The Cthulhu Casebooks

by James Lovegrove

  “A feast for whom?” Mycroft barked.

  “These snaky fiends, obviously,” said Gregson. “They must be cannibals, mustn’t they? Or near as. And we’re the missionaries, destined for the pot.”

  “Fair point. Sherlock did just mention a deity. Perhaps they’ll be eating us to worship him. The Holy Eucharist, only in a perverted form. Their equivalent of the Body and Blood of Christ. Transubstantiation taken literally.”

  At this, Gregson shuddered and let out a despairing moan. “It’s not right. Eaten alive by inhuman abominations.”

  “Buck up,” Mycroft said. “If we’re facing death, let us face it like men. Besides, look at the size of me compared with you. Which of us do you think is going to take longer to consume? Skinny wretch like you, you’ll be gone in no time. Same with Sherlock.”

  Gregson’s spirits were clearly not buoyed by the joke. Yet he did at least follow Mycroft’s admonition, lifting his head and squaring his jaw. I could only assume that Mycroft had been bolstering him in this manner throughout the duration of their captivity, alternately chivvying and indulging in gallows humour. Despite his soft, pampered exterior, the elder Holmes brother had all the guile and backbone of the younger. To be able to thrive in the internecine, treacherous world of Westminster, how could he not?

  “The hour draws on apace,” Moriarty said, with a glance at his fob watch. “The night is almost at its darkest. The new moon is traditionally the time for new projects, you know. New beginnings. The Hindoos place great significance on it, often waiting until then to hold a celebration or embark on some creative endeavour. The Mohammedans use it to determine the months of their calendar, as do the Jews. In the lore of certain much older faiths, however, the new moon is when the barriers between worlds are thinnest and one may thus more easily commune with the gods.”

  “In this case,” said Holmes, “Nyarlathotep.”

  There was a murmur amongst the snake men at the mention of the name, and a rustle of activity as some of them stirred, bowing, genuflecting, even prostrating themselves.

  “Oh well done! Clever chap!” said Moriarty. “When did you work that out?”

  “It was a process of logic – the gradual accretion of data and elimination of alternatives. Several of the Elder Gods and Old Ones can assume the form of shadows and project themselves into the earthly plane by that means. None, however, has the protean aspect of the entity which Watson and I both beheld within one of the shadows which attacked Gong-Fen’s clarence. What we saw was not formless but rather multi-formed, and while I may yet be something of a novice in these matters, even I know that there is one being who manifests in a myriad of different ways and whose core self is unfixed.”

  “Hence the sobriquet by which Nyarlathotep is most frequently known – the Crawling Chaos.”

  “Amongst countless other epithets. Is he not also the Mighty Messenger? The Black Demon? The Black Pharaoh? The Haunter of the Dark? From Cairo to the Congo, from Scotland to New England, almost everyone who knows of Nyarlathotep knows him by a different avatar. It is as though he adapts to the eye of the beholder, assuming whatever aspect he deems most suitable for the occasion, most likely to achieve the desired effect, be it awe, terror, familiarity, or any permutation of the three.”

  “Yes, and some occult scholars have speculated that this transformative ability is what allows him to serve as the Elder Gods’ personal messenger,” said Moriarty. “He can appear to each of them in a guise that is pleasing, and thus mitigate their wrath if the message he is carrying happens to be an unwelcome one.”

  “I knew once and for all that Nyarlathotep was the deity to whom you have pledged your allegiance when I spied his name on the obelisk, enclosed within a box. A cartouche, just as the Ancient Egyptians were wont to use in their hieroglyphs to indicate the name of a god or a member of royalty.”

  I marvelled that Holmes had been able to give the obelisk more than a cursory look as we were dragged into the pit in the crypt. His presence of mind, even under duress, was remarkable. Did he never stop observing, assessing, gleaning?

  “Down here,” he continued, “must be a point of access between our realm and Nyarlathotep’s home, which is said to lie at the centre of the planet. Somewhere in this cave there is a conduit through which he may be summoned. And I would be very surprised if said conduit was not that pool over there.”

