New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird by Kim Newman, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Charles Stross, Cherie Priest, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Sarah Monette, Michael Marshall Smith, Paula Guran Read Free Book Online Page A

thing sprouting from the base of the coccyx and reaching halfway to the bend of the subject’s knees. As I have said, Pickman had a flare for realism, and his eye for human anatomy was almost as uncanny as the ghouls and demons he painted. I pointed to one of the sketches, to the tail.
    “That isn’t artistic license, is it?”
    She did not look back to the two drawings, but simply, slowly, shook her head. “I had the surgery done in Jersey, back in ’21,” she said.
    “Why did you wait so long, Lily? It’s my understanding that such a defect is usually corrected at birth, or shortly thereafter.”
    And she almost smiled that smile again, that hungry, savage smile, but it died, incomplete, on her lips.
    “My father, he has his own ideas about such things,” she said quietly. “He was always so proud, you see, that his daughter’s body was blessed with evidence of her heritage. It made him very happy.”
    “Your heritage . . . ” I began, but Lily Snow held up her left hand, silencing me.
    “I believe, sir, I’ve answered enough questions for one afternoon. Especially given that you have only the pair, and that you did not tell me that was the case when we spoke.”
    Reluctantly, I nodded and passed both the sketches to her. She took them, thanked me, and stood up, brushing at a bit of lint or dust on her burgundy chemise. I told her that I regretted that the others were not in my possession, that it had not even occurred to me she would have posed for more than these two. The last part was a lie, of course, as I knew Pickman would surely have made as many studies as possible when presented with so unusual a body.
    “I can show myself out,” she informed me when I started to get up from my chair. “And you will not disturb me again, not ever.”
    “No,” I agreed. “Not ever. You have my word.”
    “You’re lying sons of bitches, the whole lot of you,” she said, and with that, the living ghost of Vera Endecott turned and left the parlor. A few seconds later, I heard the door open and slam shut again, and I sat there in the wan light of a fading day, looking at what grim traces remained in Thurber’s folio.
    7. (October 24th, 1929)
    This is the last of it. Just a few more words, and I will be done. I know now that having attempted to trap these terrible events, I have not managed to trap them at all, but merely given them some new, clearer focus.
    Four days ago, on the morning of October 20th, a body was discovered dangling from the trunk of an oak growing near the center of King’s Chapel Burial Ground. According to newspaper accounts, the corpse was suspended a full seventeen feet off the ground, bound round about the waist and chest with interwoven lengths of jute rope and baling wire. The woman was identified as a former actress, Vera Endecott, née Lillian Margaret Snow, and much was made of her notoriety and her unsuccessful attempt to conceal connections to the wealthy but secretive and ill-rumored Snows of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Her body had been stripped of all clothing, disemboweled, her throat cut, and her tongue removed. He lips had been sewn shut with cat-gut stitches. About her neck hung a wooden placard, on which one word had been written in what is believed to be the dead woman’s own blood: apostate .
    This morning, I almost burned Thurber’s folio, along with all my files. I went so far as to carry them to hearth, but then my resolve faltered, and I just sat of the floor, staring at the clippings and Pickman’s sketches. I’m not sure what stayed my hand, beyond the suspicion that destroying these papers would not save my life. If they want me dead, then dead I’ll be. I’ve gone too far down this road to spare myself by trying to annihilate the physical evidence of my investigation.
    I will place this manuscript, and all the related documents I have gathered, in my safety deposit box, and then I will try to return to the life I was living before Thurber’s death. But I