Department Zero

by Paul Crilley

  “For someone supposedly ‘in character’ you’re acting very shifty,” I say. “Unless this is how the priests normally walk around in their own temple? Like you’re on your way to a midnight rendezvous?”

  Graves straightens up without answering. Then he strides out into the passage. I grin and follow.

  We move along the corridors, passing expensive tapestries and old, faded paintings. Deeper into the temple, up back stairs and along more passages. The corridors eventually all blur together, but we gradually make our way higher, moving to where we were told the Eli or whatever he is called has his bedroom.

  I mean, what’s with that, anyway? What kind of crazy-ass priest keeps the holiest relic in his bedroom? What an idiot. He deserves to have it stolen. We’re actually doing them a favor. They can see how crappy their security arrangements are.

  I’ve taken the lead by now, Graves dragging his steps as he pauses to admire each of the tapestries.

  I turn a corner and come face-to-face with one of the priests. I falter, smile, and nod, hesitate, panic slightly, glance over my shoulder to find that Graves is nowhere to be seen, face front again, smile one more time, just for good luck, then carry on walking past the priest.

  “You! Stop.”

  Shit. I turn around. This priest has silver embroidery sewn around the hems and sleeves of his robe, patterns that make him seem like he’s high up on the food chain. And he has a deranged look in his eyes. This one’s definitely of the “mad priest” variety.

  “What are you doing up here? This area is off-limits. You cannot disturb the Eli’s sleep.”

  “Uh . . . yeah. Sorry, man. I was . . . I got lost, you know?” I rack my brain for anything remotely similar in my life that could in any way prepare me for this. The only thing I get is the thousands of movies I wasted my life watching. “I . . . was looking for the bathroom.”

  “The what?”

  “The bathroom? No?” I think about it. “The . . . water closet?” He stares at me blankly. “The crapper?” Still nothing. “The john? The restroom? The throne. The potty. The commode. None of these ringing a bell?”

  “I think you should come with me.”

  “Love to, pal. Really. Sounds amazing. But I’ve got virgins to sacrifice and evil magic to conjure.”

  I try to walk away, but he slaps a hand on my shoulder. Oh, well. Had to happen sooner or later.

  I brace my feet and whirl around, pushing the priest hard in the chest. He stumbles back with a shout of surprise and hits the wall. I lunge forward before he can recover and grab hold of his robe, pushing my forearm into his neck.

  He struggles, trying to pull his robe from my fingers. I hesitate, then release him and shove him as hard as I can in the face, banging his head into the wall.

  The priest bounces and staggers forward, a smear of blood left on the stones behind him. I reach into my robes and pull out one of the daggers.

  The priest grabs hold of my wrist before I can do anything. My eyes snap up, locking gazes with him. I almost let go. I see no intelligence there, just a crazed, feral look. Before I can even react, the priest lifts a foot and boots me hard in the stomach.

  My breath explodes from my lungs. I stagger backward. The priest comes with me, still holding onto my wrist with one hand. I twist my arm and try to pull his fingers apart with my other hand, but his grip is like stone. Surprisingly strong, these insane priests.

  I give up trying and pull the second knife from my belt. I swing it clumsily, aiming for his neck. He sees it coming and tries to jerk away. The blade rips through his cheek and comes out the side of his mouth.

  I let go of the dagger. The priest howls in pain and pulls me in close, then balls his fist and hits me as hard as he can in the side of the head.

  I collapse to the floor, dropping the first dagger, and this time he lets me go. I lie there dazed, telling myself to get up, to move, but my body doesn’t want to obey. Everything is spinning. I try to push myself to my feet. I can hear the priest moaning in pain behind me. He tries to speak, but it comes out as a muffled scream as he opens his torn lips.

  Then my head is yanked back. I find myself staring into something from a Friday the 13th movie. Blood and saliva drip onto my face. The priest raises the first dagger I dropped.

  I reach up and rip the second dagger from his cheek. The priest roars, and then I quickly thrust the blade deep into his chest.

  He looks at me in confusion, then collapses to the flagstones. He hits face-first, and I can hear his nose breaking as it smacks into the stone floor.

