by John Wilson
Jingshen’s chanting became louder:
When worlds bleed one through the other,
That which cannot is.
Kun repeated the blow. Chen thought he felt a shudder run through the ground beneath him. Kun raised the hammer a third time.
Jingshen screamed. Kun, Chen and Ting turned to stare at her. Still uttering the unearthly scream from her gaping mouth, Jingshen closed her eyes and jerked her head back violently. She threw her arms wide. Her body stiffened, and she fell backward. Chen jumped to catch her, but all he managed to grab was the lantern. Jingshen’s body stopped falling and hovered a good two feet off the stone floor. The scream faded into silence.
“You are too late.”
Chen looked up to see Shenxian smiling in the doorway.
“The ritual is not complete and never will be. The Golden Mask is mine.”
He stepped into the Chamber of the Deep and pointed at Kun, who collapsed in a heap, dropping the hammer. It clanged onto the stone floor.
Chen was about to assume his wushu attack stance when Shenxian glanced at him and said, “Stupid boy. It’s your job to hold the lantern.”
Chen froze with the lantern still in his hand. It was as if his body was no longer under his control. He could think. He could tell his muscles what to do. But they didn’t respond.
Ting leaped forward, but Shenxian waved a hand dismissively, and she fell to the floor beside Kun.
Chen fought to move, but it was hopeless. It was a struggle against himself.
Shenxian moved farther into the chamber and reached for the Golden Mask. He smiled triumphantly. But he had little time to celebrate his victory.
Showing remarkable agility for such short legs, Fu sprang at Shenxian and fastened his teeth into the high priest’s calf. Shenxian yelled and reached down to swat Fu away. In that instant, Chen felt the power that had immobilized him weaken. He dropped the lantern and launched himself into Scything the New Corn. Incredibly, this time it worked perfectly. His left leg swung around and caught Shenxian behind his knees. Chen twisted his body and aimed his right leg at Shenxian’s stomach. Flinging his arms wide, the high priest catapulted backward and landed heavily on the floor.
Jingshen sat up and shouted, “Chen, hit the Golden Mask!”
Ting reached over, grabbed the hammer beside Kun and tossed it to Chen. He caught it and moved toward the mask.
He heard Jingshen recite:
Doors that the power of the moon may open,
The power of the sun shall close.
The Golden Mask was only a couple of steps away, but Shenxian was recovering quickly. Chen felt as if he were moving through molasses. Every movement he made was harder than the one before. He managed to raise the hammer, but he was too far away to strike the mask. Then a voice in his head said, Do not fight yourself. Relax.
Chen took a deep breath and exhaled. He concentrated on releasing all the tension in his body, from his toes and fingers, along his legs and arms, into his chest and out. He moved forward. His arm came down, and the hammer struck the Golden Mask for the third time.
It was only the merest of taps, but the results were spectacular. Two fractures spread down from the mask’s forehead. They ran along either side of the nose and curved away across the cheeks, splitting the mask into three pieces that hovered above the jade pedestal.
Chen felt Jingshen move past him. He turned to see her embrace Shenxian. Their two bodies shimmered and seemed to melt into each other. They became hazy and morphed into a twisting, twirling column of gray smoke. The smoke rose and separated into three distinct clouds. The clouds moved away, and each one enveloped a piece of the broken mask. The three fragments began to glow faintly within the plumes of smoke.
As Chen watched, the glowing clouds moved off in different directions. They shrank and faded as they moved away and finally vanished into the darkness. He gasped and looked around. Emperor Kun was standing by the now bare jade pillar. Ting was getting to her feet, lifting the lantern. Fu was looking around and growling, as if searching for something else to attack. There was no sign of Jingshen or Shenxian.
A deep rumble shook the floor, causing Chen to stumble.
“You must flee,” the emperor said.
“Where did the Golden Mask go?” Chen managed to ask.
“Places where it will not be found,” Kun replied.
“And Jingshen and Shenxian?” Ting asked.
