by Aaron French
Leering eyes, mouths gaping hungrily, the hairy abomination returned Pearson’s urge to flee. Reading his mind, Zazzi and Franks grabbed him roughly.
Pinned face down to the floor, his former comrades bound his wrists using his belt. The Shoggoth’s hoarse alien laughter followed. His own shouts, echoing against the walls, drowned out the monster’s gloating tirade.
Numb, and silent with horror, Franks and Zazzi raising him to his feet, he watched Tibor deposit his charges before the Shoggoth.
Its rank smell made his eyes water. The monster’s humped form throbbed eagerly at the proximity of its offerings.
Pearson recoiled as it engulfed Kano, yelling in anger as long white tentacles, pouring greasily from its mouths, tangled around Georgina.
The Shoggoth claimed her body next.
His voice came feebly as he said, “You’re all monsters.” The Shoggoth’s uncanny slurps emphasized his words.
“Monsters that require a new home,” Zazzi whispered in his ear. “All we need do now is wait for the rescue ship.”
Franks added, “Then we transfer the Shoggoth inside and hey ho, let’s go.”
Pearson twisted in their grip, almost dislocating his shoulders for the trouble.
A sudden roar from the beast and Georgina’s naked, freckled form flopped from its bulk. Laid upon the floor like a fetus, smeared in slime, her eyes flicked open.
She looked up, smiling. “I promise it won’t hurt for long.”
Tibor helped her to her feet. Strong hands, reaching under each armpit, dragged Pearson forward.
“Soon lover,” she said, blowing him a kiss. Pearson turned away.
“Okay,” Franks said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Dragged towards the Shoggoth mass, Pearson struggled against their grip but it was futile. Gritting his teeth he closed his eyes in preparation for the final agony.
But nothing happened.
He stopped moving. Opening his eyes he found himself inches from the Shoggoth with no indication he was going any nearer.
The monster appeared stunned. If Pearson thought it possible, he would have translated its attitude to one of fear.
Zazzi and Franks released him. Turning on his heels he discovered why.
They stared towards Georgina... Georgina and the beast behind her.
A shudder of revulsion followed. Looming over her was one of the planet’s indigenous lifeforms. Myriad black tentacles wrapped about her, it melted through Georgina’s shocked body.
For a moment he felt for her safety. But no, that thing wasn’t the real Georgina.
Her assailant stood like a slimy bipedal slug, jelly-like, the only feature on its blob-shaped head a hissing vertical slit.
Pearson’s abductors stood at an impasse, unprepared for this attack.
Bastards. Obviously they’re not big fans of acid.
And beyond the creature lay an avenue of escape.
Pearson went to run but found his foot restrained. Fearing the Shoggoth, he looked down to find Kano holding onto him.
“Safer here than over there,” he said, his reformed face filled with concern.
Kicking himself free, Pearson started for the doorway. The Shoggoth’s spawn proved no trouble: they seemed stuck between the desire to help Georgina, and just leaving her to her doom. Her doom: his comrade, his lover, Georgina’s Zeroxed form liquefied as he ducked past her attacker.
Through the doorway and up the stairs, he left the horror behind. But it returned upon discovering a second native within the building’s upper room.
He ducked and rolled past the reaching beast, a difficult maneuver with his hands bound behind his back. The swishing hiss of corrosive tentacles sounding behind him, Pearson charged for the exit.
Outside in the blistering heat, he encountered more natives. But spaced widely apart, they were easily avoided.
If he reached the yacht he could assemble a second beacon. Failing this, the boat stored deadlier, more destructive solutions in the form of nuclear ordinance.
Panting already, Pearson increased his speed.
Reaching the city’s outskirts, he fell to his knees, legs weak, lungs burning. But at least he hadn’t been followed. Catching his breath, he rolled sideways, hooking his feet up past his wrists to work on removing the belt.
Climbing to his knees, he attempted to loosen it with his teeth; his desperation made short work of the material, and he continued on.
