He Who Walks in Shadow (14 page)

“The next day, the old farmer went into his field. His wife, on the porch, watching him as he walked away. He turned to her, and waved. It was a ritual they had repeated every morning for all their lives. Waving to each other before the workday began. But then, in an instant as singular as a flash of lightning, the old man was gone. One moment he was in his field. The next, nothing. Now, that’s the story the wife told, though she was so distraught with the horror of the thing that they could barely get a coherent sentence out of her. But the evidence was clear she believed it. Her hands were covered in dirt, her fingernails broken. When they went down to the field, they knew why. There was a hole where the man had been standing, a hole dug by the old woman’s hands as she tried to save him, tried to figure out where he’d gone. She didn’t find him, and neither did anyone else, despite the biggest search the county had ever seen.

“Wingate got the property, bought it from under the family before they knew what had happened. He built new barns for the extra harvest he expected from the newly acquired land. But then something strange happened. From the spot where the old man had disappeared, contagion started to spread. It was unlike any disease the local farmers had seen. It poisoned the ground, and nothing would grow. Not a blade of grass, not a weed, and certainly not cotton. It wasn’t long before the old man’s field was barren. But it didn’t stop there. It spread to Wingate’s property as well. The harvest came to the county, but none came to Wingate. With the added debt from the new barns on top of his other expenses, Wingate was a ruined man. He hung himself from the central beam of one of those barns. And the price for the old man’s death was finally paid.

“Wingate’s body wasn’t even in the ground before life returned to the soil. His eldest son, a wealthy man in his own right, mortgaged all he had to keep the family’s property. But he didn’t keep that field. He returned it to the old man’s family, free of charge.”

When William finished his story, he swept his hand across those barren lands. “That’s what I think of when I see something like this. Evil has touched this place. An evil as powerful as anything even you have ever seen. That’s the only explanation for what has happened here.”

“Perhaps,” was all I said.

It was a good story, but not one I cared to hear. I had hardened my heart.

In the end, whether he was right or wrong, we didn’t stop. Instead, we continued, crossing the seemingly endless plain of fallen trees, until finally we came beneath the eerie canopy of the dead copse.

It was then that I heard the voice.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I had been anywhere else, not at first. But in that silence, in that place devoid of life and sound, even the murmur of it was like thunder, even its whisper like a crashing wave. And that’s how it started, as a murmur. But no voice of this earth ever made a sound like that. It was neither male nor female, neither babe nor crone. Or perhaps it was all of them, at the same time, the sound of all mankind speaking as one.

At first I could make out only one word—my own name.

“Carter.”

I stopped dead, spinning in place, searching for the source of that voice. Henry and William looked at each other, concerned by my sudden, unusual behavior.

“Carter?” Henry said. I jerked around to face him, and I could see the madness in my eyes reflected in his.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” William said.

I told myself that the dead lands and the stress of the last few days were affecting me. “Nothing,” I said. “Just the wind.” But it’s never just the wind, is it?

We continued, and as we advanced, I noticed that an unease had fallen upon my companions. Henry and William became apprehensive. They were glancing about, searching for something or someone.

“Carter Weston,” the voice whispered again. I steeled myself, determined that no matter what happened, I would not add to the confusion enveloping my friends. “Long have I watched you. Long have I awaited your coming.”

The trees surrounded us, and I began to wonder if whatever was speaking to me waited inside their shadow, even as I knew that the voice was within my mind.

“Now you are here, but what you seek is not. And still you will continue, for you have never turned from your appointed path. Never doubted the righteousness of your own purpose. Always assured that you know truth, and that in that truth you would find glory.”

We continued forward, as if we were all pulled by an invisible force, pushed by unseen hands, as if we had no choice. The pale, limbless trees rose above us, covering us in their thin shadows, adding to a preternatural darkness far greater than any we had known before.

“What price would you pay, Carter Weston? What would you sacrifice to accomplish your ends? What would you give up? And what would you take? Soon, you shall know, for there is no turning back.”

