by John Pelan
“Our Ruler has returned him to us,” it said, “the steel blade in the cloak of flesh… the hunter in the black night.”
Nick looked up. Lady Langdon had appeared in front of the tall megalith known as Long Meg. She was wearing a white robe, tied at the waist with rope. Her arms were raised to the sky, her eyes shone with messianic zeal. One by one, from behind the other stones, other women appeared, all dressed in similar fashion, all as mesmerized as their priestess. Each one took a position in front of an obelisk. There were seventeen of them in total, and every woman Nick had so far met in Barrowby was present: Miranda, Jenny the estate manager, the librarian, Cora Maynard, the paramedic who'd tended to him… even Police Constable Melanie Toorney. As one, they gazed at Nick with near beatific smiles.
“What—what the fuck is this?” he stammered.
“You have been chosen,” said Lady Langdon.
“Chosen for what?”
“To replace the one who went before you. The one who failed … for failure cannot be tolerated.”
Nick glanced at the ground beside him. “Caleb? You mean Alun Caleb?”
“It was he who found and reopened the gate,” the woman said.
“Gate?”
“The gate through which Our Ruler might at last return.”
A slow realization was dawning on Nick. “It's this, isn't it… this circle?”
“It is always a circle,” she replied. “It must always be a circle. As yet, though, our circle is incomplete. You must take up where the one called Caleb left off, for you were the one who mastered him.”
“What is it you want me to do?” he asked.
“Continue the work.… Prepare the way for He of the Thousand Young.”
“He of the Thousand Young,” the other women muttered, heads fleetingly bowed.
In the face of such ceremony, it was impossible for Nick not to recall the symbols on the walls of Alun Caleb's ramshackle farmhouse, the altar in the cellar with its black drapes, its knives and skulls and pots of incense, and that bizarre phrase the madman had come out with in his statement … to offer those women for the passing pleasure of the divine Shub-Niggurath. In court, Caleb's barrister had quoted this as proof of his client's insanity. Now, Nick knew different. … He remembered the ice temple, and that… that abhorrence on the throne, that thing whose very appearance defied God, and of course, that monstrous phallus it had offered him! Caleb had always insisted he didn't rape those women… and he didn't. Because Alun Caleb was not the Black Goat of the Woods.
“He was the abductor,” Lady Langdon said, as though reading Nick's mind. “As you will be.”
An appalling picture of events began unfolding before him. Caleb had brought the women here, to this gateway, which connected with that place… Leng.
“He took them through, didn't he?” Nick said. “Only, the last time he went through … he was ernpty-handed. He sought to escape there, didn't he… where he'd never be found, but even Caleb couldn't go without an offering!”
“Caleb failed,” the woman said simply.
Nick shook his head. “And his reward was… what? The Antarctic. And him without even his thermal undies on.”
“Your words are profane,” the woman said.
“Not so profane as allowing a man to freeze to death,” Nick shouted, “as arranging the brutal rape of sixteen women… waitl” A new thought had struck him. He looked again at the women. He counted them. With the excepiion of Langdon, they numbered sixteen. “You're… you're the daughters, aren't you?” he said incredulously. “You're all its daughters! Those women who were impregnated by that thing… you're the offspring! And yet…” His words almost tailed off, when he saw that of the entire circle, fifty-four stones were still unclaimed. “You need seventy to complete…”
“The circle must be complete,” Lady Langdon intoned.
“So that… that monster can be brought through? Is this what you want me to do?”
“You must go to him,” the woman replied, “to be anointed, to receive your gift of rage.”
“No,” Nick said, shaking his head. “No wa}!”
As one, however, the women began to chant. Nick clapped his hands to his ears, but the dirge rose, and he could see them swaying where they stood, rippling… like creatures of liquid. Even as he stared, their outlines began to dissolve, their flesh to mutate, to flow outward in protoplasmic tentacles. Sacrificial robes fell away as bodies twisted and contorted, as limbs melded together. Lady Langdon alone retained human form. She joined her hands and closed her eyes, her face written with bliss.
