“Don’t be hard on yourself about this. It wasn’t your fault. The guy was a head case. You hear me?”
James said nothing. His gun pulled at one side of his chest like an organ fossilized into metallic rock.
“Buddy? You hear what I said?”
“Mm,” James grunted.
It was the second night he had had this dream.
An aurora borealis spread across the heavens, a glowing curtain of light that would dwarf the mere ribbons over the Antarctic skies. As it billowed like some impossible serpent writhing, the air crackled and boomed deafeningly, charged with electrical anomalies. Lightning flashed, illuminated in harsh strobe glare a landscape of dense jungle. Not Costa Rican jungle, James thought weirdly, but far older. Far more primeval. He saw, in those flashes, scurrying life that no man had ever seen with flesh on its bones.
But now the aurora writhed more violently, like a snake pinned with the blade of a shovel. It was opalescent, iridescent, but this iridescence was made up of colors for which James’s dream-self had no names. The electric storms grew more fierce, the thunder like the explosions of a battlefield. Somehow, he knew, it was a kind of battle. The curtain of light seemed under attack, somehow, and was lowering closer to the primeval earth from a great height. And as it descended, James could see that the curtain was actually made of many individual parts, like iridescent soap bubbles – like cells, he thought. Boiling, foaming, merging and reforming in a vast, lowering conglomeration. Until the conglomeration of glowing spheres seemed to fill the whole sky, Lucifer, angel of light, falling...
But as the vast curtain – entity, James thought – began to break up and fall, the pieces of it went dark first, like coals with the fire burned out of them. Like flesh turned to fossil. More of these dark spheres rained, more, until the air was black with a meteor shower such as the earth had not known since its surface had been one lake of fire. The earth was pounded, hammered. The forest began to burn, the great-but-dwarfed lizards began to howl, aflame, and black clouds of smoke began to billow into the air.
The dark, petrified spheres plummeted down toward James’s up-turned face, toward his tiny dream-self, and he covered his face with his arms and screamed.
That was how he found himself when his eyes shot open. With his arms crossed over his face, and his own scream filling his ears.
Richard Penn had not worked for any of the companies that Detective Robart had named. But then, how many other companies might this Mr. Nye own that James hadn’t been aware of? James used the phone to contact all of them but for Pantheon Bank, which he dropped in on while on his way home that afternoon. But it was the bank’s head office that he sought out, not the small branch of the bank he cashed his check at every Friday. Having been able to leave a half hour early today, he hoped there was time to catch someone, maybe the head of personnel or security, who could answer his questions.
The building loomed above him as he approached its front doors, smaller than the obsidian black colossus of Monumental Life and older, art deco in style. As he entered, he saw two giant, tarnished metal angels to either side of the lobby, supporting the ceiling on their wings. They were curious angels; in the deco style, yes, slim beautiful women, but the wings had an almost bat-like quality. He only noticed this after, however. After he noticed what rested in the center of the lobby...
James didn’t bother contacting personnel. He’d do that tomorrow. Although he had already called them, he returned to his car and drove over to OO Software. Then CM Investments.
There was no ugly octopoid hanging suspended in any of those other foyers. That was a touch singular to Monumental Life’s building. But there was, however, in the center of each lobby, a huge sphere made up of many dark pebbles that gleamed metallic like hematite. Like meteors that had crashed through the roofs of these buildings. Or, as if the buildings had been erected around them.
“He has a sister in Arizona supposed to come out and deal with his stuff,” croaked the stooped landlord, unlocking the door to Richard Penn’s apartment. He was wheezing dangerously from the climb to the third floor of this old tenement house on its steep hill overlooking much of the city. James had gotten lost trying to find this winding back street. It must be murder to drive on in winter. He was reminded of his teen-age visit to San Francisco.
The landlord put on a light, stepped aside to let James in; a prosaic enough kitchen, for an obsessed madman.
“I thought you guys had been over everything,” the landlord went on. James had told him he was a detective. Detective Robart.”