I stopped again, and so drawn in by that voice was I that I didn’t notice that the others had stopped, too. But they weren’t looking at me this time. They no longer thought that I had lost my good sense. No, they heard it. The voice spoke to them. And while I knew that the words told to me were for my ears alone, whatever power was acting upon us allowed me to hear their messages as well.

“Henry Ar…mi…tage…” it whispered. “You who had such promise. You who had such dreams. Do you remember? The heady youth in his first days at Miskatonic? When all seemed possible? Do you remember? All the things you would become? All the things you would accomplish? Before you met
him
. Before Carter Weston came to dominate you in a way you could not escape.

“And now you follow him, his loyal lap dog. Always second. Always the inferior. Henry Armitage, the librarian. Henry Armitage, the assistant of Carter Weston. That is your fate, the fate you chose. It need not be so. You can free yourself from him. You can still be the great Henry Armitage, but only if you act now. Only if you remove from yourself the burden of Carter Weston, once and for all.”

I watched as the voice spoke to Henry, as my old friend’s eyes went wide, his mouth quivered. He shook his head slowly, voicing an almost silent, “no.”

And yet, there was truth there, no? How selfish had I been? So tied up in my “destiny.” In my “fate.” In my life’s mission. Convinced that I alone was chosen. Henry had followed me, until the end. At that moment, I wondered if the end had come. The voice, though, was not finished.

“Viktor Rostov, son of Rus, he with the heart of a patriot. You stand at the grave of your mother. Soon, she shall be dead, and you with her. It cannot be stopped now. You know this. No power on this earth can save her. What would you give to turn back the enemy? Who would you kill to rescue your country?

“Win my favor, and I will turn the tide in this war. Do my bidding, and I will give unto you dominion over all the lands from the Sea of Okhotsk to the river Vistula. The price? Nothing so high my friend. Only one life. The life of Carter Weston.”

Rostov turned, his huge frame spinning on an axis as if he were driven into the ground where he stood. His eyes fixed on me, and his hand tightened around the grip on his pistol. And still, the voice droned on.

“William Jones. Long have I watched you from afar. Not even you know the strength you possess. Not even you realize the power of your intellect, the man you might become. The things your mind might do. The heights mankind might reach on the back of your creations. And yet, perhaps it will never be. For one stands in your path. He seeks to destroy you. To punish you for not doing his bidding. Carter Weston will never forget your betrayal. He will never forget that you chose love over him, even if it was the love of his own daughter.

“But you have your chance at salvation, here, in this place. Would anyone question if Carter Weston never returned? Would anyone know what became of him in the desolate wastes? ‘After all, these things do happen,’ they would say. And you would be free.”

William’s gaze remained fixed on a spot on the ground, a swirling miasma of yellow fog. I could only wonder what thoughts were going through his mind. Wonder and hope that they were not of blood and death—my own.

It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to react. Rostov came at me and with one great blow knocked me to the ground behind a fallen log. He pulled his gun and cocked it. I looked up at him and saw a fire, the flame of a man consumed with an overriding purpose. Then he shouted, “Get down, you fools!”

Henry and William didn’t move. They were, I think, as shocked as I. It wasn’t until a rock crashed against a tree that they awoke to what was happening. William dove down beside me, and Rostov threw Henry after him. He raised his gun and fired three shots. A howl echoed through the dead forest, a scream devoid of life or humanity but unlike any beast I had ever heard. Rostov stepped back and dropped to one knee, swung the rifle he had carried on his back around, and took aim.

Silence surrounded us. The sun, which should have been directly above us, was gone; day had turned to night. Not even a pale moon lit the way, and whatever lurked in the shadows would have the advantage.

“You heard the voice,” Rostov said, not taking his eye from the gun sight. “Something stalks us. Something not of this world.”

“What did you shoot?” William whispered. All three of us now had our pistols drawn, though even so I felt as naked as a babe in a pack of wolves.

“Something,” Rostov answered. “A man, perhaps. Or the image of one at least. He wore tattered clothes, but ones that I recognized nonetheless.”

