The Dark Rites of Cthulhu Page 5
“What’s your name?” She whispered it for want of any other question.
She moved her fist and said, “Monica,” her voice was tentative and achingly fragile, just within hearing. “You have to get us out of here.”
“I don’t know how.”
Tears glistened in Monica’s eyes. Laura looked beyond her, and saw lumped forms lying on the floor, sleeping or shifting uneasily. Cats lived better than this.
“I have something that can destroy the Masters. Get rid of them all.”
Hope flared in Monica’s eyes, and the realization of how young she was hammered into Laura’s gut.
“Can you do it right now?”
“No. I have to teach you. And then we have to wait for the right time.”
Monica gestured to her distended belly, tears of frustration streaming down her cheeks.
“I can’t wait. I can already feel its claws.”
Laura avoided the desperate eyes. What could she tell Monica? She was doomed. The pregnancies of the fish-men ended with screaming and blood. She didn’t know when Dornier would turn the sky green. Would it be days? Weeks? Years?
“But you can teach it to the others.”
Laura watched as Monica’s newfound hope was snuffed out. Her worn, despairing face looked away and then back, seeking any sort of solace. They gripped each other’s fingers, as tears ran down the pregnant woman’s face.
“We can stop this from happening again,” Laura whispered. “If we can kill them, they won’t do this to anyone else, ever.”
Monica opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Laura could do nothing but hold her fingers as she silently wept. After some time, Laura couldn’t tell how long, Monica straightened up and wiped at her tears.
“Teach me.”
Laura whispered the spell, her mouth filling with the taste of hot tin. It took a long time for Monica to get it right, with Laura whispering encouragement from the other side of the fence, correcting her pronunciation as best she could. Her arms and legs were shaking with fatigue, but she hung on, desperate for Monica to get it right. Then Monica’s frail hands flew to her mouth. Laura had her repeat it twice more, to get her used to the taste, and the exact words.
“Teach the others, but don’t let the fish-men know. Whisper it to yourself before you go to sleep, and when you get up in the morning. When the sky turns green, it will be time.”
“Make it soon.” The pleading in Monica’s eyes and voice was almost more than Laura could bear. She gripped Monica’s fingers, hoping the frail, imprisoned woman could take strength, or hope, or anything from the contact. Only when her trembling limbs threatened to fail did she let go. She stretched as best she could, and prepared her aching muscles for the descent. Her final glimpse of Monica was of the skinny, pale face nearly lost in shadows. Then Laura was on the ground, over the fence, and running into the darkness before the fish-men could respond.
She spent the next day collecting food, and set off North, across the river, and away from the Dominion of Manhattan.
At first, the country looked much the same, with ruined concrete, steel, and stone towers, but they got shorter as she walked away from Manhattan. After days of walking, the buildings became houses, and twisted, malevolent-looking trees crowded in on her. She touched one and found it wept a goo which burned like a knife cut. Other bloated and quaking plants squished underfoot.
Laura had never been outside the Dominion of Manhattan. Her hunting and escaping skills served her well in this savage green place. Often, she killed only to discover her prey had some sort of rot or grotesque growing out of it. These she abandoned. Only once was she desperate enough to eat a healthy-looking part of a deer whose putrid, blackened skin was peeling away from its ribs. The days of vomiting and chills in the middle of summer were enough to teach her that it was better to go hungry.
In the wilderness, she found small enclaves of humanity that resisted the Masters’ grip. Or at least, were too small to be noticed. Most drove her off with gunfire, but a few welcomed her. To these, she taught the spell, always pointing to the sky, waiting for it to turn green. She would stay for a few days, and always leave alone.
Seasons passed. She grew lean and hard, her skin darkened with sun and travel.
After three summers, at the hottest peak of the year, Laura saw a Master. A bloated, flabby, man-like body with a cancerous, tentacled head waded through the trees like a man in a pond. She was paralyzed with horror by the impossible size, and cringed on the ground, driving her teeth into the stubs of her missing fingers to keep from screaming. The ground shook as the colossal aberration shattered trees with its passing, and Laura wept with sick fear hours after it was gone. How could she ever stand against something so mighty? When Dornier spoke of dealing with the Masters, it had seemed like a pretty dream. Confronted with their enormous reality, despair clawed at her. She repeated the spell over and over, letting each hot spark fly up to the sky, each one a wish that the Masters would be destroyed.
The next morning, weak after a night without sleep, she decided to return to Dominion of Manhattan. She wanted to see if the children remembered, and teach them again, if necessary. How large had Dornier’s rebellion grown? How many people whispered the spell to themselves at night and the first thing in the morning? She didn’t know how many times she had repeated it. The hot spark of success no longer surprised her, and she could taste nothing but hot tin.
The return to Manhattan was long, and every night, Laura looked to the sky, hoping for some hint of green. Monica would be dead, she knew. Even now, the thought saddened her. There would be fewer women left, but she would have to visit the tower again.
On a warm and clear morning, she saw again the familiar broken skyline of the Dominion of Manhattan across the great river. Conflicting emotions roiled in her. She was relieved to be home, even though the memory of Monica and the women in the tower lurked in the back of her mind.
