Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

  Silence again fell over the room as the others exchanged looks. After what I had seen in the woods and on the grounds, and given what little I remembered of the vision in the house, I grew uneasy, perhaps accepting Vos’s words more readily than the rest. But Howard’s reaction was the most remarkable. He sank back in his chair, clutching at his chest in fear.

  “Oh God, no…” he murmured.

  “You don’t expect us to believe this, do you?” demanded Gwen.

  “Whether you believe it or not is of no consequence to me,” answered Vos, smiling a triumphant smile. “All that matters is what is true.” He turned his eyes toward Howard. “As for you, Professor, I would advise you to return your trophy to wherever it came from, and with all speed. These creatures will follow you to the ends of the Earth to have it back, and if they find you first….” Vos sighed. “I suppose you gave Sir Arthur a certain mercy by drugging him before the ghoul found him. But unless you spend every moment addled with opium, you have no such fortune.”

  Now shaking visibly, Howard bolted from his chair. He staggered toward the doorway, still clutching at his chest and what I assumed to be the amulet hidden beneath his shirt.

  “I…I must go…” he stammered.

  James looked astonished. “You can’t expect us to let you just leave! You’re a thief!” He looked to the others for agreement. “He’s a thief!”

  Bella’s wide mouth contorted into a horrible frown of sorrow and resignation.

  “Let him go,” she said. “Let him take his horrible prize and be gone!”

  “You can’t be serious!” James protested. “After he stole from Pater!”

  “Please, James,” Bella said. “I just want him out of my house and out of our lives.”

  James scowled openly, but he nodded.

  “Get out,” he snarled at Professor Howard.

  Still pale and sweating with fear, Howard ran for the door. I could hear him flee out of the house and into the night.

  There was a pause and then suddenly Norrys let out a tremendous yawn and stretched his arms above his head. Blinking sleepily, he looked around at the rest of us and said:

  “Oh gosh, dreadfully sorry. Must’ve dozed off. Did I miss anything?”

  ***

  That night, when sleep would not come to me and my dreams were troubled by what had been seen and been said, I went to Vos’s room. I knocked softly, expecting him to be abed, but instead I heard my friend call:

  “Ja, what is it?”

  “Vos, may I come in for a word?” I asked. “About…about today.”

  “Ja, ja,” Vos answered. “Come in, the door, it is open.”

  I opened the door and stepped inside. To my surprise, Vos was neither in bed nor in one of the chairs reading, but rather he knelt upon the floor, prostrating himself before what I could only imagine was some manner of shrine. It was a little box made of ebony wood, but it was tilted away from me so that I could not see what lay inside.

  Vos slowly stood and smiled at me.

  “What troubles you, mijn vriend?” he asked. “Would you care, perhaps, for the cup of gin?”

  “No, no, thank you,” I said.

  Vos smiled again and motioned to a pair of chairs. When I had seated myself, he sat in the one across from me.

  “You see, Vos,” I said, “I’m not really sure what to make of all this. These things you talked about. Are they real? Or was it just a story?” Vos opened his mouth to speak, but I kept talking. “And if it isn’t just a story, how can it be true? It’s impossible!”

  “Nee, mijn vriend,” Vos answered. “What is it your great poet says, Stamford? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy’, ja? And I tell you Stamford, it is true.”

  I closed my eyes, trying not to think about the things that I had seen; about how such things could not be and yet they were too real to be dismissed save by a delusion of ignorance.

  “How do you manage it, Vos?” I asked. “How do such things not terrify you? How can you know such things and still go on? How can they not drive you mad?”

  Vos chuckled a little and brushed his moustache with his fingertip.

  “Oh, Stamford, how little you know,” he said, sympathetically. “I once was like you, sheltered and confused. But all that is changed. Perhaps one day I shall tell you the tale of those three hellish nights I spent in the secret fane of the Dark Pharaoh, Nephren-ka. But not tonight.”

  “How are you not terrified of every waking moment, Vos?”

