The Midnight Games

by Lee, David Neil;

  I stumbled into a wall and then found the stairs and made my way up to the bleachers. I scanned them up to the top, shadows dancing in the flashes of light from the commotion on the field. A wind was rising, and the clouds over the stadium whirled and glowed. Above the sounds of suffering and chaos below, I heard the subdued roar of the sky, the same roar I had heard at the previous games when, for me at least, this had all begun. One of the shadows zoomed into focus – it was the Proprietor. He was moving upward through the bleachers, approaching the rim of the stadium, arguing and pleading with someone over a cellphone pressed to his ear.

  I started up toward him, treading those worn steps as Dana and I had – it seemed like years ago. I ducked into the seats when the Proprietor turned around, and then started up again. I was gaining on him. In any case, there wasn’t much farther up he could go.

  The roaring of the sky was gaining in intensity and somehow, crazily down on the field, I felt that the ceremony – despite the police, despite the Hounds, despite Mr. Shirazi and his Delphic scythe – was carrying on. One by one the Hounds were dispersing and vanishing, and a chant was rising from the ragged crowd that had gathered. There was the same change in the light, the same charged feeling in the air as the roaring mounted, although this time the wind was rising, as if the eye of a tornado had centred on Ivor Wynne Stadium and a funnelling whirlwind, expanding outward from that centre of greed and desire, was growing to engulf us all. A voice came over the sound system: “Cthulhu is near! Have faith in him and in me! Tonight is the night!”

  It was the voice of the Proprietor – relayed somehow through his cellphone. I could see him mouthing the words as he stood at the rim of the stadium, his normally waxy hairdo spun into wavelets by the winds, fighting for balance as he rallied for this one last chance to carry out the bidding of the Great Old Ones he served. He hadn’t noticed me yet. I shouted an insult, but it was carried away by the storm.

  “Proprietor!” I called again, and raised the handgun, intending, even at this distance and in this storm, to fire and keep firing until the bastard went down. I aimed, lining up the sight of the barrel with his dark figure, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. It was jammed or something. I looked at it, but suddenly was caught in a gust of wind so strong that the gun was almost blown right out of my hand. The roaring of the winds grew and engulfed me. I stumbled, tried to right myself against a seat, but a powerful gust blew me into the stands. And Lovecraft finally caught up with me.

  “Nate – put that down.”

  A blaze of light exploded as something enormous appeared at the stadium’s rim – the grey horizon of the city ripped open to reveal a vast blackness, and, as the winds grew, I smelled the smell of death and decay and burning. I ducked as something flew toward me, something alive, bat-like and chittering, with flashing teeth and great black eyes and leathery wings. The storm before me turned hot. Twigs and vegetation blew through this hole in the night, and something enormous began to take shape in the void that had opened above the stadium: a writhing mass that filled the night sky. It was alive, it moved and groped like a huge animal, but light shone from within it. When it made a sudden move, the light surged unbearably, and I closed my eyes and saw an afterimage of countless tentacles, covered in huge glowing suckers like globes of light, a network of flesh and fibres and unnameable angles that were this thing’s veins and capillaries and nerves. The air shuddered, and suddenly underneath me the stadium buckled, and I heard the cracking of concrete, and the Proprietor’s voice.

  “The great god has come! He brings a new age! He brings new hope! He brings new wisdom! Let us praise him, Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Great Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. Y’AI’NG ’NGAH / YOG-SOTHOTH!”

  An opening yawned among the writhing shapes in the sky, and Yog-Sothoth’s voice sounded like a thousand truck horns. It was a clarion call of victory and I thought for a second maybe I should just stand back here – maybe there IS a new boss in town! Then I remembered why I was there. I raised the pistol, but Lovecraft smashed it out of my hand and it clattered off among the benches.

