Long Tall Sonny had collapsed and the invisible forces that gripped him twisted him until he was spread-eagled. I had a good idea what was coming next, and it was not going to be a pretty sight. Darkness descended, along with something else, something I first thought was gloopy, hanging in slick festoons. Cobwebs! Dozens of lengthy strands, unfurling like drapes. I was caught in a nasty dilemma. I wanted the Cobweb Queen snared in the trap, but not at the expense of Long Tall Sonny. Sure, he was a bit of a creep and I didn’t owe him any favors—he’d dragged me into this mess in the first place—but it seemed wrong to let him become, presumably, a light snack for the grandmother of spiders.
So I fired off a couple of rounds at Zermillia, gambling that it was too late for the Queen to rise up and away again. I was right—her immense bulk kept lowering itself down into the chamber. The bullets whanged up against whatever shield Zermillia had erected around herself and I saw them spinning in mid-air, quickly cocooned in webbing like flies. Zermillia’s song was unbroken, her face beatific, eyes on her mistress. I could hear Long Tall Sonny’s guitar thrumming, as if he was playing it—he wasn’t—and its chords complementing Zermillia’s song.
Impotently I fired another few rounds as I backed away. A couple of the bullets hit the far wall of the chamber and ricocheted around the place like mad wasps. Incredibly they kept going, longer than I would have expected, like they’d picked up on the power that was in play and were accelerating. The sound as they bounced from wall to wall rose.
Zermillia stopped singing, the bulbous Cobweb Queen a dozen feet or so from the chamber’s floor. I got a better view of the monster and gaped. It was no normal spider, and had an exaggerated head, shaped like a huge skull and—features. That face, it was stretched across the skull, but it was Zermillia’s face, or the prototype of it. Its brilliant, green eyes opened and fixed on me. I shrank back as if Satan himself had favored me with his sulfurous gaze.
Zermillia watched the buzzing bullets, then flung something at them, white light in jagged forks. There was a crackling, a hiss, something small rolling across stone, and the bullets were still, little smoking pellets, redundant. Zermillia stepped out of the circle and away from Long Tall Sonny, whose eyes were tightly closed, his body rigid.
My guess was Zermillia was about to taunt me and start in on me with her powers, with a view to divesting me of my clothes as she had done her earlier victim, but something checked her. Her head rose and she cocked her ears like a hunting eagle, picking up sounds outside the normal human range of hearing. I heard nothing—at first. Then it came to me, that soft whispering, a susurration. The sea outside. Lapping up against the huge doors. That and something else.
Visitors.
I worked my way back towards the base of the doors, to one side of the ramp. Zermillia wasn’t impressed and flung even more of her light bolts my way. Behind her, the Cobweb Queen, the size of a house, blotted out the light, her legs stretching across the chamber. Long Tall Sonny was in shadow, but his fate was even more clear.
Beside me, light exploded and small sections of stone burst apart as Zermillia vented her petulance on me. In her irritation she’d damaged a lower part of the doors, and sunlight flooded in. That wasn’t all that flooded in. A score of aquatic shapes rode in on the gush of sea water. They gave a whole new meaning to the concept of surfing. More of the door opened. I don’t know what force was outside, dragging at it, and to be honest, I didn’t want to, but it was enough to admit a whole host of these salty invaders.
Zermillia screamed in a combination of fury and fear. I liked the fear bit. I saw her make a break for the far end of the chamber. Meanwhile the Cobweb Queen shook herself and I saw her abdomen ripple then let loose a flood of smaller arachnid shapes. They may have been her babies, but they were the size of wolf hounds. And to add to their horrific appearance, they all had bloated quasi-human heads. And all their faces were replicas of Zermillia’s. They scampered forward at speed, preparing to meet the onslaught of the water things. These were humanoid, having our general shape and limbs, but other than that they were more like crustaceans or fish, their limbs ending in claws that would have chopped a normal man in half. And those mouths! Looked like they were chewing on a nest of lampreys. I shrank back into what shadows I could find and mercifully I was ignored. The presence of the Cobweb Queen and her horrible spawn had driven the sea folk insane with anger and blood-lust. They broke on them like a huge wave and the conflict that ensued was violent and murderous. I had no idea what the outcome would be.