  “It is simple,” Vos answered. “For you see, I need fear nothing, for I belong to my Lord and Master, Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. I fear nothing, Stamford, because I have faith. I have faith that when my time has come, my master will arrive and devour me body and soul. And until such time as that, I am free to walk to Earth unafraid, and to work His will.”

  “What…?” I gasped, not quite able to speak nor quite able to understand. “The who? The what?”

  Vos smiled in his usual disarming way, placed a finger to his lips, and motioned toward the box shrine that stood open on the floor nearby. I turned to look at it, and whatever I saw inside made me scream and scream until I remembered nothing else.

  ***

  I do not recall what was in that box save in fleeting, haunting moments. It is like the dog-things at Brympton, and the fish men in Innsmouth, and the secrets buried beneath that accursed Exham Priory. What I remember I must recount, and what I do not remember I must not and cannot recall! I am at the end of my tether. After all these years, there is nothing left for me.

  I have resolved to write these things down that someone may do something useful with the scraps of my miserable life.

  Once I am done, I have a bottle of whiskey and my old service revolver lying next to one another on my desk, and I pray to God that the one will give me the courage to use the other.

  Aerkheim’s Horror

  Christine Morgan

  Thor’s hammer shattered the skies, splitting them jagged with white-hot lightning-strokes. The great noise crashed. The sea heaved. The wind howled a cold death’s breath from a fimbul-wolf’s throat.

  Sails furled and oars stowed, at the storm’s mercy, the ship tossed upon the waves. The timbers groaned with the agonies of a living beast. In that beast’s belly, bodies huddled under cloaks and limewood shields for shelter, amid close-packed chests, crates and barrels laden with provisions and possessions. In the livestock pens, goats bleated and pigs grunted, protesting the conditions of their confinement.

  Mjiska clung to the prow, its post bereft now of a carved dragon’s head because they were on no errand of war but in hope and search of settlement. The rain dashed her face and the salt spray stung her eyes as she squinted into the turbulent darkness, waiting for the next bright crack of the thunderer’s mighty weapon.

  A thick blonde braid swung against her back, slapping like a length of wet rope. Drenched garments of linen, wool and leather plastered her frame. An axe hung at her belt. She was tall for a woman, broad through shoulder and waist and hip, broad of brow and nose and chin.

  In looks as well as manner, she was very much her father’s daughter… just as Aerk, her brother, was in looks and manner very much their mother’s son, black-haired and slender, with fine features of which he was notably vain.

  God-fire struck again, dazzling in its brilliance, painting the foaming ocean silver. In its flash, Mjiska saw what she’d thought she’d glimpsed before, but now she could be certain.

  She turned without loosing her hold on the prow and raised her voice against the storm-fury.

  “Land!” she cried. “Land to the west! West!”

  The words were, despite her effort, swallowed by the wrath of wind and wave.

  Nonetheless, she knew that, far back at the steering-oar, Aerk understood. It had ever been that way with them, in moments of trouble or urgency. He threw his full weight upon the oar-pole.

  Some joked that the Norns must have crosse
d and tangled their life-threads while they grew together in the womb, hence their way of seeming to know the others’ mind. This also, some said with knowing looks or sly winks, was why each had been born with traits more befitting the other. It was of no matter to Mjorsk Boarstooth, whose grandfather had followed Erik the Red first into battle and then outlawry and exile.

  It was, however, of great matter to Aerk. He was as vain about his reputation as he was about his handsomeness, taking quick offense to any perceived slight or insult. That, in their younger days, his sister had more often than not been the one to wade in fists flailing against the bigger boys that bullied him…well, it was not his favorite truth, but it had made him cunning as well as ambitious.

  The ship, their trusty White-Bristle, angled westward.

  The Boarstooth had been proud of his son and daughter in equal measure, and would be prouder yet of them now. Proudest of all if they succeeded.

  To succeed, they must first survive.

