The Lovecraft Squad

by John Llewellyn Probert

  Looking around him, Chambers could see that the door was just a single tile in the floor of what had to be the Circle of Treachery. It was only when he got to his feet that he realized the floor was not endless. In fact, there were very well defined boundaries on all four sides, boundaries fashioned from the same scratched wood as the floor. The room was poorly lit, and Chambers got a sense of weariness from this huge chamber, paneled in ancient oak and tired of absorbing the pitiful cries of those who had been condemned within its walls; sentenced to ensure they would never again commit the sordid atrocities for which they were being punished.

  Because Chambers, Karen, and Dr. Cruttenden appeared to be standing in the center of an enormous and ancient courtroom.

  To their left, in a crumbling jury box, sat twelve blackened and mummified corpses, lifeless now but no doubt once a verdict was required they would become charged with chattering life. In front of them sat a wizened stenographer, curly black hair framing a face that was little more than a skull over which parchment-like skin had been stretched. A few teeth still remained in the sockets of the grinning jaw, and the thing clicked them together with obvious glee at the arrival of the new defendants. The stenographer’s bony fingertips were welded to the keys of the machine in front of it. As if to emphasize the permanence of the stenographer’s position, heavy, ribbed wires from either side of the stenotype’s casing extended to the creature’s skull, where they appeared to be fused to the bone. Every time it turned its neck, the mechanism creaked with the sound of something that had lasted for centuries without lubrication.

  The stenographer, however, was nowhere near as terrifying as the judge.

  The immense and ancient creature that presided over this courtroom of the damned had sat in its sagging leather chair for so long it had become one with it, its cynical, world-weary flesh presumably having fused with the dead animal skin with which it had remained in contact for so long. Its heavy, scarlet robes were faded and worn with use, and the head that emerged from the fraying neckpiece was so large, and the eyes so small, that for a moment Chambers was unsure if it actually possessed any at all. The mouth, on the other hand, was so wide that when the blackened lips parted a set of uneven peg-like teeth were revealed, each as rotten and riddled with infection as its neighbor. Huge, fleshy jowls the color of beetroot hung from the tiny eye sockets, and ears the color of old newspaper bracketed a monstrous skull crowned with wisps of black, greasy hair among which crawled beetles and other invertebrates.

  The judge spoke with a voice that sounded like a worn-out foghorn on a windy night. “The condemned shall step forward.”

  The condemned bloody well isn’t going to, Chambers thought, knowing full well to whom the judge was referring. However, it soon became apparent that he didn’t have a choice, as he felt his legs move of their own accord, and his feet each take one involuntary step toward the bench. He was unable to resist, and unable to move either. He couldn’t even turn his neck, but he was sure he could sense Karen to his left and Dr. Cruttenden behind him.

  “How do you plead?”

  It was unlikely to make any difference what he said, and so Chambers opened his mouth with the intention of launching into a vitriolic rant. To his surprise, all that emerged from his lips were two words.

  “Not guilty.”

  “And you?” The judge-thing was looking at Karen now. She seemed to be experiencing the same paralysis, if the croaking words that emerged from her dry-sounding throat were anything to go by.

  “Not . . . guilty.”

  The stenographer clicked its teeth as if in acknowledgement of their pleas and began to type.

  “And you?”

  The judge was looking over their heads now, presumably asking for Dr. Cruttenden’s plea. Chambers expected similar forced words from the woman behind him, and so he was surprised when a voice quite unlike her own gave its reply.

  “Guilty.”

  Chambers watched, helpless and rooted to the spot, as Dr. Cruttenden brushed his right shoulder as she walked around to face them. What was happening here?

  “But you two should have realized that by now. At least, I should hope you would have, otherwise I’ve seriously underestimated you.”

  Underestimated us? Chambers wanted to say it, but couldn’t get the words out.

  “These are the ones?” Spittle sprayed from the judge’s lips and landed perilously close to them.

  Dr. Cruttenden nodded. “They are.”

  “And you intend to take them below?”

