Where had they come from? Could men conceive such horrors, born from the same Outer Darkness as Yog-Sothoth?
This wasn’t a recent work, something done overnight. This was a lifetime of arduous labor.
“Dev,” Armitage said. “This is frightening.”
Macky nodded. “I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.”
“Do you think it’s possible your connection with Abdul, The Necronomicon, actually had nothing to do with the gates? Maybe this has been going on for longer? Long before your meeting with the Mad Arab. You didn’t initiate this. You weren’t the first. You were becoming a part of what had already been set in motion.”
“Yes,” Macky said, shining the light in a slow circle. “Millie brought that to my attention recently. It doesn’t make me feel any better. And Gomory was still the first gate. We’re in a story, like you said, a Mythos. This isn’t here.”
“There’s something here beyond our understanding. This isn’t about Yog-Sothoth coming through. The Mad Arab has an agenda. He has a motive for setting these things in place.”
“His definition of fun is definitely different than ours,” Macky said. “That’s for sure.”
The paintings were gaining dimension, texture. The colors were bleeding, deeper and richer. Something whispered in Macky’s ear.
He turned to Armitage. “Did you hear that?”
“No. But I feel plenty.”
“What’s going on down there?” Millie said. “Dev? Henry? Are you guys all right?”
“It’s a treat to be down here!” Macky said. “Armitage said this might not be my fault!”
“Dev! Henry! Will you guys answer me?”
Macky looked at Armitage. Armitage widened his eyes. The darkness was smothering, muting their voices. Millie couldn’t hear them, couldn’t see them.
Something slunk against the wall, a shadow so massive it extinguished the light. It breathed strangely. Mottled gray flesh, an irregular spine protruded from split skin. It appeared for a second and disappeared.
“Yes,” Armitage said. “Something’s down here with us.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Macky said.
They headed for the stairs. Macky let Armitage go first. The old man took the stairs as fast as he could.
Macky could feel it . . . the darkness was in the air, tangible. He climbed the stairs. He was going slowly. He didn’t know why. The reality-warping was happening again, making it feel like he was moving through syrup. Something thick and wet wrapped around his ankle and pulled him down into the basement.
Macky screamed. “Millie! Something’s got me!”
Mr. Kalabraise ranted off a series of yelps. Asenath sat, laughing.
“You’ll never leave us!” The breath was like a soft, warm blow in his ear. “You can be one of Pickman’s models.”
Macky looked down. A gray, tentacle-like thing was around his ankle. It was tearing his pant leg.
Millie grabbed his arm. She, Capshaw, and Armitage tried to pull him up.
“Hurry!” Macky cried, both arms in front of him while the three of them pulled. “It’s got me!”
Capshaw had one hand. Armitage had the other. A tearing sound came from Macky’s pants, and he was set free. He stumbled up the stairs, colliding into Millie, Capshaw, and Armitage, and they tumbled to the floor. Mr. Kalabraise continued to bark. Asenath was laughing so hard, she was crying.
The thing was coming up the stairs—a breathing, wet sound slumping onto the steps, lifting itself, and slumping down again.
Capshaw and Armitage hurried over, shut and locked the door, and braced themselves against it.
Chapter 15
“He was taken by . . . what?”
Jerry Fogherty stood behind the desk, a tall divider that separated him from the public. He was a foot above the rest of them. The woman had come in thirty seconds ago. Her hair was in curlers. A ratty pink robe with slippers to match hung about her plump frame. Her hands were shaking. An unfocused look was in her eyes—glazy, red. She was close to fifty, but she looked older.
“Bats! Bats! Bats!” the woman said, making wide gestures with her hands. “I know it sounds crazy, but you gotta believe me! Bats are what took him. Bats are what’s killing him! Not that he doesn’t deserve it! I’m just saying! If bats could do that, who knows what they’re capable of?”
The phone calls had started several hours ago. A few at first, they steadily increased. It was a weeknight. That meant trouble. Something in the air. Something in the wind, the October moon.
It was lunacy to the third degree. If there was a fourth-degree, it would qualify for that. Jerry was going to make a joke about it, but he didn’t think it would go over too well. He going to say was something about rats. Rats would’ve been believable, plausible even. But bats? How did bats carry away a full-grown man? How many did it take? He was going to ask her these questions, but he didn’t have the heart. It was just as well. Where did they take him? He was going to ask this question, too, but the woman looked frazzled. Her eyes were bugging out of her head. Her nose and cheeks were ruddy. He knew what that was. He recognized the smell.
His next thought was, If I’d seen someone carried off by bats, I’d be hitting the sauce pretty hard, too, and that’s the truth.
Innsport was turning into a 24-hour creature feature. The hound business . . . that was something. Someone had called him about a giant spider earlier. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but now he wondered.
“Ma’am, please. It’s okay,” Jerry said. “Just calm down. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
The woman, whom he’d learned the name of, was Caroline Walters. She was on the other side of the desk looking up at Jerry as if he were her executioner. The stars and twinkles were coming out in full force. That’s what his dad used to say. It never made sense, but it didn’t have to. His dad had been referring to the lunacy of the moment when things just didn’t make sense. Stars and twinkles sounded like a good way to label it. It made you scratch your head. There were more things going bump in the night than he cared to admit, but that didn’t make it easier to accept.
