One of his comrades whispered in our ears, “You hear this now? This is how it must be done. You must remember it, remember how it sounds. It must be done exactly like this.”
I nodded, and strained to listen more closely, but Behr just stood there entranced, like a bird caught in the stare of a snake. He didn’t even notice that the mortar that held the stones together was raining down. As Munoz held our enemies with the power of his voice, everyone else in the room rushed to the door and scrambled up the stairs.
“Stewert,” I pleaded with my friend, “we must go, now.”
He shook his head. “No, I have to hear this, I have to see this.”
On the ground before us the security forces had turned into piles of dust, piles that were still shaped like men, but would never live again. Only Charriere was still intact, but I could see where his cohesion was beginning to falter. His fingers were beginning to fray, to crumble, to float away in the wind.
“Stewert!” I screamed and dragged him into the doorway. From there we watched as Munoz’s incantation reached a crescendo and as the bell tower of the old city rang out midnight a terrible bolt of lightning reached down from the sky and touched the two battling necromancers. The bolt of energy exploded the two men and from where they had once stood, a terrible unearthly scream went up and echoed through the night.
After that we ran into the sultry Havana night. Fearful that our treachery had been exposed we dared not return to our diplomatic quarters, and instead sought refuge in the embassy of the British Empire. There, a sympathetic military attaché spirited us out of the city and onto a dirigible. Of this we were immensely grateful, as were we to Doctor Munoz who had not only given us the secret to the necromantic incantation that destroyed the Resurrected, but had sacrificed his own life in the process. The only issue that nagged at Behr and me was that horrible, echoing scream that pierced the darkness at midnight. To whom did it belong: our enemy, Charriere, or our ally, Munoz? Who died in such horrific agony?
And if need be, would one of us be willing to suffer such a sacrifice in the future?
4. THE DEMON LEGIONS
It was in October of 1920, five years after we had fled Havana, that Behr and I finally returned to the land that had birthed us. We had been living in Europe, Britain mostly, but Spain and France as well, and acting as advisors to the Allied Forces. War against a superior force makes strange bedfellows, and where once the European powers had battled amongst themselves, now they stood united, desperate to have someone to stand against the vampiric forces that had expanded beyond North America and now held the entire Caribbean and nearly all of South America. Only the vast plains of the Argentine remained free from the monsters and their servants that had come from the north.
That had been the fatal mistake.
Spurred on by reports from our spies, the Allies launched a multi-prong attack. The Russians swept in through Alaska, while at the same time the Iberian and Australian fleets struck at Mexico. In the Mississippi River Valley, Republican forces led an armed revolt freeing the millions of African slaves that still toiled in the fields, and setting them to march on local capital cities. All this while the combined fleets of Germany and Britain struck at the eastern seaboard, landing troops in Cape Cod. It was the intent of our assault to draw forces toward the Naval Yards in Boston and Providence, leaving only the reserve battalions to guard the throne in Manhattan.
Even here our plans were multi-fold, with airships launching fighter craft armed not only with machine guns, but loudspeakers blaring out a recording of the incantation, with myself and Behr secreted onboard a submersible vessel moving up the Hudson, past the fortifications of the Governor’s Island and Titan’s Watch. The East River was a tangle of defenses to prevent vessels from reaching the Imperial Palaces on Randall’s Island, but those defenses were all above the water line. Submersibles had existed for more than fifty years, but they had always been small craft designed for speed and stealth, and to damage other vessels. The thought that one might move upriver, and convey a most terrible weapon, had not been considered by the ancient and necrotic minds that ruled the Americas.
We surfaced the Gabriel not far from Hell’s Point. While I and my team of engineers set about preparing what all of us had come to call “the weapon,” Behr and our colleague Major Clapham-Lee of the Royal Navy deployed their units to fortify our position. The Stokers were specially trained soldiers who wielded implements of fire and necromancy designed to destroy and maim the undead creatures that were sure to lay siege to us. As I erected the tower, and my men began to power up the amplifiers, I watched as Clapham-Lee headed east, and my companion and lover Stewert Behr headed toward the island that was the imperial stronghold.
