“It’s ironic, Mr. Petty.”
“So it is. I reckon you planned this bloody course of events from start to finish.”
Angela opened the cylinder of her pistol and began to reload it. As she did, she said, “Do you know what I used to be, Mr. Petty? Prior to this existence tracking and killing monsters? I was a natural scientist, in Kansas City, of all places. I studied the behaviors of all manner of animals, from small to large. Of course you know they follow certain patterns. After the Break, with its influx of strange new organisms, I came to understand—over time—that these creatures had their routines, too. Discovering the logic of their actions, I could better work out how to deal with them.
“Before I left Runyon Hawk’s, I learned the times at which his cattle had been attacked. I had a reasonable idea of the schedule the creatures were keeping. I judged I could turn this to my advantage, arrive at their lair prior to their return to it.”
“And use me and my men to do your work for you.”
“Men and women are subject to their own laws,” Angela said. “After our encounter at the Gates, yours were apparent. Yes, I used them to my advantage. Try not to be too aggrieved. You were planning to kill me.”
“I was at that.” The light in Petty’s eyes was guttering. “Don’t imagine I’ve got too much longer.”
“You don’t. If it’s any consolation, I’ll put a bullet in your brain once you’re gone. Just in case you’ve been infected with one of the walking sicknesses.” She snapped the cylinder back into place.
Petty swallowed. “I’d be indebted to you if you did. If you’d do the same for my boys, I’d take it as a kindness.”
“I will.”
He didn’t last long after that. Angela shot his corpse between the eyes, as she did the bodies of the bravos who’d died at the creatures’ claws. She inspected the beasts, noted the thicket of short tentacles around their star-shaped mouths, the eyes that bore an unsettling resemblance to those of the men they had fought. On one of the creatures, she found a set of fingers protruding from the palm of its right paw.
By the time she was done and on her way out of that place, the sky had darkened, the stars flared into view, bright and pitiless.
For Fiona, and for Orrin Grey
An Old and Secret Cult
Robert M. Price
YOUNG MR. ABERNATHY LOOKED SHEEPISH AND LOOKED BOTH ways as he approached his Ecclesiastical History instructor as class was breaking up. Professor Exeter dropped his stack of rumpled and long-used lecture notes into his briefcase as he focused on his inquirer.
“Yes, Mr. Abernathy? What can I do for you? Can I perhaps clarify some point? Sometimes I take too much for grated, I know.” The old man’s avuncular manner went some way to putting the seminarian at ease.
“Clarification. Yes, I suppose so, Professor. It’s this passage right here.” The average-height, brown-haired, unassuming young man had used his finger as a bookmark in his copy of scripture, and now he flipped the well-thumbed text open to the page and repurposed that digit to indicate one particular verse. “Isn’t the Apostle saying that the apocalypse is coming soon? I mean, we always hear that it means it’s going to happen soon for us, but he doesn’t really say that, does he? Isn’t he really saying his own generation should get ready for it?”
Dr. Exeter sighed silently. It was not the first time a student had seen the problem and raised the same question confidentially. It was not a topic of polite conversation in the halls and dormitory of Miskatonic University’s School of Divinity. Talk like that could get a fellow branded as a heretic, a doubter, and that could have career-killing ramifications, to say the least. Still, keen minds could not keep silent forever.
“Ah! It takes a sharp eye and a sharp mind to notice a ripple in what others see as a glassy pond! I’m proud of you, Mr. Abernathy. But hardly surprised. Still, certain matters are best dealt with discretely. We don’t want to upset the ‘weaker brethren,’ do we?”
A nervous laugh from the aspiring young clergyman. “Oh no! Certainly not, Professor! I guess I’m just afraid I’m one of them!”
Dr. Exeter let out a hearty laugh and clapped the lad on the shoulder. “Nonsense, my boy! I’ll be in my office in the Library all afternoon. Come by at your convenience, and we’ll talk it over. Oh, and by the way, I was quite impressed with your paper in the Medieval Metaphysics Seminar.” The young student perked up a bit at that reassurance and departed. Professor Exeter took off his wire-rims to wipe them clean, returned his handkerchief to his vest pocket, and rubbed his wrinkled forehead. He hoped there would not be a problem this time. The boy seemed so promising.
