A sign above the filthy door read “SHAFT #42.” The words meant nothing to One.
“Wait. I will go.” A human who served the Motion stepped forward and put its hand to the portal mechanism, cradling the lightning gun in one forelimb. The human was obviously attempting to gain the assassin’s good favor. One could not yet tell the human traits of facial expressions for what they were, although he knew muscle configurations on the human skull indicated emotional responses; he had studied human anatomy for some time. The Motion agent’s orbicular oris muscles were drawn down taut, and its frontalis muscle was pulled back, raising the hair patches near its orbital cavities—but what this implied One could not determine. The assassin also noted a thin sheen of water precipitate on the skin of the human. These responses were mirrored on the faces of the other humans present, so they most likely represented emotional and not physical responses to stimuli. The other Motion men stepped forward to flank the door.
The Motion agent pushed the door wide. The assassin noted a scraping sound on the floor as the portal swung open. Inside the structure, past the slowly widening gap, the assassin could perceive a terrible red, blue, and green pulsating light. It was a familiar perception. The light reminded One of cities in ruin, of endless seas of rippling immaterial beasts as they poured from beneath the earth and consumed Pnakotus, of an evil so all-encompassing that even the Great Race could not resist it. The assassin turned and ran as the whistling and screams began.
The juvenile musculature of the child’s shell could not carry One into the safety of the wilderness fast enough. Behind it the ear-splitting cracks of the lightning guns sounded—but only twice. The Motion agents died in seconds, emitting awful gurgling screams as they were pulled into the gelatinous, not wholly material body of the thing. The assassin fled into a gathering of trees, fumbling with its box in a desperate attempt to save its mind from the impending death of its shell. It did not look back but could feel a smooth and unnatural wind caress the shell’s skin, like fingers playing across foreign objects in the dark.
Then, the terrible whistling growing ever closer. One snatched another small box from its pocket and retreated further, desperately adjusting components in the device as it stumbled to a snow drift opposite the trees it had been hiding behind. The shell that carried its mind collapsed from exhaustion, barely able to consume enough air to keep its blood fully oxygenated. One rolled over on its back, closed the box and pointed it at the copse of trees. The construction beyond the trees and the bodies of the Motion agents were not visible. One gathered its thoughts and prepared for death. From beyond the cluster of trunks a flashing blue, green, and red aura reflected off the snow, illuminating the scene with an eerie purple light, growing closer.
A shearing, high-pitched shriek shattered the scene, bursting one of the shell’s hearing membranes and causing its eyes to water. The beast had detected its presence. The creature that came for One represented the single thing that the Great Race could not conquer and would never fully destroy. It would come for the assassin and erase its mind from existence; all it had worked so hard to gather, expunged forever.
The shell’s tiny hands began to waver and shake. One found that its mind was endlessly repeating the single thought of its own mortality, over and over again. The shell’s eyes emitted a salty, sight-obscuring liquid, and One found its control over the the shell failing. The shell relieved itself, abruptly voiding the body of all waste products.
The enemy appeared through the trees suddenly. A roiling mass of pockmarked red-green jelly, floating improbably five feet off the ground. A halo of purplish light played off it, illuminating the tiny cul-de-sac in an unearthly glow. Its gelatinous form slithered through the mass of the trees, pulling its atoms through gaps in the atomic structure, searing them, leaving behind dead husks. Portions of the beast phased in and out of existence, appearing and disappearing as it wove its way through the trees, slowly slipping through them to the other side to consume the assassin. Odd five-toed footprints sank slowly into the seamless snow, appearing it seemed of their own accord, and pushed deeper as the beast pulled itself forward on invisible legs.
One recovered control of the shell and pointed its box at the clutch of trees. This device of the Great Race remained useless against the enemy because they were not wholly material, but One could target those things that the beasts passed through. One triggered the box-like device with the press of a small button on its side, and instantly the entire area was lost in an immense, bright white flash. All sight was obliterated instantly; even through the closed lids of the shell’s eyes, the flash was enormous. One turned over and stood clumsily, completely blind yet ready to run.
The next second a deafening wet noise sounded and One was suddenly covered in a foul-smelling, jelly-like liquid which knocked the assassin to the ground and coated it in a crashing wave. Slowly, the eyes of the shell recovered and its blood oxygen level returned to normal, One, victorious, turned to survey the scene of destruction.
A huge, half-moon gap was cut through the copse of trees which had stood just moments before. Two great oblong teardrops on either side of the trees were covered in the remains of the great enemy, a thick, viscous black jelly which smelled of ozone and oil. One had removed the trees, and with them the atoms of the great enemy as they slithered within the form, instantly slicing the beast in two. The assassin had succeeded in killing that which its race feared most.
One stumbled forward towards the structure, its shell’s legs still shaky.
