Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 4 Rev1

by Price, Robert M.

  “Where is it?” Cold said again, and this time the buzzing intonation held a threatening note. The barrel of the automatic tilted and St. Cyprian found himself staring down the black muzzle.

  He swallowed and said, “Well…I did try.”

  Cold stiffened as a feminine arm slithered around the back of the chair he occupied and caught his throat. A second hand, clutching a diminutive pepperbox derringer slid around the other side and the barrel of the tiny pistol jabbed Cold in one cheek. ‘Move and you’ll be singing out the side of your mouth,’ a young woman’s voice said.

  Cold stiffened. “What?” he hissed. He sounded less surprised than offended.

  “My assistant, what,” St. Cyprian said. He reached out and carefully prised the automatic from Cold’s unresisting hand. “Indrid Cold, meet Ebe Gallowglass, Ms. Gallowglass to you. You took your sweet time, Ms. Gallowglass.”

  “Thought you had it handled, didn’t I?” Gallowglass said, peering over the top of the chair, “Should have known better.” She was dressed like some hybrid of a cinematic street urchin and a Parisian street-apache, with a battered newsboy cap on her head.

  As St. Cyprian had served Carnacki, so Gallowglass served him. And in time, the office would pass to Gallowglass, though neither of them had discussed the inevitable as yet. Frankly, St. Cyprian found the contemplation of his almost certain demise to be far too ghoulishly enthralling, so he was happy to avoid it when possible. Gallowglass seemed content to oblige.

  “Cheers for that,” St. Cyprian said. He sat back in his chair, Cold’s pistol pointing at its owner. Cold’s face rippled unpleasantly, and his gloved fingers bit like talons into the chair’s armrests. “Now, let’s see if we can’t find out what’s what here, shall we?”

  “Give me the cipher, Mr. St. Cyprian and you will not be harmed,” Cold said.

  “Oh I think not, Mr. Cold. No, I think that the ‘cipher’ as you call it, will be staying with me. You see, I’ve rather been expecting a visit like this any day now.” St. Cyprian smiled genially. “Good of you to let me know that I was on the right track, what?”

  “You do have it,” Cold said.

  “What—you mean the journals of Sir Edwin Drood? Of course I do, old boy. I am the Royal Occultist, as you yourself said.” St. Cyprian took a last drag from his cigarette and then stubbed it out. “I wonder if you’re the same Indrid Cold that Carnacki had a run in with during that affair with Professor Challenger and John Silence some years before the War. You were working for the same firm at the time I believe.”

  “Then you know what danger you are in. Give me the cipher,” Snow said.

  “What’s he going on about?” Gallowglass said, looking at St. Cyprian.

  “A diary,” St. Cyprian said, “Edwin Drood’s diary, written in a code known only to three men, two of whom are dead.”

  “And the third,” Gallowglass asked.

  “Indisposed,” St. Cyprian said.

  Cold laughed. It was a horrible sound, like bones rattling. “He is running, and the hounds are on his trail. Give me the cipher.”

  “Awful demanding for a fellow on the wrong end of a peppy,” Gallowglass said.

  Cold’s face twitched unpleasantly. St. Cyprian fancied he saw something bulge briefly against the front of Cold’s buttoned coat. “Why do you want it?”

  “You know why,” Cold said.

  “Well there’s the rub, Mr. Cold…I don’t. I’ve managed to translate less than a third of it, and that only because I’m passing fluent in Polari and the ancient Naacal alphabet. Which is why I’m glad to see you—or one of your sort at least; I think you might be able to fill me in on what I’m missing.”

  “I did not come to answer your questions,” Cold said.

  “Of all the cheek,” Gallowglass murmured, digging the pepperbox into Cold’s cheek for emphasis. Cold didn’t flinch.

  “No, you came to get the journals—why?” St. Cyprian said, leaning forward. “What do they contain that you need? And why now; they’ve been here for almost twenty years. Twenty years of opportunity, and not once, not even once has one of your lot set foot inside this house. Granted, it’s an intimidating edifice I’ll give you that, but why not make the attempt during the War, when it was unoccupied?”

  “We did not require the cipher,” Cold said, with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

  “But now you do. Why?”

