Department Zero

by Paul Crilley

  Ar’atak.

  I see the past—I see the word used on a mountain and see the mountain crumble to dust. I see it used against an ancient beast of the forest, and the horned creature unravels, its life going backward, undoing itself until it doesn’t exist, until it never had existed. I see that ancient battle, the Elder Gods against the Old Ones, them using the word of undoing against some of the Old Ones before Cthulhu and the others surrender.

  Ar’atak.

  The power builds up inside me. It is a maelstrom of heat and energy, a gathering of . . . undoing, of nothingness.

  Cthulhu reaches out to me. He grabs my neck, but I let the power burst out of me, a surge of entropy, an invisible heat wave that sucks in and swallows everything in its path.

  I direct it at Cthulhu’s head, and I reach out, the massive fingers of the Elder God rending through Cthulhu’s skin. I feel the fingers curl around the Jewel of Ini-taya, Cthulhu’s consciousness, and I unleash the power.

  “Ar’atak.”

  The force strikes Cthulhu. He staggers, his head tilted back as he screams his fury into the Dreamlands. Cracks spread across his skin like corrupted veins, purple light pouring out. I sense the battle down below stopping, all eyes turned to us.

  And I pull my hand out with the jewel resting in my palm. The word of undoing surges through it. The jewel trembles in my hand, then explodes, shattering and turning to dust that drifts away on the wind.

  Cthulhu’s scream breaks off. His eyes close, and he sags.

  A moment of weightlessness, and then he falls over backward and drops onto the city, buildings and structures crushed beneath his weight.

  The blankness in the sky pulses; then the stars flicker back into view. The Old Ones shriek in the night sky and flee back through the gateway, Yog-Sothoth herself turning inside out and vanishing into nothingness.

  I close my eyes and smile—

  And when I open them again I’m on the shores of the empty lake, Dvalin peering down at me with some surprise.

  “You’re still alive,” he says. “Well . . . that’s good. Didn’t really expect that, if I’m honest. Well done.”

  “Did I do it?” I croak.

  “Um . . . if by do it you mean did you destroy Cthulhu’s consciousness and force him into an eternal coma from which he will never awake, thus ensuring the survival of the entire multiverse, then . . . yeah. You did it.”

  I sigh with relief. “Groovy.”

  Epilogue

  The polite term for what I do for a living is “supernatural hazard remediation.”

  That’s what I say if anyone asks me at a dinner party. Not that I’m ever invited to dinner parties.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. I am sometimes. Megan has invited me over a couple of times recently, which is nice. And Graves. I’ve been to a few with him, but it’s best to keep those as a special treat. They usually last for a few days and involve dimension hopping on a grand scale.

  Another term for what I do is Decontamination of Interstitial Crime Scenes.

  Which, basically, means that I clean up stiffs for a living.

  All the stiffs. No prejudice in my line of work.

  Murder of citizens of a Class D medieval-based society by a space-faring race? Check.

  Superhero villains invading a non-magic-based society? Check.

  Fairy genocide? Check.

  Wizard duels held on hillsides with magic lights and fireballs spitting between the combatants? Check. (Not that I’ve ever had one of those, but I live in hope.)

  The department I work for is called the DDICS. That’s not “dicks” by the way, so stop laughing. It stands for the Disposal Department for Interstitial Crime Scenes. My boss is a man called Havelock Graves, and he’s a complete ass.

  I’ve been stuck in this dead-end (ha-ha) job for two months now. Not bad, considering it was only ever meant to be temporary. I was assured we would be promoted back to the actual investigative unit after what we did. You know, saving the entire multiverse from destruction.

  But no. All that had to be kept super-duper quiet. Even though Graves took great joy in making the Inspectre stick up for him. He said the whole thing was worth it just to have the Inspectre stand before the disciplinary commission and tell them that they had to leave Graves (and me) alone. That more people knew the truth now than could be silenced.

  We had to sign a lot of papers promising not to talk about it all. Papers that had scary words like “official secrets act” and “permanent incarceration.”

  Graves assures me that after a proper amount of time has passed we’ll move back to ICD. We just have to keep this up for a little while longer. How long, he won’t say. But I did catch him weeping in the toilet a few days ago, so I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

  “All I’m saying,” says Graves, “is that I’m right.”

  “You’re not. You’re so wrong it’s not even funny.”

  “It is funny. An Elder God miraculously appeared and destroyed the other big, nasty god. It’s literally the textbook definition of deus ex machina.”

  “No. Because if I wasn’t there, then it wouldn’t have happened. See? deus ex machina means the god did everything. But it didn’t. I did.”

  “Only by inhabiting a god. Admit it. It was a cop out.”

  “I saved the fucking multiverse. It was not a cop out. The whole thing since we started out was about gods. Of course the resolution was going to be the same.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, sport.” He yawns and stretches. “What’s the job today?”

  I check the clipboard.

  “Robot war being fought in primitive, Neanderthal alternate. We have to clean up the evidence.”

  “Of course. And we’ll have to stay out of sight. Just imagine what they’ll think if they see us.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “These primitive people, watching us appear in a flash of light.”

  I stay silent.

  “Why, they’d almost think we were some sort of supernatural advanced being.”

  I sigh.

  “Come on. Say it.”

  “I’m not saying it.”

  “Say it!” shouts Graves gleefully.

  “I’m not saying it.”

  “We’ll be like gods! It will be—”

  “Don’t.”

  “—a deus ex machina.”

  Then he bursts out laughing. And won’t stop.

  I hate my job.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my editor, Rene, for putting up with my crap and never losing patience with me. And thanks to my copy editor, Jeffrey Curry, for untangling my many abuses of the English language.

  And to Noelle Adams, for being an awesome beta reader/English fixer-upper.

  And to time. Just for, you know, passing. And making things easier. Keep on keeping on.

  About the Author

  Paul Crilley is a Scotsman living in South Africa. He writes for television, comics, and computer games. His previous books have mainly been for children, among them the Invisible Order series about a hidden war being fought on the streets of Victorian London between humankind and the fae. He also wrote Poison City, a supernatural thriller set in Durban, South Africa.

  Photo by Caroline Doherty