Fortunately Long Tall Sonny was as interesting to the sea things as I was, and at last he was able to break free of the power that had gripped him. He snatched up the remnants of his clothes, put them on, and regathered his dignity, as well as his now silent guitar. I waved him over to me and we stood, temporarily mesmerized by the confusion. We lost sight of Zermillia, but my guess was she was either buried under a mass of writhing tentacles and claws, or she’d found a back way out of there. I didn’t much care one way or the other.
I dragged Long Tall Sonny out through the door into daylight. The churning sea was right up the slipway and for the moment had finished disgorging the horde of things from under its waves. There was a narrow path, a rough quay to one side and we edged along it. I looked out to sea. As I thought, no city skyline, but no jungle either, just a flat sea horizon. This island may not be anywhere near the mainland at all. Out in the bay, the deeper waters boiled. It looked like something even bigger and nastier was preparing its own version of a D-Day landing.
I shoved Long Tall Sonny along the quay and we kept going. Eventually, rounding the last of a series of rock outcrops, we came to a small bay and a bigger quay. There were buildings, small and cramped, but long abandoned. And no city.
“You okay?” I asked my companion.
“Thanks,” he said. “You saved my bacon.”
“Pal, you were the bacon. And we’re not out of this yet.”
* * * *
We spent the day waiting. I’d convinced myself Montifellini would come. Somehow that crazy bus of his would roll up on the quay and whisk us back to our saner world. Long Tall Sonny was skeptical. He shuddered every time we heard a distant boom as the conflict inside the old buildings raged on insanely. The sea hurled its waves at us, probably stirred up by events, but we were otherwise left alone. I didn’t think we’d be safe indefinitely, though. Whoever won that clash of the Titans would seek us out eventually. A snack for the Cobweb Queen or a watery trip to R’Lyeh or some such tourist spot down in the deeps.
Evening finally turned up and my eyes, tired from scanning the emptiness of the sea, picked something up, a shape on the water, coming around the shoulder of rock to the west of us. A little craft, with one occupant. I slipped out a gun, fully loaded once more. As the canoe-like craft got closer, the figure waved cheerily. I knew the grinning face.
“Fred the Ferryman,” I breathed. “That’s a relief.”
“You know him?”
“I’m happy to say yes.” I helped Fred tie up at the quayside.
The little man’s blob of a head bobbed up and down as he laughed. “Mr Stone. Montifellini told me I’d find you here. He’d have come himself, but there’s an ocean of aquatic horrors on the lookout for him in this realm. And he was grumbling about some of them denting the bodywork of his bus. You know how that kind of thing irks him.”
Long Tall Sonny looked a mite queasy. “You mean I have to get aboard? I get seasick.”
I gave him my searching look. “Is it my imagination, or do I smell bacon?”
* * * *
Long Tall Sonny took his mind off the rocking of the boat as Fred ferried us through yet more banks of fog (which he breathed in happily) by strumming a few blues tunes on his guitar, while Fred added the lyrics, most of which centred around his having woken up that morning. No one was seasick, but I grumbled about the interminable fog, even if it did mask us from anything swimming about below us.
Some time later we
bumped up against something and I realized we had arrived at yet another quayside. Long Tall Sonny and I climbed the weed-infested steps and up to dry-ish land. Fred gave us a cheery wave and rowed away, still singing about his baby having left him, though the event, if not a fiction, must have been a happy one. I wouldn’t be buying the album.
“Are we home?” said my companion.
“I think we have one more trip to make.” I pointed at a large, humped shadow. It shook to the strains of Carmen. Montifellini’s Magic Bus was parked alongside some weird buildings that could only have been erected in Ulthar, to which we had apparently returned. “Let’s get aboard. I want a few words with Pavarotti’s cousin, several times removed.”
