The Mall of Cthulhu (5 page)

He was also Ted whose clothes were still bloodstained, and that would certainly draw unwanted attention to him if he left the house. Well, Laura's ex, Kendra, had been a rather beefy 5'10''; maybe she'd left some clothes here he could use. She almost certainly had. What was that joke Laura always told about lesbian second dates involving a U-Haul? It must have been based in something, because at the back of the closet, Ted found a pair of sweatpants that would reach up to Laura's head, and an extra-large Boston Breakers-replica jersey.

He tucked Laura's laptop under his arm and walked down the stairs from her third-floor apartment. He turned onto the tree-lined street and his courage took a nose dive. A tattooed couple walked by hand-in-hand. The guy was wearing a Cannibal Corpse shirt—surely they were into blood and gore and had probably studied Ted's composite picture so they could have it tattooed on themselves somewhere. A woman jogged by pushing a stroller. Ted had never seen anybody actually jogging with a jogging stroller. Was she a cop? Was that a real baby? He knew it was stupid. But it felt real anyway.

Laura lived as far from a Queequeg's as probably anyone in Boston. It took Ted ten agonizing minutes before he saw the familiar, if no longer comforting, blue sign at the end of the street. He was glad that this particular Queequeg's was on the corner of Centre and St. John—this saved him having to walk on Centre Street, with its stores and restaurants and nosy pedestrians. He approached from the St. John Street side and saw a large American car, the kind that only cops and old people drive, parked across Centre Street from Queequeg's. The two guys sitting in it were wearing sunglasses and appeared to be under forty. Undercover cops? It couldn't be. Could it? Even if it was, they wouldn't be able to ID him. But for all Ted knew, they might be taking pictures of everyone who walked in, and that was too big of a chance to take.

Ted ducked into the alley behind Queequeg's, hoping he could still tap into the wireless signal back here. He saw nothing but the metal fire doors of the businesses and the dumpsters that held their trash. There weren't even any windows back here. Ted opened the plastic flap on the Queequeg's dumpster, tossed Laura's computer inside, climbed in and shut the lid.

He tried not to think about what he was sitting on, and reminded himself that stale coffee gave off this ammonia smell that was a lot like piss, so it was probably just old coffee, though there was a sour note that was almost surely some milk that had gone off. And there couldn't be any rats in here, could there? He powered up the computer and looked around in the blue light emitted by the screen. He saw nothing but black garbage bags that looked kind of cool with blue light reflecting unevenly on their folds and creases.

He popped the CD in and logged on to the internet using the Queequeg's wireless connection. Once at the Virtuality site, he double-clicked on the file on the CD. "Uploading settings" the screen told him, and two full minutes later, just as Ted was about to give up on this whole adventure and devote the rest of the afternoon to trying to get the piss and puke smell off of himself and, more importantly, Laura's computer, the screen changed. "Welcome back, Nyarlathotep," the screen said. Ted thought that Half-caf's user ID seemed familiar.

"Play as which avatar?" the screen asked, then presented him with only one name: "Randolph Carter." This sounded familiar too. Ted clicked on the checkbox, and the screen changed again. "Welcome back to Virtuality! Proceed to Miskatonic U. expansion area?"

"Sure," Ted said.

Soon Randolph Carter was strolling, in his jumpy, not entirely naturalistic stride, through the leafy campus of Miskatonic U. He knew that name. Where did he know it from? Was it even important?

Ted looked in Randolph Carter's inventory and found a dorm room key with "Innsmouth 212" stamped on the side . . . He proceeded to a green quad with knots of students sitting at the foot of trees and four guys tossing a Frisbee. He imagined what Laura would think of guys sitting immobile in dark rooms pretending to play Frisbee out in the sunshine. The red brick walls of the buildings were covered with some kind of climbing plant that looked like a strangely sinister version of ivy. He wondered if it was supposed to look like that or if the Virtuality programmers had just blown off making believable ivy. He walked up to five buildings before he finally found Innsmouth Hall. His key opened the front door, and he walked down a long hallway. A staircase led down, and a sign with a downward-pointing arrow said "Subterranean Passage to Howard Phillips Hall." He suddenly realized where he knew all these names from.

