by C W Hawes
The Medusa Ritual
A Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation
CW Hawes
Table of Contents
Title
Join the Team!
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by CW Hawes
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Copyright
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Prologue
__________
◼︎
The small fire crackled and sent whiffs of smoke drifting lazily into the June night sky spread out over Los Angeles.
No burning was allowed, but he’d be damned if he was going to eat the hot dogs cold. Besides, what could possibly catch on fire in this concrete jungle? Nothing but concrete, brick, asphalt, steel, and glass as far as you could see.
Nope. Nothing burnable except the scraps of wood he’d found in the abandoned warehouse. Damn politicians. Always making life difficult. As if it wasn’t difficult enough already.
He took a stick and maneuvered the small can of baked beans out of the fire. He stuck a spoon into the bubbling contents and lifted out a spoonful. He blew on the beans until they were cool enough to put in his mouth.
He chewed and swallowed, while holding a hot dog skewered on a long stick, over the fire. With his other hand, he scooped up a spoonful of beans. He blew on them and then put the spoon in his mouth.
Something was preying on homeless people again. He’d heard that at the mission this morning from One-Tooth Bill and Skinny Sue. Sitting there at the long table eating oatmeal with raisins. God, he hated raisins.
They’d said three nights ago the loner guy everyone called Dopey hadn’t shown up for supper at the mission and no one’s seen him since. And two nights before that, Needle Nancy vanished. Last night, the guy everyone called John Donne, because he was always quoting poetry, was with Luke, Smitty, and Travis. John went off to take a leak. They heard him scream and when they found him, he was curled into a ball and petrified.
He’d asked, “Petrified? Like scared?”
And Skinny Sue, her eyes all big, and not from dope, said, “No. Like in stone.”
He’d let out a laugh and told One-Tooth and Skinny those three’d been drinkin’ too much Doc Tichner’s.
However, when they left, One-Tooth had looked him in the eye, all serious like, and told him to be careful. To be polite, he’d told One-Tooth he would.
He shook his head. If you’re going to drink, at least find some real booze. He’d given it up, himself. Getting the crap beat out of him and robbed had been incentive enough. Besides, he had to panhandle extra hard to get enough money for booze. And he was sick and tired of panhandling.
He’d saved up enough so he could get himself a harmonica. He was pretty doggone good at the instrument. He’d play for his supper, as it were. It had to be better than standing in the hot sun at intersections all day long trying to get money out of stingy drivers sitting in their air-conditioned Beemers.
The hot dog was done. He blew on it and took a bite off the end.
What was that? He cocked his head and listened again. There it was. A shoe stepping on some grit on the pavement.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “I hear ya. Don’t pretend ya ain’t there.”
He heard the shoe once again stepping on grit, rubbing it against the concrete.
“What do you want? I don’t have nothin’ but some beans and hot dogs. I’ll share.”
There, at the edge of the firelight, he could see a shape.
“I’ll share if you’re hungry.” He stood. “I don’t got nothin’. Just some food.”
Into the light stepped a woman. She had a beautiful face and then his eyes took in the rest of her. He screamed.
At the same time he felt himself becoming stiff. It was hard to breathe. No. It wasn’t hard to breathe, he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe at all. His chest. It didn’t move. And his eyes. Everything was disappearing. In a moment, the light from the fire vanished into the blackness of eternal night.
1
__________
◼︎
An eerie, high-pitched piping came from the clearing in the woods. Filtering through the trees was an orange-colored iridescence.
We found it, Mostyn Pierce, Helene Dubreuil’s words appeared in Special Agent in Charge Pierce Mostyn’s mind.
He gave her a hand signal indicating he’d received her thought, and for a moment thought how much easier his job had become due to Helene’s special abilities.
He whispered into his headset, “Dotty, do you hear the piping and see the glow?”
“I’m not deaf and blind, Mostyn.”
“Good. I want you and NicAskill to move down the hill and flank the thing from the east.”
“Got it,” Dr Dotty Kemper replied, who was one of the world’s top forensic anthropologists. She also knew her way around a weapon or two.
“Do you copy, Jones?” Mostyn asked.
“Yep,” Special Agent DC Jones replied. “You want Doc Petrie and I to move in from the west, I take it.”
“I do.”
“On it, Boss.”
“Baker here, Mostyn. Dr Stoppen and I will hold the entrance to the ravine so the thing doesn’t escape. Unless you have other plans for us.”
“No, I don’t. Hold the entrance to the ravine, Willie Lee.” Mostyn paused a moment before continuing. “Listen up, everyone. Helene and I will attempt to make the capture. We’re moving out now.”
He shouldered the bag of transmitters for the Electronic Confinement Array. Helene carried the activation device. She held Mostyn’s hand and dematerialized them both.
The cloud of atoms that was Mostyn and Helene carefully moved through the woods. No quick or sudden movements. Mostyn wanted to play it safe, because Helene wasn’t sure if being in a dematerialized state rendered them invisible to the thing they were after or not.
