by Emby Press
“Miss Ramsbotham?”
Petunia shifted position so that she could turn her head to me and smiled when she saw my bemused expression.
“Surprise,” she sang in her dulcet Cheshire tones. “I got in this morning, thought I’d treat myself right away.”
Elin stepped between me and the alluring view and looked rather miffed. “You know each other?” she asked.
“Indeed, Petunia and I work in the same… office,” I fixed my colleague with an accusing eye. “But I was not aware we would visiting this establishment at the same time.”
“Quite a coincidence, Templeton,” smiled Petunia. “Perhaps we’ll bump into each other later.”
“Possibly,” I tossed back, slightly annoyed.
Elin took me gently by the sleeve and turned me toward the exit. “There shall be no conversing with the guests while they are undertaking treatment, Mr. Rend. I am sure you understand.”
“Of course, my apologies,” I attempted to steal a last quick glimpse of Petunia’s heavenly loins as I was delicately frog marched from the room. “Carry on!”
The Scandinavian grunted and continued to knead his clients as Elin closed the door. Her once pleasant demeanor was most certainly tainted with impatience now and she took off toward the reception hall without checking to see I was in tow.
“Come along, Mr. Rend. I have to show you the lower level, including the steam room, the birch room and the colonic chamber.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” I replied, catching up with her in three long strides, “I’d like to call it a day. The mud room left me feeling a little squiffy, and I could do with a cup of tea and some air.”
“Please yourself,” Elin retorted gruffly. “The front door’s that way.” With that she disappeared down a set of steps set flush in the wall behind the main desk.
“Thank you for the tour!” I chirped sarcastically as I took myself out of the building and back into an early afternoon resplendent with specks of tree pollen floating on a honeysuckle breeze. I inhaled deeply and strode away from the spa, my head full of unanswered questions and unprofessional desires.
*
“So, would you like to tell me what you are doing here?” My first words to Petunia as she sat down at my table were more caustic than I had intended but this was because I had allowed myself to stew for half an hour in the Snare cradling a large white port, fuming that I had been kept in the dark.
“Templeton, old fruit, put that bottom lip away,” she took a sailor’s swig of her pale ale and set the glass down, resting her hand on my forearm. “Petulance doesn’t suit you, and the old man surprised me just as much as you.”
I looked up into her face, her wide-set green eyes, and all of my anger melted away. By thunder she was gorgeous.
“Krellen received your report shortly after midnight and had me on the earliest pod down here. Said you might need some female help.”
“Really?” I pulled my arm out from under her gentle touch and immediately regretted it, “How so?”
“Access, my dear. When he read about the bath house, he suspected you would have a spot of bother gaining entry.” She smiled as I rolled my eyes and continued, “but naturally that old ferret Penfold granted me membership as soon as I stepped through the door this morning.”
“Of course,” I muttered. I downed my drink and gestured to the cyclopean landlady for a refill.
“I’m happy you are here, Pet, truly I am. Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?” I pulled out my tatty notebook and flipped it open to my most current entries, scrawled down moments before Petunia’s arrival at the pub. Petunia did likewise, pulling a small stack of books from her handbag and setting them down next to her pint.
“I think we can both agree the Penfolds are up to no good,” she said, flipping back and forth between penciled notes. “First impressions?”
“East coasters, Cape Cod Bay area I think. Into their fish demons in a big way.”
“Good guess.” Petunia spun one of her books around so that I could see a tiny map of a familiar hooked peninsula of Massachusetts. “Duxbury Bay actually. The Penfolds made their fortune in canning as well as other deliciously nefarious activities, and now they are expanding.”
“To our fair isle, delightful. Have you tried the mud?”
Petunia laughed and shook her head. “Heavens no, Templeton. I know a bad idea when I smell it, but it hasn’t stopped the rest of the village.”
“Did you feel August Penfold?”
“When I shook his hand. Most queer, like he was mummified.”
