She talked with Ellis on the phone about the new developments in her life. She left out the matter of the silver-eyed man, instead telling her boss that she was working with a new doctor. Ellis asked to have dinner with her to celebrate, and they decided to meet at Albert’s, a steakhouse near her home.
On the way to dinner, Fleur stopped by the drugstore to chat with Denise. She wanted to show her friend the whole effect of her makeup, weight-loss and new outfit.
“Don’t you look wonderful!” her friend said. “Just like a movie star. After tonight, the boss is going to start seeing you in a new light.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Fleur said, “but I’m not counting on it. I’m just happy to be up and walking. I’m not expecting Ellis to suddenly fall in love with me and ask me to marry him. Even if he did ask, I’d probably turn him down … he does drink a bit.”
“No harm in being picky,” Denise said with a smile. “The right one is out there somewhere. You’ll find him.”
At the restaurant, Ellis complimented Fleur on her figure, her outfit, and of course, her newfound health and mobility. He was a very handsome man, fortyish and quite robust, and Fleur had to admit that she was highly attracted to him. But then, he wasn’t a dream-man who could make miracles happen….
“You’re fairly well-versed in all matters supernatural, aren’t you, Ellis?” she asked as she sliced into her medium-rare steak. “Do you know much about Egyptian mythology and deities?”
“I’d like to think so, yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Can you tell me anything about an Egyptian god … or maybe magician, I’m not sure … named Nyarlathotep?”
Ellis nodded. “Years ago, before you started working for me, I was thinking of writing a book about an Egyptian pharaoh and sorcerer named Nephren-Ka. I put the book on a back burner because a big-money book deal came up … eventually I forgot about it because I was too busy with other projects. Anyway, this Nephren-Ka fellow worshipped an evil being named Nyarlathotep.”
Fleur put down her fork. “Evil? Why do you say that?”
Ellis shrugged. “Because Nyarlathotep, also known as the Crawling Chaos, was a malignant, shape-shifting monstrosity that sought to destroy the world.”
“So he’s not even human or … humanoid….?” Fleur considered the facts at hand. She could feel her face growing hot. “So what is he, exactly? Is he an alien? You said he was a shape-shifter…. What’s his true shape?”
Ellis leaned toward her. “Are you okay? You seem … upset.”
“No, no, no…” Fleur decided upon a good lie to get the conversation back on a comfortable track. “I just got caught up in the drama of it all. You’re such a wonderful storyteller. Tell me more.…”
The author shrugged. “Nyarlathotep was a demon, I suppose. Or an evil god. Six of one, half dozen of the other. He’s fairly obscure. Not as well-known as Beelzebub or Pazuzu. Probably because he’s far older. He delighted in cruelty and deception. He came to people in their dreams to forward his evil agendas. His cults used to spread destruction and death.”
Fleur frowned. “How does he select the people he visits in their dreams?”
“You’re talking about him in present tense. Did you hear something about him on the news? Has a new cult sprung up?” He took a drink of his red wine. “Maybe I need to dust off that Nephren-Ka project and finish it…. It was more than half-completed. But what did you ask–? Oh yeah, the dreams. I think that people are visited in their dreams by demons all the time. They just don’t remember any of it. Demons stretch out their tentacles in the dream-dimensions and sometimes, they make a connection.”
“And what happens to the person once that connection has been made?”
At that moment, their waitress, a young woman with a huge smile and too much eye shadow, walked up to the table. “Can I interest the two of you in dessert this evening? Our chocolate-raspberry rum cake is my absolute favorite. We also have–”
“You can stop there. I’ll have that rum cake,” Fleur said.
“Sounds good. Make that two,” Ellis said to the waitress. He turned to Fleur. “You asked what happens when people connect with demons in their dreams. I guess an encounter like that wouldn’t be much different from our conversation with that waitress. The demon makes a sweet offer and the dreamer decides from there. In the case of Nyarlathotep, he might still be looking for his Deathless Bride.”
“Deathless Bride...?” she echoed.
