Beyond The Chaos Gate: Lovecraftian Horror

by Quentin Ravensbane

  "I got the feeling that it is the desire of the people to bring this thing into our world that is what makes it possible, not anything that they actually do," explained Ian. "The only way to stop them from desiring that is to get rid of them."

  "On a different topic," Oscar interrupted, "When did you learn how to speak Latin?"

  "I never learned how to speak Latin," Ian stated. "I know just enough to recognize the Latin roots in English."

  "So, what do we know so far?" Garret asked. "We are aware that people are committing murders, desecration of bodies and ritual actions. We know that they do not fit the standard models of psychopathic behavior or serial killer's MO. We think that they are trying to bring a made-up demon god to Earth, using some really creepy rituals and blood sacrifice."

  "I know you don't believe it," Ian said, "Even though the murders were obviously done by human beings, there is a very dark and alien Entity making this all happen. I know that Lovecraft made a bunch of details up in his writing, but he must have picked up on something real while doing it."

  "It has been my experience that people are always the thing behind crimes," Garret said. "I cannot believe in alien creatures that cause stuff like this. It does not matter, though. There are plenty of responsible people involved to catch. Let's focus on them for now."

  "Come on, Garret," Jonny joked, "Don't you want to slip the cuffs on some alien god-thing?"

  "It is above my pay-grade," Garret explained. "One last thing. You should all be careful not to tell anyone else about our speculations. I suspect that there are people in the police, and possibly other departments, that are spying for the group that is doing all of this. Assume that anyone not in this room right now is a suspect."

  8 odds and ends

  April 10, 2019, Wednesday 3 PM

  Garret stood by as Chief Smite talked to the Mayor of the town on the telephone. Smite's voice escalated in volume throughout the conversation, a clear signal to Garret that he wasn't getting good news. The tidbits of conversation that Garret overheard suggested that the Mayor was going to end the curfew on the town. Smite was not happy.

  Smite viciously hit the end button on his telephone. "That asshole wants to stop the curfew," Smite complained, "Even if people are dying, he thinks that everyone should come and go as they please. I hope that he is the next victim!"

  "Maybe it is a wash either way," Garret suggested. "If you restrict people's movement, you make unauthorized movement noticeable, but you also isolate potential victims at home, where they are easy for the killer to find. Like I said, it is a wash."

  "You got a point there," Smite admitted. "It doesn't matter either way. He is the boss, so the curfew is off for now."

  Garret and Smite discussed the ins and outs of the current policing situation for a while, which really translated to complaining about all aspects of work. The conversation was just about to die a well-deserved death when Garret's phone rang. It was Detective Crawford.

  "Hey, Garret," Crawford said. "I located a potential witness on the last crime, and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me to talk to her?"

  "It sounds more useful than hanging out here at the station," Garret admitted. "Why don't you swing by and pick me up?"

  "I am on my way," Crawford asserted. "I will be there in five."

  "Okay. I will see you then."

  Garret ended the call and strolled toward the front entrance of the precinct. Almost as soon as he cleared the door, Crawford pulled up in the brown Impala fleet car he had been assigned.

  "This should be a good one," Crawford said gleefully. "The witness is a stripper. She works in Dallas, and she stated that she saw some people coming out of the Canyon residence at about 8:45 PM on Tuesday night. She was headed to work, and so she didn't stop to find out what was going on, lucky for her."

  "Keep it in your pants, Crawford," Garret directed. "Any way it goes, the girl is going to be a lost cause for you. Besides, don't you have a wife?"

  "Brenda doesn't go for threesomes, so why bring her into this?" Crawford complained. "If I am lucky, I can get a little glitter, and she will be none the wiser."

  "It sounds like your moral compass is broken," Garret suggested. "Try not to make any problems, okay?"

  "Where is the fun in that?" Crawford asked. "Things are just starting to get interesting in this town. We may as well enjoy it."

  Crawford was driving with an odd almost exhilarated look on his face, clutching the steering wheel far tighter than the conditions called for, and arousing Garrets suspicions to the alarm level. Garret studied him carefully from the corner of his eyes while Crawford distracted himself by driving. Crawford was definitely going into the deep end, and Garret doubted that he could be trusted much longer.

  Crawford swerved into a parking space in front of a reasonably attractive if petite house, complete with a white picket fence, and two Chihuahuas in the yard that obviously considered themselves to be at least a half ton of ferocious canine flesh.

  The two men got out of the Impala. They braved the tiny canine teeth to knock on the door of the house. When it opened, a slim, attractive, and youngish dark-blonde woman peered out at them. They identified themselves, and she reluctantly granted them access.

  The woman answered their initial questions with no real problem. Her name was Jaime Heinsley, and she was going to work on Tuesday when she passed the Canyon house and saw approximately eight persons getting into two SUVs after leaving the house.

  "I knew the Canyons slightly," Jaime said. "They were nice. I hated to hear that they had been killed. Somebody has already called me and told me to shut up, or they would get rid of me."

  Jaime was near to tears, and as she talked, she became increasingly agitated. Garret could tell that she was being panicked almost to the spastic stage. It was time to find a way to make her secure.