The October winds blew cold as I climbed up that dark, steel tower that hung four stories over the river. There were younger men that could do this work, but I trusted none of them, for none had my expertise. It had been I who had conceived of the weapon. It had been I who had designed it, and now even though I was well into my fifties, I had convinced Churchill to let me deploy and unleash the weapon. The High Lord Admiral had balked at first, but when he saw my determination and dedication, he had little choice but to cave in to my demands.
So there I was in the cold autumn wind, four stories above the East River, when the first shot rang out. I turned to look and saw that Clapham-Lee’s forces had been discovered and were under fire. However, as I expected, they were giving as good as they got, wielding not only conventional arms, but incendiary grenades, flamethrowers, and of course I could hear the echoing chants of the incantation as it was used over and over again to blast the Resurrected forces into dust.
I must admit that I watched amused as our allies quickly overtook our enemies and Clapham-Lee’s team advanced to their next objective, but that elation changed to fear as more gunfire erupted, this time from the west, and several rounds struck mere inches from where I was climbing. Behr was pinned down, and not only were he and his team in dire straits, the position of the Gabriel had been made plain, and I, in the air as it were, was an easy target!
Adrenalin pumping through my veins, I scrambled up the tower and made the last of the cable connections to the diaphragm that fed those queer, trumpet-like shells that served as amplifying horns. They had been found in Australia, where exactly I was never told, but they served their purpose, amplifying the sound to a volume greater than anything else we had been able to manufacture. Satisfied that my work had been done, I gave the signal to begin broadcasting and turned back round to try and catch sight of Behr and his team.
As I made my way down, my eyes searching the landscape, I could feel the generators powering up and the tower begin to vibrate as the sound of Behr’s voice began to pour through those alien trumpets. Even today, I can still hear those words, that terrible chant, the incantation that would undo the necromancy that had conquered not one, but two continents.
OGTHROD AI’F
GEB’L—EE’H
YOG-SOTHOTH
‘NGAH’NH
AI’Y ZHRO
I fumbled with my earplugs, and as I inserted them the entire world went silent, as the demon legions began to crumble. It was a terrible thing to watch.
I had no sympathy for the Resurrected, but to watch sentient beings suffer like that, even as monstrous as they were, it was almost unbearable. They were being destroyed, reduced to components of dust and ash and scattered into the winds, and they knew it. I was both overjoyed and disgusted by what we were doing, and, for a moment, a tinge of sadness, of regret that such sciences could not be used to better mankind crossed my mind.
And then the shot was fired.
I saw the gunman. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years of age, and by his uniform he was still alive. I saw his rifle fire and the small wisp of smoke leave the barrel. I braced myself for an impact, but that never came. But I felt it just the same, as if I had been shot. It was as if I, myself, had taken the round to the chest, a cherry blo
ssom of crimson spreading across my shirt. As Stewert Behr crumpled to the ground I let go of the ladder and let myself fall the remaining way to the deck of the Gabriel as her horn finally reached maximum volume.
I had survived, of course, and the commander of the Gabriel had me hoisted upright so that I could watch what I had accomplished. As we sailed up and down the East and then the Hudson Rivers, I watched the shambling liches that had ruled for more than a hundred and fifty years crumble into nothingness. In that night we struck at and destroyed the ruling class of an entire civilization, and I watched it die. It was a fitting vengeance for the death of my friend and lover Stewert Behr, I only wish that someone had bothered to remove my ear plugs, that way I could have enjoyed their screams of dissolution, and not watched as they collapsed into piles of ash in terribly damned silence!
