Sam’s mother looked over my shoulder at the book and dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “This is just another Westerner writing down their silly ideas about the East.”
Mr. Shirazi nodded. “This is a Western invention, Nate. The Necronomicon. Some European, or Euro-American type like Lovecraft, writing down his fantasies and passing it off as folklore. Just like the Arabian Nights.”
“So, you have heard of it.”
“It’s insulting,” Mrs. Shirazi said.
“I’m sorry, it’s not that I believe any of it, but I’ve got kind of a problem,” I said. “Lately I’ve run into people who seem to take this book very seriously.”
“Spells and devil worship – this is fairy tale,” said Mrs. Shirazi.
“Nate,” said Mr. Shirazi, “don’t buy into this kind of prejudice. You think because we’re Persian we’ll know all about this? ‘The Mad Arab.’ That’s just because we’re from what everyone here calls the Middle East...”
“Sorry, Mr. Shirazi. I’m asking everyone I meet, because...”
“Lovecraft was a typical North American xenophobe who was afraid of everything and everybody that didn’t come from white America or northern Europe. He was a fantasy writer who made up everything he wrote, based on old books by English and northern European writers, who were also xenophobes and imperialists and racists and who made up stories and called them Asian culture ...”
“Mr. Shirazi, I’m sure that’s true, but I’ll tell you, lately there’ve been some very strange things ...”
“Besides,” Mr. Shirazi harrumphed, “Not only was he not Persian, he wasn’t even an Arab. Everybody knows that Abdul Alhazred was a goddamned Egyptian.”
CHAPTER 12
SOMETHING IN THE DARK
As I walked back through Belview Park, I felt my cellphone vibrate. I sat on a bench and read this text message:
Hope all is well. Could we meet @ Homegrown Hamilton café on King William St., 11 am tomorrow? Mutual co-operation can only be beneficial!
Well, I didn’t know anyone else at the Hamilton Public Library, so HPL must be that librarian, Meghan. “Hope all is well.” Did this mean she was thinking about me, even worried about my well-being? She should be. Even though she’d been snarky and officious, I’d decoyed – heroically decoyed, I might add – the Resurrection Church creeps away from her and made off with a book she claimed to hate. I texted back, See you there.
TONIGHT, HOWEVER, to make sure that the Resurrection Church stayed away from me and anyone I cared about, I decided to go where no one would find me: I would surprise Dana and spend the night sharing his luxury squat at Prince of Wales Elementary. After all, I had overnight gear, a bottle of water and granola bars I was willing to share. What else could I need?
It was just after nine, and the sun was down. When I reached PoW I found my flashlight and slipped it into my pocket. Across the street, the empty stadium slept, and the neighbourhood was dead quiet. I looked around, but saw no one as I approached the ground-floor window. The plywood rattled when I touched it; if it was loose, that meant Dana must be inside. Sure enough, when I poked at it, I saw that it was on the hook.
“Dana,” I called quietly through the crack. “Dana! It’s me.”
I listened; there was no response except for a far-off hiss, like oil sputtering in a frying pan. Probably one of PoW’s noisy old steam radiators. “Dana!” I called, watching the street for passersby.
Well, if he was so far inside he couldn’t hear me and come let me in, this plan could go up in smoke. I tugged on the plywood but it wouldn’t open more than a few centimetres. I tried my pocket knife, but its tiny blade wouldn’t reach the hook. But there’s always junk around construction sites; I groped around on the ground, and in a few seconds found a thin splinter of wood. I stuck it through the crack and popped the hook on Dana’s makeshift latch. Then I pulled back the plywood sheet and slipped through.
I recognized this room. As I remembered, it had been an empty classroom, used to store old blackboards and wooden desks; now it was stripped down to cracked cement walls and, in the ceiling, gaping sockets where they had ripped out the fluorescent lights. “Dana, it’s me!” I called in a loud whisper.