  Another nod. “I do.”

  The judge-thing raised its right arm, allowing Chambers to see that it ended not in pudgy, rotting fingers, but an iron gavel. When it hit the sounding block, the resonance of the deep booming sound produced was deafening.

  “I therefore proclaim that you be taken from this place to another place, where you will face the Sea of Darkness, and all therein that may be explored.”

  There was a rumble from beneath their feet. As suddenly as it had arrived, the paralysis lifted and they were free to move. But there was nowhere to go.

  Chambers rubbed his throat and looked at the lecturer. “What on earth are you talking about, Dr. Cruttenden? You’re with us. You always have been.”

  The old woman shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice normal once more. “I’m afraid I haven’t. I was offered a glimpse of the ultimate, and at my age you just can’t say no to such an opportunity.”

  Karen was shaking her head. “It must be something in this circle possessing her,” she hissed to Chambers.

  “That’s closer to the truth.” Dr. Cruttenden’s voice had resumed its unnatural, over-confident tone. “But the process has been going on for far longer than you realize, and I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.”

  “I still can’t believe it.” Karen had tears in her eyes. “You’ve been so nice, so helpful.”

  “Of course I have,” came the reply. “I dared not give you any reason to suspect me, and I had to get you here safely, didn’t I? Otherwise the entire exercise would have been pointless.”

  Silence descended on the courtroom. Eventually Chambers pointed at the woman whom he had thought was their colleague.

  “What about her?” he asked the judge. “You haven’t sentenced her.”

  The chortling that came from deep within the judge-thing’s flaccid throat was reminiscent of an especially self-satisfied and very ancient toad. “Oh I have,” the thing said. “Many, many times, and many years ago.”

  “And now you’re coming with me.” Dr. Cruttenden’s normal voice had returned once more, and she seemed more like her old self again. But something of the person who had given the plea still remained in the eyes, which were like ice, and the posture, which was far more confident now, like someone who knows they have won the prize even though the result has yet to be announced.

  “But . . . you said you were guilty.” Karen was getting used to being able to speak again. “Don’t you have to stay here?”

  Dr. Cruttenden looked around her, and then smiled in a way that wasn’t like the woman they knew at all. “I have stayed here, my dear. Here, and every other circle we’ve visited on our little trip. I just thought it would be most appropriate for you to find out here. Besides, I could hardly lie considering where we are, could I?”

  “The Circle of Treachery.” The rumbling was getting louder now, and the room was beginning to shake. Chambers was having trouble keeping steady. “But you still haven’t told us why.”

  “And I’m not going to,” came the reply as cracks began to appear in the wooden walls of the chamber. “Not just yet. However, I do think it’s time I cast off this rather uncomfortable appearance.”

  With that, the woman before them began to change. The transformation was at once fluid and yet jarring, sinuous and yet utterly awkward. Both flesh and clothing metamorphosed simultaneously as the figure both Chambers and Karen had thought they knew so well increased in height. Chambers was beginning to feel dizzy
watching it, and closed his eyes to combat the nausea.

  By the time he opened them again, someone new was standing before them, someone entirely different. A robust-looking man, whose silver-gray hair and lived-in face suggested him to be in his early sixties. The faded period costume he wore indicated either fancy dress or that he had been plucked from the eighteenth century.

  “Thomas Moreby,” he said, with an unpleasant grin and a small bow. His voice sounded strong, and yet the way he spoke suggested the world-weary experience of centuries. “I would add at ‘your service,’ but that is not the case. Not the case at all.”

  Chambers found himself lost for words. Karen, also speechless, was blinking away her disbelief as the figure before them spoke again.

  “Time for us all to be going, I think.”

  The stenographer was still typing as dust began to rain down from the ceiling. The jury, motionless until now, was finally starting to rouse. Clad in tattered rags, parts of their faces crumbling to reveal bare bone beneath as they struggled to stand, the twelve members of the jury began to make their tottering way toward the center of the courtroom, where a black circle had appeared and was now expanding as the chamber around them began to fall. It was ten feet across by the time the first of the treachery undead reached it and began to descend by means of the spiral staircase that had appeared within its depths.