Chapel services were no longer compulsory, but most of the seminary students still attended anyway, most out of sincere devotion, while others were afraid of being looked upon as lukewarm in their faith if they skipped it. Allen Abernathy slipped into a pew hastily, causing everyone else in the row to squeeze together. The fellow next to him passed him a hymnal, and he paged quickly over to the hymn whose number was posted on the boards on either side of the platform area. He had just opened to it when the liturgist, Professor Hansen, who taught Pastoral Counseling, took his place standing between the reading desk and the pulpit, a higher structure mounted by a brief flight of stairs. Dr. Hansen began to intone.
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
Allen always dreaded to be asked to do any of the scriptural readings because despite the fact that both scripture and liturgy were now read in English translation, some of the proper names were still pretty tongue-torturing. Soon Dr. Hansen turned the proceedings over to Reverend Paul Malherbe, a local pastor and part-time Homiletics instructor, who embarked on a carefully timed sermonette on how, like Great Cthulhu, we, too, must have big dreams if we are to accomplish great things for him. It might have been stirring had it been at all fresh. No luck on that score. Allen’s attention began to drift and he didn’t bother trying to get it back on target.
The longer he studied scripture and theology, the more struck he became with the hollowness of the standard rhetoric. Scripture spoke in profound tones of cosmic thunder building afar off, of the imminent overthrow of the corrupt order, of the upheavals of a new age dawning, when the Old Ones would return to wrench the world from the fumbling hands of human beings. The faithful adherents of Great Cthulhu and his cousins should reap the rewards of their services, repaid for the persecutions they had suffered at the hands of the squatters, the late-coming humans who vainly claimed the Earth for their own.
Oh, in the beginning, when the Rasul al-Cthulhu, the Mahdi of Yog-Sothoth, the Apostle Alhazred had secured the allegiance of desert tribesmen who joined him in a whirlwind that swept out of the Arabian Desert and drove all before it, there was a red tide of slaughter. Cities fell before their resistless assaults as the zealots for the new faith (really a very old one) reclaimed first this empire, then that kingdom, to prepare the way for the Old Ones’ return in glory. In an astonishingly short time the Byzantines, the Persians, the Mongols, and all the rest had fallen before the servitors of Almighty Cthulhu, King of Gods, God of Kings. Infidels who would not confess the faith of R’lyeh were offered up in sacrifice, and the sulfurous glow of them lit up night skies around the world for many years. Those who valued their lives converted, or pretended to convert.
The centuries passed without the great consummation appearing. Cthulhu’s worshippers had to walk by faith, not by sight. The reveling in red ruin ceased. Once it was plain the world was not going anywhere any time soon, the satraps of the world-empire proscribed the chaos and promulgated new laws, not essentially different from those of the old world they had replaced. Institutions were found needful again. An economy had to be rebuilt because people had to be fed.
But the zeal of the faithful did not flag. The love of violence inculcated by Alhazredism merely manifested itself differently. Holy wars erupted between different sects into which the parent religion had divided. Most of the African cont
inent had chosen Ghatanothoa as their lord and god after a group of tribal shamans announced revelatory vision experiences amid the stone ruins of Zimbabwe. For the other gods of the pantheon they had no use, reducing them to disobedient subordinates of Great Ghatanothoa and slaughtering priests and worshippers of Tsathoggua, Cthulhu, and Nyarlathotep alike. Heresy and massacre repeated themselves all over the globe. Western Europe declared for Yog-Sothoth, the Key and Guardian of the Gate, while East Europeans and Eurasians worshipped Lloigor and Zhar in carven grottos deep beneath the surface. Within that sect, visionaries, backed by scheming theologians, caused further strife when some announced that Lloigor and Zhar were in reality twin hypostases of the same deity, whom they called Ithaqua, while others set the two deities against one another in a mythology of dualism. Still others divided the Old Ones’ ranks into opposed clans of “elementals,” pitting Nyarlathotep of the Black Pyramid against Hastur of the star-winds, Nyogtha of earthen caverns against volcanic Cthugha and Aphoom-Zha. Of course the gods fought one another; little else could they do since, in the absence of real apocalyptic miracles, they were no more, really, than factional totems, effigies and incarnations of their bloodthirsty legions’ hatred.
