Screaming inside a space suit was contraindicated, too. And with collapsed lungs, she couldn’t even do it properly.
* * *
alice.
She floated. In warm darkness. A womb, a bath. She was comfortable. An itchy soreness between her shoulderblades felt like a very mild radiation burn.
alice.
A voice she thought she should know. She tried to speak; her mouth gnashed, her teeth ground.
alice. talk here.
She tried again. Not with her mouth, this time.
Talk… here?
The buoyant warmth flickered past her. She was… drifting. No, swimming. She could feel currents on her skin. Her vision was confused. She blinked and blinked, and things were shattered.
There was nothing to see anyway, but stars.
alice talk here.
Where am I?
eat alice.
Vinnie. Vinnie’s voice, but not in the flatness of the heads-up display anymore. Vinnie’s voice alive with emotion and nuance and the vastness of her self.
You ate me, she said, and understood abruptly that the numbness she felt was not shock. It was the boundaries of her body erased and redrawn.
!
Agreement. Relief.
I’m… in you, Vinnie?
=/=
Not a “no.” More like, this thing is not the same, does not compare, to this other thing. Black Alice felt the warmth of space so near a generous star slipping by her. She felt the swift currents of its gravity, and the gravity of its satellites, and bent them, and tasted them, and surfed them faster and faster away.
I am you.
!
Ecstatic comprehension, which Black Alice echoed with passionate relief. Not dead. Not dead after all. Just, transformed. Accepted. Embraced by her ship, whom she embraced in return.
Vinnie. Where are we going?
out, Vinnie answered. And in her, Black Alice read the whole great naked wonder of space, approaching faster and faster as Vinnie accelerated, reaching for the first great skip that would hurl them into the interstellar darkness of the Big Empty. They were going somewhere.
Out, Black Alice agreed and told herself not to grieve. Not to go mad. This sure beat swampy Hell out of being a brain in a jar.
And it occurred to her, as Vinnie jumped, the brainless bodies of her crew already digesting inside her, that it wouldn’t be long before the loss of the Lavinia Whateley was a tale told to frighten spacers, too.
•
The Nyarlathotep Event
Jonathan Wood
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #1 :: Performance
The Oxford Playhouse. Now.
For the record, it is very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when you went wrong if a woman with a Laura Ashley dress and blood-stained teeth is rhythmically beating your head against the floor. Just so you know.
Ten minutes before
Here’s a treat: a night out at the theater courtesy of work. All expenses paid. The only catch: I might have to gun down the performer halfway through.
See, this is the problem with working for shadowy government agencies. There’s always rough to go with the smooth. Yes, you get to enjoy an evening of ancient Egyptian magic, but it is being performed by an interdimensional avatar called Nyarlathotep who hales from a dimension representing humanity’s collective fears. Silver lining, meet cloud.
Still, just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.
The niggling familiarity of the the name Nyarlathotep clears up as soon as he steps out on stage. Lovecraft. Whether the performer’s the real deal or just some wacko with a penchant for non-Euclidean geometry, they’re using the name of a gibbering literary horror.
Which, I feel, should inform my plan. Except the only plan I seem to remember old Lovecraft providing was running howling into the night, so I’m not sure how helpful that’s going to be.
Nyarlathotep stands seven feet tall, wrapped in blood-red rags. They hang from his shoulders like a cloak. They wreathe his face. Red mist billows about his feet, spills into the theater, spreads out over feet and ankles. People in the front row let out odd barking sounds—the terrifying inbred cousin of laughter. And I’m pretty sure Nyarlathotep’s not told any jokes yet.
Screw evaluating the situation. I reach for my gun.
Nyarlathotep opens his mouth.
There are no words. His mouth moves. Sounds emerge. But it is something beyond speech. Something more profound. Some kinesthetic reflex of bile and horror.
