by Prey (lit)
"Allow me to introduce Vanessa Charles," smiled young Mr Billings. "A spinster of Ventnor . . . and the first witch in human history to reach full-term. That is why she needs so many children, you see! Young flesh, to strengthen her babies! But of course, nobody in 2049 can have children. There aren't any children. That was why we had to go back to Fortyfoot House . . . that was why we needed to take them from the past."
The woman's tiny mouth opened and closed, and then suddenly she wheezed, "Wotcher, cocker. I knew I'd get you in the end. You caw-baby."
"Kezia," I whispered.
"Oh yes, cocker. And Liz too. And all of them. And now the lovely Vanessa. What about a last kiss, cocker?"
She let out a thin, hissing sound that was supposed to be a laugh. But she stopped abruptly as her huge stomach suddenly gave a repulsive double-shudder, and the interior of the chapel was blitzed with lightning.
"Nearly time!" said young Mr Billings gleefully. But then he looked at me suspiciously, and frowned. "You do understand, don't you, that I had no choice?"
"What do you mean?" I asked him, dully. I couldn't take my eyes off Vanessa's surging stomach. I couldn't stop trying to imagine what it was that made it surge so violently. I couldn't stop thinking thatmore than anything else in the worldI didn't want to be here when whatever it was emerged. "What do I mean? What do I mean? Do you think I wanted to slaughter all those innocent children? They asked me for twelve, that's all, and so I gave them twelve. I told you why. I told you I didn't want to give them any more. I felt such remorse! I tried to stop them, I tried! That was why I asked you to leave Fortyfoot House, so that your Liz could never complete her pregnancy, so that her witch-entity would die within her. All three pregnancies must come from the same human source, or else the embryos simply atrophy, and die, and then the witch-entity dies, too. That is why Vanessa here is the only witch left."
"If I'd known that " I began.
"Yes, yes, I should have made it clearer, I suppose. I did try, my dear sir. I did try. But you would do what you wanted to do!"
The ground trembled, and more skulls rolled down the mountain of bones.
Mazurewicz, behind his bandages, whispered, "I must feed her more. The time is almost here!"
Young Mr Billings slid back down towards the place beside the altar where he had originally been standing. "Mr Mazurewicz is my midwife, aren't you, Mr Mazurewicz? He has always been the midwife, when witches come to give birth. Those who know nothing of the Old Ones, and the power they used to exercise . . . well, they used to be afraid of Mr Mazurewicz. Little did they know what they really should have been afraid of!"
He laid his hand on Mazurewicz's shoulder, and squeezed it, affectionately but respectfully. "Mr Nicolas Mazurewicz is the character the people called the King of Darkness; or Old Nick; or Old Scratch. Sometimes they called him Satan."
Mazurewicz said, more urgently, "It's time, Billings! She needs to feed!"
Young Mr Billings said, "Go on, then," and grasped D-s Miller by the collar-bone. I don't know what nerve he pressed, but D-s Miller let out a quick, gasping breath, and his eyes bulged helplessly, and he neither moved nor spoke. Mazurewicz returned to the bulging, churning Vanessa, and immediately cut her off a huge steaming slice of liver and lungs, and crammed it between her podgy lips.
Young Mr Billings said, "I should have made it clearer, yes. There are so many things I should have done, and didn't. And all those children dead! It's a terrible pity, sir! A terrible pity! I weep for them!"
Brown Jenkin, just behind me, giggled and tittered.
"Quiet, Jenkin," Young Mr Billings admonished him. He released D-s Miller quite casually, and raised up his arms as before.
"The trouble was," he said, his hoarse voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "The trouble was that they offered me something very special, in return for all of my services. If I gave them all the children they needed, for their great Renewal, they would make me part of them. I would have dominion over the world, too. And not just the world, but space and time! I would exist for ever, beyond all human understanding. I would indulge every conceivable sense and many that are inconceivable. I would travel beyond the barriers of infinity.
