“No.” She said it in a gasp, and fear glimmered in her good eye before she turned away from him. So she was a woman after all. “You do not want to go to that temple. We … we need you. You were not given that book for your own--” He cut her off with a glare.
The weariness, the uncertainty, and the feeling of distance all faded, replaced with a sense of purpose. A plan, half-formed and cloudy until now, roared through him.
“You said Souad was a valuable member of your … organization.” He almost said ‘cult.’ “This will be my trial, then. If I can reach the temple, then both Souad and I will return to you, and you will be stronger for having both of us. If I fail, then this book is only lies and blasphemy.”
She looked at the floor, understood his threat.
“The book does not tell everything. Some secrets were left only with trusted servants of our order, so that no one who only has the book would know the whole truth.” She glanced up at him, only to flinch away from his hard stare. “The temple of the Masked Messenger is much as the book says it is. But Sharinza’s story does not mention that there must be an offering to access the power of the temple.”
“And what does the djinn of the temple prefer? I expect it is not exotic incense.”
“No. A soul must be offered.”
Udad nodded, turning this profane act over in his mind.
“What else?”
She tried to look at him, and again flinched away.
“Peel, the Westerner who murdered your sister. He has a copy of The Masked Messenger, and he could be headed toward Tamegroute.”
“He is an ignorant American who doesn’t know what must be offered, even if he can understand the book.” Udad felt the heady rush of power course through him. Even if Peel wasn’t headed for the temple, it would not be difficult to kidnap him. “Still, it would be best not to make him wait for his destiny.”
Udad could see no greater justice than to burn the soul of the Western unbeliever who had murdered his sister in order to light her way back from death. And if the temple did not work as the book claimed, he would at least have revenge.
“Is there anything else?”
“Just being near the Temple is dangerous, Udad.” Her small hands plucked at the air. “Time and space are distorted, and can drive a weak-minded man mad. You could see your past or future.”
Udad was unimpressed.
“I don’t fear the future. Is this why you need a man to go? Someone without womanish fear?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor.
“Then you should go,” he said. “I need to prepare.”
Clearly cowed, she left. When the door was safely shut behind her, Udad pulled the clothing out of a chest, revealing the AK-47 hidden beneath.
It was nothing for him to steal a pickup truck and turn it south. It was a long drive that took him across the Atlas Mountains and into the burning, trackless Sahara, but his desire for vengeance burned hotter than the pitiless desert sun.
Peel sped into the mighty Sahara. He’d crammed Chemal’s Landrover with bottled water, canned food, and petrol drums in the back. He needed to be prepared as drove out of Tamogroute and to the south, where a vast lifeless world opened to him.
When he made an illegal crossing into Algeria nobody noticed. When he reached the Bechar to Tindouf road, he crossed it without thought and drove into the mighty sea of sand dunes.
It was then that the Masked Messenger appeared.
She sat next to Peel, in the passenger’s seat. She wore only a dirty white robe. Acid perspired from her pores, dissolving the fabric of her robes and the car seat, but never enough to completely erode either. She smelt like drain cleaner.
Peel ignored her for three days.
Only when he was lost, when he was convinced that he’d been driving in circles for the last forty-eight hours, did he deign to talk to her.
“What exactly do you want of me?”
That thin smile again, but no answer.
Later they stood together outside the stationary Landrover, on the rise of a dune. Peel peered into the vast expanse of still yellow waves searching for a landmark to drive towards. He guzzled another water bottle until it was empty. It was so hot he felt that he sweated most of the water before it reached his stomach.
His unwanted companion required no sustenance. Outside the hot wind gathered, swirled her robe about her slender form as if it were a living entity. She continued to drip acid, an endless supply carving canals in her flesh. Where the acid fell upon the sand, glass formed.
“Are you going to speak to me … Nyarlathotep?”
She pointed south. “There’s a sand storm coming.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re about to lose your vehicle.”
Bottling his anger, Peel fashioned a makeshift turban to protect against the encroaching winds of coarse sands. When the storm hit he worked hard, dug through the rest of the day and right through the night. But the sands were too fast, too persistent. Without really remembering when it happened, the four-wheel drive was swallowed by the dunes. He’d only managed to save an AK-47 assault rifle, a knife, his map, five liters of water, and his copy of The Masked Messenger.
“Fuck you!” he yelled into the night, for Nyarlathotep had long abandoned him. “I said fuck you!”
Exhausted he wrapped a shawl about him, sat with his back to the violent winds, and waited out the storm.
In the morning when the winds had died, Peel marched. He held off from drinking the last of his water for as long as he could. He trudged south only because his map said that a water pumping station lay somewhere in that direction. But in the desert there were no landmarks to keep his bearings, and when his mind was rational, he knew he was lost.
Time passed and eventually his water was no more. The sky swam, blistered with gusts of heat like invisible demons sent to torment him. Eventually he tumbled down the side of the dune. When he crashed at the base, his mouth and eyes stung with the sand that filled them.
“I’ll do it!” he called. “Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”
The ground began to rumble. Huge layers of sand slid down the dunes, forcing Peel to continuously climb upwards. Just beyond the next crest a gigantic cloud of sand billowed into the sky. He spied enormous stone blocks rising in its chaotic fury.
