Finally, exhausted and empty, its body now nothing more than a deflated empty black sack, its job done, the flea-beast fell from its lofty perch and landed with a wet thud on the broken floor tiles of the church.
There was another waiting behind it to take its place.
And another.
Chambers and Karen watched horrified, as the six creatures emptied their burden of digested souls, now transformed by the Anarch’s power into crimson-colored fleas, into the body of Thomas Moreby. Then, one by one they fell, landing in a heap far beneath his feet. When the last emptied carapace had fallen, he turned to address Chambers and Karen once more.
“The time is not yet upon us,” he said. “But soon it will be, when the stars come right again. Thanks to you, the Gla’aki Rituals have been completed, the Anarch has been satiated for now, and the gift of eternal life which was bestowed upon me long ago has been consecrated. In time to come, my army of the dead will bring chaos to a world already steeped in chaos, but that time is not with us yet. The world of man is not yet ready to benefit from what I, and from what my God, have to offer it. You may think upon that if you wish. It may help to distract your petty minds when the men from the bedlam come for you.”
Chambers opened his mouth to reply, but Moreby was already descending, the monstrous limbs dragging him down, deep into the earth and leaving a gaping hole behind. Flattened against the wall of the north aisle, Chambers and Karen found themselves standing on a tiny remaining ledge of what had once been the stone floor, peering into an abyss, a deep rent in the ground beneath All Hallows Church. They could see, far below, hundreds if not thousands of feet down, something glowing redly.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Karen asked, eyeing the distance from where they were standing to the door. Chambers shrugged as he dug his fingernails deeper into the wall behind him.
But the rent was already closing, the flagstones of the floor falling back into place and reconstructing like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Each time one floor slab met another, there was a sound like a hundred heavy doors being slammed shut, and their ears were ringing by the time it was over.
“Has he really gone?” Karen whispered.
The interior of the building looked as if a bomb had hit it, but otherwise there was nothing to suggest the place was anything other than an old church that had been allowed to fall into ruin.
Chambers nodded. “I think so.”
“Have they gone?”
“If you mean the bodies of those flea things, they were dragged down with Moreby. If you mean the undead, I suppose we should go and look.”
Together they stumbled over the debris. The grayish tinge lent it by the light outside gave it an uncomfortable resemblance to the Sea of Darkness. But rather than the dust of fathomless ages, here was just stone and ceramic, wood and iron. There was not a trace of a body, undead or otherwise.
The door to the undercroft stairway was hanging off its hinges. The stairway itself was empty too. Downstairs it looked as if the kitchen that had been constructed for them had not been used in years. The fridge they had moved to bar the entrance to the crypt was ancient and rusting, and the entrance itself had vanished completely.
“We didn’t dream all of this.” Karen picked through the remains of food boxes, their contents long since moldered and turned to dust. “I know we didn’t.”
“There’s nothing left to prove our story, though.” Chambers examined a couple more items, still expecting the wall to burst open and the undead to come flooding through at any moment. “If we were to tell it.”
“But we have to!” Karen gave him a look of disbelief. “We have to warn people! We have to tell them . . .”
“Tell them what?” Chambers was shaking his head. “That we met the architect of this place, that he was at least three hundred years old and he was living in the Sea of Darkness that exists at the bottom of Hell? That he has a plan to bring chaos to the world, but just not yet? And no, we don’t have any proof that any of it happened?”
He began to make his way back up. “Moreby was right. The men from the bedlam would enjoy the bedtime stories we’d have to tell them.”
“But we can’t just do nothing!” Karen was chasing after him.
Chambers knew that, just as he knew that the truth would be too much. The events of the past twenty-four hours were already beginning to feel unreal to him. By tomorrow he would probably be wondering if he needed to be committed himself. And though his colleagues in Washington, D.C. might believe him, he knew even they would have trouble taking in everything he would eventually have to tell them.
He looked around the remains of the church. The sun was rising, bathing the rubble with a golden hue, the freshness and purity of which made him want to cry. What actually made a tear fall from his eye was the sight of the church doors, hanging open.
“We’ve been given permission to go,” he said.
“Permission?” Karen frowned. “You mean our time is up?”