“They have gone to continue their eternal battle. Sanxingdui will be destroyed, but you have saved the world. Now you must go.”
“What about you?” Chen asked.
“This is my place,” Kun said with a smile. “I must remain here and wait. I’ll be needed when the Ivory Ark arrives.” An even stronger tremor ran though the ground. “The three of you have done well,” Kun added. “Without you, all would have been lost. I see great things in your future—yes, even you, Fu. You must all go to Jinsha. You’ll have dangers and struggles, but Jinsha will need leaders. And one far-off day, when the Ivory Ark sails through time and the world is once more threatened from beyond, the three shall return and I shall be waiting. But now it is time for you to go. Flee!”
Kun’s voice was so commanding that Chen and Ting didn’t even consider disobeying. They turned and ran up the spiral stairs. Every few steps, the stairs bucked so hard that they fell painfully to their knees, but they kept going. Fu leaped nimbly from step to step. Above the roar of the tortured earth, they could hear the bells on the great bronze tree clanging and the bronze branches breaking off and crashing down into the darkness.
After what felt like an eternity, they found themselves back in the palace. It was night, and the shaking was worse and made more unreal by the dancing shadows thrown by the wildly swinging lantern that Ting carried. The walls bulged and cracked, and large chunks fell from the ceiling as they raced through the corridors and out into the town. Moving in a staggering run through the cracked streets and between the collapsed buildings, they made it back to the city gates where their horses, although agitated, were waiting.
But the view of the mountains stopped them in their tracks. In the flashes of lightning that danced around the dust cloud above the mountains, they saw that it was still growing and struggling to take on a more concrete shape. At its base swirling images of massive ruins—shattered pillars, walls, streets and towers—formed and dissolved. None were illuminated long enough for Chen to get a good look at them, but he had the feeling that something was awfully wrong with what he could see. The geometry wasn’t right. It wasn’t…human.
Nor was the thing the dust cloud appeared to be forming. The tendrils of dust looked like tentacles. In one particularly bright lightning flash, Chen thought he could make out the rough shape of tattered wings. What really disturbed him, however, was that the red “eye” was still there, deep in the cloud, staring at him.
With shocking suddenness, the earth stopped its rumbling and shaking, and in the final flashes of lightning, the dust cloud collapsed in on itself and vanished. Chen felt his whole body sag as if something had released him. He was utterly drained, both physically and emotionally. “What was that?” he whispered to Ting.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Is it over?”
“It seems to be, but Kun said that Jingshen and Shenxian were fighting an eternal battle. I suspect they’ll return.”
“I hope not while I’m around,” Chen said fervently. Fu nuzzled his leg, and he picked up the dog. “Fu, you were awesome! We couldn’t have done anything if you hadn’t bitten Shenxian on the leg.”
“Or if you hadn’t used your wushu on him and hit the Golden Mask the third time.”
“Which I couldn’t have done if you hadn’t thrown me the hammer. Did we really save the world?”
Ting shrugged. “Maybe. But even if we did, no one will believe us.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Go to Jinsha and start again.”
“Nooooo!” Chen exclaimed
. “That means I have to get back on that horse. I don’t think my body can take it.”
Ting laughed. “You’ll get used to it. And anyway, it’s much easier if there’s no army chasing you.”
AYLFORD
THE MOON
“Do we bring the witch?” Leon asked.
“Not a witch, Leon,” Hei said in a fatherly voice. “I’ve told you—she’s a wu. Yes, bring her. Great Cthulhu will be hungry when he arrives.”
As the implication of that sank in, Howard screamed, “No! I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know what Cthulhu is. I have no idea why I’m supposed to be the key or what you think I can do, but whatever insane cult this is, I’m not a part of it.”
He kicked out wildly at Leon, catching him in the ribs and sending him flying. Then Howard lurched and made a grab for the door handle. It turned easily, but the door didn’t move. He hauled on it, but it was solid. He beat on it with his fists, but the heavy door merely absorbed the pounding. He yelled and screamed for help, praying that Brad and the rest of the football team would burst through and rescue them.
