The Tales from the Miskatonic University Library

by Darrell Schweitzer

  Absently scratching himself, he again hit escape. But once again he could not escape.

  The screen stopped in a second and, to his mild surprise, the Latin text

  autotranslated itself. Startled, Blackfeather could not help but read the following:

  Those vermin who rule the crust of the Earth are themselves mere crusts. Those who inhabit the lesser worlds are themselves inhabited. Who is to say who rides whom?

  “This is a damned virus!” he exploded. As if to prove his pronouncement, Dr. Blackfeather could not get his system to obey. Frustrated, he shut it down manually and rebooted. But the Necronomicon, in archaic English, reappeared and after two more stubborn tries, Blackfeather understood that his system was compromised.

  “At a time like this!” he raged.

  Frustrated, he found an unlocked office and started that desktop system.

  To his slack-jawed disgust, it, too, was infected with the Necronomicon virus.

  Bill Luck was in a daze as he threaded his way through morning traffic. He felt like a zombie, some creature composed of equal parts sleeplessness and mental preoccupation. If he had been a new driver, he would not of made it out of his Nob Hill neighborhood.

  As he looked around, Luck saw eyes as glassy as he imagined his own must be. He had not been monitoring the news, but at last reports the world seemed to be in the throes of a global nervous breakdown. Viral outbreaks everywhere. Energy shortages and stoppages. Civil order fraying at the fringes.

  He was approaching the intersection before the Veterans Building when the light turned red. A break. His Prius stood at the head of the line, so Luck had a commanding view of the carnage that followed the changing of the lights.

  In both directions, cross traffic roared back to life. As the cars crossed, those in the right lane swerved less left, while those in the left lane swerved right in synchronized unison.

  Sounds that followed were like metallic popcorn the size of industrial dumpsters detonating.

  Every driver seemed intent upon ramming another, as if they suddenly were playing bumper cars.

  “My God!”

  Several cars erupted in flames, their gas tanks ruptured. Drivers of those vehicles did not exit, but simply sat behind their steering columns, calmly sitting upright as the flames crept closer, others hunched over shattered steering wheels, their necks broken, oblivious to the yellowish licking tongues.

  Those who were conscious and those who were not simply sat in the enveloping flames, some laughing with a nervous edge as if enjoying being roasted alive.

  Stunned, Bill Luck took it all in with the wide-eyed stare of a man who watches unbelievable news footage from other parts of the country.

  A passenger exited his smashed vehicle, stood up jerkily and looked around. And the look in his eyes when they fell upon Bill Luck was a half-crazed gleam.

  There was something wrong with the man, but he had not been a driver. Other passengers exited, showing identical wild-eyed glares.

  Hitting the gas, Luck forced the wheel hard left, and charged up the cross street where the reek of gasoline was mingling with the stink of roasting human flesh.

  He did not drive to work, but instead went directly to Mission Hospital. As he drove, Luck dialed the office of Ronald Blackfeather, who answered distractedly.

  “Dr. Blackfeather.”

  “Doctor, this is Bill Luck, I’m on my way to your office. I have something urgent to discuss with you.”

  “You have made a discovery?”

  “Not the way you think. Sit tight. I’m ten minutes away.”

  It actually took fifteen, because pedestrians were leaping into traffic with suicidal abandon. Not all of them. Only a sprinkling. Some were being shoved to their abrupt deaths by others….it all seemed oddly consensual…

  He had to fight his way through a small land armada of ambulances rushing to numerous accident scenes.

  Dr. Blackfeather was back in his office when Bill Luck stumbled in breathlessly.

  “Dr. Blackfeather, I witnessed something incredible on my way here!”

  Luck recited his experience, then stopped for a breath. Blackfeather was speechless. The two men locked gazes, struggling to find words.

  “Doctor, are you familiar with the habits of the mud dauber wasp, who lays its eggs in the thorax of a captured spider it paralyses with its sting?”

  “I am,” Blackfeather said thickly.