  And to survive…

  A monstrous swell reared up beneath the hull, as if Jormungandr himself meant to surface from the deeps and bring challenge again to red-bearded Thor. But it was surge and not serpent, lifting the ship like a child’s boat made of twigs.

  More lightning, stark-white and sheeting, tore through the clouds. Land was near, yes, land; Dunvik and Njallan saw it as well and called out.

  The White-Bristle gave a sickening dip and tilt. Folk screamed, by no means all of them women. So too screamed the horses, tethered close to the mast, the pregnant mares and yearling stallions that were to begin their new herd.

  For a terrible moment it seemed they must roll and be capsized, that their struggles would mean nothing, that they would be cheated of triumph as their long journey ended in destruction within the very sight of shore.

  Then they crested the swell just as it began to curl into a wild white-maned wave. A dark, glassy slope plummeted away before them. The prow tipped into it and the sleek ship coursed down with such speed that Aerk uttered a loud whoop of exhilaration.

  Her brother was cunning, Mjiska knew, but could also be reckless. He had a way with charm and clever speaking that might have well served him as a skald, and there was proof of it in how he’d convinced forty men, some with their families, to accompany him on this brave undertaking.

  She herself had needed neither convincing nor persuasion. Where Aerk went, she went as well; someone had to look after him. And the White-Bristle, their inheritance, was as much hers by right as his.

  It was Vinland they sought. Vinland, which Leif Eriksson had discovered, coming home with such tales of. Lush and green Vinland, where the grape-vines grew in wild abundance and the timber-forests put even those of Norway to shame.

  Vinland, which others had subsequently sought but forever failed to find.

  Or, perhaps, had found it but never returned.

  In the next of Mjolnir’s blinding blows, sharp shadows leaped into view between their ship and the land. A black reef jutted up through the seething waters. Surf pounded against it with ferocious force, froth flinging high in tatters and spume.

  Mjiska shouted a warning but Aerk had already seen the peril. He strained at the steering-oar with all of his might. Dunvik, who was closest, rushed to help him. But the powerful current and northeasterly gale had seized the White-Bristle in an iron grip, hurtling it inexorably toward this unforgiving barricade.

  The reef, the deadly black reef…

  It formed a long, curving shield-wall lined with spear-points and axe-blades, as if some ancient army waited braced on the battlefield…some ancient and undead army made from slick sea-stone and coarse coral…bony and bleak, disease-raddled with clusters of cankerous barnacles.

  Closer now, Mjiska noticed how the reef was pocked with caves and with crevices, how skeins of lank kelp tangled rotting among its spires. Such a stench of dead fish hung around it that not even the incessant waves could wash it away.

  The White-Bristle would be dashed against it, broken like an egg—

  Another swell came, another surge of the ocean. It bore them up and over the reef with a hideous scraping of the hull-planks. The ship shuddered from it but carried on past, then swept in toward the coast.

  The jaws of the reef had torn three ragged gaps in the hull. Men rushed to plug the leaks with wads of oakum.

  Pretty Eyn, old Ypsvik’s daughter, made her way to the prow. “Is it Vinland?” she asked, wiping rain-soaked red hair from her brow.

  “I see no grape-vines from here,” Mjiska told her. “Not that there’s much of anything to see.”

  Eyn nodded. She stood a time, pensive, peering into the night.

  Thor’s battle above the clouds had moved southward by then, the bright lightning-strokes and thunder-crashes more distant.

  “My father says,” said the girl at last, twining her fingers with Mjiska’s, “that once our new home is settled, I’ll have to marry. He wants grandchildren.”

  Mjiska squeezed her hand gently. “We must all do our part.”

  “What about you?”

  At that, Mjiska snorted. “Persuading some man to marry me would be the greatest challenge yet to Aerk’s silver tongue.”

  They had no more time then for talking. To the north were the weathered bluffs of a wooded headland and what might have made a good harbor at what might have been the mouth of a river, but the tide carried them past it and ran them aground in a wide, fetid bog.