The assassin considered the remains of the three Motion agents scattered near the opening into the structure. The lightning guns they once held were the only portions of them to remain undamaged. Their bodies were desiccated and burned and their clothes had disintegrated, leaving stick-thin, shriveled, mummy-like forms lying peacefully on the snow. There was no blood, or any liquid left to leak from the broken bodies.
The inside of the structure was one room built around what looked like a vertical mine shaft. A series of Great Race texts were stacked neatly to one side of the room along with assorted equipment. Drawn on the floor in chalk sediment was a diagram recognized by the assassin. As ancient as Pnakotus, the pentagram was a ward against the great enemy and could keep them at bay indefinitely, as long as they were not in numbers. They had been used in ancient times by the Great Race to seal the beasts beneath the earth. And they were used after the fall of Pnakotus, when the time was right, to seal the great enemy once more beneath the earth in stasis.
Now the traitor had used it as a weapon. Somehow—from reading the secret texts of Pnakotus, no doubt—the traitor had learned to release the great enemy and bind them. It had sealed the beast with the pentagram and left the texts behind as a lure for One. When the portal had been opened, the metal flap on the bottom of the portal had scraped clean a portion of the sigil, rendering it powerless and instantly releasing the beast—a potent trap.
The traitor was far more clever and dangerous than One had believed.
The assassin set out to consult the council for further orders.
On a street in Boston, at the moment the door to the small shack in Bary swung wide, an older man suddenly froze in midstep on the sidewalk and let out a hoarse cry of pain. Surrounded as he was in the midst of Fulton Street, many people came to his aid, offering to call a doctor or perhaps a police officer for assistance. But the man with the salt and pepper beard politely and insistently declined.
Shrugging off all inquiries as to his health with a wave of his hand and a smile, the man in the black coat turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 11:
Deep in the soul of impulse, memory
January 28, 1943: Arkham, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Nine days on a ship in the icy waters of the North Atlantic and now a New England winter, Arnold thought morosely to himself. Barnsby, on the other hand, seemed far more chipper than usual as they moved across the snowy campus of Miskatonic University, which was just resuming classes followi
ng Christmas break. As Arnold watched him Barnsby even began whistling. The fourteen stitches on the little man’s head, the remnants of his unfortunate run-in with the Abwehr agent in Scarborough, were quite prominent on his pale skin but nearly ready to come out. The criss-cross scars made it look like he had been treated by Dr. Frankenstein himself. The scar rippled on his forehead when he talked or smiled, as he was doing now. The further away from England Barnsby got, the happier he seemed.
Arnold could feel the weight lifted from his shoulders too, as though England were a little too close to the giants’ den of the Third Reich for comfort. It somehow seemed much safer here in America. The war was some distant thing, although both men knew it grew closer every day. No one they had seen here in the States held the harried look of the English, of people living every day within bomber range.
The university was overflowing with foot traffic. Students, excited to be back but somewhat disappointed at the same time, stood beneath huge baroque stone arches to get out of the wind, talking in small groups. Others hung their heads out windows to shout out into the winter air across the quadrangle. Those out in the wind did nothing but hurry toward their destinations, heads down, hoods up and gloves on to protect against the vicious wind.
“That’s it.” Arnold pointed up at the jutting roof of the University Library, which cut a bizarre zig-zag against the stark white sky. The American flag whipped dramatically in the air above the building, the only bit of color visible in the arctic conditions; the chill in the air seemed to consume color itself. Barnsby and Arnold walked carefully around a groundskeeper who was shoveling the light covering of snow from the steps of the building with an ancient, worn spade, the plume of his breath trailing in the air behind him like a scarf. The man did not acknowledge them or even look up. He simply grunted as he flung another shovel-load of snow onto a bush to the side of the steps, almost striking Barnsby as he brought the shovel back to the ground.
“Excuse me,” Barnsby chirped and tipped his hat.
“Damn kids,” the groundskeeper replied.
Inside the nearly boiling foyer of the library, Barnsby fumbled to wipe his glasses with a small rag. Already groups of students were gathered at the huge mahogany tables, consumed in their reading. A cold white light spilled in through the huge, cathedral-like windows, illuminating the room with a pearlescent glow.
“Upstairs?” Barnsby asked, glancing through his glasses to check the lenses, watching the traffic on the isolated, green carpeted staircase.
“Another psychic news flash?” Arnold snickered, weaving around tables towards the stairs.
“No, just that the sign on the door up there says ‘Peaslee’,” Barnsby smirked, and placed his glasses back on carefully.
“Nobody likes a smart guy, Al,” Arnold said and smiled. The two walked briskly up the stairs, banishing the last bit of winter numbness from their legs. On the second level of the library, a small U-shaped walkway led around to a cluster of more than a dozen faculty offices. The door in front of the two men read “Professor Wingate Peaslee.” They had found who they were looking for.