“We have some new information,” was all James would say. He turned to the old man. “You can go on back downstairs, sir...I’ll be in to see you with the keys when I'm done.”
“Oh, well...okay,” the old man wheezed.
James bolted the door quietly behind him.
In the living room, things were less prosaic.
A bay window overlooked the city, its buildings a misty violet-gray in the autumnal twilight so that they resembled crowded tombstones and obelisks in a graveyard. On each of the three windows that composed the bay, Penn had painted the same black star design with which he had defaced the sphere.
The walls of the room were one big bulletin board. Taped there were photographs of buildings James recognized from town, or didn’t recognize, charts with apparent mathematical equations, photocopies from books, magazine articles. A large map of the city, full of push pins that Penn had connected with a highlighter marker. The resultant pattern had a geometric look.
James drew nearer to one wall to more closely examine this montage-like display. One photocopy was from a book written in another language; Latin? Taped beside it was a handwritten translation, James judged. It was headed: “From The Metal Book.”
“So in the heavens there raged a war, as the Elder Gods did battle the Outsiders, and did hurl Them into the seas, and thrust Them under the earth, and lock Them in tombs and cells of Their own making. A sleep like death came upon the fallen Gods, but it was a sleep from which They might yet awaken, a death from which there might yet come resurrection and rebirth. The gates of the tombs and cells must be guarded from those servitors of the Outsiders, who seek to open them. The greatest of these gates is Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth is the Gate, Key to the Gate, and Guardian of the Gate all in one.”
James let his attention drift to another page. It was from an article on the extinction of the dinosaurs; specifically, on the theory that a comet fallen to earth had brought on their doom. A shudder went through him. His dream of prehistoric monsters, screeching, aflame, puny compared to the cataclysm in the heavens.
Penn had said nothing in the lobby about this subject, had he? No, definitely not. So why should James have dreamed it? Why should he have felt that the writhing ribbon of light, the electrical storm and the subsequent meteor shower in his dreams had all been part of a battle of some kind...a cosmic struggle between gods as described in that passage from something called The Metal Book?
On the opposite wall of the room, James studied various other hangings, putting on a lamp as much to dilute his unease as to illuminate his reading. A newspaper clipping commanded his attention. It was from a business section, and there was a photograph of a man accompanying it. He was dark-haired, handsome in a severe, intense way. He was familiar, and the caption confirmed James’s suspicions. He had indeed seen this man before, at Monumental Life. It was a picture of Ralph Nye, president of the Nye Conglomerate. The article concerned Nye’s latest acquisition, a bought-out company to be renamed Gateway Realty.
Gateway. James thought of that transcription from the so-called Metal Book .
Under the caption, Penn had written his own caption in red marker. It consisted of one alien word: NYARLATHOTEP.
Was it Nye’s full last name, shortened and made more Anglo-sounding for the sake of business? Nye didn’t sound exotic enough to suit the man’s swarthy looks, nor did Ralph, for that matter.
Ralph. James considered the a
lien word again. Nye could indeed be extracted from Nyarlathotep. And so could Ralph, for that matter.
The map of the city claimed James’s attention now. For one thing, across the top margin of it was written, in highlighter marker, YOG-SOTHOTH. Drawing close to the map, he took note of the push pins. The location of them was obvious. One pin was situated in the place where Monumental Life loomed above the streets. Another, where the headquarters of Pantheon Banks was situated. Another represented CM Investments, then OO Software. James couldn’t interpret some of the placements of the pins, however. Another map was butted up to this one, some of the pins spread there along the coast, even out in the ocean. One pin was inside the borders of this city’s oldest graveyard, dating back to the eighteenth century. Again, all these sites were connected with highlighter marker, forming a rough series of concentric circles, James saw now, as if they represented the waves of destruction emanating from a nuclear bomb. At the center of the circles was the pin for Monumental Life.
James lifted his eyes to the marred bay windows.
He saw that towering edifice, its lights glittering against the darkening sky. And beyond Monumental Life, distant but still towering ominously, a silent titan, was the headquarters of Pantheon Banks. Across the river, he knew, was CM Investments. One of the pins was in the river, he had noted.
