Demogorgon

by Brian Lumley

  Kastrouni was shuddering. Trace could feel it where he crouched beside him. ‘You know what this means, Charlie?’ the Greek’s voice was heavy with dread. ‘It means he’ll be melting them, absorbing them, becoming them! You, too, if you’d gone down there with them. I’m glad you didn’t.’

  ‘But you’d have let me, eh?’ Trace grunted.

  ‘If you hadn’t tried to fight him, that would have been as good as saying he was right,’ Kastrouni answered, ‘that you were in fact his son. We had to be sure.’

  The tide of frogs had washed past the landrover, passing in widening ripples of squamous, squirming life, apparently unafraid, through Demogorgon’s curtain of energy. Then came the lice.

  Trace had thought he knew what lice were, but he didn’t. For one thing, he hadn’t known you could see them; or rather, he hadn’t guessed they could be so obvious to the eye, so many and so loathsome.

  Lice! – millions of lice! – they burst from the vault in leaping, hopping, milling clouds. Jumping this way and that, whole armies of them dashed themselves together in mindless mid-air collisions as they spewed aimlessly outward from the vault’s entrance; and then they flowed over the earth, over the landrover, on to the five where they shuddered in a huddle behind it.

  Amira screamed her disgust, leaped in horror, again and again, slapping at herself like a madwoman. The others, too, all dancing as if on hot coals, trying to dislodge that miniature vampire horde: And not a single bite, not a drop of blood shed or sucked. For the pit-lice, fat and bloated as ticks, had already sated themselves – below.

  ‘Those poor devils down there,’ Amira sobbed in Trace’s arms when the lice had passed on. ‘And you might have been one of them. Oh, Charlie, Charlie! I would have killed myself if – ’

  ‘Six minutes,’ her father cut her off.

  Gokowski took out something that looked like a black plastic transistor radio from his night-suit. ‘We’ll give him four more minutes,’ he said. ‘By then the change should be complete. He’ll have taken those damned, doomed sons of his by then, and possibly Decker or that other thug, too. The odd man out will most likely be dead. Then he’ll start on his way out, and that’s when we’ll hit him!’ He extended an antenna from the device in his hand, turned a small knob until it made a click. A tiny red light began flashing on and off, illuminating a red button.

  ‘You’ve mined the place!’ Trace made a guess.

  Professor Halbstein nodded. ‘I did, yes. Enough PE to turn the whole damned hell-hole into an inferno. There are pounds of the stuff down there, as much as I dared to use. Any more and he was sure to find it. That firing device of Saul’s will set it off.’

  ‘Shh!’ Amira cautioned. ‘What’s that?’

  Over and above the threatening, crackling electric voice of Demogorgon, there now sounded – screams? Screams, yes, coming up from the caves beneath the earth – but such screams as never were heard before. Or perhaps once before. ‘Oh, God!’ said Kastrouni, trying to control the tremor in his voice. ‘That I should have lived to experience this again!’

  But then the agonized shrieking was blanketed by a new sound: a mad massed buzzing as of insects in flight.

  ‘Blowflies!’ Trace gasped, and knew he was right. ‘Your bloody blowflies, Dimitrios. I remember what you told me: “carrion flies – born in rotting meat”, born out of Khumeni!’ Kastrouni could only nod.

  And up they came from the vault in their buzzing myriads, circling the area within the living curtain like a solid, shining wall of metallic blue chitin, then breaking up and heading outwards, heedless of Demogorgon’s hell-spawning energies. And at last the nightmare approached its climax.

  ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ the words burst from Professor Halbstein’s trembling lips. ‘At first sight of the locusts, Saul, you press that damned button. For if that monster should somehow manage to break out of there …’ He left his fears unspoken.

  And now, as if summoned by the waxing terror of the five, up came the locusts in an endless stream of whirring ravenous horror – which was all the signal Saul Gokowski needed. Cowering down and warning the others to do likewise, he pressed the red button. The tiny red light winked out and stayed out. Then –

  – Crump! Crump! Crump! From deep underground three explosions came as muffled rumbles, and a triple shock was transmitted from the earth and through the soles of their feet where the five crouched.

