The Lovecraft Squad

by John Llewellyn Probert

  For a moment they could still hear her faint wailing, then it became duller, and then it was not there at all.

  “What the hell just happened?” Like the others, Karen was left staring open-mouthed at the expanse of stone where the girl had disappeared.

  “I hope that’s a rhetorical question because I don’t think any of us can come up with a sensible answer.” Chambers was rubbing his fingertips. They had been unusually chilled by his contact with the girl, whose body had been ice cold.

  “No,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “Not a sensible one, anyway.”

  That surprised Chambers, and it looked as if it surprised Karen as well. “You mean you do have one?”

  “I’m not sure,” came the reply. “I need to think about it for a while.” She shivered. “Shall we continue our journey?”

  “But that girl!” Karen was shaking. “Shouldn’t we stay here in case she . . . in case she . . .”

  “She’s not going to be coming out again anytime soon,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “Or at least I would be very surprised if she did. The only thing we can do is keep going. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t touch the walls.”

  She strode ahead as if, Chambers thought, for all the world she knew where she was going.

  “She’s far too cheerful,” Karen whispered. “Do you think she’s going mad?”

  “She’s certainly going somewhere,” Chambers replied. “And we’d better hurry up or she’s going to leave us far behind.”

  A little further on they arrived at a crossroads, where two of the broad, high-ceilinged corridors met. Dr. Cruttenden barely hesitated before carrying straight on.

  “Do you think you might know where we are?” Chambers asked.

  “I have an idea,” came the reply. “But I need to gather more data. I see no point in hesitating about it either. I have to admit I was hoping we would have come across someone else by now. If we don’t in the next ten minutes or so, I hope you won’t mind if we double back and try one of the left or right turns back there?”

  Chambers didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. Pretty soon it didn’t matter because Dr. Cruttenden found what she was looking for. The sight turned Chambers’s stomach, and Karen had to stifle a scream.

  Up ahead were two people. Or rather, parts of two people. The nearer was an elderly man, dressed in a once-smart black suit that was now streaked with gray dust and pale mud. On his left wrist was a watch that still ticked, albeit irregularly. His right wrist was buried in the stone of the wall he was leaning against. Most of the rest of his body was free, but his head was close enough to the stone that his gray hair had fused to it, forcing him to tilt his head at an awkward angle. As they watched, whatever had a hold of his hair tightened its grip and pulled his head a little nearer to the wall.

  “Not . . . much . . . longer . . . now,” he said in a strangled voice. “No . . . more . . . waiting.”

  The second figure was worse, because there was so much less of it.

  It was difficult to tell if it was a man or a woman as it only existed from the waist up. Anything lower than that had long since disappeared into the stone floor. Its head hung low on its chest, pulled into that position by the long strands of iron gray hair that had also fused with the ground, causing the figure to resemble an especially bloated fly caught in the web of an enormous spider. This figure emitted a low unintelligible moaning that got louder as they approached.

  The three of them took great caution to avoid touching either of their new acquaintances as they carefully skirted them. Dr. Cruttenden wanted to examine both in more detail, but Chambers stopped her.

  “We don’t want to risk you ending up like them, do we?” he said.

  “What are they?” Karen was staring at them too, fascinated.

  Dr. Cruttenden didn’t seem at all worried. “They are not exactly alive, but neither are they truly dead. I suppose if you wanted to give them a name you could call them ‘zombies.’” She looked at Chambers. “I don’t think such a fate is intended for us,” she said. “Otherwise we would be here already.”

  “But we are here.” Karen could not take her eyes off the waist-high thing, and Chambers had to take her hand to encourage her farther down the passageway.

  “I know we are physically here,” said Dr. Cruttenden, “but I do not believe we are spiritually intended for this place.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It was no use. Dr. Cruttenden was already off in search of more evidence.

  Very soon they encountered three more of the stone zombies, as Chambers had come to consider them. One was an elderly woman half-buried in the wall to their right. She regarded them with a single rolling eye as they passed. A little farther on was a man who had evidently succumbed to some trauma that had caused him to lose both his lower limbs. The wall to the left had sucked in his arms, but his amputated stumps still flailed helplessly against the stone floor. The last, and most disturbing, was little more than a face, staring out from the wall at waist-height. It had assumed the same pallid gray as its surroundings, but still maintained a degree of flexibility that allowed it to cry. The most horrifying aspect was that the face belonged to what appeared to be a two-year-old child.

  “Does this fit in with your theory?” Chambers asked as they hurried past the last one.

  “Yes.” Dr. Cruttenden’s face was grim. “Yes, it does. I wonder how far we are meant to go?”

  “I’m guessing the answer is to keep walking until something happens?” Karen seemed resigned now, but Chambers was still worried about her.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “As okay as anyone could be,” she replied. “I’m not that delicate, you know. My job has taken me to all kinds of places in the world, and I’ve seen some terrible things. You just learn to cope, don’t you?”

  Chambers knew what she meant. “All kinds of places in the world, but I bet you’ve never been under it like this.”