“It’s something I picked up while researching that Egypt novel,” Ellis said. “I found it in a privately published book called The Mysteries of the Black Pharaoh, by an explorer named Lamont St. Clair. He was looking into legends about the City of Night, the center of Nephren-Ka’s empire in ancient Egypt. According to St. Clair, Nyarlathotep was constantly in search of the woman who would be his companion forever.” He gave her a wink. “Eternity with the Crawling Chaos. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”
“It does, actually,” Fleur said. She put her hands on her lap so Ellis wouldn’t see that they were trembling. “Such a powerful, monstrous being, alone for so long ... he’d probably seek out someone who was just as lonely, and who felt just as monstrous.” She noticed that the waitress was heading their way with two plates. “Here comes the rum cake. Let’s talk about something more festive than ancient Egypt.”
After the waitress set down their dessert plates, Ellis asked for another glass of wine.
“Are you sure you want more?” Fleur said. “That’ll be your fourth glass.”
The author shrugged. “Who’s counting … besides you? Really, I can handle my vino. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine, okay?”
Fleur managed a weak smile. “Okay.”
- - -
That night, Fleur found herself in the dimension of dreams again.
Like a royal woman of ancient Egypt, she wore a sheer linen gown and sandals. Around her left wrist was coiled a gold bracelet shaped like a snake, with tiny rubies for eyes.
She strolled down an immense hallway lined with white marble pillars. Overhead, the pillars went up and up into an opalescent abyss filled with glittering red stars.
An enormous millipede with multiple locust-wings swept down out of the abyss and landed in front of Fleur. It stared at her with a huge single goat’s eye, set over the dripping mouth of a lamprey eel.
“You sure know how to make an entrance,” Fleur said. “So I hear you’ve been looking for a Deathless Bride. I take it I’m the top candidate for the position?”
“You’ve been doing your research,” said the dream-man. “Deathless … sounds good, yes? Never having to pass away, in a universe with so much to see. Climb on my back, angel mine. I have much to show you. Magnificent vistas. Glorious wonders. Terrors and delights.”
For hours, they glided from world to world. For a creature as powerful as Nyarlathotep, nothing is impossible. Fleur saw a valley where single-eyed dinosaurs fought with huge slug-like creatures of green and gold. She saw a city filled with golden automatons and slender, purple-skinned humanoids with barbed tails and batwings. She saw a volcano filled with bubbling white lava, in which swam black-crystal fish that thrived in the intense heat. She saw a planet inhabited by scientific geniuses that resembled praying mantids with teal roses for heads. The mantids rode among the clouds of their planets on silver sleds equipped with powerful, multi-jointed organic wings.
“More…” Fleur whispered. “I want to see more. Much more.”
“Of course,” said Nyarlathotep. “And so you shall, in time. But for now I must return you to your life on Earth. Soon, it will be time for you to wake up.”
A split-second later, they were back in the hallway of pillars. Fleur dismounted, and the winged composite creature began to shrink and shift until at last it assumed Nyarlathotep’s silver-eyed human form, garbed in his regal Egyptian attire.
“Are you ever going to join me in my world?” Fleur said. “You may have to do something about your eyes before
you do.”
“Certainly,” the Crawling Chaos said. “Whenever you like. We have all the time in the cosmos, you know.”
- - -
Seven years passed.
During that time, Fleur left her job with Ellis and began writing her own supernatural novels. The first one, The Crystal Sarcophagus, was an international best-seller, which in turn was made into a Hollywood summer blockbuster. Each subsequent book was also a best-seller. All concerned ancient Egypt, and critics praised her for the amazing research she put into each of them.
Fleur moved from her little apartment to a lavish mansion on the outskirts of the city. She began to attend society events, accompanied by a tall gentleman with sculpted features. He wore designer suits of either white or black, and though he introduced himself, people always forgot his name shortly after gazing into his dark eyes.
One night, Fleur and her companion came home to find Ellis’ little red sports car parked there. The author was seated at the bottom of the front steps.