  I push myself shakily to my feet and stare at the corpse. Then I throw up into the corner.

  “Not bad,” says a voice.

  I wipe my mouth and turn to see Graves leaning casually against the wall.

  “What the hell, man? Why didn’t you help?”

  “You were doing fine on your own.”

  “He nearly killed me!”

  “Nearly being the operative word. Relax, idiot. I would have stepped in eventually.”

  I straighten my robes. I want to punch him, but my hands are trembling so much I don’t think I’d manage it. I stare down at the body. I can’t believe I just did that. Stabbed a man to death. I mean, sure. I used the Elder Gods’ guns on things, but they just made the target . . . go away. There was nothing left to look at and realize what you’ve done. This, though. This was actual death. Actual murder. I mean, sure, I killed Crew Cut, but that was instinct. I couldn’t stop that if I wanted to. This . . . was different.

  “It was self-defense,” says Graves, as if sensing my thoughts.

  I glance at him, and he nods over my shoulder. “Nearly there.”

  I take a deep, shaky breath and turn. He’s right. The passage leads to a single open door with a narrow set of stairs leading up.

  We climb the stairs, moving as quietly as possible. I’m worried about guards, but when we reach the top there’s nobody there. Just a doorway leading into a huge antechamber with couches and tables and a wooden desk facing an arched window. Seems that when you’re the head honcho in a world, you grow a bit lax on the security front.

  “I don’t suppose it would be out here?” I ask.

  “We were told it’s in his bedchambers.”

  Of course. There are three doors leading out of the antechamber. The first opens into a tiled room with a sunken floor filled with steaming water. I close the door as Graves opens the next. He closes it again.

  “Library,” he says.

  That leaves one. We approach the door, and Graves carefully pushes down the handle, edging the door slowly open.

  I peer over Graves’s shoulder. The smell of incense is heavy in the air, thick and cloying. Rich tapestries hang from the walls. Cushions and thick carpets are strewn everywhere, and in the center of the room is a massive four-poster bed with gauze curtains hiding the occupant.

  We sneak inside. Graves gestures for me to search the right side of the room while he takes the left. I nod and move off, checking the sideboard, looking behind the tapestries, searching the shelves of gold ornaments depicting Cthulhu and his brothers and sisters. There really are quite a lot of them, and they all look like monsters from the deepest part of our primal brains. Just looking at them makes my skin crawl.

  No jewel, though.

  Graves glances over at me and shakes his head. He hasn’t found it either.

  Our eyes turn to the bed. We move slowly toward it, and I gently part the curtains, seeing Graves doing the same on the opposite side.

  The high priest is lying on top of the sheets. Naked. He’s ancient and wrinkly and, frankly, pretty disgusting to look at. His massive, hairy belly pokes up like a mountain.

  But it’s what he’s lying next to that draws our attention.

  It’s a huge head.

  No body. Just a head. It’s about three times the size of my own, but the proportions are odd. Like some kind of space alien left out in the sun to wither and dry out.

  And it has a je
wel embedded in its forehead.

  I stare at it in awe. The jewel seems . . . alive. It’s black and oily, and it looks like there’s something inside it, slowly writhing.

  The head is on my side of the bed. I look uncertainly at Graves. He’s staring at the head with a pale face, looking seriously freaked out. I gesture for his attention, miming if I’m supposed to lift the damn thing up or not.

  He seems hesitant, at first, but he finally nods, once, and steps back away from the bed.

  I reach down and pick up the head.

  As soon as I touch it, the eyes snap open. They’re black and filled with stars. I almost drop it in shock. The mouth opens. The forehead creases in a frown. It’s about to scream. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. I quickly try to slap my hand over its mouth.

  In doing so, I accidentally brush the jewel. . . .

  Darkness. A breath of cold wind that brushes my face with an almost audible sigh. The breeze becomes sticky, tangible. It pushes against my face, pressing into my skin so that it’s like walking through a cobweb. The pressure against my face increases, turning into pain. I open my mouth to scream, but then with an almost physical snap, it pushes through my skin and enters into my very being.