  Professor Halbstein’s mouth fell open and he clenched his fists. His face took on an expression filled with frustration. ‘But there should have been six detonations!’ he gasped. ‘Three of them have failed … or else he found them.’

  Saul Gokowski jabbed again and again at the button on his detonator, but uselessly. He uttered a low curse, tossed the dead device aside – at which the ground underfoot gave a shudder, a sudden convulsion. ‘It’s caving in!’ Gokowski cried.

  ‘And he’s hurt!’ Kastrouni almost danced in his excitement. ‘Look! Look at this curtain of hellish fire!’ But they were already looking.

  Demogorgon’s mesh was damaged. It pulsated erratically … was torn and at once mended itself, only to tear again … and now in several places. The curtain of energy billowed and fluttered as if great winds blew upon it; its ever-shifting filaments of fire sputtering and crackling less ferociously; and as the massed, whirring clouds of locusts passed through it and fled, so the mesh’s blue light commenced a spastic dimming and flaring, until finally its harsh electrical ‘voice’ hissed into a stricken silence. Controlled by Khumeni – by an injured Khumeni, whose concern now was concentrated solely on personal survival and nothing else – Satan’s storm-born familiar drew back his webs of energy into the writhing sky.

  ‘We … we might have won!’ Halbstein’s breathless voice sounded dinningly loud in the sudden hush.

  ‘And we might not,’ Kastrouni growled. He ran into the shadows, in the direction from which he and Gokowski had originally appeared. But in the moment before he ran Trace had seen something in his face: a strange eagerness, or maybe a look of grim, sardonic anticipation.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ he asked Gokowski.

  ‘We brought something with us,’ the other answered. ‘Dimitrios’s idea. A last wild throw if everything else failed.’

  ‘Midnight,’ Halbstein whispered now. ‘We’ll soon know whether or not we’ve failed.’

  The ground shuddered again; uneven patches of earth around the entrance to the vault began to sink, throwing up clouds of dust; several ancient walls toppled into rubble, and the landrover leaned over a little. From below came the sounds of a thunderous collapse, and puffs of dust and smoke issued from the gaps where the second Chorazin tablet lay partially covering the entrance.

  Then – dread sound that set all who heard it gritting their teeth – there came more muted screaming, which this time issued unmistakably from Decker. Decker lived, and he had been driven mad with torture and terror!

  With an abrupt and shocking suddenness, the fat man came up from below, toppling the tablet aside as if it weighed nothing at all. Strong as ten men in his madness, he squeezed up from the vault laughing, crying, gibbering – utterly bereft of mind. For a moment he glared all about; then, laughing again in a high-pitched, almost feminine voice, he turned and staggered through the ruins toward the cliffs where they overlooked the Sea of Galilee. How he stayed on his feet at all was a miracle, for he was streaked with blood and dirt, badly burned down one still smouldering side, and his right arm hung dislocated and useless.

  For a moment the four who crouched behind the landrover were awed by the madman’s sudden appearance and shambling departure, but then Gokowski sprang up. ‘Charlie! Professor!’ he shouted. ‘We have to put the tablet back!’

  They ran to the vault’s entrance, struggled with the stone, at last got it positioned again. But even as the tablet was replaced, so there came more movement from the darkness below, where stone steps descended into smoke and gloom. The men drew back, cast frightened glanc
es at each other. And in the next moment:

  Foul, stinking black pseudopods of tarry, throbbing matter pushed up from the gaps at the sides of the tablet. One of them, a tapering tentacle of oily, glutinous loathsomeness, touched the tablet in its groping – and all members were at once snatched back. From the reeking blackness beneath the slab, hell’s own eyes burned red as coals; and then there came a nightmare voice, crying:

  ‘F-F-FATHER, HELP ME! THY WILL BE DONE, MY TIME IS COME, BUT I AM HURT AND WEAKENED. AND STILL I MUST TAKE A THIRD. LET DEMOGORGON AID ME. THOUGH IT DRIVE HIM BACK WHENCE HE CAME, LET HIM NOW DESTROY THIS HURTFUL STONE FOREVER. I WOULD BE FREE TO RAVAGE AMONGST MINE ENEMIES. FATHER, I PRAY THEE – LET ME OUT!’

