by Josh Shiben
Chapter 13
Shub-Niggurath
“Three prophets exist beyond space and time to guide us in our search for purpose. There is a natural progression to them; predictable, measurable and reasonable. They consist of The Divided Man, the Flayed Man, and the Gutted One, each a tribute to Rog’nshgnak, the great mother in her Web of Nows. These three exist beyond time, yet are born from it. They are the manifestation of the will of the creator – enlightened to all that is, was and will be. They are the binding threads of the web – the lynchpins to its structure. Only through them can we achieve our destiny.”
-Gregori Weder
David awoke in his bed, shuddering. It was 2 in the morning, but he was no longer tired. Restlessness had overtaken him, some reserve of energy he had not known he’d possessed. David sighed and collapsed into the armchair in front of his television. He had no idea where else to go, or what to do. He flipped on the news while he sank deeper into the cushions of the chair, hoping the droning of the anchor could bore him back to sleep. Instead of sleeping, he found himself listening wearily, his eyes blearily staring at the pale electric glow.
“There’s a new star in the sky that has astronomers abuzz!” chirped the reporter cheerfully. “WR-104, a star normally invisible to all but the strongest telescopes, is now brightly shining in the night sky!” Burfict felt his stomach cramping into a knot as panic gripped him. “Scientists say the brightening is a result of the star exploding into a supernova nearly 8,000 years ago, although the light is just now reaching Earth!” It couldn’t be true. He gaped at the screen. “They expect it to keep brightening for the next day or so, before gradually dimming. Amateur star-gazers should look South for the constellation Sagittarius.”
Burfict ran outside and looked to the South. There, low in the sky hung a new star, brighter than any other in the sky. The stars were right. He raced into his apartment, dressed and jumped into his car, speeding away into the night.
Gregori looked down from his pulpit at the young man before him. Petir was smaller than Gregori, and his father before him, but he had excelled at grasping Gregori’s teachings. He had no doubt that his instructions would be carried out perfectly. The door sealing the inner sanctum thudded loudly as something on the other side hammered against it, cracking the heavy wooden bar sealing it shut. Gregori knew he must hurry.
“Take these books,” he said, handing the prized Nekrodeus de Antichronos and his own set of writings regarding the language of Those From Beyond. “Make haste, and flee to the East. Continue our line. The chain must not be broken.” Petir nodded and took the heavy books, slinging them over his back before crawling into the hidden passage in the floor. Gregori slid the rug over the concealed entrance to the tunnel and turned to face the door. Another jarring blow hammered the door, cracking it open. He could hear the shouts of men on the other side, and just see the flash of armor and blades. He steeled himself for the end – the writings found in the Nekrodeus had held off his death for so long, that he almost longed for its embrace. After 130 years of life, he was ready.
A final blow against the door broke the brace and soldiers spilled into the sanctum. Gregori recognized the black cross of the Teutonic Knights, and held still as they poured into the room. A regal-looking man entered last, his armor especially ornate, with a yellow halo circling the crown of his helmet. His breath rang out in the hall like a trumpet. “Gregori Weder, you have been accused of heresy, witchcraft and subversion and sentenced to death.” Gregori only smiled as the steel blade thrust into his innards, spilling his lifeblood onto the floor. The blade was cold, chilling him as it stole his life. He felt his organs contort and rupture about the steel, and fell to his knees. “May God have mercy on your soul,” murmured the warrior above him.
Gregori turned, feeling the wet sticky warmth of his lifeblood as it dribbled freely from his mouth. He looked up into his executioner’s eyes and whispered his last words. “No God. No soul.” As oblivion overtook him, the ancient man found peace; pleased to know he had fulfilled his task.
David arrived at the dilapidated barn, only to find the three prophets already there waiting for him. “We knew you would arrive,” murmured the Flayed Man from the shadows. “We are here to follow you to Shub-Niggurath; to witness her destruction.” The sight of them rocked David, who even after a lifetime of nightmares had not expected to see the three while awake.
He gathered his breath and calmed his nerves before stepping forward. “I’m not doing anything for you, and you’re not following me anywhere.” Standing up to them felt right, he felt righteous, even if he was panicking on the inside. The Divided Man shambled up to David, his arms and feet swinging apart and together as walked like some form of hideous insect.
“We are your guides. Your guardians. You need us.”
