Department Zero

by Paul Crilley

  “You do?” I ask, surprised.

  “Yes. We find the kitchens.”

  “The kitchens?”

  “The kitchens.”

  “Why?”

  “Because culting is hungry work. These psychos get themselves worked up into a right mess, what with all the human sacrificing, blood pacts, demon summoning, and so on. They always like a good meal afterwards. Some red wine to wash down the blood.”

  I stare at him. “I never know when you’re kidding around.”

  “I never kid around,” Graves declares, striding along the passage. “Kidding around is for children and middle-aged, balding office workers with comical wigs and clown noses.”

  In the end we don’t bother with the kitchens. Instead, we stumble upon a cultist wearing a black robe hurrying through the corridors. We follow after him, and he leads us through the passages and up some stairs into what I assume is one of the towers of the castle.

  “Softly,” whispers Graves as we climb.

  I hear chanting as we climb, a soft, monotonous drone. The stairs end at an arched entrance leading into a circular room. Twelve columns circle an empty floor space covered with gray-and-white marble. Inlaid in the marble is a green, stylized sun.

  Resting on the sun is the Spear of Destiny.

  Behind the columns are twelve alcoves with windows looking out into the night. And standing in these alcoves are twelve figures robed in black. They’re swaying back and forth, like trees in an autumn wind, chanting in a language I’ve never heard, filled with guttural consonants and not many vowels.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper.

  “A summoning,” says Graves in surprise. “It looks like they’re trying to use the spear as an amplifier. Or perhaps a beacon.”

  “Can it do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” says Graves uncertainly. “I have to say I’m really not happy about this. I think this spear is a lot more powerful than we thought it was.”

  “Praise to thee,” says a suddenly loud voice.

  Graves and I both turn our attention back to the ceremony. One of the cultists has stepped forward, his arms raised into the air. He lowers his hood to reveal the face of Heinrich Himmler. Seems like ceremonies dedicated to the Old Ones are done in English.

  “Ever Their praises,” he calls out. “And abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath!”

  “Iä! Shub-Niggurath!” repeat the other robed figures.

  “What is Shub-Niggurath?” I whisper.

  “One of the Old Ones,” says Graves. “You know, like Cthulhu.” He sounds puzzled.

  “And they’re trying to summon it?”

  “They can’t. There’s no way they have the power. She’s locked away in another dimension. Has been for millions of years. The Elder Gods made sure of that.”

  “Come to us, Shub-Niggurath,” calls out Himmler. “Depart the Crimson Desert. Travel through the City of Pillars and the Diamond Fields of the Forgotten Constellation. I, Guardian of the Temple of the Goat with a Thousand Young, call upon you to help us wipe this world of unbelievers.”

  “What if they actually succeed?” I ask nervously.

  “There’s no way.”

  “Humor me. Can they control it?”

  “Do you think an amoeba has the power to control you?”

  “No.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  “Come to us, Shub-Niggurath!” shouts Himmler. “Depart your home in the Absolute Elsewhere and heed my call.”

  “What’s the Absolute Elsewhere?”

  Graves clicks his tongue in irritation at me. “It’s the name of the dimension where they are imprisoned. The Dreamlands.”

  The cultists start their chanting again. My attention is drawn to the spear. It . . . it’s vibrating. And a purplish, black mist is forming around the head of the weapon, tendrils probing outward.

  “Um . . .”

  There’s a silent explosion, as if all the air has been sucked instantly away and then thrust back in. My ears pop. The cultists cry out, stumbling back deeper into their alcoves.

  A fierce wind springs up, pummeling against us all. I stagger back against the doorway, grabbing hold before I’m thrown back down the stairs. Graves is standing, legs spread apart, braced against the gusts. I squint, shield my eyes, peering into the center of the room.

  The spear is spinning in the air, round and round, over and over. It moves faster and faster until it blurs, then faster again until it looks like a solid sphere of purple-and-black light.

