The Dark Rites of Cthulhu (3 page)

We'd just taken a jump—another one—into the Twilight Zone. This wasn't going the way either of us would have predicted. Or rather, not as I would have predicted, for Jake seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He raised his gun.

The robed man drew a knife from up his left sleeve—a long curved thing with writing carved along the length of the blade.

"Put down your weapon, sir," Jake said.

"I assure you, it's purely ceremonial," he said, and raised it above his head.

"Put down the weapon or I'll shoot."

"You'll do what you have to do," the man said sadly. "I've already seen it."

He lifted the knife high, stepped forward and let out a yell.

"Ia!"

Jake put two bullets in him.

The tall man fell to the ground, grunted twice and coughed up blood all over the chalk circle.

Jake stood over the body, eyes glazed as if he was not really sure what he'd just done. I wasn't sure what to do about it—by rights I should have hauled him off downtown, but he was my partner—I trusted him. I just hoped I was going to be able to believe his reasoning.

As it turned out, I didn't have time to think. A colder chill blew through the warehouse, and behind it came the first distant sounds of chanting.

"Step out of the circle," one of the robed figures said. "Please, step out of the circle."

I took a step back—all that was needed to get me beyond the widest extent of the drawing—but Jake stood his ground, standing over the prone robed body.

The chanting got louder, the same dissonant mixture of singing, yips and screams we'd heard in the cellar.

"Jake—I think you should get out of there."

"Don't worry, pal," he said, grimly. "I know what needs doing—I've seen it."

The cold bit at my bones, and the chanting rose to echo and ring all around the warehouse. Something shifted—I can't describe it any better than that, and that's exactly what if felt like—a shifting to somewhere subtly elsewhere—or elsewhen.

It started small; a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared in the center of the circle above Jake's head and hung there. As I watched, it settled into a new configuration, a black oily droplet held quivering in empty air.

The walls of the warehouse throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was growing.

It calved, and calved again.

Four eggs hung in a tight group above Jake's head, pulsing in time with the rising cacophony of the chanting. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces, blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.

In the blink of an eye there were eight.

I was vaguely aware of Jake shouting, but I was past caring, lost in contemplation of the beauty before me.

Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

The chanting grew louder still.

Thirty two now, and they had started to fill the warehouse with a dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of magic and the screams of the chant, everything careening along in a big happy dance.

Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.

The colors filled the room, spilled out over the circle, crept around my feet, danced in my eyes, in my head, all though my body. I gave myself to it, willingly. The warehouse filled with stars, and we danced among them.

I strained to turn my head towards the eggs.

A hundred and twenty eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.

Jake had tears in his eyes as he looked at me.

"This is how it has to be," he said.

The protective circle enfolded what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty four eggs. Jake lifted his gun and emptied the clip into them.

Several things happened at once. The myriad of bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Jake screamed—a wail that in itself was enough to set the walls throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seem to come from nowhere to fill the room with darkness. Everything went black as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast rocked the warehouse, driving me down into a place where I dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors.

I drifted.

When I got back—was given back—to what passes for reality, thin daylight lit the floor of the warehouse. There was no sign of the two robed figures—nor of the body of the man
that Jake had shot. The chalk circle on the floor, and any blood that had been there, had been scuffed and scraped into the dust so much that any forensics gathering would be almost impossible.

Jake lay on his back, dead eyes staring up at me.

I didn't shed a tear in the warehouse, but the funeral is later today. I have to do my best not to cry, but I fear that I will.

This is how it has to be.

D
ead Man’s Tongue

By Josh Reynolds

“A man enters a room, carrying a strangely proportioned package. He is not seen again, until his screams alert his fellow tenants in the boarding house as to his distress. The door is busted open, and not one, but two bodies are found. The origin of the first is obvious, but the second—ah, that’s the mystery, ain’t it, Carter?” Harley Warren said. He rubbed his hands together gleefully and sank down onto his haunches just outside of the room in question.

“A mystery we should perhaps leave to the police, don’t you think Warren?” Randolph Carter asked nervously. He and Warren were a study in contrasts. Carter, the tall, thin lantern-jawed expatriate from Massachusetts, and Warren, the short, stocky cat-eyed South Carolinian, made for an odd pair. Carter often found himself wondering how and why he was still in South Carolina, in Charleston, and still trundling in Warren’s oft-disturbing wake. Times like these only made such moments of introspection occur more frequently.

“Seeing as the police are the ones who came to me about this here little conundrum, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they wouldn’t be at all grateful in that regard,” Warren drawled. Carter glanced back down the hall, where several uniformed Charleston police officers stood nervously. They'd come knocking sheepishly on Warren's door, and had escorted them to the boarding house where they now stood. Warren had an odd relationship with the local constabulary. For the most part, they were inclined to ignore him. But sometimes, something happened and men would come, seeking quiet consultation or, as in this case, something more active.