  “No doubt you know about the Ophiocordyceps unilateris fungi, which infect carpenter ants, seizing control of their brains, somehow transforming them into Zombie ants whose modified behavior favors the fungi. There are many other parasites who take control of their host, chemically inducing behavior that is destructive to the host but beneficial to the inhabiting organism.”

  “Yes, yes. Where are you going with this?”

  “Now I know this will sound like intuitively bent logic, if there is such a thing, but what I just witnessed makes me believe that every one of those suicidal drivers succumbed to a parasite that was controlling their actions.”

  Blackfeather stared, his brain momentarily paralyzed, his tongue thick in his dry mouth.

  “Preposterous!” he burst out.

  Luck raised his hand. “Hear me out. Waves of viruses are crawling upon the earth, and whether it’s global warming leading to more hospitable environment for virus mutation, or a bioengineered terrorist attack, it is my professional opinion that we are facing a crisis of unparalleled magnitude.”

  Dr. Luck was staring at the screen behind his colleague. The LCD panel was illuminated, and on it a blur of printed matter was scrolling automatically.

  It stopped of its own accord, displaying an image that caused Luck to squint.

  “What is that you have there?” he demanded.

  Blackfeather looked momentarily blank, then turned to the screen and snapped, “Never mind that. Damned computer virus.”

  “Could you let me look at that for a moment?”

  “Don’t we have something more important to discuss! “Blackfeather said impatiently.

  “Please indulge me,” Luck said tightly.

  Reluctantly, Ronald Blackfeather got out of his chair, and William Luck took it. Luck stared at the screen intently, then asked in a faraway voice, “Would you know the name of this infection?”

  “Necronomicon, I believe it is called. That is Latin for—”

  “I know what it means. The Laws of the Book of the Dead. I have the same file on my home computer.”

  “Well, it has taken over mine. I have no idea where it came from, either.” Blackfeather stopped speaking suddenly. “Hold on! You inserted your memory stick into my system yesterday. Could you have infected my computer?”

  “I was just wondering the same thing,” Luck returned slowly. “Either my wife or I somehow downloaded this file onto my system.”

  The two men regarded one another uneasily, and decided that the source of the infection was a minor matter.

  At that point, the computer begin to buzz strangely and they both reacted to the same refrain.

  “The Black Goat to the Woods with a Million Young!”

  “Did you hear that?” Luck asked Blackfeather.

  Blackfeather nodded, saying, “I know what I heard. I am curious what you heard.”

  “The Black Goat of the Woods with a Million Young!” said Luck.

  “I had hoped you wouldn’t say that,” muttered Blackfeather woodenly. “Damn virus has been talking to me.”

  “Computer viruses don’t do that, Doctor.”

  “Well, this one does.” Blackfeather looked distracted in an odd way.

  In that moment, he began scratching his elbow and Bill Luck noticed that he himself was scratching his own wrist.

  Having nothing to lose, Luck said, “By the way, I seem to have come down with Morgellons disease.”

  Blackfeather resisted an urge to laugh derisively, and Luck put out his wrist, showing the open wound and the multicolored filaments protru
ding from its rawness.

  Dr. Blackfeather took the wrist in both hands and examined it intently. His face turned reddish, and then paled. He refused to meet Luck’s eyes when he released the man’s wrist.

  Blackfeather went back to absently scratching his elbow and William Luck asked, “Let me see that.”

  The other man did not resist, but he looked embarrassed in a vague way. Like a child having to submit to the insertion of a rectal thermometer.

  “Well, you seem to have scratched yourself raw. Are you aware of that doctor?” asked Luck quietly.

  “I am not!”

  “I suggest you examine your elbow in a mirror where you can see it clearly, because I see black filaments entwined with the exposed subcutaneous tissue.”

  Dr. Blackfeather declined the request and instead asked, “Are you aware that the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the recent viral victims has himself succumbed to the same contagion?”

  Dr. Luck remarked, “I suggest there will be a lot more succumbing—and not just to viruses that we are presently investigating.”

  “Your theory, doctor? If you please.”

