Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (5 page)

He realised that he’d been standing outside Spuller’s bed chamber for too long. The others would come and look for him soon. He twisted the handle, both relieved and revolted that it wasn’t locked, and walked in. He purposefully avoided looking at the hints of female occupancy – the scarves hanging from the hat stand, the tiny perfume bottles on the dresser, the elegant silver-backed hand mirror – and made his way over to the bed. As carefully as he dared, placed the box on the floor and pushed it beneath.

Disgusted with himself, he turned and left, pausing at the door as he heard something hollow, something
wooden
, tip onto floorboards. He did not want to look. He wanted nothing more than to close the door, go home, and slip into a sleep from which, if there was any mercy left in the world, he would never wake up. But something beyond his control, some base human urge to know, turned him. Beneath the bed, the box lay in two halves. The hollow sides were open to the world. A viscous slick led away into the shadows beneath the bed.

♦

The alliance with France was greeted with cheers across London. Street parties were allowed as France reopened its embassy in Knightsbridge. Whitehall took the opportunity to announce the joint Anglo-French war on Spain and Prussia, while Austria-Hungary ended its policy of neutrality to join the alliance, after a visit from a French delegation.

Martin Fisher rested his head on the inn’s faithful table, gently rattling the empty bottles surrounding him. The Queen had been true to her word. She had offered him anything he wanted, and he had asked to be free. He walked from the Palace a free man, no longer an Officer of the Agency. He bore no delusions, though. His liberty was nothing more than a thinly-draped disguise. It was less than a day before he saw the bare-faced man in the street, standing within a flag-waving crowd, watching him with an awful patience.

They would come for him, and he found that he no longer cared.

ELMWOOD
by Tim Dedopulos

Tuesday 4th

I think the bus driver is one of them. He looks like a squashed frog – no forehead, no chin, hair like a bonfire, eyes almost on the sides of his head. He gave me a long, knowing glance as I got on board, and he watched me in the rear view mirror all the way down the aisle. He kept shooting me glances through the journey, too, when he thought I wasn’t looking. Maybe he was trying to figure out what I had in the bag. He’s seemed suspiciously interested in me before, but this is the first time he’s been so open about it.

It could be a sign that they’re getting ready to move against me. I’ve learned enough to pose a threat to their plans now. If they’ve decided that I’m too dangerous to leave alive, they’ll find a way to get to me. There’s no point running. No precautions can stop a careful and devoted assassin. The Internet is a two-edged sword. I must warn the others, tell them to be on their guard. I should start taking a different bus home, too. No point making it easy for them.

Friday 7th

Philip came to see me this evening. He had some extremely disturbing news. I’ll record the salient points of our conversation to the best of my memory:

“People are vanishing from Elmwood, Robert.” He’d barely finished shaking my hand.

I arched an eyebrow. “Suspiciously, you mean? It’s a depressed area. Transient population. Are you sure they’re not just trying to dodge debt collectors, or being swallowed up in some sort of turf war?”

He shook his head. “I’m not talking about criminal types. These are good, hard-working people. Settled people. Not the sort to get drawn into gang crime, or to just up stakes in the night and vanish.”

“How many?” I took his coat from him, and hung it beside the door.

Philip followed me into the study. “A dozen in the last six weeks. I’ve been down there digging around, and yeah, it really does look suspicious. They all left possessions behind, most abandoned good friends or loved ones without a word, and no bodies have turned up. The police aren’t interested – they’re too busy to spend time on some missing low-income Hispanics. Too many cases with real corpses to deal with. It’s a perfect hunting ground.”

I nodded, reluctantly. “It doesn’t sound good. Do you think it might be the cult?”

Philip sighed. “Possibly. Something about this is shrieking at my intuition. Elmwood isn’t far from Federal Hill.”

“That church is long-gone, Philip. So is the stone it held.” I sat down, starting to feel some of his sense of alarm. “You of all people know that.”

He pulled out a chair and sat across from me. “The church, yes. The trapezohedron... I’ve read my grandfather’s notes. It should be buried in the mud of Narragansett Bay – but who knows what allies that thing might have called for aid. It’s had sixty years.”

“I don’t even want to think about it, but I suppose there is a possibility that you could be right. If you are, we’ll have to be especially careful. I think the cult are onto me, and this certainly might explain a few things. Be vigilant, Philip. Trust no one.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be cautious.” Some of the tension drained away, leaving him looking tired and unhappy. “This whole thing is hideous. I wish I’d never started poking into my grandfather’s work.”

“We’ve done some good, my friend. That must count for something.” I turned to the cabinet, and poured us both a small Scotch.

“I suppose so.” He had a sip of his drink and visibly pulled himself together. “What should we do next?”

“We need more information. You’ve done really well in Elmwood. Why not concentrate there, see if you can find any patterns. I’ll look for any hint of unusual activity in the bay and Federal Hill, and check the usual sources for anything else that might shed light on these vanishings.”

The discussion continued on for several hours, but at the end of it, we still didn’t have a clear theory or any stronger plan. We decided not to bring anyone else into it. Extra manpower wouldn’t have helped much, and you can never be too cautious. Loose lips sink ships!

Sunday 9th

There’s something happening off the Mexican coast. Unusual naval exercises, friendly fire accidents, rumors of some contagious agent. The situation is still unresolved. I fear the Mexicans may have bitten off more than they expected to have to chew. I’ll drop Etta an email, make sure she knows about it, see if she can do anything. Let’s hope it’s nothing like that thing under the Irish Sea last year.

Tuesday 11th

Philip believes he has struck gold. He pulled some strings in the police department that I didn’t know he had, and got a list of the missing people. Their last known locations form a shaky rectangular outline on the far side of Elmwood, and he believes that they have been taken to some place inside that area. He brought his notes over – impressively extensive – and we spent the evening going over all the possibilities.