Carter had first visited Warren’s Charleston residence seeking a consultation of his own. Then, as now, Warren had displayed a level of occult competency that Carter found both comforting and not a little frightening. Carter had sought relief from the night-terrors that flapped and squirmed and tickled his soul with rubbery talons and scorpion tails and Warren, opium-numbed and erratic as he was then, had guided him through the labyrinth of dreams that he had been trapped in. But he had found relief from one nightmare only to be propelled along new avenues of dread in the months since. Warren had set aside the dragon-pipe at Carter’s insistence, but remained erratic; indeed, he had become almost predatory since Carter had moved in to the strange house on the Battery.

Warren now hunted the unknown through yellowed pages and across rolls of papyrus and cowhide, looking for any gleanings of old knowledge left behind. He looted tombs-or paid others to do so-and collected the detritus of centuries with compulsive glee. Warren collected the hideous and the beautiful in equal measure, and Carter occasionally suspected that he, too, was a part of his friend’s collection, in some odd way. But the purpose of that collection still eluded him. Warren was hunting something, and Carter feared the day that he finally caught it.

Warren cocked his head and looked up at Carter. “If it’s a strain on your delicate sensibilities, why don’t you just beat feet and go back to scribbling out another penny dreadful for that hack, Wright?”

“Farnsworth is hardly a hack,” Carter murmured. “Old Plato is quite a decent editor. And besides, you invited me to accompany you.”

“A decision that I already have reason to regret,” Warren said loudly.  He hunched forward, balancing on his knuckles. “Does he look like he’s been throttled to you?”

“Which—ah—which one are you referring to?” Carter asked. He plucked a handkerchief from his coat pocket and pressed it to his mouth and nose as he leaned over Warren and into the room. There were, as Warren had said, two bodies occupying the small square of space, one on the bed, and the other on the floor. The one on the floor was bad enough. He’d seen similar looking examples of mortality in the trenches of France; the dead man’s face was twisted in an expression of horror, his eyes bulging and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

But it was the body on the bed that drew most of Carter’s disgust, and not a little worry. It was a shrivelled thing, it’s dried and cracked flesh was shrunken tight to its bones and its body was curled into a loose ball. It was nude, so far as Carter could see, and he could tell that it stunk strongly of strange spices and exotic unguents, even from a distance. There were rags and shreds of what looked like brown, decaying linens scattered over the bed and the floor, as well as on the body of the dead man. 

For a moment, he fancied that it had moved, ever so slightly, when he leaned in. He heard nothing, saw nothing, but even so, he felt it. And he froze, the way a mouse might freeze, when it feels a snake watching it.

“The one that don’t look like jerky,” Warren said. “And don’t lean too far into the room.” He swatted Warren on
the shin with his knuckles.

“What? Why?” Carter said, startled from his paralysis. Warren didn’t reply. Carter looked down at the body on the floor. It was clear that the man had indeed been throttled by some powerful grip. Even a layman such as himself could tell what those wide, dark bruises indicated. He looked up from the body and let his eyes scan the walls.

Someone, likely the dead man, had covered them in scraps of paper covered in strange markings that he recognized from several books in Warren's library. He had no idea what most of the markings meant, but, familiar or not, they seemed to swim before his eyes, crawling like insects across the badly patched and plastered walls. Shivering, he looked away. Those sigils he did recognize did not bode well.

Warren rose smoothly to his feet and ran his fingers along the door frame. Without entering the room, he reached around and felt the interior frame. “Ha,” he said, “There we are.”

“What is it?”

“Somebody was whittling,” Warren said. He grabbed Carter’s hand and forced his startled companion to feel the frame, even as the latter let out a squawk of protest. “See? He had himself a high old time with a buck knife, by the feel of it.”

“Yes, I see that, thank you,” Carter snapped and jerked his hand out of Warren’s grip. “Is that pertinent?” His fingertips felt greasy where they’d touched the wood. His stomach roiled, and his eyes strayed to the leathery thing on the bed. He’d been studiously avoiding looking at it, but now he felt compelled. It was as if reaching into the room had drawn its notice. As before, he felt as if it were staring at him from beneath its brown, wrinkled lids. Between it and the unpleasant symbols stuck to the peeling wallpaper, he was feeling decidedly nervous.

“Ain’t you the one who reads all those detective stories? Everything is pertinent,” Warren said. He tapped Carter between the eyes with a finger, snapping him out of his reverie. “Clues, Carter,” he said.

“Yes, clues, I understand, thank you,” Carter said, slapping ineffectually at Warren’s hand. He rubbed his fingers together and looked at the doorframe again. “What was that I felt? I—I can remember touching something of similar shape and convolution before, though I can’t…I can’t seem to recall where.”

