Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 4 Rev1

by Price, Robert M.

  “Bah!’ spat the self-styled Supreme Soviet. “You are but filth! I shall clean things up!” He took a deep breath, seemingly undaunted by the dust of decay he had inhaled, and ejected the tainted air like water from a fire hose, scattering what was left of Asche farther and wider, forcing it through every available fissure and gap. It would take some time before the haunter of the subway labyrinths could reconstitute himself to return to the battle.

  Hurst stood motionless as if passively waiting his turn to die. But in fact he was trying desperately to clear his mind, an almost impossible task in the circumstances, in order to make sense of a kind of signal or scent he had begun to feel on the astral plane, where a part of him always cocked an open ear. At first he thought it was his proximity to what remained of the slain ghouls, though he was not touching them. But then he began to suspect he was hearing the distant, as if deeply buried, screams of a great many souls of the dead. His eyes scanned the close space, barely noticing Scheiber clumsily stooping to take a look at the waning Operator 13. But all he could see was the manifestly vital Supreme Soviet, who was now staring at him. Hurst thought momentarily of a pitcher on the mound, winding up for a throw. He should have but seconds left before joining the ranks of his familiar dead.

  The shabbily armored Scheiber was now pacing, waiting for his power pack to

  regain its charge, panicking and praying the longer it took. But just as the Stalinist Goliath was aiming his next punch at the seemingly paralyzed Hurst, a familiar click told Scheiber that the recharging process was complete, and, thinking that there just might be a God after all, he unleashed a mighty blitzkrieg upon their tormentor.

  His hunch had proved correct: for all his invulnerability to physical impacts, the Supreme Soviet could be affected by raw electricity simply because electricity had made him what he was. Clearly the Russian must be a product of the unnatural experiments that took place here beneath the surface, and his abilities must have been enhanced and magnified by means, among others, of electrical manipulation. If he had become impervious to the effects of electrical power, he could not have benefitted from the procedure.

  The giant crashed to the floor, inert. As Hurst and Scheiber stooped to examine the great body, they could see he had suffered no superficial damage from his collapse: no blood, no shattered teeth. He breathed, but he looked to have given up the ghost, a marionette with the strings cut. Scheiber spoke tentatively.

  “I think I, ah, short-circuited him, or overloaded him, but I admit I’m only guessing. I don’t know if he has expired. If not, I cannot say how long this dormancy will last. Perhaps he is like my battery, drained again. I only hope we may have time to attend to the wounds of…”

  Hurst had heard none of this, for the moment he had touched the supine form to examine their foe he felt a great jolt, psychical, not physical in nature. It was both familiar and unprecedented, the sense of being in communion with the dead, yet magnified many times. And then he recognized the voices. They were the ones whose desperate cries had reached him, but dimly, minutes ago. It was clear now, but it was like hearing the voices of trapped miners through a pipe or an air shaft. He could not distinguish words or individual personalities, but the general import quickly became clear. And at once he knew the origin of this man-monster called the Supreme Soviet.

  In the chamber that lay beyond the steel barrier the superhuman had breached with nothing more than his diamond-hard fists, the Soviet had been fashioned by a nightmare science worse than any fabled sorcery. Using blasphemous secrets that had seeped down the centuries, Nazi savants, under the orders of their new masters, the Soviet occupiers, had managed to harvest carefully chosen body parts from their limitless supply of human detritus, and to combine them into a titan energized by the trapped vitality of all the poor victims whose organs and tissues now adorned an artificial skeleton. Subsequent examination would reveal that the body parts were imperfectly matched, the fingerprints on one hand not corresponding to those on the other.

  The Deadman Detective now read the thoughts of hundreds of dead men. The superior physical form lying at the feet of himself and the still-lecturing Scheiber was itself a concentration camp of souls! And the souls within were suffering in death as much as they had in life.

  Hurst interrupted Scheiber, urgently trying to convey his weird tidings in as credible a form as he might. He knew he and his comrades might have precious little time before the mighty-thewed Frankenstein’s creature revived.

  They had no time at all.