  “Nate!” shouted Lovecraft. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

  I stared at the creature that was pulling itself out of a gap in space onto the rim of Ivor Wynne Stadium. One of Yog-Sothoth’s tentacles brushed against a light tower. The steel tower broke off like a twig, shattered on the bleachers and fragments sprayed onto the field. The cry of the Great Old One rattled through my skeleton, but then there was another blast of light, and the unearthly trumpet sound dropped a tone or two, as if as if the winds of victory had suddenly shifted.

  I heard new screams from the crowd in the field below. The last of the hounds was running – fleeing – and suddenly it was seized by an enormous black shape that struck at it like a cobra, raised it in its mandibles high into the night sky, and swallowed it like a python sucking down a rat. In the flickering lights of the tent I saw that it was an enormous dritch – far larger than the one I’d battled in my backyard. Then the lamps in the tent guttered and went dark, as the tent itself lurched sideways and dropped into an enormous sinkhole that split the middle of the field. Out of the growing chasm emerged more of the creatures, of different sizes – I counted three, then seven, pounding up out of the dark. Each and every one of them was heading up the bleachers toward the growing continuum threshold – heading for exactly where Lovecraft and I were standing.

  Lovecraft grabbed my arm. “Why did you take my gun?” I demanded.

  “Exanimators,” he said. “If we can conceal ourselves, they’ll pass us by. They have sensed the energy field of the continuum threshold, and their instincts beckon them to return to their home world.”

  A gout of blue flame shot out of the opening in the sky, and now it was unmistakeable: Yog-Sothoth’s bellow had become a scream of agony. Suddenly the Proprietor’s voice, coming over the sound system, was drowned out by a voice that came from both the sky above and from inside my skull, a grinding bass rumble that trembled the air as it rose to a shriek.

  “Father! Why do you let them hurt me – Father?”

  “My god.” Beside me, Lovecraft stopped in his tracks, looking up at Yog-Sothoth. He turned and looked at me, his mouth hanging open, his eyes welling with tears. “Did you hear that?” he sobbed.

  “You’ve got to fight the voice, Howard.”

  “It is worse than I dreaded. I’m sorry, Nate. I’ve got to get away from here. Far away. Tell everyone, I’m sorry.”

  He tore himself away and ran down a few steps. Then he stopped and turned.

  “Whether the battle is lost, or won!” he cried. He turned and ran. I called out a warning to him as I saw the long brittle legs of a dritch, its black bulk pulling itself up into the bleachers. Lovecraft swerved to avoid it, but the dritch ignored him and kept coming up. Now the Proprietor was the one in its path.

  “Don’t take me! Take him!” The Proprietor rose up to his full height. He was attempting to command the dritch. As it passed me, it turned. This wasn’t one of the bigger dritches that had emerged from the field and now were scuttling up the bleachers to the continuum threshold. It turned toward me, feelers rattling in the night air, until its mandibles hung inches from my face. I backed up a few steps.

  “Kill him!” the Proprietor shouted.

  I reached out and brushed my hand against one of the boney feelers that ringed the dritch’s monstrous head.

  “Is that you?” I asked. “Stumpy?”

  With an exasperated whoosh, the dritch blew air out of the circle of holes that lined its serpent-like abdomen. Then shuddering and clacking, it pivoted away from me and headed to the stadium’s edge.

  Above u
s, another enormous shape filled the opening, and as I beheld it, the opening itself started to shrink and weaken, the edges of the night sky scorched like burning paper, and Yog-Sothoth pulled itself back from the stadium’s edge. Something else, just as huge, was pushing its way through the dimensional breach, but it was not an Ancient God. Perhaps it was another of the Great Old Ones, but whatever it was, it was ringed with fire – was there some war in this infernal heaven, that the Great Old Ones were now bringing to earth?

  Seeing that I remained uneaten, the Proprietor turned and raised his arms against the wind, in supplication to his ancient god.

  “Almighty Yog-Sothoth,” he shouted, “cast the hands of foulness from our throats! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! You who are the gateway, let the great sphere meet, enter and save –” The Proprietor threw himself prone at the stadium’s edge, as something huge emerged, flying low; part of it clipped the stadium’s top as it crossed from R’lyhnygoth into our world, bringing with it a wind that pounded like a hurricane.