Before we’d taken a few steps, things materialized in the fog on either side of us. Unpleasant things. Things that had lately been in that choppy sea, now sloping along, claws flexing, tentacular mouths wriggling, eager to fix on human flesh, specifically mine and Long Tall Sonny’s. It was touch and go as to whether we’d make it to the bus before they fell on us. A wild screeching shattered the silence and the fog disgorged yet more shapes, to wit a seething mass, furry and feline. Cats, scores of them. In their forefront and yowling with maniacal fury, was none other than Montifellini’s little calico heroine, Bella. She arched her back, her fur fluffed up and her tail three times as fat as normal, swishing to and fro like a conductor’s baton directing her musical ensemble.
The sea spawn hissed, a sound nowhere near as effective as the terrifying caterwauling, and at once the battle began, while Long Tall Sonny and I edged closer and closer to the bus and its swelling chorus of toreadors. We tried not to watch as claws of varying sizes swiped at flesh and needle teeth sank into skin and scales. The walls of the buildings echoed to the concatenation of horrible sounds. We reached the door to the vehicle and I looked up to see the big man, sitting back, eyes closed in euphoric pleasure as he accompanied the lusty Italian singing booming from his speakers.
He opened an eye and favored me with a face-splitting grin. “Nick! I knew you’d get through. Come aboard, and bring your musical maestro with you.”
We needed no second bidding as the battle on the quay, which had now assumed war proportions, snarled and hissed very close to the bus. Like the opera, it reached a crescendo—then stopped. There was only the fog. And a single cat. Bella. Insouciantly, she climbed up the steps into the bus, favored us with one of those imperious cat glances, found a comfortable seat and proceeded to wash herself as if nothing had happened.
“She is a Boudicca among cats,” said her master proudly. “I take it you dealt with the intruder,” he added, closing the door and wrestling the engine into life.
I was too relieved to be on board to make a big deal of it all. Long Tall Sonny sat down and idly picked at the strings of his guitar. “You know, that tune Zermillia was singing. Really melodic. Could be a winner.”
I glared at him. “Sonny, you play one note of that song and I will remove both your arms and shove the guitar where the sun don’t shine. Stick to twelve bar blues, okay?”
TRICKS NO TREATS, by Paul Dale Anderson
One does not venture onto the streets of Arkham after dark on All-Hallow’s Eve. I’ve been told that those who do, never return.
Or they come back totally and hopelessly mad.
Life-long residents remain safely ensconced inside their dilapidated homes, with all the doors securely bolted and windows shuttered tight. Outside, blustery fall winds wail and shriek through clogged eaves and denuded trees like crazed banshees. Dogs growl and howl.
Above the town, a huge flock of agitated whippoorwills—inexplicably delayed from migrating south for the winter and tonight sounding more like carrion-consuming birds of prey than delicate songbirds—issue incessant cries from dusk to dawn. Only the insane would go outside on a night like this or dare answer the door. I am not insane.
Nor am I the ignorant country bumpkin native New Englanders consider me to be as I wander deserted streets alone. I hold dual doctorates—one in archaeology and the other in arcane literature from the University of Chicago—and I have accompanied fellow Oriental Institute researchers to the farthest reaches of the accessible world.
I know many strange things, some of which were hidden from mankind for countless aeons before my colleagues and I unearthed them.
Which is the very reason I’m drawn, like a moth flirting with the tall flame flickering mesmerizingly atop a half-melted candle, to this hideously dark and desolate street in Arkham, Massachusetts, on this cold and blustery October 31st, near the end of the second decade of the third millennium of the modern era.
I have come tonight to discern for myself if what I’ve learned is really true.
Or merely a dream.
