The Last Ritual

by S. A. Sidor

  “What difference does it make?” She aimed the semiautomatic around the apartment.

  The next day we took turns drawing the weapon, blowing bottles off stumps, in a vacant lot along the river. We were no marksmen, but in a jam, we might get off a few shots.

  Now, riding beside Nina, I rechecked the magazine. Tucked the gun into my waistband. In case we ran into trouble. Which we certainly would.

  Now that we were mobile, we didn’t have to worry about walking everywhere in the freezing January cold. After a bit of poking around on lanes that dead-ended at the river, we found the one that led to the bootleggers’ camp. Better to let them see us coming from a ways off with the sun in the sky, I thought. We didn’t need them feeling any jumpier than they were going to be already. Pine branches hid the entrance to the camp road. We passed it a few times before I noticed the long gap running back into the trees. Nina pulled over, and I dragged the branches out of the way. Once she drove in, I arranged them back the way they were. Farther up the old dirt road, we encountered a heavy log crossing our path. No way to drive over it. But together we managed to roll the log off the lane. Momentum carried it out of our hands and into the ditch. We drove on. The Miskatonic flashed through the bare trees to our left. I hadn’t spotted any lookouts watching the road for trespassers. I almost wished I had. Then they might’ve turned us back around and sent us home.

  “We’re getting close,” I said.

  The Twenty rocked and skittered up and down the hills.

  “I’ll talk first,” Nina said. “They’ll be less suspicious of a woman.”

  “Don’t bet on it. How do you explain us driving on their road?”

  “We’re from out of town. Honeymooners. We got lost.”

  “After we removed their camouflage and barriers?”

  “They’ll believe me. I can be terribly convincing.” Her cheeks turned rosy in the cold.

  “Remember, when we get there, we can ask about Calvin. If we don’t see him, we try to find Freddie or Winston. But don’t get out of the car. Any sign of danger, we leave,” I said.

  “Life is danger, Alden.”

  “I prefer mine moderated.”

  We reached the camp.

  She hit the brakes.

  Squirrels. Cardinals in the pine branches, flashing like torn red flags. Junk on the ground. Cigarette butts. Broken bottles. Empty cans of beans. Footprints chewed up the snow. Truck tire marks slashed the ground, as if a giant had been digging with his fingers, but none of the tracks were recent. They had ice in them. Quiet as a saint’s confessional box, it was. Nobody home.

  “Where did they go?” I said.

  Nina opened her door.

  I grabbed her arm. “We’re not getting out. Remember?”

  “That was if they were here. The bootleggers have cleared out, obviously.” She pulled away from me. Her shoes made glassy, crackling noises on the crusty snow. I hadn’t opened my door.

  “Then why get out at all? Calvin’s not here.” The sight of the camp made my head start to ache. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, a physical recollection of my head injury and treatment. My temples throbbed.

  She turned. The wind was picking up, snatching at her words. Her hand held her hat down, keeping it from blowing away. “I want to look for clues. If nobody’s here, we can explore the cave.” She walked on before I could object.

  I bit my lip. “This is a mistake,” I whispered. My fingers rested on the gun grip.

  I climbed out and followed her.

  Honestly, I was curious. Visions of the scene I witnessed in the Black Cave still showed up in my dreams most nights along with the night watchman’s swinging bat. My ride in the Burdon’s ice truck with the mackerel. It was all there in my head. Nothing burned as brightly as my memory of the green lights in the cave. Hooded figures finger-painting on bumpy cave walls, their buzzy voices chanting as they carried me up the steps.

  “Wait for me,” I shouted.

  Nina paused inside the cave mouth, as if she were about to be swallowed.

  “You have your lighter? Fire up my torch. I found one leaning against the wall. I want to go investigate back there.” She pointed to the depths of the cave, past the places where I’d seen the barrels and crates stacked for deliveries. They were gone. You could see their impressions in the sandy soil. I lit her torch, and she held it over our heads. The copper pot stills were pushed farther inside than they had been. Maybe they were too heavy to bother moving.

