Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Read Online Free PDF

times, enough for it to actually begin to make phonetic sense to Ruth.
    “Now is not the time!” Adele continued. “The sight of you will be profaned by the presence of an unbeliever! I am your true acolyte! I am the one who has made all the sacrifices, slaughtered the calves, and endured the self-inflicted ritual of placing your Sign upon my body…”
    At that Adele moved quickly, and suddenly had pulled aside the straps of her overalls and torn open her shirt exposing an elaborate tattoo that Ruth could plainly see involved a hideous display of wormy filaments gathered around a sigil incised over her belly. In its center her navel, painted like the rest of her, stared like the single eye of a demented Cyclops. Feeling both repelled and attracted at the sight, Ruth vaguely recalled seeing a similar design on the Turners’ barn.

    Screaming now herself, Ruth suddenly staggered back and, lifting a hand to wipe the perspiration streaming from her head, she remembered the gun she was holding in her hand. Adele was still shouting imprecations toward the disturbance in the atmosphere over the circle of stones that Ruth could now see was blurring out the stars behind it. And even as she watched with growing horror, it seemed to her that the blurriness began to congeal into the likeness of the image upon Adele’s body, and that something was snaking out from it…
    Suddenly, there was a soundless explosion and a long scream of utter despair as the night was lit in a brilliant burst of light.
    Blinded and desperate to regain her sight, Ruth rubbed her eyes with the balls of her fists and, when at last she began to see again, she saw Daniel’s rifle lying on the ground where she’d dropped it, a thin wisp of smoke still drifting from the barrel. Quickly, she picked it up and aimed it toward the circle of stones. But the emergency of only a few seconds before seemed to have passed. The sky above was once more filled with stars, the air devoid of disturbances or the strange image she thought she had seen in those final seconds.
    Trembling slightly and still half-blinded, Ruth looked for Daniel and found him standing in the darkness, outside the circle of stones, still obviously in a trance. Picking up his shirt where it had been tossed on a tree stump, she draped it around his naked shoulders and slipped his arms into the sleeves. She was relieved when he began to fasten the buttons on his own. Satisfied, Ruth turned again toward the stone circle but saw no sign of Adele. Whether she had run off or simply vanished she didn’t care, so long as she had her husband back. Slipping her hand into Daniel’s, Ruth quickly led him away from the scene and, as they recrossed the cleared field, a kind of desperation overcame her so that she began to move faster, suddenly in a great hurry to leave the Turner farm and Dunwich altogether. Now they were among the great piles of brush at the lower end of the field and Ruth noticed that one seemed to be burning. Grateful for the additional light cast by the fire, Ruth used it to find her way to the cart path that led back to the farmhouse. But as she passed the burning brush, she couldn’t help looking in its direction, wondering idly how it had come to be lit. And as she stared, she thought she saw something in it other than the blackened bones of mangled trees. Wary of the heat and the danger of flying embers, she drew closer to the pile and, seeing what it was that rested there amid the flames, she recoiled in horror. The flames licking at jeans and work boots and hair already smoldering, Ruth nevertheless had no trouble recognizing the features of Josh Turner, as the dew that had collected on his face and naked torso earlier in the evening sheened in the flickering light.
    After that, Ruth neither cared about how the fire had been lit nor the whereabouts of Adele. All she wanted was to get as far away from Dunwich as she possibly could. The mad dash from the field to the farmhouse, boarding