The Dark Rites of Cthulhu Read online

  “This is crazy…”

  “Raymond, I’m rich enough to be crazy. I’m also prepared to pay you for your service. Handsomely.”

  I shook my head, “We’re old friends, Paul.”

  “Please don’t take it as an insult,” Paul said holding up a hand. “It would be my pleasure. I’d pay Abraham’s bounty for this. A seven figure remuneration for an old friend is almost a relief.”

  I coughed.

  “Seven figures?”

  “Seven for the seven books of the Infernalius. Magicians like synchronicity. Will seven million dollars secure your expertise?”

  “Seven million?” I shook my head. “You’re joking.”

  “Look at this place, Raymond,” he insisted. “It cost me more to build this house, and I have four more around the world. I’m not boasting, just trying to put it into perspective for you.”

  “It’s above and beyond my usual fees,” I said.

  “This is my life’s work, Raymond. I only wish I could grant you some greater portion of the joy I’ll feel once it’s done.”

  Seven million dollars buys a lot of joy, I thought.

  I had come in sight of this place with a stab in my heart thinking of what I would have to return to. Now, Paul was saying, to simply render some ancient text into a phonetic key, I wouldn’t have to. It would be real work, and he was right, I was probably the most qualified expert he knew. I shouldn’t feel guilty about the money.

  I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “Alright, Paul,” I said.

  “Let me show you to my Oratory,” he said.

  Paul led me through the house to a basement stair, and down into a surprisingly large sub-level, somewhat labyrinthine in design. There were passages that led off into rooms where I saw workspaces with assorted tools, some for carpentry, others for electrical work, and a pottery room with a wheel and kiln. We passed a strangely sweet smelling room where I saw a large vat of bubbling liquid.

  “What’s that?” I asked, craning my neck as we walked past.

  “One of my wife’s hobbies. She runs a candle making business out of our home,” he said.

  I looked at him askance.

  “Idle housewife. She’s picked up a lot of hobbies since she quit modelling,” Paul said. “Anyway, that’s for making tallow,” he said, reaching in the doorway and slapping off the light switch. “She’s always leaving it going.”

  He led me to a locked door and produced a ring of keys from his pocket and opened it. Beyond was a narrow concrete stairway, incongruously leading up.

  We climbed the stair to the top of the house, and so came up through the floor of Paul’s ritual lodge, a custom built single room Oratory on the roof of the house with shuttered windows covered in thick red drapery in every direction, and a terrace surrounding, like the top of a lighthouse. The structure was cleverly hidden from street level.

  Paul lit a series of seven brass oil lanterns suspended from the ceiling by chains, illuminating the room, which was paneled with white pine wood. In the center of the chamber was a large uncut stone altar with a ritual silver censer atop it, and in a hollow space beneath, various linens and silks, phials of oil, a scarlet miter and wand of Almond-tree wood. A marble lectern, engraved to resemble a baroque pillar rising from the back of a reclining dragon, stood before the altar. The room smelled of myrrh and olive oil.

  The floor around the altar was already inscribed with white chalk. A large circular device had been drawn there, a summoning or protection circle. I didn’t know which, because it had been so long since I’d concerned myself with such things. It certainly wasn’t any Solomonic ward I’d ever seen. There was a kind of many-pointed star design in the center, constructed of what appeared to be seven heptagrams overlaid. The fantastic geometric pattern managed to suggest both dizzying chaos and meticulous precision. On the outer edge of the circle, corresponding to each of the star-points, there sat a black candle, forty nine in all.

  The candles were also of peculiar design. They were shining black in color, and molded in such a way that they tapered upwards. Each was flanged into six wicked outreaching points, like a spearhead, or the topper on some gothic iron fence.

  I approached the circle and crouched down to peer at one of the candles. The wicks were of some braided, silken substance. Not cotton.

  “Did Cherie make these for you?”

  “I used her resources,” Paul smiled thinly. “But I built the molds. The book called for specific design and placement.”

  “Are they wax or….?”

