Red Right Hand (27 page)

The Man in Black looked like a wisp in comparison, a tiny slip of a figure next to the massive sea god. He stood in his fluttering coat, thin blade in his red right hand.

Then he
shifted,
and everything changed.

The Man in Black looked the same, but suddenly he was different. His presence expanded between one eye blink and the next, growing into something that
pressed against the magick under my skin. He was the Heart of Darkness, the Lord of Nightmares, the original Suicide King.

He was the Crawling Chaos in all his terrible glory.

Daniel scurried next to me. His voice was still thready with pain. “What do we do?”

“Be very, very quiet,” I whispered.

“'Cause we're hunting wabbits?”

I shook my head. “We are the rabbits.”

“Good point.”

Cthulhu shifted, and more of the ceiling crumbled against his winged back, dust falling across shoulders like mountains, sticking to damp, sea-god skin. His voice was the sounding of cloister bells inside my head, loud but hollow, warning of danger.

NEPHEW.

“Uncle.” The Man in Black gave a small nod, lips pulled into a grin.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

“You are free from your prison, Lord of R'lyeh.”

BECAUSE OF YOUR ACOLYTE.

The Man in Black tilted his head. “You are welcome. Indebted, but welcome.”

Cthulhu shifted.

IT WAS NOT AT YOUR HAND.

“She is my hand. She bears
my
Mark.”

The symbol in my palm flared hotter as he said it. I bristled inside but stayed quiet.

Cthulhu shook his head, and the cavern vibrated.

HER POWER IS HER OWN. NO DEBT IS OWED TO YOU.

His massive head turned slightly, red orb of an eye looking directly at me. Under his gaze, my magick began to bubble and boil. My skin flushed fever-hot, and it took every ounce of control to not squirm, to not turn away and hide from the weight of that awful, crimson eye.

The Man in Black lunged forward, coat flaring around him with a snap, his saturnine face pulled into a snarl exposing long, jagged shark teeth. “She is my Acolyte. What is hers is mine by right of possession.”

The implication of that struck me like a fist. My hand reached back, falling on Daniel's leg. He was mine. No one else's.

Mine and mine alone
.

Cthulhu turned toward the Man in Black.

SHE ONLY FOLLOWS YOU BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT KNOW THE TRUTH.

“My truth is her truth, Deep Dweller,” he spat.

NOT FOR LONG, PRINCE OF LIES.

Cthulhu didn't move as his mind crashed into mine like a tsunami, sweeping me under and washing me away into a riptide of darkness.

 

54

I
WAS BACK.

Back in the vision of a blood-black future where the moon hung low and red in a tattered and falling sky, and the world burned and bled, and the stench of torn gut and violent death threatened to choke the air from my lungs. It all closed around me like a fist.

Squeezing.

Constricting.

Oppressing.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears that welled in my eyes, burning from the soot that hung in the air. Movement in front of me caught my eye.

I stood behind a monster, the monster I'd seen earlier, the one that held my little brother, Jacks. The one eating my little brother, Jacks, with jagged, gnashing teeth. I could just see my brother's tiny socked foot around slowly flapping wings of stretched membrane.

My stomach clenched.

“Don't move, Charlie. You can't save him. That's not why I brought you here.”

The voice came from behind me. It carried over my shoulder, a pleasant tenor with a muted accent that was vaguely Bostonian. I turned.

A man stood just a few feet away.

He was dressed in dark jeans with folded cuffs, a brown leather jacket over a skin-tight black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, and his dark hair was greased into a pseudo-pompadour; he looked like a seventies version of someone from the fifties.

He had kind brown eyes and a large nose.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Really?”

“You know me, Charlie.”

“I don't.”

He opened his mouth and spoke something in a language I could not understand, one made of feelings and urges instead of language and sound.

The moment he said the word, knowledge poured on me like boiling oil. He pushed against the magick inside me, sweeping back and forth like the tides. He felt immense, bottomless, near infinite.