“No!” came a frenzied voice, and a rifle shot split the air.
Nick turned sharply. A figure in khaki was approaching across the meadow. It was the drunk from the Packhorse, the one called Kurns. He didn't seem so inebriated now. When he came close, Nick saw that his eyes burned with rage; he also saw the big rifle in the man's hands. It was a huge, lethal-looking affair, a Dragunov in fact, and it was trained firmly on Lady Langdon.
“You said it would be me!” the man roared. “You promised me the gift!”
The cop glanced back at the women. Every one of them had resumed her earthly form, though several were nude, and one or two clad only in tatters.
Lady Langdon was glaring at the intruder. “You will never understand, James Kurns. This man has been chosen… sent to us.”
Kurns could only sneer. “Is that so?” Then he raised the rifle to his shoulder, took careful aim at Nick… and fired.
8
When Nick came around this time, he was in a world of pain. It burned in the middle of his chest, intensifying with every breath. If he moved so much as a muscle, it wracked him head to foot, though his movement was largely restricted. He was fastened to a bed, a belt buckled tightly across his thighs, another one across his neck. His arms were loose, but it hurt like hell even to twitch his fingers.
He rolled his eyes left to try and view his surroundings. It was a spacious bedroom, nicely furnished. The curtains were drawn, but pale daylight came through them. Then Nick sensed a presence… this time to his right. He rolled his eyes that way and saw a man in his shirtsleeves scrubbing up at a washbasin. Beside him, on a small table, there was a black bag with a stethoscope hanging out of it.
“Dr. Death I presume?” Nick groaned.
The man glanced around. As the cop had guessed, it was Cusani, and as usual he wore a vexed expression. “I'm not enjoying this, you know,” he said.
“My heart bleeds for you,” Nick retorted.
The doctor reached to the sideboard and lifted up a heavy gray object. Nick immediately recognized it as his armored undervest. A flattened hunk of metal was embedded in the very center of it.
“Ingenious,” the doctor said. “Expecting trouble when you came to Barrowby?”
“I always expect trouble,” Nick replied, flexing his hands, finding that pain-free sensation was slowly returning. “Ever since a maniac had a crack at me with a shotgun, about twenty years ago.”
The doctor pulled on a pair of latex gloves, snapping them into place on his fat wrists. “You've only delayed the inevitable, I'm afraid. And in the meantime you'll have to endure three cracked ribs and a fractured sternum.”
Nick acknowledged this with a wince of fresh pain. He didn't even want to look down at his chest; he knew it would have bruised blue-black, probably over an area the size of a dinner plate. Cusani came and stood next to him, gently probing with his rubber-clad fingers.
“You'll never be able to fight them, you know,” he muttered. “And at the end of the day, why should you want to? They're offering you the chance to be much more than you are now.”
“Is that what they told you? Yet here you are … an ordinary G.P., probably with fewer patients than the average vet.”
Cusani looked at him pityingly, as if he, too, had once thought that way. “You're either with them or against them.… It's that simple.”
“They must have a weakness?”
“
Well, of course. Everything has a weakness. But I doubt you'll be able to take advantage of it.”
“What is it?”
The doctor laughed and turned back to the sink.
“Damn it… tell me!”
Cusani laughed all the more. “It's no secret,” he said over his shoulder. “Deprive them of the one thing they need… the portal. In other words, the circle. Break that, and their cause is lost.”
Nick considered, but quickly realized how futile this was. Even the smallest of the megaliths was immovable. They must weigh five tons each, at least.
“You wouldn't be the first to try, actually,” the doctor added. “An attempt was made in the eighteenth century, but according to tradition, a sudden and terrifying storm put the demolition team to flight. Still”—and he turned back to his patient, now with a full hypodermic in his hand — “it hardly matters.”
“What's that?” Nicked tried to shy away, but the belts held him in place. “What is it?”
“Secobarbital.” Cusani depressed the plunger slightly and a jet of fluid spurted from the needle point. “It's a mild barbiturate. Just a little something to put you out. Lady Langdon's orders.”