Greater was the number of those who perished in the sectarian wars than those initially sacrificed to the newly-regnant Old Ones. But wars on such a scale eventually cease like fire that has consumed all its fuel. Things had been calm on the whole for generations now. Much had been rebuilt, much had been restored. The de facto coexistence gradually became de jure as treaties were signed, trade relations drawn up. A slow process of secularization began to dawn, inevitably, given that religion must be relegated to a secondary concern when survival and peace have perforce become priorities.
Allen had long thought about these things, wondering if somehow the past did not discredit the present. His religion, as he knew it, as he saw it practiced, seemed by comparison to be a game of childish play-acting. How could this lame pantomime possibly be heir to the Earth-shaking early days? Were those days mere myth? Oh, Allen had been raised in these latter days; his values had been formed by them. He had no desire to see the world, his world, torn asunder, shattered like the egg of a newborn Shantak. But he had as little desire to conclude that his faith was a mockery, a sugar-coated domestication of an ancient barbarism.
So Allen Abernathy reflected as he sat in the chapel, until his bench-mates shook his shoulder and told him, chuckling, “Snap out of it, Allen!” Embarrassed, he rose and sidled out into the aisle. He saw Professor Exeter among the crowd, heading back, Allen knew, to his office. He would follow him to take him up on his invitation. There was much to discuss.
Both the teacher and the student shrugged off their coats. Dr. Exeter doffed his big, furry hat, revealing his bald dome of a head, stuffed as it was with knowledge and wisdom. He indicated the chair in front of his desk even as he plopped his own posterior down on the well-worn leather padding on his side.
“So! Mr. Abernathy, tell me what’s on that fine mind of yours!”
Allen shifted in the chair to get comfortable, then began. “I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with me, Professor. Here’s what’s bothering me. The verse I asked you about, in the Necronomicon, where the Apostle sounds like he’s predicting the end of the age in the immediate future. It’s not just that by itself. That passage sort of sums up a lot of other problems.”
He went on to summarize the sense of contrast between the early, violent era of religious conquest and the present, more staid and mundane state of things. “It’s not like I wish there was still bloodshed and religious wars. Just the opposite, in fact. I don’t want to live in a world like that. I don’t think I’d want to see it return if the Old Ones reappeared. Did I say ‘if’? I meant ‘when.’ But I have always counted on the Second Coming, like everybody else. But wasn’t it supposed to happen a long time ago? In the Apostle’s day?”
With that, he held his tongue, fearing to be lecturing the expert.
“Well, you have to remember that the stars have to be right. They have to reach a very precise configuration before anything can happen.”
“Yes, sir, but that happened a long time ago! I mean, those star charts in the Necronomicon. They’re pretty specific. The stars locked in place properly centuries ago, closer to Abdul Alhazred’s time than to ours. What happened?”
“Good question, Allen, and one to which I’ve given much thought. Here’s a possibility to consider. You know, of course, that these things are cyclical. The stars have wheeled their way into and out of that configuration many times, and they will again. Perhaps scripture intended a later alignment, maybe not even the next one coming up. Have you ever thought of that?”
“No, Dr. Exeter, I can’t say I have. But wouldn’t that only make the problem worse? I mean, if that’s true, doesn’t it push the Second Coming even further, much further, off into the future? It’s like saying it’s never going to happen! We’d never see it, anyway. I just can’t square that with the sense of expectation the Necronomicon implies.”
