The Dark Rites of Cthulhu (18 page)

The creature was carrying an armful of tinder, perhaps to start a fire. March had no doubt at all that these beings were now capable of creating fire. He realized, however, that it wasn’t bare branches in its arms but a bundle of human leg and arm bones.

The strange being was moving straight toward the hovering disk. It didn’t bend its path around it. Snow growled again, showing her teeth now, as the creature drew closer to the inky circle. March reached around behind him, without taking his eyes off the viewing screen he had called into existence, and stroked Snow’s neck to calm her. Was the creature going to offer its burden of bones to the disk as a tribute, to appease its new masters?

Having created this scrying pane from a once empty sheet of paper, March was not surprised when he comprehended the black disk was a portal – though whether it was an intentional creation of the Outsiders, or merely a hole stretched open in the fabric of space and time as a byproduct of the Outsiders’ new activity, how could he judge? However the portal had come to be, March’s first impression when the dog-creature arrived at the disk was that it was going to throw the bones into it. Instead, the thing stepped over the rim of the disk and slipped its whole body into the blackness. In a fraction of a moment, the dog-being was gone, as if it had plunged into a vertical pool of ink.

No sooner had it disappeared than two more of the canine-things emerged from the same direction, their arms also full of human bones. Snow growled again, as the pair of creatures approached the disk as the first one had. They too, one after the other, hopped up into the black circle and were swallowed.

Like him, the dogs had figured out that the disk was the mouth of a tunnel.

“They’re…migrating,” March whispered to Snow, in awe. “And taking their masters’ bones with them.”

But, he wondered, migrating where?

Over the next several hours he saw one more dog-being disappear into the disk with a load of bones in its grasp. After that, March was too impatient to watch for more of them. Too impatient to wait until tomorrow to forward the words of power another notch. He decided to do that now.

First, though, he sat on the edge of his bed and stroked Snow and talked to her soothingly. He told her he was going to tear up some hotdogs for her and add them to her bowl of dry food as a treat, to keep her distracted while he inscribed the last of the ten words of power that would reactivate his decagonal lens. He said, “You’re a good girl, Snow. You’re the only living thing on this planet that I can count on. That I can trust. The only constant in my life. The only living thing in this world that truly loves me. The only thing that I truly love.” His eyes were filling up in self pity, but also with the enormity of his affection. He understood he not only loved this animal, but admired her…and all her kind. To his mind, dogs were already the pinnacle of evolution.

He went on, “You don’t live as long as we do. What will I do, someday, when I don’t even have you anymore? I’ll be alone. But I guess…I guess we’re all of us alone. Most people just don’t think they are.” He smiled, and ran his hand along her neck again. “We’ll just keep being alone together, I guess, huh? And see what the future brings.”

She turned her head to lick his hand.

With Snow digging into her bowl of food at the other end of the long, single room that doubled as March’s bedroom and living room, he penned in the last of the ten potent words.

March’s initial impression was that he had been unsuccessful, that he had written one of the words incorrectly. The window only showed unbroken blackness. He was reminded, uncomfortably, of the disk he had seen floating above the street in the last view. He imagined a dog-creature’s head suddenly thrusting out of the portal into his reality, pink eyes blazing, to snap at his face. But then he considered that perhaps night had finally descended over that future landscape.

Eventually, though, he realized he was seeing a churning sort of blackness within the blackness, a restless pulsing almost sensed more so than actually seen. Seen with his mind rather than his eyes. Thus, trusting more to his intuition than his paltry organs of sight, March came to understand that the Outsiders had descended from the sky at long last. Descended, and consumed. They had swallowed up all, until they were all.

He advanced the ten words another notch, to the fifth configuration he had attempted, so impatient that the correction fluid hadn’t dried fully and the inscriptions were smeary. They still did the trick, but the resulting view was the same as before: only churning, sentient blackness. Nevertheless, he continued this way – sixth configuration, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, as though he were the master of time himself, forcing the arm of a clock -- until the only position that remained was the original one, setting number one, which had showed him the Earth still blazing with the white light of the Outsiders’ eruption onto this plane of existence.

For now, he left the dial set at view number ten. For now, his mind couldn’t assimilate any more than that seething black emptiness. It was almost soothing, that living oblivion. A kind of relief, like an afterlife of blissful nothingness.

That night, after he had walked Snow and then made himself a sandwich, he sat down in front of his computer to look in on the news. He almost expected to see that there had been a third killing in his city in or around Hope Cemetery, but there hadn’t. He extended his search to other cities, then other countries, but of course gruesome murders committed in or around graveyards were so prevalent that they could have been the work of a never-ending supply of madmen. Still, wasn’t it possible that some of these crimes he skimmed had been committed by another kind of predator? A predator that had lived in humankind’s shadow for generations, maybe since the earliest days of human civilization? Going back as far, perhaps, as the time when primitive humans and wild canines had first begun living in conjunction?