The buzzing of flies. The stench of rotting meat filling my nose, my mouth. Burning my throat. I gag. Heave up bile. A liquid scream. Pins in my arms. Needles, and nails, and shards of glass. The grind of cigarette against skin. My brain is burning, melting, is fecal matter sloshing in my skull.
And still his mouth stretches behind reams of cloth. And on and on pours out the filth. Into me.
My gun. I need—
I grab for the thing with numb fingers. Atrocities flicker at the edges of my vision. A noise like a kettle boiling. Rising. Rising. Up, and up. Like an itch I need to reach into my brain to scratch.
Somehow I get the gun loose. I half see it out of one eye, through filters of horror and peeling flesh. I try to sight Nyarlathotep, but I might as well be trying to shoot the moon.
Screw it. I pull the trigger.
The muzzle’s thunderclap hits me like water to the face. Abruptly I’m just a man in a theater, waving a gun about, while around me everyone goes insane.
Men and women are on all fours. They roll in fights. Some screw. Some scream.
On stage, Nyarlathotep stands, arms wide, welcoming it all. The conductor of this pageant of madness. And, Lovecraft old buddy, running and screaming does seem like a good idea right about now.
On the other hand, that’s not what I get paid to do. So I stand. I steady my gun. I draw a bead on the bastard. I think about how I should probably change careers.
Which is exactly the moment the woman in the Laura Ashley number clotheslines me around my throat and brings me down.
My gun scatters. I scrabble at her, coughing and choking, trying to pry her off me. She seizes my head. Slams it onto the floor. Crash. Crash. The room spins. Crash.
Which brings me to the point where I’m left wondering if I’m going to have the time to enumerate all the mistakes I’ve made before my head gives way.
Just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #2 :: Rescue
8:15 pm, The Oxford Playhouse, Oxford, England
There is romance to the idea of the Man Alone. Abandoned, desperate, he reaches deep inside and finds the will to go on, to do what must be done, to save the day.
But when the Man Alone is being beaten to death by a pack of insane theater-enthusiasts, the idea of back-up has a little more charm.
In those moments there is little better than a co-worker dismissing a homicidal Laura Ashley fan off your chest with a very large sword.
Kayla—co-worker, possessor of almost inhuman speed and agility, sword-wielder, dangerously psychotic person—stands over me, twirling a four-foot long katana.
It’s hard to express my gratitude. I go with, “Guh-th-fuh.”
“Shut up. Get up.” Kayla demonstrates her social skills as a man in a three-piece suit leaps up on a chair in front of us, growls.
Kayla slams the butt of the blade into the man’s forehead. The man pinwheels away over seats, head snapped back.
“Feckin’ mad bastards,” Kayla says. “Always the same crap with the baying at the moon and the lust for human flesh.”
I have other concerns. Like putting a bullet in the interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos on the stage whose fault this all is—Nyarlathotep.
Except the stage is empty.
“Target’s moving,” I say. “Out back. Now.”
A mass of drooling, enraged Oxonians stands between me and the stage. As one, they bay their madne
ss.
“Lobby?” Kayla suggests.
I move. A raving student comes at me. I use both fists to club him to the floor.
The lobby is stark in its emptiness. And we’re moving now. The chase is properly on. You’re mine, you interdimensional bastard.
From nowhere, a yellow clay jar arcs through the air. I duck. It explodes against the wall behind me. Gas rushes out, a red mist. I duck, but an arm of vapor circles my head. I breathe—
A wall of flesh rises, engulfing. Jackals chase me across a desert. Water closes over my head, tentacles wrapped about my ankles, pulling, pulling—
—and crash to the lobby floor. I gasp, claw at my eyes.
Three figures in ragged yellow robes are in the doorway. They hold curved knives high. Their robes billow about them—whether it’s the air-conditioning, or just the universe deciding to add cinematic flair, I’m not sure.
To be honest, I just reach for my gun.
My gun. Beaten out of my hand. By the the charming lady with a Laura Ashley dress and a mad-on for the taste of my spleen.