The sapphire city behind him, it wasn’t long before he spied the river’s dark expanse. Again increasing his gait, he prayed the yacht lay where they had left it.
Skidding to a halt before the banks, he found the Persephone floating unmolested in the water.
He looked behind him: still no pursuit. Mounting the boat Pearson turned right, towards the cabins and the hold between.
How long to remove, reprogram and launch the beacon, and then what? Escape in the yacht? He couldn’t pilot it alone.
Stamping across the deck plates Pearson attacked the trap door, sliding down a ladder and entering a storage space between two bulkheads. Surrounded by crates he upturned some, ripping others apart. His heart sank when he found nothing but spare parts for the yacht.
His earpiece crackled to life.
“We know where you are.” It was Franks. “You can’t operate the yacht without Tibor, man. Give it up.”
Pearson’s desperation increased a hundred-fold. His plans for survival, or at least of warning the rescue ship, vanished completely.
“We’re coming for you,” Franks continued. Removing his earpiece, Pearson smashed it beneath his boot.
They can’t be far now, he realized, wondering how they’d so quickly gained the upper hand on the natives. Well, they wouldn’t get the upper hand on him.
Stepping towards the bow-side bulkhead, he felt around until his fingers discovered a concealed panel. Popping open, it revealed a small numerical keypad.
I never thought I’d need to use this.
Fingers grown clammy, he started to type. He was only halfway through the code when a sudden voice startled him.
“You could have helped us save Georgina, sir.”
Tibor.
Pearson wheeled around only to discover the voice issuing from the intercom. Turning back towards the console, panic paused his hand. What had he typed in?
7,8,1,1...
“We’re boarding the yacht,” Tibor continued. “The Shoggoth is eager to greet you.”
Completing the code, Pearson screamed over his shoulder, “I’ll greet you all in hell!”
Stroking the engage button, he paused a moment longer. The hold around him shuddered as something huge mounted the yacht.
Pearson pressed the button.
***
From its original launch, it took eleven hours before a neighboring colony detected Tibor’s satellite beacon. It was five hours more before the rescue ship arrived at Capricus-B.
Entering the planet’s upper atmosphere, the Ascension Rest descended towards the co-ordinates directed by the steady, well-practiced hands of Captain Jan Amos.
This wasn’t her first extraction.
Minutes left till intercept, Amos placed the ship on autopilot. She had systems to check and logs to complete.
A bleep from the control panel informed her the co-ordinates had been reached. Turning from her pad, Amos witnessed an unbelievable sight.
“Hot damn!” she exclaimed, pressing the intercom button to communicate her discovery to the crew.
“Check the feed from the main screen folks,” she said. “There’s the city the beacon described.”
“It’s beautiful,” piped the engineer. “Like mountains of blue ice.”
“Yet invisible to sensors,” added Bersega, their android scientist.
Smiling, Amos disengaged the autopilot.
Flying across the stunning blue city she wished the discovery had been made under more auspicious circumstances. Still Amos felt thankful there were at least s
ome survivors left for extraction.
“Now what’s this?”
A light on the control panel indicated a signal. Pressing a switch released a remote voice.
First inaudible, the ship’s computer enhanced the signal.
“Repeat, this is Commander Pearson of Katsushi Colony Provis-Base to the rescue ship. We have five survivors here ready to pick up.”
“We’re on our way, hold tight,” Amos replied, lowering the ship between blue crystalline structures.
“How are things down there?” she said, then, “almost there,” upon spying a suitable landing spot.
“We had more trouble from the natives, but we’re ready now and fit to go.”
The door slid open behind Amos, curious crewmembers entering the cockpit.
The voice continued. “We have important salvage we’d like to place in your hold if that’s okay?”
“Affirmative,” Amos replied. “Anything to accommodate.”
Lowering the landing struts, Amos unlocked the cargo bay doors.
The Ascension Rest safely landed, she eagerly anticipated seeing the survivors and their precious cargo.