“The Evenki…”

All of us looked to Henry, whose face wore the frightened expression of a man who did not expect to see the next sunrise. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, some of his courage had returned.

“The valleymen,” he said, “the ones the elder warned us about. I think we know now who they are. Or were at least. The tribesmen who came to investigate the crash. They weren’t killed. They didn’t disappear.”

“No,” William said. “No, they didn’t. And whatever it was that fell to earth all those years ago, it’s not what we thought it was. There’s nothing holy here. There’s nothing good about this place. It took those men, and it will kill us if it can.”

Rostov shook his head. “Perhaps,” he said. He lowered his rifle and looked at me. “But I think there is one of us it wants more than the rest. Don’t you agree, Dr. Weston?”

“I’ve made many enemies in my time.”

“Enemies that make their home in the Russian waste?”

“Yes, Colonel. Enemies who are always to be found in the dark and lonely places of the earth.”

A shadow moving between the trees caught my eye. A hulking beast wearing clothes that were tattered and ripped to shreds. That it was ever a man I could not believe. When it moved into the moonlight, I could see that its skin hung from its bones. It was as a corpse that walked, a dead man that had risen. My mind went back to years before, on a desolate island in a place in the Pacific that exists only in legend. The same dark power that had commanded ghouls in those days commanded this creature now. A shot rang out and the back of its head exploded. Rostov smiled.

“Another one down.”

“I have a feeling,” Henry said as he fired a shot at a dark mass that might or might not have been one of the beasts, “that it doesn’t matter how many we kill. They’re not the real threat.”

Perhaps Henry was prophetic. Or maybe his words sparked the change. But at that moment, the forest fell silent. The creatures’ roars died away. It seemed as though we were alone. Even if we knew we were not.

The sallow mists swirled around us, and then, as if a vacuum had opened in the middle of the forest, they seemed to withdraw. Faster and faster the fog flowed away, massing in the distance. As it grew, it began to glow, and a yellow fire burned within it. It formed into the image of a man, and my mouth fell open.

“We were wrong,” I muttered. “We were terribly wrong.”

“It was never here,” William said. “The Oculus was never here.”

“What does this mean?” Rostov asked, and even in his eyes I saw fear. “What does this mean?”

I turned to him. I turned to them all, to William who waited breathlessly, to Rostov who was utterly confused, to Henry who had his head in his hands. And guilt and shame and horror were all bound in one. “It means…”

I swallowed hard. How to explain what it was that was appearing before us? How to explain what it meant?

“No star fell from the Heavens to do this,” I said, sweeping my arms across the plains. “Nor the Oculus either. Nothing from Heaven brought down that fire and death.”

“You mean the prophecy was wrong?” William asked.

“No,” Henry answered. He raised his head and stared at the jaundiced fire that roared before us. “We picked the wrong prophecy.”

A flash of amber light burst through the forest, turning night to day, a roar shattering the stillness with the thunder of an avalanche. We were blinded and struck deaf, all of us. When our senses returned, we were no longer alone. A god stood in our midst.

Rostov and Henry both fired their guns. I didn’t bother. The bullets passed through the figure as if he were nothing but the swirling brume. And yet he was so much more. He stood fully six-and-a-half feet tall, his angular face and aquiline nose held high and haughty, the princely visage of a tyrant king. But his sallow robe, his cowl and cloak, they told a different story. Tattered and stained, marked with blood and mud and the tears of the damned.

He spoke to us, though his mouth did not move. Still, the booming voice was not only in our head. It rang through the forest, echoed off the trees.

“The time has come,” he said. “A time for choosing. Long have we waited, and the hour of our return is at hand. I am the harbinger, the one who walks before, a voice of one crying in the wilderness. I speak for Him who sleeps beneath the waves. I speak for Him who dreams at the center of all chaos. I speak for those whose names alone would shatter the minds of man. What is shall cease. What was will be again. Bow before us. Mark the way. Or burn with all that is waste, all that is filth, all that is corruption.”