5. THE HORROR FROM THE TOMB
It had been three decades since Stewert Behr was taken from me, a decade since his death was memorialized in the great tomb that stands in the green, rolling hills of Glenside, Pennsylvania. It is here, not far from his birthplace, and his final resting place, that I chose to make my home. I am an old woman, a rarity in these parts it seems, for under the Resurrected, life spans had been reduced sharply. The Republic, seated in the new capitol of Philadelphia, bestowed upon me the same honor that they bestowed upon Behr; they called us Deanimator Emeritus. It was meant to be an honorary title, they expected me to assume the mantle of doddering old woman.
And I did.
But I was also a lonely old woman, and I was far too great and terrible a personage to remain incognito. The villagers knew who I was, and they shunned me. They whispered things behind my back, they hinted at the terrible things I must have done in the service of the Resurrected. They don’t care that it was I that freed them, and that it was I who gave up my love to do so. They drive an old woman mad with these whispers and innuendos. They shunned me, and I, in turn, shunned them.
I became the local hag whose house the children throw stones at while yelling “WITCH!”
But I was just a lonely old woman.
At first.
Over the years the loneliness turned to frustration, and a longing ache built in my breast. Out of amusement I said to myself, a distraction, nothing more, and in the cold and damp cellar I began my experiments. It did not take long. With one of my knowledge, it was exceedingly easy. Within months I was prepared, not just prepared but capable. I only lacked that last bit of fortitude.
It came soon enough, and one dark night when that ache could no longer be denied, I crossed the hills that surround the cemetery, a fattened calf by a rope behind me. The only light was that of a swollen moon, half hidden by wispy clouds. The calf protested as I pulled it through the gates but it eventually conceded to my will. Inside, beneath the flickering light of an eternal flame, I pushed back the carven tomb lid and exposed the corpse that dwelt beneath. It was a sad, paltry thing. Once it had been a man but it had become little more than dry skin and dust clinging to bone. I stared at it for a moment and remembered the man I once loved, and then I said the words, the words that I had learned reversed death itself!
EYAH ENG ENGAH
YOG-SOTHOTH
HAH HALGEB
EFAY THRODOG
EWAAAH
There was a flash of light, and a terrible miasma that flooded that hallowed chamber. I coughed and gagged, and the calf screamed. Something dark and quick flew out of the resting place and ended the sound coming from the animal. There was a noise, a horrible, wet, gurgling, and then the beast fell to the floor and laid still.
He stood there staring at me, his eyes aflame, and his mouth dripping with gore.
“What have you done!?” He shouted at me, that horrible thing from the tomb that had once been my true love. I opened my mouth to speak, but I could not find the words, and then his words seemed to drown out everything else. “So hungry, so terribly hungry.”
And then he fled into the night.
I listened as he moved through the village, listened to the screams of men and women and even children as they echoed through the night. It was hours, and Behr was a ruthless predator. I had no idea the thirst would be that great. I had thought the calf would have been enough. I was a fool.
The town is not that large. I suppose he shall be finished soon, and I will be the only thing left alive for my one time friend, lover, and compatriot to confront.
I wonder what he shall do. Will he destroy me, feast upon my flesh and blood? Shall he convert me, make me like him, a creature of the night?
Is it wrong that I long for him to take me? Is it wrong that I wish to feel his touch again, even if he is a cold, undead thing that only pretends to be alive?
Is it wrong that I don’t care?
To Kill a King
Don Webb
1961, AS I SAW ON THE COVER OF MAD MAGAZINE, WAS THE “UPSIDE-down” year. That is to say you could write down the digits of the year, turn your paper upside-down, and it still read 1961. It seemed an upside-down year for me as well. Some pride of the South had firebombed the Freedom Riders in my home state, we had put Alan Shepard into outer space, and I won the Pulitzer Prize. There were other winners as well: Phyllis McGinley won for writing poems about suburban lawns and the joy of picking her husband up at the train station. My oldest brother got around to calling me.
“Nell, I liked the book, really I did, but I am surprised so many people are interested in Monroeville.”
“I was surprised they were interested at all, but Tru said they would be.”
“But you left out the big part. What happened to you and Amasa and Tru.”
“That would distract from what I wanted to talk about. Besides, I don’t want that old photo running anytime they mention the book.”