"Only one human could join themonly one! My father was tempted, of course, but he wouldn't let them have the children! Only one human in all the world, to give them the knowledge they need to command every other human! At least for the few miserable years which remain to you humans, before we chase you and devour you and use you for whatever sport amuses us."
Rubbing his neck, stepping away from him, D-s Miller said, "You're crackers, you are."
Young Mr Billings waved a hand at him dismissively, and then came close up to me, so close that I could smell his sour-milk breath. "It's you I wanted, David. Somebody who knows about the Old Ones. A Gauleiter, if you likea lieutenant. Somebody human who's been with a witch. So that when I'm one with the Old Onesyou can speak for me in the human world. I will be God, and you will be my Jesusdo you understand?"
I could scarcely speak. I suddenly understood the scale of my own weakness and my own gullibility; but also my humanity.
"You like the idea of that, don't you?" said young Mr Billings. "Run, I told you! But you didn't run. Not you! Too curious. Too easily tempted. Nowstay closewait till you see what happens now. Jenkinguard them, don't you dare to let them go!"
"Ach, merde," spat Brown Jenkin. With one claw, he hooked me aside.
Young Mr Billings began chanting again. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" The ground shook so violently that huge lumps of masonry dropped off the chapel walls, and bounced across the slates. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
Even Brown Jenkin backed away as Mazurewicz raised one hand and screamed out, "It's happening! It's happening at last! The Renewal, Billings! The Renewal!"
Thunder bellowed over our heads. The natural forces that this Renewal was stirring up were cataclysmic. But this was hardly surprising, when you realized that this grossly distended Vanessa Charles was just about to give birth to a species of creature which had once commanded both time and space.
Mazurewicz, dancing like some terrible bandaged scarecrow, lifted the knife with which he had been slicing up meat. He whirled it around and around, and then he thrust it deep into the soft glistening flesh of Vanessa's belly.
Vanessa's eyes pigged in agony. One of her fat arms was helplessly flung up. But she must have known from the very beginning that she had to die. Mazurewicz began slowly to draw the knife upwards, cutting her wide open in a grotesque parody of a Caesarean section, when the thing that had been gestating inside her decided to force its way out now.
"Oh, Christ," breathed D-s Miller. The whole chapel shuddered, and the sky was split with lightning from side to side.
Vanessa's stomach tore, and out of the gaping hole protruded waving tentacles, like those of a gray shining squid. More and more of them writhed out, until her whole stomach was alive with struggling arms.
"The son of saliva!" screamed young Mr Billings. "The son of saliva! Ia! Ia!"
I stared in horror at Vanessa's face. She was still alive, still sensateand God alone knows what pain she was suffering. But then there was a moment of extreme tension, in which I heard her ribs cracking apart, and the huge tentacled beast rose up, and swelled.
Vanessa's eyes opened, and streams of brilliant light shone out of them from the inside. Her mouth stretched wide, and light poured out of that, too. Then her skull exploded, and a quivering globule of shining protoplasm, a kind of shimmering gaseous jellyfish, poured out into the gloom, followed by three or four more.
"The son of seed!" screamed young Mr Billings.
There was another soft, bloody, violent explosion. Vanessa was blown apart into ribbons of flesh and shattered bone. A huge black amorphous shadow rose out of her remains, a shadow which carried an aura of intense cold and infinite evil.
"The son of blood! Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
The three hideous sons of the Old Ones hung suspended in
the air above the grisly altar of Vanessa Charles' body. After thousands of years in concealment, they had returned at last to re-establish their rule over a barren and poisoned world. I didn't really understand what they were, or where they had originally come from; but I had the coldest feeling that they believed this Earth to be theirs, rather than ours, and that they would show us very little mercy when they reclaimed it.
Mazurewicz wiped his knife on his coat, and stepped away, bowing his head. But young Mr Billings approached the three floating entities, his arms outstretched, and greeted them as if they were gods.
