Early in the conversation, Dad had offered a bed for the night: “Look, Howard, we got the room, no trouble at all,” and Lovecraft had modestly declined, then accepted. Shortly afterwards he revealed that the bags he had brought were not, as I had hoped, high-tech extraterrestrial monster-fighting artillery, but simply his luggage from the hotel; which he admitted that he had checked out of, hoping that somewhere in Hamilton someone would offer him a bed.
“As luck would have it,” Lovecraft sighed, “the Underground, which I’m sure you’ll agree is at this moment among the world’s most important organizations, is also among the least well-funded.”
THIS WAS the whole idea, I thought, as the two of them sorted out where Lovecraft would sleep. The Proprietor knew that Lovecraft was in town. He had slipped me the parchment not because I was such a danger to him and his church, but because he knew that once the runes were discovered, our little cell of resistance would turn all its efforts to saving the accursed ... and away from trying to undermine his plans.
“Hamilton itself is famous for two near-misses,” Lovecraft said. “In 1946 a man named John Dick almost evaded the Hounds.”
“Hey,” my dad said, “I know about that.”
“There are those who say that in a natural setting, away from any man-made angles, the Hounds can be thwarted. Seemingly that was Dick’s intention. He went out to a wild area on the outskirts of Hamilton.”
“Albion Falls,” Dad and I said together. He had told me the John Dick story lots of times – how as kids, his dad and some buddies were out exploring near the falls.
“There is a theory that makes more sense to me – that running water will also completely hide the victim from the Hounds,” said Lovecraft. “If you immerse yourself in a current or a waterfall at the moment that the curse strikes, they will simply be unable to get at you. The shifting matrices of the moving liquid, with its dissolution of any straight lines or angles, makes access impossible. However ...”
“My dad was one of the kids who found John Dick’s body.” Despite the danger he was in, Dad sounded excited. This was family legend.
“It was Evelyn Dick, who did it,” I said. “His wife. It was her claim to fame. She shot her husband and cut him up into bits, and she buried her baby in concrete.”
Lovecraft blinked and thought hard. “People really think that? No one realizes she was trying to save ...” He shook his head. “Oh well, another time.” He shook his head again. “Gordon, I have no faith in the running water solution. If you wait until the Hounds appear, you won’t have time to immerse yourself, and if you immerse yourself beforehand, you could drown.”
“The falls are really shallow,” I pointed out, “but I have another idea.”
In the basement, I reminded Dad, we had an old storage drum made of stout cardboard with metal rims. It was easily big enough for a man to huddle inside. At the moment, it was full of old pillows and bedspreads, but we could empty it out in a second.
“Why don’t you just plaster that,” I said. “Round off all the angles inside it. It’s small, so it won’t take much compound – and it’s a cylinder anyway. You’ll just have to fill in the top and bottom.”
We went downstairs to look at the drum. “A very sound idea,” said Lovecraft. He peered inside the cardboard drum. “There won’t be a point or a straight line anywhere. It won’t take more than an hour or so to completely disangle this enclosure!”
“I just hope it’ll work,” Dad said.
AS THEY talked and talked, I formulated a plan of my own. I bowed out of the conversation and went to bed, falling onto my pillow and lying there like a rock for several hours. Then, as the house fell silent, I awoke anxious and full of nightmares, wondering if I would ever again sleep the whole night through.
The first part of my task was easy. Dad slept with his bedroom door open, his clothes draped over a chair at the foot of his bed. I tiptoed in and, without even needing the flashlight I’d brought, found his shirt pocket and removed the parchment I’d seen him put there.
Back in my room, it didn’t take long to copy the runes with a felt pen onto a blank sheet of paper, then crop it with an exacto knife so that in a few minutes I had what I thought was a fairly decent copy of the parchment. I put the copy and the original side by side and gave myself credit: granted my lack of arcane knowledge, I was pretty sure my replica didn’t have the weight of trans-continuum whatchamacallit or Hound-summoning angles, but it looked pretty darn close to the original. I crinkled the copy a bit to make it look well-travelled and then, congratulating myself that luck was on my side, I tiptoed into Dad’s room and put the copy in his pocket.