  Overhead the sky was a black disc of whirling cloud, a dizzily revolving turntable of pent power. And as Khumeni begged for help, so the demon hidden in those clouds answered one last time. A single bolt of lightning lashed down from the centre of the churning disc, struck unerringly with a lance of white fire that shattered the second Chorazin tablet to flaming fragments and hurled them in all directions. Tiny shards of rock and chunks big as fists rained down on the men and the girl where they cowered, and when they dared to look up all that remained of the vault’s entrance was a smoking crater – in which all the evil of elder earth bubbled and bloated!

  What rose up then into view was hardly George Khumeni, and yet it was him. Him and more than him. It was the seed of Satan. It was Ab and it was Gidor the Gadarene, it was Bodang the Mongol Mage and it was Guigos the beast; it was all of these and others unnamed, unguessed. It was a man – or at least composed of men – and it was a monster. It was the monster, caught in its own metamorphosis; but there remained one last element - the catalyst – without which his renewal was as yet incomplete.

  The antichrist stood upright in the crater. A thing of black slime with a monstrous laughing face; a gigantic thing with a hairy left leg, with a huge slack breast in its armpit, with cloven hooves and a gape-jawed caricature of a head! It stood there and smoked and smouldered, blackened and blistered, a thing which should have been dead for two thousand years. But instead of death, its single thought was of life eternal!

  ‘A THIRD,’ the bass croaking burst again from its blackened lips. ‘THE THIRD – YOU!’

  Its steaming, dripping arms elongated toward Trace, great fingers hooked to snatch him up. And as those inhuman hands went to close on him, so the beast threw back its shuddering head and bayed its victory to the night through teeth like crooked bone daggers.

  Trace stood paralysed, frozen with horror, rigid as a rock – until something hit him from the side and sent him staggering. Kastrouni, with a sack over his shoulder – which without pause he slit open. Inside, a live animal. The creature squealed its terror as Kastrouni whirled it in a circle, released his hold on its hind legs and sent it flying – directly into the bulk of the horror in the crater. And:

  ‘There, you great black bastard!’ the Greek laughed like a man deranged. ‘There, take your third. Last time it was a poor blameless donkey, but this time I’ve found you something more fitting. A pig, George Khumeni, or whatever you are – swine-flesh for a swine!’

  The thing in the crater offered up a gigantic croaking cry of rage and disbelief, then collapsed in upon itself, pig and all.

  ‘Back,’ Kastrouni addressed the others then. ‘Quick, get back – and try not to watch. You really don’t want to see this.’ He shepherded the four stumblingly away. But Trace had to know.

  ‘I’m going with you,’ he said, as Kastrouni headed back toward the seething crater.

  The Greek looked at him hollow-eyed, shrugged tiredly. ‘It’s your right, I suppose.’

  ‘FATHER!’ the shuddering, frothing mass in the crater continued to croak. ‘FATHER!’ But Satan no longer listened. Exhausted, Demogorgon’s clouds dispersed in a sky where stars came out again to pour on the land their clean white light. And:

  ‘There,’ said Kastrouni at last. ‘Look, it’s finished …’

  Hybrid horror ran squealing from the smoking crater. Its hideous body was huge and grotesque as before, but firmed-out now and without its previous tarriness; and upon its shoulders it wore the head of a great tusked pig! Away toward the cliffs the monstrous thing scrambled, grunting and squealing and going on all fours. Away into the shadows and the ruins of doomed, damned Chorazin, where even now the crazed figure of Decker staggered in starlight and cried like a baby.

  Following, Trace and Kastrouni saw the two come together, heard Decker’s howl as the beast-thing tore at him. For a moment they were silhouetted as one where they fought on the very rim of the cliff, and then they were gone into the abyss.

  And thus it was that the last Gadarene swine was choked in the Sea of Galilee …

  Epilogue

  Trace and Amira spent a little time with her father, but five days after the horror at Chorazin they were back in London. At the moment their plans were very loose: they had decided to stay together for now and see how things worked out, but they did not yet know where they would live. The summer would last for months yet, and autumn to follow, and there was always Greece and/or its magical islands. Also, Professor Halbstein was going to rest for a while, then start a dig up in Chorazin. He intended to unearth the first tablet and destroy it forever, reduce it to powder. That way the invocation under the ascending node could never be used again. Trace had intimated he might like to be there to see that happen – but not just now.

