What happened next almost blew Herbert West's mind from his skull, and he grabbed the nearest tree for both support and safety.
The heads (and in turn, faces) of many of the cultists were exposed when their hoods slid from their brow, and Herbert West now saw why the croaking of their leader seemed so foreign to him.
Their skin was scaled and crusted, and their features had more in common with the sea than anything on land. Their lips were downturned and ended in barbs, their eyes enormous and unblinking, even in the direct light of the mist.
He had heard rumor of their existence many years ago in the seaport town of Innsmouth, a place he had never had the need to explore in person, but had heard talked about in hushed whispers at the University.
The four circles of 'men' continued to look to the sky as the maelstrom gained momentum, and their eyes bulged, as if they were being sucked from their heads. They each, in turn, raised their arms toward the clouds, and energy of a misty blue arced there, causing the hair on the back of Herbert's neck to stand.
They took up the chanting again (he hadn't even noticed that they had stopped), but it was barely more than a hum as the energy filled the air with a crackling sound that caused pain in his teeth and bones.
By this time, their eyes had expanded to the point of ridiculousness, and they began to pop, the noise more than most people wouldn’t have been able to stand, but Dr. West stood his ground, his own eyes never wavering from the display.
They began to shake, and the arcs of blue light flew from their fingertips, striking the book held by their leader. It rose straight up, their leader reaching for it, not knowing what was going to happen next, but obviously not yet willing to give up his possession.
The book exploded into a ball of intense blue flames, knocking the leader to the ground. His robe burned that same blue, and he stood up and raised his flaming arms, absorbing the arcs of energy that still flowed there. What remained of the book filtered down to Earth like bioluminescent rain.
The flame that engulfed the man turned from blue to violet, and he concentrated a single beam with clenched fists, and threw it skyward.
With a final spasm, his followers dropped to their knees, and cried out as a viscous violet light of their own poured from the ruined pits where their eyes had been...
The beams, each as intense as a surgical laser, met that of their leaders, the combined power of which burned a hole in the swirling mist, in effect, opening the fabric of reality itself. Herbert could see through tear-stung eyes beyond the threshold of this dimension, and into that of the beyond.
Before he knew what he had done, he was sprinting across the cemetery, side-stepping ancient, crumbling grave-markers as he went, and soon he had pierced the side of the congregation and was heading straight for their leader who, unlike his followers, still had his eyes, and through the violet flame saw Herbert's advance. He protested wildly for breaking the circle and moved to stop Herbert in his tracks, but it was too late... the damage had been done, and was irreversible.
Herbert stood there, hundreds of men surrounding him, energy arcing over his head and intense winds threatening to knock him to the ground, but none of that mattered, because he could see now, see straight into the abyss of space, time, and the whole of creation...
From the corner of his eye, he saw the violet-flamed leader wielding a club of some sort, and he instinctively ducked out of the way of the blow, but he hadn’t seen the tombstone that rose to his left, like a pyramid from the sands, and he hit it with the side of his head, and went down.
Every color, every sound, everything that he had tried so hard to understand was gone... only blackness remained, and maddening silence.
*****
Herbert could taste dirt, feel grit on his teeth, his tongue, but his eyes wouldn't work, wouldn't see. He sat up, blind to his surroundings, and his fingers dug into the ground, the soil loose, moist.
He dared not walk for fear of running into another of those damned gravestones, but he didn't feel safe sitting here either, exposed and helpless.
He was on his hands and knees, moving slowly over the ground. The fact that he felt no grass and nothing but dirt (or was it sand?) caused minor alarm. He was not in the cemetery at Hangman's Hill, he was sure of that, but where was he? When was he?
He was starting to see light, but nothing more; his mind told him this was a good thing. His eyes were functional and should return to him soon, then he would figure out where he was, and what he was going to do about it...
His hands reached, felt strange things and retracted from them on their own. He needed to find water, something to wash out his eyes. He needed to see.
His hand touched something smooth, round, slightly wet. He pulled back from it, then touched it once more, this time with some force, and it cracked under the pressure of his grasp.
He felt a thick fluid pour out of it, followed by a thinner liquid. Instinctively, he cupped his hand in the puddle before the ground claimed it for its own and splashed his face and eyes with it.
Slowly, the light became color, and the color, shape. He still couldn't see properly, but he could see enough to know he wasn't in Arkham anymore. Beyond him lay an endless expanse of rippling, grey soil, an immense range of mountains far off on the horizon.
He sat down, and almost immediately regretted his decision. He could feel the thicker fluid that had yet to be absorbed by the porous ground as it soaked into the backside of his scrubs. He held his hand up to his face and studied it. It still dripped from the puddle, but it wasn't water that he had bathed himself in... in fact, he had no idea what it was. Regardless, it seemed to have done the trick.
The first thing he saw when his eyesight returned was a field of what he at first thought were eggs, but came to realize were indeed opaque pearls, or perhaps glass spheres, a head floating in each (those of the cultists, it seemed). Each of the heads were severed cleanly at the neck, and to confirm the fact that they were indeed the cultists, each was missing its eyes.
