Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013

by Various Writers

  But Legrasse had not. He went to them all, adding another layer to the horror building within him with each one witnessed. Why he thought of the cultists as horrific merely because they went cheerfully to their deaths, all shrieking the same line of nonsense, he could not explain. But, horrify him it did. What he later found in the asylums was worse.

  The inspector then visited both of the New Orleans’ hospitals into which the various prisoners found too unstable to stand trial had been relegated by the courts. In the first, a bleak, cold series of buildings which confined its inmates to singular rooms of a tiny, claustrophobic nature, he found that the new patients had taken to the asylum routine quite gracefully once they had been assured that they were merely being held for execution. None of them had anything new to tell Legrasse. They simply thanked him for his visit, several asking, politely, if there might not be some way in which he might speed up the waiting process so that they might be taken to the gallows faster. The inspector demurred from comment.

  In the second hospital, however, Legrasse found a different situation. The next facility was far more modern than the first—the methodology used within its walls quite advanced and experimental. It was a sunnier, healthier environment than practically any mental hospital in the country at that time. The hospital’s progressive administrators along with the doctors and nurses at that institution had assured their new charges repeatedly that no one meant them any harm—that they were in no danger of execution there, and that they would be well cared for. Thus the staff could not understand why the patients had existed in a state of dread, obsessive terror since their arrival—a state that only grew more shrill and violent with each new battery of assurances.

  Several of the cultists managed to commit suicide. One in particular stood out from the rest. The danger of his possible self-destruction visibly obvious to all in attendance, the man was kept in a straight jacket to thwart his desires. One morning he was found dead, smothered in a manner the staff would have thought previous to his success to be impossible.

  The man had chewed through the thick mattress layering which covered his floor, straight down to the hardwood slats beneath. Then, he had continued onward, gnawing away at the boards below until finally he had reached a state where he could hook his teeth into the wood to the point where they would anchor him against the floor. After that, he had induced vomiting and choked himself to death in a pool of his own liquefying dinner.

  It had only been after examining the hole chewed into the smooth oaken boards that Legrasse finally began to feel the same despair which had shaken his lieutenant so much earlier. Indeed, at that point the inspector began his search for anything or anyone outside the usual sphere of police influence that might shed some light on what had motivated the happenings in the swamps outside his city.

  Finding nothing for several weeks, Legrasse’s last hope had been the conference to which he had taken the idol. Meeting professor Webb had given the inspector a bit of optimism. The elder academic had found the same cult, even the same type of graven image as Legrasse had, across the world in the frozen mountains of Greenland. His eagerness to explore the site of another branch of the same lost religion inspired Legrasse to the point where he thought he might finally be able to close the books on the monstrous case once and for all.

  As he continued to stare at the dark idol on his desk, the inspector ordered in a soft voice, “Galvez, gather all the men who were with us in the swamp into the announcements room, would you?”

  The lieutenant went off to do what Legrasse had requested. As he did, the inspector and professor Webb merely continued staring at the curiosity in the middle of the desk. Neither man touched the black stone—the dreams resultant from previous contact had taught them better—but stare they did.

  For the moment, they could do nothing else.

  #

  “And that, gentlemen,” concluded Legrasse, “is all the back history any of us needs.” The inspector had taken nearly an hour’s time to retell the entire story to Webb, Galvez, and the nineteen other officers who had gone into the swamp, making sure each man in the room was as aware of every detail as everyone else present—giving them all the chance to contradict and correct the official record.

  “So now, let’s begin to outline what must be done next.” Throughout the room, his officers shuffled uneasily. Knowing what was in their minds, knowing also that none of the men of lesser rank would dare speak, Galvez asked for them, “Sir, is there anything that says all the men from the first raid need go on the second?”

  The quiet in the room stirred like the windswept snow at the feet of the first man to reach the shores of Antartica. The dry silence howled soundlessly, moving against its will and then finally settling back to the ground. Feeling its weight, Legrasse answered.

  “I never ask any man to set foot where he knows he can’t walk. I ...” his voice faltered for a moment, his mind deciding exactly how much truth was good for his officers. He continued after a moment, admitting, “I understand what hesitations there might be in a man’s mind over all of this.”

  “Ain’t no man here what’s scart too bad to follow you, inspector,” answered a street officer, Joel Carrinelle. He was a tall but thin man, with the bony hands and protruding Adam’s apple common in those of lanky frame. Unconsciously brushing back his cropped hair, he swore, “God’s oath, sir, if your gun’s in hand, mine’s at your back and you’re covered right up to Satan’s front door if need be. You strike the knocker, inspector, I’ll keep the neighbors busy.”

  “Thank you, officer Carrinelle. I’ll keep that in mind should we need to venture so far south.” As some of the men chuckled, Legrasse invited professor Webb to the front of the room. Loud enough for his men to hear him, the inspector said, “I want these men to know just what I plan to drag them into. Please, professor, tell them what you told me in Missouri.”

  As Legrasse took a seat, the professor began to address the assembled police officers before him.