The doctor leaned over, but Nick lashed out with his elbow, catching the guy full in the groin. Cusani fell forward over his patient, dropping the hypo, which landed point-down on the mattress. Nick grabbed it, yanked it free, then stabbed it fiercely into the doctor's left buttock, flushing out its contents in a single massive injection.
“You fool!” Cusani choked, tottering back to his feet, his face a livid purple. He felt around for the syringe and tore it out. When he saw that it was empty, he went white. “You… bloody fool, you might have overdosed me!”
“I'll be sure to send flowers to the funeral,” Nick replied, struggling with his bonds, though the effort sent flashes of fire through his entire chest cavity.
Cusani wheeled and lurched toward the washbasin, on the side of which there was a small bottle with a printed label. Already, however, the sedative was taking effect. He stumbled and slipped down heavily to his knees, his forehead banging on the porcelain bowl. He stayed in that position for a moment, breathing deeply, groping blindly around with weakening hands, before finally toppling sideways in a dead faint.
Nick was relieved by that, but still fought to get free. The crushing pain made it difficult—as he twisted and turned, he actually heard the grating of cracked bones inside him—but several minutes later he'd succeeding in getting his legs loose. After that, he was able to shift over onto his stomach, lever himself up with his knees, and drag his head under the neck restraint.
He sat there for a moment, wheezing, listening to see if the sounds of the fight had alerted anyone. Several moments passed, bringing no response. At length, the cop stood up and hobbled to the sideboard, where he retrieved his ragged sweatshirt. As he put it on, he noticed the empty hypodermic on the carpet. He picked the instrument up, then checked the label on the bottle by the sink. As he'd suspected, this, too, contained Secobarbital. It took only a moment to refill the syringe to its maximum capacity.
A minute later, he'd let himself out onto the upstairs landing of a large, well-appointed house… almost certainly Halkin Grange. He listened for a moment, and still hearing nothing, advanced along the corridor, passing portraits, vases of flowers, the occasional antique. The more he saw of the place, the more incredible it seemed that these people were mixed up in such ghoulishness, yet he'd seen the evidence with his own eyes. As if that wasn't enough, however, he suddenly did hear something. Something curiously repulsive, like a throaty gurgle, like a long, gelatinous groan.
Nick's ears pricked up. He glanced around. There was a door quite close to him, firmly shut. Nick heard the noise again. This time it was more like a choked keening, as if something which had never been intended to talk was trying desperately to do so. Mystified, but with a growing sense of dread, the detective put his ear to the door. Someone or something was burbling away in there, in moist and miserable fashion.
Nick couldn't resist. Turning the handle, he found the door unlocked. Slowly, he pushed it open. What he then saw in that room was bizarre beyond his dreams, an image of madness perhaps drawn from the deepest nightmares of Picasso. The room was empty of furnishings —only blood streaked the otherwise bare floorboards and plaster walls—but it wasn't empty of furniture. For in the very center there was a chair. A chair that had once been a man.
The mans' tibias and femurs, stripped clean and gleaming white, had been torn loose from their original joints and, with long lines of tendon, fastened as chair-legs to the four corners of his horizontal pelvis, which also had been cleared of fleshy tissue, but was now smartly upholstered with the soft and palpitating air sacs of his lungs. These in their turn were attached through a gristly tube, which wound its snakelike way around the upright spinal column, fitting neatly between the splayed and sawn-short rib bones now providing struts for the chair's backrest—framed, by the radius and humerus, broken square and tied off with sinew—to the shaven cranium, upper jaw, and popping eyes of James Kurns… located in a place of honor at the very top of the macabre throne.
Nick would normally have called it impossible for a human being to survive such a transformation. Normally… but now, with the eyes still rolling in Kurns's distended sockets, with the chewed-off stub of tongue flicking in the deep crimson cavity that had once been his throat, with the mass of pink and reddish organs dangling below the seat—tucked well below it so as not to inconvenience a sitter—dripping fresh blood and bile, and clearly connected to the head through various pipes and arteries wound unobtrusively through the framework, but subtly translucent so that the labyrinthine passage of life-giving fluids could clearly be seen … he didn't think he could call it anything.
