Arkham Horror- Ire of the Void

by Richard Lee Byers

  A long tongue protruded beyond the jagged fangs. Periodically, it writhed toward one of the detached organs and stabbed its pointed tip into it. The proboscis then swelled rhythmically as the musculature inside it worked and matter flowed down what must be a hollow channel at its core. Meanwhile, the punctured organ deflated like a balloon.

  Sickened yet fascinated, Norman wondered if he was watching a Hound commit suicide. If Stane had been correct about their regenerative capabilities, quite possibly not. Perhaps the thing could put itself back together or grow new organs to replace the discarded ones.

  But if that was the case, what was the purpose of the seeming self-destruction? Was the Hound undertaking a natural part of its life cycle analogous to molting? Performing a ritual of atonement? Doing something that gave it pleasure? In all likelihood, Norman would never know.

  The only thing that was clear was that here was additional reason to believe earthly weapons were unlikely to do a Hound any lasting harm. Grateful that the one Hound he’d thus far seen in the complex appeared incapable of harming him—at least until it regenerated or reassembled itself—Norman prowled onward and after another turn discovered Schmidt.

  The German lay in the middle of an open space suggestive of a plaza or park with half a dozen stone buildings looming around it. Soil covered all of him except the head in a way that reminded Norman of his daughter burying him in sand at the beach. Schmidt wasn’t moving, and in the gloom, his would-be rescuer couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  Norman hurried toward him. “Schmidt!” he called, keeping his voice low.

  To his relief, the physicist rolled his head. He seemed dazed, but that was preferable to deceased.

  Norman quickened his stride. “It’s me,” he said. “I’m going to take you home.”

  Schmidt’s eyes focused, and the slackness in his face gave way to alarm. “No!” he croaked. “Get back!”

  An instant later, Norman heard a sibilant, susurrate sound rising from the ground. He looked down. Long, humped ridges in the earth were slithering away from Schmidt and toward him.

  They appeared to be burrows with some sort of creature inside. But when one flowed over the toe of his right shoe, he discerned there was nothing there but soil given life or at least the semblance thereof by some unimaginable process. Once it had his foot looped, it hardened.

  21

  Norman gasped, kicked, and broke the dirt-thing into pieces before it could finish altering its consistency to grip him like concrete. But already, others were trying to coil around his ankles and crawl up his legs. Half tripping with every step, he made a frantic, floundering retreat while resisting the urge to fire the submachine gun at his attackers. He’d likely riddle his own feet if he tried.

  He hoped that if he retreated far enough, the dirt-things would break off the pursuit. But there was no sign of it. With every staggering moment that passed, they seemed ever closer to bringing him down. Then they’d surely immobilize him as they had Schmidt. Or simply crush and smother him to death.

  He made for a lightless pyramidal building and lunged through the trapezoidal doorway. He swept the Thompson gun from left to right as he looked for new menaces stirring in the gloom.

  Nothing. Panting, he turned around.

  For the next few seconds, the dirt-things crawled and coiled beyond the threshold that divided ground from stone floor. Eventually they balked and slithered back in Schmidt’s direction.

  Norman didn’t want to step back out of the pyramid. For all he knew, some of the dirt-things had remained to ambush him. He had no way of telling what might be hiding under the surface. But he couldn’t help Schmidt from where he was.

  He slowly set one foot on the ground. Nothing struck at it. He kept tiptoeing forward until he was close enough to Schmidt for them to converse in low tones. Fortunately, that appeared to leave him outside the circle in which the dirt-things were lurking.

  “I never dreamed it was possible for anyone to find me.”

  “It took some doing,.”

  “Thank you. But you have to go back if you can. There’s nothing you can do for me.”

  As far as Norman had been able to observe, the dirt-things had no eyes, ears, or noses. It seemed plausible they sensed intruders through vibrations in the ground, and he proposed to give them something to orient on besides his own footfalls. He readied the trench broom and, reminding himself again not to squander ammunition, fired three shots into the earth on the far side of the captive.