  The Supreme Soviet rose uneasily to his feet, looking about him groggily. Hurst and Scheiber naturally supposed he was reorienting himself after the massive shock he had absorbed. And they looked on helplessly, knowing more than ever that they had no more defense, not even any stalling tactics.

  The titan’s eyes cleared. He looked upon the expectant mortals as if he had not seen them before. When he moved, he appeared unsteady on his feet, as if trying to gain his sea legs. Or like an amputee struggling to become accustomed to clumsy artificial limbs. There was no longer any air of threat about the tall, crew-cut, blond-haired form, and so the armored scientist and the reader of the dead found themselves relaxing, having to remind themselves to remain vigilant. For whatever was transpiring before them must surely prove to be no less bizarre than what they had experienced hitherto.

  And the newly awakened man began to speak.

  The first thing his hearers noticed was that his thick Russian accent was gone, replaced by one whose provenance they could not recognize. Then his peculiar speech trailed off as he began instead to snap his fingers, two or three on each hand, producing an effect similar to castanets. Then this, too, subsided, and human speech resumed.

  “I am sorry. It is difficult at first. Your mode. We are so very different in our mode. But I believe it is coming easier.”

  Behind his sweat-slick face plate, Scheiber’s haggard features registered blank surprise. The finger-snapping gave him the hint.

  “You… you come from the past, the far past. You come from the people of Yith! Is that not so?”

  “It is so,” the strange accent answered. “You are the Scheiber. You remember too well. Too much.”

  “So it is true: you do keep track of us. I thought you must, in case your memory blocks fail.”

  The usurped form of the Supreme Soviet made to click its fingers once more but caught itself and spoke: “We have never perfected that art.”

  Hurst spoke. “But what brings you here? Have you come to reclaim Herr Scheiber?”

  “No. For then we should have taken his mind as we did before. In watching over him, we saw what was happening here. We saw something we had never observed before—even as you did just now. A crowd of minds contained in a single physical unit. This we knew we must study, and so we have displaced those minds and placed each one in a separate conical body, the ones familiar to the Scheiber one. When we have learned from them all that we can, we shall allow them to disperse into the Gulf of Unknowing where they should have gone but for the efforts of these experimenters you seek.”

  The possessed figure stopped, his attention drawn to the strange sight of a vortex of dust swirling and condensing a few feet away.

  Scheiber took the opportunity to speak up again. “But you want to learn something here too, am I right? That is why you have occupied this body?”

  “That is so, you Scheiber, you Hurst. Something done here has poisoned the dead. The dead who are past poisoning. We must know what this is. We will now help each other to discover it. But first, I shall see to your fallen comrade.”

  Chapter 6. The Transition of Mr. Rib

  By Pete Rawlik

  But it was not the enigmatic Operator 13 that the former Supreme Soviet went to aid. The OSS Agent needed no help, for he rose from the ground where he had fallen and where his blood had pooled, not with fatal wounds, but rather scratches that were quickly fading into scars. He smiled and explained.

  “There was a man, a doctor, a
n American who worked for the Germans. He learned many things about life, and death, and how to cheat both. His treatments occasionally come in useful.” There was more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

  The collective man knelt beside Mr Rib, the ghoul whose neck had been broken. His mismatched eyes grew wide and then began to glow, the air became electric and time seemed to slow. There was a spark, a blue ray erupted from his eyes and danced over the fallen carrion eater. The body convulsed, spasmed, and then screamed in agony, in a manner that only ghouls crawling through ancient catacombs can. It was a scream to wake the dead, and it tore through the living and left them on the verge of terror.

  Yet as the echoes of his cry died, Mr. Rib’s voice rose out of his throat and in a sobbing, pain-wracked voice begged: “What have you done? Dead I was dead. Feeder no more I was food!” The ghoul took a deep breath. “I stink, not of the dead but of death!” He rose from the ground and pushed the patchwork man away and then dashed to his fallen brother Mr. Spleen. “I won’t let you defile him as you have me!” With a swipe of his claw Mr. Rib split open the other ghoul’s skull and then buried his muzzle into the bloody gore within.