They were haphazardly strewn about and numbered in the dozens. Beyond the field of spheres were small earthen mounds that looked to be still more spheres covered by a thin layer of soil.
He bent down and studied the remains of the one he had broken earlier, and it occurred to him that the thicker of the two liquids might actually be the dissolved remains of the head it had contained; and the thinner liquid, that which had suspended it, possibly a chemical reaction with the surrounding air?
His suspicions were confirmed when he saw traces of hair and skin swirling about in the mess...
He had washed out his eyes with the dissolved remains of a cultist’s face! This fact disturbed him greatly, but there didn't seem to be any ill effects, so he refused to dwell on it.
To take his mind off this, he decided to start looking for a clue, any clue as to his whereabouts, when he felt a tremor in the ground that seemed to be caused by an upheaval in the vicinity of the dirt mounds. He looked just in time to see several of them open, and to discover that they contained huge eyes, not unlike those of a deep-sea squid.
He stepped back and watched from what he hoped was a relatively safe distance, and saw as a creature, at least 30 meters across, shook itself free from the ground, and raised itself into the air. It looked not unlike a terrestrial skate or ray, if not for the dozens of eyes that it sported topside.
The underside was featureless, save for the mouth and what seemed to be gill slits, and it flapped its giant wings and turned to the mountains, swinging around a giant barb that looked dangerous enough to do Herbert a great deal of harm, so he let the beast on its way, and he in turn went the other.
This, it would prove, was a stroke of luck, because as far as his still-weak eyes could see was a structure that looked to be of intelligent design, so he set off for it in the hopes that it held the key to his whereabouts.
*****
Along the way, he saw more strange—and beautiful—creatures, but very little in the wa
y of landscape. To the left of him was a great chasm that fell away and would have dwarfed the Grand Canyon back home. Clouds of dark matter swirled there.
From the cloud, a pod (a flock, a swarm?) of mile-long headless eels slid in a smooth, almost graceful movement, like a flag waving in the wind. Each end of the creatures was the same, tapered to a thin, almost transparent tail. There were no eyes or any other features of note, and the only way he knew which end was which was by the direction they were going (if they weren't going in reverse, he thought).
At the edge of the chasm, a sluggish thing the size of a car slid along the ground, tentacled parasites clinging to its splotched skin, and Herbert noticed that its body changed shape, color, and texture with the ground it covered. This change was almost instantaneous, and fascinated him greatly.
As it was back in Arkham, he could have stared at these things forever and never absorb it all, but he told himself to focus on the task at hand: the structure that he hoped held the answers that he sought.
The temple (for he could now see it for what it was) was immense, dwarfing the landscape around it. It was still a ways off, but it dominated the skyline and consumed his attention.
It was stone, that much he could see, and constructed from a strange amalgamation of towers, peaks, spires, and walls, some of which just seemed to end with no rhyme or reason.
Corpses and skeletons littered the ground around him the closer he got to the temple; some of them from creatures he had already seen, but still others that were completely alien to him. He also found the discarded robes of several of the cultists, including the scorched and blackened red robe of their leader. No sign—skeletal or otherwise—of the cultists themselves remained. He kicked at several to confirm that they were indeed empty, and uncovered a handful of small (in comparison to what he had seen so far) hermit crab-like creatures. They scurried about, finding shelter under robes that lay close by.
Beyond them, the structure...
There was a gentle slope that led up to the front gate of the structure, which, in his mind, could only lead to a chamber of cavernous proportions inside. To either side of the gate were obelisks, some ten stories high, and covered in (from this distance) indecipherable writings.
The colour and texture of the thing gave the impression of coral, but that seemed unlikely since there was no water to be seen in any direction, unless it was of an age when long-gone oceans still broke against alien shores.
Almost lost behind the obelisks were what appeared to be two immense water wheels with roughly-carved gears at the hubs. There where chains attached at the hubs that disappeared into unknown chambers below. Portions of the wheels themselves turned either underground or into recesses in the structure itself. Above them, two fluted openings with tubes that led off and over the oddly-shaped roof.
Herbert West stopped a few hundred yards from the temple and looked up at it, trying to make sense of the thing. What could a structure so massive possibly contain (if it contained anything at all), and to what purpose?
There were no windows, no doorways of note (aside from the obvious), and no markings, save for those on the obelisks, which Herbert studied at length. He cursed himself for skipping those lectures at Miskatonic that might have come in handy right about now.
There were obvious references to marine life such as fish, eels, octopus, whales and the like, but what drew his attention most were the human-like figures and their likeness to denizens of the sea—bulbous eyes, pouting lips, webbed hands and feet—worshiping a creature shown falling from the stars.
Just as Herbert thought to get one of his journals to transfer over this small portion of the hieroglyphics, he saw a school of what could only be this world’s version of fish come over the horizon. They were slender, scaled, and almost completely invisible, their skeletal structure and organs easily seen through skin that more resembled panes of glass than scales. Their fins, which were silver-blue and ornate, flowed behind them like battle-torn banners.
