Urban Temples of Cthulhu - Modern Mythos Anthology

by Khurt Khave

  They must have glimpsed me as I went about my business on the shore, two young men sneering at the tramp. They pass comments and laugh repeatedly at their own jokes but I sense that one of them is fascinated and he does not know why.

  Year by year there are more of us who heed the call to dwell alone on the far shore of the dark, dark sea. To most people, their true nature is veiled, manifesting perhaps in unease in a particular place, a sudden convulsive nightmare, or an urge that pulls them to lonely sites and suggests strange voices cry among the wail of flocking birds. Yet there walks among them one such as I. A skin-sealed void, a flesh-held abyss, and it is more than blood which my body is leaking all over my assailant’s wall; a darkness deeper than the night passes from me. It is gradual at first, but when it erupts it is a seething force that shatters the bone-frame, wrenches apart the curtain of flesh, and in a joyous release into nothingness, banishes all sensation until that furious, terrified man is a mere flicker of the light that coils across the endless face of the void.

  My laughter becomes the rattling wheeze of his world draining into Her. He ceases his battery to witness what is dead rising and rippling as it too inverts back into nothingness and he comes face-to-face with a blackness more intense than anything since the womb.

  That is the point at which he knows. Somewhere amid the fragments of thought and the horror, there is both awe and an embryonic desire for this darkness that bristles, seething against itself. He stands above a precipice that calls to him, and below him an anti-light burns away colour and form and wears the world as a mask.

  The eye of that power is fused into my eye, and as that Dark Mother renders his temporal reality a reflection on shifting waves, he finally sees and I can tell my tale.

  I believed I had attained enlightenment at an Indian ashram. Intended for westerners whose donations allowed the monks to run inns for pilgrims to the nearby temple – it was run by Tantric devotees who venerated Radha, consort of Krishna, as Shakti – the creative source of the universe. Under their guidance, I experienced the Goddess. I was meditating upon an image of Krishna and Radha when a bolt of energy fired within me; I was jolted upright, feeling my limbs crackle with an unseen fire. I was reminded most vividly of the joys of earthly existence – not hedonistic pleasures but the simple bliss of breathing, of moving, of seeing for the kundalini – the sacred trace of Shakti, Mother of All, had awakened and began to rise within me. It was at once profound, joyous and visceral. I saw, smiling within my mind, the Goddess. She was wreathed in a garland of flowers, a radiance spilled from her, animating a kaleidoscope of images that fluttered beneath her face; everything on earth seemed to rise and sink into existence beneath her.

  Convinced that I had voyaged beyond earthly desire, I left the temple, eager to know her in her other forms. I came to believe that I left before I was ready as soon I was assailed by both a futility of purpose and the yearnings of the world: I was becalmed on the far edge of my self.

  My urge to become arose. This led me down some dark paths but eventually She revealed Herself in a different, more terrible form and I am now bound to Her, sailing forever beyond the seas of life.

  It was he who stood like an island in the waters of the sacred river who guided me to my Mother. Hollow-eyed and naked, waves slapped against his left leg whilst the right was raised, resting against his thigh. His angular form resembled a heron scanning for fish. He was of the Aghori, the Shaivites who haunt cremation sites. I was stood on the sand down-river from him among drifting smoke when he stirred to blow through his conch shell. That hollow, vibrating groan unsealed my world and the desires which burnt within me were scattered like embers across the flowing waters.

  He turned and faced me, his eyes blank pools, before pointing into the river. A pale bulk appeared borne on the waves toward the shore. He lunged, falling onto the thing so they both submerged. When he surfaced he was dragging at something large. I joined him, heaving at the cold, slippery bulk whilst he uttered guttural cries against the waters’ drag. Together we floundered – we might have been wrestling a huge eel from the depths – but eventually we heaved a heap of blubber onto the sand, squashing it down to prevent it rolling back into the eager waves.

  We had dragged the remains of a woman from the river. The yogi gestured with a curt sound and we carried the cold, sagging mass into a makeshift hovel on the sand where she was stuffed against the far wall beyond a smouldering fire. The guru ushered me from the place and I was not permitted back into that dank, clammy space until the following evening.