  That raised the hint of a smile that made him feel a lot better. “Caves in Trinidad and mines in South Africa during an uprising. But no, nothing quite like this.”

  “Are you coming?”

  The two of them had ground to a halt. They jumped as Dr. Cruttenden’s voice came from farther up the passageway.

  “Better get going,” said Karen. “Our teacher’s calling us.”

  “She is a bit like that, isn’t she?” Chambers said. “In fact, I had a schoolteacher very much like her when I was five.”

  Karen winced, “I had a grandmother,” she said. “Believe me, I think you probably got the better deal.”

  Ahead they reached a T-junction, with the same grotesque sight both left and right.

  Projecting from the walls were human arms.

  They were all different—sizes, lengths, ages. Men and women appeared to be accounted for, and children too.

  And they all appeared to be made of stone.

  Chambers didn’t fancy turning left or right. “Do we brave one of these, or is it back the way we came?”

  “There’s no going back,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “That would be foolish in the extreme.”

  It looked as if there was just enough room down each passageway for them to walk single file and not come into contact with the petrified fingers.

  “Time to toss a coin?”

  Dr. Cruttenden took one step into the left-hand passageway. Almost immediately there was a terrible grinding sound, and as they watched, all the arms stretched, emerging further from their prisons of rock on either side until they formed an impenetrable barrier, a mesh of petrified limbs that it was now impossible to pass.

  The lecturer took a step back, and tried the right passageway instead.

  Nothing happened.

  “It would seem the decision has been made for us,” she said.

  Chambers pushed Karen ahead of him. “Let’s just hope they’re not trying to split us up,” he said as they followed Dr. Cruttenden down the passage that had been ch
osen for them.

  The corridor of limbs lasted for twenty paces. Then they stepped through an open doorway, and into a room that seemed to have no walls. If there were any, they were too far away to see. As far as Chambers could tell, there was no ceiling either. Instead, a curtain of magenta sky hung over them, with irregular pinpricks of light that could be stars, although not in any known configuration Chambers was familiar with. A faint breeze blew, and if he concentrated he could see tiny specks on the far horizon, where the sky was redder and met the pale gray stone slabs of the seemingly never-ending floor.

  “Where are we?” he breathed as he clutched at Karen’s hand.

  “Closer to the end than we were,” said Dr. Cruttenden, looking around her.

  “The end?” Karen frowned. “The end of what?”

  “I could be wrong, of course, but if I’m correct I don’t mean the end of us, so please don’t start fretting.”

  “I’m not fretting.” Karen did sound incensed, though. “Perhaps I might be a little less inquisitive if you told us what you think is going on?”

  “Not enough evidence yet,” Dr. Cruttenden muttered. “Not enough.”

  Chambers laid a hand on Karen’s shoulder. “Best not to get her worked up,” he whispered. “We’ve no idea if what she’s implying has any basis in fact, or if this has just all got too much for her.”

  Dr. Cruttenden, meanwhile, was wandering off ahead of them, muttering under her breath the entire time.

  “Has to be here . . .” Chambers heard when he caught up with her. “Somewhere around here . . . should be obvious. Has to be here somewhere . . .”

  “Could it have anything to do with those shapes up ahead there?” He was trying to be helpful, and he certainly didn’t expect his words to cause her face to assume a look of abject terror.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no oh no oh no. We have to find it before they get here.”

  “Find what?” Karen asked. “Before who gets here?”

  Dr. Cruttenden raised a shaking hand and pointed at the horizon. “Them.” Her voice was a dry whisper.

  Chambers shielded his eyes and tried hard to focus on the tiny shapes. Was it his imagination, or did they seem bigger than before? And were they moving a little from side to side?

  “We have to leave this place before they get here.” Dr. Cruttenden was kicking at the stone slabs. “The way down has to be here somewhere.”

  Karen looked at Chambers, who shrugged. “Sounds like we need to find a way down,” he said to her.

  All three began to kick at the stone slabs, yielding little more than dull tapping sounds and sore toes. Every now and then Chambers looked up. The shapes were definitely closer now, shambling and rocking from side to side. If he squinted, he could make out that they were human figures, as gray as some of the parts of the poor individuals they had encountered in the corridor.

  “What are they?” he asked as they continued to search.

  “Souls bound to Limbo,” said Dr. Cruttenden. Now she was down on her hands and knees patting at the stone. “We saw their precursors back there, in the preparation channels. Once they are absorbed, they take their place on the eternal plain to wander it forever. Only one thing can free them.”

  “Dare we ask?” Karen kept tapping as she spoke.

  “Souls to replace them,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “That’s why we have to hurry, or we’ll be trapped here forever.”

  “In Limbo?” Karen pushed hair out of her eyes and looked at the figures. Some were lurching more than others, and some seemed to only have one functioning lower limb and were dragging the other behind them. Some were crawling, and others had no limbs at all and were slowly wriggling or rolling toward them.

  The ones at the front, however, were moving quickly.

  “Survival of the fittest,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “It’s the same in Heaven or in Hell.”

  “Or Limbo?” Karen repeated. “Is that where we are—Limbo?”

