Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron by The Book of Cthulhu

of the stone paths. Any path at all, for there were no intersections, just a straight unbroken run. You had to run fast, before something within the windows became aware of you, rather as a carnivorous plant becomes aware of a fly. The last part of the run was the worst, because you knew that at any moment something would appear in all the windows at once: things that, although they had mouths, were not faces—
    Ingels stumbled wildly as he halted, glaring up at the empty windows of the houses. What on earth was that? he thought distractedly. Like one of those dreams I used to have, the ones that were so vivid. Of course, that’s what it must have been. These streets reminded me of one of them. Though the memory felt much older, somehow. From the womb, no doubt, he shouted angrily at his pounding heart.
    When he reached the exhibition he walked straight past it. Returning, he peered at the address on the ticket. My God, this is it. Two of a street of dingy but tenanted terraced houses had been run together; on the front door of one, in lettering he’d taken for graffiti, were the words LOWER BRICHESTER ARTS LAB. He recalled how, when it had opened last year, the invitations to the opening had arrived two days later. The project he’d described after a hurried telephone interview hadn’t looked at all like this. Oh well, he thought, and went in.
    In the hall, by the reception desk, two clowns were crawling about with children on their backs. One of the children ran behind the desk and gazed up at Ingels. “Do you know where the exhibition is?” he said. “Up your arse,” she said, giggling. “First floor up,” said one of the clowns, who Ingels now realised was a made-up local poet, and chased the children into a playroom full of inflatables.
    The first floor was a maze of plywood partitions in metal frames. On the partitions hung paintings and sketches. As Ingels entered, half a dozen people converged on him, all the artists save one, who was trying to relight a refractory cone of incense. Feeling outnumbered, Ingels wished he’d made it to the maze. “You’ve just missed the guy from Radio Brichester,” one said. “Are you going to talk to all of us, like him?” another asked. “Do you like modern art?” “Do you want coffee?”
    “Now leave him be,” said Annabel Pringle, as Ingels recognised her from her picture on the cover of the catalogue. ”They’re new to exhibiting, you see, you can’t blame them. I mean, this whole show is my idea but their enthusiasm. Now I can explain the principles as you go round if you like, or you can read them in the catalogue.”
    “The latter, thanks.” Ingels hurried into the maze, opening the typed catalogue. A baby with an ear-trumpet, which was 2: Untitled. 3 was a man throwing his nose into a wastebasket, and Untitled. 4: Untitled. 5, 6, 7—Well, their paintings are certainly better than their prose, Ingels thought. The incense unravelled ahead of him. A child playing half-submerged in a lake. A blackened green-tinged city shouldering up from the sea. A winged top hat gliding over a jungle. Suddenly Ingels stopped short and turned back to the previous painting. He was sure he had seen it before.
    22: Atlantis. But it wasn’t like any Atlantis he’d seen pictured. The technique was crude and rather banal, obviously one of the primitives, yet Ingels found that it touched images buried somewhere in him. Its leaning slabs of rock felt vast, the sea poured from its surfaces as if it had just exploded triumphantly into sight. Drawn closer, Ingels peered into the darkness within a slab of rock, beyond what might be an open doorway. If there were the outline of a pale face staring featurelessly up from within the rock, its owner must be immense. If there were, Ingels thought, withdrawing: but why should he feel there ought to be?
    When he’d hurried around the rest of the exhibition he tried to ask about the painting, but Annabel Pringle headed him off. “You