Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) (43 page)

His right arm felt like it had been dipped in burning gasoline, but Gabriel pushed the pain aside as he brought his pistol to bear. The boy with the shattered kneecaps was dragging himself toward Gabriel, though the pain must have been incredible.

“Nice try, buddy,” said Gabriel. He squeezed the trigger and blew the guy’s head off.

His Colt was empty, and he snapped the cylinder open. He struggled to free a speed loader from his pocket with his good hand as four frat boys emerged from a room farther along the upper hallway.

“Christ, how many more of you are there?”

Armed with a mixture of knives, pistols, and shotguns, they ran toward Gabriel with murder in mind.

They never reached him.

A cascade of fire, like molten metal pouring in a steel mill lashed down through the ceiling and obliterated them in the time it took to blink. Gabriel fell back from the sudden rise in temperature. The inside of the frat house was now as hot as a furnace. Each breath felt like he was in the middle of a Texas heat wave. Gabriel blinked as hundreds of pinpoints of light suddenly sparked into being throughout the frat house.

“What the hell?” he cried.

Flames leapt from the walls and floor where these spinning sparks landed. Pictures and team pennants were hungrily devoured by the flickers of light, and Gabriel felt a horror of recognition as they darted and spun against the flow of the ragingly hot air. Entire portions of the frat house were simply disintegrating, instantly vaporized in random conflagrations.

Fire flowed like liquid across the ceiling, turning the timbers to ash in moments. Blooming thunderheads of white heat billowed and seethed through the walls, bellying them outward as the materials exploded. Gabriel picked himself up and ran for the stairs as the searing heat rampaged through the frat house. Each breath was fiery pain, and he felt his hair begin to crackle and burn in the terrible heat.

Gabriel skidded down the stairs, the carpet catching light in his wake and burning to greasy smoke instantly. He passed a window that slithered as molten glass vitrified in the frame. He knew just what was happening. This was exactly like Alexander’s description of the destruction of Belleau Wood, and despite the intolerable heat filling the frat house, Gabriel’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

“I ain’t going out like this,” he said.

Gabriel ran for the front door and shouted, “Oliver! We gotta get out of here!”

* * *

Oliver ran down the stone-cut stairs, heedless of the risk to life and limb if he slipped and fell on the axe or took a tumble and broke his neck. Amanda was below and he had to get to her. Barking howls and the clang of fists on metal echoed up from below.

“Amanda!” he shouted. “I’m coming! Hold on!”

“Hurry!” came the shouted response. “Latimer’s almost out!”

Oliver didn’t know who Latimer was, but that didn’t matter. The stairs curved around, finally opening out into a wide, high-ceilinged cave that reeked of unwashed bodies and decaying flesh. The stench made Oliver gag, and he retched dryly as he saw the grisly tableau before him.

Cut into the walls were man-sized alcoves, each barred by an iron grille, and each home to a pale-fleshed thing that yapped and screeched as it battered itself against its confinement. This was the lair of the cannibals, the beasts that had preyed on the young girls of Arkham, the monsters that had attacked Finn’s fellow bootleggers, and the killers who had come to murder him in his office. Though they were all these things and more, Oliver couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for these beasts.

Had they chosen this fate, or had it been forced upon them?

The point was moot, for they had killed dozens of people and there could be no forgiveness for that. Oliver saw Amanda chained to the wall, looking thin, bloodied, and terrified, but it was the monster across from her that commanded Oliver’s full attention.

A moment of recognition surfaced as Oliver saw the ghoul’s ravaged face. Seeing its ruined eye socket, Oliver realized that this was the ghoul that had come to kill him. His letter opener had taken the missing eye, and knowing what he knew now, he saw the humanity submerged in its bestial features. He saw the face of a young man transformed by ancient rites, grotesque practices, and debased acts into a monster beyond imagining.

Was this Latimer?

The creature’s body was gangling and powerfully muscled, its physique fed by a horrific diet of human meat and God knew what else. Skin flaked from its limbs and running sores wept infected fluid as it tore the bars from the iron door keeping it imprisoned.

