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The Call	By : drowsteel Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Call of Cthulhu Views: 3040 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft

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“Where is James?”
Tabitha’s hands trembled as she clutched her revolver, pointing it at James’ face from three feet away.
Wondering if he was about to die, James forced himself to sit perfectly still. He said nothing, not sure what might set Tabitha off.
“Where is James?!” Tabitha’s voice rose to a shriek, and her hands twitched on the gun. Her face was tense and her eyes twitched, her hair matted with sweat. There was no telling what she was seeing.
From the side room, Mayumi slowly walked in with her hands raised. Tabitha’s eyes turned without moving her pistol from its course.
“Tabitha,” Mayumi said carefully, “you are not in danger.”
“What?” Tabitha looked outraged at the implication. “Don’t you see what’s happening?”
Mayumi put her hand out slowly and pushed Tabitha’s gun until it was pointing at the floor. She put her hand on Tabitha’s shoulder and rubbed it gently. “James and I are here,” she said. “No one else.”
Tabitha raised the gun again, this time pointing it at her own face. Mayumi and James grabbed her simultaneously, wrestling her to the ground as she struggled and screamed.
“They’re going to kill me!” Tabitha screamed. “Let me die! Let me die quick!”

After two days of constant watching, Tabitha had recovered enough to be left alone in a room by herself, as long as James or Mayumi were near enough to hear her if she started trying to kill herself or anyone else.
Neither James nor Mayumi had ever known Tabitha when she wasn’t under severe mental strain, this was just the first time she’d ever completely broken down. She needed professional help, probably for a long time. The problem was, she couldn’t be committed to an institution. James and Mayumi weren’t family, for one. For another, there was a very real possibility of her never coming out.

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Although the house had been empty for six months, sometimes it felt like Mary still lived there. Louis would still think he saw her in the kitchen. He still spoke aloud to her, half-expecting an answer to come from the hollow air.
Thinking about the future was the hardest. Louis wondered how many days he had left, and why he had to wait. Sometimes he cried, always in private. In public, he was the same as ever, and his neighbors remarked at how well he was doing after his wife’s death. They wouldn’t ever see him cry.
It wouldn’t do to mope forever. The knowledge that he couldn’t last forever was comforting, in its own way. Each day, Louis felt that making it to the end of the day was the only thing he had to do. His health was still good for his age, and soon it wouldn’t be.
Louis took a walk to Providence every day; only a mile, but calming and something to do. He talked to people along the way. He’d become recognizable in one corner of the city. He knew several other people by name.
He did not know the young man that approached him on the street.
“Doctor Halsie?” The blond man had a pleasant smile and spoke with a gentle English accent. Louis wondered if he’d met him before.
“I’m sorry,” Louis blinked at the man. “I’ve met you before?”
“James Weatherby,” James extended his hand. “No, you’ve never met me.”
“Ah,” Louis shook James’ hand.
“I need your help as a psychiatrist,” James began.
“Oh, no no,” Louis shook his head and started walking past James. “I’ve retired, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I know,” James walked with Louis. “It’s rather the reason I sought you out. I could buy you a biscuit and explain,” he gestured at a Starbucks. “After all, I’d be happy to accept your rejection once you fully understand my position.”
Louis considered it. He considered the empty house that waited for him. “Coffee, then,” he agreed.
“The help isn’t for me,” James started explaining as the duo walked to Starbucks. “I have a dear friend who suffered a breakdown, and whose family refuses to acknowledge.”
“Her problem, or acknowledging her at all?” Louis asked for clarification.
“The problem,” James said. “They prefer to keep her mental illness a secret. Poor thing is suicidal.”
“Are you sure it isn’t a matter of money?” Louis asked.
James held the door for Louis.
“Dead sure,” James said. “I’ve offered to pay for it. They also refuse state-sponsored commitment. It’s a stigma issue for them.”
Louis nodded. He’d heard similar stories in the past, with shocking frequency. He ordered coffee, and James paid.
“Part of the problem,” Louis said after James had explained for several more minutes, “is that I can’t possibly write prescriptions if your friend needs them.”
“Well, some therapy is better than none,” James replied. “I would at least feel more comfortable having a diagnosis.”
“What if,” Louis took a breath, “I had to recommend that she be involuntarily committed?”
James shook his head. “Impossible. Her family will sign her out right away and I’d never get to see her again.”
“That worries me,” Louis said.
“It worries me, too,” James said. “But it would be a start, and I’ll pay you your standard rate.”
Louis smirked. “My rate before retirement was one hundred and fifty dollars an hour.”
“I take it back,” James laughed before drawing out a money clip and peeling off twenty-four one-hundred dollar bills. “I told you I offered her family.”
Looking around nervously, Louis protested “Most people pay with a check.”
“I suppose that’s because they aren’t concerned with traceability, in part,” James sighed as he folded the more than two-thousand dollars in half and tucked it into Louis’ pocket.