Warren peered at him for a long moment before replying. Carter had the feeling that he was choosing his words very carefully. “It’s the sign of Koth, Carter. You’ve probably seen it in one of my books, when you were making notes for your little stories.”

“I—yes, obviously,” Carter said, pushing aside the hazy, half-formed not-quite memories of a certain black tower, standing alone in the twilight vale of his dreams. He shook himself and rubbed his arms. Such dreams were one of the reasons he'd come seeking Warren's help in the first place, and he didn't care to be reminded of them. He blinked as Warren's words sank in and said, “Little stories?”

“Focus, Carter,” Warren said and snapped his fingers. He looked back at the room. “Only reason a fellow might want to carve that particular sign on his door, or put them other ones up on the walls, is to keep something out.” He frowned, as if something unpleasant had occurred to him and added, “Or in.”

Carter wrung his hands nervously. He felt a thrill of fear. He’d seen that look in Warren’s eyes more than once in their brief, but eventful, association. It was something more than curiosity; it bordered on obsession. “Warren—Harley—perhaps we should call someone…”

“Carter, I surely do hate to tell you this, but I
am
who people call for something like this,” Warren said. He knocked on the doorframe and then, before Carter could stop him, stepped into the room. 

Carter held his breath. Warren turned in a slow circle, looking about him. He murmured soft words that Carter didn't quite
catch, under his breath. The thing on the bed didn't so much as twitch. Carter wondered why he'd thought it might.

Warren went to the small writing desk opposite the bed and sifted through the papers there. "Shipping receipts," he murmured, "Iceland." He looked back at the bed. "Is that where you're from?"

"They have mummies in Iceland?" Carter asked, still staring at the thing on the bed. "Are those markings on the walls Icelandic as well? Have we stumbled upon some ancient rite from the sagas?" he asked excitedly, forgetting his fear, momentarily, in a rush of curiosity. "Wait until I tell Conrad and Kirowan!"

"They have mummies everywhere, Carter," Warren said. "And no, those markings are not Icelandic. They're Tibetan." He sank down beside the body on the floor. "You don't happen to recognize him, do you?" he asked. "Come on in, get a good look."

"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," Carter said.

"Carter--get in here," Warren said.

Carter grimaced and stepped into the room. He watched the thing on the bed as he did so, though he couldn't say why. Surely it was no threat? He looked down at the dead man. He was no threat either. He looked down at the man's death-mottled features and shook his head. "No, I don't know him. Do you?"

"Nope. Pity, I was hoping to learn who it was who thought they were going to perform the rite of
rolang
here in this pleasant little domicile," Warren said.

"The rite of what?" Carter asked. Instinctively, his hand dug for the small moleskin notebook and pencil stub he habitually kept in his coat.

"Don't you dare pull that damn notebook out," Warren snapped. He reached inside his own coat and extracted a heavy, antique revolver from a shoulder holster. The pistol was a LeMat, a Civil War era revolver that Warren had some attachment to, despite its age and unwieldy size. Warren had never shared the origin of that attachment with Carter, despite the latter's numerous attempts to pry it out of him. "You're going to have your hands plenty full with this."

"What?" Carter stepped back, hands raised in protest. “I’m not the sort for guns, Warren."

"Take the pistol, Carter. I need you to hold it for me for a minute," Warren said, flipping the revolver around so that he proffered the butt to Carter. Carter made a face, but took the weapon. It was heavy in his hand, far heavier than the pistol he'd carried in France during the Great War. In its own way, it was as much a relic of ancient times as the thing on the bed.

"Fine," he said. "Now would you mind telling me what you're talking about? What is this--this 'roh-lang' you mentioned?" He hesitated, struck by an unpleasant notion. "It doesn't have anything to do with that business in Arkham last year, does it?" he asked quietly.

"Not quite," Warren said, smiling slightly. "You'll recall I spent some formative time in Tibet?" He pushed himself to his feet and dusted his hands. "I learned a lot in those mountains. Mostly things I'd rather not know, but you can't always pick your lessons or your teachers, if you catch my meaning." He grinned crookedly and Carter felt a shiver pass through him, though he couldn't say why. Warren went to the bed and looked down. "At any rate, there are certain men of power in the hinterlands of Tibet who swear by the rite of the rolang. They spoke of signs and marks like those plastered on the walls, and told me of scenes just like this one here, rolang and all."

"And what, pray tell, is a rolang?" Carter asked.

Warren gestured to the thing on the bed. "That handsome fellow right there.'Rolang' roughly translates as 'corpse who stands up' or some such, depending on the dialect." He scratched his chin and looked down at the brown thing.

"He's--ah--he's not standing up," Carter said. His skin crawled at the thought even as he said it. He had an image in his head, of burying grounds full of crawling, rising corpses, and he clutched himself as a cold chill ran through him.