Moshe heard his voice, heard his thoughts. Moshe recognized the girl's name. This Tamara was the Ghost's daughter.
“איפה היא"
“Where is she?” he asked the young blond boy.
Dante pointed as his mind reached out in that same direction. Moshe followed his finger, followed his thoughts, across miles of warped ocean to the corpse-city of R'lyeh. Dante reached his mind out, hoping to find Tamara safe, but instead, his mind met the Amber-symbiot's.
Moshe and Dante remote viewed as one mind, their psychic empathy fully engaged when they contacted Amber's mind.
Moshe recognized the taint that was The Whisperer and withdrew. Krulgh was there! Moshe sensed It. Krulgh was where Tamara was!
“אלוהים יברך אותנו. היא נמצאת בסכנה גדולה"
“She is in great danger!”
Moshe would never had dreamed of confronting Krulgh. But the monstrous alien Star-Spawn was upon the young girl! Moshe's eyes blazed like the bright embers of a dying fire as he levitated off the ship's deck. Then, in a bright snap of light the strange black man teleported away.
Like Moshe, Dante too sensed the taint of The Whisperer, but where Moshe recognized the taint and withdrew, Dante did not, remaining fully engaged and entranced in the Amber-symbiot's mind.
He sensed Amber's inferno rage – raw and blistering. A blind rage that could only be appeased by the death of billions! But Dante's empathy was tenacious. He saw this rage for the byproduct it was. Beneath her mind's storming exterior Dante saw it. Sorrow. Loneliness. A devastating and crippling pain. He reached further into her mind...
* * *
Tamara had given up trying to walk on the alien stones of R'lyeh. Its perspective played tricks with her eyes. Certain gentle obtuse angles acted surprisingly acute, like its gravity worked on a different angle – but only sometimes. There was no obvious pattern or rhyme or reason. At any rate, Tamara didn't have the inclination or luxury to figure it out. She levitated down what appeared as some outré downtown boulevard, its towering office-buildings and skyscrapers massive stone monoliths, menhirs, and hieroglyphic covered upright sarcophagi. The street beneath her weaved and wove between the alien architecture, covered in the corpse-city's strange oozing-slime.
It was quiet. Far too quiet. At times in the haunting silence Tamara swore she could hear the slime ever so quietly rippling, as the sunlight made flecks within the slime reflective and iridescent.
She was trying to remember what her mother, the Remnant-Marie, had told her.
“...Your natural abilities do not affect water – they create gravity wells...”
“Like when I crushed Nyarlathotep's amulet,” she thought to herself. But Tamara's train of thought was broken as the slime-coated street rippled with a wave, like some invisible spatula was peeling it away and off the ancient stones!
The Amber-symbiot peered around the corner, the ooze retreating from her very presence. Twenty-feet in the air, she half hovered, half walked on her invisible telekinetic tentacles. For a moment Tamara was surprised. Those telekinetic tentacles carried Amber across the stones, pressed themselves on the enclosing walls of the alien Cyclopean monoliths, and waved chaotically above her like some tormented sentient dreadlocks. She could sense the energy surge in the monster before her!
Tamara violently made a downward pushing motion with both her hands, like she was slamming her palms on a table. The gravity-well was instant. The alien stone splintered and crushed, spiderweb patterns exploding across its surface. The booming sound was louder than thunder. The building-sized menhirs' surfaces fractured and sloughed off, its debris sounding like multiple shale-slides.
The strange shattered alien edifices were colossal structures, their collapse seemingly in slow motion. Everything in view was in motion, crumbling, cascading; a colliding domino effect of numerous deafening landslides!
Amber made a guttural sound as the air was forced from her lungs, her levitating body dipping from the tremendous gravity surge. Her telekinetic tentacles battled the excessive gravity, struggling to keep her off the crushing ground. In a mad frenzy, other invisible tentacles whipped and slashed wildly through the air, hammering into the already weakened millennia old monoliths. More rock-slides cascaded upon the two. The entire landscape was raining and rebounding with stones.
Both released concussion waves to protect themselves, the splintered stone and shattered rock violently being thrown, ricocheting against other debris, further adding to the raining chaos. The cascade was a domino effect! Another apartment building-sized sepulcher began to tumble.
Through the chaos Tamara saw the only thing familiar to her. The ship. An old rusted ship, wrecked and bent upon the shore of the mad city. She needed to get out of here. She couldn't hold off all the falling stones! In the next instant, Tamara teleported away.
In one unified force the Amber-symbiot's telekinetic tentacles slammed into the ground, launching her high into the air above the corpse-city in her desperate attempt to escape the gravity-well. She was propelled upwards, her telekinetic tentacles trailing her like a swimming squid. Her psychic bow wave pulverizing any and all falling debris before her, until she cleared the crushing pull of the gravity-well.