  The wind howls and shrieks through the room. The cultists are shouting in fear. And there’s something else, a high-pitched whine just on the edge of hearing.

  “What’s going on?” I shout.

  “I . . . don’t know!” shouts Graves. “But I don’t think it’s good.”

  The sphere of light explodes into black mist, purple lightning flickering around it. The mist grows thicker, and I see tendrils of cloud reaching out, solidifying into oily, black tentacles.

  One of the tentacles wraps around a cultist. He screams in horror as the tentacle yanks him up into the air, holding him above the black mist.

  Then the mist changes. Snapping jaws appear, ten, twenty of them, serrated teeth biting at the air. Black slime drips to the marble, sizzling and smoking.

  The mist parts even more, and a starscape appears behind it. Deathly black skies and glittering, unfamiliar stars, icy and terrifying.

  The SS officer is yanked through the . . . portal . . . gateway . . . whatever it is. As soon as he is pulled through, his body convulses. His eyes bulge out, then explode. Blood and viscera freeze instantly, flying back through the gate to pepper the stone walls of the castle like bullets.

  I push against the wind to where Graves is standing. He’s leaning into the storm, staring at the spear that now hovers in midair below the tentacles and mist.

  “This is bad!” he shouts. “Very bad.”

  “You think?” I shout back.

  “That spear shouldn’t have been able to do this. It’s literally ripping open doors between our dimensions. Don’t you understand how much power is needed for that?”

  Obviously I don’t, and he realizes it as soon as he utters the words.

  “This kind of thing can only be done by the Elder Gods. Which means that spear was made by them.”

  “Kind of explains why everyone wants to get their hands on it then.”

  “We need to get the spear away from here. If Shub-Niggurath comes through, it will wipe out this entire world in a matter of days.”

  “You sure they won’t be able to control it? Even with the spear?”

  “Don’t be absurd. It’s a creature of the ice plains. Of the Forgotten universe. It’s older than the sun and stronger than anything you or I could ever imagine. That creature has floated in endless night while millions of years pass it by, waiting for this very opportunity.”

  “So that’s a no then.”

  In response, Graves pulls out his gun and aims it. He fires, narrowly missing the spear and hitting a cultist in the background, who screams and disintegrates into a pile of ash. Graves swears and aims again, but Himmler has spotted us and is running around the circle in an attempt to stop him.

  “Nein! Nein!” he shouts as he draws closer.

  Before he can get to Graves I step forward and punch him in the stomach. He doubles over, and I knee him in the face. His glasses go flying, and he staggers back—

  A tentacle whips around his chest, and he’s yanked back through the gateway into the dimension beyond. But before he can explode, the tentacle whips away from around his chest, sending him into a whirling spin that ends when huge, disembodied teeth clamp down onto his torso and bite him in half. His legs and pelvis fly into the air, only to be snapped up by another mouth. Yet another snaps at his feet, pulling and tugging like two dogs fighting over a bone.

  “Hey. Hey, Graves.”

  Graves ignores me.

  “Gra
ves!”

  He still ignores me.

  “Graves!”

  “What?” he shouts.

  “I just killed Heinrich Himmler!”

  “Congratulations. Now be silent!”

  He aims his gun again and fires. The bullet hits the spear, but it doesn’t disintegrate like the guy did. Instead, the spear starts spinning off-kilter, its orbit now cutting into the mist above it.

  Shub-Niggurath senses something is wrong, and tentacles flick out of the gateway, wrapping around the twelve pillars. Graves shoots the spear again. Its orbit gets crazier and crazier. The high-pitched whine gets louder. Then another scream, coming from the gate. Shub-Niggurath moves forward, trying to pull itself into the room. Some of it succeeds, the mist solidifying into a pustule-covered bag with snapping mouths. I peer closer and see the pustules are actually little sacs, and there are smaller creatures shifting inside, floating in blood-tinged amniotic fluid.

  Graves fires again, and this time the spear flies out of its orbit and rams itself straight into the wall only a few feet from me. The high-pitched screaming rises in volume. I reach out and grab the spear.

