by Paul Crilley
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s done a runner. Jumped out the back window.”
Graves’s eyes widen. He runs to the front of the shop just as a Slip flares to life outside, and the Inspectre steps through the doorway with a small army of tactical officers spreading out behind him.
“Shit,” says Graves, turning and shoving me toward the rear of the shop. “Go, go.”
We move past the beaded curtain and down a tiny passage into a cluttered office. Graves takes his entropy gun out, shoots an antique-looking computer system (complete with blinking green cursor), and pulls the back door open. He stops and grabs an old revolver that’s sitting on the desk, then darts outside.
We move along the rear wall of the shop and pause at the mouth of the alley, peering into the street beyond. The Slip is gone. Off to our right the ICD agents are bursting through the door into the pawnshop, screaming and shouting. Graves waits a second, then sprints for the car. He gets behind the wheel, and I slide into the passenger seat. Graves starts the engine and pulls off slowly, not wanting to draw attention.
We head south until we hit the suburbs, driving past identical houses with identical, neat lawns and immaculate sidewalks. A David Lynch nightmare.
“So,” I say eventually. “Dante. What a dick.”
“I can only assume they threatened his family.”
“Really? ’Cause he’s not the kind of guy I see as having a family. Unless you’re talking like sitting blow-up dolls around the dinner table or something.”
“You don’t even know the man!”
“Am I wrong, though?”
A pause. “No,” says Graves eventually.
“So what now?”
“We carry on. I got the address of one of the victims from the motel. We’ll see if there is anything to be found there.”
“No,” says a voice from behind us. “You won’t.”
I turn in my seat and see an ICD agent wedged down in the rear footwell. He’s pointing a gun at me, but holding it really awkwardly, his elbows pushed hard against his ribs.
“Hey, Graves. There’s a guy on the floor back here.”
“What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know. Hey—you. What are you doing?”
“Guaranteeing my promotion. See, all the other guys. They always go in guns blazing. But I spotted your car outside and decided to hide in it, just in case you managed to sneak past.”
“That’s . . . actually pretty smart.”
“Thanks. I like to plan ahead. No offense. I’m going to shoot you now. I only need one of you alive, and I think Graves is the most valuable—”
Three gunshots explode in the car, and the guy bucks and screams, blood spraying everywhere before he slumps back, dead.
My ears are ringing. I look at Graves, shocked, as he tosses the gun he grabbed from Dante’s desk into the glove box.
“What an idiot,” he says.
Chapter Twenty-One
The address Graves got from Dante’s computer system is a fenced-off apartment block that looks more like a motel than anything else. A U-shaped, three-story building facing into a concrete courtyard with rusted swings and a broken seesaw. The gate is closed and locked, but the chain-link has more gaping holes than a politician’s excuse for being photographed at a strip club, so it’s easy enough for us to get inside.
“Are you really expecting to find anything?” I ask. “It’s been a couple of weeks since the massacre at the motel.”
“If you have any better ideas, I’m very keen to hear them,” says Graves as we move across the pitted concrete. “At the very least, we might find out something about the victim, something we can use to make sense of how he was involved.”
“And you’re sure he wasn’t ICD?”
“Not according to the search I did at Dante’s place. The victim was called Maurice Stableford, and it looks like he was a born-and-bred earthman. Like yourself.”
“That’s what I’m not getting,” I say as we climb the stairs. “If he’s got nothing to do with ICD, and if he was from this alternate, then how the hell did he know to be at the motel?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” says Graves, stopping before a door. There are remnants of police tape stuck to the frame, but it looks like it was ripped away ages ago.
Graves tries the door, but it’s locked. He takes out a small leather purse from his jacket and extracts two thin pieces of metal that he proceeds to insert into the lock. Five seconds later and we’re inside.
“Shocking security,” he says as he studies the cramped entrance hall. “Imagine a poor, defenseless woman living here, prey to the whims of the psychos who roam the streets.”
“Defenseless women?” I say. “This is LA, Graves. The women here are tougher than me.”
“That doesn’t take much,” mutters Graves as he moves into the lounge.
It’s pointless, though. The place has already been cleaned out. There are empty spaces on the walls where paintings have been removed, a few computer cables lying around on the dark brown carpet.
“Looks like nobody’s home,” I say.
“That’s a very annoying habit, you know,” snaps Graves. “Stating the obvious in a manner you think is amusing. You’re not funny. Or clever.”
He disappears through a door into the bedroom. I give him the silent finger and check the door to my right. It’s the bathroom. I use my foot to open the door all the way, peering hesitantly inside.
No old-man monkey waiting for me this time. I check the medicine cabinet. No prescription drugs with helpful names and addresses. Just old, disposable razor blades and expensive moisturizing cream.
I open up the cream and sniff. Then put some on my finger and rub it into my face. Traveling between alternate realities really dries you out.
I head to the kitchen, pulling open cupboards in the hope of finding something helpful. Just a couple of chipped cups. No handy scribbled note stuck to the fridge with a forwarding address. No postcard from a close friend or work partner, handily chatting about why they were at the motel.
Some people are no help at all.
