come back. Sheriff wouldn’t do nothin’ after that. I went out there again myself. Looking for something, the heart of this thing, its root cause. Oh yeah, I found it. Found the little clearing, the black hoofprints burned into the dirt, and all the time the trees moving in a wind I couldn’t feel. Found the Mother too, poor thing; think I was supposed to. I’ll do for her as I can, and what I must, when it’s her time. I have seen the future, and I know what side my bread is buttered on. My advice? Go to ground. Stay out of the woods.

the Young come
and they will hunger
Iä, Shub-niggurath, baby
The end