Department Zero

by Paul Crilley

  “Why would anyone want to know the word?”

  She looks at me as if I’m simple. “Power, stupid. Power over everyone and everything. Still, no need to worry. It’s said the word died out with the last of the Elder Gods.” She frowns. “Even though some say the Elder Gods might come back.” She shakes her head suddenly. “Anyway, enough of this! Such talk is best kept for under the stars and after a skin or two of wine. Come. Move. Arin has work to do.”

  “Do you need to recite the origin poem again?” I ask, genuinely curious.

  “Not exactly. I’m going to have a nap.”

  A nap doesn’t sound too bad, actually.

  I’m dreaming. I know it instantly, but I don’t give a crap, because the feeling of wind against my face as I fly through the air, the damp feeling of clouds brushing my cheeks, is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

  Bit of an odd choice of subject, though. I’d have thought scantily clad women would be more my subconscious’s idea of a good time. It’s certainly my idea of a good time. Maybe I’m flying to an exotic locale, a secluded beach or a private forest glade.

  And then I’m plunging down through the clouds. I burst through and see this odd world spread out below me.

  I’m soaring down, past one of those impossible plateaus of land. Down the supporting spire of rock, all the way to where it drops into the ocean. And then I’m skimming across the water. Faster than is possible. I see the Barge Clans up ahead, but before I even get there I sense something is wrong. As I draw closer I see bloated bodies bobbing in a polluted sea. Birds hop from corpse to corpse, pecking at water-decayed folds of gray skin.

  A blink and I’m before another spire of rock, this one a hundred times thicker than the one that supported the city where we arrived. As I fly to the top, I see the miners who let us use their lift. They’re climbing the rock, spilling from holes in the spire and crawling topside.

  I rise past the lip and see them fighting with others. Thousands upon thousands are dead. And at the head of both armies are monstrous beings, a hundred feet tall, tentacles and limbs slashing the air. One has a hundred eyes and snapping jaws; the other is difficult to look at, a being made of angles and refracted black light.

  I’m high up again, in bright sunlight. I look down and see desert. But then I notice that the ground is moving. Tall, thin people moving like a tide of sand to the edge of the plateau. I swoop lower and see drifters tethered there, floating in the air. The people—and I notice something odd about their skin; it is almost translucent, pale and thin, and invisible at the same time—are climbing into the drifters, and they’re heading down, to fight a war.

  Then all I see are bodies, a carpet of rotting meat, and the screams of the dying fills the air. The sky rains ash. The clouds are heavy with ravens. They circle in packs, black against gray.

  And through this sea of carnage wades another colossal being. This one with tentacles on his head and wings on his back. The creature is incomprehensible in power. It hurts my mind just to look at it.

  Cthulhu.

  As if sensing my thoughts, the massive creature turns to me. But not just me, because suddenly I’m not alone. I turn to look.

  Graves stands next to me, plus the Matriarch and what looks like every clan member currently onboard the barge. Even Mad Arin.

  The old woman looks at me, puzzled. “How are you doing this?” she asks.

  As if these words are a signal of some kind, I feel myself yanked backward in my dream. I’m flying again, and the world is dark. Stars burn brilliantly in the freezing sky. I look wildly around and see that I’m approaching the darkened city from my dream last night. From up here, I can see just how monumental the city is. How vast and alien, buildings cut in angles and shapes that are not for the human mind.

  In the center of the city the towering monolith watches over everything, carved from what looks like black obsidian. I’m pulled toward the top of this tower.

  Where something waits.

  I look behind me. I’m alone, but at the same time I know that everyone else is with me, just . . . unseen. I try to change direction, but something keeps drawing me—all of us—toward the coldly glittering tower.

  I can sense a presence, a hunger. Curiosity. I strain against the pull, but there’s nothing I can do. It draws me in, faster and faster. The monolith grows larger. I can feel the presence watching me, reaching out with its mind—

  “Wake up!”

  My eyes snap open. My breath catches in my throat, and I inhale a great, panicked gulp of air. I scramble to my feet, looking wildly around. I’m surrounded by bright red light. I think for a moment that it’s blood, but then I realize it’s just the sun shining through the red silk of the overhang. My stomach lurches and heaves. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  Graves is seated next to me, looking at me with wide eyes.

  “On your feet!”

  It’s the same voice that woke me up. I peer out of our shelter and see the Matriarch standing a few paces away, surrounded by guards armed with spears. She doesn’t look happy.

  Graves and I step out of the shelter. It’s about an hour from dusk now. Afternoon. I couldn’t have been asleep for long. I squint against the low sun, realizing the barge isn’t moving. In fact, no one is moving. Everyone has stopped whatever they were doing to watch the scene unfolding before them.

  “What was that?” snaps the Matriarch, looking directly at me.

  “What?”

  “You know what. That . . . vision. Dream. Whatever it was.”

  “You saw it too?”

  “We all did. You pulled every single person aboard this barge into the Dreamlands.”

  I frown. “Into the what?”

  “The Dreamlands,” says another voice.