  Moriarty looked towards the pool and nodded. “Our serpentine friends have long been aware that Nyarlathotep may be brought forth from those waters if given the appropriate incentive. Over the centuries they have sacrificed to him from amongst their own whenever they fall on lean times – if food is scarce, or the rate of births has dropped to a precariously low level. Nyarlathotep has petitioned on their behalf with the greater gods and restored the fortunes of their tribe. How else do you think they have managed to survive down here for so long, in such numbers? Interbreeding and a dearth of resources would surely have wiped them out otherwise.”

  “Divine intervention, purchased at the cost of a tribe member or two.”

  “And in much the same way, I intend to obtain that divine intervention for myself.”

  “What do you want, Moriarty?” I demanded. “What in God’s name are you after? What is the purpose of all this?”

  “Blunt and straight to the point, Doctor. You ask the questions that get to the nub of the matter. What do I want? Let me put it to you this way. What is it that gods have and we mortals do not?”

  Holmes butted in before I could formulate an answer.

  “Immortality, obviously,” said he.

  Moriarty laughed. “And…?”

  “Power.”

  “Immortality and power,” Moriarty said. “Absolutely. The two things which set the gods apart from us. They live for all eternity, and they possess an ineffable eldritch might which they can wield over human affairs more or less as they please.”

  “And you desire a portion of that for yourself.”

  “Who in their right mind would not?”

  “In their right mind?” said Mycroft. “The description does not apply to you, Moriarty. You are a lunatic, sir. Quite mad. Do you sincerely believe any of the drivel you are spouting? Gods in pools? Immortality?”

  “I do. And so does your brother.”

  Mycroft leaned forward in order to peer past me and look at Holmes, who was on the other side of me. “Sherlock? Is that so?”

  “I believe much of what Moriarty has said.”

  “Really? I mean, I have listened to you and him discuss this ‘Narwhal-tip’ or whatever his name is, but I took you yourself at least to be talking in the abstract, as an intellectual exercise, the same way one might talk about vampires or werewolves or other such fictitious creatures.”

  “Would you not have previously dismissed snake men like these as ‘fictitious creatures’, Mycroft?” said Holmes. “The stuff of superstition? Yet their corporeality is, on present evidence, irrefutable.”

  “Some sort of freakish throwback,” said Mycroft. “A reptilian offshoot of mankind’s evolution.”

  “And the pyramid?”

  “If the Ancient Egyptians could erect pyramids, why not our ancestral forebears too? None of it makes all this other mystical guff seem anything more than the purest claptrap. I can countenance the idea that Moriarty is going to kill us in the name of some sort of heathen deity, in return for some godly blessing. Even apparently civilised white men may fall prey to that sort of Dark Ages delusion. But it’s hard to accept that you think he might genuinely succeed.”

  “I never said anything about him succeeding. In fact, I predict that there will be precious little chance of Nyarlathotep granting Professor Moriarty’s wishes. The Crawling Chaos is no storybook genie. He is a malign menace. His gifts habitually lead to their recipients’ destruction. Moriarty’s dream of becoming godlike is as futile as it is tragic.”

  “If it comforts you to believe I am going to fail, Mr Holmes, by all means continue in that delusion,�
�� said Moriarty.

  “I believe you have always failed, sir,” Holmes retorted. “You have failed as an academic, for all your abundant intellect. You have failed socially, reduced to eking out a living as a tutor. You have failed, above all,” he went on, clearly warming to his theme, “as a human being, incapable of cultivating friendships or any kind of relationship which does not involve your superiority and the inferiority of the other person. Ascending to godhood, in the unlikely event that should happen, will alter nothing. You will still be an abject failure at heart, and the hell of it is that you know this. You know your inadequacies, you know how great they are, and you know you will never escape them no matter how high you climb, no matter what you become.”