I breathed his name.

“Cthulhu.”

He nodded, warm eyes twinkling.

“What are we doing?” This made no sense.

“We are having a conversation in a possible apocalypse.”

“Wait, why aren't we in the cave?”

“We are.”

I shook my head. I didn't understand.

“We are both avatars of ourselves. You are still beneath the Temple of Ba'althune next to your paramour. I am still in the golden city of R'yleh,
and
I still fight your master in the same temple where you are. All of these things are true. I splintered us and took a portion of each to the moment you chose your path, the moment
you
chose
this
future.”

“I didn't want any of this.”

“You chose to help Nyarlathotep achieve his goals.”

“To
stop
this.”

He shook his head sadly, then lifted his chin, indicating the scene in front of us. “Watch closely.”

I turned to look. We'd shifted, now looking at the event from the side. I saw myself.

I looked terrible. Other Charlie looked like a child compared to the squatting monstrosity she faced. I watched myself scream in rage, face purple and knotted. The creature leaned to the left and broke wind, my brother's body sliding on its bloated stomach.

“Watch,” Cthulhu said. Other Charlie took a step, her hands clenched in fists of rage, and then the night swirled behind her and coalesced into the form of a man.

The Man in Black.

He looked different now, his coat flaring off him in spikes and blades of inky black energy, his skull swollen and malformed around a shark's maw of triple-rowed teeth. His eyes glowed crimson, pulsing in syncopated rhythm with his red right claw. He reached out, razor talons clamping on Other Charlie's shoulder, spinning her around. He grabbed her, snatching her off her feet and lifting her into the air. Blood burst where his talons pierced her body, tearing a scream from her throat that cut into my bones, going on and on and on in an undulating wave of agony that stole her words away.

He grew, expanding and swelling, his shark maw swinging wide and vicious. She tried to fight, legs kicking, her hands moving. I could feel her try to use her magick like an echo inside my chest. The Crawling Chaos smiled around his slung-open jaw, arm-thick tongue slithering out, whipping the air. A guttural bark blew Other Charlie's hair as he laughed at her futile effort.

Her tears fell, splashing against rows of jagged, jutting enamel.

Then he shoved her face first down his throat.

Cthulhu's hand clamped on my arm, stopping me from running to save her. I jerked hard against his grip, but he kept his fingers closed.

A small part of my mind noticed they were webbed to the second knuckle.

“Let me
go
!”

“It would do no good.”

I pulled harder, jerking with all my body weight. “What's happening?”

He let go of my arm, and I stumbled. “You were only shown a portion of this future. You were manipulated into using your power to guide reality to this future. Your choices have been tumblers in a lock, one by one falling into place until this future cannot be undone. It is almost too late. This is the reality if you allow the Son of Azathoth to win.”

I looked at the scene with Other Charlie and the Crawling Chaos. They were perfectly still, time-locked; everything around us was frozen in place. Her legs hung in a mist of blood freeze-framed around the monstrous countenance of Nyarlathotep. It was gruesome and gory, and the fact that I was looking at another version of myself made the horror even more surreal. It scratched at my eyeballs, picking away at the edge of my sanity.

I turned away, back to Cthulhu. He stood there as if he were innocent, the kindly old guy who would buy you beer but never ever try to feel you up after you drank it. It was a lie, and I recognized it. “Oh, and you want me to throw in with you?”

He shrugged. “It would be better.”

“I doubt that.”

“All I want is a home for my star-spawn. They swim the aeons of space, skirting through the Void without form, without a home. It…” A tear trickled from a watery brown eye. “…
pains
me to be separated from them.”

Loss struck me like a fist, blasting into my gut, leaving me scooped out. I felt as though part of me, part of who I am, had been trapped a million miles away, and I couldn't get to it, couldn't be whole, would never be whole again.

I felt like I did when I'd woken up so many years ago.