  “Tallow. Calf suet,” he said.

  “From the veal takeout place?” I asked, grinning.

  Paul smiled.

  “I intend to start the ritual tonight, Raymond. Do you think you can provide me the pronunciation in time?”

  “That soon? I don’t even have any of my reference books.”

  “I’m paying for expediency. My own library has copies of every book your uncle had.”

  “Show me to the library,” I shrugged.

  The downstairs library was as well outfitted and aesthetically pleasing as the Oratory. The reading table was already piled with the books I needed.

  He set The Infernalius down and opened it. He unfolded a sort of brass plate and laid it across the open book. The plate had an adjustable window which Paul centered on a certain paragraph. Effectively, the rest of the two pages were hidden.

  “Confine your work to this passage,” Paul said. “I’ll be in the Oratory, preparing. When it’s finished, ring this,” he said, placing a small bell on the table. “I’ll hear you.”

  I slid into the chair at the desk and glanced at the stack of reference books.

  “Raymond,” said Paul, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Then he left me to it.

  I call it work, but really, I was surprised how easily and quickly the transcription went. It was a short, though expressive passage, which required only a few glances at Casterwell and Copeland to suss out. I was surprised Paul couldn’t do it himself. But of course, he was burdened with his own neurosis. He believed this would actually attain for him the driving need of his life. I merely thought it would make me rich.

  Oh, I checked and double-checked it, to be sure. Both for Paul’s sake, and for my own. Really this work would forever alter my life, if Paul actually paid me what he’d promised. But then, I thought, what if, once the whole affair is over and nothing happens, and he pushes over his marble lectern and breaks his wand over his knee, he decides not to pay me? Maybe, I thought, I should ask for the money in advance.

  Was I being unscrupulous taking advantage of an old friend’s eccentricity? Maybe. But I was tired of the book shop, tired of reading of places I would never visit. A million dollars would buy a year of exotic travel, a year or two of absolute freedom. But with seven, I knew I could live the rest of my life free of care.

  I glanced down at my own reflection in the brass plate. It had only taken me an hour to transcribe the passage into a phonetic key. It was just a lot of pseudo-mystic babble, heaping praise and swearing loyalty to something called Yog-Sothoh and Azathoth, and offering sustenance to a thing called Krefth Daal Zuur, That Which Strains Against Its Chains.

  Bullshit.

  I grinned at the plate, picked veal from my teeth with my fingernail. I hesitated to ring the bell and tell Paul I was finished. Seven million dollars for an hour’s work didn’t seem kosher. Maybe I should wait a bit, make Paul think I was really breaking a sweat over the thing? Maybe he wouldn’t trust the key if it was completed too quickly?

  I flipped through the reference books a bit, but soon grew bored. I’d read these, after all. I touched the edge of The Infernalius, and noticed something poking out from beneath the brass. It looked like a bit of illumination.

  I shifted the brass plate to the side and saw, with a flush of excitement, that there was a painting visible on the edges of the partially fanned book pages.

  I turned the book on the desk
and moved the pages to arrange the painting, which was not visible when the book was closed. I’d seen disappearing fore-edge fan paintings before in the shop, on sacred works. They often depicted pastorals, or religious figures.

  I considered the mad genius of the book. According to him, it was comprised of pages from seven separate books (each from different locations and time periods), pages which only made sense when compiled with their scattered brethren. What kind of mind came up with such a thing? And what kind of mind could conceive of a piece of fore-edge art on those disparate pages which again, only appeared when the book was compiled and fanned out in such a way?

  No, it was impossible.

  The painting was strange in the extreme. It was actually a panorama that extended across three edges. It depicted a multitude of naked human figures surrounding a jutting black stone and cowering beneath a starry night sky that would put Van Gogh to shame in terms of its roiling expressionism. The entire painting, or rather the sky, was bordered with rows of jagged teeth, as if the sky itself were a gaping mouth. Further, the stars within the mouth were actually more like iridescent globes of sickly light. At the base of the altar, a man in the red and black robes of a magician stood within a circle of lit candles. Looking closer, I saw that strewn and broken over the altar, were the bodies of two female figures, a mother and child.