“Mmmm…yes, I see what you mean. Well, there’s also the theory that Great Cthulhu is tarrying until we show ourselves worthy of him. Perhaps our faith and discipleship are too lax…”
“But astronomy is astronomy, Professor. The Coming is supposed to be determined by the position of the stars. How can anything we do or don’t do affect that?” He sped up, cutting off some new comment from the older man. “And besides, what could we be doing differently? I mean, look at the Hastur’s Witnesses and how they’ve had egg on their faces all those times they set dates for the return of Hastur? How is the case any different with our whole religion? Didn’t the whole thing pretty much debunk itself when Alhazred’s prediction failed?” Ouch! Now he had said it.
Though the professor’s demeanor did not visibly change, his attitude did. This boy was too smart for his own good. He wasn’t just doubting. It was clear, even if not yet to Abernathy himself, that he had lost his faith. He wasn’t a troubled soul looking for reassurances. He was engaged in refuting a religion in which he no longer believed.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Mr. Abernathy! Let me think on it. In the meantime, I’d advise you to do some serious praying. That’s what I’m going to do.”
But that wasn’t all. As soon as his student picked up his things and left the office, Professor Exeter made a phone call he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to make.
Two weeks went by uneventfully. Allen bore the burden of his uncertainty as he had for many months. It sapped his one-time zeal, but he kept focused on his studies. He had few friends on campus anyway, having spent so much time in the library and in his dorm room, nose in the books. He’d had to learn Arabic and Latin for his courses in scriptural exegesis, for all the good it did him. You had to scrutinize the texts in meticulous detail to discover the problems that both a casual and a devotional reading failed to reveal.
At the end of that fortnight he was heading back to campus after a dinner at the local Arkham House of Pizza when it happened: a trio of guys wearing enveloping parkas plus ski masks jumped him as he was passing the mouth of an alley. No knives or guns, as he was soon relieved to realize, but they were none too gentle, either, as they yanked him down the length of the shadowed, junk-filled shaft. There was a waiting car at the other end, and they bundled him into it. Allen was not so much afraid as astonished. What on earth would anyone want with a non-entity like him? He was doubly a nerd, cerebral and religious.
To his further surprise, the car turned in to the campus, and his masked abductors wordlessly hustled him through an unlocked door into the basement of a building he had not seen before. It looked like it must be a utility shack of some kind. His burly hosts pulled off their hoods to reveal unfamiliar faces, both with the dreadlock-goatee beards sported by many of the divinity students. But, beyond that, he didn’t recognize them. One of them spoke to the others, and their captive heard the words “this infidel.” At once he
knew what had happened. In that moment he was filled with both rage
and sadness at his betrayal at the hands of a respected mentor. But he had only a moment for these emotions to register before the next thing happened.
The car must have been followed because somebody obviously knew they’d be here. Two more men burst in, cudgels and baseball bats flailing. Allen instinctively raised his arms to protect his head when he realized the two newcomers were not after him. The first three dropped, and hidden weapons (they had them after all!) clattered to the cement floor.
“Uh, who the hell are you guys? Not that I’m ungrateful! And who were those guys?”
“No time for that right now, Abernathy! As for us, we’re cultists. As for them, they’re from the local ministerial association. They were planning a little counseling session. Tough love—you know.”
Great! Out of the frying pan
Allen and his rescuers checked into a room at the King’s Grant motel up Route 128. He sat in the desk chair while the others sat, one each, on the twin beds. Their body language was non-threatening, and Allen felt his tensed muscles relaxing. They didn’t look imposing. For all he knew, both might be Miskatonic students like him. Despite the small size of the Miskatonic student body, he didn’t recall seeing either man before. Both happened to be tall, one black, named Bill, the other white, who called himself Mort. Both were clad in sweats.
“Okay, you win—what’s going on here?”
“We hear things. We know things. We know about your ‘crisis of faith,’ Allen.”
“So?”
“Things like that can be dangerous around here. You should know that by now.”
Through a Mythos Darkly Page 8
