Shotguns v. Cthulhu

by Larry DiTillio

  Not important.

  In the gap between my memories and the world, something hovers. It is alive and terrible, and has slept a long, long time. It speaks to me, and uses me and makes me whole. It has taken me into it and has made me real. I sleep in it in the cold mountain and it keeps me warm.

  I gave myself to it before I knew it even existed. I gave it blood on the mountain and worshipped at its stones and made the proper ablutions. It heard my pleas even when I didn’t know I was making them. It heard me and watched me and waited.

  It took me, one night on the mountain, and now I am with it forever. It speaks to me from time to time. It manages me. It works through my memories, it keeps me from going mad by moving my mind from subject to subject.

  SLEEP it says to me. A word so complete and total, so encompassing it washes away all that has come before in my life like a wave of white. Erasing all want, all need, all time.

  I will sleep soon, and when I sleep, I will forget. But not forever.

  Nothing human lasts forever. Does it? Please. Is there someone there with me in the dark.

  Hello?

  Listen.

  In the Pacific, there is a fish which poisons its prey in such a way that it causes the fish to flail about, to swim in circles and to let off a distress chemical which calls other bigger fish for it to feed on.

  It waits, this predator, until the other bigger fish get close, and then it feeds. The poor bait fish can be poisoned dozens of times in this manner before succumbing to death. Bloated with the poison, mind reeling, body reflexively going through a terror-dance, it can sometimes last days in this stupor.

  I think about that fish a lot, beneath the water, screaming.

  I can’t remember why.

  Snack Time

  Chris Lackey

  I was in a bit of a hurry.

  I was actually running for my life down an empty street in Los Angeles, when I noticed a police car parked in front of a donut shop. A cop was just walking out with a bag in his arms. I ran up to him.

  “Officer, Officer!” I shouted. He was in his mid-thirties and a bit overweight. He had a mustache, which seemed to still be in fashion for police officers and firemen. His name tag read “Officer Bluthe.”

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, annoyed.

  “I...uh...”

  I panicked for a second. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him what was really going on. That would sound crazy.

  “My friends were...attacked.” The truth.

  “Where are they? Did you see who attacked them?”

  “Well yeah. It...” I had to softball it. “It was a dog.” Okay, that’ll work, I thought. He looked around, worried. I knew he was buying my story.

  “Where is the dog now?” he asked—a good question.

  “I don’t know. It was chasing me. I think it might still be around.” I was sure it was. “It’s really big like a St. Bernard, but it looks more like a Rottweiler.” I was laying it on pretty thick. Sure, it was big and doggy, but not like any dog I’d ever seen.

  “Okay. How bad are your friends hurt?” the officer asked.

  They were dead.

  “I don’t know. But we should get out of here quick,” I said very calmly. I always keep my head in crisis situations. I guess that’s why I’m still alive.

  At that moment I started to feel a little dizzy and nauseous. I could see the officer was feeling it too.

  “Okay. Let me call this...” Bluthe said, but he was interrupted. I was looking over at the donut shop, to the side of us, when something moved at him. I couldn’t see what happened next because warm liquid sprayed in my face and in my eyes. I heard him hit the ground as I ran blindly in the other direction. I tasted blood.

  I wiped my eyes as I ran, and almost slammed into the donut shop’s front door. It wasn’t a chain store—it was one of those places that sell donuts and Chinese food. I never understood why there are so many Chinese/donut shops in Los Angeles. Someone told me it had to do with deep fryers, that you use the same ones for making donuts as you do egg rolls. I never checked into it.

  As I was saying, I was running into a fast-food-Chinese-and-donut-shop, covered in blood. I got inside and pushed the door shut behind me. I wiped my face a few more times, trying to get the blood out of my eyes. When I thought I could see well enough, I looked for the beast through the glass door. Nothing. All I could see was the cop’s body laying on the ground about fifteen feet from the squad car and ten feet from...his head. I started to panic.

  “Oh, my god!” yelled someone behind me. Heh. I swear I jumped out of my skin. Probably the worst startle of the evening. Well one of the worst.

