by Scott Shoyer
What now looked back at him in the bathroom mirror was nothing any earthly language could describe. The sight before him changed from what he now realized was an image of his decaying self to that of something incomprehensible.
His eyes had gazed on an aspect of the Ancient One.
On N’Xabez itself.
An impenetrable darkness filled his mind as madness engulfed him. His jaw dropped and his eyes were frozen open. He didn’t know if he was afraid to look away or if what he stared at wouldn’t let him gaze away.
Joseph’s hair immediately turned white, and even though his bloodstream filled with adrenaline—his survival instinct telling him to run away—his feet may as well have been cemented to the bathroom tiles.
All he could do was look.
And go mad.
As Joseph’s mind futilely attempted to comprehend what it was seeing in the mirror, a scream found its way from his throat. It was the muffled scream of someone paralyzed by fear and knowing death was moments away.
The indescribable thing in the mirror stared back at Joseph and uttered two words into Joseph’s mind.
Not you.
Then, what seemed like hundreds of tentacles, crashed through the mirror and the walls of the bathroom and tightly coiled around his body, just like the dark madness had embraced his mind, and squeezed him.
Joseph’s scream was literally squeezed out of him until it became a faint whisper. He felt his bones being compressed and knew they would start snapping soon. Before the first bone gave way to the enormous pressure, he felt one of the tentacles slither up his leg and forcefully push its way between his ass cheeks. Even with the pain he felt as all of his bones were being crushed, this new invasion introduced a new, white-hot agony to his already over-stimulated nervous system.
He could do nothing as the tentacle pushed its way into his body. He felt the loathsome appendage invade every inch of his insides as though It searched for something that was lost long ago. He felt the tentacle as it snaked its way into his ribcage and slithered around his heart.
Not you, the daemoniac-thing repeated in his mind, those words being the only comprehensible thought he was able to have through the madness.
He felt the tentacle wrap around his heart and ribcage, and then, without a pause, it withdrew quickly from his body with its find still in its grasp. Joseph felt his insides being torn from him as his body was turned inside out.
A pile of amorphous flesh now littered the bathroom floor. The resemblance of anything human was lost. Partially recognizable human traits were buried within the glistening red meat and broken bones of the man once called Joseph.
The tentacle that had invaded the man released its hold on the scarlet prizes and withdrew from the bathroom with the other appendages.
Joseph’s wife would find the mangled pile of her husband, but wouldn’t emit even one scream. All the blood relatives of the original six families understood that the cosmic force at play in Derleth had an agenda, and they knew they would never understand or be privy to that agenda.
Karen cleaned up the pile of what was once her husband and then sought out and told the High One of what she had found. The High One questioned as to whether there were any signs left behind. Any symbols in the blood, any smells in the air—anything.
Karen told the High One that besides the torn inside out, foetid body of her husband, the only other thing left behind in the bathroom was the whisper of two words.
Not you.
8
“I am so tired and full,” Damien said as he pulled the car out of the parking lot of the Hualapai Lodge, where they’d had dinner at the Diamond Creek restaurant. He, Kate, and Brandon were surprised at how busy the restaurant had been, considering the lodge was closed for the off season. The waitress had told them that the restaurant stayed open all year to feed the locals.
“Those portions were huge,” his wife added.
“Even I’m full for a change,” Brandon said as he smiled and got comfortable in the backseat.
“If that was my last meal,” Damien said as he grinned, “I’d be a happy man.”
Not only had Damien been surprised by the quality of the food, he had also been surprised at the portions. Their waitress had made them feel like long lost friends and had walked them through the menu. Damien had settled on the Hualapai stew and fry bread, while Kate and Brandon had each gotten a Hualapai taco, served on traditional fry bread instead of tortillas. Kate had barely finished half of the huge taco, and Brandon was more than happy to polish off the rest.
Now sleepy and exhausted, the Squires settled into their car, wishing the lodge was open and that they didn’t have to drive another hour to get to their hotel in Derleth.
“I think I’m going to sleep for a week,” Brandon said as he nestled into the seat.
“No, no, buddy,” Damien said as he looked into the rearview mirror. “It’s only an hour drive. Don’t fall asleep in the car. You’ll be up all night.”
“Besides,” Kate added, “the waitress said there is some beautiful scenery on our way to Derleth.” After hesitating for a moment, Kate continued. “Did you notice the look on the waitresses’ face when we said we were headed to Derleth?”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “It looked like someone had slapped her.”
Damien headed west on Route 66 and felt a second wind coming on as he scanned the landscape around him.
“Well, the waitress was right about one thing,” Damien said. “The scenery is breathtaking.” The speed limit was forty-five miles-an-hour due to the curvy mountain road and low visibility. The waitress had warned them that this section of Route 66 was considered one of the foggiest roads in America. It didn’t matter what time of year it was or what time of day-there was always a fog surrounding this section of road. Luckily the fog wasn’t too thick, and allowed the Squires to get a good look at their surroundings.