Louis felt thrilled, but in a frightening way. He knew that more was going on than the honest looking Englishman had told him, but was excited to be part of something which was secretive and illegal. He wondered if he was going to be dealing with a Mafia daughter, in spite of the ridiculousness of the idea. Fancies kept running through his mind.
The patient arrived that afternoon, alone. She drove up and knocked on Louis’ door.
Louis tried to take everything in about his new client. She dressed all in black, with dyed-black hair that had red roots showing. She wore no makeup, and stress lines etched her face, accenting the dark circles under her eyes.
“Hello,” she said without emotion. “I’m Tabitha Curwen.”
“Come in,” Louis said with a soft smile. “I’m Doctor Halsie.”
Louis had prepared his sitting room like a therapist’s office, moving his big recliner next to a desk. He gestured for Tabitha to sit there. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“Bourbon?” Tabitha asked. “I don’t know how lucid you need me.”
“Do you drink often?” Louis asked.
“Hardly ever,” Tabitha sat down in the recliner and sank down as if exhausted.
Watching her behavior, Louis tried to decide whether it would be prudent to give Tabitha liquor. He decided that with all the other secrecy going on, it wouldn’t hurt.
Tabitha didn’t say anything as Louis set the drink down next to her. She didn’t pick up the glass, either.
As he sat down, Louis jotted down highly indifferent on his notepad.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions,” Louis said. “Is that all right?”
“Yes,” Tabitha said flatly.
“Do you feel safe here?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’m here to help you?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think you need help?”
Tabitha grinned. “Yes.”
Louis made a mark on his pad. “Do I have it in my power to help you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you feel is your biggest issue?”
“A massive cult which wants to awaken and serve a dark god,” Tabitha said, staring at the wall.
Louis didn’t write anything.
“Are you having fun with me?” Louis asked.
“No.”
Louis didn’t write that down. Her answer either crossed the line into complete psychosis, of which she didn’t readily manifest any other symptoms, or she was trying to get him to freak out over an outrageous lie. He pressed on.
“Why is that a problem for you?”
Tabitha turned her head to look at Louis for the first time since she’d sat down.
“They’re murderers,” she said.
“And they want to kill you?” he prompted.
“Yes.”
Louis tapped his notepad with his pen, a nervous habit when he was thinking hard.
“Do they have reason to?”
“Yes.”
“What is that reason?”
“They kill anyone who finds out about them,” she turned back to the wall. “That’s how they stay secret.”
On his pad, Louis jotted psychosis:unspecific.
“How many people belong to this cult?”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said. “I estimate between one and ten million, all over the world.”
“Now, when they kill people,” Louis thought the question out. “Is it a kind of ritual? Like an Incan sacrifice?”
“Incans didn’t make human sacrifice a common thing,” Tabitha replied. “But no, anyway. When they make a ritual out of it, it’s more like something Voodoun. Usually if they ambush you on their time, there’s a ritual. If they just have to kill you because you and they happen to cross paths, they’ll shoot you, stab you, whatever.”
Complex delusion went on the pad.
“Tell me this drink isn’t poisoned,” Tabitha said.
“Do you think I’m trying to poison you?”
Tabitha took the bourbon and downed it. After a second, she said “no.”
“Are you saying that in case I might turn out to be a member of the cult?”
“No,” Tabitha set the glass down. “James would have spotted you if you were. I just feel...uncomfortable.”
“James knows about the cult, too?”
“Yes.”
“You trust James?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
“He’s a great shot,” Tabitha said. “Former commando.”
“And he fights this cult?”
“Right.”
“What else?”
Tabitha shrugged. “He’s smooth. When Mayumi and me can’t talk someone into something, he can. He’s on the run from something that happened in Britain. I don’t know what.”
Notes went on the pad.
“Who is Mayumi?”
“She’s our occult specialist,” Tabitha was getting noticeably more relaxed as she continued. “She can read ancient languages and knows about magic.”
“She can cast spells?”
“She thinks so,” Tabitha answered. “All I know for sure is that she understands what the cultists are doing when they cast spells.”
“So THEY do magic.”
“Like Hoodoo.”
“Do their spells work?”
Tabitha obviously wrestled with whether or not to be truthful.
“Yes,” she said at last. “Their spells work. They can do things that stretch the boundaries of reality.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know!” Tabitha sounded angry. “I don’t know what the fuck it is! They just do...things that aren’t possible!”
“Calm down,” Louis said gently. “If you feel like I’m pressing you too much on any issue, let me know and we’ll move on.”
“Move on,” Tabitha said. “No more about magic. I don’t get it.”
“Okay,” Louis flipped the page in his notebook. “Can you tell me if you feel suicidal?”
“Yes.”
“That’s yes, you do?”
“Right.”
“If you had a gun right now, would you shoot yourself?”
“I feel good right now,” Tabitha said. “I’d probably wait until I went outside.”
“So you feel good talking about these things?”
“Yeah.”
“But you feel like killing yourself other times?”
“Yes.”
“Is it because of this cult?”
“Yes,” Tabitha said. “Because if they catch me...”
“If they catch you?” Louis prompted after Tabitha trailed off.
“I feel like you’re pressing me on the subject and want to move on,” Tabitha spoke in a nearly mechanical monotone.
“But these feelings are because you’re afraid of being captured?” Louis checked. “No other reason?”
“That’s enough of a reason.”
“Well, I would say so,” Louis scribbled notes. “But if that’s the case, why haven’t you gone through with it?”
“I’m afraid of death,” Tabitha said. “And my friends stop me from doing it.”
“James and Mayumi stop you?”
“Right.”
“Because they’re your friends.”
“No,” Tabitha said flatly. “Because they need me. Neither of them are in the U.S. legally. They’re here to fight the cult.”
“I see,” Louis didn’t know what else to say.