Peel clambered up a shifting dune. A great temple was rising from the Sahara, greater than any structure built by humanity. Sand ran off its mighty roof like waterfalls. Hollow reverberations like the echoes inside an enormous cavern rang to announce its materialization. Peel could only wonder at its size, for it was at least three hundred meters in height, with four sides a kilometer and a half long.
Upon its square roof were gigantic statues of faceless winged demons. In mighty alcoves arranged around its base where impossibly large statues of octopoidal-bat hybrids, each carved from a single piece of stone.
In a daze Peel walked up to its base, stood at its mighty steps. He could not be sure he wasn’t hallucinating until he clambered upon the first mighty stone block. When he reached the lower balcony, exhausted and sun-burnt, a single stone entrance awaited him. In his heart, he knew that an infinite darkness lay beyond, and that he must enter if he was to find answers and salvation.
Peel staggered into the temple, his weapon slung under his arm, his sheathed knife within easy reach in his belt.
The portal was more than a doorway, for he found himself transplanted across the gulfs of space and time, and perhaps into another universe altogether. This was no longer the Sahara, but a vast alien city of buildings and towers carved from single pieces of rock. Each structure was connected by a web of passageways, balconies, tunnels and bridges joined at conflicting angles that only Escher could have imagined. The sky was a brilliant green tapestry of stars and galaxies. Half the horizon was dominated by a tremendous gas giant, its swirling atmosphere of browns, oranges and whites clearly visible. Peel could make out six satellites of varying c
olors, populated with oceans, mountains, volcanoes and … writhing tentacles.
In a stupor Peel walked to the edge of one balcony, peered over its lip. Hundreds perhaps thousands of kilometers beneath him was the surface of a purple world decorated with pink clouds and pasty-grey mountains, and a sea which frothed like bubbling acid. This city reached heights so great, Peel could see the curvature of the moon upon which it was built.
Feeling vertigo Peel stepped back.
Now the Masked Messenger waited for him. She wore an elongated mask of bronze, with two dark eye-slits and no mouth piece, so slim that it should have been impossible for her face to hide behind it.
Beyond the Masked Messenger lingered two muscular naked humans, a man and a woman. Their faces were blank stretches of featureless skin. They waited motionlessly like bodyguards.
“I’m insane, aren’t I?” Peel asked.
The Messenger approached, removed her mask revealing the normal face of Lathanty Rope, now hairless and disfigured by her caustic blood.
“So where am I then? Am I to be another one of your tales?”
“You’re in my home. This is Sharnoth, the Court of Nyarlathotep beyond the universe. All things can be learnt here, for a price.” Her mask had transformed, as she handed him a bronze jug lapping with clean water.
Peel didn’t hesitate as he guzzled its entire contents. “Including the knowledge on how to bring Nicola back?”
“All things are possible.”
His eyes caught movement, not from the faceless watchers, but from a distant man running between passages, darting across bridges, and peering into windows. He too carried an AK-47. At times Peel could see the man more than once, as if he could glimpse the man in his past, his present and his future all at the same time. Like Souad’s weapon, in this world time and space were unaligned with cause and effect.
“Who is that?”
“The man I want you to murder.”
Peel lifted his Russian made weapon, firm in his hand now that he was no longer delirious with dehydration. The Masked Messenger in her infinite planning had arranged for everything.
“Who is he?”
“He is Udad Benhammou, brother of Souad. He is here to kill you.”
Because of the water in his gut, Peel felt alive again, more clear-headed. But that was exactly how Nyarlathotep wanted Peel to feel, because she had a job she wanted him to do.
Peel had killed enough times in his life, and he regretted every one of them. The faces of the dead kept him awake at night. His only solace was that each killing had been in self-defense, or to protect against alien intrusion that they worked to allow. But to kill in cold-blood for a selfless purpose, Peel wasn’t certain that he had it in him, or if Nicola would even want him to.
“Why, what do you get out of it?”
Again, Nyarlathotep gave Peel that sardonic, all-knowing, omnipotent line-thin smile. “Nothing that you could ever possibly hope to understand.”
Udad clenched his AK-47. It was his closest link to the real world. Most of the time, the gun’s steel retained some heat from the desert outside. Sometimes, however, it was cold beneath his fingers. Udad clenched his teeth until the warmth returned. He did not like this palace of the ifrits. The sky was unnatural, frightening, and made Udad nauseous just looking at it. The temple around him was no relief either.
His other anchor to reality was his hatred of Peel. Udad had seen tracks leading to the mighty temple, and they could not have belonged to anyone but his sister’s murderer. There was a symmetry to all this, the poetry of fate.
Udad crept across the strange interior, keeping his head down. He tried to ignore the grotesque, ungodly statues. The carven abominations mocked everything that was sacred and decent, and their imagery preyed on his mind. Two days of driving in the hot desert night and sleeping during the worst of the Sahara’s blistering heat had left him exhausted and parched, but still determined.