As they passed through the small, quaint town of Peach Springs, Damien realized it was probably the last denizen of civilization before they reached Derleth. He remembered reading that Peach Springs had a population of just under eleven hundred. From what some of the locals had said in the restaurant, Peach Springs was a huge metropolis compared to Derleth. But Damien was in no mood to try and find a new hotel in another town. An older resident of Peach Springs had told him that after Derleth, the next town was over two-and-a-half hours away.
Besides, Damien thought as he smiled. We have a free hotel room waiting for us in Derleth.
Damien glanced at his son in the backseat with his ear buds in and then at his wife sitting next to him reading on her iPad and wondered how he’d ever gotten to the point where he’d been ready to take his own life. He referred to his suicide attempt as “the darkest time in his life,” but that really explained nothing.
Damien had never told anyone about what had really happened that day he’d dragged the razor across his wrist. Truth was, he really didn’t know what had happened either. From what he remembered about that day, supplemented with some research, the closest explanation he had was that he had entered into some kind of fugue, whereby he couldn’t remember anything that had happened. He remembered everything before and after his suicide attempt, but couldn’t recall one memory during the act. The last thing he remembered was feeling as though a large black cloud had descended upon him. To this day he could still feel the oily-like texture on his skin, as something had engulfed his body.
A shiver ran up his spine as he tried to understand what it was he experienced that day.
“Are you okay, babe?” Kate asked as she laid her hand on his thigh.
“Yeah, yeah,” was all Damien managed to say. “I’m just entranced by the scenery.”
“It is beautiful,” Kate said. “The mountains make me feel so small—so insignificant.”
Insignificant.
Damien’s mind seemed to punch through a previously forgotten detail like a hammer smashing through brittle wallboard.
I saw som
ething right before I blacked out that made me feel insignificant that day, Damien thought. Right? His mind probed itself as he tried to drag the memory out of the darkness.
Something… called to me, Damien thought as he focused on that day.
Something called to me and then reached out and touched me. Damien felt his heart race faster. Yes! he almost shouted out loud. Something was there with me—with me in the darkness!
“Holy crap!” Brandon called from the backseat. “Look how close we are to the edge of the mountain!”
“Shit, Damien,” Kate said as she jumped in the passenger’s seat. “You’re paying attention, right? You aren’t falling asleep, are you?”
“No, no,” Damien answered. “I’m good.” Damien looked at Kate. “I promise I’m not falling asleep. This scenery is too beautiful.”
He wasn’t lying. The further they drove, the more mountains and valleys they passed. A low-hanging fog surrounded everything. It was impossible to tell how tall some of the mountains were because of the fog. In some cases, it looked like the peaks punched through the sky itself and rose infinitely.
While his mind had been preoccupied, Damien hadn’t even realized they had traveled up a mountain road. The view was extraordinary, but the road itself felt dangerous. There was no guardrail or anything else to prevent them from driving off the mountain.
Damien slowed the car to thirty miles-an-hour and kept a sharp lookout for upcoming turns in the road.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Kate asked.
“Well, you saw the road,” Damien answered. “I never turned off Route 66, and 66 is the road that leads right to Derleth.”
“This just seems really dangerous,” Kate said with an awkward laugh.
“This is friggin’ awesome,” Brandon said as he took pictures with his iPad. “You can see straight down the side of the mountain. Nothing down there but… nothing.”
“You’re scaring your mother, buddy,” Damien said as he patted Kate’s leg.
“Are you crazy?” she asked as she once again jumped in her seat. “Get both your hands on the wheel! If we crash here, no one would find us for weeks.”
“If we crash here,” Brandon corrected his mother, “we’d be dead as soon as we hit the bottom.” Brandon emphasized his comment by making a whistling noise, followed by a loud explosion sound.
“Okay, okay,” Damien said. “You’re scaring your mother, buddy.”
Brandon laughed and continued to take more pictures.
“I’m guessing we’re about halfway there,” Damien said as he tried to take Kate’s mind off the road. “Just look at these mountains. It might be a little scary, but they are beautiful. Look how huge they are.”
“The fog makes them look almost sinister,” Brandon said as he removed his ear buds. “The shadows being cast by the fog and sun are sweet.”
At the highest point on the mountain road, Damien slowed the car to a crawl. He looked back and forth across the quickly darkening horizon. Conflicting emotions filled his head as he felt anxious, scared, and curious at the same time. He had difficulty focusing on one thought and felt as though a million shards of broken glass were flying around in his head.
Visions of a desert world filled Damien’s head. A world inhabited by a thick, impenetrable fog that drifted across the landscape as if it were a living thing. Flashes of creatures living under the sand bombarded his conscience. He knew something lived beneath the surface, but the creatures wouldn’t reveal themselves. Oceans full of alien life shot through his mind—blurs of tentacles and rubbery-looking flesh.
Whatever the source of these vision was, it was taking Damien on a tour of what may as well have been Hell. The visions turned skyward, and the sky of that alien world looked nothing like the Arizona sky in front of him. Imposing, amorphous clouds; thick, dank fog that could be felt on the skin; a sunless sky. Damien closed his eyes for a second and shook his head, hoping it would have the same effect like a mental Etch-A-Sketch.