“For what?” David spat, anger rising in him, replacing his earlier fear. He felt emboldened and alive. “You’ve haunted me all my life, and now you expect me to do something for you? Fuck off.”
“It is not for us. It is for all the things that call themselves mankind. It is for Leanne Grange and Ben Samuels. For David Burfict and Tanya Brown. We are merely guides and observers. The historians and prophets. The seers and dreamers.” David felt his heart quicken again.
“What does this have to do with my friends? What does this have to do with anyone?”
“The stars are right,” the Divided Man pointed up to the blazing star in the sky. “Shub-Niggurath approaches. For your kind to have any purpose, she must be caught and destroyed. You are the key.” David stood still and took this in. He debated whether he could trust these things when they claimed to be here to help him. After decades of nightmares at their hands, he found it hard to acquiesce to their suggestions, regardless of what they told him. It wasn’t the mutilations that repulsed him so; it was the emptiness of them all. How could he trust something so empty?
The Flayed Man seemed to sense his unease, interrupting David’s thoughts. “For her salvation.” David’s thoughts travelled to Tanya, to the simple pleasure he took from being around her. The prophets had never lied to him before – even when the information was horrifying, it was always true. What if they were telling the truth? What if the only way to save mankind was to follow that star? They were offering a chance to destroy the invader. He had to take it. He felt the comforting weight of his side-arm on his hip and drew in a deep breath, and keeping an eye on the three figures set off, towards the star.
It seemed they walked for ages – David’s feet ached, and he was chilled by the cool air. The night had not changed a bit, almost as if time itself were waiting for them. The air seemed to hang, pregnant with expectancy. In the windless night, the only sounds were David’s own footsteps and breathing. The prophets moved silently behind him, seemingly implacable. He had tried to talk at first, about what he would find, or what he would need to do once he got wherever he was going, but was met only with stone-faced stares and empty eyes.
Eventually, they came to a small structure. It had no walls, just a roof to divert the rain, with a large feeding trough in the middle. Sitting against the trough, watching his approach was the goat-headed woman. She sat crossed-legged, her back to the feeder, and in her arms, cradled something small. David drew his weapon and approached her cautiously, occasionally sneaking glances at the three things behind him. It wasn’t until he stepped closer that David realized that the small thing the Goat held was a child, newborn. The beast looked up at him with her slitted eyes, and David almost thought he detected a sadness to her expression, as if grief could somehow show through those animal eyes. The night was silent but for his and the mother’s breathing. She laid the nude infant on the ground, and David was struck by the paleness of it. It seemed to radiate its own faint sheen in the bright starlight.
He looked at the child for signs of deformity, and found none - it looked like a normal human baby. He approached slowly, and when the woman made no sign of moving, he picked it the infant up, rea
lizing it was as cool as the night. He felt for a breath and found none. Stillborn. “It’s dead. The baby. I thought she was going to give birth to Shub-Niggurath. To end the world.”
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die,” whispered The Flayed Man.
“The child is a vessel. A gateway into this tomb,” said The Gutted One, his insides trembling as he spoke. “The stars are right. The key approaches.”
“What’s going on?” asked David. “I don’t understand.”
The Flayed Man turned and answered. “Shub-Niggurath has broken through into your world. You have been brought here to destroy her.”
“How do I do that?”
“The stars are almost right. You are the link. The key. You shall open the gate.” Then, the three things that were once men knelt before The Black Goat of the Woods, and one by one spoke.
“Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!” said the Divided Man. “I offer you the gift of life.”He extended his mutilated hand and caressed the head of the goat.
“Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!” said the Flayed Man. “I offer you the gift of knowledge.” He held his forehead to that of the beast, and they gazed into one another’s alien eyes.
“Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!” said the Gutted One. “I offer you the gift of destruction.” He cupped the woman’s hand, almost tenderly, and then produced from seemingly nowhere a small obsidian sculpture, nearly invisible in the starlight, and laid it at her feet.
David felt a cool wind blow, as if the world was exhaling. Every fiber in his being felt alert and alive. Something tensed in his stomach – he was ready for this moment, and he knew it. He had been ready his whole life, perhaps even before it. He knew he was the pinnacle of life on this small rock, and had been readied for just this purpose. The apex of evolution. He gazed up at the burning new star, and saw the color change from a beautiful white to a red, casting the world in a crimson pallor.
