“No friends of mine,” I said.
Long Tall Sonny yelped in horror and started gabbling. “They serve the Old Ones! They’ve come for Zermillia. They want to trap the Cobweb Queen and sacrifice her. You don’t know what they’ll do to her. We have to get away!”
“Let’s not get hysterical.” I turned to the barman. “This is the part where I ask you if there’s a back way out of here. Maybe you could have your cats distract those fish-suckers?”
He seemed to understand that me and my two new pals weren’t quite as undesirable as he’d originally imagined, whereas the shamblers outside were all that and more. He nodded and spoke to the mass of cats, which had miraculously grown to about three times its original size. Boy, were those beasts ready for action. The barman swung open the door and the cats poured out, shrieking as only cats can. I didn’t stay to watch the bloody rending and tearing that followed. Long Tall Sonny stood up, a spindly guy who must have been nigh on six foot six. He had a battered old guitar hanging from a shoulder strap. Both had seen better days, better years even.
The barman led the three of us through the inside of the pub and to a low doorway that opened to another alley. He gave us instructions so I could find our way back to the original steps that would drop down to where the Magic Bus would be waiting. On our way, I could hear the frenzied sounds of wild animals at war and was thankful I couldn’t see any of it. We got back to the stair, but not before I sensed other shapes out in the fog, like smears in the swirling clouds. They were closing in. This was going to be a close shave.
Mercifully the unmistakable shape of Montifellini’s vehicle was waiting. I hurried Long Tall Sonny and Zermillia towards it. She’d managed to run the gauntlet still mummified in her cloak, apparently as easy on her feet as if she’d been gliding. I heard the scuffling of many feet behind us. Things were undoubtedly closing in and I smelt the salty stink of the sea.
I flung open the door of the bus. Montifellini looked down from his seat, his black eyebrows raised in an expression of deep curiosity. “You’re in a hurry, my friend.”
“Two more passengers,” I said. “Can we scoot, pronto?”
He revved the engine, which made a sound suggestive of something about to blow itself apart. But the bus was alive, primed. I gestured for Long Tall Sonny to get aboard and he did so, Zermillia behind him. Her head was down as she drifted past the huge driver, not wanting to look at him, or be seen. I got on board and shut the door. Long Tall Sonny and Zermillia went into the empty bus and sat near the back, looking out of the windows at the thickening gloom.
I stood beside Montifellini as he took us away. I thought I felt something bump on the sides of the bus, like we were being mobbed, in danger of being turned over. Montifellini shouted a few choice Italian swearwords and I picked out the word ‘paintwork’.Then we were plunging into a new fog bank, dark as a tunnel.
“Passengers?” said Montifellini. “I recognize Long Tall Sonny. But who’s the other?”
I attempted to explain.
“Something is wrong,” he said, his voice low, covered by the rumble of the engine. “Have you seen her clearly?”
“No, we didn’t have a lot of time for introductions, not with the fishy tribe about to organize a three course meal.”
“You say she was a servant of the Cobweb Queen? I know a little about that monster. Nasty lady, if that’s what she is, my friend. Her servants are not women you would want to associate with. Even you would draw the line, I think.”
“Hey, easy on the compliments,” I grunted. “I’ve just had a run of bad luck with the fairer sex of late, that’s all.”
He grinned. “Sure.” His grin dissolved. “Seriously, Nick, we’re in trouble. We need a little time to work this out. Go and sit with them. Find out what you can.”
I did so. Long Tall Sonny was hunched up, not very talkative. Zermillia’s vivid eyes studied the fog as if it would reveal its secrets to her.
“Tell me about your former mistress,” I said, but she shrank back as if I’d threatened her. I wasn’t going to get anything out of her, obviously. So I sat back and let the bus wind its way back to my world.
* * * *
We’d stopped. It was night outside, and still foggy as hell.
“Terminus!” called Montifellini.
I went up front. “Seriously?” I said, voicing my skepticism.