  “You are brave men,” he said sincerely, “all of you. Of that there can be no question. Why do I say this, you ask? I will tell you. You men have looked upon the cult of Cthulhu and not only not gone insane, but apparently kept your wits as well. From what I know, that act, gentlemen, takes a brave heart, indeed.” Coming from behind the podium Legrasse had used, Webb moved out in front of it, spreading his hands as he continued.

  “These cultists are, I am certain, the most odious, faithless, monstrous representatives of humanity there are to be found anywhere in this world. As a group they claim to be everywhere, hidden from the eyes of mankind. I believe them. Those that I discovered years ago, those you have found—curious and degenerate? Unquestionably. They are a deliberately bloodthirsty and repulsive pack of things. The mere mention of them to peoples from outside their number who might still have knowledge of the cult causes even those possessing only the most rudimentary traces of civilization to shudder and turn away.”

  The officers listened intently. Webb told them what science could of the human sacrifice and queer rites practiced by the menace they were opposing. When he ran through his short bit of exact knowledge of the Cthulhu cult, he went on to tell of other, lesser sects he had studied. He told the officers of men who ate the hearts of their enemies to possess their souls, of slavers and exotic tortures and the secret prophecies of a score of religions, all twisted and foul—one more loathsome than the next. Then finally, he told them,

  “For all we know, these practioneers you have stumbled upon could be capable of any of these cruelties, or things far worse that none of us could even imagine. But gentlemen, that is why I believe it is precisely you and only you twenty in all of New Orleans—perhaps in all the Americas—that are capable of standing against these beasts.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, professor,” ventured a flush faced Sergeant named Muller, “but what’s so special about us?”

  “A fair question, officer,” answered Webb. “And I shall answer it. You men have
all faced these maniacs once. I am told that several of you froze for a moment, that one of you fainted. You won’t again. I’ll tell you why. When first you see ... oh, what? A yapping dog, perhaps. It barks and howls and you pull back, not so much because it is so fierce, but because its presence came unexpectedly. Once you see what it is and gauge its ability to do you injury, your fear disappears. These things are no different.”

  Walking back toward the front of the room slowly, Webb threw his words over his shoulder.

  “They are merely men. Nothing more. They might commit brutish, horrific crimes, but they are not more than flesh and blood. You proved that once. And that time they had the cloak of mystery and the unknown within which to hide their crude ordinariness. But you have stolen that wrap from their shoulders. They can not wear it to fool you again.”

  “But what about ...”

  Webb turned. One of the officers blurted the few words only to be hushed by his fellows. When the professor could not draw the man out further, Legrasse demanded the speaker finish his question. Reluctantly, surround by a sea of curious but embarrassed faces, all listened as he asked, “Professor, what if these bunch be more than just men? We ain’t been eager to say much about little, but it could be you maybe don’t know everything about this. I ain’t meanin’ no disrespect to you nor your learnin’, sir, but we ...”

  The man hesitated again, flustered and uncomfortable. His pause evaporated, however, forcing him to blurt, “we, we saw things out there, heard things. Plenty of us saw those eyes—glowing eyes, off in the distance—and that mound, the white mound. It was alive. Alive! And that wasn’t but all. There was giant things around us—flyin’ things! Flyin’!”

  “That’s enough,” snarled Legrasse, his tone curt and final. He understood his men’s fears. He had been in the swamp with them, had felt the cold stare of unseen eyes following them throughout their raid. In truth, he had felt those eyes more than once since that night, even amongst the cultured and learned elite with whom he had met in Missouri. But, he would not have officers in his command chattering in frightened shrieks. As the man sat back down, Webb took over.

  “There are many things in this world that none of us understand, my son,” he admitted. “I won’t bother debating with you whether or not there was something else unseen out there in the swamp with you. In all honesty, from some of the blasted texts and unpublished works I’ve read over the years, I feared there might have been something more to this even before your mention. But, I will ask, if there was, who else is there to stop it but yourselves?”

  As the officers looked from one to another, the professor told them, “Every religion awaits some sort of final outcome. Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Hindus, et cetera, all look toward the return of their messiah. Gentlemen, this cult of ours is no different. Those words shrieked by each of the executed cultists, as your inspector discovered during his interrogations, mean ‘In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.’”

  Staring into the eyes of the officer who had been brave enough to give voice to his comrades’ fears, Webb said, “This Cthulhu is their messiah, and they await his return as you do that of yours. If the sound of great wings here means otherworldly presences, all I can say is if the angels of some devil-worshiping cult’s messiah have arrived on the scene, then it is all the more important for you to prepare for battle.”

  Legrasse was glad no one was present save the men who had actually been in the swamp. What they were saying would have seemed madness, perhaps even unintelligible, to anyone who had not stood in the fetid air of the dark bayou that night, listening to the foul snap of giant wings, feeling the cold taste of hungry eyes rubbing against their backs. As the inspector pushed the unnerving memories back to a safer compartment within his brain, Webb moved closer to the officer he had picked out from the others.

  “Where others would be venturing into the unknown,” he said, “you have been there. As frightening as the thought of returning might be, imagine what it would do others—others without your experience? Others who had not so seen and done all of what you twenty have seen and done. You men, you have a better chance than any force in the world.”