  The hull splashed through sluggish creeklets and squelched to a stop in a gritty salt-mud sand bank. Rain pattered on briny brackenweed. A few stunted, dead trees canted this way and that. Crabs scuttled. A startled bird flew.

  Land.

  Such as it was.

  Here again was the smell of decaying fish-flesh, not as vile a stench as before but a low and seeping miasma that seemed to waft in from all sides.

  No one spoke. Even the penned livestock and tethered horses held their silence.

  Then Aerk laughed, such a glad and joyful laugh that the others could not help but laugh with him. They leaped ashore, floundering in the silt and sludge, wading in cloudy brine-water. There were hearty embraces, and back-slappings, and cheers.

  Whatever else might come, they were alive.

  They sacrificed a pig, cutting the beast’s throat, spilling its blood in thanks to the gods. By sputtering, smoky torchlight, they beached their injured White-Bristle on higher and dryer ground, and made what camp they could for the duration of the night.

  Aerk went among his folk at their tasks, jesting, bringing words of encouragement to lighten their spirits.

  “All right, I grant you, it’s hardly wine-grapes in abundance,” he said as they gathered by the cook-fires for a meal of boiled meat, hard bread, harder cheese and ale. “But, by day, this land may show us a fairer face. Let us give it a chance.”

  Nods and murmurs greeted this.

  Aerk grinned. “We are here, and it is ours if we want it. Is that not why we came? To find a new land, claim it for our own?”

  “Yes!” cried several.

  “We’ll build halls and houses, farms and settlements,” he went on. “Towns, even cities! More folk will come, our kin and friends, following our bold example. Our names will live on in lore and mens’ memories…” Arms outstretched, he turned in a slow and encompassing circle. “Aerkheim, my home will be called!”

  “Aerkheim!” they echoed, lifting their cups.

  “And who else?” Aerk asked, striding among them. “Mjiska, my sister, would you have a hall or a town with your name? Dunvik, how about you?”

  With more jests and laughter, they passed the evening until the fires burned low, then went to their sleeping-places. Notched beams fitted together in frameworks, over which they’d draped the sturdy sail-cloths to fashion long tents to ward off the rain. For beds they had mats of leather, wool blankets, and fleeces or furs.

  Most, for added warmth and comfort, had bed-mates as well. Families with children slept all bundled t
ogether. Mjiska rested with Eyn’s head on her shoulder and Eyn’s soft breath on her neck. Only Aerk, wrapped in a thick reindeer’s pelt, slept apart and alone.

  He often did, Mjiska knew. Not for any lack of lovers, or lack of opportunity…but such encounters were fleeting, never serious in nature. Aerk, she suspected, still blamed himself for Sven’s death so many years ago—Sven’s murder, gone unpunished and unavenged. Since then, he had contented himself with one sword-brother after another, when the mood so took him.

  She wondered, in her last waking thought before sleep fully claimed her, if what she’d said to Eyn—“We must each do our part.”—and Eyn’s question as to whether that meant Mjiska would also marry…if that further applied to Aerk himself. Unlike old Ypsvik, their father the Boarstooth had not much expected grandchildren.

  The rain ended by morning, the sun dawning golden in a fine clear spring sky. It could not shed much beauty over the salt-marsh where they’d come ashore, but the sea rolled dark blue trimmed with white foam. Gulls wheeled and larks twittered. To the west and north, hills climbed toward dense green woodland.

  The reef over which the White-Bristle’s hull had scraped was all but invisible now, just the tops of its ridges and spires poking up through the high tide like the tines of a black comb. Past it, the sea was an even darker blue yet, suggesting depth beyond measure.

  Aerk left a few men to guard the ship and look after the livestock and horses. The stretch of coast might seem deserted, he reminded them, but the tales told by Leif Eriksson and his men had made mention of skraelings, strange people who dressed only in animal skins. The rest went out in pairs and small groups to explore. They needed wood and fresh water, they needed a better place to make camp, and they needed to know what resources this new land offered as well as what dangers it held.