“The fog will pass. Go and get some sleep. Tuck the lovers up in bed.” He said it with a tone of finality and I knew that was it. Out. Resolve whatever problems I’d now gleaned from this little jaunt without him. I grunted and waved Long Tall Sonny to me. He and his cloaked partner disembarked and the three of us watched the Magic Bus rumble away, its exhaust pumping out clouds of fumes that suggested it was where the fog had originated. Maybe it had. Montifellini works in mysterious ways.
“Where are we?” said Long Tall Sonny.
“Good question.”
“This doesn’t feel like our New York.”
I wasn’t going to argue. Instead I watched the fog as it began to close in again, tight as a fist. I heard the sound of lapping water and a sudden gust brought with it a distinctive fetor of sea. So we were on a quayside. I turned to see Long Tall Sonny and the woman walking away. I followed them.
Ahead of us a number of buildings reared up, partially obscured by darkness and mist. Blocks of stone, windowless and in places overhung with thick tresses of leaves, ivy maybe, or some kind of matted climbers. This place was deserted and had been for a long time. My guess was, a very long time. There were stone steps leading up to an open rectangle of deeper darkness, a door. Further up the quay a long slipway dropped at an angle into the mist and again I heard water lapping at it. There’d been no ships sliding down that ramp in an age.
I paused at the top of the steps, looking around. If this was New York, I was a monkey’s uncle. Where the heck had Montifellini dropped us—and why?
Long Tall Sonny re-emerged from the building. “Zermillia’s gone inside, looking for somewhere to crash until sunrise. Where is this place?”
“The truth is, I don’t know. It’s not our Big Apple.”
He let out a deep breath of relief. “I’m cool with that.”
“You want to explain why?”
“It’s Zermillia.” He dropped his voice. “She’s not my partner. Well, she sort of is. She seduced me. I feel kinda impelled to do what she tells me. She has powers. She’s not on the run from the Cobweb Queen.”
“You’re not making my night any better.”
“She’s a Summoner.” He peered through the doorway, listening. When he was satisfied we were still out of the girl’s earshot, he spoke again. “The Cobweb Queen has eight of them, her most powerful servants. They look for new places for her, like scouting bees. When they find somewhere, they perform certain rituals and summon her into existence. Right now the Cobweb Queen is heavily pregnant. When she arrives, she’ll discharge her countless thousands of offspring and the invasion will begin.”
“Invasion?”
“New world, new home, new beginning.”
“And is there any good news?”
“What you just told me. This isn’t our New York. And Zermillia doesn’t know that. Better if she doesn’t.”
I was beginning to get the picture—and Montifellini had indeed cottoned on to something. Which is why he dumped us here. Not like him to abandon me, though. Maybe he thought I’d wriggle out. Right now, though, I didn’t have a key.
What I did have, tucked inside my coat, was a flashlight. I pulled it out, as well as one of my guns, and switched on. The beam shed light beyond the doorway as we entered. This was some place, a granddaddy of a warehouse, its ceiling way up above us, festooned with more creepers, lianas, jungle plants. Another piece of this weird puzzle clicked into place. This wasn’t just a case of where we were, it was also when we were. My guess was, a long time ago. Montifellini had done a good job of shipwrecking us.
The walls were coated with
slime, fungus, mold, you name it, and it was soon apparent I didn’t need my flash. Some of this stuff glowed, a baleful candle-light that threw everything into relief. We’d climbed more steps to the central area and could have been in a primitive cathedral, its tall columns angled upwards, some leaning, others collapsed, but still enough to keep most of the roof up. Tendrils of fog curled around up there, feeling their way in through an open section, but quickly dissipating as they groped about in the inner air, a bizarre, natural defense.
Long Tall Sonny gasped, a skeletal, bony hand indicating one of the walls, where an inscription had been embossed and could still be read. To me it was gibberish, as intelligible as Sanskrit, but he recognized it. He was a travelling man, so maybe he’d picked a few things up on his ramblings.
“Jehoshaphat!” he cried, then dropped his voice again. “I think I know where we are. It’s an island, an old kingdom. One of a number of places sacred to…an old religion.”
I wasn’t exactly loving this. An alien world, a remote time, and we were on a goddamn island. “Something tells me you’re not talking High Anglican Church.”
He pointed to some crude carvings, bizarre figures cavorting about, figures with gills, spatulate hands, piscean features. Not unlike the things I’d seen shambling about in Ulthar.
