“Yes!” answered the high priest as if he had read Legrasse’s mind merely by looking into his eyes. “De worm understands! It understands!”
The storm was what wove the strange design in the plants they had found earlier, and it was what called forth the monsters from the sky. The high priest, delighted at the mad dawning he found in the inspector’s eyes, unhitched the lead weighted club dangling from the girdle he wore, the only piece of clothing to be found on any of the cultists. Holding his weapon on high, an insane gleam in his eye, the black skinned man shouted to be heard over the howling pain of wind and screams.
“You know—dat good. Good and good. Now you know why die must, to bring down de priests dat will rise up great R’lyeh, and thus free almighty Cthulhu!”
As a piercing whoop went up from the worshippers, the high priest aimed his club for Legrasse’s head and intoned—
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh ...”
The first bullet ripped through the side of the Negro’s head, exploding out through his opposite ear, scattering an arc of blood through the growing wind. The second and third hit his body at different levels a split second apart, spinning his shattered frame first one way, then the other. Before Legrasse’s brain could form the slightest prayer of thanks, suddenly two lines of police broke clear of the distant foliage where the inspector’s boat had been swamped and came streaming toward the island.
The cultists raced to the water’s edge to greet their attackers. None of them possessed weapons outside of teeth and nails, but they seemed oblivious to such concerns. Charging through the ever tightening circle of wind surrounding the island, they drove forward to the edge of the swamp and then off into its foaming waters, straight on at the attacking line of police.
Legrasse’s men opened fire, dropping one naked corpse after another into the churning marsh. The wind howling, spinning madly, the constant gunfire and the shrieks of those it cut down all conspired to fill the air with a masking cacophony, hiding what was truly transpiring. Still lashed to the monolith, however, Legrasse was not deceived.
“For our dear Lord’s sake, don’t kill them!”
But none could hear the inspector as he struggled against his bonds. One after another, he watched the cultists die, saw their smiling lips repeat the damning words ...
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Carrinelle reached Legrasse’s side just as the inspector had almost freed his left hand. Long strips of skin hung from his wrist and thumb, blood flowing freely, but Legrasse cared not. As his man cut through the last of the restraints, the inspector shouted, “We can’t kill them! That’s what they want. Every death brings it a bit closer.”
“What, inspector?” asked Carrinelle. “Brings what closer?”
And then, a sudden dreadful knowledge gripping him, Legrasse looked upward through the horrible storm and pointed, screaming.
“That!”
Carrinelle looked up along the line of the inspector’s arm. Shielding his eyes from the sand and other debris whipping through the cyclonic winds, the officer stared up into the sky. What he saw made him gasp. Descending slowly toward the island, some staggering distance overhead, a white shape spun wildly, hanging suspended due to the gale currents and its own great wings. Carrinelle jammed the fingers of one hand into his mouth. Words sputtered out around his drool-slicked fingers, meaningless and stupid. Grabbing him, Legrasse demanded,
“Get hold of yourself, man—that’s an order!” When the officer continued to stare blankly, his pupils contracting to the merest pin points, the inspector slapped him, leaving a bloody outline on Carrinelle’s cheek from his own dripping wounds. The man blinked, then began to beg Legrasse’s pardon. The inspector silenced him.
“No time, Joel,” he said. “I understand. Forget it. Right now we’ve got to deal with that, that ... that thing!”
“But how, inspector? What can we do?”
“Did you get the explosives?” When Carrinelle shakenly indicated that they had brought an entire boatload, Legrasse ordered, “Then get them up here—now!”
While the officer made his way to the beach, Legrasse turned to the monolith behind him. Heedless of his torn hand or his exhaustion, the inspector threw himself against the great granite slab, grappling for the hand and foot holds that would take him to the top. Blood smeared the rock from his wounds as he made his way painfully up the great stone’s side. The violently swirling winds threatened to knock him free several times, but he managed to hang on, leaving a flowing crimson trail behind as he finally pulled his head above the monolith’s pinnacle.
Looking over the edge, there in the center of the small platform atop the monolith, Legrasse found another statue, exactly as he had the first time. His eye caught by the smooth dark carving, he fell into the spell of the hideous statue, lost to time until after he knew not how long, Carrinelle’s voice came to him.
“Inspector! We’ve got the explosives!”
Grateful for the distraction, Legrasse grabbed the new statue with his unprotected hand and then released his hold on the monolith, sliding painfully down its side until he slammed against the ground. Staggering to his feet, he found that only some four of his men had managed to keep their wits besides Carrinelle. Where the rest had run off to—if they were even still alive—he did not know or care. He could not blame any man for cracking under what they had seen that night, he could only thank God for those that had not. Gathering those few hearty souls together, the inspector pulled them close so as to be heard over the roar of the building storm.
“How you kept your wits, gentlemen,” he bellowed, “I won’t ask. We can all make thanks on Sunday come ...”
“If we live that long,” interrupted one officer, a wild, terrified look in his eye. Understanding, wishing he could give in to the madness eating at him, Legrasse nodded, saying, “We’ll live.”
