The Iron Thorn

teeth. The rock disappeared into the shoggoth’s maw with a snap of gravel.

Dean worried the Lucky Strike behind his ear as the shoggoth shuddered all over like a bear waking up from a long hibernation. “Fine job, cowboy. You work to be this stupid, or is it innate?”

“It doesn’t have a brain!” Cal argued. “It’s just a dumb, deaf ball of necrovirus. Wasn’t even human once. Grew up out of the mud, like a living infection.”

I watched in fascination as the creeper of boneless, waterlogged flesh writhed over the ground where the rock had come from, seeking and searching. More eyes opened on the shoggoth’s hide, filmy and infected as the first.

“It’s blind,” I realized.

“And ancient, to get that big,” Dean said. “I’ve seen them from the air, and I’ve seen the carcasses they leave behind. You want my expert guide’s opinion, we need to stoke fires and get outta here.”

“We’ll have to find another way up to Graystone,” Cal sighed. “I knew I should have packed my road atlas. I could practice my navigation.”

“Or we could knock off pelting Ol’ Stinky here with rocks and just tiptoe on around,” Dean suggested. “If that meets with your approval, Scout Leader.”

“You know, I’ve had just about enough of you,” Cal snapped. “So far, all you’ve guided us to is a heap of trouble, and kept Aoife out in the cold and the wet.”

“Cal”—I scratched at my scar, underneath the damp wool of my school scarf—“leave me out of this.”

“We can’t just go around,” Cal growled at Dean, ignoring me completely. “Shoggoth can travel fast over ground, and then we’ll be dead, as well as trapped out here in stinking manure.”

“Here’s an idea,” Dean retorted. “Unknot your bloomers and admit that your lily-white city-boy ass doesn’t know everything.”

Behind Cal, I saw black in the corner of my vision, windy-twisty black that sought warm skin and bone with a sharp, hungry mouth.

“Cal.” I raised my numb finger and pointed.

“Aoife, I won’t be shouted down this time,” he snapped. “You’re smart for a girl, but this was a rash idea and I’m sorry I let you talk me into it. Now I’m leaving this shyster, going into Arkham and catching a jitney for home, and you’re coming with me. I have a responsibility.”

The tentacle from the mass of rotting muscle reared as it caught Cal’s scent, and bore down on him. I lunged, planting my hands against the rough wool of his coat and shoving with my whole weight. “Cal, watch out!”

In the instant Cal and I touched, the shoggoth struck.

I felt the freeze and smelled the stench of dead orchids rotting in hothouse dirt. The teeth bit into my skin, straight through my clothes, and pain slashed my sight and breath to ribbons.

I fell, hitting hard on frozen ground, and scrabbled for purchase as the shoggoth dragged me backward. I kicked at it, but that did all the good of kicking a pile of vulcanized raincoats—the thing was rubbery and solid, inexorable and hungry.

I felt my skin burning as the shoggoth’s mouths ate through the layers of my clothes, heard a low sizzle like slow-frying bacon. I kicked and scratched at it, sloughing off chunks of rotted hide under my nails. I caught a frozen furrow in the ground and held on for dear life as the shoggoth dragged me toward its mass, all its eyes clustered together now and staring at me sightlessly. Blood from under my nails sank into the earth, and I’m sure I screamed.

Through the pain came a buzzing, a humming of locusts or bird’s hearts, speaking to me inside the deep, secret place of dreams.

So sweet so sweet meat so sweet blood blood condemned blood hot fresh meat …

My eyes flew open. Not my eyes. The shoggoth’s eyes. I saw the shoggoth’s visions. I was the shoggoth.

I saw everything at once, a screaming void of black, a field of starry flowers whiter than snow on a dead man’s skin. A great Engine of black iron that ground gears and belched smoke into a sky stained red by a double sunset. I heard the crack of a whip and I shuddered and mewled, forced across barren earth while ice clawed at my soft underbelly. The world was white, entombed in ice, and my brothers built a great stone city on the bones of brick and steel. I knew this skyline. I knew the river that churned red, naked fleshy corpses bobbing on the tide. The spires of Lovecraft lay reduced to blood-colored ash, and all around me tall white figures held whips, glaring at me from solid blue and silver eyes.…

I was floating in a void; no, a sea; no, a great birthing tank, watched by men in black uniforms, jagged silver lightning bolts on their collars, skull pins on their peaked caps.

I slithered through grasses the color of bruises and decay while the white figures loosed their great hounds with fire for eyes to hunt me.

I writhed on sand as sailors sank harpoons into me and a pair of men in black coats watched the carnage of my brothers and sisters, the red tide that pushed us onto this foreign shore, where everything tasted like ash and smoke.

My own voice rolled over the tableau of slaughter, and the sailors grabbed their heads, twitching and losing their minds from the very sound.

Help me help me see us see the lost see the forgotten spill the sweet blood set us free send us home …

The shoggoth howled and my eyes flew open to find Dean standing above me, wreathed in a halo of mist. He lifted his fist and brought it down. His knife flashed, again and again, hacking at the shoggoth’s creeper. Black-green blood the consistency of motor oil watered the ground, eating away the topsoil, sending foul sulfuric smoke into the air.

“Get off her,” Dean growled. He locked his long artful fingers around my good arm and pulled, hefting me easily and hauling me over the stone wall, away from the moaning, rippling shoggoth. It was thrashing in a fit, eyes rolling and blinking all over its hide, masses of creepers growing and retreating in every direction as it bled ichor into the field.

Dean gathered me against him. “I’ve got you, Aoife.” His smell of leather and tobacco made my head spin. Dean whispered against my ear. “I’ve got you.”

“It—it talked to me,” I jittered. My skirt and jumper were soaked with melted frost, and trickles of my own blood painted a road map down my arm and over my palm where my blouse had torn away. “The shoggoth. Talked to me …”

Dean snapped his fingers at Cal. “Kid. You got a clean bandanna in that scout pack?”

Cal just stared at the darkening wool of my jumper, his hands slack at his sides, tongue creeping out to catch between his front teeth.

“Doorstop.” Dean’s voice could have drawn blood. “She needs help, double-quick time. You want to gawk, buy a ticket.”

Cal came back to life and dug into his kit bag, drawing out a pristine red bandanna, still with the paper band from the department store around it. He tossed it underhand at Dean, who snatched it out of the air, a cotton bird interrupted in flight.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Aoife,” Dean said as he slid his hand under my jumper, under my blouse, and pressed the cloth against my torn skin. “I’m thinking only the purest of thoughts.”

The pressure of his hand triggered a fresh wave of pain-fueled giddiness. I danced on air, the world a painting that melted off its canvas before my eyes. Looking through the shoggoth’s eyes had been real, too real and too visceral to escape, but this felt like a dream, the kind I lied to Dr. Portnoy about, and I panicked, thrashing against Dean’s touch. I just wanted the pain to stop.

“Hey.” Dean snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Stay with me, Aoife. Still and steady, and you’ll be right as rain.”

“Is she …” Cal’s words twisted down a long and cavernous passage to my ears. “Is she … viral? If she changes …”

“I’m not …” My tongue was thick, and speaking made my head pound, but I found the swirling, twirling