At the same time, Dotty Kemper and Special Agent Kymbra NicAskill moved into position on the east side of the clearing, while DC Jones and Dr Winifred Petrie moved into position on the west.
The closer Mostyn and Helene moved towards the clearing, the louder the piping and the brighter the orange glow became. In addition, Mostyn began to smell a putridly rancid odor wafting on the light breeze. It took all of his willpower to keep his stomach from heaving out his hastily eaten lunch.
In his ear, Mostyn heard Kemper’s voice, “My God, what is that stench?” Focused on the task at hand, Mostyn ignored her.
Helene’s voice sounded in his mind. We are almost on the edge of the clearing.
Mostyn sent his thoughts back to her. We’ll plant the first transmitter directly ahead, and then move around the creature clockwise.
Yes, Mostyn Pierce.
They broke into the clearing. Before them was a giant, orange spheroid object. It’s surface pockmarked with what appeared to be craters. Mostyn thought the thing looked like
an orange moon.
In his mind, Mostyn heard Helene gasp. It’s my Lord—
Focus, Helene! Mostyn thought.
It was, however, too late. Helene’s concentration broke and they flickered back to visibility. In that instant, an arm of orange goo shot out towards them. Mostyn pushed Helene to his left and dived to his right. The arm of goo passed between them, engulfed a tree and withdrew, ripping the tree out of the ground. When the tree made contact with the surface of the sphere, it vanished.
Another orange tentacle shot out towards Mostyn, who rolled out of the way. The tentacle withdrew, grass and rocks stuck to its surface.
Mostyn was headed for the tree line when a scream blasted through his headset. He turned and saw Helene, who’d been snared by one of the thing’s protoplasmic tentacles, being pulled towards the monster.
NicAskill’s voice blasted through Mostyn’s headset. “Incoming!” A moment later a bolt of lightning flashed out of the trees, accompanied by a tremendous thunderclap. Mostyn was knocked off his feet by the concussion of the rapid change in air pressure. From the corner of his eye, he saw the lightning bolt strike the monstrosity.
The creature’s piping shot up the register until it was almost out of the range of human hearing. Waves of red and black and gray spread across the sphere from where the lightning bolt had struck the thing. The hideously aberrant singularity rose into the air, and again NicAskill’s voice was heard to yell, “Incoming!”
The second lightning bolt blasted its way through the trees and struck the now slowly rotating spheroid. The creature dropped back to earth. The weird orange light began flickering and a dark gray began spreading out from the wounds inflicted by NicAskill’s weapon.
Mostyn got up on his hands and knees. His eyes swept the clearing, looking for Helene. He spotted her some seventy feet away from him, lying face down.
He started crawling towards her, and was only barely aware of Jones’s voice coming over the headset saying, “I got this!” A split second later, a rocket screamed out of the woods, struck the alien looking abomination and a dull whump sounded as the thermite warhead ignited.
The high-pitched piping soared beyond human hearing. From inside the giant spheroid thing, Mostyn saw an ever expanding red glow, and then flames burst out of the unearthly entity like volcanic eruptions.
A scream rent the air. A scream that came from the creature. A scream that was human, all too human. The monstrous obscenity collapsed into a black, burning ooze.
Mostyn jumped to his feet and ran the remaining distance to Helene. He felt for a pulse and found one. She was still alive. He pressed a key on the radio control box. “Sumer Base, come in Sumer Base, over.”
“Sumer Base here, Mostyn.”
“Target destroyed. We have one casualty. Need emergency evac.”
“Roger, Mostyn. Dispatching now. ETA, four minutes.”
The other team members arrived. Dotty Kemper knelt next to Mostyn, and held his hand. “She’ll be alright, Pierce. She’s tougher than all of us.”
“I hope so, Dot. I hope so.”
“I know so,” Dotty replied. “Now we need to collect as much of that thing’s remains as we can for the lab. Bardon will be pissed as it is. The least we can do is save the remains.”
“Right, Dot.” Mostyn stood. “Alright everybody, listen up. We need to collect as much of that goo over there as we can. It’s the creature’s remains, and the lab will want it.” He looked at Dotty.
“I’ll stay with her, Pierce.”
Mostyn nodded, and followed the rest of his team to what remained of Tommy John MacIlhenney.
2
__________
◼︎
In the helicopter with Mostyn were Helene and the medic keeping watch on her condition, Dr Dotty Kemper, and Willie Lee Baker, the team’s photographer. Mostyn looked at the sedated Helene lying on the bed. She looked peaceful.
He cast a glance at Dotty. She appeared to be asleep, eyes closed. The three of them had an odd relationship. In part… How should he put it? Managed? Managed by Dr Rafe Bardon, director of the ultra-secret Office of Unidentified Phenomena. Of course, it was he himself who had created the triangle there in K’n-yan in order to save his team. Still, he felt a bit like Jacob being tricked into marrying Leah, when it was Rachel he wanted.