I had reclaimed the parchment, and hopefully the curse that went with it, because in the next – I glanced at my phone – twenty-one hours, without Dad or Lovecraft suspecting a thing, I planned to pass that parchment back to the person who had given it to me, back to the Proprietor himself.
MY MIND made up, I headed through the night streets with only the vaguest plan of how I was going to do this. The absolutely vaguest plan. In fact to be honest, I had no plan. I was heading to the Church’s headquarters out at the end of Markle Avenue. I was hoping that, with another ceremony in the offing, the place would be full of people and I could slip in and – now this would be tricky – get close to the Proprietor without him noticing me and also – this would be really tricky – hand him the parchment without being stopped by Clare or Jimmy or some other minion or bodyguard, and have him accept it, to willingly take it from me.
This last, in particular, was clearly impossible and I was not sure why I was even trying to do it. Mere hours ago I decided to simply ignore the Church and let the apocalypse come, or not come, without me. But now they had set the Hounds of Tindalos after me, hoping that in twenty-one hours the same thing that befell Dana would befall me. I couldn’t choose to remain a bystander; like it or not, I was in this up to my neck. I looked down at my body and my clothes and my legs and my feet, taking me closer and closer to the Church. Clearly impossible ... stupid and dangerous ... no proof it would work, et cetera ... but somehow I kept walking.
I thought of Lovecraft or whatever his name was, the Underground’s proxy Lovecraft. Some troubleshooter! Just when the situation called for a steely-eyed mercenary impervious to pain, preferably with a bionic arm, someone who would kick some serious butt, the Underground had sent us a nervous, gentle eccentric. A harmless goof with a weakness for ice cream. I would let him and Dad fuss over that barrel, and Lovecraft could message the Underground, which was clearly, as Meghan had thought, a geekfest, while I went out and actually did something.
CHAPTER 19
EVIE
I headed down Primrose toward the railroad tracks. I wondered if I should even be taking this route, which went right past the Shirazis’ house. What if someone was up late, looked out the window, saw me and called out? Where would I tell them I was going, what I was doing?
As it happened, I could see that all the lights in the house were on as I approached.
I stopped and looked across the street. From where I stood, looking through the window of the front door, I glimpsed Sam’s sister Hamideh. Well, they are a family and they have their own problems, I thought. This is not a night to drag them into mine.
As I was about to turn away, I saw another figure through the front door: a tall blonde woman, who entered the frame of the window as she stooped to hear something Hamideh was saying. She looked familiar to me.
In fact, the woman looked a lot like Meghan.
I looked both ways. The street was silent, and everyone in the Shirazis’ house looked intent on their own affairs. I crossed the street to get a closer look. Hamideh left to go into the dining room, and I got a better look at the blonde woman as she followed her. It was Meghan.
What the hell was going on here? I turned and stomped off toward the tracks. Why did all these people seem to know each other, and yet never manage to tell me? Was I not asking the right questions? Is t
his what my whole life was going to be like? Standing outside, looking in at the people who were actually doing the important stuff? Was I fated to be some kind of perpetual outsider?
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Here we are, Dad and I, putting our lives on the line, and nobody tells me anything ...”
I had a thought. Last night – actually in the wee hours of the morning – Mr. Shirazi had given me a card. I had never looked at the card. Now, I found it in my wallet and pulled it out, peering at it in the glow of the nearest street light.
THE LOVECRAFT UNDERGROUND
Since 1974
Defending Humankind
From the Outer Dark
There was a web address, and the familiar phone number in Mr. Shirazi’s handwriting.
Hmm, maybe I had been too quick to dismiss LUG.