“Oh, dear,” Fleur whispered as she parked the Cadillac. “Ellis is holding a bottle. This can’t be good.”
The couple left the car and walked up to Ellis. He was clearly drunk: his eyes were red and his gaze was unfocused. His handsome face was set in a drowsy yet angry pout.
“How are you doing? Are you okay?” Fleur said, kneeling by his side.
“I miss you, Fleur. After you left to do your own thing, I began to realize how much you meant to me.”
“I … I’m sorry.” Fleur couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I would never have guessed you’d ever feel that way about me. I had no way of knowing.”
“Well, I know what’s going on now,” Ellis shouted in angry, slurred tones. “I figured it out! This fancy guy … I’ve seen you and him together at all the big to-do’s. He’s Nyarlathotep and you are his Deathless Bride. I mean, you started walking again … you lost all that weight … now you’re writing all these best-sellers set in Egypt. I have it all figured out and I’m going to tell the world. Yep, I put two and two together! I’m not stupid, you know.”
“I beg to differ,” Nyarlathotep said. “You are, in fact, incredibly stupid. If you were smart, you’d have minded your own business.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Ancient Weirdo? Mr. Crawling Chaos? I have some news for you: I’m making this my business.” Ellis struggled to his feet, pushing over Fleur in doing so. She cried out as her elbow hit the sidewalk.
Nyarlathotep’s dark eyes instantly turned silver. He raised a hand to the skies and made a quick slashing sign with his fingers. A long rip opened up in the air twelve feet above Ellis’ head – a rip filled with flat-edged, gnashing black teeth. A cluster of muscular, lime-green tongues snaked down from the rip and carried Ellis, still clutching his bottle, up and in.
The Crawling Chaos moved his hand toward the car and made the sign again. The opening in the air lengthened instantly. Hundreds more of the tongues slithered down and pulled the red sports car up into the darkness beyond the rip.
The rip then closed, disappearing seamlessly.
Fleur’s dream-man – now a dream no longer – made a different, smaller gesture toward the front door of the mansion. It drifted open, to reveal the building’s interior du jour: a grassy meadow, bright with sunshine.
Nyarlathotep helped his Deathless Bride to her feet. “Did he hurt you, my angel?”
Fleur shook her head. “No. Just surprised me, that’s all.” She turned toward the front door. “The meadow! How I love the meadow, the beautiful meadow! You know me so well.”
Hand in hand, they walked inside and the door drifted shut.
Toadface
By Mark McLaughlin
John Masters was always hungry. Hungry enough to eat a whale. That’s all there was to it. He was on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet and so far, he’d lost fourteen pounds. At work, he found himself constantly looking up at the clock, wishing those sluggish mechanical hands would spin him closer, always closer to his next meal, so he could leave his computer monitor and hurry to the company cafeteria and wolf down a plate of meat – any kind of meat – and some green vegetables.
Every evening after work, he would stop at the Pantheon Coffeehouse to enjoy a sugar-free caramel mocha latte. It was hot, rich, creamy and altogether wonderful, and it didn’t break any of the rules of his diet. The coffeehouse was also a great place to hang out because some of his friends and coworkers went there, so there was usually someone to chat with while he enjoyed his drink. The walls were covered with loaded bookshelves, so if none of his friends were there, he could at least find something to read.
One night, he stopped by the coffeehouse and saw Meg, a project manager from work. She was very pretty, with green eyes, black hair and a friendly smile, and Masters often thought about asking her out for dinner. He hadn’t done so yet because he had a couple worries holding him back: he was still about twenty pounds overweight, and he was ten years older than her. Maybe she didn’t consider him attractive.
Masters walked up to her table. “Hi! How’s life been treatin’ ya?” He waved a hand toward the other chair at her table. “Are you here with somebody?”
“No, go ahead and sit down,” she said. “Well, we have a new director in our department. She works from eight a.m. to eight p.m., so of course she expects the rest of us to work around the clock, too. She must have the words ‘salary’ and ‘slavery’ mixed up – she thinks they mean the same thing.”