  Now, at last, Moriarty was antagonised. Holmes had cut him to the quick in a way that I had been unable to do, despite my best efforts. It was a pleasure to see colour rise in that sallow face, to watch those drawn cheeks turn choleric red, and to observe at the same time the wounded look enter those eyes – a look which acknowledged the truth of Holmes’s assertions, even as Moriarty sought to repudiate them.

  “Poppycock, Sherlock Holmes,” he spat. “It is beneath your dignity to voice such slanders. I can only think that, in your final moments, fear has got the better of you. I held you in such esteem, too. Perhaps I should have known you would disappoint me. Everyone does, after all.”

  “Why don’t you just shut up and get on with it?” declared a peevish Inspector Gregson, who had clearly had enough of the whole business. “Put us out of our misery. Anything’s preferable to listening to you pontificate all night.”

  “Indeed I shall,” replied Moriarty, huffing tartly. He returned his attention to the Necronomicon, his fingers once more turning its pages, if with less care and delicacy than before.

  His anger intensified his focus on the task before him.

  It also made him inattentive to anything else.

  For while Moriarty was bent over the book, Holmes began to move his right arm.

  In a series of stealthy, jerky manoeuvres he started hoisting something up from inside his shirtcuff. It was a small steel tube, as long and slim as a cigarette. By flexing the muscles of his forearm he was able to propel it up towards his fingers, which were doubled over, ready to retrieve it the moment it was within their reach.

  I had no clear idea what the tube was or what it might do.

  But I remember experiencing a sudden surge of elation as tremendous as any I have ever felt.

  Holmes did, in the event, have a literal ace up his sleeve.

  All he needed now was an opportunity to bring it into play.

  NO SOONER DID HOLMES EXTRICATE THE STEEL tube fully from his shirtcuff than Moriarty found the section of the Necronomicon he was searching for. He looked up from the book with a triumphant smirk.

  Holmes immediately palmed the tube, pinning it under his thumb and crooking his fingers over it in such a way that it disappeared from view and his hand seemed to be hanging loosely from the manacle exactly as before.

  Had Moriarty spotted the furtive action?

  I prayed not. I kept my eyes fixed firmly forward, trying to betray no hint that anything had occurred. Neither Mycroft nor Gregson was privy to what Holmes had done. I myself would have remained oblivious had I not been positioned directly adjacent to him and spotted it from the corner of my eye. I strove to maintain the sort of blank, impassive face that serves one well at cards. Whatever was in the tube, I presumed it must be an aid to Holmes freeing himself. I realised, too, that Holmes had permitted us to be taken captive and fastened to the pyramid precisely because he knew he might be able to effect an escape. He had made provision for this eventuality, seeing it as his best chance of rescuing his brother and Gregson.

  Moriarty peered hard at me, at Holmes, at me again. For several terrible seconds I feared that the jig was up; that the one slender little advantage we had was about to be ripped away. All Moriarty need do was step forward and wrest the tube from Holmes’s hand, thereby dashing our hopes.

  To my immense relief, he did not. Clearly none the wiser, he returned his gaze to the Necronomicon and began scanning a particular passage there, as though to reacquaint himself with it. Then, raising head and hands, he began to recite an invocation in R’lyehian.

  The opening words struck a chord of recognition in me: “Fhtagn! Ebumna fhtagn! Hafh’drn wgah’n n’gha n’ghft!” They were the self-same words Stamford had cried over and over in his cell. “He waits! He waits in the pit! The priest controls death in the darkness!” Stamford must have overheard them spoken by Gong-Fen at some point, or else by Moriarty, and they had become lodged in his memory. In his drugged, maddened state they had arisen from his subconscious, inadvertently exposing the truth behind the deaths by emaciation.

  Here, now, was the hafh’drn himself, Moriarty, conjuring up death once again in this benighted subterranean domain. This time, however, that death was going to visit not some unfortunate drawn from the lower echelons of society. It was going to visit four men, at least two of whom were of great substance and standing, to consume them all in one fell swoop.