  An inexplicable dread came over me, and I glanced up at that instant to see a family photograph hanging on the wall. Paul, looking grim as usual with only the hint of a smile, his hands on the shoulders of his lovely wife Cherie, statuesque, blonde, shining blue eyes. His twelve year old daughter, already reflecting the beauty of her mother.

  I stood up, the chair groaning back. I don’t know why, but things started to fire in my brain. Connections. That weird fore-edge painting. Paul’s offhand joke about his willingness to pay ‘Abraham’s bounty.’ The heading, The Making of The Black Tallow. I couldn’t bring myself to find that heading again.

  I stared at the bell for a moment, then left the library.

  I crept through the immense house, fearful I would turn a corner and bump into Paul at any moment. I managed to find what I was sure, by its pink trappings and popular band posters, must have been Paul’s daughter’s room upstairs. The bed was unmade. It could be the slovenly habits of an adolescent, of course. I went to her walk-in closet. Rows of clothing. Nothing to be gleaned here. Except above one shelf there were two pink designer suitcases. The girl was wealthy. She might conceivably have more than two suitcases. She might have a different color suitcase for every day of the week.

  I vacated the room and headed down to the basement, my pulse accelerated. What would I say to Paul if he caught me snooping around? Didn’t seven million dollars buy a modicum of discretion? Apparently not.

  I walked through the basement corridors, past the various rooms, till my nose detected that sweet smell again and I fumbled for the light switch in the dark candle making room.

  The big vat of buttery yellowish tallow was cooling now, like old soup.

  On the workbench table I found strands of long blonde hair. Scissors. I opened the cabinet over the table. Nothing but spools of cotton, premade wicks, pillar molds, oils, and ceramic holders. I sat down heavily on the stool, and noticed the metal wastebasket next to the bench.

  It was full of women’s clothes. I arranged them on the table. A woman’s and a girl’s.

  Heart sinking, all the saliva in my mouth evaporating, I went to the vat, found the wooden stirrer sitting outside on the concrete floor, splashed with old tallow and colored wax.

  I broke the hardening skin and dipped it inside, stirred the thick mixture, ground against something on the bottom.

  After a few tries, I dragged it to the surface.

  A gory human skull broke through the yellow patina, the blue eyes still staring out of the mournful sockets.

  I let the stirrer tumble to the floor and backed out of the room, deaf from the blood coursing in my ears.

  I ran back upstairs. I had a thought that made me gag. When I’d asked Paul if he’d gotten the beef suet for the candles from the same place he’d gotten the veal…he had smiled without answering. It was just a thought, but I vomited on the floor.

  I returned to the library. The Infernalius was gone, along with my pronunciation key. God, I should call the police. Paul had gone over the deep end at last, in his crazy pursuit of….of what? How could he do this? Throw all this away? That lovely woman, their child.

  I don’t know why, but I returned to the basement stair, suddenly more angry than afraid. I wasn’t afraid of Paul, surely. I don’t know what I intended to do.

  I made my way down to the locked door, found it ajar.

  My legs felt like they were strapped with sandbags as I slowly mounted the stair to the Oratory, where I could hear Paul chanting. A red glow permeated the stairway the higher I got.

  I crept up to the top and peered over the edge.

  Paul stood in the circle, decked in his silk robes and tall miter. The Infernalius lay open on the lectern. The curtains and shutters were open, the dark sky all around. There were no stars, no moon, only black clouds that blotted out the stars, like in the fore-edge painting.

  He was turning slowly in the circle, chanting the old dead words I’d transcribed, over and over again, touching the braided human hair wicks of the black tallow candles made from the fat of his own wife and child with the lit end of a ceremonial candlelighter.

  “Paul…,” I managed.

  He paid no mind to me. Didn’t hear me, maybe. My voice was no better than a croak. The last candle was lit.