What was that smell? It turned my stomach like something rotten, but it was sharper than, say, a dead animal. Gas, I thought, maybe that hissing sound was gas. I wrinkled my nose and breathed through my mouth. If there was a natural gas leak and Dana was inside – and I was sure that if he’d left, he would have screwed shut his secret entrance – he could be passed out in here somewhere; could even die, if I didn’t get to him fast.
From down the hall came a prolonged hiss that built to a hoarse rattle, Ashshhhchikkachikkachikka ... I pushed the plywood sheet back onto the hook and groped for the door, then rounded the corner into the hall where, now that I was away from the window, I dared to turn on my flashlight. In its harsh beam, the air churned with blue smoke, and the smell was stronger than ever. But smoke would mean fire, and if there was a fire, I wouldn’t be smelling gas: the whole place would have gone up and there would be flames and black smoke and the smell of burning plaster, wood and wiring.
So there was no danger from fire. Somehow, realizing this didn’t make me feel safer.
From the end of the hall, toward the gymnasium, I heard the sound again, Ashshhhchikkachikkachikka, and I thought, sure enough, this is a gas leak and that sound – was it the sound of someone injured, or suffocating? “Dana!” I called and rushed toward the gym, but suddenly I was gripped by nausea; the floor seemed to spin and I sank to my knees. The flashlight skittered across the dusty floor. Dizzy, I crawled toward it, noticing in the dust the criss-crossed treads of many workboots. Ahead of me came that sound again. Suddenly the building shuddered. My ears popped, like a change in air pressure before a big storm. A waft of cold air, laden with that awful stink, blew from the gym’s open doors. The beam of my flashlight dimmed and went out – and then came back again as bright as before. My head began to clear. If this was no gas leak, I thought, then what was it? I wanted to bolt back through the window and run and not come back. But I thought of Dana, somewhere there in the dark – and of how gas rises, doesn’t it? – so just in case, I’d stay down on the floor, hoping that gave me a better chance of getting through this. I picked up my flashlight and crawled toward the gym.
The doors were ajar. Sure enough, as soon as I got inside I rotated the light and saw that I had found Dana’s nighttime nest. Through the plumes of bluish smoke I saw a few household items: a bottle of water, a jar of peanut butter and a can of silver spray paint. Amid the workmen’s boot prints on the dusty floor, I saw other marks – the prints of enormous three-toed paws. If someone had brought a dog in here, it must have been a huge one. The prints were everywhere.
Then, like discarded slippers, the pale soles of Dana’s bare feet, dead centre in the floor. I called his name again, and sniffed. The awful stink was still there, but it was fading, and the old school building had gone eerily silent. Whatever I’d heard, it had gone away, far away. Dana didn’t move. I stood up, sniffed the air again and walked toward him.
“Dana?”
The smoke was clearing, and around Dana were scattered flakes of ashes and charred clothing. For sure they were Dana’s clothes, because Dana himself was naked; his pale, bony body lay squarely in the centre of the coloured lines on the dusty gym floor. There was some kind of gunk, something bluish smeared all over him, and his eyes were wide open on his battered face. Worse yet, that battered face was no longer on top of his neck where it belonged, but was sitting on Dana’s chest, where his severed head was carefully arranged between his dead hands.
PART 2
THE HOUNDS
“No words in our language can describe them!” [Chalmers] spoke in a harsh whisper. “They are symbolized vaguely in the myth of the Fall, and in an obscene form which is occasionally found engraved on the ancient tablets. The Greeks had a name for them, which veiled their essenti
al foulness. The tree, the snake and the apple – these are the vague symbols of a most awful mystery.”
– Frank Belknap Long, The Hounds of Tindalos
CHAPTER 13
ENEMIES OF THE CHURCH
I woke up with a great upsetting lurch, my resting place quaking under me.
“What the hell is this?” A man’s outraged voice.
“Oh... hey...”