  Unable to stand against the gale, I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around a bench so I wouldn’t be blown away. I looked up to see this monstrous thing. It was not a god or monster or alien, it was an enormous dirigible, passing mere metres over the top of the stadium, close enough for me to see the ancient, flaking fabric of its huge bulk. It was as if one of the mountain-sized freighters, built to haul tonnes of steel halfway across the world, had taken to the air.

  Squinting against the wind, I gasped as the acreage of its rubbery sides passed over me, showing me a string of incomprehensible characters – R102 G-FAAX – and then a glowing line of windows, amazed faces pressed against the glass, shooting past in a blur, and then the source of the roar that had hovered over the stadium on these accursed nights: engines the size of freight cars, sparking and spinning and humming a tone so low that my bones vibrated along with the seats beside me and the cement steps I sprawled over. It soared over the stadium, and then flickered into transparency; suddenly, through it I saw the glow of the horizon, and then as fast as it had entered the night sky, it was gone again. The roar of its engines lingered then faded, echoing over the industrial fields to the north. I blinked dumbly, shocked at its sudden appearance and disappearance, and saw once more in my mind’s eye the vessel’s name, in fading and flaking paint, but still vast and imperious across the airship’s bulk, in letters four metres high: SORCERER.

  CHAPTER 26

  AFTERMATH

  With the passage of the airship, the smoke of the Hounds’ appearance had been scoured from the air, and as the wind died down, once more the stadium was lit by little more than the glow of the city night. The swarm of dritches had passed, happily wiggling their huge carcasses back through the continuum threshold to their home world. At least they had had a good night.

  I pushed myself to my feet and started down the stairs. All over the field people ran, some still trying to escape, some calling for help, some stooped over motionless bodies, and parts of bodies. There were wails of agony and grief, and a rising chorus of approaching sirens. No one paid me any notice as I reached the ground level and searched for Dad among the dead and the living, avoiding the gaping pits and the mounds of soil from the surfacing dritches.

  “Dad!” I called, and when no one answered, “Gord! Gordon Silva!”

  Still no one answered. I knew my dad was gone, and that no one else would answer me. I was just a kid who couldn’t do anything, didn’t know anything, would only get in the way. Across the field I saw the lights of emergency vehicles. Thinking of myself as a full-fledged orphan, I shivered as a breeze rose in the wake of the intersecting worlds, shivered because the front of my hoodie was soaking wet.

  I stepped on something and stumbled as it rolled away. Dammit, I thought, more bones, bare bones. Then I fell onto all fours and looked at the thing up close: a baseball bat with a shattered handle, its unravelling tape dark with blood. My vision blurred and I shook my head until it hurt, and tried to find the strength to stand up. But maybe because of the continuum threshold, I was having a problem with gravity: my body had become unaccountably heavy. Just wait a minute, I thought, just a minute, and your strength will return. I sank onto my face on the cold grass, and lay there having thoughts about strength. If you rest long enough, it comes back. Suddenly, a man put his hand on my neck.

  “This one’s alive,” he said, but I was busy having thoughts. I thought about the airship that had passed over, how that thundering during the midnight games was not the rumbling of doom, but the engine noise from the Sorcerer. A vessel that had been trying to get home for a long time.

  “What’s your name, son?” My face was getting lightly slapped. An antique dirigible, that had gone farther and longer than any ship ever invented.

  “Hey, kid, stay with us. Can you say your name?”

  I knew that my father was dead, and that even though the ceremony had failed, the church had been defeated, and the will of Yog-Sothoth had been broken, my own little world had been destroyed, bent beyond recognition, changed forever.

  I blinked wearily, and I told them everything I could.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE SURVIVORS

  Meghan, as far as I could tell, was never more in her element than when she was letting people know how stupid they were.

  “For your information,” she crisply told the nurse, “his name is not Sorcerer. That’s not even his nickname. What kind of a name is that?” She told the nurse my particulars, as far as she knew them.