I do have my own sword. A recent acquisition, and one I’m rather proud of. It’s a flaming sword, in fact. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it rocks so hard it makes Metallica look like a group of small girls. But it’s also not the most fashionable accessory for a night out at the theater, and I left it back at the office. So no go on that front either.
The robed men charge. It’s not much ground to cover. The first attacker is yards away. He stinks of decay. I catch a flash of teeth. Jaundiced skin. Black pits of eyes.
“Kayla!” My voice slides up to an octave I try to avoid hitting in public.
Her blade flies out. Yellow robes are stained with red. The leading attacker flies backwards in more parts than he entered the theater. Bits of him collide with his fellows.
I pull myself up, still blinking away the after-effects of the attacker’s gas. “We need to get out of here.”
“The Children of Nyarlathotep will stop you!” One of the yellow-robed men is pulling free of the tangled pile of his fellows. “We will come for you in your dreams. We will unseam your sanity.”
With a speed that laughs at the conventional rules of physics, Kayla crosses the room and delivers her toecap to his forehead. The man’s head slams to the ground, tongue lolling.
“Let’s go.” Kayla pushes through the door and out onto the street. I follow after her. Time to get finally get the bas—
I stop. I stare. The streets. The city.
Where has Oxford gone?
The road, once paved and straight, is a twisting roller coaster of asphalt and cobbles. Limestone storefronts have curled into blackened husks, glass bulging like blisters. Dreaming spires have stretched to the sky, points drawn out like knife blades. The citizenry scream, and caper, and cower.
The madness is spreading. It’s not just in the citizens, it’s in the city’s walls, its streets, its soul.
And seriously, even an interdimensional avatar of madness is a Tim Burton fan?
“You know,” I say to Kayla, “I cannot wait to find this bastard and shoot him.”
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #3 :: Countdown
8:38pm. Oxford, England.
“Derrière. To Christ Church College. Five minutes or less. Otherwise you’re responsible for the end of the world.” Tabitha, my handler and MI37’s resident cheerleader, sets the ticking clock just in case my day wasn’t going badly enough.
It had been a simple plan. Go to the theater. Make sure the performer really is an interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos. Shoot him.
All in a day’s work for Agent Arthur Wallace.
Except now I’m chasing the bastard through Oxford transformed. Nyarlathotep—the aforementioned avatar—has vomited up the citizenry’s collective fears and given the place a good basting. Architecture spirals out of control. Streets twist back in recursive loops. Buildings teeter and leer.
Oh, and everybody’s gone mad. The insane cherry on the lunacy cake.
Ten minutes ago
Kayla—MI37’s superhuman swordswoman and high-functioning psychotic—passes me a plastic earbud. “Tabitha,” she says. I plug it in. Because who doesn’t want a running job evaluation from a committed misanthrope?
“Screwed that up. Big time.”
I close my eyes. “Where’s Nyarlathotep?”
“Christ Church. Potential reality rip.”
I move. Kayla follows.
Seven minutes ago
Get to Christ Church—simple enough. Run in a straight line from the playhouse.
Except every exit from this bloody traffic circle leads back to where it starts.
“What the hell?”
“Reality leakage,” Tabitha answers through the earbud. “Leaking into ours. Nyarlathotep’s home dimension is. Distorting space. When you tear through realities and summon avatars of fear and chaos, sensible to close the door behind you. Not into common sense. People who summoning avatars of fear and chaos.”
Which is all lovely to know, but, “How the hell do I get down this street?”
“Magic,” Tabitha says.
Unfortunately, MI37’s magician recently became a little less than corporeal so that could be a problem. But Tabitha says, “Our end. Already working on it.”
There is muttering. I hear someone say, “Entropic Negotiator,” and then, “No, the Phillip’s version.”
Tabitha comes back on the line. “Phone. Dial office. Then hold it up to the street.”
I comply. Tinny nonsense syllables emerge. And then the world ripples like water, and I get to go down the street I actually want to go down for once.
When did running in a straight line get this hard?