  A horde of dirt-things writhed away to investigate. Norman ran forward. “Dig your way out!”

  He hoped the younger man still had the strength to accomplish something in that regard, but Schmidt merely squirmed to no effect. Norman bent over him to tear at the soil cocoon with his hands.

  The dirt bulged into elongated humps, revealing itself to be made of additional creatures. Some crawled over Norman’s feet, and many of those he’d diverted with the gunshots were already turning around. He saw no choice but to make a second hasty retreat before he could be snared.

  When Norman emerged from the pyramid once more, Schmidt said, “The gun made too much noise! You have to run!”

  The sensible part of Norman was in full agreement. As it had before, it assured him he’d already attempted more than any rational person could expect, and no one could blame him if he now gave up.

  He pushed that part down and once again did his poor best to imitate Holmes, Raffles, and Boston Blackie. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I have this figured out now.” He fired more shots into the ground on the far side of Schmidt. The jolts sent a horde of dirt-things crawling away as they had before.

  That still left the ones that had remained with Schmidt, but this time Norman was ready for them. As soon as he reached the German, he fired the submachine gun into the ground, down one side of his body, then the other. Or anyway, he hoped he was missing the physicist’s body. It looked like the cocoon pressed Schmidt’s arms up against his flanks, but it was impossible to be certain.

  The humps of dirt atop and around Schmidt heaved and broke apart. The physicist struggled again to drag himself out of the now-lifeless earth and made a little headway. Norman worked his hands into the soil, managed to grip the younger man under the arms, and pulled until his kicking feet emerged.

  Norman glanced around. The rest of the dirt-things had already turned and were crawling back in his and Schmidt’s direction.

  “Run!” the older man cried, He bolted for the doorway of the stone house that had sheltered him before. Schmidt ran after him.

  Norman didn’t look around again until he and the German crossed the threshold, and then he saw the ground immediately outside bulging and sliding. By the end of the chase, pursuit had been mere inches behind.

  He took a long breath and told himself that it didn’t matter by how narrow a margin he and Schmidt had won the race, only that they had. “Are you all right?”

  “Thirsty,” Schmidt rasped.

  In addition to his more destructive military equipment, Norman had brought a canteen. He unscrewed the cap and offered it to the man on the ground. “Go easy at first.”

  Schmidt took a couple sips, then tilted his head back and drank more deeply.

  “The bootlegger from the barn,” Norman said. “Do you know what became of him?”

  “The things killed him,” Schmidt answered, “then threw the body off the white path into the void.”

  Norman felt a guilty surge of relief that he needn’t attempt to rescue the gangster as well. He scrutinized the patch of earth immediately outside the doorway. The swelling and stirring had subsided. “Then let’s go.”

  Schmidt peered. “Are you certain the things are gone?”

  “They didn’t linger long before. Once they lost the scent, they crawled back to where their masters stationed them. Anyway, you were right. We can’t linger here, either. We have to get away.”

  “Very well, then.”

  Despite the r
eassurances he’d just given, it took an effort of will for Norman to shift a foot from the safety of the stone floor to the soil beyond. He held his breath until it was clear that nothing was going to grab him.

  He and Schmidt turned in the direction of the maze. At a distance, in the darkness, the boundary where one world met another was invisible, but Norman felt a vacancy even more profound than the starless sky behind and above him.

  To his relief, he likewise felt his directional instinct bestirring itself now that he was ready to make the return journey and, although Schmidt had started out hobbling, his stride was growing brisker. The possibility of escape was emerging in him despite whatever torments and privations he’d suffered.

  That possibility still seemed the slimmest of hopes. But the two scientists made it out of the complex without any new creatures accosting them.

  Was there any chance at all that the noise of the gunfire had failed to rouse the Hounds? After all, they weren’t human. They might not even be animals in the truest sense of the term. Perhaps their senses and minds worked in such an alien fashion that the commotion failed to register as cause for action.

