Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20

by Tanzer, Molly

  “They seek to stop us from reaching the place of ritual,” Dubnotal said, adjusting his turban. “That is astonishingly bad form, I must say.”

  “Can’t count on the rival firm to play fair, I’ve found,” Ravenwood said. He was squeezed tight between Dubnotal and Silence. “Can we outrun them?”

  “I’d wager we’ve outrun worse,” St. Cyprian said. The Crossley followed the serpentine length of the Thames. “But that won’t matter unless someone tells me where we’re going.”

  “It is a house that is not a house,” Dual said, pressed tight against the passenger door, his hands against Gallowglass’ shoulder.

  “Very helpful, this chap,” Gallowglass said.

  Something scraped against the back fender, and the car momentarily fishtailed. Warren shouted in fear as he clung to the door, and St. Cyprian fought with the wheel. Things followed them, moving between the blinks of their eyes, ragged hungry shapes that resembled leaves caught in an updraft.

  “Left, go left,” Dual yelled.

  St. Cyprian turned left. Something was yanking on the roof, tearing at it like an enraged simian. Gallowglass drew her pistol and leaned over the seat, twisting and firing upwards even as the back of her head connected with Ravenwood’s lap. The American mystic made a strangled sound. “Sorry,” Gallowglass said, popping open the Webley and ejecting the spent brass.

  The roof ripped away a moment later and cartwheeled down the street as if caught in a strong wind. A smell like a wolf-den in summer washed over the Crossley’s passengers. Silence, Ravenwood and Sar Dubnotal all shouted at once, Latin, Naacal and Etruscan syllables tripping over one another and tangling together in a concerto of occult significance. There was a snap, as of leathery wings and the car trembled as if a great weight had suddenly left it.

  “Right, Mr. St. Cyprian!” Dual said, flinging out a hand. St. Cyprian fought the wheel, trying to follow the astrologer’s shouted directions. They took a narrow by-street and the brick walls to either side gave twin groans as sudden canyons were carved across their heights, showering the Crossley with bits of brick and dust.

  “They’re still on us,” Warren said, hunched on the running board.

  “We’re close,” Dual said.

  “So are they,” Warren snapped. Bricks thumped into the Crossley’s hood and cracked the windshield. The hood buckled, causing the front tires to squeal. The windshield burst, spattering St. Cyprian with glass. Something invisible, but strong, burst through and what felt like a hairy, scaly talon fastened about his throat, shoving him back into his seat.

  “Grab the wheel!” St. Cyprian gurgled as he fumbled in his coat, his vision going black at the edges. The Crossley slewed as both Warren and Dual grabbed for the wheel. Gallowglass sat up, her Webley snarling at the windshield. Whatever had St. Cyprian gave a thunderous swine-grunt and a smell like spoilt eggs and milk washed over the car’s passengers. St. Cyprian’s fingers found a glass vial, one of several, in his pockets and he pulled it free and shattered it against whatever inhuman limb held his throat. Immediately a foul-smelling smoke boiled forth, choking him even as the pressure on his neck released and his attacker retreated with a thin scream; whatever it was rolled off of the hood, leaving only a large indentation in the metal to mark its passing.

  “Oil of hyssop,” St. Cyprian rasped, rubbing his throat. “Handy as engraver’s acid, in a pinch.” He grabbed the wheel, and Dual motioned sharply.

  “There! The emanations are centered…there!” the astrologer said. St. Cyprian turned the wheel and the Crossley bumped and skidded up onto the pavement as it turned down into a narrow, one-way mews. The cul-de-sac was quiet and only a single street-light burned, casting striations of weak light across the shadowy street. No lights glowed in any window and as the seven climbed out of the battered and sagging Crossley, a hush settled over the cul-de-sac. Even the omnipresent seething a humming of London-by-night was dulled here, as if the rest of the city were on another world. Strange shapes seemed to writhe through the darkness across the rooftops like prowling cats, blotting out the stars from moment to moment.

  The house itself was a dull thing, square and damp with the rain that had caressed the borough earlier in the day. The door was open.

  “We are expected,” Sar Dubnotal said, checking his cuff links. He looked up at the rooftops and sniffed. The half-visible shapes that lurked above seemed to be unable-or unwilling-to descend into the mews, for which St. Cyprian felt a sharp relief.

