by JG Faherty
I released him and he fell onto his side, clutching his wounded arm.
“How fitting that we end up this way, Ben Olmstead. A bride for a bride, a life for a life.”
“No…not Callie…please…” His words came out weak and breathless as he comprehended my meaning. I laughed and turned away, eager to consummate my desires while he watched, helpless in his pain and terror.
The thud of heavy footsteps alerted me to my mistake. The narrow confines of the hallway hindered my ability to meet Ben’s attack and he rammed me like a bull, dodging under my tentacles and putting his shoulder into my ribs. We fell into the bedroom and before I could rise a sharp pain blossomed in my back. I tried to rise and my left leg gave out.
Stabbed! I’d forgotten that Ben always carried a small knife, a pearl-handled blade left to him by his father. That blade now resided just above my hip. I reached for it and Ben kicked me, his heavy boot finding my stomach and rolling me over. The knife jabbed me again and fire raced down my leg, immobilizing me.
His injured arm hanging useless, Ben stood over me, pistol gripped in his good hand and aimed at my face.
“I don’t know what sorcery befouled you, but I’ll not let you contaminate my sister or any other person. This time you join your father for sure, Henry Gilman.”
I tried to lash out with my tentacles but they were trapped under me. Ben smiled, knowing he had me just where he wanted me.
A flash of movement behind him and the dull clang of metal meeting skull. His eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground.
Callie stood there, a chamber pot in her hands.
“My lord,” she said, dropping to her knees before me. She took my hand in hers and bowed her head. I tried to speak, but I had no words. She lifted her gaze and I saw something more than adoration in her eyes.
Worship.
“There is much I have to tell you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“I tried many times to speak with you, but you kept refusing me.”
Her words should have carried the sting of bitterness but I heard nothing but simple statement of fact. Either she hid her feelings well or she truly harbored no ill will for my past actions.
“My mind was elsewhere,” I said. Not an apology. I could never apologize for placing Flora’s welfare above all else. Indicating my bandages, I added, “You have a captive audience now. What is it you need to say?”
I had many questions for her as well, but I held my tongue. She’d already piqued my curiosity with her comments and her actions. Her lack of surprise at my appearance. Her undisguised desire for carnal relations.
Calling me ‘my lord’.
Where had that come from? And she’d nearly killed her own brother to save what would appear to anyone as one of Satan’s guardians. Things were not as they seemed with Callie Olmstead, and caution lent me patience to find out why.
She glanced at Ben, who lay on the floor, a pool of blood beneath his head. He still breathed, although shallow and erratic. I suspected it would be a long while before he woke, if at all.
“I feared this day would never come, that my brother had truly killed you in that cavern. Twenty nights I have waited, my hopes dwindling with each new dawn.”
“Twenty nights?” How could that be possible? I’d thought my transformation had only taken hours, a day at the most. But then, my father’s had lasted even longer.
She ignored my question. “I tried not to lose faith in you. I told them you were strong, that if anyone could reach the goddess it would be you.”
Callie tied off my bandage and seated herself in a chair across from me. She’d donned her nightdress and buttoned it, although it still offered little in the way of decency. The lack of decorum bothered her not in the least as she leaned forward and spoke with an intensity that held me rapt even though her words created more questions in me than they answered.
“Eons ago, in the first time of man, the heralds of the Elder Gods crossed the great expanses of space and came to Earth.”
“I’m well aware,” I said, motioning with my tentacles. I quickly told her of my encounter with Mother in the depths of the river, and the subsequent passing of her knowledge to me. “They came from Aldebaran, a planet so far from here we’ve never seen its sun in our sky.”
“And the goddess?
I informed her of Mother finally succumbing to her injuries. She bit her lip. “I feared it was so when you told us of the explosion. We’ve already begun to make new plans. Although your presence will force another change, one most definitely for the better.”
“We? Who do you refer to?”
“The Followers. After the Great Wars, when most of the heralds left our planet or perished, the remaining Star Children went into hiding.” She explained that a few human acolytes had remained, biding their time until the gods returned. As the centuries passed, they continued to worship in secrecy, handing down their knowledge from generation to generation.
“Our numbers are small, and we remain scattered so as not to draw attention.”
“And who do you worship, Callie Olmstead?” I remembered her brooch, the same one worn by many at Miskatonic, and I had a suspicion I knew the answer.
“The Dweller of the Deep,” she said, confirming my guess. “Scythalla.”
With that word, a million doors opened in my skull, spilling images and words and facts, only some of which made sense. A great war raging across the continents. Terrible weapons of light that carved alien flesh from bone and melted giant swatches of earth. Enormous flying machines that blazed like multicolored comets across the sky. Entire civilizations, some as advanced as the ancient Egyptians or the strange primitives in South America, wiped out in cataclysmic events.
Much like during my rebirth at the bottom of that river, it was too much for me to comprehend at once. But one colossal figure I recognized, her tentacles burned and steaming, sinking to the bottom of the ocean off a rocky coast.