They danced above him, skirting around the perimeter of the structure, and even though they numbered in the hundreds, they moved as one.
His mind reeled, but he reigned it in, and all at once it hit him: This world, and he with it, was completely underwater. It made perfect sense, all that he had seen thus far: eels, skates, and fish. Everything pointed to water, except the complete lack thereof.
Could it be that he was just slightly out of tune with this other dimension? It would explain so much: the complete lack of sound, the creatures within arm’s length not seeing him, and the temple made of blue-green coral that held the answers to the stars.
He wasn't standing in a vast, barren wasteland; he was standing on the bottom of the ocean, be it an alternate Earth's or some other world’s.
Still, questions remained...
How had he been able to touch the pearl, or break it, or wash his eyes with the remains of the cultist? He had even been able to kick one of their robes. Could it be that they had failed back on Earth, and they too were here, but almost not? These things were still a mystery to him.
Whatever happened, they paid with their lives, and he was at least grateful that he had not.
He traced the relief of the creature falling from the stars and looked to the door of the temple (or was it a tomb?).
He had to get inside now, had to find out if the scenes transcribed on the obelisks were indeed true, and what (if anything) it had to do with what was happening in Arkham, and he assumed the rest of the world.
He was almost small enough that he could slip through the crack between the door and doorframe, but he thought better of it. He decided he would walk the base of the temple and look for another, more accessible opening, and only return if there were no other options.
His plan never came to pass, as the moment he passed through the gap between the obelisks, the water wheels began to spin, unseen water flowing through the fluted tubes above them (water flowing underwater?). As the wheels turned, so turned the gears and chains; slowly at first, then with increased speed, and the massive door of the temple began to open.
Dr. Herbert West froze where he stood and waited for whatever fate was to befall him. Even though God was foreign to him and his strictly scientific mind, he wondered what else could stand behind a door of such stature.
An impenetrable wall of darkness greeted him from within as the gate continued its slow decent.
He wanted to get closer, to see through the darkness, but his body refused his command to move, and he, for once, didn't blame it.
The gate slammed into the ground, threatening to topple Herbert, the obelisks, even the far off mountains themselves.
The darkness moved, coils of it feeling the walls outside the gate.
Then it came...
Claws gripped the walls on either side of the opening, and Herbert had to crane his neck to fully see them. He was a speck of dust in a cosmic dance, his mind a black hole swirling with unfathomable things and inexplicable experiences.
The eyes...
It was the eyes that put him over the edge, filled him with the first true sense of dread, of primal fear, he had ever known. The eyes were the last thing he remembered seeing before slipping off into a dimension of complete and utter darkness...
*****
Herbert West woke up for the second time in as many days (or so he thought, because there was really no way of knowing how long he was gone) with the taste of dirt in his mouth, but when he opened his eyes, he immediately knew his surroundings. He was back in the wooded cemetery behind Hangman's Hill. He stood and looked around him.
Other than scorch marks on several of the grave markers, any proof of the events of the previous day were all nonexistent. He checked his belongings, which were still stowed behind the tree he had hidden behind, and except for a broken bottle of reagent, everything seemed to be intact.
On his way out, he checked the police cars, their batteries long dead, and recovered a shotgun and, oddly enough, a flame
thrower. He considered heading back to the University, but decided at last to follow the river to French Hill.He wanted to see what had happened on the other side of town, and was quite ready to give up the thoughts that swirled in his mind. What exactly had he seen, and did he have proof that he actually saw anything at all? Could all of that have been visions brought about by the blow to his head?As he followed River St., and just before he crossed Garrison, he heard gunfire. He turned in time to see a Police Officer standing over the crumpled body of the man he had just shot, and a swarm of crustaceans closing in on them both.
Knowing the gun would do him no good, Herbert tossed it aside and ignited the flamethrower. The man, he could see, was still alive, but the officer was, even as he rushed to the scene, being eviscerated by the crabs. Herbert decided that if he could save one of them, it would be best to save the man that was mostly still intact, and he engaged the creatures with several short, controlled bursts from the flamethrower. Already claiming the Officer as their prize, they scuttled off with what was left of him, leaving Herbert to tend to the wounded man.
The man was falling into a state of unconsciousness, so Herbert worked fast. He kneeled down beside him and removed a bone saw from his bag.
“Trust me,” he said. “I'm a doctor.”
Then he flipped it on, and went to work...
Secondhand Flesh
Darkness crept over Arkham like some great, lumbering beast, swallowing everything in its path. Firelight fought back, but plumes of black smoke, created by the fires themselves, gave darkness the upper hand.In his candlelit corner of the night, David had fallen asleep watching the door. It was something he did most nights. He awoke when he heard his name (or a bastardized version thereof) and opened his eyes.In the corner of the room, he saw white fangs and yellow eyes. The neighbor’s cat had gotten in again.There it stood, over six-feet tall on bent legs, and studied him.“Hungry,” it said in that detached, matter-of-fact voice that all cats had.“What food I have is in the pantry,” David replied, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “You know that.”
Re-Animated States of America Page 2