  Mad Arin approaches. The Matriarch and the guards step respectfully aside to give the old woman space. She stops in front of me and peers into my eyes, frowning.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I . . .” I look helplessly at Graves, but for once he’s silent. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I fell asleep, I had that dream, and then she woke me up.” I point at the Matriarch.

  “That wasn’t a dream,” says Arin. “That was the Dreamlands. You pulled all of us in with you to witness what you saw.”

  “But . . . I don’t even know what the Dreamlands are,” I say.

  “It is an alternate dimension. Born from the power of the Elder Gods. Some say the Dreamlands are the real world and all this . . .” she gestures around us, “. . . is the dream.”

  “Which is of course, nonsense,” says Graves. “Mumbo jumbo and superstition.”

  “Oh? Then how do you explain what just happened?”

  “I don’t,” says Graves. “I choose to ignore it.”

  “Good for you. I, on the other hand, choose not to. Something is happening here, and it involves the two of you.” She thinks about it then nods to herself. “You must stand before our Oracle.”

  “Sorry,” says Graves. “Got people to see, magic artifacts to find. No time to stop and chitchat.”

  “We’re not asking you for permission,” says the Matriarch.

  “Outrageous! You can’t keep us here against our will!”

  One of the guards taps him in the chest with a spear point. “This says otherwise,” he says.

  “I will not put up with this!” shouts Graves. “I’ll report you to the authorities. I’ll write bad reviews about your hospitality.”

  “I’m afraid it is necessary,” says Arin. “Didn’t you see that? Those creatures. They were the Old Ones. Freed from their prisons.”

  “In a dream!” snaps Graves. “It wasn’t real.”

  “It felt real to me,” says Arin. “It won’t be so bad. You are still going in the same direction. You will just be stopping off for an afternoon visit before you go on your way.”

  “And if this Oracle decides she doesn’t like what she sees?” Graves asks. “If she decides to keep us
prisoner?”

  “We will deal with that when the time comes. For now, relax. Enjoy the journey. Tonight we will have a feast. To show you we are not bad people.”

  Graves turns and points an outraged finger at the Matriarch. “I want my money back. The service on this barge is abysmal.”

  “Sorry,” says the Matriarch with a grin. “No refunds.”

  Later that night, the barge clan is throwing a feast. Not for us. I think it’s just what they do. Music and wine and fires lit in metal bins. Lots of singing and dancing and good-natured fighting.

  I close my eyes and let the sounds of feasting wash over me. The sounds, the laughter, the music, and, barely discernible, the sound of the ocean moving aside, a dull whoosh-whoosh sound as the barge slides through the waters.

  Megan would love this. She always liked to have a good time. It’s in her blood. She didn’t even need booze to do it. Not like me. She just naturally enjoyed life. I could never understand how she did that.

  “Cheer up, it might never happen,” says Graves, heaving himself down next to me.

  “I think it already has.”

  “Stop talking,” snaps one of the bargers seated next to me. “The Medula Onta is going to tell a story. It is a great honor for you both.”

  “The Medula-what?” I ask.

  “Medula Onta. The Speaker of Words.”

  She gestures. I follow the direction of her gaze and see Mad Arin standing before a large fire pit. She raises her hands in the air, and silence flows out from her, spreading through all of the clan members.

  She waits until all eyes are upon her. Then she begins speaking.

  “Before, when we all lived on the unbroken land, strangers would visit our clans in the woods and forests, and we would spend the night eating and sharing stories, sharing cultures. This practice has fallen by the wayside of late.” Here she looks pointedly at the Matriarch of the clan. “Some think we should keep to ourselves, trapping our souls in these bags of skin and preventing them from joining with others. For that is the reason behind sharing our past, our legends. Joining with others. We take away a part of someone else, we carry a small amount of them with us, an understanding, the memory of a moment shared.”

  It seems that she looks directly at Graves and me as she speaks.

  “With that sharing we gain a small amount of knowledge of another people, and hopefully that knowledge leads to greater respect, to greater tolerance of those we thought were nothing like us. For we are all the same. We all seek happiness, peace, love. We all dream of growing up; we all think fondly of our youth. We all cry. We all hope. We all live. We all die. Tonight is my gift to our visitors, and I hope they will carry this tradition with them on their travels.”

  She waves her hand over the massive fire. It is the width of two men lying head to toe, and I can feel its heat even from where we sit.

  And then, as I watch, Arin suddenly leans forward and plunges her face into the flames. I gasp and leap to my feet, but the woman by my side grabs hold of my arm.

  “Sit!” she commands.

  I look around. No one else seems worried. Not even Graves. But then he looks bored by the whole thing, casually inspecting his nails for dirt.

  A moment later Arin pulls her head out of the flames, her face unscathed. She opens her mouth, and a small flame dances on her tongue. At the same time, the massive fire dies down to the barest flicker, an orange carpet that glows and pulses. She spits the small flame out of her mouth, and it lands in the pit. As I watch, it forms into the shape of an egg.

  “The origins of things are important,” says Arin. “I know the origin poem of fire so I can control it. But knowing the origin of things does not always mean control. Sometimes, it means understanding. This is why I tell you this night about the origin of language. The origin of the universe.”