Still, I had important stuff to do at the Church. I turned to continue on my way. Then, from inside the Shirazis’ house, I heard a woman scream.
My first impulse was to run away from the house, to continue on my own quest to save my father and disable the Resurrection Church. But I did the opposite – I ran toward the house. I was almost at the front steps when I saw movement in the kitchen, the front door flew open and a running figure threw itself down the front steps. Before I could step aside we collided and, although I pulled away, the person clung to me desperately and cried out in a high, thin voice like a seabird.
“Help me.” It was a woman. She looked into my eyes.
“Nate?” Sam called from the porch. “What are you doing here?” In a moment we were surrounded, and the woman pulled back from me, darting her head around and looking more birdlike than ever. Then she looked into my eyes again, this time recoiling in horror.
“My vision,” she cried. “It’s come to pass.”
“Evie, you’ll wake up the whole neighbourhood,” Sam said. “Nate, what are you doing here?”
I began to tell him, but his sister Hamideh shushed me and hustled us all into the house. There was much fussing over the woman named Evie. She sat at the table trembling, and refused repeated offers of tea.
Meghan spoke up. “I didn’t know you knew the Shirazis.”
“I didn’t know you did.”
“Of course I do,” Meghan answered. “Mehri’s been part of my English for New Canadians class since she was like, twelve. I practically couldn’t run it without her.
“But I just thought of something,” she continued. “This man you said you saw killed: what did he look like?” From a file folder she pulled out a photocopied poster, with a picture of a roundfaced, dark-haired man grinning nervously at the camera.
Have you seen this man? Dusko Bibanovic. Age 43.
I shrugged. “That could be him. Or not. When I saw him, he was a long way off. And he was definitely not smiling.”
“Dusko came to our ESL classes. He was a sweet guy with a sad story. A carpenter, brought here from Serbia by a gang claiming to be legitimate contractors. But for more than a year they kept him locked in a basement, only let out to work building condos, every day for no money. He spoke hardly any English, and they told him that if he escaped, either the cops would throw him in prison, or the gang would catch up with him, which would be worse. Finally the gang was busted, and Dusko was set free, but he had no job, was fighting deportation, trying to learn English. Then, two weeks ago, he stopped showing up for English class. No one’s seen him since.” Meghan started pacing the room.
“Like I said, it might be him.”
“Someone else who was there, was certain it was him,” Mehri said. “They told my father, and I told Meghan.”
Meghan’s voice came from behind me. “Nate, you’re not the only one who’s snuck into one of the midnight games, without being a member of the Church.”
I turned to face Meghan, leaned closer to her and whispered, “So who is this lady, Evie?”
“She came to the library this afternoon, claiming she would do anything to disrupt the midnight games and looking for the Necronomicon. I told her she was too late, then I invited her here tonight. I’m not sure it was such a good idea.”
“When my parents went out,” Mehri added, “Evie suggested a seance.”
“A seance?” I was dumbfounded.
“We joined hands around the table,” Meghan said, “and Evie said she was feeling contact; that a message was coming to her from the dead. And then she screamed, and ran out.”
“I’m so glad you were there to catch her,” Mehri said.
A car pulled up outside, and Mr. and Mrs. Shirazi came in the front door. Unlike the others, they didn’t look remotely surprised to see me. Mrs. Shirazi was carrying a long, wooden shovel handle, and her husband had some kind of apparatus that he laid out on the kitchen table across from where Evie sat looking at it, and him, and us, with a skeptical eye.
“Nate, just in case Howard’s scheme doesn’t work, this could be the way we save your father.”
“Mr. Shirazi, I just looked at your card. So, you’re part of the Underground?”
“Howard has been keeping me up to date.” He gestured at the device on the table. “With this, we will send the Hounds of Tindalos running and whimpering like frightened jackals, their tails between their legs.”