  I spun around to see a chubby, teen-aged, Chinese-American kid with a name tag reading “Nick”, standing behind the counter. He took a step back. Oh yeah, I thought. I’m covered in blood and look like a lunatic. Normally a 49-year-old, skinny, balding, white guy isn’t that intimidating, but when covered in blood—that’s enough to give anyone pause.

  There was also a rather dirty looking, bearded man (homeless, I presumed), and a thin, older, Hispanic woman wearing scrubs under a jacket. I think she was a nurse. Everyone looked terrified. Of me.

  “Kid, call the cops,” I said very calmly—though I honestly didn’t know what the police could do. Maybe they had enough firepower to take the thing down, but mostly I just wanted more people around to distract it.

  Nick walked over to the phone without taking his eyes off me, slowly picked up the receiver and dialed 9-1-1. I thought about asking him if we could lock the door, but I didn’t think it would stop the hound.

  I looked back outside. No sign of the beast—or of anyone. Los Angeles can be like that: a city with millions of people where at times the streets are totally empty. You can actually be alone on a typically busy street, and I really felt it then. I felt very alone.

  “Are you okay?” the nurse asked hesitantly. She was cautiously walking towards me. The homeless guy just sat there drinking his coffee.

  “Yeah, it’s not my blood,” I said a little too casually.

  “Oh…” she stammered as she stopped walking.

  “Hold on. I didn’t kill anybody. There is this really big, rabid dog out there. It attacked that cop,” I explained as I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder.

  “Officer Bluthe?” Nick said, almost shouting. He ran and looked out of the front doors. The whole front of the place was glass, but filled up with those poster-sized stickers with pictures of donuts and Chinese food.

  “Oh, god,” he whispered. The nurse walked over and looked out one of the windows. She gasped. I felt bad for a moment. This was my fault. If I was more careful... If I anticipated the opposition better... those fanatics. My friends and I had a plan that night. We knew there would be opposition, but we thought we could handle it. We were wrong. They overpowered us. They had machine guns! Where did they get machine guns? And in the confusion of the gun fight, the summoned hound had no one to control it. All my friends were devoured or riddled with bullets or both. I managed to get out with my life, but the beast seemed to be on my trail. Officer Bluthe, Nick, these poor people... all affected by what I had done. Or didn’t do.

  Then I felt the nausea again, only for a split second, before it appeared. It’s a kind of sickening feeling, a vertigo. Then the beast slammed into the glass and bounced off. The nurse screamed and I felt myself just shake hard for a moment. I couldn’t believe that the glass had held. Perhaps my luck was beginning to change.

  The thing lay on the ground stunned. That was the first time I really got a good look at the creature. To call it a hound now, seems a gross misinterpretation, but nothing else really comes close. It moved like a dog, it had four legs, a head, a mouth and eyes... but that’s where any real similarities ended. Its bone structure was different, the joints were odd and misshapen and the skin was textured like a rotten lizard. My head throbbed as my poor brain fought with the cognitive dissonance, but I couldn’t look away. The
y call it a Hound of Tindalos. I think. The taxonomy is sketchy on these sorts of things, so I’m still really not sure.

  It was still conscious, but stunned. I knew I wouldn’t have an opportunity like that again, so I bolted out of the front door and towards the fallen police officer. I crouched down to unclip the holster and pull out his pistol. I spun around, ready to shoot the fallen beast with every last bullet in the gun—but it was gone.

  Oh no. I blew it. I kept spinning around and aiming the gun, thinking the beast was going to try to sneak up on me. I needed to move, get my back up against a wall or something, but the police car caught my attention—more specifically the shotgun inside it. I need that, I thought. But it was locked into some kind of holder.

  I leaned over the cop’s body and rummaged through his pockets, while keeping an eye out for the hound. I really didn’t know what the thing was capable of. I’d heard stories about the Hounds of Tindalos, but it was already doing things I didn’t think were possible. I thought it could only slip into our world through the angles of our universe, but it seemed to be popping up anywhere it liked. But then why didn’t it appear on the other side of the glass—the side I was actually on? I pushed the thought out of my head as I pulled out the cop’s keys.