“I have no idea, and I don’t care.” He was looking around now, trying to find something. Eventually his eyes alighted on Dr. Chesney’s machine, the one he had never had the chance to use. He tore off a long strip of squared paper.
“Have you a pen?”
Karen gave him an exhausted look. “I’m a journalist, remember? I’m never without one.” She passed it over.
It was Chambers’s turn to frown. “I thought you’d have something a bit fancier than a crappy ballpoint,” he said with a faint smile.
“I’m also someone who’s used to lending people pens and never getting them back,” she said. “What are you writing?”
“I’m just leaving a message,” he said. “For when the television and newspaper people get here. It’s still early, and looks pretty quiet out there now. I’m guessing they’ll be along later for the great opening. By which time you and I need to be long gone.”
“But the story!” Karen looked over to where her apsidal was, where her tapes would be stored.
“I’ll bet those tapes will have nothing on them.” Chambers was following her train of thought as he scribbled. “Rather than tell the story, the best thing you and I can do is be part of it.”
He left the note pinned to Dr. Chesney’s machine. He had written it in big enough letters and weighed it down with the heaviest of Chesney’s self-published books, and so he hoped no one would miss it. Whether or not they would heed the warning was another matter entirely, but there was little either of them could do about that.
“What do you think he meant?”
“Who?” asked Chambers.
“Moreby,” Karen replied. “Back in the Sea of Darkness, when he said that our souls were interconnected?”
Chambers smiled. “I have no idea,” he said, “but maybe it’s time we found out.” He took her hand and walked with her through the doors and out into the fresh sunrise of a beautiful December morning.
“It’s time for this particular story to end.”
Saturday, December 24, 1994. 6:26 A.M.
Memo
From: The Office of the Secretary to His Holiness Pope John Paul II, and subsidiary members of The Vatican Advisory Committee on The Incidents at Blackheath
To: His Eminence Cardinal William Thomas, Archbishop of Westminster Cathedral
William,
The events at All Hallows have been noted.
We still await your report.
Signed on behalf of the Vatican Advisory Committee
Saturday, December 24, 1994. 6:34 A.M.
Memo:
From: His Eminence Cardinal William Thomas, Archbishop of Westminster Cathedral
To: The Office of the Secretary to His Holiness Pope John Paul II, and subsidiary members of The Vatican Advisory Committee on The Incidents at Blackheath
Be assured that our Holy Mother Church has been seen to have little or no involvement in the matter. Father Traynor has been appropriately discredited and his current whereabouts stated as unknown. British government assu
res us that matter is in hand. Suggest no further action that would draw attention to the site or the family members of those who are considered to be missing as a consequence of the disaster.
William
Sunday, December 25, 1994. 8:42 A.M.
Memo
From: The Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street
To: Michael Howard, Home Secretary
Dear Michael,
Re: the message found at All Hallows Church
Is this something we need to be worried about?
Best wishes,
J
Sunday, December 25, 1994. 9:05 A.M.
Memo
From: The Office of Michael Howard, Home Secretary
To: John Major, Prime Minister
Dear John,
Sorry you were bothered with this. Situation has been contained. Nothing to worry about.
Happy Christmas to you and Norma.
Best wishes,
Michael
Radio Times, Wednesday, December 28, 1994
[Note: The listed program was never broadcast, being pulled from the BBC schedule at short notice and a rerun of the popular entertainment show Morecambe and Wise substituted in its place.]
8.00 Panorama
All Hallows Church: Disaster, Publicity Stunt, or Both?
The BBC’s current affairs programme presents a special edition in which recent events at All Hallows Church are investigated in the wake of the disappearances and the subsequent media frenzy. Are newspaper corporations and commercial television channels becoming increasingly irresponsible in their search for ratings? How long will it be before the individuals who formed the “ghost hunting” team are allowed to come out of exile? Or do newspapers now have sufficient financial resources to maintain such a hoax indefinitely?
We present a profile of those involved, and investigate reasons for the continued silence from the News of Britain, the British Museum, the Catholic Church, and the British Government regarding the matter.
See page 29.