Amber's invisible telekinetic tentacles splayed out like the robes of a whirling dervish as her ascent plateaued, hovering airborne, high over R'lyeh. And as she cleared the high air, she immediately became aware of a probing presence. Her mind made contact with something hauntingly familiar. Dante!
Chapter 9: Reunification
The nightmare started the same way every time. Dante knew she was dead. She was always dead. She lay on her back, her blue eyes staring at the ambulance ceiling.
She must have been pretty in life. Blonde, just like him. Blue eyes, just like his. Not like his. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot; the contrast made the blue stand out all the more. They carried a hint of fear in them. It disturbed him. He could see the look of horror and hopelessness frozen and etched in those dead eyes. She died alone and in fear.
One side of her mouth hung limp. She may have been pretty in life, but not so in death. She lay on her back with little more than a blood-stained gown on, her legs spread. She lacked dignity in death.
She died in this ambulance. She had been pregnant. She was pregnant in death. The baby died too. It was never born.
This dream wasn't new to Dante. He had been haunted by it for his entire life. He had always struggled with it. The inside of the ambulance was familiar to him. Every minute detail. The dead blonde woman. The blue-gray half-born dead baby with its vacant dead blue eyes. The paramedic in shock from the experience. It was the same every time.
But this time – for the first time – it was different. The dream was frozen in time – like a three-dimensional snap-shot. He was not the only observer; Dante was not the only dreamer. The blonde woman stood beside her own dream corpse, alive! Clearly she recognized the dream. Although Dante was too young to understand her emotions, there could be no denying that it affected her. Dante knew her name. He had always known her name. Amber.
As Amber's eyes took in her surroundings, tears began running down her cheeks, overwhelmed by the grief. She openly wept, choking on her words, “...my life meant nothing...”
Dante could feel her pain. Part of him wanted to sever contact, to run, to avoid this anguish. But another part sympathized, his empathy fully connected with her.
“My life has been a complete failure...” she wept into her hands. “I could have been important. I failed him,” she motioned towards the unborn and dead baby. “I could have been his mother... I could have made a difference... I could have mattered.” Amber dropped to her knees, fragile and openly crying .
On her knees, broken and sobbing, something stirred in Amber's multimind.
A flicker of recognition rippled in Dante's memory.
Fragments of Lorne's fractured consciousness began to remember. They were forgotten memories. Memories both
Amber and Dante shared. They were remembering Lorne S. Gibbons' final moments. His death. The symbiot-facet's natural metempsychosis. His reincarnation. Lorne's resurrection into a vacant body... vacant bodies. Their vacant bodies!
Both Amber and Dante died in that ambulance, both mother and child. Driven by the alien-facet's abilities, Lorne reincarnated into both mother and unborn child.
“You've never failed,” Dante spoke, breaking the silence, as he brushed Amber's damp blonde hair from her tear-stained face. “I'm your little boy. I'm here now.”
Amber looked up at Dante. Before her stood a boy with bright blue eyes. Just like hers. Blond hair. Just like hers.
Unlike the dream frozen in time, the outside world unfurled like a silent movie before the two. Images of the USS Antietam battling an onslaught of Shoggoths. The young Japanese girl desperately trying to avoid the alien Star-Spawn, Krulgh.
“But... look what I've done,” Amber whispered, looking into the world outside the dream. The silent landscape image of the massive oceanic crater, cradling the insanely warped corpse-city of R'lyeh overtook their view. “Look what I've done,” she was barely audible.
“We can't save the world,” Dante said while offering his mother his open hand. “But we can stop it from dying. You don't need to be alone anymore.”
Amber paused for a moment, afraid to even hope. Her lips quivered and her hand trembled as she tentatively reached for Dante's hand.
Chapter 10: The Klulu Gnostica
Château d'automne,
Saverne, France, 1930
Otto crouched in the pale silver moonlight. The crescent moon created a silhouetted aura off Donita's cloak and cowl as she stood behind her lover.
“Are you sure you can pick her lock?” the blue-eyed pregnant women asked.
“It's difficult with this poor light,” Otto grimaced as he twisted the lock pick in Alia Moubayed's office door, “but yes, I can pick the lock.”
“I'm concerned why Alia has gone to The Hollow Mosque. It's forbidden.”
Otto made a face, he nearly had the lock opened. “I'm more curious as to why she took that freshman, Luang. What was his major again?”
Donita's cloak ruffled gently with the night breeze. “Ancient Mandarin – Chinese. Otto, have you opened it yet? I'm getting cold.”
Click!
From his crouched position Otto turned to face her, flashing his charming boyish smile. “Yes!”
For the briefest moment Donita imagined Otto on one knee proposing to her. He blew her a kiss and winked at her as he stood, shattering her fantasy. “Let's get you inside, out of the cold.”