The Lord of Manhattan had changed his ways in her absence, and Laura crept into a trap as she tried to sneak across the great, creaking bridge. Men and sea-devils with guns emerged from wrecked cars and chased her down. She cut three of them before being overwhelmed. They tied her tightly with straps onto a metal frame, and carried her, like a slab of meat, into the Dominion.
The Lord of the island kept his court in the tremendous Central Park, his throne at the bottom of a large depression with seats, his castle a little ways off to one side. The crumbling towers of Manhattan stood silent and stern above it all.
The theater was full of filthy men, who pounded hands on their thighs as she was carried down the steep incline. They grunted an unintelligible monosyllable in time with their fists. When she reached the nadir she was pitched upright, face to face with the grossly fat Lord of Manhattan. Wedged into a leather, bucket-seat throne, at least three times as wide as she, blubbery fat as if he wanted to grow huge like a Master. His face was heavy and drooped like diseased fungus off a tree trunk. Four inhumanly tall fish-men flanked him, guns in their frying pan-sized claws. In front of the massive sea-devils were a pair of young, naked woman, absent-mindedly running their hands through the Lord’s hair and touching his greasy skin. Their eyes were deader than those of the fish-men.
“A wild girl, I see.” The Lord’s deep, forced rasp sent unpleasant chills up her spine. “Let her go.”
The straps were undone in a moment, and Laura was unsteadily on her feet. Above her the still sky was white with overhanging clouds. She stared into the Lord of Manhattan’s pale-blue eyes, and said, very slowly, “There will be a time when you and your Masters will die.”
He laughed, a heartless, fleshy earthquake that left him coughing and wheezing.
“You’re one of Dornier’s little followers, aren’t you?” He moved his face close to hers. Laura turned away from his reeking breath, but someone grabbed a fistful of hair and forced her head back to him.
“Let me guess, he told you that you are the chosen one.”
“The
what?” She tried to bluff, but her heart quailed. His laugh was cruel.
“Release her.” And she could move her head again. “Dornier is just like us, the only difference is that he was stupid and backed the wrong horse. We came to power, and now he’s just a beggar, seeking after the scraps left by our lord. He finds gullible children and tells them they’re the chosen one, like a fable off TV. He teaches them a useless spell so they think they’re something special, then runs off to find another one. We’ve killed six of his chosen ones this year. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but he can’t stand against the might of Great Cthulhu.”
The crowd shuddered at that awful name.
“You see that?” He regarded the cringing throng with open contempt. “That’s power. Fear is power. You want to get anywhere, people have to fear you. I’ve got the power of life and death over everyone here, and your Dornier lives like some sort of shit-eating scavenger. Nobody tells me what to do.” He glared at the mob.
“You!” The man he pointed to was pale and wasted-looking, with few teeth left in his head. The crowd backed away, as he fell to his knees, too paralyzed to beg for mercy.
“Tear him apart and feed him to the crowd.”
Two of the sea-devils were on the man instantly, his inarticulate screams replaced with wet tearing and the spatter of liquid on concrete. Laura didn’t even bother turning away. After they’d ripped the terrified man into raw chunks, they jammed handfuls of human meat and offal into the terrified faces of the crowd. They ate, the blood coursing down their chins. They hated it, and glared in the direction of their Lord, but they ate.
“That’s power, little girl. They hate me. They’d kill me if they could. But I’ve got power, and your precious Dornier doesn’t. All he can do is seduce the young and send them out to learn one of Azathoth’s idiotic spells.”
Azathoth. One of the words of the chant. Laura tried not to show recognition, but the Lord of Manhattan smirked.
“Azathoth. Goddamn blind demiurge, the size of a star. The awesome daemon-sultan, that sits and does fuck-all at the center of the universe. Destroys everything he touches, doesn’t even know what power is all about. What the hell is your idiot god going to grant anyone? The power to drool and shit themselves? Dornier backed a second-rate loser, not even a contender. Your spell doesn’t do anything, you stupid bitch.”
Laura concealed a relit spark of hope. The chant did something, even if she didn’t know what. And if the Lord of Manhattan didn’t know what the spell was, it would take him by surprise. She looked at the sky.
Two fish-men grabbed her and took her away. It didn’t do any good to struggle–they had hands like steel. They wrestled her into a cell at the Lord’s castle. The door was too strong for her, the walls unforgiving stone.
Now she knew the despair that Monica felt. Tomorrow she would go to the tower, and sometime later, a fish-man baby would tear its way out of her. If she survived the first one, there would certainly be another, and then another until whatever luck or strength had sustained her gave out. Would the spell work if she was dead? She thought about the Lord’s jibe about Dornier and the chosen one. He was a liar.
She watched as the clouds slowly broke up, revealing a fine red sunset. Daylight turned to darkness, and no one bothered her, not even to feed her. She paced in the nearly-blind dark, the stars remote and uncaring. Did she have it in her to escape from the fish-men?