“The time is upon us. Kill her.” David was unsure if he thought it or heard it, but he looked down from the crimson sky just in time to see the woman rising to her feet. The Black Goat of the Woods moved quickly and silently, closing the several yards David had between himself and the monster, her teeth barred in something akin to a snarl. There was no time to think. He aimed his weapon and squeezed the trigger, feeling the satisfying jolt of a slug leaving the chamber. The woman staggered backwards silently into the manger, and David squeezed the trigger again, feeling the satisfying pop of the weapon as it flung metallic death at thousands of feet per second. David watched as the goat woman crumpled into a heap, the dead animal’s tongue hanging limply from its mouth. He squeezed the trigger again, and watched her jump as the third bullet imbedded itself into her chest, but she remained otherwise still.
He stepped close to touch her neck, looking for a pulse, but the body seemed to melt away into nothingness - ethereal, like a zephyr. The malformed slugs fell to the ground – the only sign that she once existed. He turned to the swaddled corpse sitting on the ground, and instinctively picked it up, looking at it closely. The eyes were open. David tried to drop the baby, but found himself rooted to the spot, frozen there by a mixture of fear and confusion. The eyes were twin black orbs in the face of the child, dark like the blackness he had seen in his dreams. It reminded him of an oil spill – black inky suffocating death. He thought of a bottomless abyss, endless and dark, of black holes roving through the depths of space. There was nothing in those eyes – they were the eyes of the void, and yet, behind them, David’s mind felt something massive. Shub-Niggurath. She stretched back into a place beyond space and time, looming over the plane of our existence like a fly over a rotten piece of meat.
Through the child. That was the gate – the being of both words. Born of both man and outsider. The thought echoed in Burfict’s mind as he stared into the endless orbs in the newborn’s eyes.
“Feel her. The prey approaches.”
David felt his mind reach out through the stillborn thing in his arms and run along the length of the God before him. It was immense and timeless, inscrutable and unfathomable. He felt like an ant staring up at a dragon – it was too large to take it all in. It was so much more than he had ever seen. It was worlds and centuries and forever and nothing all rolled into one vast organism. It was too much. The pain began to build behind his eyes as David remained staring into the coal-black eyes of the unborn thing in his arms. David felt the presence reach out to him, like a moth to a flame. He instinctively fled from it, trying to pull his mind back from beyond its grasp, but felt it close in around him. When it touched his mind, pain seared through his body like coursing electricity, fixing him rigidly to the spot. He groaned, the only thing he could do, as the being in the corpse coiled itself around his mind like barbed wire. The three prophets circled him, whispering.
“Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! May her reign of agony –“
“-the key, and the gate is open –“
“-confined to the web of nows-“
“-trapped-“
“-tomb-“
“-death-“
“Rog’nshgnak!”
David screamed as pain exploded behind his eyes, and the stillborn child screamed with him. He felt his mind drawing back to him through the child, but the being beyond clung to it. As he retreated to the safety of his own body, he sensed himself dragging the massive being out of the corpse and into the world. The birth-throes of a god wracked through reality, as the invader poured into our four dimensions. Reality shuddered and contracted as the alien forced its way into it. Black tar-like resin wept from the eyes of the child, as if they were tears of oil. The thick tendrils curled up into the air, coalescing in the burning sky like long thin tentacles. He felt his mind continue to pull itself back from the corpse, drawing more of the outsider with it. The pain was insufferable now, threatening to blot out everything. David fell to his knees and groaned. He thought briefly of Tanya, of his friends. Had he chosen this? Could he have averted it somehow? Did he ever truly have a choice?
He watched as the growing monstrosity blotted out the stars, a massive behemoth of undulating arms and searching eyes. The atmosphere shuddered with screams as the beast roared in many voices at once, shouting the truths of past, present and future. The world burned as men turned upon another in fits of madness. Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath had entered her tomb, bringing life to this otherwise dead world. Rog’nshgnak, the Spider Queen from her web of nows had captured her prey.
“Do not mourn man, for there is nothing to mourn. No man has ever truly lived, nor will any one ever truly die. That which was never alive cannot die. To weep for our end is to weep for the end of a character in a story – we exist only as our author demands, and then, only to her whims. When the world burns and the outsider breaks through, our thoughts should be of joy, for we will have completed our great task. The fly will be caught, and the spider shall feed.”
-Gregori Weder