“’Fhalma,” I whispered.
“The Great Mother,” Callie said. “The Followers knew she had not perished. They, and their descendants, continued to search for her through the centuries, hoping to one day wake her and begin the Cycle of the Coming. Like so many others, I dreamed it would happen in my lifetime, but I never believed the prophesied one would be my own heart’s desire.”
“Descendants?” I glanced at Ben’s prone form and then back at Callie. Had the Olmsteads been hiding some kind of familial secret from me all these years?
“Not me.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t lucky enough to trace my roots back to the original Followers. I knew nothing of the Great Ones before I came to Miskatonic.”
She went on to tell me of her conversion, of meeting a man – Professor George Angell, the very same person she’d sent us to see – who had opened her eyes and her soul to the magic and wonders of ’Fhalma and her kind. Along the way, he’d also partaken of her in ways both foul and arcane. Had I known of this when I was but a human, I’d have been furious at his treatment of her and avenged her honor.
Now, I understood the necessity of it. He was preparing her body and soul to be a vessel for something no ordinary human could survive.
“As an acolyte, I pledged my life to Scythalla, even as I pretended to live among ordinary people. When the professor discovered the ancient city of Celephaïs, we thought it might provide new information that would help us locate our goddess or her kin. We had no idea your father had already awoken her. Not until you confided in my brother. I tried to speak to you privately, but….”
“Better that you didn’t. I’d have thought you mad. Or worse, in league with the very demons I sought to destroy.”
Indeed, things would have been very different had Callie informed me of all she knew. It would have pitted Flannery and me against her and her Followers, quite possibly with their side victorious and my father
still alive. Alive and determined to put himself on the throne of the world.
No, better I carry out Mother’s vision in the proper manner.
Unlike Silas Gilman, I knew my place in the grand plan. To waken the sleeping giant slumbering beneath the Antarctic ice. Asgotha, brother of Scythalla. He would take her place and open the gates so that the Elders – Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, Zoth-Ommog; I knew their names now – could finally cross the great expanse to our world.
But where did Callie and her Followers fit in all of this? Why had they focused their efforts on Innsmouth? I asked her as much.
“We have always maintained outposts in New England and certain other parts of the country, and the world. Places where ancient lore and writings hinted that Scythalla or one of her brethren might have gone to ground. A little more than fifty years ago, Professor Angell, then a young man just starting his career, heard a rumor that a fishing magnate named Marsh had made a deal with the devil to ensure good hauls for his ships.”
“Marsh? Flora and Scott’s grandsire?”
“The same. The professor rushed here from out west but before he arrived the town fell victim to a terrible sickness.”
“The plague.”
“That’s the popular story. But in truth, it was much the same as what your father brought about. Dead men rising from their graves, creatures half-man, half-monster walking the streets at night. Professor Angell tried to locate Marsh so he could learn the whereabouts of Scythalla but the townspeople took up arms and put down all the half-breeds, and Marsh and his crew with them.”
“Flora always said her grandfather died of the plague.”
“That was the story told. Only a few knew the truth. Confident the great goddess had to be nearby, Angell obtained a position at Miskatonic and slowly gathered the brethren to the area. Innsmouth, Arkham, Bolton, Essex. Miskatonic became a center for our efforts because it maintains such a vast library of the arcane. Professor Angell has held firm to the belief that one day we would find the Great Mother, wake her, and bring forth the prophesied one, who would lead us into the new age.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Dozens who are descendants of the old families, and more like me. Acolytes. Tomorrow we will go to the university and you will greet your subjects.”
“Tomorrow? Why wait?” I was eager to take my rightful place as king. Had I known a legion of devotees already awaited me, I’d have forgone my desire for revenge and made Miskatonic my first stop.
“I will send messages tonight but it will take a day for all to gather. In the meanwhile, we have something more important to attend to. It is my honor to become your First.”
Callie stood, pulled her nightdress off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor.
At the sight of her nakedness, my former ardor returned. She was not Flora, but that no longer mattered. I was a king, and I needed a queen to help me build a new society. Callie would be a perfect choice. Her mind was sharp and her body ripe and womanly; she would bear me many children and provide valuable counsel.
Yet something human still remained in me, causing me to question her true desire. Had it been anyone else standing there, I would have taken them, as was my right. But this was Callie, and she deserved more than to be an unwilling slave to my lust.
“You truly want me, even in my present form?”
She smiled and held her arms out. “I do. I always have. All that I endured, all that was done to me, was for this one purpose. To prepare me for the possibility of joining with the Chosen One. To have it be you makes it even more of an honor. I am truly blessed that the Ancient Ones have seen fit to not only select you as their emissary on Earth, but that you believe me worthy to be your mate. You have a choice, you know. Any of the Followers would kill to stand here before you.”
“I need no other,” I said, and I meant it. She smiled and stepped toward me, and my lust surged to greater heights than I’d ever known before.