The next day, Louis met with James again in the morning, as they’d arranged.
“I can’t do anything for her long-term delusions,” Louis said. “Flat out, she needs extensive psychiatric treatment. What we can do is perhaps stop the suicidal aspect temporarily.”
James smiled. “Well, we take what we can get. It’s a step in the right direction.”
“Do you know what she thinks you are?” Louis asked.
“The sniper thing?” James asked.
“Okay, you do know,” Louis sighed. “She thinks you’re a former commando who helps her fight the cult which is after her.”
James nodded solemnly. “She told me that you’re only helping her because you want her to teach you spells.” James smirked.
“I wish I had my notepad,” Louis said. “Actually, your friend really does make me wish I still practiced.”
“So do it,” James said.
Louis laughed. “I’m too old. My credentials haven’t been renewed.”
“Renew them,” James smiled. “If you can handle Tabitha, you’ve still got some fight in you.”
Louis shook his head, smiling. Smiling and thinking.

“Hi,” Tabitha said curtly as she walked into the house and took her place in the recliner. She eyed the already poured bourbon on the table.
“It isn’t poisoned,” Louis said as he joined her.
“But I didn’t ask for it,” Tabitha sounded annoyed. “Why did you pour it?”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Louis said, removing the glass. “You asked for one yesterday, and I thought it might make you feel comfortable.”
“It doesn’t,” Tabitha sat down, glaring directly at Louis.
“Why does that upset you?” Louis asked.
Tabitha didn’t answer.
“Is it because you think I’m up to something?”
“Yes,” Tabitha faced the wall, the same as she’d done yesterday.
“Will you tell me what it is that I’m up to?”
“No,” Tabitha said. “I don’t know what I thought. I was just...uncomfortable with it.”
“Okay,” Louis said. Picking up his pen, he asked “do you feel any different today?”
“No.”
“Yesterday,” Louis flipped through his notes, “you said that you felt like you would have shot yourself if you’d had a gun. You still feel that?”
“Yes.”
Louis let a pause go by. “Can we talk some more about this cult you were telling me about?”
“Sure.”
“How many people did you say were in it?”
“Between one and ten million, but I don’t actually know.”
“And they commit Voodoo murders?”
“Voodoun style rituals,” Tabitha corrected.
“And it’s the fear of this cult that makes you want to kill yourself, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any place this cult can’t get to you?”
“Yes.”
Louis wrote notes.
“Where?”
“Lots of places,” Tabitha said. “It’s like running from the mob. If people don’t know where you are, then no one can find you. It’s what Lovecraft does.”
“Who’s Lovecraft?”
“He’s in hiding. He fights the cult, sort of. He figures out some of their secret members, then publicly murders them in the hopes that other members of that particular sect will have to relocate or be arrested. Then he goes back into hiding.”
“I see,” Louis said. “Now, if there are places where you can hide, why don’t you just hide?”
“I don’t know when their god will awaken.”
Louis paused, considering that answer.
“So if you went into hiding their god might awaken.”
“Not as a result,” Tabitha sounded annoyed at how crazy the doctor believed she was. “The possibility exists that it will, at some point, awaken. If it does...” she trailed off.
“How do you fight a god?”
Silence.
Tabitha made a sound, though not words. It was a sound like a choke, which turned into a sob, which turned into a howl. Her shoulders rocked and tears poured from her eyes as she completely broke down and cried.
Louis got up and put his arms around Tabitha, and she clutched him desperately. She continued crying for an hour and a half.

