by JG Faherty
Satanists in New Hope? Cultists? A coven of witches? It didn’t seem possible. Our town was too small, too familiar with each other’s business for anyone to hide that kind of secret.
Then again, the impossible seemed to be happening on a regular basis the past couple of days, especially to me, a thought that gave me no measure of comfort. Suddenly the shadows across the room took on a more sinister quality. Whoever or whatever had been reading down there might very well still be around. I picked up my pace, and it wasn’t long before I came upon the cage.
Four walls, each made from a crosshatching of vertical and horizontal iron bars. It appeared to be about fifteen feet in each direction. The nearest wall was in actuality a door, with a metal lock panel very similar to those portrayed in movie dungeons. I pulled on the door, but it didn’t budge. For one brief second I felt frustration at having come all this way for nothing, and then I remembered the key Miss Watkins had given me.
The old-fashioned key fit perfectly. The lock made no sound when I turned it, again causing me to wonder how regularly people visited these archives, and for what possible reasons. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open, afraid something would leap out at me the moment I crossed the threshold despite the fact that I could see there was no one inside. When my first step brought on no attack, I gingerly entered the tiny space.
One bookshelf occupied the back wall, with perhaps fifty volumes lining its shelves. Other than that, the only objects in the room were a table and a chair. A small desk lamp sat on the table. All the surfaces were dust free, as neat and tidy as the shelves and tables in the main room.
A quick shudder ran through me. Someone cleaned the room on an almost daily basis.
Why?
I could almost hear Melissa’s answer in my head. Only one way to find out, Sean. Start reading.
I approached the bookshelf. With each step, a sense of loathing built inside me, a distinct desire to be as far away as possible from those books with their black, featureless covers and untitled spines. But apparently my feet didn’t feel the same trepidation; they kept moving me inexorably forward. A sensation of otherness came over me, as if I no longer controlled my body, was instead merely a passenger on a preprogrammed ride.
I reached out and withdrew the first volume from the top shelf. Its cover, some type of dyed parchment or leather, felt greasy and unwholesome in my hands.
Turning on the light, I sat down and opened the book, positioning it under the lamp’s cone of illumination.
I opened the book with a shaking hand.
The True History of New Hope
Vol. I
The Beast Arrives
I began to read.
Chapter Nine
I remained in the room until I’d read every one of the fifty-three volumes. I had no sensation of time passing; when I finally returned to the first floor it was well past midnight, but I had no idea what day it was. I didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, but my body was consumed by the same exhaustion I knew too well from spending nights on end studying until the sun’s glow touched the horizon.
I made my way past the long-empty tables of the reading room. Miss Watkins wasn’t at the counter, although a strip of light showed from under the door to her office. I imagined her in there, listening for my footsteps, perhaps on the phone to my parents. How long had she waited there for me? Eight hours? A full day? Had she stayed the entire time or left me alone with my blasphemous reading and only come back periodically to check if I was still in the building?
The idea that she’d been keeping tabs on me didn’t seem the least bit outlandish. I no longer felt as if I suffered from paranoia; instead, I knew I was the victim of a vast conspiracy.
I walked home through dark, empty streets. New Hope is a small town even by small town standards, and like all burgs and hamlets it goes to bed early, even on the weekends and holidays. Night owls are few and far between in a community where more than half the residents have to be out on their boats by sunrise. But tonight there were no pedestrians or cars out at all; even the Fife and Drum, the most popular tavern in town, was closed, its neon lights dark.
Miss Watkins must have been very busy on the telephone.
The houses around me could have passed for abandoned, their black windows hiding barren, dusty rooms and ancient ghosts. They didn’t fool me; I could sense the presence of people within, pressing themselves into corners and shushing children as I walked by. I was the evil, threatening presence, not these shuttered, cowering domiciles, and they, and their inhabitants, felt it as much as I did.
My own house was no different. No homey, flickering glow of a television in the living room or Owen’s bedroom; not even a sudden burst of dim light as someone opened the refrigerator for a late night snack.
Just a dark, depressing silence, a palpable absence of love. When I entered, only dead air greeted me, only fear bade me welcome.
They were awake, those so-called members of my family. I knew this not from the sounds or movements they made behind their closed doors, but rather the ones they didn’t make. Owen’s mattress didn’t creak as he tossed from one side to the other, as hyperactive in slumber as he was awake. The bull-snort sounds of my father’s snoring didn’t echo from the walls of the upstairs hallway.
No, they were awake, and waiting, just like a thousand other people in New Hope.
Let them wait.
I thought of opening their doors, shouting “Boo!” or “Here I am!” Would they scream in fright? Would Owen piss his pants and cry? Would my father clutch his chest as his heart exploded from terror? I decided I’d rather not know, and I simply made my way down the hallway to my own room.
I pulled off my clothes and crawled under my covers, hoping desperately to wake in the morning and find the past few days had been nothing but a nightmare.
Sleep claimed me before my head fully settled on my pillow.