“Servants of the sea god,” he said, shuddering.
“Azathoth? Is that what you called it?”
He shook his head. “Azathoth is at the heart of his own universe, linked to many others, a sort of primal chaos, a cosmic being beyond understanding, who -”
“I get the picture. So which god are we talking about here?”
“He who dwells in the deep ocean. There is a theory that his city, R’Lyeh, sits in more than one dimension, on more than one world. This is one of them. It’s out there, in the fathomless ocean chasms, where he dreams. This citadel is one of a number that ring the ocean, a place where his children can gather, swarming up from the waters.”
“So, all in all, pal, this is probably the worst place in any number of universes for us to be. Sandwiched between the water god and the spider monster.” I was thinking, the next time I saw Montifellini, I was going to have a few words with the big guy. Was he nuts? Then it hit me. No, not completely. There was method in his madness. Things started to make sense, the internal fog clearing if the stuff outside wasn’t.
“And all this you’ve told me,” I said to Long Tall Sonny, “Would be news to Zermillia? She doesn’t know where, or when, we are?”
“It’s better if she doesn’t. But ask her yourself. She’s coming.”
We were almost in the center of the huge building, dwarfed by its monumental stones, its floor a series of concentric mosaics, ancient patterns. Zermillia came out of the shadows beyond it. She had got rid of her cloak, hood and facial mask. I tried not to gape. She looked like something that had stepped off a catwalk in the latest Parisian fashion show. She wore a single, flowing garment, a very pale pink affair that hugged most of her contours, thin as silk. Her hair was as white as snow, a tumbling mass, and her skin was also white. An albino, as pure as I’d ever seen. Her face was human and yet had an elfish look, if I can put it that way. Her eyes were a brilliant green, emphasized now by that white skin, and her lips were very full, blood red, though that wasn’t lipstick. Beauty incarnate, and yet in a way repellent, at least to me. Long Tall Sonny had already succumbed to her charms. His natural inclination wasn’t to recoil, far from it.
“Mr Stone, or should I say, Nick Nightmare,” she purred. The cats of Ulthar would have liked that. “Good of you to help us.”
“Always like to keep the clients satisfied.”
Her green eyes surveyed me coolly and I was thinking more of serpents than spiders. “I am a little puzzled, though. This building, its location—aren’t we a little off the beaten track?”
I could feel Long Tall Sonny’s terror crawling up him from his boots like a hot flush of plague. His long face was slick with sweat. Panic was poking him.
“That’s right, ma’am. We’re in New York, but this is about as insalubrious a spot as I could find.”
Those crimson lips made a little moue. “Quite. And why did you choose it?”
“Thing is, ma’am—”
“Zermillia.”
“Sure. Thing is, guys like me who travel around in ways most folks don’t even know about, are secretive types. Only a few of us have the keys to the kind of trip you just made.”
“Yes, it’s why my mistress selected you.”
“We come and go privately. If we’d walked out into Times Square in broad daylight, well, we’d have caused a stir. My guess is, your mistress would rather announce her coming when it suits her. Element of surprise.” I waved my arms at the surrounding stone. “No one will know she’s here until she’s ready.”
“Very clever, Mr Nightmare. Your point is well taken.”
I thought I’d done pretty well for an on-the-hoof explanation. But we were a long way from being out of the woods yet.
“What is this place?” she asked innocently.
“Uh, well, ma’am—Zermillia—it’s an old building. There was a war many years ago, a world war, in fact, and our military powers built a whole lot of warships, some in secret bases like this one, to disguise the scale of the work. Even in its heyday, this place was remote, out on the edge of New York. When the war ended, it was abandoned. Never been used since. We’re probably the first people to set foot here in a long time. So we’re not likely to be disturbed.” All this was complete bull, but experience has taught me the key to bull is to deliver it with conviction.
“The Cobweb Queen will be delighted. We shall begin the rituals after dawn. I suggest you get some rest. It will be quite taxing.”
“I assume you won’t be needing us.”
She smiled her chilling smile and I mean icy. “Oh, I will, Mr Nightmare. You and Sonny are an integral part of the—ceremony.” She left us again, swallowed by the walls of shadow.