  In Richmond, Amira put her flat (her father’s flat) up for sale; and then, because it was a beautiful day, they ate in a garden restaurant not one hundred yards from the bridge. After that it was a spin in Amira’s little Japanese job to Trace’s place, where he had one or two things that required winding up. As she drove, Amira tackled him about.something:

  ‘Charlie, there are two things we should get straight right now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One: I don’t think I’d much care to live with a thief. You’re clever enough to do anything you want without that. So I’m asking you to give it up.’

  He smiled at her, however wrily. ‘Clever enough, am I? Well, I don’t know about that – but I’ve certainly got enough money. I can promise to stay out of trouble for a couple of years, anyway. What’s the other thing?’

  She glanced at him for a moment, a very serious glance, before turning her eyes back to the road. ‘Ever since I first met you, you’ve had trouble with that foot of yours. And I’ve watched you. You try to hide it, but I can see it gives you trouble. And it isn’t getting any better. I think that before we leave London you should have it looked at. By experts, I mean.’

  ‘You’re a straight-up kid,’ he told her, nodding. ‘Too right, you are! Anyway, put your mind at rest. I had already made that decision. You think I like being a cripple? Well, I don’t, and I don’t intend to be.’

  He had phoned ahead to let Betty Kettler know they were coming. She met them at the door, dressed in her habitual housecoat with her habitual cigarette dangling from her lips, all smiles and wrinkles and unspoken innuendo. But she did have her uses.

  ‘Er, Charlie,’ she caught at his sleeve as he ushered Amira upstairs. ‘Something came for you.’ She gave him a letter. ‘I can tell you about it, if you like – and about some callers you had …’ And she passed him a certain look.

  He gave Amira the key to the flat and said: ‘Go on up. I’ll be right there. Put the kettle on.’ Then, as she disappeared up the stairs, he turned to Betty. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You put your phone on party line,’ she told him.

  ‘That’s right – so you could handle it if anything important came up. I was waiting for a call from a hospital in Portsmouth. And then there were one or two other things.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, there’s that letter – from St Mary’s, Portsmouth. I pretended I was your mum and the postie let me sign for it. It’s special delivery, see? And then there was this bloke on the phone – very common! What a mouth on him! A Mr Pelh
am?’

  Trace’s heart picked up a little, began to beat faster. ‘Joe Pelham?’

  ‘That’s him,’ she nodded. ‘Real annoyed about something, he was! Also, he sounded like he was talking round a mouthful of broken teeth – so maybe that’s what was annoying him, eh? Anyway, he says you’re not to bother to take him any more business – only he didn’t quite say it as nice as that …’

  Trace liked none of this. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Just one thing: during the last couple of days you’ve had some rather hard looking callers, Charlie. I just thought it might be worth mentioning, that’s all.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he nodded. ‘You’re a straight-up lady, Betty.’

  She dug into the pocket of her housecoat, gave him a scrap of paper with a number. ‘These hard men said you might like to give them a ring,’ she told him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said again, and slipped her a fiver.

  On his way up the stairs he tore open the envelope, and on the landing he paused to read the contents. Then he shook his head, snapped on the light and read it again. It was very brief, very official, very cold and clinical. And it had been written and signed by the obstetrician who had delivered Trace into this world – delivered him, and his brother.

  Trace’s frown deepened as he read over the letter yet again, before crumpling it up and thrusting it deep into his pocket. Down’s Syndrome? Mongolism? Was that all? Then what the hell – ? And:

  What the hell? a chuckling, throaty voice repeated his question in the back of his mind. Suddenly cold as ice, he felt dizzy, staggered a little as he entered the flat. Pain shot up his left leg from his gammy foot.

  Amira came out of the kitchen, saw his drawn face, the way he leaned against the wall. ‘Charlie? Is something wrong?’

  He shook his head, gruffly answered: ‘No. I mean, I don’t know. Make some coffee, eh?’

  She stared hard at him, opened her mouth and closed it again, went back into the kitchen. Trace switched his telephone to personal, dialled the number given him by Betty Kettler.