The cosmic clock come full circle?

With the world all peacefully black outside the windows of his third-floor loft, March swiveled his computer chair to watch Snow as she slept, her snout propped on one paw as always.

“They don’t eat us because they hate us,” March whispered to the dog, while he wondered about the dreams that made her twitch one hind leg from time to time. Was she dreaming the primal dream of hunting prey? Was she dreaming of stalking on her hind legs alone?

He said, “They eat us to commune with us. Because they still love us.”

Of Circles and R
ings

By Tom Lynch

It’s a good bout, up to a point. We’re pretty evenly matched, and this is the farthest I’ve gotten in the elimination rounds, so I’m stoked to be this close to placing first. Then, my opponent switches gears to Bagua Zhang. That’s fine. No problem. He’s probably getting tired, so he’s looking to evade my attacks and let me tire myself out. Fine by me. I’ll just wait till he makes a mistake, then I’ll take home the trophy.

All of a sudden, he’s doing an elaborate form, almost a dance, still moving in circles, spinning his hands and arms in some kind of demo thing, moving closer, closer. I don’t know who he thinks he’s going to impress, but it won’t be m—

And I’m on the floor, sitting on my ass. My cheekbone is throbbing. It feels like he hit me, but what the hell just happened? I didn’t see anything!

The ref comes into the ring, and raises my opponent’s hand, pronouncing him the winner, and I’m still sitting there as everyone starts cheering for the other guy. Did I black out or something? I rub my cheek where he must have hit me, and my fingers come away bloody. He broke skin, too. Quite a hit. How did that
happen
? Why didn’t I see it
coming
?

I roll up onto my feet and wander out of the ring, and meet with my sifu on the side. He nods at me, proud I’ve done as well as I have, but he can tell I’m disappointed. Years of training, practice, and meditation…to have come
this close
. I try to smile, but wind up shrugging, and head back to my car.

I get to the studio early to meet up with Sifu to review the video of my match. He meets me in the cramped office at the back of the studio, and moves some paperwork off a stool so I can sit next to him. He pulls up the file the tournament officials had sent him, and we get ready to watch.

“You did really well the other day. Perhaps the best you’ve done,” Sifu said.

“But not good enough, hunh?”

“No matter how good you are, there’s always somebody better.”

“I guess. I just wanna see where I messed up. I was sure I was going to win that match.”

Sifu nods and clicks play on the video. The whole thing is only a couple of minutes, so we don’t have to wait long. I see a few spots where I left openings, and grin a few times when I caught my opponent’s lags. I watch the status bar, and there we are, coming close to the end. He starts his spinning dance thing, inching closer to me, and then I’m on the floor, and his fist is out.

I hear Sifu catch his breath. I turned to look at him, and he’d gone pale, his eyes wide.

“What—” I start.

“You must go,” Sifu said. “Now!” And he practically chases me out of the studio. I stand outside in the slush, looking up at the sign for Kwan’s Kung Fu, wondering what to do now. It’s too early to go to work, and too long a drive to head back to my apartment to study. I pull out my cell phone and call the tournament organizers.

“Hi, this is Pete Jones,” I say to the woman who answers.

“Hi, Pete. How can I help you?”

“Well, I was in the competition last weekend, and have a question.”

“I remember you, Pete. You fought well. What’s your question?”

“Thanks. Um…my opponent that final round. Can you give me his contact info?”

“Aw, Pete, you know I can’t do that.”

“At least his name. I’m really not looking to settle a score outside the ring here.”

“Yeah, but how do we know that?”

“I want to know what happened! That’s all! You saw the fight, right? Where the hell did that punch come from? I want to learn that technique, cuz I’m stuck between furious that I lost and awestruck that he won with one punch outta nowhere.”

“I hear ya, Pete,” she says, and pauses. “Look, I’ll tell you his name, okay?”

I sigh. “I guess that’s a start.”

“And he’s local, so you should be able to find him.”

I perk up at that. She’s clearly trying to help me out. I’ve been competing at their events for years, so they know be by now. Finally, I might catch a break, here. “Thanks! What’s his name?”

“His name is Shun Jian.”

“Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.”

I sit in my car outside the address I dug up for Shun Jian. It’s a simple apartment complex on the edge of town. As the late winter sleet comes down on my windshield, I try not to nod off while watching for this guy.

And then I see him. He has a backpack over one shoulder, and a baseball cap on, but it’s him alright. I hop out of my car.

“Shun Jian?” I call.

He spins. “Who are you?” He speaks slowly, with a heavy accent. Chinese, yes, but something else, too.

“Pete Jones. We fought at the tournament last weekend.”

“The match was not personal.”

“I know, I know…I just…”

“This is not a good time for me, Pete.”