  He lay the snuffer on the altar and raised up his arms, as I’d seen them in the painting. He roared the invocation I’d transcribed one last time. I couldn’t have pronounced it better myself.

  I stood and leaned in the doorway, sick at the mad spectacle.

  Paul Woodson turned and faced me in the last, but he was looking downward. The horrid, flanged candles flared, and he was lit from below in the resulting blaze. I saw his expression fall slack in utter surprise.

  Then he fell through the floor.

  Or rather, into it, up to his waist.

  From where I stood, I saw the floor on which he stood within the strange chalk diagram shimmer and fade to darkness.

  It was as if a hole opened beneath his feet. A pit.

  But it was no pit.

  It was more like a throat. The walls pulsed with unnatural life, and were lined with whirling, counter rotating rows of teeth, like some kind of combine. The teeth were flanged, exactly like the black candles surrounding its outer maw. A black, inky breath seemed to exude from it, and the oils and incense of the room was overpowered by a stench of rot that made me gag.

  He screamed as he fell, and the circle folded and closed on him exactly like a mouth, the burning candles snapping together, biting him in half through the middle with a sickly sound and a splash of copious blood.

  The surrounding windows exploded inward, showering him with a hail of broken glass. A hurricane wind roared through the Oratory, extinguishing the candles, but not before the silk robes caught flame.

  I saw his detached upper half ablaze, tumble flopping from the circle. Dying, he managed to lift himself from the floor by his hands, and I saw his expression, framed in fire. It was one of absolute, sublime ecstasy. He began to giggle, or perhaps scream. Both. I couldn’t be sure. Then his flesh curled and he collapsed. The billowing drapes caught fire.

  I turned and ran from the room.

  I half fell down the stairs, careened from the basement, in total animal flight, staggered upstairs, and burst out the front door.

  I saw the smoke rising from the center of the roof as the Civic turned over and I wrenched the wheel about and tore down the driveway, smashing through the gate and out into the Hinsdale streets.

  Paul Woodson was dead. Devoured by…what? I didn’t want to think about it. My brief stab at fortune was gone. The book was real.

 
; The book.

  Did that mean what Paul had said about it was true, too, that it would give a man his heart’s desire? At the very least, it was physically worth a bundle to the right people. Mr. Zell at the bookshop could’ve set me up with a buyer, no doubt. Hell, I could’ve done it myself. Paul had said the previous owner had made a mint just lending it out.

  Well it was gone now, consumed in the fire.

  And yet….I found myself wondering.

  The painting on the fore-edge. Paul hadn’t seen it. Maybe it had been a warning, not to evoke the powers he’d called attention to. Or maybe, it had been a final, obscured step in the procedure. In the painting the sacrifices had been lain on the altar, not left to melt in a tallow vat.

  Maybe Paul, for all his care and precision, had overlooked an important detail of the ritual.

  Well, there was no way to test my theory at any rate.

  The blare of a car horn broke me out of my racing thoughts, and I squealed to a stop near the entrance ramp. I lay my head against the steering wheel, I don’t know how long, until a second bleat of a horn from an impatient driver behind me, roused me again.

  I accelerated up the ramp, fancying I could hear the clanging of fire engines in the distance. I angled the car for Chicago and my miserable, empty apartment, thinking of the picture on the library wall, of Cherie Woodson and that grand house.

  The streetlights pulsed down the length of my car like intermittent lightning, or the strobe of a grocery store scanner ascertaining my value.

  Something caught my eye in the middle of the backseat.

  Something pale, squarish, and mottled.

  The Mindhouse

  By Christine Morgan

  What do they tell you about me, I wonder?

  The truth, now that you’re old enough to hear it? The truth, because families are about honesty, about trust?

  Or do they tell you the same lies they told the rest of the world? The lies they wish they themselves could believe, the lies they wish were true?

  Maybe it was with what they considered the best of intentions. To protect you. To spare your feelings. Why should you have to grow up with so much hanging over your head? Besides, it was easier for them. Preferable. Less painful. Safer.