About the author: Glynn Barrass began his writing career in late 2006, his major inspirations being H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers, and his major output being horror with a smattering of Cthulhu and King in Yellow Mythos included in the mix of dark satire and science fiction tales. Visit him online at: Stranger Aeons: The Domain of Horror Writer Glynn Barrass.
Azathoth Awakening
Ran Cartwright
ONE
Joyce Ehrlich had always dreamed. For as long as she could remember she had always dreamed. Some dreams she remembered upon awakening; others were fleeting shadows lurking on the edge of her subconscious memories. And, of course, there were those she remembered not at all. Those were of no concern. But for the past few weeks, ever since the Black Nightmare, her dreams had become more vivid, life-like, easily recalled. They reflected the natural, and unnatural to some extent, order of the world. More and more her dreams involved disasters, pain, anguish, murder... all unnatural to the pleasant well-being of humanity, yet, events natural in the normal order of human existence and experience.
There were earthquakes in California, Mexico, China, and Turkey. All around the Pacific Rim volcanoes became violently active, spewing molten lava everywhere, building islands, destroying resorts, burning and burying people alive. There were destructive and deadly floods in Pakistan and Bangladesh while typhoons churned across the Pacific and hurricanes battered the Caribbean.
And while nature dealt a destructive blow, so did humanity. All around the world murder on the streets increased both day and night; there were more rapes, more muggings, more militias guarding against capitalism. Plotting, deceit, treachery... dark and deadly. All this and more were the things of Joyce’s dreams—dreams of past, present, and future all rolled into one. Jack the Ripper cut; his victims, of course, were the women of London’s west end. The Cannibal Killer killed and ate; the gunman shot; the mad bomber bombed; the terrorist terrorized. Numerous Sons of Sam, Zodiac Killers, and Hillside Stranglers were slinking in the shadows while buildings, trees, bridges, highways, mountains, people and more that created those shadows were twisted and contorted by the increasing violence of nature.
The escalation of violence and destruction in Joyce’s dream world had begun with the Black Nightmare. The Black Nightmare. That’s what she called it. That’s what it was; that’s ALL it was. No sights, no sounds, just a curious black that seethed of potent malignancy. Although she could not see them, Joyce had felt herself spiraling through a kaleidoscopic miasma of odd angles, plunging deeper and deeper toward... something. She felt alone, trapped, terrified. Her senses became overwhelmed by an ominous feeling of despair. Her thoughts cried out, reaching for something to grasp and anchor her. She succeeded, and immediately recoiled in abject horror.
Somewhere in the black amidst the curiously odd unseen angles Joyce’s thoughts had touched upon a sleeping cauldron (her word) of ultimate unbridled chaotic living madness. The momentary brushing of its sleeping mind sent a torrent of heart-stopping fear wrenching through her. She instantly had pulled her thoughts away, but it was too late. She had innocently touched the mind of sleeping Chaos.
And Chaos had stirred, shaken off its weariness, and sent a tendril of cackling madness in Joyce’s direction. That cackling madness seared through her mind to send her scurrying desperately for the waking world. With a howling scream, unclear whether the scream was her own or the manifestation of the unseen maniacal laughter in her mind, Joyce tore away from the Black Nightmare.
In doing so, she nearly threw herself out of bed and onto the floor. She made coffee, drank the pot, and made another pot. Drank that as well. She did everything she could think of to stay awake. The black madness lingered, chilling her. She didn’t want to go back to her dream world, to the black void and the howling maniacal cackling of that thing. What Joyce didn’t know at the time was that she didn’t have to go back; in time, in the waking world, it would come to her.
So Joyce spent endless hours and days devising ways to stay awake. Eventually, though, she failed and gave in to her physical needs. She did need sleep; and her body needed rest. But she slept a fitful sleep—in her bed, on the couch, in a chair—at times with a paperback half slipping from her fingers. Sometimes she even fell asleep on the floor.