  Ravenwood paused, two fingers on the Crossley’s hood. “He’s alone,” he said, head cocked.

  “His kind is always alone,” Silence said, stepping towards the door but St. Cyprian got there first and Webley in hand, stepped in front of the older man.

  “I say, fools before fellows, what?” St. Cyprian said, peering through the doorway.

  He stepped inside, flanked by Gallowglass. The foyer was quiet, and the carpets were oddly damp, as if the door had been left open all day and the rain had blown in, saturating the floor. There was a wet chill sliding off of the unpleasantly brown wallpaper and St. Cyprian didn’t think that the chill was due to the weather. There was also a noisome odor on the air, a thick stench that seemed to drape across the inner doorway like spider-webs. Behind him, Sar Dubnotal raised a hand and murmured softly. A soft, warm glow spread outwards from his fingers, enveloping them all and pressing back the gloom of the house, though not the smell.

  “The air stinks of aetheric disturbance,” Dual murmured.

  “By their smell can men know them near,” Warren said, his odd eyes glittering.

  “This house is obviously the locus bellum,” Sar Dubnotal said, glancing at Silence. The latter held up a hand and hissed, gesturing with his other hand towards the floor. In the wet carpet, a foot-print had appeared. It was small, almost like a child’s print. It squished softly, though there was no sign of what had made the print. Another appeared ahead of it, as if the unseen child was fleeing from them at speed.

  “At least we won’t have to search the house,” Ravenwood said grimly. “He’s waiting for us.”

  “Who’s he?” St. Cyprian said as they followed the foot-prints. “You fellows seemed to know who it is who is behind this.”

  “If it’s who we suspect, he’s had many names, down the long red path of history,” Silence said softly. “Melmoth is the one he has used the most. I first encountered him on the Continent, in the ruins of a Heaven-crippled monastery where he tried to claim the life and soul of an innocent man.”

  “I met him in New York, a few years ago. He was working with a bad bit of business named Thorne and they nearly had Thunstone and me on the ropes,” Ravenwood said, dabbing at the sheen of sweat gathering on his face. Despite the chill, they were all sweating. The smell had become riper the deeper they moved into the house, almost like some miasma of tropical rot.

  “Melmoth…Melmoth,” St. Cyprian murmured. He’d heard that name before, back when Carnacki had still been running the show, in connection to the Cleopatra’s Needle Affair. ‘Melmoth of abominable memory’ was how Carnacki had referred to him. Carnacki and the Great Detective had only just managed to avert whatever catastrophe Melmoth had been set to unleash. He wondered whether it had been a similar situation to the one he and Gallowglass now found themselves in. Was Melmoth a cosmic gamesman, gambling with the stuff of reality over and over again?

  Before he could ask one of the others, Sar Dubnotal’s light suddenly went out. The mystic cursed as if the sudden snuffing of his witch-light had pained him and the cold rushed in all at once, cloying and harsh. St. Cyprian sucked in a freezing breath and winced as his lungs burned with cold. In the darkness, things seemed to move and press close to them, and a force suddenly beat down on them.

  St. Cyprian had matched wills with other occultists, sorcerers and worse things, but what he felt then was far stronger than any of those. It was raw and wild and hateful, and animalistic in the intensity of that hate.

  “Malignancy-human malignan
cy-like a fine wine, grows ever more potent as it ages, I find,” a voice said, out of the darkness. “The last true owner of this house left quite an impression here, I’m given to understand. A bit of himself trapped behind the walls and under the floorboards. A vicious brain for a vicious house, though I’ve cowed the feral soul-stuff for the nonce.”

  “Reveal yourself!” Sar Dubnotal thundered.