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, its dull metal housing blinking with LED operating lights and its long point curving into a hook. “A Delphic scythe,” said Mr. Shirazi. “Iron alloyed with a nickel atom fused at trapezohedric bonding angles that disrupt Tindalosian body chemistry.”
I was not inclined to ask for more details. “What’s it do?”
He and Mrs. Shirazi were busy fitting the scythe onto the end of the shovel handle. With a few boosts from an electric drill, Mr. Shirazi fastened it firmly in place.
“It’s a weapon effective not only against the Hounds of Tindalos, but against the dritch.” He smiled when I looked surprised. “Nate, I’ve already told you how much I despise the old H. P. Lovecraft, the author of all those stories. But this new, proxy Lovecraft – this guy really kicks ass!
“Respect your father,” he snarled when his son and daughters laughed at his turn of phrase, but they only laughed again. He ignored them. “This proxy Lovecraft – Howard – has told us that you have been passed the runes, and that your father persuaded you to pass them on to him.”
“Tricked me, actually.”
“He did what any father would do. But there is a chance we can save him.” He hefted the scythe in the air. “Stand back, everyone.” He pressed a trigger wired to the end of the handle.
Looking like the beak of some huge robot bird, the Delphic scythe hummed and the air around it shimmered, like a mirage on a hot day.
“Although from here, we feel no heat,” Mr. Shirazi explained, “the scythe can deliver a serious burn to normal flesh, such as ours, or the flesh of the dritch. But when it contacts a creature such as one of the Hounds of Tindalos, it completely disrupts its links to our dimension. Its molecules drop out of our space, and return to its own. The Hound will literally disintegrate on contact.” He switched it off.
“Frankly, Mr. Shirazi, you know a lot more than I thought you did about the Church and the games at the stadium.”
“Someday, I’ll tell you why. But, Nate, look at the time. We have a long day ahead, and then a great battle.”
“I guess so,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”
“It is not for boys. Go home, Nate. Help your father and Howard prepare.”
“Yes, go home.” Evie spoke up from her place at the table. Suddenly I realized I had seen her before. When I had met Meghan and Lovecraft at the Homegrown, Evie was the skinny, grey-haired lady sitting outside, nursing a coffee. But when we came out, she had gone.
“I’m sorry I upset everyone,” she said. “But that’s me. I’ve always upset everyone – just by doing what I do and by being who I am.” She turned her gaze on me. “You look like a nice enough kid – I don’t know why you’re smack in the middle of this, but you ar
e. I saw it. If Yog-Sothoth gets through to this world tonight, if he makes it, you will be smack in the middle. His mind-control stuff doesn’t work on you, does it? Me neither.” She shrugged. “I’m an independent thinker, always have been. And look where it’s got me.” She chuckled.
“But you, son, if that monster gets through, he and his followers will do whatever they can to wipe you off the face of the earth. You, and anyone else who doesn’t get on the bus.”
“So, if you’ve seen the future,” I asked, “do you know how it will turn out tomorrow?”
Evie shook her head. “Yeah, it would be so easy if I could. Sonny boy, powers like mine are just a mess. ’Cause I saw you, I really did, I saw you there, in the middle of the holocaust that will happen if the Great Old Ones are let through. But I also saw what will happen if they don’t get through.”
“That’s great.” The thought cheered me up. “Peace, love,” I snuck a glance at Mehri, “and prosperity?”
Evie snorted. “What a nice, naive, optimistic young man you are. No, they might not get through, but if they don’t, they won’t stop trying. And you might get so tired and scared you’ll want to turn your back on it, but you won’t. It will just keep getting harder. And mostly you’ll feel like you’re all alone. But you won’t be.”
I looked at the clock on the kitchen stove.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” I said. “But there’s a question maybe you can answer. Every now and then someone mentions this other person: the sorcerer. Is this somebody you know about? Is he or she any use? I mean, is this ‘sorcerer’ someone who has any actual power? Or is the sorcerer just somebody who does magic tricks?”
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