One of the...spheres, he realized. One of the fallen meteorites. Once glowing with unnamed colors, but turned black in the battle that had raged above this spot eons before humans had dwelt upon it.
YOG-SOTHOTH, the word at the top of the map proclaimed, accused, defined it. The map was a diagram of Yog-Sothoth. As much of Yog-Sothoth as Richard Penn had discovered the traces of. Yog-Sothoth...Gate, Key, Guardian all in one.
And this man, Ralph Nye, or whatever his true name was...he was buying the sites of these fallen globes. Making them places of power, or more power. Uniting them into a web of power.
Another newspaper clipping nearby. A photo of a sphere being raised from the earth beneath the foundation of a building demolished by dynamite. The story explained that the rock, thought to be a meteor, had been discovered after the building had been brought down to make room for a new company called OO Software. Yes, James thought, yes. Spheres exhumed beneath or in the vicinity of CM Investments, Pantheon Banks, Monumental Life Insurance. Enshrined in each lobby. Linked, united into a web...
James looked out the window once more. Pictured that great sphere resting in the lobby of his company, and beyond that, inside the Pantheon Banks lobby, guarded by bat-winged seraphim, another sphere. And beyond that, a sphere buried beneath the mud of the night-black river snaking through the city.
The conglomerate was growing. And growing more powerful. More and more sites being linked together. What would happen when Nye possessed all those spheres, buried in the sea, in the earth? Would his power be complete? And then what? Would he then own all of this city? Would he then own all this planet, and more?
James did not question his sanity at these conclusions. He no longer questioned the sanity of the man who had killed himself with his gun. The truth of it all resonated in his soul on a primal level. It resonated in his cells, as if touching upon the memories of the ancient cells from which they had evolved. Upon memories of a horror so great that it had imprinted itself on the minds of creatures not yet born.
It was a gateway. A gate. And Ralph Nye was clearing it as surely as if he were a patient, diligent archaeologist. He was uncovering the gate, and its key. He would open the portal, James knew. And there were prisoners beyond it. Outsiders, The Metal Book had called them. Yog-Sothoth was the guard at that gate, which was Himself.
Colin James backed slowly away from the bay windows, as if he thought faces lurked behind each of the glittering windows of Monumental Life, windows glittering like stars against the now black sky. The brutish faces, the yellow eyes of servitors...perhaps human, perhaps not. Eyes watching him, reading his thoughts.
Was Ralph Nye even now behind one of those windows? And staring across the city at these bay windows, with their mysterious protective talismans?
James left the living room lamp on. He did not want to retreat through the apartment in utter darkness.
It was a new dream. A dream of the future, perhaps, where the other dreams had been of the past. One of the quotes on Penn’s walls had read, after all, “Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth.”
It was dawn, and there was a rumbling beneath the city. An earthquake, perhaps.
But it was a selective earthquake. Only one building fell, crumbling in upon itself with a monstrous roar. Monumental Life collapsed, an amorphous cloud of dark dust billowing into the air as if to take its place.
But now another structure was crumbling. Pantheon Banks. And the water of the river was churning, bubbling. From the rubble of the fallen giants, through the clouds of dust, rays of light shot into the air. Light of unknown iridescent colors, dust swirling in its beams.
The sources of these beams lifted into the air. One brightly glowing sphere rose and hovered above the city. Then another. Another. One rose from the hissing steam of the river. Others rose from a great distance, like bright stars, perhaps from the sea.
They were now moving toward each other. Began to link with one-another. They were forming an undulating, blinding ribbon of light in the sky. And one man, a dark silhouette, stood on the roof of an intact building with his arms spread to this terrible spectacle, this unholy miracle. He was crying, “Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!”
And in the dream, James was crying out, also. But his cries were of terror, and pain, and damnation. And moments later, as the glow of the ribbon blinded him to the city completely...as if it had been burned out of existence...the air became filled with the screams of every occupant of the city. Every damned soul. Not sent down to hell, but hell raised up around them.