  "I imagine that you are doing exactly the opposite of what they told you to do," Crawford said. "I wouldn't want to be you right now."

  Garret could tell that she agreed with Crawford's logic by the way she finally lost control. Her face lost all composure, and the look of sheer fright on her face was beyond all normal expression. She began to move in what was probably going to be a flight of panic into the street.

  Crawford grabbed her left arm with his left hand and drew his pistol. Reversing the weapon, he struck her on the head, hard, and she collapsed into his arms. He heaved her up onto his shoulder and grinned.

  "She should be secure, and available, from a jail cell in the precinct," he said. "I will drop you off wherever you want on the way there."

  "There was no need for you to hit her like that," Garret protested. "My car is at the precinct, so I will be riding along with you. That way, I will know that she makes it safely to the precinct."

  Five minutes later, the car arrived at the station, and Detective Crawford carried Jaime to Booking, while Garret found and entered his vehicle. A couple of minutes later, he was back at the motel.

  Garret spent a couple of hours trying to make sense of the rather odd clues in the murder cases. Just before seven, he put all of the files aside and prepared to go to the bar as he had promised. He walked across the street to the bar.

  Garret's bar visit 7 PM

  Garret walked into the bar promptly at seven. He had noticed that Oscar's old Pontiac and Wilber's blue PT Cruiser were already in the bar's parking spaces. He knew that meant that the gang was all there since Freya would be working, and Ian and Jonny usually caught a ride with one of the car jockeys.

  A strangely festive scene greeted Garret. In addition to his group, there were a half dozen townspeople in the bar, catching up on their drinking. He settled down into the booth with Oscar, Jonny, Wilber, and Ian. Freya was hovering when possible when she was not shuttling containers of beer to incessant requesters.

  There came a bit of a lull in the activity, with everyone who wanted beer or liquor having full containers for the moment. Freya finally got a chance to sit down with the gr
oup. The previously disjointed conversation finally focused on the esoteric activity in the town.

  "Have you noticed that features seem to be getting weird?" Jonny asked. "Things just don't seem to fit quite right. Do you know what I mean? Like when you look at a person's face from an upside down position. It seems a little odd, almost alien. I see something like that, a lot."

  "I have noticed that people are coordinating their reactions to events over distances," Oscar added. "It is as though the people are increasingly all thinking with a single mind. If this were a science fiction novel, I would say that they are developing a hive mind."

  "I have a guest on tomorrow's broadcast that may have some ideas about what is going on here," Wilber stated. "He is an Occult Historian by the name of Ira Stone, and he has studied the Cthulhu-like chthonic demon-gods extensively. If anyone can make sense of this mess, it will be him. I will have him stop by the bar tomorrow night before the broadcast."

  "I will make a point of being here tomorrow night," Garret asserted. "I could use an hour of explanation for the recent events."

  A sudden uproar from the opposite side of the bar acted like a magnet to focus the group's attention. A couple had been quietly talking to another man, and suddenly the volume of their conversation had increased dramatically.

  "Your daughter is a slut," The lone man yelled. "I wouldn't do her with your dick."

  "You wouldn't be able to keep up with her," The other man asserted. "I haven't been able to satisfy her since she was twelve!"

  "I am not sure what she sees in you," The wife said. "But whatever it is, you are going to fuck her. She is going to get whatever she wants."

  "Fuck you, and the whore you rode in on," The lone man yelled. "The only sex thing she is good for is a gangbang."

  There was a flash of light glinting off the blade of the knife that the wife buried in the lone man's neck. She leaped onto his back as he turned mindlessly, holding his neck with his left hand. She sank her slightly yellowed teeth into the wound, and savagely ripped out a huge chunk of flesh from the man. Garret saw the striated pattern of muscle tissue exposed to the air for an instant, until the blood welled up over it, obscuring the raw meat in the wound area.

  The man collapsed, and the woman continued to chew on the flesh, and lick the blood from the wound. Garret rushed over and knocked her unconscious with a hard right to her jaw. He heard a sound that he suspected was the sound of her jawbone breaking, but after what she did, he wasn't too worried about it.

  The woman's husband edged up to the woman's unconscious body. He began pushing her skirt up her thigh until he uncovered her lacy panties. With a quick twisting motion, he ripped the flimsy garment off her body and began to finger her sexual organs.

  Garret decided that the man's actions crossed the line, and he had already determined that the wounded man was going to live. He reached out and clocked the man who was committing a sexual crime, and then he removed the cuffs that he always kept in his pocket, and cuffed the man behind his back.

  Garret pulled his phone out and called the precinct for a pickup of the three suspects. After all the excitement of the last few minutes, the group conversation while they waited for the police was of the chit-chat variety.

  After about thirty-five minutes, a patrol officer finally arrived and seated the three suspects in the back of his van. Garret hoped that one of them would not wind up eating the others on the way to the station. He assured the officer that he would submit his report tomorrow before he left.

  Everything after the incident was nothing but a denouement to the activity before it. Within the hour, everyone had made their excuses and left the bar. Freya closed the bar due to the bloody event, and she went with Ian to visit him at his cottage. Garret drove them there, just to be safe.