  The nurse looked at the chart. “The paramedics asked him, and that’s what he said.”

  Meghan looked at me and furrowed her eyebrows. “He was delirious. The poor little guy was in pain.”

  The nurse shrugged. “It says that exsanguination was a definite concern.”

  The “poor little guy” comment didn’t bother me. My chest and shoulder, raked by the hound’s talons, weren’t bothering me much either. I felt no compulsion to open my eyes. I could lie there forever if they let me. I kept listening, and eventually I realized that Meghan and the nurse were gone.

  The next day I had a short visit with a youngish French-Canadian guy, Dr. Martin. “Slight concussion,” he said. That had happened in the church at the end of Markle Avenue. “Miscellaneous cuts and contusions. It’s these lesions on the chest and shoulder that I don’t get.”

  “Lesions?” I asked. “They’re scratches.”

  Dr. Martin chuckled. “They are some serious scratches. They’ll leave scars, but the actual wounds are healing well. There was no infection, because the wounds were so clean. How did you say you got them?”

  “Claws.”

  He smiled. “Nate, I’ve heard your story about these so-called hounds. Do you know why I know these wounds weren’t caused by an animal?”

  “They were caused by an animal.”

  “Because, like I said, some of the flesh at the edges was blistered. No animal’s claws would leave cuts like that. Whatever made these lesions was intensely hot. Even where it ripped through your clothes, the fabric was singed and blackened.”

  “The Hounds of Tindalos,” I said, “are animals from another dimension, that evolved in angled space, as opposed to curved. We call them Hounds, but they’re not canines, if you know what I mean. They’re not like regular hounds.”

  “So, they are hounds made out of, let’s say ... molten lava?”

  I’m sure that Dr. Martin – “hey, man, call me Derek” – was using a patronizing tone at this point, but somehow it didn’t bother me a bit. In fact, I laughed.

  “It’s not that simple, Derek, but you’re getting warm. Hey, I made a joke: getting warm, get it?”

  Dr. Martin looked at his watch. “Nate, I’ve got to move on. Much as I’m enjoying this talk.”

  “Me too.” I grinned. “I’m really enjoying it.”

  “That’ll be the painkillers.” He patted my shoulder, making me wince (the painkillers weren’t one hundred per cent), and left.

  UNFO
RTUNATELY (it seemed at the time), they steadily reduced my dosage, so in a couple of days I was in better health, but enjoying myself less. Meghan did nothing to boost my selfesteem when I told her how I’d picked up the policeman’s sidearm and tried, and failed, to shoot the Proprietor.

  “What a stupid thing to do.”

  So far in the hospital I’d gotten used to be being told that I was a courageous and inspiring figure. I had started to believe it myself.

  “Meghan, go to hell. You weren’t there.”

  “In fact, I was there. I was trying to help other people get away, or not get eaten, or crushed, or electrocuted by that crashing light tower, or shot by idiots with guns. That’s what some of us were doing, Nate.”

  “I meant – jeez, I couldn’t make it shoot anyway.”

  “Hello – guns have safeties on them? Because they are dangerous?”

  Meghan also pointed out that there were cops in the stadium who, seeing me brandishing a gun, could have arrested me or done much worse, seeing that they knew perfectly well how to operate their sidearms. After she had reamed me back and forth on this subject a few times, I decided not to tell anyone else about the gun fiasco.

  Meanwhile everything, especially my chest and shoulder, either itched or hurt like hell. When an orderly came in to take me for a walk, I was already sitting on the edge of my bed, gingerly putting slippers on while managing an IV drip. He took my arm as I stood up.

  “Dizzy?” he asked.

  “No. I’m fine.” Sam and Mehri appeared in the doorway. I thought fast.

  “Maybe a bit dizzy,” I said. “But my friends are here. They can help me.”

  “When I came here before,” Sam said, “you were totally out of it.”

  “Here, you guys, help me down the hall.” I put an arm around Sam, and one around Mehri. “Can you get that, Sam?”