  The others turned away, but Hurst watched and listened as the spirit of Mr. Spleen became something small and dark that fluttered briefly around Mr. Rib. It found a perch above the feasting ghoul’s eye and then slowly sank into the flesh below. For an instant Hurst could see them, the thousands of memories that had been devoured by Mr. Rib, and been preserved there, and he realized that he and the ghoul were more alike than he would have thought possible. “Mr. Rib . . .”

  Whatever Hurst was going to say the ghoul waved it away. “Mr. Rib, no I cannot be Mr. Rib. Mr. Rib is gone. A new name yes, I must be new, I must be what I have become. I must be Mr. Dead.”

  From the shadowy tunnels came a chorus of mad gibbering and the scrambling of dozens of claws. Dust fell from the ceiling and piles of debris vibrated from the wave of whatever was coming toward them. The impromptu team steeled itself for the arrival of this new threat, save the Night Mayor who was still trying to gather the myriad parts of himself.

  “Gentlemen, I appreciate that you are all possessed of some skill that sets you apart, and perhaps above, other men. But my senses tell me that when it comes to the horde coming for us discretion is the better part of valor.”

  Scheiber looked at the hazy image that was still putting itself together and then at Operator 13. “What did he say?”

  The agent chuckled, holstered his guns, and moved toward one of the tunnels, from which there were no sounds emanating. “I think he said we should run!”

  As Operator 13 moved down the hall at top speed the others fell in behind him, and the Yithian occupying the Supreme Soviet wondered why.

  The spy enlightened him. “When the United States was building the atomic bomb, the scientists explored a variety of directions. Some failed almost immediately, others were promising but ultimately proved unreliable and were shelved. The Soviets, when they developed their superman, faced the same problem. Unfortunately, many proved resistant to liquidation.”

  “I am sorry. Your language, the colloquialisms, they are difficult to understand. What is it you are trying to say?”

  “The things coming after us are rejects, prototypes in development of the Supreme Soviet, and many of them share the same powers and resistance to injury that your body does. Put more simply, they are very difficult to kill.”

  Chapter 7. The Lord of Benevolent Order

  by Rick Lai

  “We don't have much time before those things attack,” said Scheiber. “Yithian, we need answers. You claim to be ignorant of the force behind these animated corpses, but I know your devious race. You're withholding information. You need to fully trust us.”

  “You're correct, mortal,” answered the being possessing the Supreme Soviet's body. “I wasn't originally sure of our adversary's true nature until my suspicions were confirmed through this host body's eyes. Ask me your questions.”

  “One of the living corpses mentioned a 1942 expedition authorized by Admiral Karl Dönitz of the German navy,” recalled Hurst, “What do you know about it?”

  “Other Yithian operatives in this time period were able to learn the truth about this Nazi endeavor. My race had established two great cities on your planet, The first was in Australia, but we also needed to harness the energy of a magnetic pole. Our second city was constructed in your Arctic Circle.”

  “That makes no sense!” interrupted Operator 13. “Why go north? If you were already in Australia, the South Pole would have been the logical place to erect your citadel.”

  “The South Pole was already controlled by our entrenched rivals, the star-headed Q'Hrell. It was impossible to dislodge them. Like R'lyeh and Mu, a cataclysm submerged our polar metropolis. The ruins of our city rest on the ocean floor. The Nazis discovered its location. Dönitz sent a submarine there. Divers searched for our ancient records, but they retrieved something more. Beneath the ruins, they found a comatose creature we had imprisoned.”

  “Great Yahweh!” swore Scheiber. “One of those whistling horrors!”

  “No, something far more dangerous than the blind polyps. In a remote corner of the universe exists a planet called Yekub. Its worm-like denizens had mastered a technology of mind transfer similar to our own. Their goal was the destruction of all intelligent life in the universe. The Yekubites sent cubes to remote planets that swapped minds of the local inhabitants with members of their own race. Eventually the entire planet's original dwellers would be displaced by the Yekubites. On Yekub, the captive minds would be exterminated.