“Tell me about it. My director is the same way. I think he just sleeps under his desk at night.” Master took a sip of his drink and then continued. “He’s always asking me to do things outside of my regular duties. Last week he asked me to fix his computer – as if I knew how. I just called one of the guys in technical support.”
“Makes sense. So what was wrong with it?”
Master smiled. “Loose nut near the keyboard.”
Meg shook her head slightly toward the other side of the room. “Speaking of loose nuts,” she whispered, “look over there. The booth near the men’s room.”
Masters lifted his mug to sip from it, and also to hide his face as he glanced in that direction.
The man in the booth had gray-white hair and a greasy, heavily wrinkled face, with huge, startled black eyes, a thick-lipped mouth and a puffy double-chin.
“He looks like the frog prince,” Masters whispered.
“More like the toad king,” Meg replied softly. “Maybe he’s on the same diet as you. Earlier, he was eating a tuna salad sandwich, but he just ate the salad and didn’t touch the bread. No, I take that back – he did touch it, he just didn’t eat it. He licked off all the salad gunk. So how’s your diet coming along?”
They began to talk about his meal plans. Masters told her what foods he was allowed to eat and which ones were strictly out-of-bounds. He told her about some of the ways he prepared different foods to make them more interesting, since boredom was the usual reason for people straying from diets.
“So would your diet help me with my thighs?” Meg asked.
“Your thighs are fine,” he replied. He then lowered his voice. “If you want a second opinion, ask old Toadface. He’s coming this way.”
A moment later, the thick-lipped man was standing over them. Masters noticed that he had a flabby, pear-shaped physique, probably from licking up too much salad gunk. The man’s shirt was wet and stained around the armpits.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Toadface said in a high, nasal voice, “but I happened to overhear you two talking about some diet. May I join you?” Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed a chair from a nearby table, pulled it over and sat down. “I’d like to hear more about this diet. It sounds extremely interesting.”
“Basically, it’s all about eating protein.” Master didn’t want to explain the whole complex matter to this bizarre man, so he decided to give him the condensed version. “You just eat a lot of meat and some vegetables, and no sugar or complex carbohydrates. Drink plen
ty of water and the weight just melts off.”
“The water wouldn’t be a problem. Can it be any sort of meat?” Toadface blinked his wide eyes with rapt curiosity.
“Yes, I think so,” Masters said. “After all, meat is meat.”
The man cocked his head to one side. “But do some meats have more protein in them than others?”
“I suppose so.” Masters had never thought about it before. “I guess lean meat would have more protein in it, since there’s less fat content.”
The man smiled, revealing an abundance of yellowed, oddly narrow teeth. “But if the animal – the source of the meat – ate a lot of protein itself... Then it would probably contain even more protein. Yes?”
Masters couldn’t bear to look at that hideously eager, hungry smile a second longer, so he glanced at his watch, pretended to be surprised at the time, and stood up. “Wow, I almost forgot. There’s a movie on TV tonight I’d really like to see. I’d better get going.”
“Yeah, I’m running later myself,” Meg said. “See you at work, John.” She gave him a big hug – something she’d never done before. He wondered if it would be okay to give her a little kiss, a peck on the cheek. But no, not with Toadface standing by.
Masters watched her leave, lost in thought. Toadface said, “What’s the name of the movie?”
“What movie?” he replied without thinking. Then he remembered his impromptu lie, but it was too late.
Toadface was clearly upset. His mouth stretched wide in an ugly grimace. Then the grimace turned into a vicious smile as the man looked down from Master’s face. “You just came from work, didn’t you?”
With a rush of panic, Masters realized he was still wearing his name tag. JOHN MASTERS, ACCOUNTING. INNSMOUTH QUALITY CONSTRUCTION.
There was nothing for him to say, so he just turned and walked away from the table, dismayed that the clammy creep now knew his name and where he worked.
The Abominations Of Nephren-Ka & Three More Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos Page 3