  “After you,” said Thomas Moreby.

  “I’m guessing it’s not the way out.” Chambers knew they had no choice—it was take that exit, or be crushed and end up staying in the Circle of Treachery forever.

  “It is most certainly the way out for me,” came the sardonic reply. “And possibly for you, too, although probably not in the way that you might imagine.” A chunk of masonry fell from somewhere high above and scoured the floor. “Come along,” he continued jovially, “time for all good boys and girls to do as they are told.”

  “Where are we going?” Karen said, as she dodged a crack that had appeared in the floor while she looked out for more falling masonry.

  “Did you not hear the judge?” They looked at the bench, but the creature that had been presiding over them had vanished. “We are descending to the final level, the very bottom of this magnificent construct that has been fashioned over the centuries by theory, and belief, and devotion. The very Pit of Hell itself, if you like.”

  Moreby gestured toward the staircase. The very last of the undead were now making their way down. “Now it is your turn,” he said pleasantly. “And please do not worry, I shall be right behind you, as I have been all the way. And you will have all your answers once we are there—all the answers you could ever wish for, and much more besides. Come. It is time for you to face the Sea of Darkness.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  THERE WAS A BREEZE blowing.

  It brought nothing pleasant with it, however. No sense of refreshment, no cleansing of the senses. No, the fetid air that plucked at clothes and wormed its way through hair carried only the scent of death and decay; a grim, musty odor that dried the back of the throat and clogged the nostrils with gray dust. So thick was it that Chambers found himself repeatedly coughing to try and clear his throat.

  The dusty plain on which the three of them were standing undulated gently, like the sand dunes of a desert, or the lifeless landscape of a barren planet too far from a star for it to receive sufficient sunshine, but not so distant that it was forced to exist in complete darkness. Like the land and the wind, the light, too, seemed to be constantly at the point of death. The sky was bruised with a kind of lifeless maroon hue that appeared to be aching inexorably for darkness, but which had been forced to continue existing as perpetual dusk.

  Above the far distant horizon, where purple twilight met lifeless land, something blurred and obscured by the dust seemed to be hanging in the air, Lord of all it surveyed. Chambers tried not to look, but he couldn’t help himself.

  It had been difficult to see how many stone steps had led down away from the courtroom and, as they had descended, so they had been enveloped with a soft blackness, their feet guided from step to step by forces beyond their volunteering. Karen had gone first, followed by Chambers, with Moreby close behind.

  As soon as they had entered the Sea of Darkness, the steps had vanished. Chambers was still looking around him, wondering where they had gone, when Karen asked, “What have you done to Dr. Cruttenden?”

  Moreby gave her a vulpine grin, but said nothing.

  “Well?”

  It was a while before he answered her, and when he did his voice was almost charming.

  “That all depends, my dear.”

  “Depends?” Karen was looking around her now as well. “Depends on what?”

  “On whether you truly believe Dr. Cruttenden ever existed. Or any of them, for that matter.”

  “Any of whom?”

  Moreby pretended to look shocked. “Why, the colleagues with whom you entered All Hallows Church, of course, Miss Shepworth. That motley collection of experts, ne’er-do-wells, and dabblers put together by your charming self and your less-than-charming gazette for the purpose of investigating the strange occurrences within the building in question.”

  Karen opened her mouth.

  “Before you utter anything else,” he held up his palm, “please do not for one moment consider that you, yourself, are actually the reason why you are here. Your coming to this place—and yours, too, Professor Chambers—has been long in the planning, and it would be unfair of me to allow you to apportion any of the blame to either of yourselves for what is about to happen.”

  Chambers narrowed his eyes. “And what is about to happen, Mr. Moreby? And who, in actual fact, are you?”