  I moved over to the squad car and checked the handle. It was open. I sat in the driver’s seat and something poked me in the back. It was my dagger—my magic dagger. I’d forgotten I’d crammed it down the back of my pants when things went south back at the mansion. I didn't know it yet, but it was going to be very important that I had it. At that point, however, it was just a pain in my lower back.

  I started going through the keys, trying to find the one that would unlock the shotgun. Finally I got the right key, grabbed the shotgun and took some ammo. As I got out of the squad car, I tucked the pistol into my belt and ran back over to the shop. Thankfully, Nick hadn’t locked me out. As I stepped inside I saw him standing tensely behind the counter.

  “Stay away!” yelled Nick, brandishing his own shotgun. Oh no, how does everyone have a gun?

  “My god, put that thing away!” screamed the nurse.

  “Nick. Calm down. I’m on your side,” I said quietly and calmly. “My name is David Daniels. I work at UCLA. I’m a professor. That thing... is some... it’s a government experiment gone awry.”

  “It just walked into... nothing!” he said angrily. I know he wasn’t mad at me, he was mad at this thing for twisting his view of reality. When dealing with the supernatural, some people get quiet, some get angry, and some even pass out. Nick was angry, with a weapon. Not a good combination.

  “I know... It’s unsettling. But the animal is... equipped with state-of-the-art... stealth technology.”

  “What, like in Star Trek?” he said with the shotgun still pointed at me. At that point I couldn’t tell if he liked Star Trek or hated it.

  “Yeah, sure, Star Trek—but much more dangerous. Please, can you aim that thing somewhere else? I don’t want you to put it down. I actually want you to shoot that damn thing if you can see it. Shoot it. Blast it and don’t think twice.”

  “I have to go now,” said the nurse. She began slowly walking towards the front door.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, moving to block her exit. “It’s still out there.”

  “I have to go home. My husband is waiting for me. I have to get him his medication...”

  I wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. I’m not really a people person, so I pointed the gun at her. “Sit down,” I screamed. Then she screamed at me. Then Nick was screaming. But the homeless guy didn’t scream. He just looked a bit concerned.

  “Put the gun down or I will shoot you!” Nick yelled at me.

  “This is a life-or-death situation. If she goes outside she’ll die!”

  “So you’re gonna kill her?”

  I realized I might have been a bit overbearing, so I lowered my shotgun and put it on the floor.

  “Sorry…sorry,” I stammered.

  And, as if on cue, that bend in space/time happened, but inside the shop. It was hard to focus on the hound. It was standing a few feet from me, but it looked like it was yards away. My perceptions were confused. I wasn’t sure where to aim. Nick, however, seemed to have no problem. Before my eyes could even focus on it, I heard the deafening boom of his shotgun and saw the beast jerk over. It rolled across the floor and faded away.

  The homeless guy finally got up and moved to the back of the restaurant. He still took his coffee with him. The nurse just climbed up on top of a table and started doing this strange staccato scream. Nick started yelling. I couldn’t tell if he was screaming in fear or for victory. I looked at him and he was smiling, but still screaming. It was very unsettling.

  “I got him! I got him! I got him! HA!” He screamed. Nick may not have been all there, but he had some great survival instincts.

  “It’s okay. Everyone has to calm down. We’re going to be okay,” I said.

  With a crazed smile on his face, Nick shifted his gaze to me. He looked at me for a moment, unchanged, then his face melted into an expression of confusion. The nurse got quiet.

  “What's your name again?” Nick said skeptically.

  “David. Professor David Daniels,” I said, hoping the police were going to show up soon.

  “And why do you know so much about this? Did you make that monster?” He walked out from behind the counter to me and vaguely waved his gun in my general direction. I looked over at my shotgun still on the floor.

  “Oh, no. No. I... I worked in another department.” Even I didn’t believe that one.