  I cry out. Pictures flash before me, but so quickly I only have a sense of the vastness of them, of the sense that if I did actually manage to focus on them I’d be driven mad. They’re blood red and liver purple, glistening and sharp. A battle—between the Old Ones and the Elder Gods. The screams of a million dying madmen, the taste of raw flesh and corrupt earth. The touch of the images is ragged and sharp, a tongue made of shards of glass that licks over and over, pulling up strips of skin and muscle, breaking against my bone.

  Then a voice speaks to me, and it is the joyful babble of a lunatic as he kills innocents. It is the rending scream of a man woken up to find his family murdered and a bleeding knife held in his hand. It is the cajoling voice of madness, the encouraging whisper that speaks of foulness and murder.

  It is the voice of a god.

  The presence sifts through my mind, searching for knowledge. I can’t remember the questions. They fall away from my thoughts with the blood that drips from my ears. The presence pillages my mind, pushing, twisting, leaving trails of vileness that I know I’ll never break free of.

  Then the presence is gone, and I’m left with a sense of dark, alien space. Cold and brittle stars. Freezing cold. Eternity. Dreaming. Hungry.

  I try to lift my head, but it won’t budge.

  Why can’t I move?

  Then the memories roll over me. Touching the jewel. Opening my mouth to scream. Guards, yelling. Pain.

  I pull my arms. Nothing. I force open my eyes and swivel them left and right. Chains. I’m chained to something. I finally manage to lift my head, and then I peer over my shoulder. A . . . giant pillar of rock, by the looks of it, that disappears up through the roof.

  I look around. I’m in some kind of arena. Or an amphitheater, the kind used for lectures. Tiers of benches climb up to doors. I’m at the bottom, the rock pillar situated on a sandy floor.

  Well. This is just peachy. I look left and right, but I don’t see any sign of Graves. Did he escape? Is he dead?

  This is bad. I strain against the chains, but there’s no give. The rock is digging into my back and arms, cutting into my skin.

  I hear a creaking sound from somewhere. I look around to see one of the doors at the top of the amphitheater slowly opening. I tense, adrenaline surging through my system. I strain against the chains again, but it’s no use.

  “Psst!”

  I snap my head up. Graves is peering around the door. I blink stupidly at him, wondering if I’m hallucinating.

  He makes sure I’m alone, then enters the chamber carrying his rucksack against his stomach. It looks heavy.

  He makes his way down the steps, looking furtively over his shoulder.

  “What the hell happened?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” says Graves. He puts the bag down and starts fiddling with the chains. “You started screaming. Woke the high priest up; then you passed out. The guards came running and took you into custody.”

  “And you?”

  “I hid. Under the bed.”

  “You hid under the bed?”

  “No choice. I knew one of us had to stay free. And your little distraction meant they left the room unattended, meaning I could get hold of . . .” He kicks the heavy satchel. “This.”

  “Is that the head?”

  “It is indeed. They left it in the bedroom when they took you off, you naughty thief. Perfect plan, all round.”

  Graves disappears behind the huge pillar, and a moment later I slump forward, only just managing to stop falling face-first into the ground.

  “Get up, idiot. No time for napping.”

  I push myself to my feet. I stretch and wince, trying to get life back into my limbs.

  Graves grabs the satchel and leads the way back up the stairs. “Nearly done,” he says.

  “Yeah.” I follow him to the door. “Now we just have to figure out how to get the hell off this world.”

  Graves’s shoulders sag slightly. “God. Five minutes, Priest. Is five minutes too much to ask without you inflicting reality on me?”

  We retrace our steps back through the temple. We still have our robes, so nobody gives us any trouble as we pass.

  We arrive back at the first entrance hall. We pause and peer over the balcony, but there don’t seem to be any surprises waiting for us. We hurry down the stairs and across the hall, stepping through the doors and back out into the humid night air.

  We start to run, which doesn’t really make sense. It’s not as if we can run all the way across the desert, but still, you like to get a head start when you’ve just ripped off a holy relic from mad priests.

  We don’t get far.