“She had a moment of catharsis yesterday,” Louis told James. “How much do you know about the god of her cult?”
“Oh, quite a bit,” James said thoughtfully. “But there are a few of them. There’s the main one, which lies beneath the waves in a dead city.”
“Cthulhu,” Louis said.
James’ eyes widened and he grabbed Louis’ arm. His grip was powerful, much more so than his slight build let on, and Louis arm was bruised in James’ grip.
“OW!” Louis wrenched his arm away. “What the hell are you doing?!”
James was already back in his calm, easy personality. Almost imperceptibly, his eyes darted around the coffee shop.
“Terribly sorry,” James smiled. “If Tabitha hears that word, she tends to immediately distrust whoever was speaking it. I just don’t want it getting around.”
Louis rubbed his arm, remembering the look of panic which had been on James’ face just a moment ago.

“Hello,” Tabitha sounded a little shy as she entered Louis’ house that afternoon.
“Anything to drink?” Louis asked.
“Some water, please,” Tabitha smiled weakly. Louis got it for her.
“I want to tell you about Allen,” Tabitha said.
“Of course,” Louis picked up his pad and pen.
“He was my ex-husband,” Tabitha began. “When I didn’t used to dye my hair. Three years ago.”
Louis nodded.
“He’s dead now,” the tears were already falling. “He was murdered when we were caught by the cult in Maine. We just were off-guard, and they caught us both, and...and they cut his cheeks open. They cut his skin and pulled it, tearing it off in big strips, and they poured boiling fat into the strips, and his eyes...popped...his fingers were onlyhanging on by threads...the kind of smell shouldn’t come from your eyes...”
Trembling, Tabitha tried to pick up the glass of water and instead knocked it over, spilling the liquid all over herself. As Louis watched, Tabitha kept talking and kept fumbling with the glass which was now empty anyway.
“...cut the rest of his body apart...teeth...coming apart while he still screamed and he should have fainted I wish I’d fainted...” Tabitha managed to pick up the empty glass and tipped it against her mouth, farther and farther as nothing came out before she tremblingly dropped it, watching it roll down her body and across the floor.
“...ate it...” She trailed off. Unsure what Tabitha’s state of mind was, Louis let her recover on her own.
“...I still get sick...”
After an unusually long pause, Louis softly asked “Do you need another glass?”
“Yes,” Tabitha’s voice cracked, tears still falling.
After a long, totally incoherent description, Tabitha believed she’d told Doctor Halsie everything about her husband’s death. In fact, he only understood that she believed Allen had died horribly.
“It’s that event which gives you your thoughts of suicide, isn’t it?” Louis tried to ask gently.
Tabitha nodded. “I think of them making Mayumi eat my dead body...” she trailed off again.
“Personal trauma is a lasting thing,” Louis said. “It can take years to work through.”
“I don’t need to work through it,” Tabitha mumbled. “I just need to ignore it.”
“That won’t work,” Louis said. “Your suicidal urge will return over and over if you keep suppressing. Really, you ought to see a licensed psychiatrist as soon as you can.”
“I can’t,” Tabitha said.
“Because of your family?”
Tabitha looked confused. “No,” she said. “Did James tell you that?”
Louis redirected. “Why would you think that?”
“He lies a lot,” she answered. “Every time he introduces himself, he invents a new last name. He uses gun names; James Colt, James Springfield, James Barret, blah blah. He’s got a really sharp mind for lies.”
Louis looked at his notes. “But, you told me you trusted James.”
“I do.”
“Even though he lies a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“So, does he not lie to you?” Louis probed.
“He lies to me,” Tabitha said. “But it’s to protects himself. If anyone has correct information about him, they could give it up under torture.”
Louis bit his tongue to keep from laughing. It sounded like a joke, but he knew Tabitha believed it. He took a moment to calm himself.
“If you could get therapy for an extended time,” Louis started, “don’t you think you would be able to better help your friends?”
Tabitha was quiet as she thought about it. Louis could tell that he was on the right track.