It was during those periods of restless sleep that she began to dream her dreams of wanton death and destruction, of increased natural disasters, murders, rapes, muggings. In her dreams the world was caught in the grip of madness. And during her waking hours, Joyce watched the Evening News, saw that her dreams were becoming realities. But she could care less. Joyce now dreamed a new nightmare, a new recurring Black Nightmare, different than the first. The new nightmare was revealing itself slowly and methodically. She was convinced she would never escape.
She played the scene over and over in her mind. There was a beach of black sand. Black water rolled in on the shore, the wave caps as black as the sand and water. There was a huge towering ever-growing approaching cloud mass highlighted by a violet glow, with lightning streaking jaggedly across it. And noises—crackling, hissing, shifting immediately like odd abrupt angles, no soft rise and fall of pitch or tone. And finally, a mad dance of piping music that howled an unearthly discordant tune.
But the images of her new nightmare didn’t cause Joyce’s fear, didn’t cause her to bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide, her pulse racing, a scream held strangled in her throat. No, not the images. It was the feeling she felt. A sensation that crawled through her like a slowly moving dark and painful cancer. She felt a terrible loathsome darkness concealed within that rising cloud, an evil sentience that cackled in her thoughts. It was an absolute blackness not meant for human experience, not meant for experience in the natural order of things, not meant for the natural order of the Universe. Something black and hideous that defied all convention.
Joyce knew the blackness was the source of the mad maniacal laughter. It had awakened and now it watched. And worst of all, she came to the realization that the black hideous mass within the cloud knew her. It had reached out, touched her mind, once again sending her spiraling through the oblique and unknown angles of infinity.
At that final moment of failing sanity, as she approached the brink of a glowing violet vortex of cackling maniacal laughter, Joyce broke free with a final last ditch effort in the form of a howling scream. She found the scream choked in her throat as she sat up in bed, awake, frightened, alone in the darkness of her bedroom. She knew immediately that her self-preservation was only temporary, that soon there’d be nothing that could save her.
Or the Universe.
It had awakened and it was coming.
I did this, she thought.
I caused it all!
TWO
The black cloud churned, billowed, and expanded as it rolled through odd angles beyond space and
time. It crackled and hissed as it grew. Jagged fingers of lightning clawed through the dark. It pulsed. Its violet glow flashed with heat, highlighting the fringes of the ever-growing cloud. Before it rolled a group of smaller clouds, which danced to the rhythm of the horrid piping.
Finally it tore into the fabric of space-time where it didn’t belong, where it shouldn’t be. The Universe was rent with a howling mad noxious scream that no human ears could hear. And the black cloud grew at an alarming rate, expanding, pulsing, cackling madly as it destroyed and devoured everything in its path.
Great civilizations across the Universe fell before the onslaught of madness, reduced to a profound emptiness as though they had never existed. And onward the great black cloud came—laughing, cackling its dementia, mad pipes calling its raucous tune of destiny across all that is, announcing to all things to prepare for the coming of Chaos, the Daemon-Sultan, Supreme Lord and Creator of All Things.
Those civilizations who knew of the Daemon-Sultan waited in despair. They wondered what had caused the Awakening, and who was to blame. Somewhere in space and time, they knew, someone had touched the mind of Chaos. Chaos had awakened.
And now Chaos was coming.
Chaos, the Daemon-Sultan, came. Its roaring, howling, maniacal laughter rented atmospheres. Crackling filaments of violet lightning reached out and flicked planets, stars, and galaxies out of existence. The mad howling of the Daemon-Sultan and its piping music destroyed all things, from High Civilizations to the lowliest of life forms crawling out from shrouded pools of primordial ooze.
The Daemon-Sultan moved on, emptiness left in its wake. Filaments of cackling random madness reached into the dark of space, seeking, searching—looking for the one who’d been brazen enough to reach out and touch the sleeping god and awaken it from its timeless slumber.
Suddenly, there it was. A feeble light of deranged thought. A single entity, a single feeble mind filled with a madness all its own. And the Daemon-Sultan reached out to the feeble mind, cackled deep in the dark recessed corners of her thoughts, and would not release her.