He’s really jumpy, though. I think he’s cracking up a bit. He’s become suspicious of Cassie, thinks she might be one of the bad guys, not one of the good. I agreed to let him leave his notes in my safe, for now.

There is one venue in his target area that he thinks might possibly be a suitable location for cult activity – Coldharbor Court, an aging care home that finally got shut down last year. I’ve promised him that I’ll go check it out.

Thursday 13th

As I’ve told Philip, Coldharbor Court is an unhappy sort of place. It looks like it was built in the ’30s, all creepy point-arched windows, steep gables and shadowy, wood-pillared porches. It was white once, but now it’s mostly graffiti. The place sits in the middle of a patch of scrappy ground, walled away from the rest of the neighborhood by chain link fences, and fierce warning signs that don’t actually mean a damn thing. It must be a tax write-off. The doors and windows are boarded up real tight.

Anything going on there would certainly be easy enough to hide. Get a security company van, and a replacement padlock, and you’d be able to drive right up. It would even keep the kids away.

Friday 14th

Once Philip had slept on my report, nothing would do but we had to go have a look. I offered to stake the place out during the afternoon, keep an eye on any possible comings and goings so that we didn’t blunder into something we couldn’t handle. Philip joined me once he got off work. We left our cell phones in the car – they leave a very dangerous trail in this high-tech age.

We made our way into the grounds some time after 8:30. There’s a section of fence that the kids have opened up at the base, wide enough to squeeze through even at my age. There wasn’t much ambient light shining through, but we didn’t want to risk a flashlight, so we picked our way around in the darkness. Better safe than sorry. There was an alarm system, but nothing expensive. The owners really have been cheapskates with this property. Philip knew how to bypass the system. Then we poked around, rattling the boarded-up windows and doors.

One of the windows was hinged, and swung open easily.

It was at the back of the building, near the parking spaces. Philip doesn’t carry a gun, but I pulled mine, and then we slipped in carefully and got out our flashlights. The room was empty, institutional walls and a nasty, thin brown carpet. No graffiti, so no kids. We went through into the hallway.

Philip saw it first. “That graffiti looks... Robert! My god! Look!”

I joined him, peering at the small, crabbed characters cut into the wall. Aklo. I said so. Philip paled even further. There were other phrases further down the wall, and we followed them along, glancing into the empty rooms we were passing as we went. Poor Philip was starting to shake quite noticeably, the flashlight emphasizing his jitters. I tried to encourage him, in a kindly yet firm manner.

Eventually, we came to a closed door. It was painted black, with strangely luminous spirals spread over its surface. I think Philip would have bolted then, but I put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “We have to look, Philip. We have a duty.”

He shot me an unhappy look – duty is easier for the older to bear, I suppose – but eventually he nodded. “All right, Robert. We look. But then we get out of here, and call the others. We should have told them what we were doing. They need to know, in case...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“Of course,” I agreed. “But we have to make absolutely sure first.”

“All right. Let’s do it, then. Before I change my mind.”

I pushed the door open slowly. A staircase led downwards, painted entirely black. Not even spirals decorated it. The paint seemed to swallow the flashlight beams. I had the gun, so I went first. Philip followed, reluctantly. The staircase was only short, but it seemed to go on for an eternity. As we descended, an unpleasant smell slowly started to build, acrid and sour, like a broken car battery.

Eventually, we came out into a large concrete root cellar. Various cupboards, shelves and partitions broke up some of the space, but there was a wide open area of floor. A strangely irregular, rune-carved stone pillar sat in the center of it, some four feet in height, with a trapdoor some distance behind it. A very strange yellow box sat on the pillar, even more asymmetric than the stone column.

Philip gave a strangled cry and dashed over to it in a flat panic, struggling to undo his jacket. I followed, and as he fought his arms from his sleeves, I smashed him across the base of the skull with the butt of my pistol.

The rest of the cult had arrived by the time he came round, securely bound and gagged at the foot of the pillar. I knelt down in front of him and smiled at him pleasantly as his expression melted through pain and confusion into horrified betrayal.

I ruffled his hair fondly. “Your intuition is magnificent, Philip. The long wait is almost done. Very soon now, the stars will be right again. Great Cthulhu sent the stone back to us, borne from the mud by one of Dagon’s beasts. The Haunter knows so much... Far more than Al-Hazred or von Juntz ever dared to dream. Y’ha-nthlei is furious.”

He grunted wildly and thrashed about, cracking his head painfully against the pillar in the process.

“Don’t worry. There is no more you can do. You will be its thirteenth. It’s only fitting – the sins of the grandfather... But my gods, man! The eternities you’ll experience within that creature. The midnight cities of black-lit Yuggoth. The bleeding of Atlantis. The infinite gulfs at the center of the universe. Almighty Azathoth itself! Honestly, I envy you, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that I’m required here.”

I gestured to the others, and they started the chant, a low, guttural phrase in a language long-dead when mankind first escaped from its creators. As Philip started screaming into his gag, I took a good hold of the trapdoor and switched off the flashlight. The last earthly words he heard were my instructions to the creature: “The soul is yours, but leave the lower skull and jaw intact. I’ll need them later.”

Saturday 22nd

They held Philip’s funeral today, at a churchyard in Fox Point. Most of the investigators were there, and I shared stunned condolences with them. Cassie seemed particularly agitated, and stopped me after the service. We discussed our mutual loss, and she revealed that she had followed Philip into Elmwood in the week before his disappearance.

I assured her that I didn’t know what he had been working on, and then recalled that he had, in fact, left some notes in my safe. She has agreed to come over to look at them tomorrow, to see if we can work out what he might have been investigating, and possibly pick up where he left off.