The last bars were coming loose, and it would be moments before it was free.

“Professor!” shouted Amanda, her eyes wide and pleading. “Hurry!”

Oliver needed no further prompting and ran down the last steps. A pool of fetid water filled part of the cave, and his admiration for Rita soared as he realized the courage of her escape in taking so horrible a route to freedom.

“I’m here,” said Oliver, rushing over to Amanda. He rested the axe against the wall as she threw herself into his arms, sobbing in fear and relief.

“Thank God,” wept Amanda. “I can’t believe you found me.”

“Rita led us here,” said Oliver, prying himself free of her desperate embrace.

“She’s alive?”

“Very much so,” confirmed Oliver. “But we’ll talk later. Let’s get you out of here, yes?”

Amanda nodded, holding her hands up to Oliver. The manacles were tight, and Oliver handed his gun to Amanda as he fished out the ring of keys. He stood to one side to give himself better light, and tried those keys that looked small enough to match the manacles. His hands were trembling, and it took him two attempts to get the first key in the lock.

It didn’t fit. He tried another, but it didn’t fit either.

“Come on!” cried Amanda.

“I’m trying,” muttered Oliver.

Amanda screamed and pulled free of him. The keys dropped to the floor and Oliver spun as he heard the bestial roar of Latimer as he broke free of his cell. The ghoul sprang from the alcove, its wiry musculature propelling toward Amanda with a bounding leap. Oliver saw its jaws spread wide in slow motion. Its yellowed teeth had been sharpened to lethal points, and its claws were devolved to tear warm meat from the bones of living prey.

A thunderous boom split the air and the back of Latimer’s head exploded.

Though it was utterly impossible, Oliver felt sure he saw a flattened bullet emerge from the ghoul’s skull amid the mushrooming bloom of his pulverized brains. Latimer’s leap ended with him slamming into the wall beside Amanda, who stood with Oliver’s smoking pistol in a two-handed shooter’s grip. Latimer rolled onto his back, and Oliver saw a thin trace of smoke curl from where Amanda’s shot had punched clean through the creature’s remaining eye.

“I don’t believe it,” said Oliver. “That was a hell of a shot.”

Amanda didn’t answer, and aimed the weapon at the fallen ghoul. She pulled the trigger and sobbed each time the hammer slammed down on an empty chamber. The ghouls in their cells gibbered and yelped at the death of their pack leader, hurling themselves with greater ferocity at the bars of their cages.

Oliver gently took the gun from Amanda and slipped it into his pocket as she slid down the wall. She spat on the dead creature and held her hands up to Oliver.

He retrieved the keys from the floor, swiftly finding the right one and unlocking the manacles. Amanda’s wrists were bloody and raw, but just being free of them brought a smile to her cracked lips. With Oliver’s help, she got to her feet, and the determination on her face was astounding. This was a girl who was stronger than he could ever imagine. To have survived this long in such desperate straits was nothing short of miraculous.

“Let’s get out of here, Amanda,” said Oliver, seeing that the frantic attempts of the ghouls to break free from their cells was bearing fruit.

Oliver lifted the axe and put his free arm around Amanda’s shoulders. The two of them made their way toward the stairs, climbing them at a rate much slower than Oliver would have preferred. Amanda’s strength was all but gone, and Oliver had to bear her weight for much of the climb. The descent had been mercifully short, but the ascent seemed to be taking forever, and Oliver was reminded of the climb through the jagged mountains in the other world. Was it his lot to be forever climbing to safety?

Triumphant yells and barks sounded from below, and Oliver’s heart sank as he knew the ghouls had finally broken free of their cells. The top was close, but he was carrying too much weight. He reluctantly dropped the axe, knowing that he couldn’t fight the ghouls with it. He was no Finn Edwards to valiantly defend the stairs while Amanda escaped. In any case, it was doubtful she could go anywhere without his help.

