by Joshua Bader
I thanked her, hung up, and fished out the card she had mentioned. The only thing left to do was to decide whether this was really a good idea or not. If I was smart, I would wait until Veruca came home, tell her everything, and go tackle this together. The truth was, I was more afraid of what might happen to her than I was of what might happen to me. I still remembered that prophetic insight when I first looked into her eyes. I would give anything, even my own life, not to be the cause of her death.
I brewed one last cup of coffee to give Duchess time to work out the details, then headed out the door before I could talk myself out of it. The roads out of Boston were strangely deserted that day as Dora and I muscled our way out of town. It was as if the entire city could sense the coming showdown.
The empty roads let me mull things over, putting together again the pieces I had already linked in the past week. It had been a long year for me. I had rung in the New Year just outside of Seattle, worked my way down the West Coast through January and February. In March, I had driven across the southwest, heading east. I had stopped in Oklahoma City in mid-March before heading down to New Orleans. I wondered if I had slept that night and, if I did, what I had dreamt about.
I would have been working at a bar back in the Big Easy when the old woman wrote her curse in April. I understood now where I had gone wrong in the investigation: I had assumed that people’s actions were what mattered. My wrong assumption led to my equally wrong belief that the old woman had called the wendigo. The Eye of Winter knew better: the wendigo had called to the old woman, nurturing her hate, prompting her to free it with her curse. While I was bouncing around the South, playing a renaissance fair wizard or working at the docks, Hungry Winter was gathering its strength and nursing its pups.
With wendigoes as the caller, rather than the called, it was easy to understand what it did after it was killed: it called again. The old woman may have been dead, but there must have been another in the Old Ways with a spiritual sensitivity. How had the deal been phrased? Give me your lives, your energy, your heart, and I will give you vengeance. It had been something like that. The people didn’t run, didn’t scatter from the wendigo’s attack, because it had been a willing offering. They gave themselves to it.
The wendigo had been tracking me, slowly, but surely, ever since. It had followed the same roads Veruca and I had driven on our way back to Boston. It was stopping and feeding as it went, but it was learning…the closer it got to Boston, the less evidence of its attacks it left behind. In Memphis, all they found was a partially frozen severed arm. In Pittsburgh, they never found a body at all, though the number of missing persons during the blizzard was suspiciously high.
Why so slow? Why so careful? Because it knows I’m dangerous. It should, too. It knows it woke up because someone was walking the Shadowlands, disturbing both its sleep and the peace of the Twins. My guess was it knew that someone was me.
“When did you figure it out?”
“You’re not really my subconscious, are you?”
“Hey buddy, it’s just you and me, right? What else could I be?”
The internal dialogue was interrupted by my arrival at the rest stop. A state trooper’s vehicle was parked blocking the off ramp. I pulled up beside him and waited for the trooper to come to my window.
I rolled it down as he leaned over. “Rest area is closed, sir. There’s another...”
I held up the Richard Dugger employee ID. “Valente International sent me to check out the leak.”
The trooper nodded, but instantly pulled back as if Valente were an infectious disease. “I’ll pull out of the way, then tape off the entrance.” He took another step back before asking, “Do I need to see a doctor or something? I’ve been out here for 45 minutes.”
I put on my most scholarly face. “Usually takes at least two hours of continuous exposure, except in children or pregnant women. Still, better safe than sorry.”
The officer didn’t say another word as he let me in, taped up the entrance with caution tape, and sped off. That left me all alone with my car, my supplies, and my dark alter ego. Once I was sure the trooper was gone, I parked as far away from the road as possible, and gobbled down a cereal bar for both energy and good luck.
I pulled the Necronomicon from the bag, for once not fearing the strange energy that pulsed through its black leather. I flipped right to the section I was looking for, even though I had avoided it like the plague for the last three years:
“In the dark recesses of that ancient cavern,
I could hear the mad priest still chanting,
His deathless voice repeating the forbidden words,
Fast and frantic, an insane jumble of ranting;
Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.
Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.
Each syllable of that dark tongue echoed over water and stone and I knew then what must be done: For what horrors might come if I allowed the mad priest, the terrible mad priest to call Yog Soggoth, Walker of Shadows?”
“You ate Sarai.”
“Details. Try and think big picture here, kid.”
“You ate her.”
17
Five feet past where Dora’s bumper ended, the speckled white sidewalk gave way to raw earth. The grass was worn down by years of feet running toward the bathroom. What remained was suppressed by winter’s approach. Into that cold ground, I etched a large circle with my chaos blade, then added a triangle within it, but touching at three points. At each junction, I placed an ebon candle.
Along one arm of the triangle lay the spear replica. Another arm held both my lighter and chaos blade. The base of the triangle, facing southwest, had the Necronomicon laid out upon it, open to the page I had referenced earlier. Once, it had been a spooky bedtime story for a pair of intellectuals to play with, look down upon. I tried not to think about what it meant to me now: it was both my only hope in the growing storm and the symbol of my own damnation.
After my preparations were made, I stripped down to bare skin before stepping into the center of the circle. The chill air tore into my skin, but I had a pretty hardy dose of righteous anger burning within my chest. I knelt in prayer and waited for night to come.