“Dawn,” I said to him. “That could be a problem.”
“We have to get out of here,” Long Tall Sonny muttered.
“When dawn comes up, and if the fog has lifted, it won’t be the Manhattan skyline she sees across the water. My guess is, it’ll be jungle. Not a concrete one. One with a whole lot of trees. And we’re not talking weeping willows.”
* * * *
We snatched some uneasy sleep. My dreams were twisted ones, mostly to do with water and things bubbling up from it. Not helped by the sloshing and gurgling of the tide outside, sluicing up the big ramp. I heard things wading around in it, but with any luck that was just my fevered imagination. Who was I kidding?
Dawn came, its first light seeping through the east end of the building. The door through which we’d entered was shut, a solid block of stone sealing up the way out. Close by it, where the long slipway to the sea came into the building, I could see the outline of a huge door, its outline picked out in places as sunlight poked through the cracks of time. Maybe I’d been right about ships being launched from here, but whatever types of ships they’d been remained a mystery. No bad thing.
Long Tall Sonny and I got to our feet at the same time. Zermillia was watching us from the steps, a smile on her face that would have melted bronze. No doubt she was eager to get on with the summoning. Montifellini’s devious plans were clearer to me now: have the Cobweb Queen brought here and virtually imprisoned. That was okay by me. The problem was, I didn’t want to share her splendid isolation. I couldn’t believe Montifellini would simply sacrifice me to achieve his aims. So I assumed he’d pick me up once the work was done.
Zermillia had been busy in the night. The huge chamber had a central area which she’d cleared of any debris, and she must have used a makeshift broom from some of the bigger leaves to sweep away the dust of the ages. What had been revealed on the circular floor was an intricate concentric sequence of glyphs, dancing figures and stars, a kind of pictographic saga hinting at a cosmic li
nk between the world and the stars. I’d seen this kind of thing before, mainly in conjunction with the sea and certain things that shambled up from its deeps from time to time and mingled with the human population, not necessarily to its advantage.
Zermillia saw my expression and laughed, a cold sound that bounced around the high walls. “It’s ironic,” she said. “This abandoned temple to dead gods and the forgotten remnants of the Queen’s enemies. It seems fitting that she will be brought here, hidden from your world in this shell.”
So she hadn’t bought my World War Two warship blarney. But she did think it was my world. I wish the thought had comforted me.
“Once,” she went on, “the priests of another cult stood here and poured their libations to the Old Ones, summoning powers from the stars. I shall open another conduit. The Cobweb Queen will come, carrying her thousand young! Here they will bloom and go out into your city and feast! Days of great joy are upon us.” She pointed to Long Tall Sonny, her finger a long, white stick, its nail as red as her lips. “Stand inside the circle!”
He snapped upright as if something had grabbed him. I could see him struggling against it, shaking like a doll caught in the mouth of a huge dog. It was hopeless—he couldn’t prevent himself from being dragged across the circles to their innermost point. Zermillia lifted her arms and spoke to the heavens, and a scarlet mist surrounded her, its fingers reaching out and ripping Long Tall Sonny’s ragged clothing off him. Naked, he looked even more bony, his flesh pale, his limbs like thin branches. Gasping with pain, he dropped to his knees, head bowed. His guitar rattled on the floor beside him.
I pulled out my twin Berettas and directed them at Zermillia.
“Save you bullets,” she said. “They won’t work on me. Enjoy your freedom for a while longer. Then prepare to meet your goddess.”
She raised her hands again and now began a low dirge, her voice echoing in the chamber, rising in pitch, picked up by the acoustics and amplified. I’d seen gates opened before by songs, and although this one was quintessentially weird, its power became evident as something high above groaned and shifted, as if huge stones had been moved to let in daylight. Well, not daylight. It may have been daylight outside the building, but whatever conduit Zermillia had opened did so onto a black, starlit sky. As the song swelled, the stars were gradually blotted out by a vast bulk, a huge something coming over the roof. Its long, long legs, several of them, were as thick as palm trunks, hairy and fibrous. The Cobweb Queen was answering the summons.
The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack Page 7