Chapter Ten
The enormous expanse of featureless landscape stretched before me once again. The plains of Leng, I knew now, although where those particular plains, and the planet they occupied, might actually be was as much of a mystery as before.
Depraved clouds hung in repellent masses from the sky, unwholesome crimson lightning issuing from one to the next. The black disk, more dreadful than in my previous visions, occupied a large section of the heavens, the coruscating waves of foul energy flaring and diminishing in strobe-like fashion around its perimeter.
Words came to me, their very presence on my tongue creating an unpleasant flavor in my mouth, a taste of otherworldly corruption.
“IA ZI GURRA KAAPA! ANU TULUMUUN TIAMAT! WAAYR AZATHOTH!”
Searing pain ran down both my sides. I looked down and saw my skin bubbling with boils and pestilent sores that oozed foul ichor. As I watched, my flesh parted, peeling away from my bones like roasted meat. Writhing tentacles erupted from my rib cage, casting away the remnants of what I was and revealing that which lay beneath. Squid-like appendages, too long to have remained hidden inside my human shell, burst forth in all directions.
“Prepare the Gate!” I cried out in a voice much deeper than my own. “Cthulhu! Hastur! Yig! Summon thy forces and prepare to rise again. The time of the Wakening approaches. Those that wait Beyond shall wait no more!”
A growling, stentorian thunder rolled across the inhospitable plain and vibrated underfoot in subterranean response. The ground before me cracked open in violent fashion and gouts of rancid, polluted fluids spurted upwards, their stinking presence defiling the already tainted air even further. I choked back bile as the thing within me breathed, relishing the poisonous atmosphere, and—
—I woke, my hands clutching at my chest, my breath rattling in a throat still burning from the memory of Leng’s fetid air.
In the predawn light, shadows and shades of gray occupied my room like ghosts, turning it into a faded photo
graph whose colors had been sucked away by passing years.
I took a deep breath of the clean, unsoiled breeze wafting in through my open window.
Something moved in the shadows. My heart kicked into overdrive with a thump! before I discerned it was no monster lying in wait for me. Melissa sat at my desk, staring at me with the same empty gaze she’d had the day before.
“You know.” My tone was as dead as her eyes. It was an accusation, not a statement. For the first time in my life, I felt truly angry with her.
“The whole town knows, Sean.” She moved her chair closer to the bed, her face never losing that blank, reptilian look. “You must be aware of that by now.”
“How long?”
“Have I known?” She shrugged. “Since before we moved to New Hope. In fact, it’s why we moved to New Hope. Your parents moved here for the same reason. The whole town is here because of you, in a way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. No one could. Did you read all the texts?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was struggling to keep from screaming at her. I wanted to run through the room, breaking everything in sight. The only thing that kept me on the bed, immobile in my cocoon of reluctant acceptance, was the realization that it would do no good. Fate had me firmly in its grasp.
“Then you know it’s not an exact science. Would it be this year? Last year? Next year?” The corner of her mouth curled up in a wry smile. “Hell, would it even be you? It could have been Owen. Or even your own child. All the hundreds of years of planning, of watching, and all anyone could predict was that it would be someone descended from your parents. Can you imagine trying to explain that legacy to you, to anyone, in a sane fashion?”
I took a deep breath. Sane? Nothing was sane about this. “So now what?”
Melissa shrugged. “Now we wait. The next step is up to you. You can either fight it or accept it. If you accept it…” She leaned forward, placing her hands on my legs. The thin blanket was no barrier to the sensual feel of her rubbing me. “Then anything you want can be yours. You’ll have access to powers you’ve never dreamed of, and the freedom to do with them what you wish.”
Her hands moved further up my body, caressing my most vulnerable areas. Against my will, I found myself responding, her gentle touch blending together with my memories of a special night in my backyard two summers ago, a night of exploration that ended with us taking each other’s virginity. “An experiment”, Melissa had called it afterwards. Two friends learning the biology of sex. She wouldn’t date me, though, because she felt it would ruin that same friendship. I’d been heartbroken at her rejection, but it was still the most magical and wonderful night of my life.
And it was the most secret of secrets of hers that I carried, because she’d never let anyone do that again. In fact, she’d told all her boyfriends she was a virgin and intended to stay that way until marriage.
Now she was looking at me with something in her eyes I’d never seen before, something that said virginity, even fake virginity, was no longer an issue. She confirmed it with her next words. “And of course, you’ll have me. If you want me.”
I did. She knew it. I saw something clearly now. Her whole relationship with me had been an act, designed to bring me to this very place. The friendship, the puppy love, the night of experimentation. Then the pulling away, staying close enough to keep me interested but distant enough so there was no chance of us having a real romantic bond that might lead to me possibly falling out of love with her after only a few months, as teenagers can do so easily. And no chance of her wasting her time if it turned out I wasn’t the One.
She’d played me for a fool, used me, set me up. I should have been furious with her, but instead I only felt anger toward myself for being so easy a mark.