He crept through the dark interior of the temple, searching, unsure as to how long he had been doing so. Time seemed elastic and strange, wrapped around itself. Several times, he could not tell how many, he found himself in places with no memory of having arrived. Experimentally, he made a single pass with his hand in front of his face. His hand appeared to flicker randomly before coming to rest where he had intended. On the second pass, he tried to change where his hand would stop, but somehow, it ended up somewhere else.
Fate, it appeared, was strong here. All the better for him.
After an uncountable time of stealth and waiting, Udad saw Peel and a bald woman standing together on a raised dais. Anger surged through him. If he had been betrayed by the Sisterhood, he would hunt them all down. Then he would be the sole master of the temple and its power. Peel had a reliable AK-47 slung off his shoulder, like the one Udad held.
He found a dark corner, next to one of the immense carven blasphemies. As quietly as he could, Udad worked the action of the AK-47, chambering a bullet. Neither Peel nor the woman seemed to notice. As Udad watched, she gave him an urn, and Peel drank. It was too much to hope that it was poisoned.
As he brought his sights to bear on Peel, the figures on the dais flickered and vanished. Udad cursed under his breath. He should have been faster. His sister’s spirit cried out for vengeance, and he had been too slow. What evil magic was this?
Even as he remonstrated himself, someone--Peel--was back on the dais, alone. Udad could not make out his features, silhouetted against the nauseous green light from outside, but the distinctive assault rifle with the curling magazine slung off one shoulder was all the confirmation he needed.
Peel turned. He appeared to hear the shot just before Udad squeezed the trigger. The weapon’s chest-thumping retort was immediately swallowed by the strange geometry of the temple. There was a chunky spray as the bullet caught Peel in the head, and he collapsed like a sack of grain.
In his triumph, Udad did not rush his pleasure. He walked casually up the stairs slinging his weapon over his shoulder. His sister was avenged, and the sacrifice had been made. The powers of the temple were now his to command. But first, he wanted to see the face of the man who had murdered Souad.
He reached the top of the dais, but no body and no blood awaited him. The polished grey-yellow stone of the dais was dust-free as if it had been polished.
He glanced back to where he had come from and saw himself, weapon aimed. The retort of the shot reached him a split second after his own bullet smashed through his skull.
The offices of the French oil prospecting company, although still deep within the Algerian Sahara, were a welcome sight for Harrison Peel. He drank their water, ate their food, and used their amenities until he felt refreshed and human again. Then he commandeered their telephone to call the United States.
“We all thought you were dead, Peel,” said the distant voice of Jack Dixon, Peel’s NSA contact back in Maryland.
“I should have been, mate. I should have been.”
“Well glad to hear that you’re not.”
“A geological survey team found me in the middle of nowhere, brought me here. Unbelievable really, the chances of them finding me were astronomically low, but they did.”
The open office plan was pristine and clean, with desktop computers and notice boards. A young woman sat at one of the computers, her keystrokes even and unbroken, otherwise Peel was alone. From where he stood he couldn’t see her face. She didn’t seem to be eavesdropping, so he let her be.
“Get yourself to In Salah. We’ll have a passport and a flight out waiting for you.”
“Thanks Jack, I owe you one.”
“You always do.” He laughed and then hung up.
Peel sighed, feeling as if he could actually relax for the first time in weeks. He made himself coffee in the minuscule kitchenette. Instant was all that was on offer, but it tasted good regardless.
The silent woman continued to tap away. Only her fingers moved.
Peel’s mind was drawn again to the horro
rs he experienced inside the temple, and its bizarre and terrifying secrets. He’d told the Messenger that he would not kill Udad for her. As simple as that, he had walked away, out into the Sahara, expecting to die.
Even now he wasn’t certain he hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Was the Masked Messenger really a cosmic god that made all the decision on when and how the universe evolved? Or was she entirely a fabrication of his fevered mind?
His copy of The Masked Messenger was all that had survived with him. His knife, the gun, the water, even his photograph of Nicola and their engagement ring had been consumed by the sands. Why had the book survived?
The tapping had ceased without him even noticing it.
“Harrison Peel.” She wasn’t asking.
He turned, faced the young woman staring at him. She was pretty, until he spied her milky white eye.
“Yes?”
“I have something for you.” She handed him a vial with a metal stopper. Inside swished a pristine transparent liquid that turned turquoise and amber depending upon the angle of the light.
Reluctantly Peel took the vial. “What is this?”
“The Messenger keeps her promises.”
Peel did a double-take as he stared back at the woman. Was she one of the Sisters? Was their organization real? Did the Masked Messenger actually exist?
“Drink it,” she explained. “And it will take you back in time and space, to be with your lover once again. But only some experiences of your past will change. You’ll still return to Morocco. You’ll still become lost in the Sahara and find the temple, where you will fulfill the Messenger’s plans.”
“But I …” he stumbled. He wasn’t sure whether he should dismiss her, or interrogate her. “What? I didn’t kill Benhammou.”
“We never expected you to.”
“Then what did I do, to deserve this?”
“You’ve read the book Mr. Peel, the first story? After her servant sacrificed himself in the temple--a fact not recorded in the book--Sharinza returned to her home, and in doing so bridged the dimensions between our world and that of Nyarlathotep, and then …”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2013 Page 16
