Alex S. Johnson

Mistress of Graves

Jordan Kingfisher bent over the drinking fountain, her head swimming with the latest discoveries she’d made at the HP Lovecraft archives at Brown University. Her long, thick black hair–which she often described as “Jewish grandmother hair”–flowed down her back. Clad in a hoody with a pattern of interlocking diamonds down the back and the logo of the post-punk band Puke Graveyard down the front, Jordan very much wanted to share her findings with the shy boy who lived on her dorm floor. 

At the same time, there was something about him that put her off. Something uncanny.

She wiped the back of her mouth, turned around in her tunnel vision way and nearly plowed right into the shy boy in question.

“Ross!” she blurted out. He blushed crimson when he looked into her dark brown eyes. She had that effect on both sexes, stunning them with her nearly alarming beauty. 

“I was actually going to…to…Facebook you” he finally managed after struggling to find his words. 

She smiled and reached out to pat his shoulder. She realized that at this moment they both felt awkward.

“But you’re right down the hall from me,” she said. A flood of relief poured through her. She looked again at him and something clicked in her head. He wasn’t actually that bad looking. He looked like a cousin of hers that she had only seen once at her Bat Mitzvah before his parents had taken him to live on a kibbutz in Israel. A few months later he’d been killed in a bombing raid by Hammas.

“That’s true,” he said. “But it’s complicated. Involves…those equations Professor Eldritch described as ‘esoteric’ in his Kabbalah seminar. I think I saw you there.”

“Yup, that was me,” she said. “Eldritch is a fascinating man. Well, maybe we should sit down and have a coffee like normal, civilized people instead of standing here blocking traffic.” She apologized as a hurrying freshman clutching an armful of books tripped and sprawled on his back in the hallway like a Franz Kafka bug, even though technically he was just a klutz and his accident had nothing to do with her.

“Sounds good,” said shy boy.

She knew if it were up to shy boy, he would actually just sink down into his argyle socks and then vanish further until he was a pair of scuttling claws, so Jordan took the lead. Adjusting her crammed backpack on her shoulders, and wincing slightly at the pulled muscle from an old tennis injury, she guided them both to a table at O’ Malley’s, a cafe franchise in the Brown student union.

They had been sitting down interlocking eyes and vision like Russian dolls in a quantum field before she realized that they hadn’t ordered any beverages. “Could you…could you please get me a medium latte, and whatever you would like? I hope this is enough.” She fished a folded, inked ten dollar bill out of her Surprise Pussy purse.

“Are you sure? That’s very kind of you,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it. My aunt sent me a care package and some surplus funds. She knows how I tend to buy books with whatever money I make at the library…she’s very generous that way.” She looked up, realizing he was frozen in front of her.

“Is there anything wrong?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” he said. He hesitated. “You remember that one slide Eldiritch showed in his PowerPoint, the one that looked like a red eye, only…”

“It was a three star system. Algol. Or ‘All Ghoul,’ as he likes to call it. Corny.” She snort-laughed, feeling like a dork.

“That’s funny!” he said. “Well, I’m going to get those drinks for us.” He took the crumpled bill from her and headed towards the back of the line. It was right after noon and classes were letting out. 

“Those who surrender their souls to Her will dwell in eternal darkness,” came a distorted voice somewhere out of range.

She looked up and saw that a man with a megaphone was surrounded by campus security. He was wearing an optical yellow vinyl jacket and had a deranged look in his eyes.

Then she heard the scream.

His scream. 

Her vision shuddered forward. In the shock of the moment, she could see herself as though filmed from above. Then she was moving in slow motion, rippling fractals of her body tearing away from her.

Slowly, ever so slowly, her legs made of melting sludge, she made her way to the periphery of the security guard huddle. 

Ross Green was lying still on the ground, her ten dollar bill clutched in his skinny hand. Some kind of viscous fluid was leaking out of his ear.

Within a foot of his body was a pamphlet. Adrenaline coursing through her body, Jordan understood the pamphlet to be something the religious fanatic had been distributing. As if in a trance, she bent down and picked it up.

She couldn’t make heads or tails of it at first. The photo on the cover was a blurred reproduction of a turn of the century print of one of the entrance ways to the Paris catacombs. When she looked at the photo more carefully, she realized that embedded within that picture was another–the outline of a woman. 

“She’s the mistress of graves!” screamed the fanatic suddenly, tearing free of the security guards. He came right up to her. His eyes were imploring.

“Do not heed her call!” he said. “She will drag you to hell. Your soul will be trapped in an astral prison of her own devising, and darkness will abide in you forever.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” she said indignantly. Her logical brain was shooting through possibilities for what had just occurred. “And I hope you didn’t have anything to do with…” she knelt down and felt for Ross’s pulse. It was thready, but he was still there.

At that moment Ross rose shakily to his feet, and the security guards reclaimed the crazy man. “I’m so sorry,” said one of the guards, whom she recognized from the Federal Hill shopping center where she went to indulge her fetish for rare Puke Graveyard 12 inch sides. “He’s obviously off his meds, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Ross. “I hope he’s going to be ok.”

Although Jordan knew very little about shy boy, his compassion for other misfits was something she admired about him. She had internalized her mother’s judgmentalism and was much more harsh.

The security guards marched the fanatic away.

“What’s that you’re holding?” asked Ross.

Jordan handed him the pamphlet. He peered at it through his Coke bottle lenses. 

“That’s the Mistress of Graves,” he said, flatly. When Jordan looked into his eyes, they were whirling discs, like something out of a 1950s science fiction film. 

“Who is the Mistress of Graves?” she asked.

“Never…ask that question.”

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Wake up,” she said irritably. “I asked you a question.”

“Never ask…that question.”

Suddenly her brain categorized its contents. She flashed on Algol, the star pair with a companion, and then a black mass began to play in her head as though it had been shot into her skull with a beam gun. Bloody, nude acolytes masturbated themselves and one another. On a jade table a young girl was bound and gagged. A priestess was intoning strange chants in a language Jordan had never heard before in her life. It felt more like a binary code, a series of dots and dashes. She felt a strange surge in her groin…fucking wet is more like it. Her pussy burned with desire and flash points of carnal pleasure spread through every cell of her body.

And then the images and sounds and psychic invasion left her head as quickly as they had entered. 

Ross smiled shyly. “Oh fuck, that was weird. I thought I’d lost you for a second.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jordan, trying desperately to stop the flying golden filaments in her brain. “What were you saying just now about the…what was it…the Mistress of Graves?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. And sounded like he meant it.

“Do you want to go into town…” they both began to speak at once, their words tumbling over one another. So many impressions surged between them. They had much to discuss. Inhibitions to shed. Dances to dance. 

On their way out the door, Ross dropped the pamphlet on the floor. 

The Mistress of Graves stared up at the parade of Brown students. She was smiling a black and terrible smile. Her lips parted and her tongue flickered out.

After a journey of millenia across light years, she was back on earth, and ready once more to spike humanity on a sacrificial pole.