I forced my eyes open, surprised that some dude was yelling at me, but even more surprised that I had fallen asleep. It had taken me hours ... hours while I mourned that Dana was gone, hours while I fretted that whatever had gotten him now had my scent and was shuffling through the shadows, hissing and chittering, getting closer and closer. But I’d felt that here, I was in a safe place... if only I could doze off, just for an hour, I’d be up and out of there before anyone found me. For hours, listening and waiting and reliving what I’d seen in the abandoned school, I tossed and turned in the dark, but once I fell asleep, I crashed like a skid full of bricks.
“What do you think you’re doing in my car?”
“Sorry, Mr. Shirazi.” I pushed myself up off the back seat. “I thought I’d be outta here before anybody got up. I was kind of uh, on the run last night.” Outside the old Toyota, it was just getting light. I didn’t think anyone would be up this early on a Sunday morning – not even Sam’s dad.
“Get out!” He opened the passenger door to let me out of the back seat where I’d spent the night. He slammed the door as I stood there, still wobbly from sleep.
“What do you mean by ‘on the run’?”
“It’s hard to ...”
“Are you on drugs? Because if you are, you must stay away from Osama. Stay away from my family.” He leaned down and looked me in the eyes. “I thought you were too smart for that, Nate.”
“Jeez, Mr. Shirazi ... it’s not like that. Weird things have been happening in this part of town. I’ve been trying to find out about this Church ...” I cleared my throat.
My voice was hoarse from rehearsing a growly voice, trying to disguise it in the 911 call I made from the Big Bee pay phone a few hours before.
Sam’s dad looked skeptical and I couldn’t blame him. I talked fast. “... and the next thing I know, these people – I think they killed my mother, years ago. And now they’ve come back.”
“Not the Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods.”
“I think they’re after ... Hey, how did you know?”
“Get back in the car.” Mr. Shirazi looked around anxiously at the fading shadows. He got in and started up the engine.
After I had found Dana’s body, I got out of PoW and ran. But it was late, I was cold and I had no place else to go. Still afraid to go home, I’d thought I would sneak into the Shirazis’ car – I knew the driver’s door didn’t lock properly – and spend the night on the back seat (I didn’t think it would be so uncomfortable; I’d forgotten that cars have seat belts). Then I’d get up and leave in the morning before anyone could discover me.
Some plan. Mr. Shirazi backed out of the driveway and we started toward my house through the network of narrow streets, quiet at this time of the morning. He shook his head.
“Mrs. Shirazi and I tried to be casual when you showed up at our house with that ... book ... but it made us both worried. I mean, you are a young man, still just a boy really, and it’s your right to be young and stupid, but getting mixed up with the Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods and going around town flashing a copy of the Necronomicon, that’s as bad as getting mixed up with drugs.”
At the Melrose Avenue stop sign we could see the front of PoW, swarming with the strobing lights of an ambulance and a pack of patrol cars; the sidewalk was marked off with police tape.
“Something is going on at the school.” Mr. Shirazi pulled into the intersection and idled, trying to get a better look.
“Keep going!” I burst out. “You don’t wanna know what went down there!”
“I’m sure you’re right.” He looked at me curiously and accelerated, continuing west.
“A guy got killed there,” I said. “It’s got something to do with the Church.”
“How do you know that?”
Mr. Shirazi was asking me something. Before he started preaching to me again, I thought I should seize the moment.
“Because I keep finding out stuff I don’t want to know. I’m not mixed up with the Church. I’d like to just ignore them and hope they go away. But a few nights ago, a friend of mine and I snuck into one of those midnight games, those rituals. We saw some ... stuff that looked impossible. I researched some stuff online, and went to the library to look at the Necronomicon. Well, one thing sort of led to another and I ended up running off with the library’s copy of it. And ...” How should I describe the person, or thing, or creature called the Interlocutor? “... in doing that, I found out some more ... really weird stuff. And now the people in the Church are after me. They followed me to my house.”
“And then what happened? More ‘stuff’?”
I was silent. At this point, if Mr. Shirazi had been my father, I would tell him to shove it, he would get mad and later we would both apologize and have a laugh. But he wasn’t my father.