  It was an encouraging notion while it lasted. Then, however, in the low hills off to the right where Norman had heard the sound before, a Hound howled. An instant later, others answered. An intimation of onrushing malice, like a tidal wave hurtling toward shore, proclaimed that the things were coming.

  22

  “Run!” Norman cried. He suited his actions to his words only to realize moments later that he was outdistancing his companion. His grit and determination notwithstanding, in the wake of his ordeal, Schmidt couldn’t keep up.

  At least he was running. Norman slowed down to allow the German to catch up and then took care not to leave him behind once more.

  Gradually, the gloom ahead turned from black to gray. Like the edge of a sheer cliff, the division between realities appeared and, looking dainty as white threads in the distance, pathways zigzagged out into the void.

  “Over there!” Schmidt gasped.

  Norman pivoted. One Hound was out in the lead of the pack that Norman could sense charging in its wake. A murkier shadow amid the gloom, it covered ground in bounds that put the satyr he’d encountered to shame.

  The fugitives had scant hope of reaching their entry into the labyrinth before the Hound cut them off. Making a little whimpering sound he was helpless to suppress, Norman readied the submachine gun. Wait until it gets close, he reminded himself. Then fire.

  He delayed as long as terror would allow, then began squeezing the trigger. Was he hitting the Hound as it bounded nearer and nearer? He couldn’t tell. He certainly wasn’t slowing it down.

  Perhaps, Norman thought, the only hope was to switch the tommy gun to automatic fire, conserving ammunition be damned. How else was he to inflict enough damage to have any hope of keeping the Hound away? He held the trigger down.

  The Hound made another leap. Then another. But at the end of the second, it didn’t immediately spring again. It hesitated a moment, then whirled and scuttled behind a hump in the ground that provided it with cover.

  “You hurt it!” Schmidt cried. “You hurt der Sohn von einem Weibchen!”

  “I doubt I hurt it badly,” Norman replied. “It just doesn’t feel like taking all the punishment itself when it can just as easily wait for the rest of the pack to catch up. We have to keep moving!”

  They ran on.

  23

  Norman and Schmidt reached the start of the white path ahead of their pursuers but with a chorus of howls ululating at their backs. The calls fell silent as the two men scurried out into the hyper-dimensional chasm that sundered Tindalos from the beginning of curved time.

  “Did they give up?” Schmidt panted.

  “I doubt it,” Norman said. “It’s just that we’ve entered a different aspect of space-time. We’ll hear them again when they’ve crossed the threshold, too.”

  “Of course,” the German said. “I should have inferred as much.” He smiled a grim little smile. “I’m not at my best.”

  “That’s understandable.” Norman took a drink from his canteen and then gave it to Schmidt.

  Schmidt drank and returned the bottle. “How much ammunition do you have left?”

  “Only a few rounds, I’m sure. Our one chance is to stay ahead of the pack.”

  They hurried onward as fast as Schmidt’s condition would allow. The physicist was plainly doing the best he could but flagging nonetheless. The reserve of energy he’d tapped when Norman freed him was running low.

  Norman felt disgusted with his lack of forethought. He had embarked on this enterprise carrying a submachine gun of all things, yet he had neglected something as basic as food. It was a ghastly joke that he and Schmidt might meet their ends for want of an apple or a Hershey bar.

  Still, they reached the portion of the labyrinth where the psychic pressure of infinite depths multiplied beyond the limits of perception abated and curving trails began. Then, however, the howling of the pack rang out behind them. Worse, other Hounds answered the baying from reaches of the labyrinth that still lay ahead.

  Schmidt’s shoulders slumped. “Perhaps, my friend, if you go on without me—“

  “Stop it!” Norman snapped. “We’re scientists! We can think our way out of this!” He strained to make good on that declaration. “The Hounds that are after us may or may not recognize me, but they surely have a sense of who you are and where they caught you. If we take the same route back to the barn, they’re bound to overtake us. If we make a detour, perhaps we’ll throw them off the scent.”