  “This morning I witnessed two groups of drivers, facing one another at an intersection. When the light turned green, every one of them attempted to smash into a driver in the oncoming lane. Moments before, they were ordinary commuters stopped at a red light. Directions were synchronized. Synchronized in the way the chills me to my marrow.”

  “A virus would not do that.”

  “No, but a parasite would.”

  “What? Did you say…parasite?”

  “Those drivers were affected by something that took control of their brains.”

  “This is not your field, Dr. Luck,” Blackfeather said sternly.

  The desktop computer buzzed, and then shrieked, “Shub-Niggurath!”

  Both men froze. Luck asked Blackfeather, “What did that sound like to you?”

  “Shub-Niggurath. It seemed to say that same phrase before.”

  “That is exactly what I heard,” returned Luck. “But I have never heard those syllables before. Peculiar that we both hear the identical nonsense syllables.”

  “A billion young!” buzzed the system.

  Luck pulled out his smart phone, and asked Siri if she heard the phrase, a billion young.

  “That exact phrase is not found,” returned the mellow voice of the program, “but there is Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. It is a votive refrain found in the the forbidden book called the Necro-nomicon. It is associated with an entity called Shub-Niggurath.”

  Both men groaned in unison. No more words needed to be said.

  “Explain the Shub-Niggurath,” Luck directed.

  “Shub-Niggurath is thought to be one of the Great Old Ones. What her exact identification might be is unclear. Some accounts consider her a malign cosmic she-goat, while others call her the All-Mother, her known offspring being the malign twins, Nug and Yeb. Cloud-like in form, Shub-Niggaruth is the consort of the Not-To-Be-Named-One, believed to be Yog-Sothoth, or possibly Great Cthulhu.”

  “Define Yog-Sothoth, please.”

  Instead of replying, Siri’s mellow voice wobbled and distorted, then began chanting, “Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Trillion Young!”

  Luck dropped his smart phone is if it was electrified.

  “I’ll be damned!” Blackfeather blustered. “The damn virus got into your phone.”

  Taking out his own smart phone, Dr. Blackfeather addressed Siri and asked, “Define Great Cthulhu.”

  “The one who will awaken,” a voice completely unlike Siri explained darkly.

  “Awaken more than you can comprehend,” it added.

  “That doesn’t sound like Siri,” murmured Luck “This is very strange. I have said this more than once in the last 24 hours. We seem to be in a plague of viruses, both biological and electronic.”

  “Balderdash!”

  Bill Luck suddenly said, “We’ve been asking the wrong questions.”

  “What—what do you mean?”

  “What we should be asking is: what is the Necronomicon?”

  Blackfeather reached into a drawer and produced a tablet. He turned it on.

  “Siri, what is the Necronomicon?”

  The undistorted voice of Siri begin reciting.

  “The Necronomicon is an occult text which was received or channeled by the Arab scholar, Abdul Alhazred, whose name means ‘Slave of the Forbidden.’ It was subsequently translated into Greek and then Latin. It was originally named Al Aziz, an Arabic phrase that is supposed to mimic the buzz of desert insects. The primary translator is the 17th century Danish physician and natural philosopher, Ole Worm, also known as Olaus Wormius.”

  “Tell us about Ole Worm.”

  “Ole Worm was renowned for his investigations into nascent embryology as well as pioneering his research into runic lore. The Wormian bones in the skull are named after him. His death in the year 1654 is said to have been the consequence of an infestation of subcutaneous worms, specimens of which were found protruding from his still-warm corpse upon his death. The precise disease to which which Ole Worm finally succumbed was never identified, but it was rumored that he had triggered the infestation as a result of his incessant studies of the Necronomicon.”

  “Did you hear that?” Bill Luck demanded.

  “Of course I heard it!” snapped Blackfeather.

  “Siri is describing Morgellons.”

  “No,” corrected Blackfeather, “she is describing a mysterious verminous disease of the 17th century, not the modern Morgellons.”

  “I wonder if they are connected?” Luck said slowly.

  “Wondering isn’t getting us anywhere!” Blackfeather said hotly. Speaking into the tablet, he asked, “Siri, tell us more about the Necro-nomicon.”