  “Sure,” Nick said skeptically. I was a bit worried, but I didn’t think he would shoot me. I knew that if the police arrived and got us out of there, my contacts in the department could make all of those problems go away. In my side work into the world of the paranormal, I managed to bring a few police officers into the fold.

  “Nick, I’m sorry about your friend. Officer Bluthe. I lost some friends tonight, too. I keep thinking about what I’m going to tell their families. About what happened...” I trailed off. Nick relaxed a bit when I said this. I thought that letting Nick see a bit of my “sensitive side” might win him over, though I had no intention of contacting any of my associates’ families. Why bother?

  “Can I leave now?” asked the nurse, still standing on the table.

  “I think we should wait until the police arrive. But you can get down off that table,” I said with all the nicety I could muster. She gave me a dirty look and stepped down.

  “Here it comes again,” said the homeless guy. I didn’t know what he was talking about until the wave of woozy hit me. The hound wasn’t dead.

  It manifested on the counter behind Nick and leapt to a table. I noticed there was an old scar on the side of the beast where Nick had shot it. At the time, I thought it must have healed quickly, but now I realize it stepped out of time and space to heal somewhere and lick its wounds. I guess when time doesn’t matter, you can wait until you’re feeling better, then pick up where you left off. Amazing.

  I dove for my shotgun as the monster leapt from the table. Nick spun around, lifted his shotgun and fired at the thing, but it moved too quickly. The hound jumped into Nick, knocked him to the floor, then landed on me.

  The hound had me pinned. I couldn’t reach my shotgun so I went for the pistol in my belt, but its hind foot trapped the gun. I saw Nick scrambling away from me and I screamed, “Help!” The nurse was screaming, I couldn’t see the homeless guy, and I couldn’t see where Nick was off to. All I could see was the hound. It looked right into my eyes. It didn’t snarl or growl. The beast just held me there for what seemed like an eternity.

  But in a second, the hound looked up behind me and then leapt off and over the counter. I heard a blast and felt hot gunpowder hit the top of my head and shoulders. Nick was shooting way too close to me. My ears were ringing.

  I scrambled up and ran into the kitchen. The nurse follo
wed me. Nick shot again into the dining area, then ran after me. I lost track of the homeless guy.

  “It’s gone again! What the hell?!” Nick screamed at me.

  I needed a new plan.

  I stood there looking around for an idea. Nick was sliding boxes over to barricade the door. The nurse just sobbed quietly and homeless guy was back there already. Still with his coffee.

  “That’s not going to help,” I said to Nick with too much resignation. But this didn’t phase him. He just kept moving boxes. I stood there, not knowing what to do. I stared for a moment at a tray full of pink-frosted donuts. I love pink-frosted donuts, I thought. I got very scared at that moment. I started to think that I would never get to eat a pink-frosted donut again. So I picked one up and took a bite. I didn’t think about it, I just did it. I went to a happy place. I thought about my friends alive and laughing. I thought about my parents and sister on our family vacation riding in the back of the station wagon. I thought about when I started working at UCLA and how happy I was to be there, almost skipping across the campus, to the Library, where the books were.

  The books.

  And then it dawned on me, I needed to do the spell. I knew how to do it, I had it memorized for crying out loud. It was relatively simple, as advanced space/time mathematical formula go. Unfortunately, it did seem like our best shot.

  I heard the sirens in the distance getting closer. Thank god, I thought. Something to keep it busy for a while. I needed to hurry. The hound would go through these guys in minutes.

  You see, at that point in my life, I had been thrust hip-deep into the world of the occult for almost ten years. It started off innocently enough when I began looking into the death of my estranged grandfather. It appears that he was an investigator of the bizarre, and that he uncovered a few groups people, one of which was called the Order of the Key. This group of almost fifty people prayed... or questioned... or looked for guidance from an ancient god called Yog-Sothoth. When my grandfather died, he bequeathed his papers and research to me, and I became part of that world. I didn’t ask for it. It just sort of happened to me. I’m a victim of life and its illusions of control. I find myself just going from point to point. Connecting the dots. It’s not so bad, really.