  “If you insist…Good evening, my fine merry crew, gentles all, welcome to the spoke of the world. Well, for this night, at least.” The voice was as cold as the waves that rolled across the Channel, and for all its mildness there was an undercurrent of savage hatred to it. A Crookes tube sparked and hummed to life, held in one gloved hand. It was raised up, bathing the room in waves of sharp, harsh light, revealing strange serpentine chalk marks on the walls and floor and, impossibly, on the ceiling as well. A pocket watch was extracted from an archaic waistcoat and flipped open. “And on time, despite alarums and excretions of the outer membrane,” the man mused. He sighed. “Such is my lot.” Dark eyes flickered up, meeting theirs. “Melmoth, Sebastian Melmoth, late of Albion and the Court of Gloriana, returned now to put shoulder to the wheel and set the Heavens turning.” White teeth flashed within a carefully clipped black beard. “My, my, such a crew it is too. Worthies all, or I’m a merry ass. Why, there’s old Master Silence, stiff and disapproving and lost to aetheric humors, and there’s the mock-Moor, Sar Dubnotal and his bully-rook cross-biter, Semi Dual. Ah, there’s the cony-catch dummerer Ravenwood, with his heathen familiar whispering in his ear, and behind him, oh yes, I see you, Harley, caitiff and catamite and cur. Don’t flash your alley-cat’s eyes at me sir, I’ve strangled my fair share of pusses. And two new faces…” Melmoth’s eyes narrowed. “Is that the tang of alchemy I smell, of the modern sciences and that old hen, Dee? Where’s Carnacki then? Where did that fine Jack Tar get to?”

  “Dead,” St. Cyprian said hoarsely, “at Ypres.” For a moment, as he said it, the house seemed to sigh and St. Cyprian could smell the mud and the blood again, and hear the whistle of German shells. Something slobbered in the darkness beyond the shell of light cast by the Crookes tube.

  “Oh,” Melmoth said, and his dark eyes flickered. He frowned. “Then you’d be the Roi Occulum now then, eh, the high cony in the garden? And this cranmoisie doxy is yours, I assume?” He gestured with the Crookes tube towards Gallowglass, whose lips skinned back from her teeth in a quiet snarl. “Well then, who’s the courtesy-man here, then?”

  St. Cyprian waited for one of the others to speak, but none of them did. He didn’t know whether they were cowed by Melmoth or whether there was simply some tradition he was unaware of, but nonetheless, he cleared his throat. “I suppose it falls to me then, as Royal Occultist.”

  Melmoth nodded briskly. “As it happens, yes,” he said, his antique drawl replaced by clipped school-boy precision. “That’s the way this goes, generally.”

  “First one to speak gets the purple,” Warren said, frowning at Melmoth. “And since you’ve got the divine mandate, it’s yours by rank.”

  “Ah,” St. Cyprian said. His mouth was suddenly as dry as the Sahara. “What’s mine, out of curiosity?”

  “Starting post, old salt,” Silence said, putting a hand on St. Cyprian’s shoulder. The older man looked past him at Melmoth. “You are the only one come to act as Opener of the Way?”

  Melmoth shrugged. “I’ve never been much for fraternity.” He smiled. “As the world ages, she gets set in her ways and there’re fewer and fewer of us who look forward to new ways of shouting, killing and reveling, more’s the pity. More of you lot every year, though, acid-stained alchemists, looking to box and catalogue and categorize the wild dark.”

  “Same old Sebastian, same old song,” Warren said.

  “It’s a good song,” Melmoth said, setting down the Crookes tube. “It’s the oldest song and the best song and this is the annual performance. That’s why we’re here, after all. The stars are right, the beasts are at the gates and the birds fall quiet.”

  “That didn’t stop you from trying to kill us before the contest had begun,” Sar Dubnotal rumbled disapprovingly.

  “What of it, mock-moor? It’s not like there’s a judges’ committee to complain to,” Melmoth said, gesturing irritably. He straightened the hang of his coat and said, formally, “I am come to Open the Way and Set Wide the Threshold and Invite in That Which is Out. Who here comes to prevent me?”

  “That’s your cue,” Ravenwood said. St. Cyprian looked at him, and then at Melmoth, who was waiting patiently. St. Cyprian dropped his pistol into his pocket and stepped forward. He’d seen enough rituals before, both benign and otherwise, to recognize the particulars, though he still barely understood this one. What was he being asked to do?

  St. Cyprian said, “I come to prevent you.” Then, on instinct, he added, “The Way will remain closed, the Threshold shut and the Invitation undelivered.”

  Melmoth smiled thinly. “A fine bit of ad-libbing there,” he murmured.

  “Better than mine,” Ravenwood said.

  “A tense silence would have been better than yours,” Warren said. He fell silent at a gesture from Silence.

  “The weight of night-black worlds press close upon us, and the impressions of a savage cosmos seek to imprint themselves on our placid globe. Stand firm and hold fast,” he said, and for a moment he was the John Silence of old, a man of quiet dignity and mighty power.