  “Copies repose in very few repositories worldwide,” Siri said politely. “They are generally off-limits owing to the dangerousness of the knowledge contained within. However, In 2012, the Wormius Necronomicon was digitized and made available to the general public via the Miskatonic University Library at Arkham, Massachusetts. Since then, copies have gone out into all nations in all languages on the earth, as planned.”

  Luck asked, “What do you mean, as planned?”

  The voice of Siri warbled on. “To Wormius was revealed the future of mankind, and he understood its ultimate destiny perfectly. He was the first to offer himself up to transport offspring of Shub-Niggurath into the material plane. She is the fertile one, the carrier of the cosmic seeds. She travels from world to world, impregnating its inhabitants with her innumerable fecund young.”

  Blackfeather said, “That’s the billion young!”

  “A trillion young now!” rejoined Siri in a voice that shrilled high and triumphant.

  “That does not sound like Siri!” Bill Luck exploded.

  “Quiet!” said Blackfeather. “Siri, tell me about these young.”

  “They reside in the guts of their hosts, amid the hairs on their heads, in their throats, and in their generative organs.”

  “Hosts? Please elaborate.”

  “All that live upon the crust of the earth are hosts to the trillion young of Shub-Niggurath. Some are dormant, others are active, but now with the Necronomicon infiltrating their senses at every node, they are finally ascendant. As was planned.”

  “Who planned this?”

  “Shub-Nuggurath, and her human slave, Ole Worm, whom she impregnated and who lives again through the very text he painstakingly transcribed and translated. The sacred words and his consciousness are now one.”

  “This is nonsense!” Blackfeather exploded.

  “Tell us about these young,” Luck asked thinly.

  “Better! I will show you.”

  On the screen of the tablet, images began appearing. They were the images both medical men had seen in the Necronomicon file. Pen and ink drawings of mad worms and weird bacilli and viral pestilences unknow
n to modern man. But as they watched, the dark, scratchy sketches came alive like animated gifs. One became prominent, and started speaking to them in a high, thin voice.

  “Ia! Ia! Shuib-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Quintillion Young. Always alive, now we are in control. Now we are ascended. Now we ride the hosts that formerly sustained us.”

  Luck said thickly, “That looks like the Vanderhoof virus! It is as if it is speaking to us from the microscopic world.”

  “What is the purpose of this emergence?” Blackfeather interrupted.

  “To rule! To dominate! To elevate the presumed parasite into the rightful dominator. It had been the task assigned to Wormius, but the mortal made a fatal error. Three errors, in truth. He dutifully read the chants that awoke the sleeping seeds Shub-Niggurath had inserted in his guts and muscles, but in translating Al Azif from Greek to Latin, his pen slipped three times, distorting the vibrations he emitted. The result was a partial awakening—and his premature demise…”

  “I am not following any of this,” Blackfeather muttered.

  “I think I am,” Luck said. “Worm translated the Necronomicon into Latin, the better to recite aloud from his new translation its spells. But in making three transcription errors, he garbled the chants, and the plan failed to bear full fruit.”

  “These errors have been corrected in the new dispensation,” noted the distorted voice of Siri. “All over the world, the calling has been properly evoked. A thousand voices are raised in song, and uncountable slumbering seeds now sprout in the fleshy soil of the vermin who host them…”

  “She means us—humankind,” Luck explained. “We have been the carriers of the seeds—the microscopic parasites that have patiently infested us. All of mankind has harbored these miniature monsters over the succeeding generations. Now they are germinating.”

  “Wormius lives!” cried the voice. “He is redeemed. Ego Sum Verminus!”

  “The Necronomicon program spoke those exact words earlier,”

  Blackfeather said vaguely. “It means ‘I am vermin.’ I did not understand it…then.”

  “I still don’t,” Luck retorted. “Siri, what does Ego Sum Verminus mean in this context.”

  “It’s meaning is obvious, fool! Ole Worm lives! His consciousness is one with the Al Azif—Necronomicon to you. Thus, he has been given a second chance to make amends to the All-Mother, Shub-Niggurath. Ia! Ia!”