Jerry got up and got her a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I mean, yes. Yes! Cream. Sugar. Both. I think.”
He raised his eyebrows, fixed her coffee, and brought it back to her. She took a sip, spilling some. She was shaking.
“He was just taking a walk,” she explained. “He gets insomnia. Sometimes I like to wait for him. I can’t sleep if he’s not in bed with me. We’ve been happily married for twenty-five years. They’d been good years. So, I sit up. I wait. He’s a good man. We never had kids. I’m broken. In more ways than one.” She started laughing. “He was walking back. I’d been up for about an hour or so. I sit in the chair, and I can see the sidewalk from the window. He was there one minute, and I heard him scream. It was awful. Terrible, the worst sound I ever heard in my life. I hope to never hear another one like it. He was there. He was screaming. He was trying to brush them with his hands, fighting them, but I could see them. They were fluttering. Loud as could be, even with the window shut. That was the funny thing. All those wings flapping, fluttering, carrying on, and screeching. That was the worst. The screeching mixed with Burt’s screaming. Oh, my gosh, I’m going to have nightmares for weeks! Years! Longer, probably. Horrible. Terrible. I may never sleep again! It was ghastly.”
Jerry suppressed a smile. He didn’t understand it. What he wanted to say was, “No, it was bat-ly.” But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Good thing, too. The city was falling apart, people were being terrorized, and here he was cracking jokes. It wasn’t like him.
But wasn’t this funny? Wasn’t this crazy? He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t act this way. Sometimes, in dealing with tragedy, people joked. It depended on your personality. What did that say about his?
“I couldn’t help but notice, Mrs. Walters, that you smell like alcohol,” he said.
> She brought the cup to her lips and stopped. She looked at him over the rim. She lowered the cup and frowned. Her brows came together. Her cheeks flushed.
“What are you saying?” she asked. “That I dreamed the whole thing up? That I halluci-ja-inated? You think a few drinks would be responsible for this? Yes, I’ve been drinking! Who on Mary’s bed wouldn’t? But I didn’t halluci-ja-nate! Does alcohol make you halluci-ja-nate? Does it change the fact that my husband went flying off in the middle of the night by a cloud of blood-suckers? I came here looking for help! I’m in my gal-darn slippers and robe, for Cripe’s sake! I don’t need you to doubt me! I need you to help me!”
Jerry blushed a deep scarlet. “I’m sorry ma’am. I am. It was just an observation. All suspicions must be noted and brought into question. Under the circumstances, I have to ask. I understand why you’re offended, and I apologize.”
She calmed down. It surprised him. “That’s all right,” she said. “It’s just. You know . . . he’s gone. And I don’t think he’s coming back. Ever! How could he after that?” She took a drink of coffee and said: “He was taken by bats!”
“How many bats would you say there were?” he asked, grabbing a pencil to write it down.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“More than ten?”
“I would say a hundred. Maybe more. Do you know how many bats it would take to lift a man into the air?”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “That’s troubling. I was just trying to figure that out. I’m having a hard time believing how many it would take. It would have to be more than a hundred. A cyclone, you say?”
“Yes. A cloud, tornado, cyclone. What’s the difference? They got little claws, right? Sharp little teeth. They took him into the moon.”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “I read an article about them earlier this year. And this happened right outside your home? Your apartment?”
“Home.”
“And where did you say you live?”
“Seven-fourteen Newton Place.”
Jerry wrote it down. “I’ll have someone look into it.”
“How is anyone going to look into it? There’s nothing there!”
“They might find a clue or something. That’s how these things work.”
“My Burt! My poor, beautiful Burt is gone! Not that he didn’t deserve it!”
“You keep saying that. Did he beat you or something?”
“No. He’s just an egghead. He’s dense. Slow. Stupid. He was working on the car over the summer. Fixed everything but the hood. Every time he was under the hood, it always fell on him. He would work under the car a lot, too. A couple of times it fell on him that way. Surprised he never got killed. He had a death wish. Finally caught up with him. No brains. But I loved him, don’t get me wrong. Just . . . you know . . . dumb.”
The door opened, and a little man with glasses and a thick mustache bustled in. He was sweating. His eyes were frantic. He looked like Mrs. Walters.
“Yes, sir?” Jerry began.
“It’s my wife, sir!” The man was trembling, excited, terrified. “She’s been . . . I can’t . . . I can hardly say it . . . It’s horrible. Ghastly. Terrible. Grisly! Licentious!”
“Licentious?”
“It’s the only word I could think of. But it doesn’t apply.”
“Let’s hope not,” Jerry said. “Go on.”
“It’s . . . it’s . . . insane!”
“We got a dose of that here. But, please, I need you to calm down. Just calm down and tell me what happened to your wife. What’s her name?”
“Mable. Mabel Swartz. I’m Mr. Swartz. Fred. She was . . . she was . . . I can hardly say it. I can’t say it. It’s ghastly. Horrible. Terrible. It’s . . .”
“Insane?”