“Locked,” Hei said calmly as Leon struggled to his feet. “Your voice is no more than a whisper on the other side, so no one can hear you. There’s no way out of the media room—at least, not in this world.”
“Calling this the media room’s my little joke,” Leon explained as he pulled Howard away from the door. “People think of TV, movies and sound systems, but the media in here are different dimensions.”
Hei started across the room, and Leon pushed Howard and Cate after him. Howard took Cate’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. Neither of them heard the door open behind them.
As they walked toward the far end of the room, the floor sloped gradually before them, but the end of the room got no closer. Impenetrable shadows hovered at the limits of vision, but a faint glow, just enough to see by, emanated from the walls.
“Are you okay?” Howard whispered to Cate. It was a stupid question. How could they be okay when they were being led to meet some ancient evil from another dimension? But what else was there to say?
“This wasn’t what I had hoped would happen,” she replied out of the side of her mouth. “I thought Madison would give us a clue and we would go through on our own, not as prisoners.”
“Did you know all that stuff about Cthulhu?”
“Some. I don’t think I’ve studied the Ancient One as well as Hei has.”
“Is Hei controlling Leon?”
Before Cate had a chance to reply, Leon cut in and said sneeringly, “We’ve been waiting for you a long time.”
“Why did Hei open the portal and let the ocean in?” Cate asked.
“That was a mistake,” Leon admitted. “We thought your presence here would be enough for our purposes. My ancestor and Hei made a similar error in 1891, when they assumed that the storm and the location of Heely’s house would be enough. Now we know better. We won’t make the same mistake again. You must be part of the sacred ritual.”
Howard didn’t like the sound of that, but he and Cate walked on in silence. The room had become a sloping corridor. It was much wider than the tunnel Howard had gone to in the basement of the AIPC. Alcoves lined the walls and were filled with strange and disgusting statues and carvings. The air became colder and the smell of the sea stronger with every step. Howard could hear the rhythmic splash and rattle of waves on shingle.
At length the corridor opened up, and the group stepped out onto the beach. It was the beach from Howard’s nightmare, yet it was different. A disturbingly large moon hung in a pitch-dark sky and cast a silvery glow across the undulating surface of the black water. The island was there, a darker shape on the horizon, and the peninsula stretched out to where the white ship glimmered in the unearthly light. Howard wondered how the day could have changed from afternoon to midnight in the short journey down the corridor from the media room.
The major difference from his previous visits to the beach was the circle of monolithic standing stones that rose to his left. The stones were a deep, almost phosphorescent green and looked as if they had just risen from the depths of the ocean. Dripping strands of twisted seaweed hung from every cranny, and small crablike creatures skittered between the fronds.
The monoliths were crudely carved from a rock that contained the shadowy outlines of strange fossilized creatures. In the center of the stone circle stood a large flat-topped block of the same stone. The sides of this center block were covered with deep carvings of an astonishing array of tentacled creatures, some of which, Howard noticed, bore an alarming resemblance to the fossils in the monoliths.
About a dozen cowled figures stood around the center block, watching as Hei lead Cate and Howard across the beach. The heavy cowls and loose robes hid the creatures’ true forms. Hei waved to the figures with an open-palmed gesture, which they returned in unison.
Howard was disturbed to see that their raised hands were clawed, and their fingers webbed. As Leon gently pushed Cate and Howard into the circle of monoliths, a whistling whisper ran through the gathered figures, and they drew back. Hei pulled Cate and Howard apart. Two of the cowled figures stepped forward, grabbed Cate, dragged her over to the altar and forced her to climb onto it.
Convinced they were about to cut her heart out in some ritual sacrifice, Howard lunged forward, yelling at the top of his voice, “Don’t kill her!” Before he’d taken two steps, though, cold hands gripped his arms with surprising strength and held him firm.
“Calm down, Howie,” Leon said smoothly as he moved in front of him. “We’re not going to kill anyone. Think of your friend as more of a welcome present.”