“You should still write it down, or get Tru to write it.”
“I did write it down. I just made it fiction and that enabled me to say certain things about racism and the class structure.”
“And skip the monstrous truth.”
“I was not writing for a pulp magazine. Tennessee Williams may have begun by writing for Weird Tales but I am not Tennessee Williams.”
“Are you working on anything now?” This is the question all writers hate. Do people ask their doctors if they’re doing surgery?
“I am working on a true crime story.”
“Like Tru?”
I had not known why my father had taken Tru and me to New York in the summer of 1933. It was so exciting just to see beyond the dusty streets of Monroeville. Tru was a small and annoying child and I pretended to be glad that I would be leaving him behind in the Big Apple. But in truth I was devastated. Tru, like me, and unlike anyone else in Monroeville, enjoyed reading. He had taught himself to read when he was four, and was seldom seen after that lacking a dictionary and some sort of writing tablet. He lived with a great aunt and would have spent a happy childhood in Monroeville, had not his mother performed the unnatural act of marrying a second time, something not heard of in Alabama, but apparently quite the norm in New York City. Tru’s new father had the audacity to be a Cuban of all things, but a well-to-do one according to his Park Avenue address. Amasa had not journeyed to New York to deliver the little ten-year-old bundle of joy; he was coming with one of his clients, our rather spooky neighbor Nathan Whateley. Mr. Nathan, as my brother Jim and I called him, was an independently wealthy man in Monroeville. That is to say in this time when we had nothing to fear but fear itself, he seemed to do nothing but venture out of the old Whateley place and buy a copy of The Monroe Journal, to which my father, Amasa, was a frequent contributor, and make his way past our house on Alabama Street at promptly 4:30 in the afternoon. Most everything in Monroeville was like clockwork. Everybody knew what time everything was. In small town life, and in rural life, you know your neighbors. Not only do you know everything about your neighbors, but also you know everything about them from the time they came to the country. The only mystery was the Whateley family.
They were not among the families that had settled in the town after Jackson had defeated the Creek Indians. But even more scandalous, they were not among the families that had worn the Gray during the battle between the states. They had come from New England as late as the 1890s. In fact old John Whateley, once the “Wizard of Wall Street,” had been fleeing angry investors from the Panic of ’93, caused by the bursting of the railroad bubble. He and his wife Lavinia, a simple and somewhat deformed albino woman, took up residence behind closed shutters, and did not live life on the porches as the rest of us did. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations.
I always had to watch myself when I spoke of Lavinia; Truman’s aunt Sook was a basket short of a picnic herself. She had taken him when his no account momma had dropped him off. Tru later said that Sook’s face was remarkable—not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind. This was years after Monroeville where a Lincoln comparison would not have been a social plus.
Our second day in New York Amasa and Mr. Nathan had to meet a train, so Amasa sent us to the picture show. This was a special treat as Monroeville had no regular theaters and, aside from the occasional Jesus picture that was shown at the courthouse, movies were almost unknown to me. Tru had seen some films in New Orleans and kept Jim and me up one night by telling us about Dracula. We were armed with two buffalo nickels each, so that in addition to the show we could buy candies—a Valomilk for Tru and a Snickers bar for me.
The cartoon was The Three Little Pigs. The pigs, in addition to their house building skills, were adept musicians. The piano-playing pig made the house of bricks, the flute player the house of sticks, and the fiddler a house of straw. The piano player chided his brothers’ homes for lack of security in the face of the Big Bad Wolf, but the carefree pigs merely sang Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? After the Big Bad Wolf had blown down the first two houses, he found his respiratory talents unequal to the task of demolishing the brick house. He then cleverly donned the costume of a Fuller Brush Man, and affecting a strange accent tried to gain entrance thusly. Tru and I did not understand the accent, but some men behind us with funny little caps had the same accent and said, “Yeah dose pigs wouldn’t be scared of us!”
Through a Mythos Darkly Page 10
