He Who Walks in Shadow (9 page)

“General Denikin told you why we came, then?” I asked. Rostov nodded, putting his arm around my shoulder and leading us off the platform.

“Indeed he did.”

He directed us around the station and down a side street. I was glad for that, as the main avenue was packed with the dead and wounded. The chaos of war had swallowed that place whole.

“When I received the General’s directive,” continued Rostov, “I admit to being stunned that he would think anything more important than defending the city. I have never refused an order, but I certainly questioned this one. But now…” he said. “Well, it’s only a matter of time now. I know little of your mission, but whatever help I can give you on your quest, I will provide it.”

We came to a boarding house, and Rostov shepherded us inside. There was a tavern on the first floor, and after exchanging some words in Russian with the owner and giving him our bags, we joined Rostov at a table in the back.

“You’ll stay here tonight, and then we will leave first thing in the morning. Ah yes,” he said, as an attractive young woman delivered four mugs of beer and four shots of a clear liquid that could only be vodka. “To safe travels,” he said, raising one of the small glasses. “Dlya pobedy nad nashimi vragami!”

The clear liquor burned more intensely than I expected. William and I couldn’t help coughing, and only Carter seemed unfazed. Rostov smiled so broadly I thought his face might split apart. “The nectar of the gods, my friends. The water of life!”

“I think I prefer the beer,” I muttered.

“Oh well, I suppose it is not for everyone,” Rostov said. “But the Russian people are of a strong stock, or so they say. And it is only vodka that can match our character.”

“So what do you anticipate for this trip?” Carter asked, taking a deep drink from his stein.

Rostov let loose a whistle, long and low. “Well,” he said, “it will not be easy. Anything but, I fear. The place you seek is located in a wide valley, far to the north, along the banks of the Tunguska River. It is eight-hundred miles at least to Vanavara, and another forty beyond that to the site of the explosion. The train line to Vanavara hasn’t been used for a couple years, so we need not worry about any delays. The road will be ours and ours alone. I intend to make good time. The longer we take, the more likely we will find Irkutsk in the hands of the enemy upon our return.”

“And hopefully,” Carter said, “the whole journey will be a waste of our time. If all we found was a barren crater, I would be overjoyed.”

Rostov rubbed his expansive beard. “This is my home, you know? And I remember stories of the event, from the traders who went north. They say something fell from the heavens, that it came with thunder and fire. That the early morning sun was blotted out by a flash of light not of this world, and that the earth shook with a brutal power. It is an event of great infamy in the lands to the north. Finding our way should not be difficult, though who can say what we will discover at the conclusion of our journey.”

“And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

Rostov waved him off. “It is my pleasure. General Denikin is an old friend. It is the least I can do for him.”

“Do you know if the General still lives?”

Rostov nodded as the girl brought him another glass of vodka. “He is alive. I received word from him only yesterday. He and what is left of his men are retreating toward the Crimea. He ordered me to do the same, taking our forces beyond the Baikal. As I said, I’ve never refused an order. This will be my first. That is, if we ever return here.” Rostov threw the fiery liquid back, slamming the glass onto the table. “But for now, my friends, we rest. Our journey begins on the morrow. It will be long and hard. I only hope that you find what you seek.”

Rostov stood, nodding once to each of us, and then we were alone again. We sat there, finishing our beers, saying little. Whatever destiny awaited us, we were ready to face it. Or so we thought.

* * *

Tunguska Field Journal of Dr. Carter Weston

December 5, 1919

Rostov’s men readied the train for the northern wilds as the bitter wind carried the sounds of artillery fire from somewhere beyond the borders of Irkutsk.

“It’s an advanced position,” Rostov said. “They are trying to frighten us, make us leave the city freely. We can hold them here for a month, maybe more. Do not worry. We have time.”

He slapped me on the back, and I hoped he was right. Henry came to me last night and expressed his well-founded fear that time had already run out for our expedition. Part of me wonders if I should send him and William back to Vladivostok. I am convinced that we must go to Tunguska, that if there is even a chance that the Oculus is there, we must seek it. But can I risk Henry’s life on that conviction? Can I risk that of William, my son-in-law? Still, I need them, and I choose to put my trust in Rostov. If we return to find this city in the hands of the Red Army, I suppose that we will deal with that development accordingly. Presumably, they will simply expel us from their territory. And while Rostov will insist on a fight to the death, there is no reason to think we have to join him in that endeavor. Yes, the risk is minimal, and the potential for a discovery of untold importance too great. We must proceed.

* * *

We’d been on the train for a few hours when William came to see me. Our train consists of only an engine, a coal-car, and a passenger car. Not only are we making good time, but the accommodations are far better than the train we took from Vladivostok. In fact, we are afforded a level of comfort and privacy that one could scarcely hope for. I was enjoying that precious seclusion when I was interrupted by William’s knock—an interruption I would ordinarily welcome any time. But when Will entered, I could see that something troubled him, troubled him deeply. I closed my journal—this very one—and bade him sit down.

“You’ve looked better,” I said, drawing an uneasy smile from the young man.

“I have news,” he said. “Good news, really.”

One would never have been able to tell.

“Well,” I said, “I’m certainly glad it’s not bad news. I can’t imagine how you’d look if it were.”

William leaned back and sighed. “Rachel’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant!” I exclaimed, loud enough that even Henry must have heard me. “Good news, that’s fantastic news!” And yet the look on William’s face didn’t show it. “What’s the matter? Is it something with Rachel? Is everything okay between you two?”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Absolutely. Things are fine. Things are wonderful. But this will bring a change, one I had hoped to avoid as long as possible.”

“A change?”

“You know how much I admire you. What you and Henry do. And I know you were looking for someone to follow in your footsteps. And I know that you had hoped that person would be me.” He looked up at me with a mixture of sadness and resignation. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry Carter, but my future is in a classroom, not in the field.”