Director/Producer Stephen Volk
Repeated 12 midnight
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to John Llewellyn Probert for his patience and understanding while this book was put together at a very difficult time for me, personally. He superbly rose to the challenge of combining two different series into the kind of crossover story that I used to love reading as a kid, while at the same time paying homage to both the H. P. Lovecraft Mythos and those sleazy Italian zombie movies of the 1980s that we both love so much.
Thanks also to artist Douglas Klauba for listening to my cover brief and turning it into, literally, a work of art, and to Claiborne Hancock, for his trust and support in publishing the ongoing exploits of the Human Protection League.
—SJ
First and foremost, I would like to thank Stephen Jones for giving me the challenge of linking the exploits of The Lovecraft Squad to his bestselling Zombie Apocalypse! series of books in a novel set before the actual zombie apocalypse of the latter series takes place. It turned out to be the most enjoyable novel writing experience of my career so far. Thanks, Steve, for letting me play such a large part in such an ambitious project—I had a blast. Special thanks also have to go to my friend and writing colleague Reggie Oliver, whose expertly sown seeds in the second Zombie Apocalypse! anthology—Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback—I was able to use as a springboard to create the extraordinary events you have just read about. I always intended this book to be in part a tribute to Lucio Fulci, the master of the Italian zombie movie, and there are a few in-jokes that refer to his exemplary work in the genre peppered throughout the text. So if you thought you spotted references to City of the Living Dead or The Beyond, you were absolutely correct. Similarly I have to thank Nigel Kneale and Clark Ashton Smith, both writers I have always greatly admired, and both hugely influential in the writing of this particular novel, even though it may not be that obvious.
Finally, and most important of all, my thanks to my wife Kate, aka Thana Niveau. My First Reader and everlasting love, if I’m ever trapped in a church filled with flesh-eating monsters, as long as you’re with me I know we’ll both be fine.
—JLP
JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT won the British Fantasy Award for his novella The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine from Spectral Press, and the Children of the Night Award for his collection The Faculty of Terror from Gray Friar Press. He is the author of more than a hundred published short stories, seven novellas (including his latest, Dead Shift, from Horrific Tales Publishing) and a horror novel, The House That Death Built, from Atomic Fez. Endeavour Press has published Ward 19, Bloody Angels, and The Pact, three crime books featuring his pathologist heroine Parva Corcoran. His stories have appeared in all three volumes of the Zombie Apocalypse! series edited by Stephen Jones, and his latest tales can be found in such anthologies as The Spectral Book of Horror and Horror Uncut. He is currently trying to review every cult movie in existence at his House of Mortal Cinema (www.johnlprobert.blogspot.co.uk) and everything he is up to writing-wise can be found at www.johnlprobert.com. Future projects include two new short story collections, a lot more nonfiction writing, and a couple of novels. He never sleeps.
STEPHEN JONES lives in London, England. A Hugo Award nominee, he is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, three International Horror Guild Awards, five Bram Stoker Awards, twenty-one British Fantasy Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. One of Britain’s most acclaimed horror and dark fantasy writers and editors, he has more than 140 books to his credit, including The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History; the film books of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Stardust, The Illustrated Monster Movie Guide and The Hellraiser Chronicles; the nonfiction studies Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books (both with Kim Newman); the single-author collections Necronomicon and Eldritch Tales by H. P. Lovecraft, The Complete Chronicles of Conan and Conan’s Brethren by Robert E. Howard, and Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M. R. James; plus such anthologies as Horrorology: The Lexicon of Fear, Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome, A Book of Horrors, In the Shadow of Frankenstein, The Lovecraft Squad, and the Zombie Apocalypse! series, and twenty-seven volumes of Best New Horror. You can visit his website at www.stephen joneseditor.com or follow him on Facebook at Stephen Jones-Editor.
THE LOVECRAFT SQUAD: ALL HALLOWS HORROR
Pegasus Books Ltd
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The Lovecraft Squad and Zombie Apocalypse! copyright © Stephen Jones
The Lovecraft Squad logo © Smith & Jones
Copyright © 2017 by Stephen Jones and John Llewellyn Probert
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition March 2017
Interior design by Sabrina Plomitallo-González, Pegasus Books
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