“Mr. Shirazi,” I said. “Let me out of the car, please.”
He raised his eyebrows, but kept driving. “Why? I’m taking you home.”
“Because for all I know, you’re a member of the Church.”
“What?” The car lurched to the side as he pulled over at the corner of Lottridge. “How dare you say that to me.”
“I told you the Church is staking out my house. And you’re taking me to my house.”
“I demand an apology.”
“You’re going on about how young and stupid I am and I’m sure you’re right, but that’s the same way the Proprietor talks to me.” Mr. Shirazi stared straight ahead, his hands on the wheel, and huffed. We sat there in an angry silence.
I continued, “The Proprietor is the head of the Resurrection ...”
“I know who the Proprietor is. His name is Raphe Therpens. For years he was a lawyer, out west, working for the oil industry. Until he found something bigger.”
I felt for the door handle. If Mr. Shirazi was part of this too, what did it mean for Sam and his sisters? What did it mean for Mehri? Did I have to warn them about their own father?
In the angled glow of the street lights Mr. Shirazi took a deep breath. He sat there and looked at me. “Nate, it’s true that I know more than you think about the Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods. But don’t ever believe that I might join them, or that I approve of them, or that I can even coexist with them, any more than they can tolerate me. You may think that they’re small and local, but don’t be fooled. The Church is huge. And it is everywhere. I won’t talk to you now about our reasons for leaving Iran and coming here. It is too personal, and for you it may be dangerous to know. But let me tell you how disappointed I was when we came to Canada, and settled down, and started to build new lives, and then found that the Church was here too.
“This so-called church, this cult,” he continued, “they prey on people new to the country, people who are frightened and vulnerable. They tell them there’s a better way to get ahead, by worshipping these twin gods, Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth, and their nest of aliens, the Great Old Ones who are trying to break through to this world. Wherever they go, they target the helpless, and attack those who would try to do good. They prey on people who are poor, and frustrated, and alone, and who have lost hope. I know ...” He looked over at the dark bulk of the stadium, silent as the grey dawn light of crept through the sleeping neighbourhood.
“Totally,” I said. “The Church are a bunch of fricking Nazis.” I was starting to feel a flicker of hope.
“I still wonder sometimes,” he said. “I wonder if I’ve brought my family to the right place, or whether if we’d stayed home, if somehow ...”
I was finding Sam’s dad hard to read at this point.
Then he shook his head and said, “But that’s not here or there. What kind of forces have the Church put around your house? How many?”
“It was just a car with two people when I talked to my dad. But that was hours ago. Now, there might not be anybody.”
“We’ll drive by your house, and if we see a vehicle keeping your place under surveillance, I will make a call. In ten minutes, I can have a dozen men here. Then we will convince the Church people to leave.”
“There was just one vehicle. A big black SUV.”
Mr. Shirazi smiled. “If they’re watching for you and waiting to pounce, they’ll be very sorry.”
“Mr. Shirazi, you have no idea what these people are like.”
We turned down Somerset, and pulled up in front of my house. It was dark. The street was quiet. Everything looked normal. I got out and looked around. The Escalade was gone.
“Yes, I do,” Mr. Shirazi said. He turned off the car. As we walked to the porch he felt through his pockets and handed me a card. “We can help you. Call me.”
“Thanks.” I pocketed the card without looking at it, and unlocked the front door. Mr. Shirazi looked both ways down the quiet street before coming inside with me.
I turned on the front hall light; the main floor was empty, everything looked in order. Dad’s old hollow-body Gibson guitar leaned against the couch: Dad had been up late. Still, I felt a flood of relief. It had been a long night.
“Don’t spend nights outside, Nate. Keep your phone charged. Call if you need help.”
“Sorry about using your car. I was going to stay somewhere else. But it didn’t work out.”
I almost told him about my visit to Dana, about how I’d found Dana, about what had happened. I was dying to tell somebody. But I had the feeling that the more people knew about my situation, the worse it would get. (I have since learned that it’s usually the other way around.)
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