“What the hell?” Damien said as something caught his eye. He quickly turned his head to the left and studied the sky full of mountaintops and thick clouds. He panicked for a moment when he realized he wasn’t sure if he was looking at his world or was still gazing at the other world in his mind.
From the backseat Brandon asked, “Are we there yet?” and brought Damien back to this world. But Damien took little consolation in that. What he now saw was as foreign and alien to him as the world he had just been shown in his head.
Everything seemed to come to a standstill in the darkening sky. The clouds seemed to take on a life of their own as the sun slowly set. Damien watched as the light from the sun danced against the fog and created a grayish-blue color against the dark silver clouds.
To his left, something darted out of the clouds—something long and threatening looking. When Damien turned to see what the object was, it was gone.
Get a hold of yourself, Damien. Why are you getting so freaked out?
Before he had a chance to rationalize his thoughts, something huge moved in the clouds. Not just moved, Damien thought, but rolled and repositioned itself. This time, his eyes had already been on the spot in the clouds where the movement had occurred. There was no mistaking it. This wasn’t an illusion of light against the clouds. This wasn’t a figment of his over-stimulated imagination.
There was something in the clouds.
Something big.
Damien slammed on the car’s brakes, and when the vehicle stopped, he jumped out of the car and ran in the direction of the movement he had just seen.
Kate just sat in the car as Damien stared into the sky.
“You saw it, right?” Damien asked, not taking his eyes off the clouds. “Please tell me you saw it?”
“Saw what, Damien?”
“Yeah, Dad. Saw what?” Brandon asked as he stepped out of the car.
“That… that thing in the clouds,” Damien explained. “There’s something huge in the clouds. Right there,” Damien said as he pointed to the large cluster of clouds and fog that merged together.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kate asked with a noticeable change in her tone.
Damien turned his attention back to the car and saw the looks from his wife and son.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Damien tried to explain, “but there was something huge up there. Something shot out from the clouds—almost like it was reaching for something—and then just as quickly, it retracted back into the clouds.”
Kate and Brandon looked at Damien blankly.
“Honey, honey,” Kate said in a soft voice. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. What about the clouds? What do you think you saw?”
Just as Damien was about to start again, he stopped. He saw the looks on his wife and son’s face and realized how crazy he sounded. He took a deep breath and then turned and looked back at the clouds.
Whatever had been there was gone. There was no long arm—a tentacle?—that had reached out from the cloud, and there certainly wasn’t some huge creature living in the atmosphere.
Right?
Damien turned away from the edge of the cliff and couldn’t force himself to look at his wife and son. He had been so certain about what he had seen.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Kate said as Damien walked back to the car. “You’re over-tired. You’ve driven over five-hundred miles today and are exhausted.” Kate walked over, gripped Damien’s hand, and looked into his eyes. “Everything is okay, honey. Everything is fine. Let’s just get to the hotel in Derleth and get some sleep. I’ll drive the rest of the way.”
Damien understood what Kate was doing. He’d never received the intensive therapy he’d needed after his suicide attempt and figured that Kate had been concerned about his mental state.
“Sorry, honey,” Damien said. Then he turned to Brandon and apologized.
“No problemo, Pops,” Brandon had said with a forced smile.
Kate and Brandon got back into the
car, and as Damien opened the passenger’s side door, he looked over his shoulder one last time at the clouds. They’d taken on new shapes and formations, but he still felt something up there. Something in those clouds had been watching him—had given him those visions.
Telling him to get to Derleth.
9
Sheriff Landry rubbed his eyes as he stood in the kitchen of the Beckler family. The sun had already set, and this was the time of night where shadows seemed more threatening than any other time of day or night. Landry had spent the day dealing with death. First, Karen Shaw had called him about the death of her husband, Joseph. Now he stood in the kitchen over the body of what was once Vincent Beckler. Landry assumed it was him. Joanie Beckler had said it was Vincent and Landry had no reason to not believe her.
The condition of the body was not unlike the body of Joseph Shaw. It was difficult to believe that at one time these bodies had been living, breathing human beings. Before Landry, was a pile of bloodied, shredded flesh, with pieces of broken bone scattered throughout and ruptured organs. The two bodies looked as though they’d gone through a wood chipper and then the remains were put in a Cuisinart to be further chopped.
Joanie Beckler stood next to Sheriff Landry. Her tears had long since dried. She knew what her husband and the other families and their bloodlines were involved with and that there had always been dangers. The legacy passed down through the Beckler name was one that held a huge responsibility—a responsibility to the town.
A responsibility to the Unmentionable One in the clouds.
But Joanie had always been more worried about an outsider exposing what was going on in the town of Derleth. She had been more worried about The Order of N’Xabez being exposed during one of their ceremonies. She had never thought that her husband and the others were in danger from the very One they praised and protected.
And summoned.
“What do you make of all this?” Joanie asked Sheriff Landry.