He sighed, leaned his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes. Rather than sleep, he found his mind going over the mission. They’d had a simple goal: capture the creature known as Tommy John MacIlhenney. He, or better it, had been one of several offspring born to Tace MacIlhenney, a cousin of the infamous Whateley family of Dunwich.
How Tace had come across the ancient book with its blasphemous formulae and rituals, Bardon didn’t know. And to make matters worse, Tace and her offspring had vanished. Why she’d left Tommy John with one of the Whateley families was not known either and the OUP might never know, because that particular Whateley family no longer existed. Part of the hell unleashed by Tommy John before his destruction.
Mostyn was pleased the thing had been destroyed. He could never figure out his boss’s penchant for trying to capture these abnormalities. If Bardon had his way, the OUP would have the most bizarre zoo in the universe. Research, however, was the word his boss used.
Research. Mostyn shook his head and smiled a mirthless smile.
This horror was gone and the one thing Mostyn knew he could count on was that there would be another one waiting for the Office of Unidentified Phenomena to deal with tomorrow. The most secret agency in the world dealing with the most terrifying monsters in the multiverse, all to save an unsuspecting planet from the destruction threatening it.
He felt the helicopter descend, and then the bump of the landing. In a moment the door opened, and a medical team took Helene to a waiting ambulance. Mostyn started following, when an OUP agent intercepted him.
“Sorry Special Agent Mostyn. Dr Bardon is waiting to meet with you and your team.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“What about a shower and cup of coffee?”
“Sorry, sir. Bardon wants to see you now.”
Mostyn sighed, and followed the agent to a waiting unmarked black sedan. He looked over at the second helicopter and saw another agent talking to Jones. Mostyn smiled. Jones’s very animated gestures meant he was giving the agent hell, but in the end Jones got in the SUV the agent kept pointing to.
Mostyn let Dotty and Baker precede him into the car. Once he got in, the agent closed the door, gave three taps on the roof, and the sedan sped off into the night.
***
The time was late. Well past 11 PM. Dr Rafe Bardon stood at the front of the conference room, pipe in hand. He was a little round Englishman, and even at such a late hour of the night was impeccably dressed in a dark brown three-piece suit.
Mostyn and his team sat around the table. Helene, however, was at a secret hospital run by the Office of Unidentified Phenomena.
There was no coffee and there were no boxes of doughnuts. A sign Dr Bardon was not happy.
Bardon puffed on his pipe for a moment before speaking. “We lost a great opportunity today to learn more about The Great Old Ones.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Mostyn said.
“It was Ms Dubreuil and her superstitious worship of these monstrosities bent on destroying us that caused the loss, not anything Special Agent Mostyn failed to do,” Dr Winifred Petrie declared.
“Unfortunately,” Bardon replied, “we did not realize Tommy John MacIlhenney would bear such a close resemblance to his father. The mistake is mine.”
“Nevertheless, she should have maintained cover,” Petrie said. “She could have gotten us all killed.”
A look of displeasure crossed Bardon’s face. However, all he said was, “Point taken, Dr Petrie.”
Typical, Mostyn thought. Bardon would never blame Helene. She was his fair-haired girl. His ultimate weapon. A prize snatched from K’n-yan, which was also why he wa
nted her happy. And for Helene, happiness was being with him, Pierce Mostyn. Bardon also wanted him and Dotty Kemper happy. His three best people. Mostyn had great respect for his boss, yet sometimes… Mostyn shook his head.
“Something the matter, Mr Mostyn?” Bardon asked.
“No, sir,” Mostyn replied.
“Do we know who the father was?” Dr Otto Stoppen asked.
Mostyn was thankful Stoppen’s question spared him from further questions, at least for the moment.
Bardon looked at his pipe and put it in his coat pocket. “Preliminary tests of the remains indicate the father was possibly Abholos, the Devourer in the Mist. But our DNA files are incomplete. It’s possible the father was Tsathoggua, the greater brother of Abholos.”
“Is there any more we can do on this case?” Mostyn asked.
“Yes, there is,” Bardon answered. “I have people searching for Ms MacIlhenney as we speak. She and her hybrid offspring will be found. I want to know how she made contact.
“We are, in addition, in a much better position than those at Dunwich, some ninety years ago, because of the remains you recovered and Mr Baker’s photographs. Our research staff will be kept very busy.”
“Thanks goes to Dr Kemper for the remains, sir,” Mostyn said.
“Duly noted,” Bardon replied. He looked at Dotty. “Thank you, Dr Kemper for your quick thinking, which salvaged the operation.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” Dotty said, a big smile on her face.
Bardon gave Dotty a nod, and turned to Mostyn. “As for you and your team, your part on the MacIlhenney case is over. I have another mission for you.”