Antiquarian researches uncovered anecdotal evidence that certain occult locales become gateways between worlds at auspicious times when the heavens and our earth are strategically aligned. Allegedly among them are Stonehenge on the morning of the summer solstice; the Intihuatana of Machu Picchu at sunrise on the winter solstice, which is their summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere; the three Great Pyramids of Giza when they align precisely with the three brightest stars of Orion’s belt on the night of May eve; and, not far from the rare book collection of Miskatonic University’s library, wherein lies the dreaded Necronomicon, the Old Witch House where Keziah Mason had once lived and where, at precisely midnight on Halloween, veils between worlds are thinnest.
There may be other places with portals to connect unseen worlds with our own. For all I know, somewhere in this world each and every night a different doorway briefly opens. Similar to worm holes, these are actually more like massive bank vault doors that automatically lock and unlock only when corresponding stars, not unlike tumblers of some cosmic combination lock, perfectly align.
Nor have I a clue how an obscure and allegedly-mad Arabian poet, astrologer, mathematician, and alchemist by the name of Abdul Alhazred discerned secret combinations of both past and future more than twelve centuries ago when neither Arkham nor the Witch House yet existed. Some scholars conjecture he was acting as a conduit between the remote past and the far future, that his fevered automatic scribblings ensued while in a fugue or trance state outside of time itself. It’s even been suggested, by those susceptible to believe such nonsense, that he channeled the dreams of demons.
I come to Arkham tonight not only as a scientist eager to confirm research findings, but as a man hungry to glimpse once more the face of his beloved wife who shuffled off her mortal coil much too young and much too soon while I was away doing research. For I fervently believe, as did the ancients, that on this night when the veils are thinnest and the lines and angles between stars and planets are aligned exactly right, the dead may walk and talk again and be seen and heard by mortal man.
To be able to see and possibly even—dare I hope?—touch Laura again is worth any risk. I don’t believe in the existence of boogeymen or demons. But I do believe our essences hasten someplace after death. Where that is, I hope to discover tonight in Arkham.
Although the old Witch House is gone—demolished by time and a superstitious citizenry who refused to build again on that cursed spot—a strange configuration of standing stones still remains on an island in the Miskatonic not far from the Garrison Street bridge. Just as ancient hands fashioned stones at Avebury and Stonehenge, the Intihuatana at Machu Picchu, and the Great Pyramids at Giza, so too did ancient hands position those stones in the Miskatonic to point to a secret doorway connecting the land of the living with the land of the dead.
As I stand atop the bridge, I hear ritual drumming off to the north in the direction of Salem. Bonfires blaze and glowing sparks and cinders shoot high into the night sky as ecstatic revelers dance, chant, and perform archaic rites in dark ravines beyond where a mysterious white altar stone tops Meadow Hill. The midnight hour rapidly approaches. Soon the gateway to the land of the dead will open up where the Witch House once was.
; What makes me so certain the dead will walk again? What is it about those prophetic words—“That is not dead which can eternal lie”—a mad Arabic poet coupled millennia ago in Al Azif that makes me such a firm believer in life after death?
Is it only a vain hope, a fevered dream or delirium, that I shall see my beloved alive again tonight?
Winds from the nearby salt ocean assault my olfactory senses with a flood of fetid fish odors, as if millions of dead and bloated cod suddenly float to the surface of the sea. The terrible stench makes me lightheaded and nauseous. I feel faint. I daren’t faint and lose track of time.
I stumble from the bridge over the Miskatonic, hastening in the direction of the litter-filled vacant lot where the multi-angled old Witch House once stood. The tom-toms beat louder now, more frantic, more orgasmic. The tempo of archaic-sounding chants increases exponentially as certain strange words—words I’ve only read about in my researches but here-to-for never heard pronounced—are repeated over and over again. It’s almost midnight. I sense subtle changes already occurring in the aether. The day of the dead is nearly upon us.
“Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!” shout the revelers.
“Ia! Ia! Yog-Sothoth! Hail the gatekeeper, possessor of the silver key! The hour grows late.”
“Open the gate! Open the gate! Open the gate.”
“Open the gates of time and space. Show your face! Show your face.”
The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack Page 8