  Cold smiled. It was a ghastly expression, equal parts idiot and rictus, and it revealed an impressive Hadrian’s Wall of too-white teeth. “Old debts,” he breathed.

  And then, with inhuman speed, he moved. A shoulder rotated at an impossible angle, catching Gallowglass in the face. She stumbled back, the derringer going off. The shot plucked the glasses from Cold’s face even as he lunged to his feet, hands reaching for St. Cyprian. Cold crashed into him and the chair toppled backwards even as St. Cyprian’s finger tightened on the Colt’s trigger. The automatic bucked again and again and Cold twitched. Nonetheless, his fingers fastened on St. Cyprian’s throat with crushing force.

  Things moved beneath the flesh of Cold’s face, small things. His eyes were empty pits, and he chuckled as the automatic punctured him again. “S-sword,” St. Cyprian gurgled, flailing at Cold’s hands.

  “No, cipher,” Cold said.

  “No, sword,” Gallowglass snarled. Cold whirled up and around, releasing St. Cyprian, but not quick enough as the sword that had been hanging over the mantle sank into the side of his neck with a sound like a cleaver chopping into a side of beef. Cold rolled away, making a noise like a cat run over in the street, his thin fingers clawing at the blade. Gallowglass was jerked after him and she planted a foot on his chest. With a grunt, she jerked the sword free. No blood coated it. Instead, a clear, foul smelling liquid dripped from the edge of the leaf-shaped blade. Cold croaked and grabbed her ankle.

  St. Cyprian grabbed his wrist. Cold’s face writhed horribly in the fire-light. “Get the Zanthu Box,” St. Cyprian barked, trying to hold the flopping, croaking man on the floor, “Third shelf, past the canopic jars!”

  Gallowglass backed away, still holding the sword. St. Cyprian settled his weight on Cold, trying to hold him down, pinning his wrists. The black eyes glared hatefully up at him as white squirming things dropped from the wound in Cold’s neck. More of the things crawled from the bullet holes in Cold’s torso, wriggling across the black suit.

  Cold’s strength was incredible. Even flat on his back as he was, he made it hard for St. Cyprian to hold him down. Each limb seemed to jerk and thrash independent of the whole, and things moved beneath his coat, thrashing in agitation. It was like fighting a bag full of snakes. “The Zanthu Box, Ms. Gallowglass! In your own time, please,” St. Cyprian shouted desperately.

  The sword came down point first, pinning one of Cold’s scrabbling hands to the floor. Gallowglass held an ornate and odd-looking box under one arm and she shoved it towards St. Cyprian, who took it gratefully and flipped it open. Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned the box upside down and emptied out its contents onto Cold’s chest.

  Cold stiffened, and emitted a shrill, steam-whistle sound as the chunks of raw stone thumped onto his chest. Then he flopped back, unmoving. St. Cyprian rose to his feet, still clutching the box. “Bullets don’t work; blades don’t work; but hit him with a rock…” Gallowglass said.

  “I’d hardly call the Mnar fragments ‘rocks’, but yes. There’s a tool for every occasion, Ms. Gallowglass. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “And you’d do well to remember to lock the door so people can’t walk in with guns,” Gallowglass said sourly.

  “I’m certain I locked the door,” St. Cyprian said.

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “I’m certain that I locked it then as well.” St. Cyprian shook himself and handed the box to Gallowglass. “Put this back, and then get some tea, eh? We’re in for the night, I think.”

  He looked down at Cold. The creature was as close to dead as it
was going to come, but some vitality yet remained. A flicker of hatred and frustration passed through the staring eyes. For a moment, St. Cyprian was tempted to pull the wax mask from its face, and look beneath. “The soul of the devil-bought hastens not from his charnel clay but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws,” he murmured and made the third sign of Hloh Ritual.

  Leaving his guest where he lay, he went to the bookshelves and traced the spines with his finger until he found a collected copy of Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Drood had been a man for the public, allowing various penny-a-word writers adapt his adventures for a small sum. Dickens and Stoker had availed themselves of his anecdotes, as had Marsh and Boothby. Stoker had replaced Drood with a Dutchman, and Boothby had added an unfortunate glamour to an otherwise monstrous individual in his, as well as excising Drood completely.