She curled into a ball for what might have been hours in the timeless, trackless cell, sick with fear and failure. Almost imperceptibly, darkness gave way to a faint green luminescence. She looked up. Beyond her tiny cell window, the sky was a roiling, inverted pot of boiling green water. She marveled, dumbfounded, before realizing what it meant. The time had come. Dornier was calling for her and everyone who knew the spell. She chanted. Somehow, she had imagined doing so surrounded by many people, the women and children she had taught, their voices joining up into a triumphant, ascending chorus. Instead, she pressed her face against her cell’s filthy bars, chanting alone, her words echoing off stone walls. Nothing happened. The hot spark flew up, but that was all. Was that it? She started again.
And then she heard a reply, off from the distance. First one voice, then many. Women’s voices, and then more, men now, men angry with the Lord of Manhattan. Laura sang it, stronger now, exulting in the sound of the people around her, all chanting the same spell. After two inconclusive tries, they were suddenly all saying the same words at the same time, clamped together by some force greater than all of them. When the last syllable was said, an invisible hand pulled her tongue out by the root.
Laura collapsed, hands at her mouth. When she moved them, there was no blood. Her tongue was numb, her teeth scorched and blasted. Somewhere deep inside her was a dull ache. The green churning had vanished from the sky, leaving once again the moon, and remote stars. Nothing had changed. She measured time by the painful throb of her body. Laura wept. She hadn’t been good enough, or strong enough. Not enough people had chanted, and their single opportunity had been wasted. They were defeated, the Masters had won.
When she glanced up, a strange new light was filtering into her cell. Hope surged, and she pressed herself against the bars of the window. The sky had turned a tainted red. A tremendous new object dominated the horizon, nearly touching the zenith directly overhead, somehow behind the moon.
Laura stared, her mind numb with fear at the sight of the impossible, seething monstrosity of chaos. She saw its inconceivably alive, churning surface, and the thick tentacles like the snouts of blind worms, questing with slow, terrible majesty. She quailed before Azathoth’s horrifying size and awful splendor, its utterly alien nature.
Uncountable tentacles groped out blindly. One touched the moon, and then a storm of tentacles swarmed over the surface. Laura watched in sick horror as the thick worms rent the moon asunder with slow grace. In fifteen minutes, all that was left was a coating of light dust on the reddish tentacles. Done with that, they reached out again, inexorable, blindly seeking something new.
Laura scrabbled at a corner of her cell until her fingers were bloody, desperately trying to find something–anything–to put between her and the slow, monstrous tentacles that grew ever larger.
“Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.”
- HP Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth
Changing of the Guard
By Peter Rawlik
From the Files of Detective Robert Peaslee
November 20, 1928
Megan and I walked through the dreary streets of Arkham and made our way over to Miskatonic University for my morning appointment. An icy wind had moved in from the North and turned the air of the city frigid. Morning reports said that there was ice on the river. The year seemed determined to end on a bad note. So much had happened, so much horror had been hinted at, hinted at and more, I doubted that Arkham could endure another year like the one that was nearly over. There was hope that something could be done to bring the current round of horrors to a close. Some had an idea to prevent them from ever happening again. This is why we were on our way to see the library staff. We were to speak to learned men who thought that something could be done, and that they were the ones to do it.
Oddly, to meet with the university library staff, I didn’t go to the library. There isn’t room for them all there. The Old Marsh Library, what they now call the Tabularium, has its main hall, mostly filled with files, school archives and the like, but it can hold one hundred people easily. My plan was to fill it with the entire staff of librarians, their assistants, the clerks, and those members of the campus police assigned to the library. It was a simple request, and it needed to be. Things needed to change, and the powers of this little empire had nominated me to be the one breaking the news.
Cyrus Llanfer, the Acting Director while Armitage recovered, met me at the steps and escorted both myself and Megan inside. He was a nervous little man wh
o looked at his watch disapprovingly. “You are late, Detective Peaslee.” His pace was almost frenetic.
“The cold and wind slowed us down,” I lied. “Is everybody here? I don’t want to have to go through this again.”
Llanfer nodded. “Everyone is waiting, from Armitage all the way down to that annoying little woman down in receiving. What is her name? Stanley.” He clucked her name. “Some kind of prodigy: a Law degree at twenty-two, but she ditches that to work in the pit. Who does that?” The inside of the building was warm. The old library had its own furnace and the old thing was still in fine working order.
Megan touched my hand. “I’ll wait in the reading room.”
Llanfer spoke with a condescending tone. “Thank you Miss Halsey. Be sure not to wander around, there are no clerks or librarians available to help you, and I would hate to see you get lost.”
I call out to her, “This will take me an hour, not counting questions.” She kisses me on the cheek and I watch as she struts down the hall while Llanfer takes me through the massive double doors of the entrance to what was once the Marsh Library. The room beyond was full of chattering academics. The venerable Doctor Armitage was sitting in a chair off to the side. He looked weak and sad. His actions had thwarted the Dunwich Horror, but while he had been fighting monsters, his wife had fallen ill, and eventually passed away. Her funeral had been just two weeks earlier. Behind Armitage was Harper, the former director, who was a little younger than Armitage, but not nearly as spry. He was supposedly retired, but still maintained an office and did a little research. Occasionally he served as an academic advisor to graduate students, but only to very promising candidates.