  “They left in a hurry. Didn’t take all their equipment,” I said.

  The torch reflected in the copper.

  “Nobody with a half a brain is going to sneak in here and mess with their stuff.”

  “What does that say about us?”

  “We’re only taking a look around,” she said.

  I tried to take the torch from her.

  “Let me have the torch. You’ve got the gun,” she said.

  “We must stay together,” I insisted. “I don’t want either of us getting lost.”

  “Of course, darling. We’re a team.” She kissed my cheek.

  Side by side we searched the underground hollow. Just as I recalled, the cave turned to the left and the floor angled downward, like a ramp. It was clear that previous explorers had removed several small and medium-sized rocks from the pathway, stacking them on either side of the passage. At the bottom of the ramp-like descent we reached a level surface, and soon discovered a large fragment which had broken from the ceiling in a collapse. It blocked our progress. This chunk of geologic debris resembled a toy top, or cone; its point smashed into the floor, eons ago. Nina’s torchlight revealed a blank circle on the ceiling where the fragment had once hung. We had no choice but to climb over the obstacle. With a little extra effort, we overcame the impediment. What bothered me was that I had no memory of encountering this obstruction on my first trip down.

  “You said there were steps.” Nina probed the darkness ahead. “How far ahead?”

  “Just a bit,” I said. But I could’ve sworn we should have reached them already.

  We continued to hunt for the stairway. The cave walls narrowed, not to the degree they inspired any claustrophobia or fear of entombment. However, like the top-shaped obstacle, I didn’t recall this constriction of the passageway. No wider than a doorway, the walls had pressed in around us. The flow of air lessened, or perhaps I was breathing heavier.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it got this tight? Does it open again by the steps?”

  “The steps are wide across.” Had we somehow turned the wrong way? All of this appeared unfamiliar to me. Perhaps my damaged brain had ignored or erased this interval.

  I didn’t know.

  “I see something,” Nina said.

  “The steps?” I felt a momentary rush of relief. I’d simply forgotten this tunnel portion.

  “No. Not steps.”

  Thankfully, the stone corridor did open wider. The walls disappeared completely, and we entered an enormous cathedral-like space, with high, ribbed ceilings of wavy colored rock; dark blues and purples streaked upward in serpentine ribbons, like the bottoms of many velvet drapes. Others took on more fleshy colors, reminding me of clam gills or the undersides of mushrooms.

  “This isn’t the way I came before.”

  “But there was no place to turn. We walked the only way we could go.” Nina stuck the torch out in front of her. Fiery flashes answered her movement in the dark ahead.

  “What’s that?” I whispered. “There’s somebody out there.” I drew the Colt. If anyone rushed at us, I planned to shoot them. I heard a moist glugging.

  Nina raised her torch again.

  The flashes multiplied in reply.

  “How many are there?” she said, astonished.

  “It might be that group I met. The hooded ones who carried me back to the cave mouth
.”

  Nina raised and lowered her flame, quickly. She repeated the action. Then did it once more, but slowly. “I think I know what’s happening.” She took several long strides forward.

  “Where are you going?” I bolted after her.

  She stopped abruptly and threw her arm out to block me from going any farther.

  “Careful,” she said, lowering her torch. “We don’t know how deep it is.”

  A huge glassy pool of obsidian water stretched before us as far as we could see. The lights were reflections of Nina’s torch, mirrored on the rippling surface. Water? I had no memory of this! “What’s making those wrinkles… those undulations in the pool? Is it fish?”

  “What else could it be?” Nina crouched, splashing her fingertips in the shallows.

  “Don’t do that.” I didn’t want us attracting anything closer. I felt suddenly like prey.

  “Why not? I thought you wanted to see if they’re fish.” She splashed some more.

  “Don’t.” I touched her shoulder. The ripples moved rhythmically, making bigger wavelets. Muscular waves churned farther out; the source skulked beyond the limits of our light.