  “One of those cubes landed on Earth near our polar city. Before we were able to contain its power, the cube transferred many Yithian minds to Yekub. We slew the transplanted Yekubites in their new bodies, but the cube was impossible to destroy. We quarantined it from any future contact with our race.

  “On their own planet, the Yekubites wondered why the cube was no longer functioning. One of their scientists experimented with teleportation. This savant became determined to investigate the cube's fate. He used the cube as a conduit to teleport himself to Earth. We captured him. Rendered comatose, the Yekubite was incarcerated in an underground prison. When an earthquake ravaged our polar city, the Yekubite and the cube became lost to us. The Dönitz expedition found the creature, but not the device.”

  “What the blazes does this have to do with the Auschwitz experiments?” demanded Hurst.

  “The slumbering Yekubite was brought to Auschwitz by the Nazis. The Soviets were able to revive the alien when they took over this extermination camp. The Yekubite is now even more dangerous. He can control others telepathically.”

  “How did he gain such an ability?” asked Scheiber,

  “Other Yithian agents throughout the galaxies have assembled a partial picture of what has transpired on Yekub. The planet has a new ruler. This tyrant has found a way to project his intelligence into every mind of the Yekubite race. The dictator has created an enormous collective intelligence dominated by his own personality. This entity doesn't destroy minds of other species like his subjects did in the past. He absorbs entire races into his vast mind. We suspect that he utilizes mind-melding machinery based on the cellular structure of the targeted race.”

  “Are you sure this despot is a Yekubite?” asked Asche.

  “We know that he is not a Yekubite. He is an alien mind too powerful for the Yekubites to tame. This overlord claims to be a member of the most dangerous race in the universe! A race even greater than my own!”

  “He can only be one being,” concluded Asche grimly. “Azathoth. The most formidable of the Great Old Ones.”

  “Legend has it that space devils captured Azathoth and ripped his brain from his body,” declared Mr. Death. “Azathoth was left an idiot as his mind was scattered across the stars.”

  “At least part of his mind must have been ensnared on Yekub,” argued Asche.

  “We are
no longer alone,” warned the Yithian possessing the Supreme Soviet. “The rejects have found us! And their Master is with them!”

  A horde of misshapen humanoids stood poised to attack Asche and his allies. Towering over them was a pallid thing over twelve feet in height. Asche first thought it was a worm. Closer scrutiny revealed its shape to be more like a centipede with tendril-like limbs. A cultured voice issued from the monstrous intruder. It spoke flawless English.

  “There is no reason to oppose me, my friends. I am not your enemy. I am the Lord of Benevolent Order.”

  “Spare us your lies, Azathoth,” replied Asche.

  “Azathoth? That is not my name.”

  “Then you are another of the Old Ones,” deduced the Yithian. “Only an Old One could have conquered Yekub.”

  A laugh issued from the Yekubite. “Your form is human, but I can sense your true nature! You are an egotistical Yithian! How proud your people are! Great Race indeed! My race is greater than yours! Even greater than the Old Ones!”

  “This can't be!” insisted the Yithian. “Surely my people would have encountered such a race in all our travels.”

  “You did indeed! But your pride caused your kind to dismiss us as insignificant. My race is the final stage in the evolution of the universe. I am of the race of Man! Mankind was! Mankind is! Mankind shall be!”

  “You can't be one of us!” yelled Scheiber.

  “I was born George Campbell in Canada. I was a mere university professor until stumbling upon a cube during a vacation trip. The cube transferred my mind to Yekub, and it was child's play to conquer that world in my new body.”

  “You are worse than the original Yekubites!” hissed the Yithian. “They merely killed other races. You destroy their individuality by imposing your own rigid conformity.”

  “I share with my subjects the vast knowledge of the universe—a knowledge jealously guarded by you Yithians. When I merged my mind with the Yekubites, the union extended to their imprisoned kinsman on Earth. Once the Soviets awakened him, I was able to view my native world once more. What I saw appalled me! Another World War has ravaged Earth. The tensions between the Soviet Union and its former allies indicate that peace will be of brief duration. With the creation of the atomic bomb, the next conflict has the potential to devastate Earth. My benevolent rule is the only option to prevent mankind's annihilation.”