  I spent the day lurking on the ghat overlooking the cremation site. When his ashen figure appeared once more I approached and at his direction crouched under the narrow doorframe and entered the dark hollow again. The sari was torn off and hung like a veil before the corpse and my face made contact with its crisped folds as I crawled in on my hands and knees.

  He ducked under the sari and gesticulated with his trident at the inert bulk. He rasped sounds in an unrecognisable dialect which set the air shivering. Waves of cold wafted around us, washed over by the palpable stench of decay, smoke and sweet incense. I saw him lift a bowl up and through the webbing of the veil and beheld a shriveled face. It seemed to be winking at me through its lank hair but I detected streaks of crusted matter reflected in the fire’s glare. The atmosphere locked around me when I realized that it was the severed head from the corpse.

  The yogi turned and ripped down the veil with his trident, his ashen face creasing into a leer. The corpse loomed beyond the fire, remnants of old funerary robes hung around her like cobwebs. He creased his skeletal form into the lotus position and as the sun settled beyond the hills outside, a blue flame flared from the fire. Its pale light filled the space and though the yogi was but a shadow, the skin of the corpse glowed. I began to see the hovel reflected within it. The definition intensified until it was like I was looking into a mirror. There was the veil, the hut, the shadowed holy man; but my reflection was missing. I saw the world reflected before me - it might have spread around the sea - but I was no longer a part of it.

  That was the moment I entered the eye of the Goddess. I knew with sudden clarity that I was a glinting worm trenched in the film of Her eye. My awareness was drawn tighter, bound into a glistening orb in the socket of the skull until I was as nothing. All was empty. I might have been frost-bitten into numbness like a traveller on a barren moor. I was a mere spark in darkness, the glistening coil of a worm, an echo dying in a skull.

  There was a sensation of force rushing around me and through the darkness, I beheld the Yogi twisting and shrieking. The air moved, increasing in intensity until it peaked, then slowly declined into stillness. In its wake, all felt beaten down as if under a sudden, oncoming tide. The limbs of the Yogi contorted, the flame fell motionless, and by its light the flaccid corpse visibly shuddered. I watched as it heaved itself fully upright, its naked folds flopping and a host of flies rose to orbit around it.

  I watched on as the headless trunk pulsed and gyrated, forcing its limbs and hands into sacred gestures. Shadows gathered, drawing around the blue flame, whispering and muttering, crowding into that hot space. In that blue glare I saw their features – it was the dead and dying gathering to pay homage to the Goddess of the Dead. The yogi prostrated himself before the corpse, and rising, inverted his skull bowl. The cadaver heaved, convulsed and shot forth viscous globules from the stump of its neck. The yogi caught what he could in his bowl and the shades pressed close, seeking to suckle upon what dropped.

  I knew that being as Shakti, Goddess, Mother of All, the Awakener of the Gods, She who inspired the sacred word before which unfolds the pathway of the stars and the richness of the earth and She had manifested Herself in this body plucked from the sacred waters. I followed the Yogi in greedily devouring what spluttered from the cavities of the corpse. Did she not impart her blessing through the disgorged substance? As it passed into me, I felt that it possessed a living motion, burrowing unto we who fed; it was th
e presence of the Goddess within and as She writhed through us, we shot far from that cell to behold the earth and the heavens through a multitude of eyes. We were the sound and the substance that shivered into existence, we were the warm life that pulsed across the world, a Universal God whose presence reached everywhere.

  And across the burning ghat the dead stood from their pyres like candles and the light went out in the eyes of the devotees who had gathered to cremate loved ones and shadow fell across their minds.

  That was the moment that the mask of the world was removed and I saw fully that all was mere tracing over a void. The corpse skin slipped loose to hang in tatters around a shadow that burnt with a power beyond a thousand suns and I was unborn, drained back into the birth-giver, a being undivided yet still aware of the endless stillness and emptiness from which great vortices of space and time rise to twist and dance before draining back into blankness once more. In that moment, I felt the fleeting lives of earth as outbursts of fire fluttering around a ring of shadow. I felt great symphonies of beings playing themselves at once through a multitude of species, propelling all, churning through all.