  A jolt surges through my system, like an electric shock. I look at the spearhead, and it’s like I’m looking through a window into the night sky. Stars glitter in space. A vast figure trapped in a crystal prison blocks out the stars, a huge creature that sleeps, shifting slightly as if having a bad dream.

  I hear a scream. I blink, shake my head, and the image is gone. I turn and see that a tentacle has wrapped around Graves’s leg. He hits the floor and starts to slide backward, pulled toward the gate.

  I let go of the spear and run to him. At the same moment a bright blue light flares to life in the room. I look around in shock and see a ragged tear appear in the wall just a few feet from the spear.

  Graves is almost at the gate now, sliding across the marble tiles. I leap forward and grab his arm.

  “Let go!” he shouts.

  “What?”

  “The spear! Get the spear!”

  I look up. A figure steps out of the Rip. It’s Dana. The woman who was with Nyarlathotep back at the house when he created the Hounds of Tindalos. She pauses to take the scenes of chaos in, calmly watching us fight against the tentacles of Shub-Niggurath.

  She turns to the right and spots the spear embedded in the wall only a foot from her head.

  “Let me go!” shouts Graves.

  “I can’t! You’ll die!”

  “I don’t care, you buffoon. The spear is more important!”

  Graves tries to pull his hand away. I hesitate, looking between him and the woman. No. I’m not going to let Graves be sucked into God knows where, no matter how annoying he is.

  I pull my gun out and fire it at the woman. She ducks, then yanks the spear from the wall.

  I fire the gun again, but she avoids it, turns to me with a huge smile and gives me a thumbs-up. Then she steps into the Rip, the tear slowly sealing itself behind her and winking out of existence.

  Shub-Niggurath howls in fury, and the circular gate abruptly contracts and vanishes.

  The tension disappears, and Graves scrambles to his feet, pulling the severed tentacle off his leg.

  “You fool!” he shouts, rounding on me. “You bloody idiot! Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Saved your life?”

  “Doomed the multiverse to horror beyond all imagining.”

  “Well . . . maybe. But I still saved your life.”

  A clicking sound comes from the other side of the room. Graves and I turn to find the surviving cultists aiming machine guns at us.

  “Mask,” says Graves, unclipping his own mask and placing it over his face.

  I scramble to follow just as he opens up a Slip and the machine gun fire starts. I dive through the door, the stone where I had just been standing now peppered with automatic gunfire.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It feels like days since we were last in the Department Zero offices, even though it’s been under twenty-four hours. I’m utterly exhausted, stressed, confused, and annoyed. I pour a mug of tepid black coffee with shaking hands and down it in one go, filling the mug a second time and taking it back to my desk.

  Graves is deep in conversation with Ash.

  “Shub-Niggurath?” asks Ash.

  Graves nods.

  “The Shub-Niggurath?”

  Graves nods again.

  “No. It couldn’t be.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “But . . . it’s not possible. The Old Ones are in prison. Put there by the Elder Gods. And you’re saying some . . . sub-standard Nazi cult was almost able to free one of them?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “But . . . the kind of power needed to do that is . . .”

  “Incalculable?”

  “Unheard of. I mean, we’re talking Elder Gods here.” Ash raps her knuckles on my mask, which sits atop a pile of dog-eared files. “The same as these.”

  “I know.”

  “How? What is the spear? Some kind of key?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And the second item Nyarlathotep mentioned? The Jewel of Ini-taya?”

  “No idea.” Graves groans and stares at the ceiling. “I’m going to have to take this upstairs. Goddammit.”

  “They might know what to do.”

  “No they won’t! They’re all imbeciles. They’re going to run around in a panic and blame me.” He slams his hands onto his desk. “I just want my job back! This was supposed to get us back upstairs.”