“We need to go faster,” he said, all but dragging Amanda up the stairs.

A billowing orange light illuminated the head of the stairs, and Oliver heard the hungry bellows of the ghouls climbing the stairs behind him. With a burst of fear-induced strength, Oliver carried Amanda up the last of the steps and emerged into a corridor alive with flame.

Fire had taken hold of the frat house and almost every surface seethed with white-hot flames. Oliver coughed as the smoke hit his lungs, and he was bent double by the fumes.

The heat was intolerable and he could barely draw a breath. He let Amanda slip to the hardwood floor and turned back to the cellar door. Firelight danced on the rocky walls of the stairs, and Oliver saw the first of the monsters appear below him. He slammed the door shut and slid the padlock through the hasp.

Before he could close the lock, a terrific impact struck the door, hurling Oliver backward. His head struck the wall hard, and he took a choking breath of smoky air. His sight blurred and he struggled for oxygen as the flames billowed and roared. Sparks and tiny dots of light spun in the air, darting to and fro like fireflies as they gleefully sought things to burn.

The door shuddered in its frame, and the padlock wobbled, ready to fall to the floor.

Before it could drop, a shape moved in the smoke, and snapped the lock shut. Oliver couldn’t see who it was, but recognized the voice as he felt strong arms lift him to his feet.

“No time for lying down on the job, Oliver,” said Gabriel Stone.

“Amanda…,” groaned Oliver.

“I got her, too,” said Gabriel. “I got you both.”

* * *

Rex watched in horror as the firestorm consumed the frat house. Lashing tongues of molten light hammered down from the sky, incinerating its timbers, tiles, and floors with every impact. Smoke billowed from the blazing structure and the heat was so intense it drove them deeper into the construction site.

“We have to do something!” he cried. “We need to help them!”

Neither Alexander nor Minnie answered him, but what was there to say? The inferno was impossible to approach, and there was nothing they
could
do. Minnie had her camera set up behind a block of stacked bricks and was desperately trying to capture this terrible event on film. Alexander sheltered with her, his hands over his ears as the roaring from above threatened to blot out the crash of splitting timbers and falling masonry.

Rex felt the awful heat from the sky and tried to understand what was happening. Though he too had heard the tale of Belleau Wood, he still found it almost inconceivable that he was looking at the flaming underbelly of a god. To believe someone when they told you of such a thing was one thing, but to bear witness to its horrific manifestation was quite another. The terrible magnificence of simply the
essence
of a creature older than time was awesome in its spectacle, the human mind and vocabulary insufficient to truly capture the sublime horror of its presence.

He tried and failed to find a way to rationalize the world in light of the seething monstrosity that filled the sky with its lava-like body. Arkham was bathed in its diabolical radiance, and surely nothing would ever be the same after tonight. Rex dropped to his knees, unable to tear his gaze from the ocean of molten light above him. It burned his eyes, searing into the heart of his brain with its brilliance, and the sheer incandescence of the sight was beyond his ability to cope.

Rex saw movement silhouetted in the roaring flames, and shielded his eyes.

“Look!” he shouted. “Someone made it out!”

The flame-limned outline of Gabriel Stone ran from the bellowing flames, dragging two shapes behind him. He came through the fence and fell to the baked ground of the construction site in a retching heap. Oliver and Amanda fell with him, coughing and hacking the smoke from their lungs.

A final cascade of flame spilled from the clouds and the frat house collapsed as the last of its structure disintegrated. It fell inward, a riot of ashen timbers, and no sooner had its remains fallen to the ground than the seething firestorm in the heavens began to dim as the essence of the red star began to fold in on itself, and the sky began to darken.

Rex wanted to go to Oliver and Amanda, to help them up, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the dissolution of the fire god in the clouds. With crackling rapidity, the fire in the sky faded as the power that had destroyed the house withdrew to its celestial abode.

The last spirals of darting embers swirled around it like devotees.

Soon, they too were gone.

EPILOGUE