  The figure took a step back, and spread his arms wide. “You do not recognize me then? After all your research? All your reading up about All Hallows and the events that took place upon that site before the building was but a few scratches of charcoal from the fevered imagination of a beleaguered architect?” The figure tapped his temple with an index finger, the nail of which was chipped and engrained with dirt. “Ah, but then Dr. Cruttenden was the historian, was she not? Or at least, so you were led to believe. Why should you have worried about the history of that place, when you had her to do all the thinking for you?”

  “You talk a lot about our lost colleague, but you seem reluctant to reveal anything about yourself.” Chambers knew he was taking a risk by baiting the man standing in front of them.

  “Myself?” Chambers certainly seemed to have ruffled his feathers. The man drew himself up to his full height and took a deep breath. “My name, my dear sir, madam, is Thomas Moreby. Records state that I was born in the year of your Lord seventeen hundred and two. I say ‘your Lord,’ because that deity that so many seem to profess faith in and a loyalty to never did anything for me, and most certainly is not mine. But more of that in a moment. I died in . . .” There was little humor in his smile. He spread his hands. “The date of my so-called death is not important. As you can surmise for yourselves, I am still here to conduct myself in a manner appropriate to my breeding and standing as a gentleman.”

  “Oh, you mean the Thomas Moreby?”

  The figure glared at Chambers. “Be careful what you say, sir. I have been a long time down here, and poor attempts at wit are the thing I am apt to tire of the quickest.”

  Chambers pressed on regardless. “I mean Thomas Moreby, the man who was an apprentice of Nicholas Hawksmoor, who oversaw the construction of the crypt and undercroft for All Hallows?”

  “And so much more, allow me to assure you.” Moreby seemed to appreciate being recognized. “During my existence, I have been the architect not just of buildings, but of plans to conquer death itself, plans of which both you and the lovely Miss Shepworth here are an important part.”

  Karen flinched at that.

  “Ah, but pray forgive me—where are my manners?” Moreby bent down and gathered a handful of dust. Straightening, he held the powder out before him on a flatt
ened palm and blew on it, creating a whirlwind of gray between himself and the two of them. “Before we do anything else, perhaps I should reacquaint you with your friends. You remember the good Father Michael Traynor?”

  We hardly had time to get to know each other, thought Chambers, as the figure of the priest emerged from the depths of what Moreby had created.

  “Father Traynor was assigned the task of disposing of any evidence within All Hallows that might incriminate the Holy Mother Church, were it to be discovered by any of you. Of course, no such items existed, at least not anymore, but it amuses me to think they were still worried enough to send him—someone whom they did not mind sacrificing, should the powers they believed to exist within the building turn out to reside there still.”

  Father Traynor had remained motionless throughout Moreby’s speech, a gray-faced automaton unaffected by the procession of mummified and rotting figures that had begun to pass him on either side, walking away from where they were standing and heading in two columns toward the horizon. Chambers hadn’t noticed them before but now, as the creatures shuffled by, he realized he recognized them.

  They were the residents of each of the Circles of Hell.

  They had become mixed in with one another, it was true, but nevertheless it was easy to make out those who had belonged to the Circles of Violence, and Heresy, and Greed, and Lust, and all the others—all those who had been damned, cursed to their fate, imprisoned in the corner of Hell that had been especially reserved for them.

  But imprisoned no longer.

  “He does not notice them.” Moreby’s voice cut through the noise of the swirling dust storms. “And neither does your other colleague, the False Scientist.”

  Now it was Peter Chesney’s turn to emerge from the dust. As expressionless as Traynor, he stood beside him, staring silently at the lifeless ground before him.

  “He came to All Hallows expecting vindication for his life of deceit—both of others and himself. He was even easier to attract into this realm than Traynor which, of course, is why I took him once I had acquired the inexperienced little priest. The world above is full of both of them—the one who feels he can do good because he has no real knowledge of the evil that man is capable of, and the other who believes he can pull the wool over the eyes of all, to the extent that in time even he will begin to believe his own lies. Suffice to say, both represent the very things that this realm thrives on.”