As the couple entered Otto locked the door behind them.
Donita knew where Alia kept her private book collection. She quickly scanned through the library and pulled out the grimoire, The Klulu Gnostica.
Otto pulled up a chair next to Donita. “You can read Egyptian, right?”
“It's not Egyptian, it's Coptic,” she answered somewhat annoyed.
“Chinese, Mandarin. Egyptian, Coptic. Is there really any difference, Donita?”
The pregnant woman sat back, her intense blue eyes burning into Otto. “Are you quite done yet? Yes? The Klulu Gnostica is a translated grimoire. It is in English. I wish I could get my hands on the Coptic original, but it's not to be. All we have available is this poorly translated English copy.”
“Humph,” Otto huffed. “So, we can't magically summon monsters?!” He was being sarcastic now. She didn't justify Otto with an answer and turned back to the rare book.
“So why does Alia covet it so?” he was serious now. “Why wouldn't she allow you access?”
Although she shared these same concerns, she kept it to herself. She began reading the text out loud,
“All Life flows down The River [of Time]. Humanity exists fixed at one moment, aware only of their [Now] – constantly flowing forward down The River [of Time].
“Although [they] too flow down The River [of Time], the [Star-Spawn's] consciousness saddles this one moment, being [aware] of the previous moment and being [aware] of the moment yet to come.
“Although it is difficult to accurately translate the [Star-Spawn's] (communications/language), it is believed their consciousness saddles 3 to 5 seconds of either side of the [Now].
“Their visual appearance is difficult to behold. Humans are 3-dimensional beings witnessing a 4-dimensional creature. Of the rare few that survived an encounter with a [Star-Spawn], what little description that is available, vary greatly. The human mind would seem to struggle with perceiving the [Star-Spawn] and becomes unhinged by their appearance. It is recorded that their enemy, the Old Ones, had extra-senses that could perceive [this].
“The [Star-Spawn] would seem to have a natural ability to make a decision from their future awareness which may manifest itself in their past awareness as reaction. Essentially accomplishing an Effect then a Cause – the reaction following the event.
“Although this 6 to 10 second saddle is small, physical combat with any hope of victory is impossible.
“Most information collected of the [Star-Spawn] were through brief contact with the Himalayan Mi-go or the Old Ones. The [Star-Spawn] waged war with the Old Ones and their knowledge of the [Star-Spawn's] nature(s) were vast.
“Although frighteningly alien in appearance, the Old Ones were like us, purely material. The [Star-Spawn] were something else, being composed of something other than physical matter. This, coupled with their innate time-saddling awareness only made matters worse. Even should a lucky surprise attack catch the [Star-Spawn] unawares, their quasi-material, quasi-gelatinous form could regenerate and reform, seemingly suffering no permanent damage. Even the Old One's constructs - the Shoggoths - were of no use in the war against the [Star-Spawn]. But its physical invulnerability pales in comparison to its more formidable mental contamination. The [Star-Spawn] naturally (insert/penetrate) its will into one's mind. They drastically influence and control the minds of men. The [Star-Spawn] are believed to be minor versions of the dead but dreaming god, Cthulhu, the source of humanity's delusions, hostility, hatred, paranoia, and lunacy since time immemorial.
“A wounded and captured Old One recounts a tale of its aeon-extinct civilization having developed some sort of method of successfully combating the [Star-Spawn] by tapping into the [Outer Chaos] through The Music of the Spheres. The [Star-Spawn's] natural time-saddle awareness were negated when presented with [Outer Chaos] energy or forces outside of our [Quantisphere/Universe]. However, they would seemed to have [abandoned/forbidden] the method out of fear of the god Nyarlathotep.”
“If we are to take The Klulu Gnostica at face value, we've found the Music of the Sphere's origin.”
“You can't seriously take this work of fiction to be true!?” Donita couldn't tell if Otto was mocking her or not.
“Its 'Outer Chaos' coincides with the Icelandic Gulur Dogun's reference to the Quantisphere. These books speak of the same things.”
“Pre-man. Pre-history. That's all very interesting, but it's of very little use to us,” Otto added indifferently. “However, it does convince me of one thing.” His tone became very somber. “We should not perform this music piece.”
Otto and Donita were startled by a woman's voice. “Oh, you will play it,” the voice spoke in Donita's same Parisian-Arabic accent.
A darkened silhouette appeared out of the shadows. Alia Moubayed stood with a revolver. “I think it is time you two accompany me to La Mosqueé vide.”
“La cinquième château?” Donita questioned, surprised. “But... but it's forbidden.”
Alia looked down her nose, her lips curled in a cruel Arabic sneer. “Oh, we shall see.”
Necropolis: Book 5: R'lyeh Page 6