Cate seemed remarkably calm as she took up a position on the stone, standing and facing the sea. Even when her captors left her and jumped down to the shingle, she remained still, staring intently before her.
Hei and Leon began chanting, and soon their odd refrain was taken up by the others. Together, they circled Cate and the stone three times. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were moving, but no sound came out.
When the chanting stopped, Hei turned to Howard and said, “That should keep her in place. Now you must perform your role. Time draws on, and the Ancient One is impatient.”
“Whatever it is you want me to do, I won’t,” Howard said as bravely as he could manage.
Leon laughed. “Howie, you don’t understand. You don’t have to do anything. Your power is enough. When the time is right, he’ll taste it and come.”
Leon and Hei led him out of the stone circle and down to the water’s edge. The chanting devotees followed. Howard was guided into the icy water. The moon’s reflection looked like a silver dagger pointed directly at him. At the tip of the dagger, as the water lapped above their knees, Hei and Leon dropped Howard’s arms and led the followers into a chanting circle around him. The habits of the cowled figures floated out around them like halos of a deeper black than the water. As they circled, they waved their arms in mysterious rhythmic patterns. One by one, the figures threw back their cowls to reveal the faces of the creatures from Howard’s dream. The gill slits on their necks pulsed rhythmically in time to the chanting.
Howard no longer felt any restraints, but his arms and legs wouldn’t move. It was as if his entire body couldn’t be bothered responding to the messages his brain was sending.
After a number of revolutions, Hei, Leon and their loathsome companions retreated to the shore. Howard couldn’t turn to look, but he heard the stones rattle as they stamped back and forth in some arcane pattern. Their chanting was rising in volume, and there was an urgent expectancy to it that sent shivers down Howard’s spine.
He was utterly helpless, and yet he felt almost serene. What was happening to him and Cate should have been sending his mind into screaming insanity, but he was oddly calm. He felt fear and dread at what the chanting might be summoning, but it was distant, like the memory of a weight he had carried and since put down.
As Howard stood i
n the water and stared at the sky, he wondered why the moon was so large. It was the same old friendly face, yet it loomed over him, threatening to crash down and crush him. He remembered learning in school that the moon’s orbit was moving away from the earth, so the moon looked smaller over time. Did that mean that whatever dimension he was in was billions of years in the past? He wished he could talk to Cate about all this.
Howard snapped back to awareness when he realized that the chanting and rattling on the beach behind him had given way to an eerie silence. He felt something brush his leg. Unable to move his head, he swiveled his eyes down and stared at the water in front of him. There were flashes of silver beneath the surface. Small humped backs broke into the air all around him. Some finned thing that looked like no fish Howard had ever seen emerged from the water and wriggled frantically for a second before flopping back beneath the surface. A large jellyfish-like animal, trailing bright red streamers, pulsed and wobbled past. The surface of the sea had become a roiling, seething mass of panicked marine life—all of it headed for the beach. Creatures brushed and bumped Howard’s legs and crawled and slithered over his feet, completely heedless of him other than as an obstacle to their flight to the shore. Everything that could swim, crawl, wriggle or slide was escaping to the land.
Howard raised his eyes to the horizon. The island had grown. It was larger and nearer. In the middle distance, a vast whalelike creature with long toothy jaws breached, twisted in the air and crashed back down in a fountain of phosphorescent spray. For an instant Howard thought this forbidding predator was what all the other creatures were running from, but then he realized that it too was escaping in terror. From what? Howard had no idea. He knew only one thing, and that replaced his sense of calm rationality with a mind-numbing terror.
Whatever had been summoned was coming!
AYLFORD
THE ISLAND
Howard shuddered as larger creatures collided with him, and slimy things tried to crawl up his legs. Along the shore, some immense dweller of the deep beached itself in the shallow water in thrashing panic. The horizon was alive with bolts of lightning that flared down from cloudless skies and hissed in the churning water. Howard’s mind screamed out for him to run, but Hei’s magic had fixed him in place, a helpless spectator to the doom he was involuntarily summoning.