Worse, I wanted to pretend I didn’t know she’d duped me, just to keep her hands plying their magic on my groin.
“What if I fight it? According to what I read, it’s been done before.” I knew the answer, but I had to hear it from her.
“That way lies madness, and death, for you. Even if you succeed, you’ll only be delaying the inevitable.” Her palm slid away, back toward my knee.
“A delay of ninety-nine years.”
“We’ve waited that several hundred times over, Sean. We’re nothing if not patient.”
By “we”, I knew she meant the descendents of the original Followers of the Old Ones. Even after all the centuries since the great wars had resulted in the banishment of the Elder Gods to the far reaches, victims of internal strife and mankind’s unexpected revolt, pockets of worshipers still existed. Tiny groups populating small towns like New Hope, located in mystically aligned places around the globe, vortexes of otherworldly energies.
Through a freak confluence of genetics, time and place, I was the potential earthly vessel for the one unholy deity who held the power to open the Gates to the Other Realms and bring forth the Elder Gods once again, a resurrection guaranteed to turn the Earth into a nightmare hell of chaos, bloodshed, and destruction. I was the key that could either open that door or close it for another century.
Melissa’s hand slid under the covers and resumed stroking me. I thought about my life: forever the outsider, separated from others my age by the twin faults of high intelligence and a love of science, two crippling attributes for a teenager. What would my future be if I remained loyal to my race, to humanity? Another year of torture in high school, followed by college, where I’d similarly be a freak because of my young age. Then graduate school, and a research position with a big company. A wife, if I was lucky.
That’s if I even lived that long. According to the tomes I’d read, the struggle to control the demons within usually led to insanity.
Or, I could be the king of the world.
Savior or destroyer.
How did one make a choice like that?
Chapter Eleven
“I have to think about this.” Pushing the girl of my dreams away from me was one of the hardest things I’d ever tried to do, especially when my hand brushed against one of her breasts.
Melissa glared at me. “Don’t take too long, Sean. The thing inside you isn’t known for its patience.”
Ignoring her threat, I rose from the bed and left the room. I needed air; I needed to be away from her and my so-called family.
The summer air caressed my body as I walked down the hill toward the waterfront. This time I bypassed the benches and kept going. When I reached the piers, I climbed down the sagging, dirty steps to the small stretch of rough beach. During the day it was an unpleasant place to go; the stink from the fishing boats and lobster trawlers settled there, a miasma of dead seafood and diesel that only the ever-present seagulls seemed able to put up with.
But at this hour of the morning, with the sun still waking from its own sleep and the fishing boats resting silent in their berths, the air was pure and unsullied, washed clean by the ocean breezes. At times like this, the beach became a haven of quiet solitude for me, and many were the nights—or mornings—when I’d go there just to think.
I sat down on the damp, gravelly beach, my head spinning from all that I’d learned, while another part of me, the part Melissa had woken with her sensual touch, cried out for further attention.
I dug my fingers through the coarse sand as I considered the conflicting choices that lay before me. As much as I considered myself an outcast, I still identified with humanity at some level. My intellect and my gift for science set me apart from most other teenagers as surely as my lack of desire to play organized sports or spend my nights swilling beer behind someone’s house.
For as long as I could remember, I’d yearned not to be a part of the crowd—because, after all, the “crowd” was basically nothing more than the lowest common denominator when it came to intelligence—but something apart
from the crowd yet still able to interact with it. I accepted my differences. What I wanted was for the people around me to accept them, to recognize that what I had inside my head was every bit as valuable and important as athletic ability or movie-star looks. The fact that pretty much anyone under the age of fifty considered me a freak—dork, geek, brainiac, nerd, take your pick of insult—was what infuriated me.
So the idea of becoming a vessel of infinite power, filled with thousands of years of arcane knowledge gathered from multiple dimensions, held more than a little appeal. Much more. Even now, with the images and words of distant Leng still racing through my head like dragonflies on speed, I could already access formulae and picture intricate machines whose purposes were unfathomable but blatantly menacing. I knew that if I gave in, conceded my humanity, all the combined scientific knowledge of the Elders—and all the power that went with it—would be mine, and I would become as a god myself when compared to ordinary humans. The very idea was intoxicating; why struggle for years in the hope of discovering something new, of making a difference, when with just one simple act of surrender I could surpass the combined knowledge of the entire human race?
Your race, that other part of my mind, the human part, reminded me. Yes, my race. Did I really want to be the Destroyer, be responsible for wiping out or enslaving all of mankind? I’d never had much use for religion, but surely whatever god existed had a special place reserved in Hell for someone who’d practice genocide on such a grand scale.
Then again, how did I know there even was such a god? Maybe the Elder Gods were the only true gods.
My hand came in contact with a round rock, its surface worn smooth by eons of waves polishing it. I picked it up and tossed it as far out into the ocean as I could, trying to transfer my frustration, confusion, fear and lust into physical release so that I could consider my problem with a clear head.