“Do you really think God is listening? Do you have any idea the lengths HE went to in chasing my kind out of this universe?”
Ignoring him proved easier than I thought. Just knowing that voice wasn’t really a part of me made it possible.
“But I am a part of you, Colin.”
The first snowflakes began to fall against the backdrop of a reddish purple sunset. I picked up the lighter and lit the candles in clockwise fashion, then tossed the lighter clear of the circle proper.
“Not to criticize, but that was our fire source. And you don’t control the ground here: no exploding candle tricks.”
“Nervous?”
“Curious. Even knowing you killed Sarai, suicide doesn’t suit you.”
“You killed Sarai, Yog Soggoth, not me. And, yes, I have a plan…but it may be better for you to kill us both now. Because once I finish this wendigo, I’m coming for you. Now that I know what you are and how you got here, I will find a way to get rid of you.”
“Fair enough…but I think you may find you had a lot more say in the matter of my coming than you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not just anyone could have called me, no matter how much virgin’s blood they had on their lips.”
“You’re lying,” I told him.
“Maybe. But how would you know? You still can’t remember what happened, can you?”
“Do you want to get on with my plan or do you think you can trick me into forgiving you?”
“Give me the plan. Forgiveness is overrated.”
“Take me through to the Shadowlands.”
“WHAT?”
“You heard me. This thing has been living in the Shadowlands for centuries, ever since the War of the Twins. Its e
ssence, its reality, is there. We could kill it a hundred times in the material world and it would keep coming back. I have to fight it in its world.”
“And the circle is to keep our body safe from the dark energies of the realm beyond…not bad,” he allowed.
“Will you take me through or do I have to do it myself?”
“Taking you is a bad idea. Getting back would be rough. But we can split the difference.”
My vision of reality began to crack, as if a second world was being overlaid atop the first. A gray sea of trees crashed down upon the mud and buildings that had previously owned the scenery. The circle of dirt blazed to light with a dancing orange brilliance. The inner triangle was obscured by a dark purple mist spilling forth from the Necronomicon.
“Shadow sight…all the benefits of being there without actually having to cross over.”
“But can I kill it?”
“As much as you ever could…but be careful. The Faceless trained it to be a killing machine, remember? Mad spirits taught it to eat both body and soul.”
“And when did you become an expert on the Faceless?”
“When the Eye of Winter speaks, I listen. And if I am more than just your subconscious, don’t you think I might know a few things about ancient cults?”
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?” I wondered.
“I thought we were going our separate ways after this battle. No reason to talk about the Faceless if we’re not going to work together to take them down.”
“Are you why they’re trying to kill me?”
“I give you shadow sight and you suddenly start getting smarter. That’s why we made our pact in the first place. We can stop them, Colin. We can end the Faceless.”
“But only if we stay together?”
“Like I said, you’re getting smarter.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Tell you what. Watch how this goes down, then let me know. You want me gone, I’ll leave.”
18
My body was numb, though whether it was from the raging storm or from the sickening touch of the Shadowlands, I couldn’t tell. If forced, I would say it was near dawn, but my sense of time was unreliable. For the longest time, I wondered if my body would still work when the wendigo showed up. Now I was starting to wonder if it would show up at all.
The passing hours allowed me to survey the surrounding terrain and my available weapons. The chaos blade was unchanged by shadow sight; it still randomly flickered across the spectrum. If I had hoped that it would seem more magical, more potent in the Shadowlands, there was nothing evidenced to reward that hope.
The faux spear of destiny had changed. Its shaft hummed with a thin red aura, the color on a Nazi armband in living Technicolor. The spear tip was lost under a coat of midnight black slime. Neither effect was overwhelming: it was indeed magical, but barely. It might have been copied from the Spear of Destiny, but its makers could only forge a spear of spite. On the other hand, steel and burning hate was not a bad option for this particular foe.
The Necronomicon’s endless fount of shadow magic seemed impressive…but I remembered who was supplying my shadow sight. He may have been altering my perceptions in favor of his weapon of choice.
The world outside the circle steadily shrank as night went on. At dusk, my vision was limited only by the spectral trees blocking my line of sight. Now the blizzard around me was so intense, I could not see beyond the candlelight glow of the circle. I thought the storm was real, material, but not a single flake landed inside my circle, leaving me to wonder.
“Hey, wake up.”
“Yeah, I feel it, too.”
I slowly shifted my vision a little further south. At first, I thought I could see nothing but snow. Fifty feet out, though, the flakes swirled in funny patterns, painting shapes in the night air. Most were unrecognizable, but suggestively anatomical: a nose here, a tail there, a claw there. One I did recognize, and I involuntarily shuttered as I saw the face of the old curse woman, staring wickedly out at me from the storm.
I called out in that nameless, ancient tongue. “Wolf-mother, you came.”
I could not pinpoint the growling voice that replied. The sound seemed to echo off every snow flake. “Step out of your circle and face me, white boy. Stop hiding and fight.”
“I will fight if I must, Hungry Winter. But I would ask you to sleep, wendigo. Go back to sleep. I will return to the Shadowlands no more.”