"I brought you back!" he shouted. "I brought you back! Son of seed and son of saliva and son of blood! I brought you back! Now you can join together! And now I can join you, too!"
I sensed a dark turmoil between the three creatures. The squid-like thing began to roll up its tentacles, and the shining globules began to pour liquidly together. Above them, the cold black shadow hung in the sulphurous sky, like a conjuror's cloak at the beginning of a mystifying act of magic.
And I suppose it was magicthe original pre-human magic that over the centuries had given us witches and faith-healers and psychics.
Without any sign of fear, young Mr Billings stepped into the bloody center of Vanessa Charles' remains, one foot on her shattered spine, and threw back his head.
''Now you can join together!" he cried. "And I can join you, too!"
It occurred to me then that I was witness to a genealogical event as critical as the moment when the first two single cells had divided; or when the first fishlike creature had dragged itself out of the primeval swamps; or when an apelike creature had first haltingly uttered words. The future of the whole planet pivoted on this one devastating moment: not only its future, but its past. We had brought ourselves here, willingly or carelessly or both. Was there still enough time to say no?
Above my head, the tentacled thing was drawn deeply into the blackness of the shadow, and then the glowing globules followed it. What remained was a huge dark virulent cloud, colder than anything that I had ever felt beforeso cold that it radiated cold. Yog-Sothoth, the three-in-one, the Unholy Trinity from which the Old Ones had been created, the Hell-on-Earth. And Mazurewicz, who was the devil, was its midwife.
The world had never made any particular sense to me before. Here we all were, whirling around in space, placed on this planet for no reason that anybody could think of. But now that I stood in the bitter-cold shadow of Yog-Sothoth, every mystery of human life and superstition and religion seemed to be answerable.
The fundamental fact of our existence on this planet was that we were not the first. Our folk-memory was haunted by ghosts and hallucinations and myths and extraordinary superstitions . . . the dreamtime, the Aborigines had called it. The time before. The time before uswhen the Old Ones had dominated the Earth.
My ears were bombarded by a deep drumming noise, as the black shadow gradually descended on young Mr Billings. Lightning crackled all around him, short-circuiting from one finger to the next. Sparks flew out of his hair. He screamed ecstatically as the cloud rumbled lower and lower; and as he screamed, a torrent of sparks flew out of his mouth, like sparks from a cutting-torch.
"I shall rule you all!" he shrieked at us. "I shall live for ever and ever, and I shall rule you all!"
Without saying anythingwithout even looking at meD-s Miller started running toward the altar. Brown Jenkin lurched after him, and slashed at the air with his claws; but didn't dare to go any further.
"Sergeant!" I shouted at him. "Sergeant!"
But D-s Miller was scaling the mountain of bones as fast as he could; and I suddenly understood what he was trying to do. One man, young Mr Billings had boasted. One man can chase you and devour you. But supposing that man wasn't young Mr Billings? Supposing that man was
D-s Miller dived at young Mr Billings and rugby-tackled him onto the bloody wreckage that had once been Vanessa Charles. Young Mr Billings shouted at him in fear and horror, but D-s Miller kicked him awaynot once, but twice, and then again, and again. Young Mr Billings slid down the crumbling, broken ossuary of children's bones, until he was lying on his back, one leg upraised, against the chapel wall.
D-s Miller stood in his place. There was an expression on his face which I couldn't understand. Beatificmartyredbut almost outrageously satisfiedas if he had at last performed an act of public service which was worthy of him. No wonder he had believed in Brown Jenkin, right from the very beginning. He was nearly a saint.
The cold black cloud roared down on top of him like a theater-curtain coming down. What did Yog-Sothoth care, which human it enveloped? For one instant, I saw D-s Miller with his eyes alight, his whole body transfigured with showers of dazzling static, his hair flying upward, his arms outstretched. Then the huge black cloud rumbled upward, up into the poisonous-yellow sky, and there was a sound which compressed the atmosphere so intensely that I heard it because I didn't hear itit simply hurt my eardrums, and then it didn't hurt my eardrums, because it had passed.