I head back into the lounge, and something catches my eye. A tiny blinking light by the front door. I stroll over to see what it is, crouching down and peering at the little contraption.
It’s an infrared beam set up across the doorway.
Which means it would trigger when the door opens.
“Son of a—”
That’s as far as I get. I see a flash of movement from the hallway outside the apartment. Then a blinding, nausea-inducing flash of pain.
Then a nice, pleasing darkness.
I wake up to the sound of arguing. Goddamn it, but I’m going to need to see a neurologist once this is over. I must have some kind of brain injury by now.
“I don’t care if your father is a pastor, institutional religion is the cause of more wars and deaths than anything else in human history.”
Graves’s voice. I blink in confusion.
“No. You can’t generalize like that,” says another voice, a man’s. “If religion was applied like it was meant to, then we’d all live in peace.”
“Exactly. But there’s just the little problem of humankind, isn’t there? You all tend to get in the way of the spreading of the good vibes.”
Are we in a bar? The last time I heard religion being argued about like that was in a bar. As I recall it ended up in a fight with bottles being applied at speed to peoples’ heads.
“No religion. No politics,” I mutter.
The talking stops. I lift my head and woozily look around, studying my surroundings.
It’s not a bar—it’s some kind of dreary room. And Graves and myself are tied to old wooden chairs. I shake my head and focus. It looks like a private investigator’s office from the seventies. Three old desks, dirty windows, and a metal fan that creaks and whines as it turns slowly, wafting the tepid air around the room. Two of the desks have ancient comp
uters on them, tiny CRT monitors and keyboards that are so old they’ve gone that horrible bone-yellow color.
The other desk has a typewriter on it. There’s a young girl seated behind the typewriter, and she’s halfheartedly hitting a key over and over, a bored look on her face. She’s in a stylish suit, her purple-and-blue hair pulled back in a severe ponytail.
Clack, clack.
Behind the other desks sit two very . . . beige-looking men. That’s the only way I can describe them. They almost fade into the furniture they’re so nondescript. One looks to be in his thirties, the other in his fifties, and both look as if they’ve stepped out of a 1950s clothes catalog. Old-fashioned brown suits and Brylcreemed hair set in the exact same side parting.
“Hey!” I shout. “I know you! You’re the people who have been spying on me!”
“Don’t be absurd, Harry. You’re not important enough to spy on.”
“No, he’s right,” says the woman. “We’ve been watching him since the motel.”
“Thank Christ for that,” I say, relieved. “I thought I was going mad.”
“Someone talk to me,” says Graves. “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”
To be fair, the two dudes look like they have no idea either. They look out of their depth, their eyes wide and staring. I instinctively turn to the girl.
“Who are you?” I ask.
She sighs. “Agent Anderson.” She points at the younger of the men. “That’s Agent Winston, and the other one is Agent Smith.”
“Thank you,” I say. “You’ve succeeded in explaining absolutely nothing at all. Are you feds?”
“No,” says Anderson distastefully. “We’re . . .” She hesitates, and a look of embarrassment crosses her face.
Winston straightens up proudly. “We are agents of the Society for the Prevention of the Takeover of the Old and Unseen. Or PTOU for short.”
“P-too-ee?” I say, sounding out the letters. It sounds like I’m spitting.
Anderson sighs. “Yeah. Not our choice, believe me. I’ve petitioned to have it changed, but oh, no—” she uses her fingers to air quote, “—tradition.”
“Who do you report to?” demands Graves.
“The Miskatonic University,” says Smith. “In Arkham.”
“‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die,’” says Winston.
“‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die,’” repeats Smith.
Both look to Anderson.
“I’m not saying it,” she says.
“Come on, Agent,” begs Winston. “It’s our pledge of office. You have to repeat it if one of us say it. It’s in the rule book.”
“Shove your rule book. I’m not saying it. It’s stupid.”
“Agent Anderson,” says Smith severely. “You must repeat the pledge. Otherwise I will be forced to report you.”
“Go ahead. No one knows this little club still exists.”
Smith splutters in outrage. “How dare you! Of course they do. We are all that stands between humanity and the depredations of the Old Ones. We are the last line of defense against an alien race trillions of years old.”
“The three of us?” says Anderson. “We don’t even have Internet in here. Not even dial-up. When was the last time you were contacted by the head office?”
“Well . . .”
“When?”
“Just the other—”
“When?”
“1986.”
A silence descends.
“Right,” says Anderson. “It’s been great and all that. But I think I have to draw the line at kidnapping weird old guys.”
“Hey!” I say. “I’m not old.”
She looks at me with pity. “What are you? Forty?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“I rest my case.”
She grabs her phone and brandishes it in the air. “We can’t even get a signal in here! Lost tribes in the Amazon can get a signal, but us? Oh, no! Not us.”
“I’m confused,” says Graves. “Miskatonic University is from the Lovecraft stories. It was never real.”
“It’s real,” snaps Smith.
“Yeah,” says Winston. “Our remit is to battle and defend humankind from the eldritch horrors of the Absolute Elsewhere. We are the last line of defense, protecting the world from being devoured by ancient, unknowable gods from beyond the stars.”