"Yog-Sothoth on a bike," he opined to the garbage bag next to him. "This guy's a friggin' Cthulhu geek." Like most of his friends, Ted had spent a great deal of time in the eighth grade reading the horror fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and every name in Half-caf's virtual world referred to a Lovecraft story. Ted remembered what it was like to be a fourteen-year-old who played role-playing games, read comic books, and obsessed about Lovecraft. Only later had he realized that all the energy he spent on these things was fueled by a desperate, all-consuming horniness. He had often wondered what would have become of him if Kate DeAngeli hadn't decided in the twelfth grade that Ted's interest in horror and fantasy was a close enough match to her own interest in goth culture that she was willing to date and, more importantly, blow him. Perhaps if his horniness had never found a proper outlet, he would have turned into the kind of guy who shoots up coffee shops.

He found another stairway going up and went up to the second floor. The door opposite the staircase read "222," and he watched as his blocky, robotic avatar, Randolph Carter, walked down the hall to his dorm room. As Randolph Carter turned the key and entered room 212, Ted felt his heart pounding just as it might have if he'd been pretending to be someone else and sneaking into their room in real life. He had to remind himself that he was crouched in a Queequeg's dumpster, and that there was no Miskatonic U. Even still, he was reluctant to switch to the first-person view so that he could see what was on Randolph Carter's desk. It was just comforting to look at Randolph Carter's back in that over-the-shoulder, third-person view. That way he'd see if somebody was sneaking up behind him to clock him over the head.

Which, of course, would not have any effect on Ted's real self here in the dumpster.

He looked around the room. The walls were plain white with only one decoration—a maroon pennant with "Miskatonic U." in white letters. The pennant hung over a cheap metal bedframe with a thin mattress and white sheets. There was a desk that looked too cheap even for IKEA, where Ted always bought his own barebones furnishings, in front of a gothic-arched window. Ted marveled that Half-caf had actually managed to create a virtual dorm room even more cheap and dull than most real dorm rooms. What the hell was the point?

Finally, confident that he wouldn't be caught, Ted clicked on the point-of-view toggle and moved his cursor over the stuff on Randolph Carter's desk: a notebook, a pen, a photo of Anna Paquin as Rogue, and a map of Providence, Rhode Island. Ted picked up the map and examined it, but it appeared to be a normal map. Well, Ted actually wasn't familiar enough with Providence geography to know if there was anything unusual about the map. He poked around the menu and found a way to save the map as a jpeg file on Laura's desktop.

He clicked on a notebook that said "Class Notes"—scrawled on the first page was: "The return of the Old Ones can be secured by using the thirty-seventh incantation in one of the places of power." Ted rolled his eyes and clicked on the next-page arrow. "Diana is hottt!" Next. "Temple is not the Place of Power. Place of Power is adjacent."

Ted clicked on next, and the notebook closed. He clicked on pens and pencils and a ruler and got only a dialogue box asking him if he wanted to write. He clicked on the computer, and a box popped up that said, "In-game computer games and email available at Platinum Level membership. Upgrade now?" Ted clicked "no" and shook his head in disbelief. The geeks who played this game were, in a way, his people (or at least they belonged to the tribe he had belonged to before he'd taken an axe to his roommate and a passel of sexy vampires and set a sorority house on fire), but even he was mystified that people would actually pay extra so that they could sit in front of a computer screen and watch a character they'd created sit in front of a computer screen and play games. It was even stupider than the Frisbee thing. He wondered if the in-game avatars could create their own avatars in a virtual version of Virtuality available only to platinum level members. It really could go on indefinitely. "Curiouser and curiouser," Ted said to the bag of trash next to him.

He clicked on the desk drawers—they were all empty, except for one which held a book with Arabic writing on the cover. Just as he was about to click on it to examine it, a dialogue box popped up. "Conflict alert!" it said. "Randolph Carter, you have been struck on the back of the head! 121 Vitality points remain! You need food!"

"Son of a bitch!" Ted said. Someone actually had cold-cocked him! He toggled back to third-person view and saw Randolph Carter rubbing the back of his head while a tall blonde woman with enormous breasts stood there with a length of pipe in her hand.