  It was ironic, then, that the one book where Drood’s name was prominent was the one that had the least to do with any of his actual experiences. He flipped open the book to reveal a hollowed out section containing a small, battered moleskin notebook. It was an obvious hiding place, but that was the point.

  The moleskin was a puzzle of a hundred pages. He had flipped through it often; Carnacki had left it alone. Drood’s disappearance had hit him hard. St. Cyprian knew how his mentor had felt. He closed his eyes, trying not to think of Ypres and the sound of a body falling and voice forever stilled, mid-sentence. He took a deep breath and opened the notebook.

  Drood had been something of an experimental scientist by all accounts. He had devised a number of apparatuses for use in occult research, and had been fond of tinkering. That had gotten Drood into trouble more than once, and it was what had brought him to the attentions of his predecessor, Aylmer Beamish. He flipped a page, and studied the rough sketch of a crystal egg that Drood had purchased in a grimy little shop near Seven Dials. The egg was gone now, vanished at the same time that Drood himself had disappeared from a locked garret room in Soho, leaving behind only walls covered in chalk-scrawled mathematics and a primordial stink more suited to a steamy jungle than a rented flat.

  And, of course, the notebook; Carnacki had referred to it as the ‘Pnakotic Puzzle’, when he spoke of it, which wasn’t often. Carnacki thought that Drood had been punching above his weight, and St. Cyprian agreed.

  It was all conjecture on Drood’s part—a vast, shadowy conspiracy; a determined effort to infiltrate the human race at every stage of its evolution by alien minds from the deep past. Carnacki had encountered the watchdogs of the conspiracy only once, but that had been enough to put him off. Men—beings—like Cold had made a concentrated effort to wipe out any hard evidence. They had missed the Hoccleve translations and the Sigsand Manuscripts, among others, but it was like trying to piece together a puzzle while missing more than half of the whole. Even the Book of Eibon wasn’t much help.

  “When was it you made your deal, I wonder?” he said, looking at Cold. “At what point did your interests and theirs coincide? Why help them, knowing what you must know about them, about their plans…professional sympathies, perhaps?”

  None of that mattered. Not really, though the urge to know was hard to shake. The notebook had been dropped through the letter box several months after Drood’s disappearance, and in subsequent months, envelopes carrying additional pages followed. The envelopes were of a standard type, but were dry, brittle things, as if they had been stored someplace dry and cool for decades before being sent. No postmarks or other identifying features, save for a faint tropical miasma and Drood’s spidery handwriting. Then, all at once, they had stopped coming. Carnacki, perhaps thinking better of it, had never sought to find out where they’d been coming from. He simply filed them away and pretended that they didn’t exist. As strategies went, it wasn’t a bad one. A lot of trouble could be avoided if one simply ignored unpleasant mysteries. But now it seemed to have grown teeth and sunk them into St. Cyprian’s rear.

  Gallowglass came back into the sitting room. “I’ve seen to the locks on the door and the windows. Figured out what he was after yet?” she said, stepping unconcernedly over Cold’s limp form.

  “No,” St. Cyprian said. “But I have my suspicions.”

  “Have anything to do with the third man?” Gallowglass said, righting the chair Cold had vacated and flopping down into it. She had replaced the derringer with a heavy Webley-Fosberry. The big revolver had a Seal of Solomon carved into the butt, and she cracked it open with practiced ease, examining the ammunition cylinder. St. Cyprian glanced at her. “Drood,” she said, for clarification. “He’s the one who vanished right? I figure it was him, because only Beamish and Carnacki might have known how to crack the cipher, the one being Drood’s boss and the other being his assistant.”

  “And both of them are dead, yes,” St. Cyprian said, frowning. “Thank you for the reminder.”

  “Just doing my part,” Gallowglass said. “How long are we going to leave him there?”

  “Not long,” St. Cyprian said, sinking to his haunches beside Cold. Carefully, he plucked aside most of the Mnar fragments, laying them close to hand. Cold began to stir immediately. The stones could disrupt certain sorts of magic, the way lead could block out radiation. Cold, for all that he looked human, was anything but. An ancient thing, steeped in a centuries-deep stew of sorcery, the stones could cripple him as easily as any other eldritch predator.

  St. Cyprian held up the moleskin as Cold blinked. “Why do you want this?”

  “Gggive…” Cold gurgled.