A blast of arctic wind answered me, “No sleep. It is time to eat.”
My right hand crept free from my lap, ready to act if needed. The strange shapes still danced in the air, concentrated in the direction the gust had come from. No real target presented itself. “Then come, beast. I am right here. My book and I will teach you a trick the Faceless Men didn’t—how to play dead like an obedient doggy.”
I hoped for a quick, angry rush provoked by my words. None came and the shapes vanished from the air only to reappear twenty feet to the North. “Those you speak of will soon fill my belly, too. But they did teach us many things... Leave your circle, Atlantean, and I will give you the death you crave.”
Atlantean? I focused on the new area of icy ghosts. “Afraid of circles? That’s not old knowledge. I had to teach your mate that lesson myself.”
That did it. For a split second, the wendigo’s rage triumphed, the snow forming a giant wolf body on the ground near the center of the swirling faces. It leapt towards me, its humongous body clearing the gap between where it was and the circle’s edge effortlessly. It regained control mid-flight, but too late. With sheer will and a twitch of my hand, I forced the spear into flight, catching it in the flank. If it hadn’t broken its charge, the spear would have plunged straight through its throat.
I grabbed for the chaos blade and tried to stand. My legs were used to long hours of abuse, but this night had been too much. They refused and left me eye level with its massive snout. Up close, the creature was enormous, easily six foot tall and fifteen feet long. Bright blue blood poured from its side in thick, frozen chunks.
Its breath was fetid. “Leave the circle.”
I slashed out with a katana-like blade but it bobbed back just enough. It pawed at the edge, dancing around the circle, searching for an entry point, ducking whenever I brought the sword close. “You cannot hide forever, Atlantean. The cold will take you.”
I shouted back, “And you’ll bleed to death soon enough. That spear will kill you.”
In answer, it reached back and wrenched the spear free with its teeth. A gout of its strange blood sprayed the freshly fallen snow. It looked right at me, spear in jaws, before reducing the relic to toothpicks. “A mere flesh wound, Atlantean. Leave the circle and I’ll make it quick.”
I swung at it again, this time willing the blade tip a foot longer in mid-swing. It bobbed back, but not enough and the lime green crystal slashed through the meat of its nose. The wound smoked and sizzled, cauterized instantly to angry scar tissue.
It roared, more in annoyance than in pain. The creature darted back into the storm, away from the circle. “Hungry Winter is not without her weapons. Die, Atlantean, die.”
She turned back to charge. With each fall of her paws, the wind gathered strength. She stopped with a roar that turned into wind shear beyond anything I had ever known. My feet found it in them to stand, then kept on rising, the hurricane blast carrying me up into the air.
I crashed back down, not on my legs or my sword, but squarely on my head…and well outside my circle of protection. I’d record what happened next, but the blow was an instant knockout.
19
Wendigo, Hungry Winter, moved quickly, but cautiously around Colin’s circle. The Atlantean was down, crumpled in an impossible, defenseless position. Within seconds, she was next to him. With one great paw, she rolled her meal on to its back, the better to remove the heart from the chest. His eyes began to flutter open, but it was too late. She had won.
The meal muttered to it
self in a language she did not understand. It did not sound like the usual whimperings and beggings, but this meal had always been a strange one. “Mind if I have a go at it, Colin? Or do you still think you can beat it without me?”
Whatever it meant, she didn’t care and plunged her teeth into its chest. Except it didn’t quite happen that way. A quartet of black tendrils wrapped around her maw, slamming it shut. She reached up with her paws to claw her mouth free, but they too were quickly enveloped by a host of tentacles. One after another, the tentacles burst forth from her meal: this one coming from his palm, that one from his armpit, another five from his belly...
Impossibly, the meal rose, standing her up, high and away from him. Wendigo struggled, but her opponent was stronger. With an effortless snap of his body, he threw her across the landscape. A trio of Shadowland trees checked her flight, but only after she’d gone straight through the trunk of one and put dents in the other two.
She panted. “You…you can’t kill me. I am Winter, eternal. I will eat you, Atlantean.”
The tentacled Atlantean paused to consider her threat. A twitch of a tentacle sent the glowing purple book flying from circle to tendril tip. “How unfortunate for you. Some fates are far worse than death.” He spoke in the ancient tongue before turning his attention to the tome. The language he read from there was older still, its intonations shrill and piercing to her ears.
She charged him as he read, a frantic leap carrying her into the midst of the mighty tendrils. She would never land, her body frozen in air momentarily, before vanishing as if she’d never been there.
Yog Soggoth paused to inspect the newly inscribed artwork of a great winter wolf, before closing the Necronomicon and beginning the retreat into the depths of his host’s body. “Let’s see how she likes ten thousand years in the far realms beyond space and time. Maybe dog ownership will help Cthulhu’s temper.” Yog Soggoth smiled at that, before collapsing to the ground. He was stronger now, but his pact host was weak…and the banishing spell more difficult than it should have been. He would have to trust to luck, and his host’s stubbornness, to make sure he, the Walker of Shadows, Lord of the Ancient Caverns of Insanity, Master of the Unfathomable Abyss, didn’t die of hypothermia.