  “Is it a big fish? Or an animal that lives down here?” she asked.

  “I can’t see anything. Stop it. We have to turn back.”

  Nina withdrew her fingers from the black water and stood up. She put one finger to the tip of her tongue. “Saltwater. It must be connected to the river and the ocean beyond.”

  Something thick and weighty wallowed below the surface. A pale bulge of belly, or was it dorsal? The bloated body rotated under the water, twirling a few feet from us. We backed up.

  From the unseeable borders of the pool came a loud slapping and the dull thud of – well, of I don’t know what… some creature cavorting in the underground reservoir. The merriment of it nauseated me. How can I explain other than to relate that I experienced an instant and powerful physical revulsion when I perceived the sound and its vile echo inhabiting the ancient chamber?

  “We have to go,” I said, urgently. I had the horrible sense of time running out.

  She felt it too, because she did not hesitate to retreat from the lake’s perimeter. When we had gone twenty yards, or it might’ve been more, we turned our backs to the pool and made a quick evacuation from the Black Cave. The narrow portion of the passage seemed narrower. Behind us, at a distance not terribly close, but not as far as would have made us comfortable, a wet smacking of meatiness on rock – I won’t say stalked, but trailed us.

  Nina scrambled over the cone-shaped fragment that resembled a toy top.

  I stared into the dark. If the cause of the wet smacking suddenly appeared, I would kill it.

  But nothing emerged.

  I pocketed the gun and went over the top too.

  At the base of the cave ramp, we allowed ourselves to experience a sense of reprieve from the strange perception of threat emanating from that dismal, sea-connected, jet-black lake. I clutched Nina’s cool, sweaty hand. The air seemed less thick, breathing easier.

  Too soon we felt safe.

  For we had not taken more than three steps up the ramp when we discovered the corpse. How we didn’t smell it beforehand defies easy explanation, since the body showed clear signs of advanced decomposition. A leaky, leathery, human bag wrapped in a shawl of struggling maggots. It exuded a green, black, and brown rainbow of liquids – a slow, rancid waterfall of putrefaction oozing down the slope. Whatever we had been spared of the odor now advanced upon us ferociously.

  I retched.

  Nina buried her mouth in her sleeve, gagging.

  I have left for last the most shocking fact: the corpse had no head.

  I bent over the remains, feeling fascinated and disgusted. But, ultimately, my curiosity won the day. I searched the cave in vain for a stick to prod the body. Instead, I was forced to use the tip of my shoe to nudge the cadaver’s lower leg. “Hand me the torch, please.”

  “What for?” Nina asked, her voice dampened by the crook of her elbow.

  “Please give it to me. I want to see something.”

  She passed me the flame. And for the second time in recent months, I employed firelight to identify Clark Abernathy’s scarred knee. It was a positive match.

  “This is Clark Abernathy’s body,” I said, confirming what I suspected.

  I returned Nina’s flame.

  “How do you know?”

  “He has a long scar on his leg. See the mark? I spotted the same cicatrix on the body in the observatory. Before it was hustled away. I knew it! I am not crazy! Clark was, and is, dead. Murdered. Beheaded. His life offered as a sacrifice. Something… stole his corpse from the observatory. The gargoyle! Of course! It flew him out the window before I could show the remains to Preston and Minnie. He’s been hidden away somewhere. Somewhere cold. Because he’d have been more decayed than this if the body were left to rot naturally. No. They’ve iced him. Now they’ve dumped him down here like a sack of garbage.” I felt a modicum of vindication.

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  Nina lowered her arm from shielding her nose. “Who dumped Clark?”

  “His murderers. The ones who’ve been killing Arkham’s unfortunate elites. Clark may have learned something from the Galinka girl he met at the Clover Club. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. But I’m sure it’s no coincidence.”

  “He wasn’t here when we came down the ramp an hour ago.”