Colin James awoke with his scream still ragged in his throat.
And so he waited. Each day, he manned his desk. He asked for, and was granted, extra hours. He took over a Saturday for a grateful younger guard.
But he hadn’t seen Ralph Nye yet. Not yet. But Nye owned this company. When he returned from his latest exploits, as eventually he must, James would be waiting.
He watched that silent ball for hours sometimes, its pebbled surface gazing dully back at him like the gigantic compound eye of some monstrous insect. The protective talisman was gone...but in his car, James had a can of paint.
The flayed octopus thing rippled above him, like the ghost of some creature hovering threateningly over his head. He smirked up at it. Go back to sleep, he mocked it.
He watched the rotating door for Ralph Nye. In his holster was the gun with which Richard Penn had ended his life. If Ralph Nye was mortal, his life would end too. And if not, perhaps just this incarnation, this mask, would end. Perhaps they couldn’t be killed. But at least they could be prevented from coming back alive.
Yog-Sothoth, he thought. Gate, and Key, and Guardian of the Gate, all in one.
No, thought Colin James. I am the Guardian.
Book Worm
Pym's grandfather had disappeared nearly sixty years ago, during the fabled twenties of Al Capone and Prohibition and Tommy guns, of which Pym had read quite a bit, lover of books that he was.
Books were vastly more transporting than any movie could hope to be. Pym almost resented movies. While better than most, when you watched Tess, you were aware of camera set-ups and directorial techniques and familiar actors; when you read Tess, she breathed and you ached to save her from her Fate. A monster wasn't rubber on an articulated steel skeleton with pulsing air bladders to mimic life -- it was alive, and it was something to be afraid of. The reading experience was transcendent to all other human experience; it was an out of body freedom of flight. But like some ancient supernatural ability lost to distant races, it was a fading talent, a forsaken skill, as television and Nintendo, rock and drugs loomed up almost as a unified force to eclipse the past.
Largely out of disgusted rebellion, Pym sought to plunge fully into that to which so many others were becoming increasingly blind. The past held a particularly powerful attraction for him, and books were the hatches to be crow-barred open, the coffin lids to be pried off for revelation. Books were the tombs of Pharaohs, the strata rich with dinosaur bones, the portals to the universe beyond. And so it was natural for Pym to become intrigued with his grandfather's colorful life and strange disappearance, and to become wholly obsessed when his aunt first told him of his grandfather's mysterious book...
From what his aunt and others had revealed to him through the years, Pym had pieced together a shady history of his grandfather Arnold Stowe. Even prior to his knowledge of the book, which his aunt had never dared refer to before, Pym had sought out all the information he could on the man who had died thirty years before his birth, even securing some cracked and blurry photographs of the young and handsome Arnie Stowe, dapper and smiling for the camera, arm slung around the shoulders of his pretty young wife, Pym’s grandmother, whose death at eighty-one was what led to his aunt's disclosure of the existence of the weird metal book.
That Pym's grandfather had been a gangster in the true sense was doubtful, but it was doubtless that he had had his underworld connections, dealings and inclinations. Thinking of his withered and dying grandmother, Pym had difficulty imagining her, even with the photographs, as the sexy young woman her husband had repeatedly attempted to involve in a blackmail scheme, suggesting to her that if he secretly photographed married men with her they could quickly draw in thousands -- assuring her, considerate man that he was, that she needn't strip down beyond her underclothes. She resisted. On several occasions Arnie Stowe's wife found inordinate amounts of wrist watches in a dresser drawer. After a time he took to carrying a revolver, and he slept with it under his pillow. He had recently done someone a favor by taking in and hiding away a package, and perhaps this was the source of his growing anxiety. He angrily resisted all inquiries made by his wife. When he suddenly vanished without a clue and remained that way, it was naturally assumed by all that his underworld dealings had caught up with him. His pretty young widow remarried, and Pym's pleasant but rather less colorful second maternal grandfather had died under rather less mysterious circumstances four years ago.
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