  Into the river, that sacred river, the river of all the worlds, I carried the skull. I cradled it in my arms and it bit me, leaving three teeth in my side; teeth I later hung around my neck and to which I added my own as the years passed. Once it was committed to the current, I returned to that body and bit of its flesh, leaving a tooth in my Great Mother, the Mother of the world, before I dragged Her into the depths.

  As I finish my tale, my assailant rips at me with his teeth. He bites and swallows. My heart swells in delight, for he is driven by the sliver of dark within him, a shadow of that void sun. His friend has fled into the night and heads now for the river. I hang at his shoulder as he runs. When he reaches water it is that of the sacred river in which She awaits.

  He is unsealing himself with a shard of glass, releasing himself into Her endless waves. His world vanishes. The city across the river is a hollowed mound through which flickering coils of light writhe, the air visibly congeals and rots, the sea crusts but his awareness has already sailed far across the blanketing negation from which all being radiates and into which it circles back once more.

  M. S. Swift dwells in Liverpool – the pool of life – wherein he is an ambassador of the infernal powers of the Great Old Ones. He worships the great River Mersey as an expression of the Great Dark Mother and raves into the winds or to any who can stand near him. His latest revelations have been included in Cthulhu Lies Dreaming from Ghostwoods books.

  Doorstepping Kelda Crich

  There was a buzz at the door. Mike Jansen sighed. Just when you got yourself settled after a long day working on the cheese counter, just when you were looking forward to some quality TV, the door had to go. He'd been standing up all day. His feet were killing him. He nestled down into the settee, deciding to ignore the buzz. He turned up the TV a little.

  Buzz. Buzz. Bleedin' buzz.

  The caller was a persistent fellow, make no mistake.

  Mike placed his copy of Top Telly Picks on the settee cushion, next to a plate of crackers and cheese. Cheese that was, but shouldn't be, covered in fine, blue mould (shop-soiled cheese was about the only perk he had). He made his way down the hall, pausing to glance in the hall mirror to check that he looked respectable. Last week, he'd opened the door to a young woman selling security alarms. She'd said Mike looked awfully tired. She'd seemed very concerned about his health. It had spoilt his night. Nobody likes to hear that they looked tired, especially when they're feeling fine.

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  “Hold your horses, I'm coming.” Mike opened the door and nodded at the ten-foot fungoid/crustacean alien who stood there. It was naked. Except for its shell. Did that count? A shell suit? Lights flashed over its pink cauliflower head. Its headish antennae quivered. It clutched a clipboard in one of its four arms.

  Next door's dog was barking like billy-oh.

  Mike stared at the alien who nodded its head in Mike's direction half a dozen times, in a friendly, albeit non-communicative manner.

  “So,” said Mike, after an awkward pause, “what can I help you with?”

  “Pardon my manners, sir. I've an awful habit of trying to communicate telepathically.” The alien's voice buzzed through seven shades of pink hell. “Can I just ask, is this a dog-free establishment?”

  “I don't have a dog.”

  “Good, good. Not that we Mi-go have anything against dogs. We love them. Alas, they don't love us. Cats aren't too keen on us, either. Maybe it's our fifth dimensional miasma.”

  Mike didn't know what a fifth dimensional miasma was, and he didn't really care. All he knew was that this conversation was keeping him from his settee. “No dogs. No cats. Can I help you with something, mate?”

  “No cats or dogs? Are you very sure?”

  “We do have a hamster, but it's in a cage.”

  “I am a foot soldier of democracy,” said the alien. “I'm prepared to risk it.” It flexed its membranous wings. “Ahem. Good evening, sir. It's time for a change.” The alien was obviously quoting from a script. “The main parties aren't working. I am personally interacting with you, for the purpose of persuasion. I am jolly-well canvassing.”

  “For what party?” asked Mike.

  The alien tapped its chest. Then its claws scrabbled about a little, seeking something that wasn't there. “Rhatz! It's fallen off again. There's nowhere to pin it, you see. And the glue just doesn't want to. . .but listen to me jibber-jabbering on.” The alien moved its claw with a whisk of what was possibly the interface of strange realities, cubed and distorted. A new rosette appeared. Think Pink it said.

  “I think that slogan's taken.”

  “Nertz!” said the alien. Its antennae drooped. “Headquarters really needs to check these things. Well, no matter. The Abominable Mi-go party still offers an alternative to the current spectrum. It's time for a change.”

