Smoke and Mirrors

Ben went over to the barmaid, planning to ask her for two pints of Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar and a glass of water for himself, only to find she had already poured three pints of the dark beer. Well, he thought, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and he was certain it couldn’t be worse than the cherryade. He took a sip. The beer had the kind of flavor which, he suspected, advertisers would describe as full-bodied, although if pressed they would have to admit that the body in question had been that of a goat.

He paid the barmaid and maneuvered his way back to his new friends.

“So. What you doin’ in Innsmouth?” asked the taller of the two. “I suppose you’re one of our American cousins, come to see the most famous of English villages.”

“They named the one in America after this one, you know,” said the smaller one.

“Is there an Innsmouth in the States?” asked Ben.

“I should say so,” said the smaller man. “He wrote about it all the time. Him whose name we don’t mention.”

“I’m sorry?” said Ben.

The little man looked over his shoulder, then he hissed, very loudly, “H. P. Lovecraft!”

“I told you not to mention that name,” said his friend, and he took a sip of the dark brown beer. “H. P. Lovecraft. H. P. bloody Lovecraft. H. bloody P. bloody Love bloody craft.” He stopped to take a breath. “What did he know. Eh? I mean, what did he bloody know?”

Ben sipped his beer. The name was vaguely familiar; he remembered it from rummaging through the pile of old-style vinyl LPs in the back of his father’s garage. “Weren’t they a rock group?”

“Wasn’t talkin’ about any rock group. I mean the writer.”

Ben shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him,” he admitted. “I really mostly only read Westerns. And technical manuals.”

The little man nudged his neighbor. “Here. Wilf. You hear that? He’s never heard of him.”

“Well. There’s no harm in that. I used to read that Zane Grey,” said the taller.

“Yes. Well. That’s nothing to be proud of. This bloke—what did you say your name was?”

“Ben. Ben Lassiter. And you are . . . ?”

The little man smiled; he looked awfully like a frog, thought Ben. “I’m Seth,” he said. “And my friend here is called Wilf.”

“Charmed,” said Wilf.

“Hi,” said Ben.

“Frankly,” said the little man, “I agree with you.”

“You do?” said Ben, perplexed.

The little man nodded. “Yer. H. P. Lovecraft. I don’t know what the fuss is about. He couldn’t bloody write.” He slurped his stout, then licked the foam from his lips with a long and flexible tongue. “I mean, for starters, you look at them words he used. Eldritch. You know what eldritch means?”

Ben shook his head. He seemed to be discussing literature with two strangers in an English pub while drinking beer. He wondered for a moment if he had become someone else, while he wasn’t looking. The beer tasted less bad, the farther down the glass he went, and was beginning to erase the lingering aftertaste of the cherryade.

“Eldritch. Means weird. Peculiar. Bloody odd. That’s what it means. I looked it up. In a dictionary. And gibbous?”

Ben shook his head again.

“Gibbous means the moon was nearly full. And what about that one he was always calling us, eh? Thing. Wossname. Starts with a b. Tip of me tongue . . .”

“Bastards?” suggested Wilf.

“Nah. Thing. You know. Batrachian. That’s it. Means looked like frogs.”

“Hang on,” said Wilf. “I thought they was, like, a kind of camel.”

Seth shook his head vigorously. “S’definitely frogs. Not camels. Frogs.”

Wilf slurped his Shoggoth’s. Ben sipped his, carefully, without pleasure.

“So?” said Ben.

“They’ve got two humps,” interjected Wilf, the tall one.

“Frogs?” asked Ben.

“Nah. Batrachians. Whereas your average dromederary camel, he’s only got one. It’s for the long journey through the desert. That’s what they eat.”

“Frogs?” asked Ben.

“Camel humps.” Wilf fixed Ben with one bulging yellow eye. “You listen to me, matey-me-lad. After you’ve been out in some trackless desert for three or four weeks, a plate of roasted camel hump starts looking particularly tasty.”

Seth looked scornful. “You’ve never eaten a camel hump.”

“I might have done,” said Wilf.

“Yes, but you haven’t. You’ve never even been in a desert.”

“Well, let’s say, just supposing I’d been on a pilgrimage to the Tomb of Nyarlathotep . . . ”

“The black king of the ancients who shall come in the night from the east and you shall not know him, you mean?”

“Of course that’s who I mean.”

“Just checking.”

“Stupid question, if you ask me.”

“You could of meant someone else with the same name.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a common name, is it? Nyarlathotep.

There’s not exactly going to be two of them, are there? ‘ Hullo, my name’s Nyarlathotep, what a coincidence meeting you here, funny them bein’ two of us,’ I don’t exactly think so. Anyway, so I’m trudging through them trackless wastes, thinking to myself, I could murder a camel hump . . . ”

“But you haven’t, have you? You’ve never been out of Innsmouth harbor.”

“Well . . . No.”

“There.” Seth looked at Ben triumphantly. Then he leaned over and whispered into Ben’s ear, “He gets like this when he gets a few drinks into him, I’m afraid.”

“I heard that,” said Wilf.

“Good,” said Seth. “Anyway. H. P. Lovecraft. He’d write one of his bloody sentences. Ahem. ‘The gibbous moon hung low over the eldritch and batrachian inhabitants of squamous Dulwich.’ What does he mean, eh? What does he mean? I’ll tell you what he bloody means. What he bloody means is that the moon was nearly full, and everybody what lived in Dulwich was bloody peculiar frogs. That’s what he means.”

“What about the other thing you said?” asked WIlf.

“What?”

“Squamous. Wossat mean, then?”

Seth shrugged. “Haven’t a clue,” he admitted. “But he used it an awful lot.” There was another pause.