“Exactly!” I threw back my drink and dropped my voice to a whisper, “Disappearing tourists, living mummification and that muck the Penfolds are peddling. I do believe we are talking about the bile of Ghatanothoa.”
Petunia pursed her lips as she considered my claim. “Bit far from Mu, isn’t he?”
I waited for the landlady to refill my glass and stumble out of earshot before continuing.
“I don’t think it’s the old boy himself, perhaps a descendant, or a polyp even. A little lump that broke free. Who knows how many subterranean passages honeycomb this world of ours? As I see it, this mucky little devil wound up here, deep in the ground and allows his secretions to be harvested in return for the occasional flesh offering.”
“A spa is the perfect place to gorgonize one’s victims,” offered Petunia, “I’ve already seen several guests in various states of happy befuddlement and that can’t all be attributed to Penfold’s massage machine.”
“How was that, by the way?”
“Heavenly,” she purred.
I tapped on the stack of notebooks on the table.
“We need to figure out our next move. I can send Krellen a heliscroll with our findings, but I’m not sure how soon he can mobilize a task force to deal with this.”
“We’d better be quick about it then. I think they’re planning another sacrifice tonight.”
“What makes you think that?” I picked up one of her field journals as our drinks arrived and flicked through it while Petunia snapped open another tiny notebook and read one her notes.
“Well, of all the guests I’ve encountered, Stella Greene is the most likely. She’s young, unattached and passing through. So what’s the plan, Templeton?”
I handed back her notebooks and stood up, proffering the crook of my arm to the wondrous Miss Ramsbotham, “We stroll back to my place and hatch a cunning scheme.”
*
Two hours and a grappling hook later I found myself hanging for grim life onto the bottom lip of one of the bath house portholes. My boots scuffed against the unfortunately shallow stucco as I desperately attempted to find purchase against the dome and then a piece cracked and crumbled away, leaving me a tiny ledge of texture which was enough to keep me stable. Thankfully my pathetic scrabbling had gone unnoticed in the chamber below and I managed to wrap the hook rope around my left wrist, affording me the opportunity to use my gun hand should the need arise. A familiar rasping voice echoed up from the chamber, and I settled down to take in the scene.
As suggested during our hasty planning session Petunia was in attendance, clad only in a toweling robe that hung loosely over her form. I peeled my eyes away from her and surveyed the others. Pet was one of a dozen similarly attired guests which consisted mainly of various aged women, and three nebbish-looking men.
I recognized the large woman from the mud room. She appeared to be entranced, swaying slightly and sweating profusely. Dark stains on her robes suggested that she had indeed made more holes in her flesh, and I shuddered to think how she had gone about this self mutilation. The guests were arranged like skittles and at the very tip stood a young lady with delicate pale features framed by auburn hair. I took this to be the woman Petunia had singled out as the sacrifice for the evening, which would explain her prominence in the group.
The throng stood facing the straight edge of a large semi-circular pool which stretched across the girth of the building
and which was bridged at one end by a small wooden structure. On the other side of the pool was a series of large steps, constructed from vast slabs of curved rock and decorated with shells of the dull British variety.
On the lower tier stood a small group including the waif-like Elin and several other villagers, all of whom wore kelp-green robes and exhibited copious use of the miracle mud, for there was nary a wrinkle in sight. On the next step up was the perfectly turned out Elizabeth Penfold and above her, lording over his flock, stood the desiccated Mr. Penfold, his skeletal face contorted by a hideous grin.
The brackish water in the middle of the pool rose at ten second intervals as great mud bubbles swelled and erupted like ghastly boils, indicating the position of the vent that I suspected led to the resting place of a vile horror. A mass movement below drew my eye from the hypnotic bubbles as Penfold’s followers shrugged off their robes and lowered their naked bodies into the murk. Elin and two other villagers waded over to gently help the more nervous guests out of their robes, then took their hands and led them into the center of the pool.