  Schmidt frowned. “Won’t we get lost? Even if we don’t, if we take an indirect route, won’t the creatures cut us off?”

  “There’s a great deal I haven’t had a chance to tell you. At the moment, I have a sort of compass in my head pointing the way home. As for the rest, do we really know how distance, time, and geometry work in this place? Or how the Hounds think?”

  The German grunted. “We do not. Lead on, then.”

  As Norman took a branching path that snaked to the left and downward, he hoped his homing instinct would prove as accommodating as he’d suggested it would. In truth, he had no way of predicting the capabilities and limitations of the magic, but he’d wanted to sound sure of himself to encourage his companion.

  When he and Schmidt descended the “wrong” trail, the directional intuition manifested as the same tap-on-the-shoulder insistence that he reverse course. The sensation remained as the fugitives passed truncated pathways that ran to a stone chamber where men with the heads of snakes huddled over a parchment map, and another to a hilly city on a bay—San Francisco in 1851?—in flames.

  Dear Lord, Norman thought, he’d lost his gamble. If he and Schmidt didn’t retrace their steps, they’d never find a route back to Arkham; if they did, they were sure to run headlong into the pack. The only viable alternative was to accept exile in a place and era not their own.

  He drew breath to confess as much, and then, with a swinging sensation that dizzied him for a moment, the homing instinct realigned itself. However grudgingly, it now pointed forward, not back.

  Norman sighed and marched on.

  24

  Concerned with shaking the Hounds off the trail, Norman conducted Schmidt through another wrong turn and then another. Each triggered the urging to go back and the attendant anxiety that he’d pushed the magic too hard and broken it, or that he’d blundered down a path from which it would prove impossible to reach the barn. Fortunately, on both occasions, after a minute or so, the compass needle inside his head pivoted in deference to his decisions.

  The Hounds bayed from time to time, but as best he could determine there were no longer several howling from the same spot. Apparently the pack had dispersed to seek the fugitives down various paths. Perhaps that was grounds for hope that his evasive tactic had done some good.

  He needed that to be the case, for at the moment, neither Schmidt nor h
is aging, sedentary rescuer could muster the vigor to press on faster than a quick walk. Norman supposed that meant they could spare the breath to whisper back and forth. At least that way, even if worst came to worst, he and his fellow scientist would perish with their curiosity satisfied.

  “Do you know,” he asked, “why the creatures took you alive and held you captive in Tindalos?”

  “‘Tindalos?’”

  “The name of their world. Possibly.”

  “Ah. Well, no, truly, I don’t know why they took me prisoner. Except…you realize the brutes are in some measure telepathic?”

  Norman thought of how he had sensed Hounds spying from the other sides of corners and the manner in which an element of their howling bypassed the ears to stab straight inside the head with a filthy intimacy. Presumably those phenomena were examples of one mind brushing another. “I suppose so.”

  “Well, after the one that captured me dragged me home, a dozen of them clustered around me and all dug into my thoughts at once. I don’t know what they were looking for, or why. I wasn’t able to see into their heads. But it wasn’t pleasant. I…” Schmidt swallowed. “After I while, I wasn’t myself anymore.”

  “I can imagine,” Norman said, although he couldn’t, entirely, and for that he was glad.

  “After that was over, they left me alone. Buried like a dog buries a bone to dig up and eat later, I imagine.” Schmidt laughed in a way that reminded Norman of Stane.

  The astronomer gripped the younger man’s shoulder. “Hang on. You’re away from them now, and we have to be quiet so you can keep away.”

  Schmidt nodded. “Of course. Forgive me, and tell me how you managed to come for me. The story will keep me from dwelling on things I shouldn’t think about.”

  Perhaps it would even though it too centered on the Hounds. Norman related it as he and Schmidt hurried along watching for shapes and movement ahead, behind, and on nearby paths.