  “If it was just an average cult trying to summon the Old Ones’ minions to fight a war for them, then sure, stopping them might get us back in the ICD. But, Graves, this is bigger than us. This cult nearly succeeded in bringing a Level One entity into the multiverse. That’s what this whole place—” she gestures around us, “—is set up to prevent. I mean, if Shub-Niggurath actually somehow . . . came through, the Company would have had to nullify that entire alternate. That’s not the kind of thing you can keep to yourself.”

  “What do you mean, nullify?” I ask.

  “Wipe out,” says Graves. “Eradicate. Destroy.”

  I stare at him. Then at Ash. “Are you saying you would destroy an entire universe, worlds and worlds, if that thing made it through?”

  “We wouldn’t have a choice,” replies Graves. “If even one of the Old Ones makes it through into three-dimensional space, they can then hop between alternates as easy as we can step through a door. Universes would fall like dominoes. One after the other, devoured by the Old Ones until nothing was left.”

  “But still . . . destroying an entire alternate? You’re talking billions of lives.”

  “Trillions,” says Graves. “But if you have a better method of dealing with ancient alien beings like the Old Ones, please let us know. I’m sure we’d all love to hear it.”

  He stares at me, but I don’t have anything to say.

  Graves sighs and gets to his feet. “Right. I’m off to make my report. You two, go home, get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow we all still have jobs.”

  The blue light winks out behind me, and I’m standing in my bedroom once again. I take the mask off and drop it on the chest of drawers. I wince and roll my neck, then stretch, hearing vertebrae clicking all down my spine. If every day is like today, I’m going to rack up some serious therapeutic massage bills.

  I grab a beer from the fridge and slump into the plastic chair on the balcony, staring out over LA. It feels weird to be looking out over normal houses, the traffic powered by combustion engines and not walking around on alien/clockwork hybrid legs.

  An old Cadillac drives slowly along the street. I frown and lean forward. Is that . . . is that the same goddamn Cadillac? The one that’s been following me? The car passes by, and I relax. It’s not the purple-haired chick. It’s some guy who looks like a salesman from the fifties.

  I sit back and shake my head in bemusement. Definitel
y paranoid. I sip my beer. Three days. Three days I’ve been at the job. I sometimes wonder if it’s even real. If I haven’t gone mad. Locked up in some loony bin hallucinating all of this while I bang my head against a padded wall.

  I stare out over the twinkling lights. It’s after midnight. A long day. I should get to bed. But I stay where I am, and my eyes grow heavy.

  I open my eyes to find myself standing on muddy shores, cold stars twinkling and glittering above me.

  I look around. The dark sea froths and surges, the waves moving in and out in an unsettling manner. It takes me a moment to realize the waves and the sounds are moving in reverse, like movie footage played backward.

  I turn back. A vast city towers above me, a city of hard angles and stone structures. I walk slowly forward, my feet sucking and squelching in the mud, as if it’s trying to pull me down into its slimy depths.

  The structures of the city are alien and unsettling. Not buildings as such, but structures that twist and turn in geometric angles, none of which make sense. My brain hurts when I look at them. They’re covered with alien hieroglyphs and carved bas-reliefs, the images showing nightmarish creatures doing things I can’t make sense of.

  A huge tower dominates the city. A black slab of glassy rock that soars up into the sky, so high it seems to be piercing the underside of the stars.

  I feel sick as I look at it, my insides trembling, my brain switching over to fight or flight. I don’t understand the reaction, just that my body is responding in a primitive, animalistic way that I can’t control.

  I don’t know what to do. I look around, wondering how to escape this place.

  Then I hear the slithering, sucking sound of something approach­­ing. Lots of somethings. They emit a strange whistling sound, and even though I have no idea what they are, I know I have to get away.

  I turn and run back to the beach. My feet sink into the mud, down to my shins. I struggle, but I can’t get them out. The slithering sound gets closer, the whistling louder. I use my hands to try and pull my feet out, but it’s hopeless.

  I turn to face my pursuers—

  I awake with a start, looking wildly around. I relax when I see my familiar balcony, and hear the nighttime sounds of LA traffic.