The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron Read Online Free Page A

picking and choosing. “But no more so than anything, really. The earth is older than any of us care to acknowledge, and everywhere was somewhere else, once. Most people simply don’t bother to look any closer than they have to at what they already think they know, unless…”
    “…unless something makes them.”
    “Exactly.”
    ( Old, and full of holes. But do not put your hand down to see, because …)
    Lydie took a small, shallow breath. There was something—she wasn’t sure what. A kind of wobble, at the corner of her eyes; black spots hovering, blinking. Was she going to pass out?
    A few moments later, however, Paula had made her way back up the ladder in two massive steps, and was standing once more on the lip’s moustache-like rut of trodden grass. Extending one huge, muck-filled hand, she scoured free an entirely new type of totem between her thumb and forefinger, with swift, almost brutal strokes: a squat, oval thing, bulgy at both ends like a toad, and small enough even Lydie might’ve mistaken it for a mere clot of mud-wrapped rock… except for the fact that she knew where to look, and what for.
    “Beautiful,” Paula named it, reverently. “How many have you found, so far?”
    “Oh, more and more, usually five, eight a day… sometimes ten, if I can dig uninterrupted ’ til my husband comes home. They don’t ever seem to stop. I’m thinking votive objects, a whole cache of them, brought here on pilgrimage and buried, as some sort of—prayer, or sacrifice. Some sort of payment.”
    “You’ve done your research.” As Lydie shook her head: “No? Then your instincts are very good, considering. Nice work, either way.”
    “I took archaeology in university,” Lydie offered. “Just one course a year, but I kept it up all the way through my degree; I’d’ve liked to go back, to specialize, but…”
    “Things happen, yes—sadly, almost always. We move away from our dreams, or they move away from us; seem to, at any rate. But sometimes, the universe provides a second chance.” Here Paula closed her hand, tucking the totem away, and watching as Lydie couldn’t stop herself from flinching. “May I keep this? Not forever, believe me… just for a few days. I’d like to show it to my supervisor.”
    “Um… all right, sure, okay. You do that.”
    “I promise I’ll bring it back soon, after the bathouse goes up. Would that be acceptable?”
    “…yes.”
    That smile again, a little wider. “Then it’s a deal.”
    Gone, moments later, as though she’d never been. Only the tarp, peeled back like a lid, gave any evidence of her passage. Lydie stood there looking at it for a few more breaths, thinking: You need a break, food, a minute. Go inside. No more today.
    But the sun was hot and bright, the cool, dark hole inviting. A minute more, therefore, and she was already halfway down—far enough inside to glance back up, just for a second, and almost think she saw the hole itself blink shut, grass-fringed rim knitting like eyelashes, to shutter away her from the harsh surface world forever.
    So nice, she thought, happily, going down on both knees to grub in the mud some more. So very nice, always, to come home.
     
    ***
     
    The bathouse went up both fast and easy, as advertised. A week on, Lydie watched its inhabitants fly up at twilight, scattering like thoughts into the night as they chased their food, the next echo, each other. By bedtime, undressing in front of the window that looked down onto the back yard, she felt as though could still hear them twittering, even though she knew they probably weren’t there. Beneath its tarp-lid, the hole gaped open, its presence always a slightly painful, slightly pleasurable ache; she lay there trying not to think about it, but enjoying when she failed.
    “Today wasn’t your first class, was it?” Ethan asked, sleepily, from beside her.
    “What?”
    “Well, you said six weeks…” No reply. “You missed it, didn’t you? Oh, honey.”
    “I can