Young Mr Billings, aghast, staggered knee-deep up the pile of bones until he reached the bloody and deserted summit.
"Me!" he screamed at the sky. "Me! You were supposed to take me!"
"Et maintenant pourquoi?" demanded Brown Jenkin, even more enraged. "Tu as promised me alles, you fucker! Et maintenant c'est tout disparu, dans cet cloud!"
Young Mr Billings dropped to his knees, groaning and sobbing and punching his own chest. Brown Jenkin scuttled up to him and stood over him and spat at him, spat in his face, spat in his hair, strings of spittle all over his cheeks and his ears and his eyelashes.
"Pourquoi did I suffer and fight for all of these years bastard-bastard! Pourquoi!"
Young Mr Billings clenched his fists and sobbed and wailed as if he were in mourning. Brown Jenkin stood and stared at him with undiluted venom. Then, with a quick matter-of-fact gesture, he dragged his claws across young Mr Billings' throat, and hooked out his larynx. Young Mr Billings pumped scarlet blood, twisted, and collapsed, one leg quivering. Brown Jenkin stood with his larynx on the end of his claw, with his upper lip curled in the nearest that I had ever seen him manage to a grin.
I hesitated for just one moment more. Then I ran. Mazurewicz saw me running, but didn't make any attempt to stop me. Perhaps Mazurewicz was more philosophical about the human dilemma than he had ever been given credit for. Perhaps he simply didn't feel like running after me. Old Scratch, running after a sprat? I ran through the graveyard and jumped across the brook, and labored my way up the slippery, sloping hill. Up above me, the sky was growing ominously dark, and the sea was making a sound that I had never heard before: a slow, oily gurgle. Perhaps Mazurewicz hadn't bothered to chase me because his work was done. He had supervised the birth of Yog-Sothoth, the Unholy Trinity, and God would never rule this planet again.
Panting, sweating, but chilled to the bone, I scaled the fire-escape up to the roof. Halfway up, a rusty rung gave way in my hand, and dropped to the patio below. I heard it clang, dully, and bounce. I clung to the handrail for a long twenty seconds, shivering. Then I carried on up, praying all the way.
I crossed the slimy roof, balancing, gasping, trying not to slip. Lightning flickered in the distance, over the English Channel. Thunder rumbled, and echoed, and re-echoed. At last I reached the skylight, and opened it up. I took one last look around. I doubted that I would ever live to see 2049 . . . but here it was, with its dying vegetation, and its corrosive air, and its seas viscous with oil. Somewhere, already, the chilly black shadow of Yog-Sothoth was spawning more . Perhaps they deserved the planet that they had now inherited. We had certainly deserved to lose it.
I eased myself down through the skylight, and closed it, and heard the last sprinkle of acid rain against the glass.
22 - Time of Trouble
Downstairs, I found Danny in the living-room with Charity, as well as Detective-constable Jones, two more CID officers, and a milling crowd of confused uniformed officers.
&nbs
p; "Where's Detective-sergeant Miller?" asked D-c Jones. "I thought he was with you."
"Oh . . . no," I said. "I haven't seen him."
"What happened to your leg?" asked D-c Jones. "Looks like you need a few stitches in that."
I looked down and saw that my right trouser-leg was dark with drying blood. Brown Jenkin had slashed me, deep into the muscle, but since my escape from the chapel I simply hadn't felt it.
"I, er, caught it," I told him. "There was a sharp piece of tin on the edge of a suitcase."
"Well, it looks like you need a few stitches in that," D-c Jones repeated. "And a tetanus jab."
"Where the hell's Dusty got to, then?" asked one of the CID officers, taking out a cigarette and lighting it one-handed. "We've got Mrs Pickering down at the vicarage, looking like the meat counter at Sainsbury's; we've got all this hoo-ha up here, and no D-s Miller."