  “I'm listening,” said Mike.

  “You are? Hotsy-totsy. I knew you were a man who knew his onions.” The alien hopped a little happy dance on its claws. The next few sentences it spoke were not in words, but in buzzes.

  “I can't understand you, mate” said Mike.

  “I do beg your pardon, my surgery isn't quite complete.”

  Mike nodded. “How long did you have to wait for your surgery? My Nan had to wait six years for her hip replacement. It's a bleedin' disgrace.”

  “Now you’re on the trolley, sir! The Mi-go are exceptional surgeons. We plan to fully support the NHS. One thousand Mi-go surgeons, devoted to surgery and experimentation, are prepared to work for no moolah. No additional cost to the tax payer.”

  “Experimentation?”

  “University hospitals and the like,” said the alien smoothly. “We can't wait to get our claws into your sick and elderly. Free surgery for all!”

  “That's good to hear,” said Mike. “What about after care?” Nan was in a care home, and Mike wasn't convinced that the carers were as kind as they could be. It worried him.

  “Worry not, my old bean,” said the pink one. “Our manifesto promises that every voter can be disembodied and decanted into a metal cylinder at no cost to the tax payer.”

  Hmm, he'd heard of that. “And what happens in these cylinders?”

  “All of your wonderful dreams come true. A brain free from all earthly distractions.”

  It sounded better than Nan's care home. “Where's the Mi-go on immigration?”

  “Immigration for all. A galaxy without borders. Total and utter immigration.”

  Mike nodded. He liked what he was hearing. His ex was Romanian. And say what you like about her, she knew how to graft. All the Romanians Mike knew were bleedin' hard workers.

  Mike heard a rattling noise. It seemed to be coming from the roof. He looked up. “What is that noise?”

  “Apologies, my delightful sir,” said the pink one. “They're my broodlings. It's my turn to superv
ise them, and I thought they'd benefit from seeing me engage in the democratic process. But while my back was turned, they nipped up onto your roof. They are a handful, make no mistake.”

  Mike nodded. He knew how that was. He had the kids over alternate weekends and on Wednesdays. They could be a handful alright.

  “Education is the answer,” said the Mi-go.

  “And classroom discipline,” said Mike.

  “Yes sirree bob,” agreed the alien. “We will raise education standards, by introducing Earth broodlings to the Intergalactic Curriculum, ancient wisdom of the universe, that kind of teacup. We'll raise standards. The Migo,” said the alien, with only a slightly ominous pause, “will introduce discipline into the classroom.”

  That could only be a good thing. But there was one thing that Mike wasn't sure about. “What about your leader? I've heard something about him.”

  The alien flushed a deep cerise. “Blasted negative campaigning! Did you hear that he wanted to wear the head of the Prime Minister as a hat, and wear the Opposition Leader's hands as a pair of gloves?”

  “I didn't hear that,” said Mike. He would have remembered that.

  “Well, good. Because it's all horsefeathers. He Who Is Not To Be Named is a fine fellow: the bee's knees, the elephant’s adenoids, the cat’s miaow, the ant’s pants, the tiger’s spots, the tadpole’s teddies . . .”

  “Okay, okay, I get the picture.”

  “There is no big cheese of finer qualities,” said the alien.

  Mike smiled. “A fine big cheese, you say?”

  “Abso-positively-lutely.”

  Mike made his decision. “Sign me up,” he said.

  “For the cylinder?” said the pink one, materialising a metal cylinder with alarming speed.

  “Steady, mate,” said Mike. “I'll start by putting a poster in my window.”

  “Hot Dog!” said the alien, clattering a little happy dance.

  He Who Is Not To Be Named had his faults, for sure, but what politician didn't? At least the Abominables were bringing something new to the table. “Nice fellow,” thought Mike tacking up the pink poster in the corner of his window. Britain wasn't working and that was for sure. A government of pink fungoid crustaceans led by an eternal that may or may not wish to amputate for the purposes of accessorization, a party that was proimmigration, strong on the NHS and education, could just be what the country needed. The Mi-go seemed like people with a plan. Mike had been impressed by the alien's passion. Perhaps it was time for a change. What's the worst that could happen?