  “He’s a persistent bugger, I’ll say that for him,” Gallowglass said, snapping the Webley shut.

  “Quiet,” St. Cyprian said, not looking at her. “You’re not getting this. At least not until I know why you want it. The quicker you tell me, the quicker we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

  “Let’s just bury him in Highgate with a few of those stones to keep him quiet. Let the grave-worms have at it,” Gallowglass said.

  “Bit late for that,” St. Cyprian said. He looked down at Cold. “Besides which, he’s not alone. If he vanishes, the others will come calling. Between the Tcho-Tchos, the Brotherhood of the Golden Chrysanthemum and all the rest, we already have too many people after our scalps as it is, without adding Cold’s bunch. No, we are going to reach a compromise.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Then we bury him in Highgate,” St. Cyprian said harshly. “Do you understand me, chum? Tell me why Drood’s journal is so important.”

  Cold’s face twitched and bulged as if he were trying to spit the words out. “D-date,” he croaked finally, “T-time, location an-and date.”

  St. Cyprian blinked in confusion for a moment before the meaning behind Cold’s words dawned on him. He looked in wonder at the moleskin. “Well, how about that?” he said softly.

  “What?” Gallowglass said, alert.

  “It never made any sense before. I couldn’t figure out what the numbers meant, or why they were listed, but he’s right. Of course he’s right.” He shook his head and slapped the notebook into his palm. He looked at Gallowglass. “Edwin Drood is coming back, and these pages tell us where and when.”

  “It must be soon, if they came looking for it now,” Gallowglass said.

  “Yes, I’d wager they had some idea as to the when, but they need the where.” He flipped open the moleskin, flipping through the pages. “Drood wanted proof of the conspiracy, hard evidence; who he planned to show it to, I can’t say, but he was determined. The parts of this I’ve translated implied that he’d figured out how to reverse engineer whatever process was involved in the requisite chronological mental juxtaposition.”

  “The chrono-mental what-now,” Gallowglass asked.

  “Did I not mention that? They switch brains with us,” St. Cyprian said idly. “Similar to demonic possession; in fact Carnacki had a theory that it—never mind; Drood is coming back and I have a feeling that he’s bringing some form of hell with him.” He looked down at Cold, and a su
dden, unpleasant thought occurred to him. “Your…partners could have handled him easily enough if he reached their time, their place of power. So why send you? Why even come here? They could have easily handled Drood on their end. Unless…”

  Cold chuckled weakly. “Not…Drood.”

  St. Cyprian dropped to his haunches. “What is it? What else is coming?” He batted aside the remaining Mnar fragments and jerked Cold up by his lapels. Cold, freed from the binding power of the stones, grabbed St. Cyprian’s wrists tightly. Gallowglass cursed and levelled her revolver, but Cold made no move to harm the other man.

  “My pistol, please,” Cold said.

  “What’s coming?” St. Cyprian said again, almost pleadingly.

  “As you said, hell,” Cold said, rising to his feet. St. Cyprian followed him. Cold straightened his tie. “They are not as malevolent as you imagine. Otherwise, you—we—would have been driven into the audient void centuries ago, to be replaced by purer minds. But they recognized our intelligence and chose to spare us, in their way. Drood found that out, almost too late.”

  “Is it Drood who’s coming back?”

  “Yes. Better to ask, why is he coming back now?” Cold said, reclaiming his automatic from St. Cyprian.

  “You said the hounds were on his trail…” St. Cyprian said.

  “I am and we are. He did not tell them where he was going. He knew that they feared it. They feared what he had found. But he would not be dissuaded.”

  “So they contacted you to—what?—help him? Kill him?” St. Cyprian said.

  “To do what is necessary,” Cold said. He held out a hand. “The cipher, please,” he said.

  St. Cyprian hesitated. He looked at Gallowglass, who shrugged. With a sigh, St. Cyprian passed the moleskin to Cold. He had no reason to trust the creature, save instinct. It had always nagged at him that the group that Cold represented had never sought to strike back at Carnacki, after their initial encounter. Perhaps ‘live and let live’ worked both ways.

  Cold scanned the notebook, his eyes moving oddly. Then, abruptly, he snapped the book shut and grunted. “Here,” he said, in an almost offended tone.