Having poked around Boston for a bit when they first got off the boat, they had attempted to hunt down Professor Nathaniel Peaslee. Instead of locating his address they found his death certificate, which informed them that the senior Peaslee had died in 1940 of a stroke at his home in Arkham. The records indicated his son, Wingate Peaslee, had inherited the old man’s estate and now taught psychology at Miskatonic University, the elder Peaslee’s former place of employment. Two days later, here they were.
Barnsby knocked.
“Come in, Charles,” a baritone voice offered from behind the sand blasted glass.
Arnold opened the door.
A middle-aged man in a U.S. army uniform considered them with a confused but friendly stare. His shoulder markings indicated he was a second lieutenant. The name tag on his coat read “W. Peaslee.” His beady eyes seemed somewhat too small for his face, but they spoke of almost a feral intelligence, the kind which could circumvent catastrophe through the most direct and base responses. He seemed like a man who would do well when lives were on the line. His mouth was wide and filled with uneven yellowed teeth, which he showed in his somewhat careful smile, and his hair was a thick and wavy black, combed back and shaved at the sides. He looked, to Arnold, like a hot dog salesman in military dress.
“Professor Peaslee?” Arnold asked placidly.
“Yes? I’m sorry, I was expecting a student—“
“May we speak to you? I am First Lieutenant Thomas Arnold and this is my associate, Lieutenant Barnsby. I believe the Army office in Boston called you?”
“Certainly, gentlemen. I was just packing the last of my things, here.” Peaslee placed his hat on his empty desk and sat in a rolling chair. He gestured to the couch with a ring-covered hand. “Sit, please.”
“It’s about your father.”
Peaslee’s eyebrows rose slowly and he looked up at Arnold, trying, it seemed, to stare through his calm expression into his very thoughts.
“Yes? May I see some identification, please?”
Barnsby and Arnold offered their identification cards. After Peaslee’s brief perusal they sat back down.
“How much do you know about all this, Mr...um...Lieutenant Arnold?”
“Well, that’s hard to say. We were hoping we could take a look at his library and gain access to your father’s notes pertaining to the fall of 1912.”
“I’m afraid my father’s notes from that period are unavailable.” Peaslee stood up.
“And why is that?” Barnsby asked.
“Why don’t you read the medical journals? I, quite frankly, am fed up with people staring at me when I explain my father’s curious life.”
“We’ve led curious lives ourselves. Perhaps we could offer some insight,” Barnsby suggested, his eyes filled with understanding.
Peaslee glanced down at his hands on his desk for some time. He looked up again briefly before suddenly saying:
“For five years, ending in 1912, something inhabited the form of my father. Nothing it wrote remains in my possession. When you showed up, I assumed you read the American psychological journals from the Twenties... “ Peaslee watched them carefully. For a long while the only audible noises were the students ruminating below on the quadrangle and the click of the electric clock.
“So? You’re still interested in my lunatic ramblings?” Peaslee laughed and sat back down.
“Go on,” was all Barnsby said.
“You don’t know how many times I have had this conversation. Let me congratulate you two. You are the first to stay through the introduction with straight faces.” Peaslee smirked and steepled his fingers. “My associates here wag their fingers at their temples when I walk by, and talk around campus about the Mad Peaslees is cheap. Even my commanding officers think I’m cracked. But I assure you, I have seen things which have marked my father’s testimony in my mind as fact. Even today, three years after his death, the things he wrote about after his ordeal continue to come true.”
“Such as?” Barnsby asked.
“The world war. He first wrote about it in the summer of 1936, after the dreams reached a crescendo. Everything about it. Where, when. Who. Even how it ends. So far, it’s all come to pass.”
“But how could he know these things?” Arnold piped up, watching Barnsby’s eyes search Peaslee’s face.
“I don’t really know. Even his notes are vague, and they are all basically dreams written down. Father spent the last five years of his life writing them down.”
“Do you think we could look at his notes and possessions?” Barnsby asked, standing up with a painted smile on his face. Arnold watched as the little man deliberately ungloved his right hand. It reminded him of a man slowly unsheathing a knife.
“Certainly. I am leaving tonight, I’m afraid, but Caroline, the woman at the house, will let you look at whatever you wish. I shall let her know you are coming by.”
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Peaslee and Barnsby shook hands slowly, Arnold tensed, waiting for the scene. Their was no epiphany or seizure as the two men locked hands. Barnsby finally pulled his hand away and placed his glove back on. Peaslee looked at the little British man for a moment and then smiled wanly.
“Good day.”
“We may be contacting you in the future,” Arnold said, and shut the door.
Arnold and Barnsby exited into the chill of College Street. Clusters of people passed, rushing toward warmer destinations, ignoring the two agents. Several bold motorists skidded down the ice-lined streets, unmindful of the danger.
“So?” Arnold mumbled through his scarf.
“He believes he’s telling the truth,” Barnsby replied.
“Shit.” Arnold suddenly stopped and looked down at the ground. “We should have gotten his address.”
“I already did.” Barnsby held up his right hand, smiled, and continued walking, leaving Arnold behind in the snow.
Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Page 15