  The invocation rolled on, the acoustics of the cave lending Moriarty’s voice a hollow, resonant majesty. “Nyarlathotep uln shugg. Ch’nglui shogg. Sll’ha orr’ee ah fhayak. Dlloi hafh’drn mnahn’. Y’hah.” Roughly translated, this meant: “Nyarlathotep, I call you to Earth. Cross over the threshold from your realm of darkness. I invite you to feast on the souls I offer you. Heed your humble summoner. Amen.”

  Meanwhile, Holmes had set to work. Turning my eyes to him, though not my head, I watched as he began to unscrew the cap of the steel tube with the tip of his thumb. He was obliged to perform the action slowly, surreptitiously, so as not to draw unwanted attention. Mentally I urged him to hurry, even though I knew he could not. Everyone else’s gaze was on Moriarty, but should one of the snake men happen to catch sight of the movement, or should Moriarty himself do so, then the alarm would be raised. The only option was the cautious, painstaking approach.

  Now Moriarty’s hands rose aloft to his arms’ full extent, in the manner of a clergyman pronouncing benediction, or a demagogue delivering some piece of rousing oratory. In R’lyehian he entreated Nyarlathotep to hear his call and bestow upon him everything that it was in a god’s purview to give. He begged that his humble mortal frame be imbued with just a few drops of the Great Old Ones’ essence. He asked for a share of their incandescent glory, that he might rule over the masses like an emperor and live on through aeons in a body which remained forever youthful and uncorrupted. This imprecation was not taken from the Necronomicon. I worked out later that it was something Moriarty had himself composed, a personal plea. He ended it with a cry of “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!” – “Hail, Nyarlathotep! Hail! Hail!” – which he reiterated with increasing fervour and intensity.

  The snake men picked up the phrase and added their voices to his. “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  By now, Holmes at last had the cap undone. He inverted the tube so that it was upside down above the manacle lock. A viscous, syrupy liquid began to drip from its interior, clear like honey but bright scarlet in hue.

  “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  I assumed this substance to be some kind of lubricant which might enable Holmes to slip his wrist from the manacle. I then perceived that it did not flow as any normal liquid might. When it touched the metal it divided into several smaller streams. These probed into the lock like tiny ichorous fingers. It was as though the stuff had sentience, a mind of its own.

  “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  Louder the chant grew, and louder still, until it was being bellowed by a couple of hundred throats at once in deafening unison. The snake men swayed. Some of them shivered as though in the throes of ecstasy. Moriarty himself seemed transported, his face fixed in a beatific leer, almost clownish in its joy.

  “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  As for Mycroft and Gregson, the one was
scowling, the other sullen. They might not have any idea what to expect, but both knew it could not be good.

  “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  I looked at the pool. Its waters remained smooth and still. I allowed myself the hope that, after all, Moriarty’s summons would be ignored. The Crawling Chaos would not be paying a call tonight. We had been granted a reprieve.

  “Iä, Nyarlathotep! Iä! Iä!”

  Then the surface of the pool started to vibrate. Concentric ripples spread across its glassy blackness, radiating from the middle. At the same time there could be heard the sound of distant flute-like instruments playing. The music somehow emanated from the pool itself, and was both muted and strident. There was no tune as such, just arrhythmic sequences of harsh intervals and atonalities. It was all clash and dissonance. It was the kind of music, I thought, that would be played in Hell.

  The sound of the flutes, along with the perturbation of the pool, served only to excite the snake men further. Their chanting climbed to a new, frenzied peak.

  As for Holmes, he was concentrating intently on the manacle. The tiny fingers of scarlet liquid worked away at the lock with all the industriousness of ants, and it was then that I noticed my companion’s lips were just perceptibly moving. He was talking to the substance, I realised. Murmuring to it. Giving it instruction. He had, I could only surmise, devised a fluid which responded to verbal commands, and was using it as a lockpick. This was another of the alchemical creations that had kept him busy at his chemistry bench all that afternoon, along with the lodestone solution and the special revenant-slaying bullets for my Webley.