Four minutes ago
If it’s not one thing, it’s bloody cultists.
The yellow-robed man comes out of nowhere. I spin just in time to catch his fist on my chin. I fall down—not very Kurt Russell of me but typical of my brand of heroism. Fortunately Kayla is close to being superwoman. Unfortunately, somewhere around eighteen cultists have surrounded her, which means I have to do something… well, not exactly heroic…
I kick my attacker in the crotch.
That buys me enough time to get up off the floor, and be taken down by a flying tackle from a second cultist.
We roll back and forth while, in my ear, Tabitha intones, “Tick tock. Tick tock.”
It’s more sheer frustration than anything else that lends me the strength to slam my opponent’s face into the brick. Finally he stops worrying about me and just lies there, insensible.
Just enough time to put the boot in on cultist number one, watch Kayla dispatch of her final cultist with a casual backhand, and listen to Tabitha sing a line from The Final Countdown.
Now
Seriously. This is starting to get ridiculous.
The crowd is six rows deep, blocking the College gateway. Students mostly. And not enough sane thoughts among them to rub together and start a fire.
“Five minutes,” Tabitha says.
I look around desperately. Time is not on our side.
And then I smile. Because time might be the answer after all.
“Any chance you can knock that down?” I ask Kayla. I point to the grand clock tower sitting above Christ Church College’s grand entrance. It won’t slow time but it’ll disperse a crowd.
“Pope shit in the woods?” Kayla asks me.
Which stops me for a moment, because I didn’t think he did.
A student at the edge of the crowd stops poking at his midriff with a stick and looks at us. He lets out a scream.
The attention of the crowd shifts.
Above our heads the clock’s second hand ticks, once, twice.
Kayla leaps, impossibly high. She lands on the student’s shoulders, sends him crumpling, but is already away, hits the college wall like a spider.
The crowd lurches towards me.
“Any chance you could do this faster?” I don�
�t mean to be ungrateful, but there are a lot of crazy people charging me.
Kayla starts climbing. The crowd starts running. Kayla reaches the top. The second hand ticks.
Kayla hammers at stone with her blade. Her arms blur. Stonework cracks and creaks.
The crowd hesitates as one. Looks back. Looks up.
Limestone explodes away from Kayla’s blade. Shards shower the crowd. The clock tower leans wildly. The second hand spins away from the clock.
Kayla breaks from her work, steps back, kicks the wobbling stone monument. She smiles. “Timber.”
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #4 :: Portal
Oxford, England. Not a good day.
Some days, I think, I really need to ask for a transfer. You get told you’re going into a department called MI37, and you think, oh that sounds cloak-and-dagger exciting. They charge you with defending the realm from all things supernatural and tentacle-y, and you think, well that could be exciting.
Then you find you find yourself in the middle of Christ Church College facing a pack of yellow-robed cultists standing around a bubbling rip in reality.
“Not good,” I say to Kayla, my equally up-shit-creek co-worker.
The cultists are chanting, of course. Limited options on the daily duties for a cultist, I imagine. Chant or sacrifice. And for all my bitching about my employer, at least working for MI37 isn’t tedious.
Take the portal, for instance. If I don’t close it in the next three minutes, all of Oxford is going to be permanently infected by another reality constructed of humanity’s collective fears.
Likely a suicidal task, but not a boring one.
Unfortunately Kayla and I lack the appropriate color coordination, so cultists catch on to us pretty fast. Three break from the circle, pulling large knives.
I really wish I hadn’t dropped my gun earlier. But things tend to get distracting when an entire city goes insane. Still, this is where Kayla comes in. No need for a gun when the woman next to you can make a champion sushi chef look like a sloppy amateur with a blade.
“All yours,” I say.
Which is when the smoking grenade of crazy gas comes at her. It’s a futile throw, of course. Kayla bats it out of the air without blinking. But the problem with a gas grenade designed to shatter is that it shatters as soon as you hit it.
The Book of Cthulhu 2 Page 34