  The moment was punctured by the sudden, swift rap of knuckles on wood, heavy knuckles on unseen wood, pounding hard and requesting entrance to the house and to the world. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” Melmoth said, his arms spread wide. Another knock, more thunderous than the first, followed a moment later. The house gave a groan and St. Cyprian felt as if the blows were coming from below as well as outside.

  “What do I do?” he hissed, at a loss. Silence’s hand was still on his shoulder.

  “Deny it entrance. Take his hand from the door,” he said.

  “How do I do that?” St. Cyprian said, glancing back at the older man.

  “It is different each time, for each of us,” Sar Dubnotal said. His eyes narrowed as he looked around. “They are coming, my friends, seeking to scuttle through the cracks. Ready yourselves!”

  Melmoth lunged, gloved fingers spread like the talons of a hunting hawk. Silence fell back as Melmoth jerked St. Cyprian forward with one impossibly long arm. “How do you deny me? You don’t, boy,” Melmoth said, snapping too-long teeth. “Jack Tar gave me a better fight, with his vials and formulas and Edisonade trickery. If this is what the Empire has come to, they’ll thank me for seating something flabby and squamous on the throne.”

  His fingers were like iron hooks digging into St. Cyprian’s skull and jaw and scalp and thin trickles of blood slid free of the abused flesh. “Come, we’ll dance a gentleman’s gavotte as the sky rips wide and the Outer Gulfs spill their burdens into this pale world, hey?” Melmoth hissed, pulling him close. Out of the corner of his eye, St. Cyprian saw shapes climb through the shadowed corners of the room, issuing from the angles like dough squeezed through a tube. Dust motes shifted like curtains in the light as shapes pressed against them from outside. He saw Gallowglass raise her pistol towards Melmoth, but Ravenwood stopped her, gesturing to something St. Cyprian couldn’t see.

  Sounds seemed to reverberate through Melmoth’s fingers, dull hums like wasp-wings vibrating slowly in a hollow can. St. Cyprian fumbled for his Webley; Silence had said it would do no good, but it was the only thing-

  He jerked the trigger, not even bothering to remove it from his pocket. The Webley yapped and Melmoth shook and his grip slackened. He staggered back and St. Cyprian fired again and again until the cylinder spun empty. Melmoth jittered and spun, but did not fall. He swayed on his feet and then his head swung up and his dark eyes were wide as he grinned through the bloody froth on his lips. “That’s the way!” he yowled.

  Around St. Cyprian, the others were speaki
ng or shouting, sending words into the cold dark that seemed to press against the sputtering Crookes tube. Mammoth shapes, formless and vast, crouched over them, backs pressed tight to the walls and the ceiling. He heard wood cracking and the floorboards beneath his feet sagged and buckled. Things grabbed at his ankles. He saw a strange light around Ravenwood and an elderly Asian face superimpose itself wraith-like over the young American’s, and he shouted in two voices. Gallowglass was firing her Webley and Dual was beside her, his fingers writhing into the Sixty-Seven Gestures of the Primal Hloo Ritual. Warren was spitting incantations like a machine gun, his voice going hoarse as the alien syllables slid greasily from his lips. He stood back-to-back with Dubnotal as the bigger man, swept his hands out in the sign of the Rosy Cross. And finally, Silence, a nimbus of calm around him as he stood, head bowed, hands clasped, shadowy talons scraping and shattering to wisps of nothing as the predatory entities lunged for him and were turned aside.

  Everything was moving in slow motion. The fierce shapes which lunged from corners and angles had all the substance of shadows on a screen, and the movements of his companions had the semblance of ritual. All sound faded and the walls of the house rose and spread suddenly like the sloping curves of some ancient Roman arena. His third eye sprang open as if pulled wide by hooks and suddenly there was an ochre sky beyond the gaping roof and strange, molten stars and the impressions of titan faces, perhaps belonging to gods, though whether elder or outer he could not say, loomed, alien and impersonal, looking down at the performance occurring within the squalid little house in the cul-de-sac. He saw the cringing fire-fly light of the brain in the house, a crouching goblin of malignant thought that was terrified by the battle taking place in what it had once considered its inviolate territory, and the will-o-wisp lights of the abominations which scurried towards the thinning veils, drawn by the scent of the world and all its minds.