Petunia had thrown herself into her role and shrugged her robe to the ground before stepping gingerly into the dirty water and taking a seat on the submerged bench. I briefly cursed myself for allowing Pet to put herself in such a vulnerable position, but she knew quite literally what she was getting into and there had been no swaying her from the mission. A gasp from one of the older guests drew my attention back to the flagstone shore where the large woman had begun to lower herself into the pool, her freshly made wounds gaping in the candlelight. She inhaled sharply as the putrid fluid seeped into her but she continued to smile and whisper delirious incantations as she waddled toward the mud bubbles.
The smooth skinned Haverford locals had already begun to slather themselves with the putrescence issuing forth from the hidden vent and were encouraging the guests to do likewise. In the brief confusion that came of so many bodies writhing in the water I saw Elizabeth make a beeline for Stella Greene. She grasped the young woman firmly by her wrist and dragged her to the corner of the pool that was straddled by the crude bridge.
It was only then that I noticed several manacle chains bolted to the side of the wood but to my relief I saw that Petunia had also spotted the Penfold woman’s intentions. Petunia climbed out of the pool and threw a robe around herself before trotting over to the bridge in an attempt to get there before the she-devil could incarcerate Stella. August had also observed Petunia’s efforts and he barked an order at Elin and two other locals who immediately abandoned their guests in order to thwart my partner’s intervention.
I drew my Webley, ready to shoot a warning into the periwinkle-encrusted platform at Penfold’s feet. However, before I could squeeze the trigger, the rope securing me to the ledge vibrated violently and went taut and then, to my horror, the grappling hook tore through the cement and plaster and I was suddenly sliding down the roof toward the gravel path encircling the building. The sickening crunch that I expected to hear was instead replaced by a grunt as I comically fell into the arms of Bergren, who fiercely gripped my left arm as he caught me and bopped me on the head with one of his mighty iron gloves which, I noted before I passed out, were bolted into his skin.
*
The stench from the pool brought me round as effectively as any smelling salts and I winced as my crushed arm rubbed against my restraints. It appeared that the proceedings had carried on very nicely without me and August Penfold was in the home stretch, wailing and thrashing in the muddy water, singing into each blossoming mud bubble. To the left of the pool one of the male guests lay face down on the stone floor, dark matter oozing from his skull.
Elizabeth Penfold swanned around in the water brandishing a statuette which was dripping blood and I noticed with no little irony that it was the same one I had toyed with in the reception room. To my immediate left Stella Greene was manacled and sobbing uncontrollably; to my right Petunia was in the same boat however she was far from beaten and had twisted in her iron bands to face the bridge as she attempted to free herself.
I tested the chain once more with my good arm and then turned to my feisty chum.
“Did I miss anything?”
“Oh, welcome back, Templeton,” she said between determined pulls on her own bonds. “Nice of you to show up. You’re just in time for the sacrifice.”
“Splendid,” I retorted, craning my head back and seeing that the bolts holding our chains to the wooden bridge strut were not as tight as they once might have been. “I trust you’ve formulated a new plan in my absence.”
“To be honest, Templeton, I hadn’t really got much further than escaping and not being eaten.” She suddenly wrenched downward and I heard the wood above our heads splinter. “The humidity in here has done wonders for our chances,” she said and smiled, tugging a second time and then glancing around to make sure her efforts were going unnoticed.
The cracked beam reached as far as the bolts securing my own limbs, and I jerked down with my right arm which splashed into the brown water lapping at our waists as it broke free. While Petunia worked on her own chains I freed my useless left arm and then turned to Miss Greene. She had stopped sobbing but the look of terror on her face was no less distressing.
I followed her gaze to the center of the pool where August Penfold had dropped to his knees so that only his upper torso was visible. His toothpick arms were stretched to the ceiling and he was screaming obscenities using an extinct Akkadian lingo I had heard once before during a foul summoning off the coast of Aden.