  She waves a hand, and a flame flicks out of the fire pit and forms into the shape of an eagle, swooping through the air. It weaves in and out of the spectators, drawing wondrous gasps. I grin as it swoops past my face. Graves bats it away in irritation.

  “The world eagle flew through the dark skies before time was created. She was the first of the Elder Gods. Everything existed as one instant, an eternal moment that contained within it the whole history of everything that could or would exist. The world eagle watched over this moment. She carried it within her beating heart. We, sitting here right now, existed in that moment, in that time before time. We were part of the world eagle. She has already foreseen this meeting.”

  The eagle swoops around and flutters to a halt in front of me. I reach out to touch it. The eagle pecks out with its beak and flies away. A few of the barge clan laugh at this, but none louder than Graves.

  “One day the world eagle laid an egg, and it became the sun. This was another of the Elder Gods, the second. They began talking, the first words ever spoken between two beings, and from these words the cosmos was created. Their words fell to create stars. When they saw this they laughed and cast more words into the blackness. These words created the world and all that exists within it. And when it was time to part, their words of farewell fell even heavier and created the first race, the Old Ones. They are many and varied, but among them are the most important: Cthulhu, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, Dagon, Yog-Sothoth.”

  The fire eagle expands to form a round sphere, then expands again and flattens out to show a fiery landscape of trees and mountains, all made from flickering orange fire.

  “The sun decided not to give the knowledge of words to the Old Ones. They were not happy with this. Cthulhu appointed himself as leader of the Old Ones. He signaled for the world eagle to come to him, and using gestures, he begged for a ride. The eagle agreed, but when he sat on her back he trapped her with a harness he had fashioned from fallen moonlight. When night came, Cthulhu forced the world eagle to fly to the sun.

  “The sun spoke in her sleep, and Cthulhu stole the words from her mouth and put them into his bag. He returned to the earth, but unknown to him, his bag had a hole in it and some of the true words fell across the land. But even though he had lost some of these true words, he still had most, and he shared them with the other Old Ones.

  “When the sun awoke and discovered the theft she was furious. In her fury she spat out the word of Undoing. She shouted it at the earth and split the land open. The Old Ones were swallowed up, pulled into another dimension as punishment. This place is called the Absolute Elsewhere, and it is eternal and cold.

  “The sun reserved a special punishment for Cthulhu. He was the most powerful, the first born, and the sun trapped him in a prison beneath the ocean. A place called R’lyeh.

  “But this was not enough for the sun. This Elder God put Cthulhu to sleep forever, and locked his prison, throwing away the keys.”

  Arin suddenly claps her hands, and the flames in the fire pit shoot upward again. I start from my reverie. I was so caught up in the story that I was unaware I was watching pictures made of fire. I rub my eyes.

  Arin looks at her audience. “I am the Speaker of Words. This is the story I tell,” she says formally. “If it be good, or if it be not good, it matters not. Take some elsewhere, and let some come back to me. So we share. So we grow.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning the barge shifts direction, turning toward a large mass of land that Arin tells me is Roflake. I lean on the railings and let the cold salt breeze wipe away the last vestiges of sleep. The rising sun hasn’t crested the pedestal’s horizon yet. It shines through the thousands of pillars that hold the continent up, the light silhouetting them and making the whole pedestal look like some sort of twisted tree.

  Something bothers me about this whole business. About Nyarlathotep and his cult, about the spear and the jewel. About the ICD attacking us. We’re missing something. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

  I go over and over it in my mind as the morning progresses, but I’m no closer to finding an answer. The barge makes a series of slight tu
rns until it is headed directly for a specific spot beneath the plateau, a twisted rock archway formed by the shape of the spires.

  I have no idea what is so special about that spot until we draw close enough for me to see the gently undulating carpet of color in the shadows underneath the land mass, thousands of barges linked together by ropes and bridges.

  The light dims as our barge tracks its way beneath the pedestal, moving through the channels kept open through the mess of barges. Good-natured shouts and curses follow in our wake.

  I study our surroundings with intense curiosity. It isn’t just barges that takes up space here. Collapsed spires form low islands in the sea. These spires are covered with buildings: huts, shops, and even homes. The short people from inside the spire, the dwarves, as I’ve come to think of them, operate out of stalls that sell mushrooms and dried meat, expensive foods from topside and bright swathes of material.

  Graves eventually joins me at the railing, yawning and rubbing his face.

  “How much longer do you think we’ll be stuck here?” I ask.

  Graves smacks his lips, grimacing. “A few days, if we’re lucky.”

  “And if we’re unlucky?”

  “Forever.”

  I hesitate. I’ve been wondering whether to tell Graves this or not, but I suppose I should. It might be important.

  “Listen, I didn’t want to say anything in front of this lot, but the city that I supposedly took everyone to? In this Dreamland place? I’ve seen it before.”

  Graves turns to stare at me. “Where?”

  “Remember back at that castle? When Himmler was trying to use the Spear of Destiny? When I touched the spear, I had this . . . flash. Of a city, of stars in a night sky. And then that night when I went home, I dreamt the same thing. An old, abandoned city under a starry sky.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t like the way those dreams make me feel.”