“Tabitha started talking favorably about extended therapy,” James said with a smile.
“Yes, she’s started becoming more receptive to the idea,” Louis sipped his coffee. “I think that it’s the first step to getting her to stop this cult hunting.”
It must have been Louis’ imagination, but he thought he noticed James’ eyes narrow coldly for a moment.
“Well, good.” James reached into his pocket and pulled out a pre-sorted fold of bills. “It’s been a while since I paid you, hasn’t it?”
Louis tried to motion for James to put the cash away, but the young man reached over and slipped it into Louis’ shirt pocket.
“I don’t think I need it,” Louis protested. “I really do think that Tabitha will agree to licensed therapy.”
“Yes, I think she would,” James nodded. “The issue is, she doesn’t know that it would involve the psychiatric community treating her as delusional.”
The two men looked at each other.
“She is delusional,” Louis answered.
James smiled. “I need you to pretend that she isn’t,” he said softly.
“What?” Louis was confused.
“What I would like,” James explained, “is for you to treat her as though she were a rational person with a high-stress job. Treat her as though she were a combat veteran or police officer returning to the field. Treat her as someone with a traumatic past, dealing with a horrific event. Take the delusional aspect from the equation.”
The two men were silent for a long time.
Finally, in a voice which trembled, Louis said “you believe it.”
James looked into his eyes. “How could I?” He asked in a low voice. “Believe in a cult that waits to serve reawakening dark gods? That would be silly, wouldn’t it?”
“But you do,” a whisper.
The Englishman’s stare hardened. He looked around the shop.
“Let’s walk outside,” he said.
“No,” Louis was staring at James, his mind reeling. Did he actually think that he was searching for a secret society.
“Look,” James hissed through clenched teeth as he leaned toward Louis, “I am doing you the courtesy of telling you what you want to hear. I am lying to you, and you would do well to believe that I am not.”
James face was like stone, his eyes were piercing cold blue.
“I came to speak with you because I want to be able to let you believe my lies,” he said. “I have another partner who could have come to speak to you, and she wouldn’t have lied. She’d have looked you in the face and told you everything, and if you asked her for proof, she would have proved it.” James hissed the last like a snake.
“I will not prove it,” James leaned back and started speaking in a normal tone. “What I will do is tell you that your patient needs to be treated like she does not have delusions, because being stigmatized through formal psychiatric treatment would mean the end of her career. You’re going to believe that. I’m telling you that I don’t believe in any kind of secret cult, and you’ll believe it. You will treat your patient, and when you are done, you will be able to secure yourself in the knowledge that you significantly helped a mentally ill woman. That’s all.”
With that, James stood and walked out of the coffee shop, smiling pleasantly and looking easily at home in the beautiful, sunny day.

At the end of two months, Tabitha had lost her worn, tired look. She was thinking clearly again, and her fear was no longer overwhelming. Louis didn’t know if he’d done the right thing, or allowed himself to be threatened into submission.
“We have to move on,” Tabitha told him. “I can work again. I have to get back out there.”
“I’m sure you do,” Louis answered, feeling like he was allowing his patient to damage herself.
“You really should retire,” he said, walking with her to the front door for the last time.
“You could keep working,” Tabitha retorted. “You could still help people.”
Tabitha opened the front door, and Louis saw James standing next to a young Japanese woman who was probably not more than five feet tall. Both of them smiled at him, and Louis thought they looked genuinely grateful to him.
With a soft smile on her pale face all framed in black hair, Tabitha joined her partners at their car. Louis watched them drive off.
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The Call