  As soon as we pass the massive rock that we hid behind earlier in the day, there is a flare of blue light and the air around us rips apart. We skid to a stop as the tear spreads, completely surrounding us in a circle of torn reality.

  And then Nyarlathotep steps through the rip, accompanied by Dana and four Hounds of Tindalos.

  He pauses a few steps away and smiles widely.

  “I like you guys, I really do. You’re the kind of enemies I want in my life. So incompetent that you do all the actual work for me. But don’t feel bad. Seriously. Not your fault.” He nods at the bag Graves is holding tightly to his chest. “Is that the jewel? Bigger than I thought, but no matter. It’s cool.” He claps his hands. “You did it, guys! Well done. Saves me having to storm the temple with my hounds. You saved a lot of peoples’ lives there, so good for you. I respect that. Now. Be good little monkeys and pass it over.”

  Graves grips the bag tighter to his chest.

  “Come on, man. Let’s not ruin what we have here. I won. You lost. Dana. Fetch. There’s a good girl.”

  I notice that a brief look of hatred flickers across Dana’s face. It’s so quick I wonder if I imagined it. But she walks forward and stands before Graves and myself.

  Graves still doesn’t release the bag. Nyarlathotep sighs and clicks his fingers. The hounds stalk forward, their geometric planes shifting and refracting the moonlight.

  Dana holds her hands out, and Graves reluctantly hands over the bag.

  “Thanks!” says Nyarlathotep brightly. “Glad we could resolve this without any bloodshed—oh wait, we didn’t. Because I should probably kill you now, right? No offense, you seem like groovy guys, but you’re just starting to get a bit annoying, you know? Dana?”

  She takes a knife out of her belt and smiles at Graves.

  “Just put your hands up, yeah?” says Nyarlathotep. “Make it easy for her. I mean, the size difference between you guys is immense. She probably won’t be able to take you on—”

  Dana whirls around and flings the knife straight at Nyarlathotep. He squeals and brings an arm up to defend himself, and the knife goes hilt-deep i
nto his bicep. The hounds growl uncertainly. I look at Graves, and he shrugs, his hand moving slowly to his gun.

  “What the hell, Dana? Was that, like, a really bad throw or something?”

  “Yes! It was! I wanted to kill you.”

  “What? Hey now, you don’t mean that. You’re hyster—”

  She reaches into her robe and pulls out a wand. She points it at Nyarlathotep. “I swear to the gods, if you dare say I’m hysterical, I will rip your throat out with my teeth.”

  She flicks the wand, and four blue fireballs surge out its tip and hit the hounds.

  They burst into greasy flames. The creatures howl and run in circles, rolling around and trying to put out the flames. But they can’t. I hear the shattering of glass, and then the hounds explode into shards.

  “Why did you do that?” shouts Nyarlathotep. “You know how expensive those things are? Seriously, what’s with you, Dana? Should I set up a meeting with HR? We can discuss—”

  “Discuss? Discuss what? How I’m sick of you? Ordering me around, treating me like a slave. I’m a person, you moron. An actual real person.”

  “Hey, I know that.”

  “You don’t! I’ve never met anyone so patronizing. So . . . casually misogynistic. You’re a relic from a bygone era. You should be put down.”

  Nyarlathotep’s face clears. He smiles. “I know what it is. It’s . . . you know . . .” He lowers his voice. “. . . that time? Of the month?”

  I wince. Graves’s breath rushes inward. Dana freezes and straightens up. Nyarlathotep looks over at us and grins. “You guys know what I’m talking about? Right?”

  Graves and I both take a sudden interest in the stars.

  “Guys?”

  “Don’t talk to us,” says Graves urgently. “We don’t know you.”

  Dana walks slowly toward Nyarlathotep, her whole body vibrating with fury. “I’m going to take this jewel and the spear. I’m going to free the Old Ones. And I’m going to be the favored one.”

  “But that’s my job.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Graves has been using the distraction to slowly take his entropy gun out. He brings it up and fires, but Nyarlathotep sees him and yanks Dana in front of him. The invisible bullet hits her in the back. She shrieks, not in pain, but hatred, and she lifts the wand and releases one last fireball, straight into Nyarlathotep’s face.