Cthulhu moved closer, his webbed hands moving to my arms, gentle this time. “Charlie, you have to understand,
he
is the Great Destroyer!
He
is the Ravening Lion. You are food to him and his kind. If he has his way, your world will be a feasting board. All I want is a home for me and mine. My children will come and bring everlasting life to this planet. No more death. No more illness. No more war. Just peace and plenty and an endless, pleasant dream.” His hand swept over his hair, coming away shiny. Before I could flinch, he swiped it across my face. My eyes slammed shut as they were anointed with a thin sheen of oil from an elder god.

When I opened them, I was flying through space, and I wasn't human anymore.

 

55

W
E HUDDLE CLOSE,
but it does no good; the cold still cuts through us, slicing its way to our cores. Bits of dust and debris, detritus from planets smashed long ago into pieces, whiz past, scouring my skin. I am filleted in a thousand micro-tears.

My brother next to me isn't as fortunate. He is reduced to a shred of flesh and a cloud of fluid that the ones behind fly through, blinking him away from their single open eyes.

He is gone.

One less of us.

The loss of him is a sharp pain throughout our shared mind.

We huddle closer.

Filling in the gap.

A sun goes nova as we sail by, flaring into a bright purple burst, unleashing gamma rays that cold-scorch the flank of our school.

I feel their nerve endings burn and curl as if they were my own.

Hundreds fall away, drifting into space, becoming detritus themselves.

Flotsam.

Jetsam.

Still, we swim on.

The hole inside me hurts. I need. There is something out there that can heal me.

I just have to find it.

We just have to find it.

Father, help us.

Please just call us home.

 

56

I'
D BEEN TORN
from the outskirts of space and flung to the ground like a bird plucked from the sky by the hand of God. Tumbling across the ash-covered ground of the nightmare future, I rolled to a stop. I couldn't breathe. Fine gray soot filled my nose, coating the inside of my throat, closing it down so air couldn't squeeze through.

This is the ash of everything I love.

I scrambled to my feet, coughing and choking.

Swallowing over and over again, gulping air, I finally managed to catch my breath. I held my chest, trying to keep my heart from pounding out of it.

Blinking through streaming tears, my eyes found Cthulhu in his human guise.

He'd fallen to his knees, the Crawling Chaos looming around him with deadly spikes of ebon energy. His face turned toward me, eyes filled with saltwater. He spoke into my mind as the first stabbing talon reached him.

YOU MUST STOP HIM. I AM TOO WEAK AFTER MY CAPTIVITY.

“I can't.” The words hurt coming out.

YOU MUST.

His voice pitched up an octave, smoothing out, soothing against my ears.

THREE TO BREAK THE SEAL.

THREE TO TURN THE WHEEL.

THREE TO LOOSE AZATHOTH.

THREE AND ALL HOPE IS LOST.

The words meant nothing to me. Azathoth. Azathoth was bad. I knew that, and the fact that he was tied to the Man in Black. Before I could ask what Cthulhu meant, the Crawling Chaos surged, swallowing him into the darkness of his coat. The dark god's back was to me, the soot-and-ink blackness of the coat struggling to consume the body of Cthulhu. Shapes moved on the surface of the coat, bulging here and there in misshapen forms, the sea god trying to punch his way free. Nyarlathotep's distorted face loomed above the collar, his hands, red and dark-skinned, both clutching the coat together as it screamed and screamed and screamed in my mind, its voice joining the voice of Cthulhu himself, a duet of glass-edged pain as one drove to consume and one fought to keep from being consumed. The clarion skrill of their agony crushed me to the ground.

I screamed, joining them.

Slowly, at a bone-grinding pace, the cries of Cthulhu faded, drifting into oblivion, and the coat fell to a whimpering that I echoed as the Man in Black shuddered and shifted, sliding back into his human skin.

One last shiver and he snapped back into place.

Slowly he turned, his dead white chaotic gaze falling on me.

 

57

“C
HARLIE, MOVE!”