“Are you tired?” came a voice to Nick's left The cop turned, but only slowly. He was so shocked that even the sight of Jenny, the estate manager, standing in the doorway, her eyes like onyx orbs, almost failed to register. “Why don't you sit down?” she said, with a demented grin, which exposed vards of sharklike teeth.
That was enough. As ordeals went, this one had gone off the Richter scale. Something inside Nick snapped.
“Why don't you fucking lie down!” he bellowed, thrusting at her with the hypodermic, jamming it into her neck and flushing it out.
The woman was taken by surprise. She gave a frenzied squawk, then went thrashing to the floor. Nick jumped out of the way as she threw herself across the room, writhing like a dervish and colliding head-on with the human chair, smashing it to pulp and bone-splinter. Still-living organs squashed and burst, blood and membranes splattering against the walls. Nick back unsteadily away, nauseated beyond description. He didn't know if the drug would have the desired effect upon her, for already her screams and snarls had taken on a bestial, demonic quality. But even then he was unable to flee. … He just watched, in appalled disbelief.
Only when the female finally began to change—black-green blubber bulging out from her clothes, tentacles unravelling, toothed maws springing open on every portion of her body— was he able to get his feet to obey… was he able to turn them and steer them out onto the landing.
The din that emanated from that room was frightful, bass roars shaking the walls to their foundations. It seemed impossible that anybody else in the house would fail to hear, but as he staggered down the main stairway, clutching his agonizing chest, Nick saw nobody.
Below, the front door stood open. He tottered down the last few stairs and across the hall carpet, hardly daring to believe his good fortune. Still no alarms were raised. It could only be a matter of seconds, though his good fortune persisted, for once outside he spied the Toyota SUV. What was more, the keys hung from its ignition. He clambered in and started the engine. Still nobody came.
Nick put the vehicle in gear and slammed his foot down. A moment later, he was driving at full throttle. In the rear-view mirror, he watched the palatial residence fall away and be swa
llowed by trees.
“Keep going,” he muttered to himself. “Just keep going.”
The narrow lane unspooled before him, and at length he reached the huge wrought-iron gates, now closed and padlocked. But he had anticipated this. He slowed the Toyota down but didn't stop. The heavy vehicle was doing about five miles an hour when it made contact with the gates. There was a shuddering clang and a mild shock of collision, but Nick kept his foot to the accelerator. The gates swung outward as far as the chain and padlock would permit. Nick stood harder on the gas. The engine began to rev, and the SUV's wheels were soon spinning, pouring smoke. Then, with a sudden twang, the chain snapped and flew away. The gates, which had begun almost to buckle, were violently flung outward, and the vehicle roared through.
Nick glanced again at his mirror as he drove. There was still no sign of pursuit, the lane deserted in his wake. He accelerated all the more; getting to Barrowby was imperative … or was it? All at once, it struck Nick that Barrowby was no longer synonymous with safety. Andy McClaine might be there, but so might Toomey, Miranda, et al. It was a bewildering moment. Thickets and hedgerows flickered past as the SUV roared along; shafts of setting sunlight broke in mellow spears across the road ahead. But where was he going? Where could he go?
At the very next junction, the question seemed to answer itself. It was a T-junction, with two road signs pointing in opposite directions, one indicating three miles 1:0 Barrowby, the other that it was five miles to Gilderdale. That struck a chord with Nick, and almost immediately he remembered why. The open-cast mine, the quarry… they had been blasting up there, which meant there'd be explosives.
Cusani's words came to him: Break the circle, and their cause is lost.… Break the circle.…
Nick wrenched the wheel over and turned left. The tires screeched, plumes of dust were thrown up behind. It couldn't be this easy, of course; there had to be a catch. Certainly, he'd have a difficult time getting the workmen at the open-cast to do what he wanted. He slapped at his tracksuit pants pocket, to confirm that he still had his warrant card. But even with that he'd have to be at his most convincing.