I stripped off my clothes, revealing all the changes Mother had wrought in me, and the ones still continuing. My pallid skin and the webbing between fingers and toes. The cape-like wings that hadn’t yet reached their full size, as my father’s had. My tentacles, their mouths even now opening and closing in anticipation. I wrapped her in coils of rubbery flesh and pulled her close. That part of me that still remained a man found its proper place between her legs and I entered her while I pushed her onto the bed, still clenching her tight. She moaned, but not in pain. Her hands gripped my shoulders and she matched my movements, whispering my name over and over.
It had been far too long since I had been with a woman, and I felt myself reaching my apex of pleasure sooner than I anticipated. Aware of my duty even in the throes of my ardor, I positioned the tips of my appendages at the other available openings and thrust them inside her. Her body writhed beneath me and she screamed, the sound muffled by the pseudopod occupying her throat. Her cries turned to choking as I loosed my seed, both alien and human, into her.
I held her immobile until I finished, and then released her. She coughed and lay back against the pillows, her smile one of satisfaction, although from completing her duty or a lingering pleasure, I could not say. I found myself hoping it was both.
Staring down at my new bride, her flesh pale and bruised, I wondered how much of my life had been beyond my control since the beginning. Had I always been destined to walk this path? Had Mother’s influence been there from the start, her mere presence beneath the town serving as a tool to manipulate lives through the centuries?
No, I chided myself. For if that were so, Angell and his people would have had their eyes on my father, on me. They wouldn’t have been taken by surprise by my resurrection as their king.
No doubt Fate spun a complex web with many different paths, and it was my own doing that set me down one of them. After all, hadn’t it been my personal desire and stubbornness that sent me after my father that fortunate night?
We make our own destinies, I thought. And now it was time to make mine. One that would soon see me seated on the throne of a new world. A few days ago, I’d dreamed of being the hero of Innsmouth. Now I prepared to make the town, and one day the entire world, mine.
I stood and Callie’s eyes went wide. Turning, I saw the reason for her alarm even as I heard her gasp.
Ben’s body had disappeared.
“We should have killed him,” she said. “Now he’ll come for you, and he won’t be alone.”
“Let him.” I wondered how long he’d been awake, listening to us from behind closed eyes.
“He’s as stubborn as an old mule, you know that,” Callie continued, consternation pulling her mouth tight. “He’ll stop at nothing to find you.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said, knowing she spoke the truth. “Let him come. Let them all. I won’t make the same mistakes as my father. We’ll hide ourselves away until I have amassed an army that is unstoppable.”
“My king,” she whispered, her voice still raw. “It will be my honor to stand by your side.”
Her words filled me with satisfaction. Truly, I had chosen well. It occurred to me that Fate’s plan was even more complex than I imagined. For if what Callie had told me was true, then only the psychic and physical degradations she’d experienced at the hands of Professor Angell and the Followers had made it possible for her to mate with one such as I. Flora as a human would not have survived, and Flora as a changeling, no matter how human she seemed on the outside, would have been incapable of producing my progeny, that perfect melding of human and alien species that ’Fhalma’s grand plan required.
That, in turn, caused me to ponder who my father had bred with in order to produce my siblings, the ones that even now I could sense, far out in the ocean, biding their time until they matured. Who had she been, and what had happened to her?
Ah, Fate! That cursed she-witch. So many pieces
in motion, like some otherworldly chess master. Plans within devious plans, all to place me in the embrace of a dying god, each of us the other’s last hope.
With my true path finally revealed, the way forward was clear to me, the curtains pulled away to reveal a straight line to the future. A visible road, yes, but one also still fraught with peril. Humankind would not submit easily; they’d shown in the past they possessed what it took to defeat Mother and her kind. My own stubbornness, and that of people such as Ben and Flannery, were examples of what we’d have to face. They would come after us, in groups small and large.
Let them, I thought. I will be ready for their pitchforks and torches, guns and knives. A queer sense of déjà vu came over me. They’d called my father Dr. Frankenstein upon a time.
Now I would be their monster.
But unlike Shelley’s brute or my own sire, I would use my intelligence and prepare to meet my enemies. I knew their ways; hadn’t I been the one to lead them into battle the last time? Flannery and his men got the best of me once, when I was merely human and paralyzed with grief.
I held my hand out to Callie and she took it.
“Come,” I said. “I require food before we depart for the university. Dress for travel. And we must contact your people. Tell them to prepare for war.”
Whoever came after us would come in force.
And I intended to be ready.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The fog-shrouded grounds of Miskatonic University welcomed me as we entered the campus proper. I breathed deeply, savoring the dampness, with its undertones of wet earth and brackish water from the river and nearby swamps.
Hints of movement in the grass caused me to look down. Small creatures hopped and crawled across the sidewalks and sod. At first glance they appeared to be ordinary frogs and toads, but then I noticed their larger than normal eyes and misshapen mouths. Dozens of the fist-sized amphibians joined us as we crossed the great lawn. Peculiar grunts and belches in the distance told me more of the mutant beasts were emerging from the waters in response to my presence.