The back of Ted's shirt suddenly felt wet, and, without even thinking, he reached up and rubbed the back of his head to check for a wound. He realized this was absurd, and he moved the laptop up to head level and saw that something white was dribbling out of a hole in the garbage bag that he'd been using as a pillow. Ecch.

Crouched in a dumpster, Ted felt uniquely qualified to talk trash to his attacker.

Is that all you got, Colonel Mustard? The lead pipe?
he typed.

No firearms allowed in Virtuality, Ted.
Ted felt his skin go cold. He wanted to run—not in the virtual world, but the real one.

No,
he typed,
my name is Randolph Carter.

Bullshit, Ted. We know everything about you.
Well, Ted thought, that's a bit of a lofty claim. What's my favorite porn site? Who did I have a doomed crush on for all of seventh grade? How many vampires have I killed? Hell, even Ted himself didn't know the answer to that one.

Still, if they knew his name, it was more than likely that they'd gotten it off the Queequeg's hard drive, which meant that he was probably talking to one of the people who had pulled Half-caf out, which meant that Half-caf really was part of a conspiracy and not just a lone whack job.

Ted knew he should fold up the laptop and just run, but goddammit, these were the people who'd shot up his place of employment. He called on his inner action hero and decided to try to brazen it out.

Then you know that people who fuck with me get burned,
he said.

What we have planned for you will make second-degree burns seem like a vacation,
Blondie said.

Oooh, are you gonna sic the Old Ones on me?

Mock the Old Ones at your peril, Ted. Soon you will be begging for the sweet mercy of death, and it will be withheld from you, and your soul will suffer in a nameless, formless agony . . .

Blah blah blah. I know, I know, and the geometry is all wrong, and the horror is so nameless and indescribable that it will drive me mad, mad I say. You are really a bunch of pathetic dorks, aren't you?

Do continue to joke, Ted. I shall be the one laughing while you scream for the sweet mercy of death.

Listen. First of all, you are obviously some fat guy in a comic book store pretending to be a blonde with huge tits, which is just pathetic. I have no idea why you'd want to shoot up a coffee shop, except that probably being a forty-year-old virgin makes you snap. But I am so far from afraid of you.
This, of course, was a lie, as Ted was jittery and sweaty and terrified, but the beauty of the internet was that nobody had to know that.
You bunch of pathetic gnomes are nothing compared to what I've already killed. I've got money and nothing better to do, and I am going to hunt every last one of you pathetic fuckers down and pour scalding hot coffee on your nuts.
He realized that his use of the word "nuts" might have given his threat an unintentional comedic note, but it was too late to retract it. Darn!

Thank you for talking so long, Ted. Now we know which Queequeg's you're in.

Ted's stomach lurched. Somehow they'd traced him here. Of course, they didn't know he was in the dumpster. Still, it might not be a great idea to stay here, and he didn't want another Queequeg's to get shot up, so he decided to give his Amazonian adversary a final taunt.

Shows what you know. I'm across the street. Catch me if you can, bitch!
With that, Ted snapped the laptop shut. Gingerly, he opened the lid of the dumpster. Seeing that the alley was empty, he sprinted to the end of it. He looked up and down the street and saw no cars coming. He cut through back yards, hastily crossed two streets, and eventually found himself at an entrance to Franklin Park. He disappeared into the wooded section, running down one hill and up another until he found a clump of dense bushes. He burrowed inside and looked out. For an hour he twitched at every sound, but then a profound boredom overtook him. He thought about opening the laptop and playing some minesweeper or something, but then he remembered that he was hiding from very bad people who told him they'd have him begging for death—correction, for the sweet mercy of death, and he thought maybe being bored might not be so bad. After two hours, he heard running footsteps approaching. He tensed up and prepared to run. He realized he hadn't even picked up a stick to use as a weapon and thought he might have to swing Laura's laptop. She'd be pissed if he broke her computer over some guy's head, even if he did it to save his life. Fortunately, it wasn't a would-be assassin, but rather, a brown dog, who looked at him quizzically, squatted, and deposited a sizeable mound of shit about five feet away from him. He heard a man's voice calling, "Cooper!" and the dog trotted off, leaving both his shit and Ted behind.