“I take it you’ve discussed this with Rachel.”

He nodded. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t going to go on this expedition, but she insisted. She knew that I wanted this last chance. And she knew that you needed me.”

“I do need you, Will. I do need you. And to tell you the truth, I don’t understand why you’re doing this. You were made for the field. Not a classroom. Not some university, even if it is Miskatonic.”

“Rachel grew up without a mother,” he said. “I don’t want my child to grow up without a father. I don’t say that to hurt you, but you’ve been lucky. There’s no other word to describe it. People don’t see the things you’ve seen and live to tell about it. Eventually, it catches up with them.”

“William, I understand your sentiments. But that is all they are. You’ve got to leave your emotions behind and use your reason. I love my daughter, and that’s why I do this. Someone has to. Someone has to be willing to do what must be done, whatever the price. Nothing else matters. Not our lives, and to tell you the truth, not anyone else’s.”

I watched him as he heard my words, watched as the look on his face become what one can only describe as disgust. “You can’t mean that, Carter.”

“I do mean it. I mean it without equivocation. It’s not a deal we made. It’s the hand that was dealt us, and we have to play it. Billions of lives, now and yet to be born, depend on us and what we do. That’s no exaggeration.”

“And you’d sacrifice my life, your daughter’s life, for them?”

His eyes were pleading, and I know that he wanted me to deny it. But I could meet him with nothing but the truth. “Yes,” I said. “I would. And if you wouldn’t, then maybe you aren’t cut out for this after all.”

The silence hung between us for an instant that stretched on into eternity. Finally, William stood. He reached for the door and turned back to me as he opened it. “I’ll see this one through, Carter. But then I’m finished. I’ll understand if this negatively affects your decision to support my application for a professorship.”

I probably should have said something then, probably should have stopped him from going. But in the moment, I was angry. It was a selfish reaction. I had put so much into him, I had invested so much time grooming him to take the reins when I was no longer able. So I let him go. When the door closed behind him, I was alone. And I felt it.

Diary of Rachel Jones

July 24, 1933

When I was fourteen years old, my father took me to Walden Pond. “A place of inspiration,” he called it in one of his attempts to educate me in the higher and finer things of life. Encouraging my intellectual curiosity was always at the top of his parenting checklist. My father was decidedly antiquarian, but when it came to me, he expected that I would have every opportunity—and every responsibility—of the boys my age. Perhaps he had always wanted a son.

In any event, we went to Walden Pond that summer. Walden—almost on the doorstep of Boston—was about as deep into the wilderness as my father was willing to go, particularly with me in tow.

“The wilderness,” he told me, “belongs to
them
.”

And it was in that aspect that my childhood differed most dramatically from those of children around me. I was never permitted to forget those cosmic forces at work in the dark places of the earth. Dr. Carter Weston’s daughter would go into the world with open eyes.

At times, my father’s eccentric views had gotten me in trouble. While my friends were taking first communion or learning the more esoteric points of the Old Testament, my father was teaching me about the
Necronomicon
and the
Incendium Maleficarum
, the
Clavis Salomonis
and the
Liber de Diabole.
Not that my father wasn’t devout in his Christian faith; few men who’ve stood in the presence of God could come to doubt Him. My father simply believed that there was more in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, and he believed that the Bible held truths unimagined by ordinary churchgoing folk.

There were, of course, many in his field of study that disagreed, men who held that the forces we faced were not only cosmic in their nature but unfathomable in scope and power. The gods, they said, cared nothing for us. It was not hatred that drove them or evil that they personified, but simple indifference. We were not insects to them; we were bacteria, and they had no more compunction in wiping us out than we would in curing a disease.

I always thought that both factions were right in their own way. Maybe those beings that sought our destruction were not malicious in some philosophically dualistic good vs. evil sense. But when the survival of the human race is at stake, it doesn’t much matter what you label the enemy that seeks to destroy us. All I know is that they must be stopped, whatever the cost.

It was during that summer trip to Walden Pond that my father explained to me so much of his wisdom, accumulated over a lifetime of haunting the wilds and the shunned lands. He told me about the war raging all around me. And like every war, there were more or less two sides. The openers, waiting till the stars come round right again, till the time comes to break the seal between this world and the next, throwing wide the door for the Old Ones to return. On the other side, and far fewer in number—for the allure of the forbidden was strong for anyone who has read the ancient books—are the closers. They stand in the breach for all mankind, with innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

“The Old Ones,” I remember my father saying, “are chaos personified, and they wish nothing more than to bring chaos to this world. They oppose order, and it is for that reason that the
Necronomicon
says of them, ‘They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness.’ The man who would seek them,” my father told me, “walks in the shadows of this world, lurks in the cold waste of empty steppes, and sails above ancient cities of lost antiquity, long since sunk below the waters. The wind carries him where human voices have long ceased, to storm-wreathed mountain tops and endless, silent deserts.”

It’s probably a miracle that I related to the man at all. And yet somehow, his words have stuck with me for all these years. My father had a way with language, and it was those pieces of advice that I thought of as we made our way through Berlin, blanketed in a thick darkness that gave us our only comfort. It was a shallow comfort indeed. For if the agents of the Old Ones could establish a beachhead in the heart of one of the world’s great cities, then we were already running out of time.

It was late, exceedingly so. We’d waited till after two in the morning to leave Margot’s garret, hoping that the night and the deserted city would provide the cover we needed. As we approached the gates of the University of Berlin, it seemed as though our plan might work.

“Stay here,” Guillaume said as we huddled in the trees and bushes beyond the gate. “I’ll scout ahead.” Before any of us could object, he was gone, swallowed up in the night.