  “It’s where I believe we are, and where we’ll stay, forever, if we can’t find the way out.”

  “Can’t we just go back the way we came?”

  Chambers looked behind them. “What way, Karen?”

  It was true. The entrance to where they were had disappeared. Now the stone floor extended in all directions to the horizon.

  The cursed souls of Limbo were coming from all directions as well.

  “Fucking hell!” Karen beat her fist against the stone once, twice.

  On the third blow she scraped her hand so badly she left a streak of blood on the stone. Chambers, already on his way over to stop her, examined the skin.

  “Not too bad,” he said as he looked at the scraped flesh over the heel of Karen’s right hand. “But hitting the floor like that is going to do you more damage.”

  “Do you think I care?” she cried. “Look! Those things are getting nearer, and all we’re doing is bashing our heads against a brick wall!”

  She was interrupted by a loud grating sound. They all looked down to see the blood Karen had shed had trickled into the gap between two stones, which had widened and was continuing to do so. Now the stone blocks on either side were lowering, as were those next to them. As they watched, an entire section of the floor dropped, forming a broad stone spiral staircase.

  “Where does it go?” Karen asked Dr. Cruttenden.

  “Never mind that,” said Chambers. The souls at the front were close enough now that he could see their faces and the terrible hunger in the eyes. Close enough that he could feel their loneliness, the sheer sense of isolation they felt from having spent eons trapped on this grim, empty, soulless plain. But that was nothing compared with their monumental desire to leave this place. And they were not to be cheated of the opportunity.

  “Get down there now!”

  He pushed Karen down the steps, behind Dr. Cruttenden, who was already on her way. As Chambers followed, the first of the petrified figures reached for him, and he felt a coldness worse than freezing, an emptiness greater than the gulfs of space, and a desire that was so overpowering he tripped and fell. He looked up to see that now even more of them had arrived at the brink of the steps.

  As he scrambled to his feet, a multitude of clutching, ossified claws lunged for him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAMBERS FELT ICY FINGERS touch his skull, and he had the unpleasant sensation that his hair was turning the same shade of wiry gray as the creatures of stone that were trying to drag him back to Limbo. Then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling vanished as the blocks above closed over his head, crushing the flailing arms and reducing them to dust and rubble on the steps.

  For a moment he could hear the anguished screams of those denied the salvation that had been so nearly within their grasp. Then those, too, were gone. With tentative fingers Chambers explored his scalp. The skin was numb, and felt icy to the touch. His hair was still there, but he would have to wait until the others saw him before he would know if it had changed in any way.

  Rubbing his now-chilled hands together, he set off down the staircase, kicking aside fragments of petrified fingers as he did so. He made three circuits before he caught up with the others. The relief on Karen’s face was obvious.

  “We thought we’d lost you.”

  “I have to admit I thought that myself at one point.” Chambers returned her hug. “Notice anything different about me?”

  She shook her head. “No, but the light down here is shitty.”

  “At least we do have light down here.” Dr. Cruttenden was, as now seemed to be the case in many ways, a few steps ahead. “You’ll notice it’s a different color from where we were.”

  She was right. Chambers hadn’t had much time to pay attention, but the walls now seemed to be radiating a slightly pinkish glow.

  “What does that mean?”

  The lecturer shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly say. I was merely making the observation. Shall we continue?”

  Chambers glanced back the way they had come. “Well,
I’m definitely not going back up there.”

  If he had been expecting the spiraling passage to open out as the corridors had in Limbo, Chambers was to be disappointed. Instead the very opposite happened, as the pink-tinged walls began to close in on them. Soon they were walking single file, and the temperature was rising as well.

  “If it gets much warmer I’m going to have to lose some of these clothes.” Karen had produced a tissue and was mopping her forehead with dainty dabs.

  “Best not.” Chambers was feeling the heat too. “That’s probably exactly what they want you to do so they can plunge us into freezing arctic conditions around the next corner.”

  Further on the passageway became narrower and hotter. Without thinking, Chambers put out a hand to steady himself and immediately snatched it back when he felt the wall.

  The stone was soft.

  He examined his fingers. They appeared unharmed, and so he touched the wall again. It gave beneath his probing finger, like the softest vellum.

  Or a woman’s skin.

  The thought had entered his head without any encouragement, and now it was there it was impossible to shift. During their descent, the walls had changed, not just becoming narrower but becoming smoother as well. Then, of course, there was the pink tinge to the light, wherever that might be coming from.

  What was happening here?

  They were approaching the end of the staircase, only now what they were walking on were less steps and more ridges of tissue, protuberances of flesh that supported their weight and gave with each step they took.

  “I believe I see the way out.”

  Dr. Cruttenden might have been able to see it, but how they were supposed to squeeze through the tiny hole, beyond which a crimson glow held the promise of further horrors, was yet to be seen. Were they going to shrink? Was the hole, a puckered rim of flesh, going to expand? Before Chambers had any more time to consider how else they might get through, Dr. Cruttenden had gripped either side of the orifice and was pulling it apart with both hands.