  We turned simultaneously to gaze up the ramp, toward the cave mouth. Though I heard nothing, I knew we were not alone. Threats ahead of us and behind.

  The Colt Hammerless was in my hand once more.

  Gingerly, we stepped around Clark. He’d been dragged. A trail of putrid fluids illustrated the way. We came to the turn that led to the cave entrance. It was a blind curve. Light from the outside brightened the passage, after the turn. Nina’s torch shone on the cave walls where we paused to gather our nerves.

  “If they’re waiting for us, it’ll be right around the corner,” I whispered.

  Nina nodded.

  “You stick the torch out to distract them. I’ll take a look,” I said.

  “Don’t get killed.” She squeezed my hand.

  Nina stretched out her arm and waved the torch in front of us. We waited. The appearance of our flame triggered no response. But if they were being patient… I put my back to the cave wall. I started forward.

  “Wait,” Nina seized my shoulder.

  “Wait for what?” My heart hammered in my chest.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Neither do I.” It was no use prolonging things.

  I ducked my head, and the gun, around the junction.

  No one. Nothing.

  Together we proceeded to the cave mouth. No discernible footprints stood out from those already left in the sandy soil near the opening. The stains from transporting Clark’s mushy carcass began at the ramp. His carrier had fled the scene.

  “Alden, look at this.”

  Nina pushed her torchlight at the wall. It was where the barrels had been stacked the last time I visited.

  “A new drawing!” I said, startled. Then disgust took over. “These marks have been made with Clark’s… fluids.”

  “Oh, God.” Nina covered her mouth. But she didn’t look away.

  The blackish greenish lines flowed over the stone, as if a powerful grip had forced them out of Clark, using him like a tube of paint.

  “Two ovals inside a cup. This was the first pictogram I saw, when Preston drew it in the sand with his foot back at Cannes.”

  “Over here,” Nina said. “There’s more. Words.” She slid her light along the rocks.

  I read the message out loud.

  WELCOME ALDEN

  NINA

  YOU OPEN
THE GATE!

  “We open the Gate?” Nina said. “Why would we do that?”

  “They know we’re looking for them. We must go. Now!”

  Moving quickly, we retraced our steps back to Father’s Rolls-Royce. I got behind the wheel and tried to start the engine. But it kept stalling out. Damn! I pounded the wheel. Nina took the Colt from me. “Be ready!” I said. Finally, the motor turned. I turned the Twenty around and sped away. Every tree trunk hid a monk to my mind, each cluster of evergreen branches provided a roost to a clay-faced gargoyle. It wouldn’t have shocked me to see the net blob lumbering along the road.

  I wasn’t even sure if I planned to report Clark’s body to the police. I didn’t want to be involved. What if his body disappeared again before the cops got here to retrieve it? Would I be a suspect in his disappearance? No. I was going to keep my mouth shut. Nothing would help Clark anyway. I pressed the gas pedal. Did my best to steer clear of the potholes and deeper ruts.

  “Look!” Nina shouted. She pointed the barrel of the Colt at the windshield. “Someone rolled the log back across the road.”

  I slowed the car. Was this a trap? Would snipers have us in their sights? A pair of sitting ducks parked in a Rolls-Royce on a lonesome back road. How long would it take anyone to discover our bullet-riddled bodies? Until springtime? I had no choice. Only forward.

  I stopped the Twenty. My tires crushed the icy mud in front of the log.

  “That’s no log,” I said.

  I climbed out. Nina’s door opened. She joined me at the bumper of the running car.

  Exhaust swirled at our backs.

  On the frozen ground. Two more bodies. Lying head to foot in a neat row.

  Freddie and Winston.

  Lying face-up in a mockery of silent repose. Arms folded across their chests. The only thing that betrayed their peace was the matching look of horror petrified on their faces.

  Mouths locked wide in eternal screams.

  Throats cut, ear to ear.

  They might’ve been caught staring, gaping at the blank white sky, except…

  They had no eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I felt guilty for not burying them.