  9 darker days

  April 11, 2019, Thursday 11:30 AM

  Ian felt that surge of panic that only can come in dreams. He felt the first beginnings of fear-sweat stillborn by his awakening. He opened his eyes, grateful even for the gray and stormy morning that greeted him.

  He remembered the night, both the good and the bad. He felt the warmth of Freya's sleeping body next to him, and he felt grateful for both the company and the possibility of happiness with her.

  While the presence of Freya elated him, both the weather outside and the depressive world of the dreams of inevitable invasion and destruction, and the equally depressive dreams of future time created a sense of dread and fear that he had never experienced before.

  Freya woke up when a flash of lightning and the roll of thunder briefly illuminated the fog bank of a world outside. Ian felt a transitory sense of pleasure, coupled with a peculiar sort of feeling of loss and sorrow. He could not quite understand the presence of that last emotion. Everything Freya should be nothing but happiness and light for Ian. After all, it looked like he was just about to have everything he ever wanted.

  Ian only had to review last night to realize that he was not the Alpha male that every man would wish to be. Somehow, he and Freya had spent the whole night in the same bed, but nothing that they did actually cross the line into something most people would call sex.

  It had come close. While there had been no penetration, they had covered all the bases normally alluded to in heavy petting. They had both engaged in every act of manipulation and oral satisfaction that either of them could come up with.

  "I have to get to the bar soon," Freya said. "I'll make us some coffee. Do you want to spend the day with me at the bar?"

  "I can't think of anywhere I had rather be than with you," Ian said. "I'll let you spring for breakfast."

  "Sounds good," Freya returned, "Since it will be free to me. I will cook us up some eggs and bacon at the bar."

  They sat around sipping coffee and enjoying each other's company until just before 1 PM. They took the short walk to the bar in the fog-ridden drizzling rain and got to their destination uneventfully.

  Freya opened the bar up for business, and then she began cooking their breakfast, while Ian surfed the television channels for something worth watching. He finally settled on one of the world news channels, which was in the middle of a report about several inexplicable disasters occurring around the nation and the world.

  There seemed to be a global trend in disasters today. The first issue was the mass disappearances of people around the world, inexplicably and suddenly. Most of them had not been found in the short time since their disappearance, but a few had reappeared. All of the returnees were incapacitated by insanity.

  The second trend in disasters was the violent and bloody killing of people around the world. The police were uncertain who or what was responsible for the murders, but they were savage and unmerciful.

  The third trend was the dramatic changes in the personalities of people in all walks of life. The quiet introverts would now become bullies, and the bullies would cower in fear. Children have always been violent, but now their mothers and other people whom others would contend could never turn violent frequently were violent.

  Finally, animals, including pets, became untrustworthy to coexist peacefully with humans. This might well have some relationship with the second trend, but there appeared to be a difference in the types of kills that known animals were making, versus the mysterious killings of the unknown killers.

  Oscar at the Lab

  Oscar had finished the daily water sample analyses and the somewhat lighter sample load of microbiological tests. He finally had some time to spare to examine the mystery fungus that had so far been present at each of the murder scenes in town.

  The fungus was an odd organism. Oscar wasn't even sure that it was a real fungus since it acted almost as a sessile, rooted animal. Of course, it was best defined as a fungi, since it aggressively grew hyphae and created bundles of them that formed mycelium, or the more root-like rhizomorphs.

  The major disturbing fact that Oscar has found about the fungus is that it was extremely aggressive, and grew very fast. Some
single fungus growths are thousands of years old and cover hundreds of acres of land. At the rate this fungus grew, it would outgrow its elder brothers within a year, maybe less.

  Like any fungus, it put out a shitload of hyphae, and they explored the surroundings of the fungus. Once it found something that would serve as food, the hyphae would combine into large rhizomorphs to suck the nutrients out of the food, and transport that nutrition to the fruiting body.

  All of this activity is typical of fungi, but not the speed of that activity. Once the fungus locates a food source, the rhizomorphs would grow at a visible rate toward that food. The fungus considered practically anything organic as food, although it did not like cyanide.

  The fungus acted in an animal-like manner by growing toward good stimuli such as food, and away from bad stimuli such as heat. It seemed to anticipate its needs, and it had a small ability actually to move in response to need. Oscar suspected that it could spread by sporifying, or could uproot itself at an old site after it established a strong network of hyphae in a new location.

  It would consume plant materials put within its reach, but it seemed to be excited when it was presented with a small piece of hamburger. Its hyphae grew through the meat, and the meat was consumed within a matter of moments.

  It was nearing 3 PM, and there was a knock at the laboratory door right on schedule. He let the small but still slightly overweight man into the lab. The man closed his umbrella as he entered, and fluffed his overcoat to dislodge the rain droplets that remained.

  "Hello. I am Dr. Cyril Langer from Tyler," the man said. "I believe that you were expecting me?"

  Oscar vigorously shook Cyril's hand. Cyril was a Paleontological Archeologist, and Oscar had spoken to him on the phone yesterday about the possibility of ancient civilizations on Earth in the deep past. The result was a promise to make this visit.