I look around the tiny office. “And you do all that from here?”
“Look,” says Graves. “If this is true, if you’re not just sad mental cases with a Lovecraft fetish, then we’re on the same side! We’re trying to stop Nyarlathotep from releasing Cthulhu from his prison in R’lyeh.”
Smith pales. “What do you mean, releasing?”
“Did I stutter? Nyarlathotep wants to release Cthulhu. Wants to let it take over the multiverse or something.”
“He wants to release Cthulhu?”
“Jesus! I just said that.”
“But . . . to do that he’d have to wake Cthulhu up, wouldn’t he?”
“I’d imagine so,” says Graves. “That’s how it usually works.”
“No,” says Smith. “No, no, no. That can’t happen. You hear me? It can’t!”
“All right. Keep your hair on. Just let us go and we’ll stop them.”
“Relax,” says Anderson. “If he doesn’t have the star-mover or Cthulhu’s consciousness then we’re fine.”
“The what?” asks Graves.
“It is what Nyarlathotep was after. When the Elder Gods imprisoned Cthulhu, they took away his consciousness so he would stay sleeping forever. They put it into a jewel and threw it randomly into the multiverse.”
“The Jewel of Ini-taya,” I say. “That’s why I had that . . . episode when I touched it. I was actually connecting with Cthulhu.”
“You’ve seen it?” demands Smith.
“Seen it, stole it, had Nyarlathotep take it from us.”
“And . . . the star-mover?”
“What’s that?” asks Graves.
“It looks like a spear,” says Anderson.
“It is not a spear,” snaps Smith. “The Elder Gods locked Cthulhu away in his prison hundreds of millions of years ago. The lore says that, ‘That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth.’”
“Which cannot happen,” adds Winston. “Obvs.”
Graves points at Winston. “Did you just say obvs? Because if you did I swear to God I will strike you down where you stand!”
“The star-mover was created to . . . artificially induce this process of the stars coming right. Like a combination lock. The spear advances the starscape until the correct sequence is arrived at and it opens Cthulhu’s prison.”
“Which cannot happen,” says Smith. “Seriously, I cannot stress this enough. We are on the cusp of an instant genocidal extinction here.”
Graves clears his throat. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling us something?”
The three agents exchange uneasy looks.
“I demand you tell us what is happening,” shouts Graves. “Now!”
Smith sighs. “What do you know of the Old Ones?” he asks. “And the Elder Gods?”
“What everyone knows. The Elder Gods created the Old Ones, but imprisoned them when they got a bit too . . . bitey. The Old Ones are locked away in the Dreamlands—also known as the Absolute Elsewhere—but their minions are always trying to free them.”
“That’s . . . not quite everything. You see, our society was founded in 1899 by someone from your organization. Elizabeth McLeod.”
“Elizabeth McLeod?” Graves frowns. “I know that name. You’re mistaken. She was a traitor. She was hunted down and executed for changing sides.”
“That’s the story the ICD put out,” says Smith. “The reality was different. Elizabeth discovered somet
hing she shouldn’t have and was hunted down because of this knowledge. By her own people.”
“Sounds familiar,” I say, glancing at Graves.
“And just what is it she was supposed to have discovered?” asks Graves.
“Not just her. She had a partner. Her husband. A man called Howard Harrison.”
Graves waves his hand negligently in the air. “Yes, yes. I know the story. Very tragic. He was forced to hunt down the woman he loved because she betrayed humankind.”
“No,” says Smith. “If anything, it was the other way around. It was Elizabeth who first discovered the secret. She shared it with her husband, and he fled here, to this very world, to attempt to gain favor with the Old Ones.”
“How? How would he gain favor?”
“He created a device that could open up a gate to the Dreamlands. That would take him into R’lyeh itself. It was the first step in the plan to free Cthulhu.”
“That’s impossible,” says Graves. “It can’t be done.”
“Who says?” asks Smith.
“Well . . . everyone.”
“Everyone with a vested interest in keeping the truth hidden,” says Smith. “Harrison partnered up with Nyarlathotep, and they did indeed create a machine that would open up a doorway.”
“Then his wife found out,” says Winston eagerly. “She came here to stop him. He had already gathered a number of followers and coconspirators, you see. Nyarlathotep was instructed through his dreams to aid Harrison. Of course, by this time, Harrison was an empty shell. He was totally under the control of the Old Ones. They have a way of getting inside your mind, you see. Once you open the door to them even a tiny bit, they shove it open and take over.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Elizabeth brought her own followers, and they fought against this cult. She was the one who ended her husband’s life, saving the entire multiverse from destruction. Nyarlathotep fled, but ever since then he has never stopped searching for a way to unleash his god. For the past century he has sought out the spear and the jewel . . . to finish what he and Harrison started.”
“Elizabeth founded our organization,” says Anderson. “To prevent that from happening. She stayed here and joined Miskatonic University. Since then our society has been keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. See, the truth that Elizabeth discovered, the truth that she shared with her husband, that . . . ultimately drove him insane, is something that can never be known. . . . A secret your organization is willing to kill for.”