Pointing upward, seeing that the ghastly white shape was half again closer than before, the inspector swore, “It’s that thing that’s going to Hell tonight. It’s drawn by prayers and blood. Well, this is where the prayers were, and this is where the blood is, so let’s fix it a dinner it will remember.”
Understanding Legrasse, the men tore open the crates of explosives they had brought with them so gingerly through the marsh. As they worked to rig all the different boxes together to form one large bomb around the monolith, the inspector looked upward once more and whispered.
“So you and yours ruled the Earth a million years ago, eh? Well, we’ve got a few tricks now the cavemen didn’t.” Pulling one of the flaking tan sticks from the crate closest to him, Legrasse shook it at the sky. “This is one of them,” he bellowed. “It’s a German invention. They call it dynamite!”
“Sir,” said Carrinelle, “we’re ready.”
“Then light the fuse,” answered the inspector. Throwing the damnable figurine he had grabbed atop the monolith into one of the explosive boxes, he spat, hitting its tentacled face. Sneering, he added, “And let’s get out of here.”
The strike of a match and the smell of burning gunpowder sent the last six living human beings in the area charging through the massing tornado off into the swamp. Throwing themselves into the water, each man swam back to the general area of the boats. Above them, over the pitching howl of the storm, the grotesque sound of monstrous wings reached through the shattering din, calling to each of them. It was a plaintive, seductive sound, a buzzing song that promised all, a magnetic allure near impossible to resist.
Legrasse and Carrinelle reached one of the large flat bottomed skiffs. Dragging themselves inside, they looked about, trying to see how their fellow officers had managed. Two of the men they saw pulling themselves into one of the other boats. The other two, however, had not been so lucky.
Unable to fight the siren call of the monstrous thing descending from the sky, the pair had turned and begun staggering backward toward the island. Carrinelle made to leave the boat to try an
d restrain them, but Legrasse caught his arm and whispered.
“It’s too late.”
And, as if in response to the inspector’s prediction, suddenly two cephlopodic appendages flew forward from the center of the grotesque bulk hovering over the swamp. One wrapped around each of the mesmerized officers, jerking them up out of the swamp, dragging them through the air and into the body of the nightmare in the sky.
“Damn you!” screamed Carrinelle. “Damn you to a thousand Hells!”
And then, flame touched powder, and the night seemed as dawn.
#
“Ah, look who’s finally back amongst us.”
Legrasse fought hard to stay awake—putting everything he had into opening his eyes completely. Turning his head slightly, he caught sight of the Chief of Police out of the corner of his eye. The man rose from his seat, admonishing the inspector.
“No, no, Legrasse. Don’t try to move. The doctor’s don’t advise it. Rest. You rest and let me take a look at our hero of the hour.”
It all came back to him. The explosion that tore apart Monolith Island, the shrieking of the horror in the sky as it was rocked by shock waves, pelted by massive chunks of granite. Its glimmering wings had caught fire, turning it into a torch seen, the reports would eventually confirm, in the skies of four different states.
“So, tell me... whatever am I to do with you, Legrasse, eh?”
“I, I ...” the inspector was dismayed to hear how raw his voice was, to feel the weakness that had him so firmly in its grasp. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“No, actually,” acknowledged the Chief, “I’m certain you don’t.”
Legrasse could still see the burning horror, hanging in the sky, righting itself, healing before his very eyes. The inspector had stood in his boat, staring, pointing, laughing. Despite his best efforts, he had not beaten the monster. A simple explosion powerful enough to obliterate an island had not been enough to stop the cultist’s god. Not nearly enough.
“But don’t worry,” the Chief of Police assured Legrasse. “I’ll explain it all to you.” Coming closer to the inspector’s bed, the older man told him, “You’re in a hospital, Legrasse. You and most of your men survived. Thirteen of you made it back from the swamp. Word is six, perhaps seven of you will be fit for duty after a while. The question is, what kind of duty?”
“‘Kind,’ sir?”
As the winds grew even stronger, the thing had turned its attention to Legrasse and the others. Although they had not surrendered themselves to it as had the two officers drawn into its bulk, such trifles no longer seemed to matter. The inspector could feel inside his soul that the hovering white mass was coming for him. It was moving slowly, making certain of its energies. His plan had wounded it, slowed it down, but ...
No good, he had thought, not enough. Not enough!
And then, the shelling had begun.
“Yes, what kind of duty can I give you now? I’ll be frank, Legrasse. We’ve managed to keep a lid on this monster thing, but ... well, this is New Orleans. The word of what went on out in the marshlands has run from one end of town to the other and back again—twice. And, of course, your legend grows with each new version.”
Somehow, he had forgotten about Galvez. He had jumped up and down in the flat bottomer, laughing, shrieking. Two hundred pound shells rained from out of the night, splashing against the horror in the sky, crashing it down against the Earth. The force of the constant pounding flipped the already unstable boat, sending the inspector and his subordinate into the swamp just as its wind-dried surface was set ablaze. Legrasse and Carrinelle had surfaced and begun running for their lives.