“Yes!”
“Go on.”
“She was carried away by . . .”
Jerry couldn’t believe it. Two in one night. He finished the man’s sentence for him. “Bats?” he asked.
The man looked confused. He frowned. “Bats? No, she was carried away by . . . rats!”
—
“Is it gone? Duke?”
Newt was lying face down in a puddle of dirty water. Duke didn’t reply. Newt looked one way, then the other. He didn’t see anything. The gargoyle was nowhere in sight. The thing had taken to the sky, and Newt and Duke had run away like two, frightened kids.
“Duke?”
Newt got up, brushing off as much dirt and water as he could.
A faint, October breeze was blowing. The stars were out in a cold, black sky. The fog was thick.
“Duke?”
“Over here.”
Newt turned. Duke looked more chagrined than terrified. He was putting his hat back on. He was in a dumpster. He climbed—awkwardly—because of his weight, out of it, and fell to the ground.
“In the dumpster, Duke?”
“Dumpster Duke. Another Macky original. What was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Where did it go?” Newt looked around. “Maybe it was trying to scare us.”
“Tell that to Muncie.”
“Right.”
Duke took a deep breath. “Maybe we should go back to the clubhouse. See if we can help there. You can check on Amelia and make sure she’s okay.”
“Clubhouse?”
“The precinct.”
“Gotcha. This gargoyle, monster business, or whatever it is, is enough to make me want to move out of the city, Duke.”
“That was the hound.”
Newt looked at him and raised his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“That was the hound, Newt. It has wings.”
Newt stood staring at him for a long time. “A hound with wings?”
Duke nodded. “I saw it in the moonlight. That was no gargoyle. Our hound has wings. That’s why we can’t catch it.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?”
Duke nodded again. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
—
“Quite the art gallery you have down there, toots,” Macky said.
“My name is Asenath,” the woman said.
“I’m Devlin Macky. It’s nice to finally be introduced. I know I’m relieved about it. A load off my back in all the wrong ways. But you’ve been such a Hollywood starlet about the whole thing, just call me Excelsior. Or Punjab. I like Punjab!”
“I don’t find you the least bit amusing.”
“This is for my own benefit.”
“I found you amusing sometimes, Dev,” Millie said.
“I agree,” Capshaw said. “I find you amusing sometimes, too. Maybe not all the time. You have a tendency to go to extremes. Like that Valhalla bit you screamed in Sarnath. But sometimes I find you amusing.”
“Valhalla?” Millie asked.
Macky raised his eyebrows and looked at Armitage.
“I’m afraid I’m with Asenath on this one, Dev,” the doctor said. “As much as I hate to admit it.”
Macky shrugged.
Asenath sat in the chair looking at them.
“Where is Amelia?” Macky asked.
“She’s safe,” Asenath said. “For now.”
“You could return her to us safely. Then we could get out of your hair. Everybody wins. You get some brownie points for turning over a new leaf. Whattaya say?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
Asenath smiled. Macky didn’t like it.
“Papa wants her,” she said. “He didn’t get enough last time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yog-Sothoth wants more children. But he needs a mate.”
Macky raised his eyebrows. “Don’t these Outer Gods have any other desires?”
“As a matter of fact, they do.”
“What’s that?”
“The eradication of the human race.”
“What did we do to them?” Macky asked.
“You were born,” Asenath said. “You’re irrele
vant.”
“And yet here we are. Who’s getting the best of whom?”
“Well done, Dev,” Millie said.
“He’s catching on,” Armitage said, nodding.
“Where is she?” Macky asked.
“She’s being groomed,” Asenath said.
“That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Asenath said. “She’s in a place many women would dream about.”
“Speak for yourself,” Millie said.
“I am speaking for myself. It would be a privilege. She doesn’t know how lucky she is.”
“The gates,” Macky said. “Once they’re open . . .”
Asenath smiled again. Macky was starting to hate it.
“The Outer Gods will enter the city and begin the eradication.”
“What’s with all these gods? Outer Gods, Old Ones. What else is there?”
“I can answer that for you, Dev,” Armitage said. He was perusing the book, his glasses reflecting the dim light. He pointed to a passage with his index finger. “Yog-Sothoth is an Outer God and affiliated with such—along with Shub-Niggurath. You remember her? The Elder Gods, on the other hand, oppose the Outer Gods—Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, Azathoth. Those monsters.”
Macky turned and looked at Armitage. “Elder Gods. C-what-lu? Aza-who?”
Armitage nodded. “Cthulhu.”
“What on earth is a Cthulhu?” Macky asked
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Armitage said.
“Is that all you have? What did you say about the Elder Gods?”
“They’re benevolent.”
“That means they’re nice, Dev,” Millie said, smiling.
He frowned at her.
“Kind,” she said.
“I got it, Mill,” he said. “So how do we get to the Elder Gods?”
“That’s the question,” Armitage said.
“You are no match for the Outer Gods,” Asenath said.
“Oh, my gosh, my head is starting to explode!” Macky said. He clenched his eyes shut and grasped his head with both hands. “This is madness!”
“Where’s Amelia?” Armitage asked. He seemed out of patience.
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