  “A better chance of what?” asked Galvez, the words popping out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  “Of surviving, of course,” answered Webb, matter-of-factly. When asked “surviving what?”, he answered honestly, “I won’t know that until I’ve inspected the site of the melee.”

  “And what if you don’t survive?” asked yet another officer.

  “Then I would suggest you kill all the cultists in your custody and every other one you can find, before they succeed in returning their God to this plane, which ... if my calculations are correct, they will be attempting to do again ...”

  The professor reached into his jacket pocket and pulled forth a small note pad. Flipping it back several dozen leaves, he finally found the page he had been looking for. He scanned it for a moment then, one eye brow raising of its own volition, Webb answered,

  “Some time next month.”

  #

  Luckily for the quartet of boaters, the torrential storms which had been plaguing the area off and on for several months had stopped during the night. The next morning, despite the danger presented by the swamp’s treacherous bogs, Webb, Galvez, Carrinelle and Legrasse set off for Monolith Island, the colorful name given the site of the November 1st foray by the lieutenant. Unlike the first trip, however, this time several of the locals accompanied the investigators the entire way. Having the use of the swamp-dwellers’ crafts along with that of their owners’ services in getting them to the island made the trip a far easier thing to accomplish than it would have been on their own.

  Thanking their guides with both words and a pair of silver dollars, Legrasse instructed the boatmen to return for them in four hours—a time far into the late April afternoon, but still enough in advance of sundown to keep everyone happy. The pair of squatters agreed, departing in one boat, leaving the other behind in case their passengers had some then unforseen need for it. By the time their sleek, hand-carved bottom dragger had disappeared back into the moss-hung reeds, the inspector turned to find Webb hard at work, struggling to reach the top of the monolith.

  With Carrinelle boosting him, the professor acquired the platform of the great stone, a smooth surface of some five to six square feet. Legrasse ordered Carrinelle to remain with Webb while he and Galvez scouted about. The officer acknowledged his orders, taking up his post at the foot of the monolith while the professor busied himself atop it. At the same time, Legrasse and his lieutenant moved off to the other side of the island.

  “Inspector,” Galvez asked as they walked, “what do you make of the professor’s talk yesterday, all that stuff about the things we thought we heard and saw? About heathen religions having their own gods and all?”

  “Joseph,” answered Legrasse, “what do you want from me? Should I say I think he’s crazy and not be prepared? Should I say I think he’s right and that we’re surrounded by monsters from some savage’s idea of Hell? I don’t know what to think. None of us do. Maybe we were all letting things get to us last year. But then, maybe not. You have to remember, he needs facts just as much as we do. The more wild suppositions we give him for facts, the more wild the answers he has to give us back.”

  The inspector stopped for a second, staring out over the vast mud flat the relentless rains had made of the island. The unnatural chill of the past few days still hung in the air, made to seem all the more damp by the oppressive cover of hard gray clouds teeming from horizon to horizon. Legrasse fought the urge to snap at his lieutenant. The breakdown of his self-control had been inching forward for months, each new bizarre occurrence shaking him along just another small fraction toward the comforting embrace of madness and fear. Resisting their inviting lure, however, the inspector turned to Galvez.

  “We’re policemen, Joseph,” he said quietly. “We have a job to do. No one ever said anything ab
out winged monsters when we signed up—that’s true. But then no one ever made you any assurances about anything. You swore to uphold the laws of the city of New Orleans and to act in good faith to protect its citizens.” Legrasse shuddered slightly as a strange thought passed through his mind. Instantly he seized upon it as a way to make his point.

  “Twenty-two years ago when I joined the force, no one said anything to me about monsters. But two years later, we all read the papers out of London as they rattled on about the ghoul there carving up women. Twenty years now and that one’s never been captured. Flesh stripped from the bodies of the victims, organs removed, breasts cut away, hints of perverted sexual mutilation ... whose to say that monster didn’t have wings?”

  Galvez tilted his head as if he had been slapped. His nostrils flared with distaste. It was not that the lieutenant did not like cases that made him think. He was a man of rare intelligence, skilled in moving his ability to reason down clear, deductive paths. But this case was beyond his ken. Galvez had long been known as a man who could anchor himself firmly and pull the facts of a situation to him, no matter how deep he might have to dredge the various mires in which they were hidden.

  This time, however, he found he could not position himself. The case seemed too much like the swamp that had borne it. The lieutenant could find no ground solid enough to plant his feet so that he could begin dragging for the clues he needed to effect a solution. Instead of helping to clear his vision, each new fact seemed to only obscure things further—leaving him groping for the shore of his consciousness, drowning in the darkness. Abandoning the front lines, he acquiesced to Legrasse instead.

  “So then,” he asked, “what do we do?”

  “Whatever professor Webb needs us to do. We two aren’t going to get anywhere with this on our own. We’ve been over this island twice by daylight now and not found anything that meant much to us. Our only hope now is that somehow ...” And then, before Legrasse could continue, professor Webb’s voice interrupted his line of reason.