That was the last thing the inspector remembered.
“That cyclone that started out there, after the Navy started their shelling ... damn, how’d you live through that ... it jumped up out of the swamp. Came back down upstate and dug a two and a half mile swath out of Louisiana and on into Mississippi. They say it killed over three hundred people.”
Legrasse wondered at that. Perhaps the death of the flying thing, whatever it had been, had broken the spell the cultists had called forth. That energy released, maybe the storm could not simply be dissipated, and thus had come to ground far away, burning itself out in the simpler kind of mindless destruction people could take for granted.
Before the inspector could dwell on the topic, though, the Chief of Police added, “You know, there are people talking about running you for governor.”
Legrasse’s attention finally snapped to, focusing on the older man. Suddenly, a thousand different futures intersected within his brain, showing him how exactly that the play of his destiny was depending on whatever course he set himself upon in the next few seconds.
While part of his mind reviewed the events of the past months within his head, another more immediate section weighed the worlds he had so recently discovered against the ones he had known all his life. Hero of the masses, chained to their petty antics by the cheap trinkets of cash and adoration, or a forgotten face, poking into all the dark corners of the world, searching for more of the reality he had only just begun to understand.
Signalling the Chief to bend closer, working his sore throat as best he could, the inspector whispered in a painfully thin voice.
“I think it best we downplay this story, sir.”
“Really?” asked the Chief, equal portions of disbelief and relief obvious in his voice. Giving the older man no time to debate, Legrasse croaked on further.
“Yes, sir. I’m not much a one for public life. Besides, I would think one needs more credentials to run for the office of governor than the title of ‘monster hunter.’ Even in Louisiana.”
The Chief of Police laughed. Just the reaction Legrasse had hoped for. The inspector was no fool. He knew how the world worked. The Chief had not come to visit an injured officer, waiting by his bed to be the first to see him when he awoke through some sense of noble duty. He had been sent by his political superiors to check out the threat of the city’s new “hero” to their tiny, jaded futures. As if after what he had seen, after what he now understood, he could actually be interested in mere temporal gratification.
Picking up his hat, the obviously relieved Chief of Police said, “You’re a good man, Legrasse ... a good man. Don’t you worry, we’ll downplay this ridiculous monster nonsense.”
“Thank you,” lied the inspector, suddenly impatient for the political stooge to leave. As the Chief closed the door on his way out, Legrasse turned toward the window. The sun was out, shining brightly. Was it the sun of the next morning, he wondered, or two days later—three?
Who knows? he thought. Who cares?
Smiling, he closed his eyes. Trapped as all men are trapped, fate had reached down and given him a chance to die foolishly side by side with an equal chance to rise above the snare of ordinary life. He had seen a slice of the world few men could observe and still keep their sanity.
Of course, he thought, who’s to say you’re still sane?
Legrasse chuckled, perhaps a bit too loudly. Insane or not, what did it matter? He knew what he would do next, regardless. Professor Webb had hinted that the world was filled with horrors and those men mad enough to keep truck with them.
He would not be able to set out immediately. He would have to regain his strength, put his affairs in order, and then one day just quietly slip away. He would put the idea to Galvez and Carrinelle. They deserved the chance to go with him. They had earned it.
Where they would go, what they might find, Legrasse had no way of knowing. Nor did he care to speculate.
One thing at a time, he told himself. One thing at a time. Whatever other horrors there be in this world, don’t worry. They’re out there. Patiently waiting. And we’ll find them all.
Legrasse drifted toward sleep. His eyes heavy, tired, he blinked them several times, then closed them again. In seconds he was snoring lightly, a pleased, untroubled look settling over him.
From the window, the
sun continued to flood his room, its rays warming the inspector, protecting him from harm.
Back to Top
Interview with C.J. Henderson
So, CJ, the question I wanted to ask you more than any other is the fact I’ve heard you described as the Lovecraft estate’s choice to carry on his work. Where does that come from?
Years ago, way back when the old gent wasn’t in the public domain yet, and Arkham House was charging everyone if they wanted to reprint any Lovecraft, I met with the actual last living folk who have any real claim to the estate. I’m withhold names purposely because frankly, like HP himself, they don’t want to be bothered by a lot of rights nonsense. But, they were fairly annoyed that someone was making money which should honestly have gone to them.
They didn’t care enough to fight about it. They weren’t greedy—they were just annoyed. So, after taking a look at my work, they decided I had the proper tone and respect to work with the material, but also that I was forward-looking the way HP was. They didn’t have much use for those who just wrote the same old pastiche every time. They liked the fact that I at least was attempting to build on Lovecraft, not just repeat him. So, in a very informal ceremony, I was granted their official permission to do what—thanks to Lovecraft’s own informal way of maintaining his rights—everyone else was doing anyway.
So, you won’t be suing anyone anytime soon?
(laughs) Not hardly. I’ll admit that, as slight an honor as it is legally, it was flattering nonetheless to be considered worthy. As a fan, it was a great day for me.
Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013 Page 20