Waving obscenely in the air, as if entranced by a charmer’s pipe, a muscular pink appendage had emerged some eight feet from the bubbling mud geyser and was slowly coiling downward. It seemed to be listening intently to the old man’s chanting and then its raw, tapered tip split three ways to reveal a gaping hole lined with rippling, white cilia. It probed the air, reacting to the splashes and moans echoing in the chamber and then seemed to fixate on the large woman who was offering herself the way a dog might request a belly rub.
She screamed something incoherent and it was enough of an invite to the fleshy tube which plunged into her mouth and down her throat, thankfully silencing her. Her body convulsed as more of the intruder pushed its way into her maw and then it re-emerged from one of the yawning slits in her left hip. The snake-thing turned about on itself, fairly lifting the large woman into the air and then, with a repulsive sound like the first spoonful from a trifle dish, plunged between her wobbling thighs.
All eyes in the chamber were transfixed on the grotesque spectacle happening before them and this afforded Petunia and I ample time to work Stella Greene’s bonds free. Our wrists were still held by the metal hoops so we wrapped the chains around our wrists and I made a rudimentary sling in the hope that it might keep my ruined arm out of trouble.
I glanced at my watch; seven minutes to eight. My Webley lay on the lowest step of the platform at the far end of the bridge next to my grappling hook and spare heliscroll. I was sure I could retrieve them all in this hullabaloo.
“Pet, we have a little less than ten minutes before all hell breaks loose, do you think you could escort Stella to the door?”
“While you do what, Templeton? I hardly think you are in any fit state to take on these fools, let alone the mollusk currently pumping that poor woman full of mud.”
I turned my head in time to see the climax of the grisly self-sacrifice. Football-sized lumps were pulsating along the length of the fusia tube as pints of mud were injected into the woman at an alarming rate. Her body erupted with miniature brown spurts as the mud mingled with her blood and escaped via every orifice. Her wounds, nostrils, ears and anus all became fountains of muck until, finally, her eyes were pushed aside and twin jets issued from her head, arcing in the air as she thrashed in her death throes.
“Now would be a good time, Pet, I’ll distract them as long as I can.”
“What about the other guests?” she asked, wrapping an arm aro
und the shivering woman and guiding her toward the door.
“Miss Greene is our priority, watch yourself against the Viking!”
Petunia turned and winked and I smiled back, bravely I hoped, before I started off toward the platforms.
In the middle of the room the fleshy limb had shaken loose the dead woman and was retracting back into the muck. August Penfold continued to chant while his followers leapt into the pool to scoop up the fresh, gore-tainted mud and began to layer it thickly upon their bodies. Elizabeth Penfold spun about and her jaw fell slack when she saw what we were up to.
“August!” she screamed, “The sacrifices!”
The skeletal man whipped back and forth, hissing through clenched tombstone teeth as he watched Petunia wade one way and I the other. Finally he made a decision and pointed at the two women, “Bergren! Stop those two!” He turned back to me and spat, “I’ll deal with this bastard myself.”
His spindly legs cut through the liquid and to my dismay it appeared that he would reach the gun before me but then he stumbled and fell, disappearing under the filth in the pool. Those spare seconds were all I needed as I threw myself at the artificial shore and hauled myself, huffing and puffing, out of the mire. August had resurfaced and was furiously waddling toward me, but he had lost the race. I had already checked the barrel and drum before he had surfaced and I aimed the Webley squarely between his eyes as he advanced on me.
“Game’s up, old fruit.” I clicked back the hammer. “Let these people go.”
“You fool,” he hissed, “you don’t know what you’re meddling in! The Lord Ghatanothoa will crush you beneath his glorious webbing!”
He flung himself at me and I clubbed him to one side, loathe to waste a bullet on his pathetic frame. As he crumpled to the floor I looked across the chamber and saw Petunia and Stella climbing out of the pool. The huge masseur was now striding toward them and Elizabeth Penfold was slinking up behind them, brandishing the statuette.
