Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear

by Sean Hoade

  As she swished her legs through the green water, she saw something familiar indeed, here in the last place she would have expected it: a circle of loinclothed old men around an altar of some kind (made of out what? There’s no stone around here), and around that circle a wider circle of women, old and young, holding hands, and around them still another, bigger circle with children of all ages, also with hands interlocked.

  It is a cult! she thought, completely without evidence, and mentally slapped herself back to her senses. An anthropologist does not use that word. They were a worship group, certainly, but they could be Christian for all she knew at that moment. Pentecostal crazies over from northern Florida. Maybe Santeria practitioners from—

  “Tulu!” one of the elders cried from the innermost circle.

  Kristen stopped dead in her watery tracks. She could not have just heard that word.

  “Tulu!” the second circle called in response.

  Then the children sang out the strange word: “Tulu!”

  Tears almost came to Kristen Frommer’s eyes. This was it. This was it! Her gratitude for a saved career and emotion at hearing that word again, that word that had shut her down, was so great that she abandoned all ethics and cried to them as well, in a voice heartier even than those of the children.

  “TULU!”

  Every face gathered around that altar—now she could see that it was something that must have been carried here from a church washed out by Katrina—turned as one to face her.

  Icy fear grabbed her by the throat. She was a dead woman. They were obviously going to rush her and kill her for seeing their secret rites—

  “Welcome!” a man in the inner circle shouted with happiness.

  Every face that turned to her was bearing a smile. They were odd, fishy-looking faces with severe deformities in some cases, but all with some kind of abnormality from advanced skin disease to bowlegs to webbed fingers. Except for the one who had spoken, who now was coming through the circles to greet her. He seemed to be the one nonafflicted person there, one with European features, although his face was darkly tanned.

  “Welcome!” the man said again with a huge smile.

  “Welcome!” the congregation echoed, with the same ebullient expression.

  “Y-You speak English?” she stammered.

  “Yes, of course we do. Well, I do,” the apparent leader said in his Noo Yawk honk, and the gathering giggled, not unkindly. They at least understood some English. “I am Howard, the tribe elder. But who are you?”

  Tell the truth. Ethical anthropologists tell the truth. “I’m, um, I’m Kristen. I teach (freshmen and athletes) at Louisiana State University. I’ve come here to learn about your … worship group.” She decided to go for broke and added with much more confidence than she felt, “The Tribe of Tulu.”

  Now the faces turned from surprised happiness to open astonishment.

  Goodbye, cruel world, she said inside her head. Nice knowin’ ya.

  But then they laughed. It started in that inner circle of old men, a new giggle that turned into a hearty laugh, and then into a veritable roar of hilarity. It took almost no time for the rest of the (cultists) worshipers to join them, and before Kristen knew it, she was smiling at them, almost laughing herself. Why, she had no idea, for these people were certainly about to slit her throat for finding their secret location.

  “I’m sorry if I interrupted,” she said and waded one step closer to gauge their reaction. “If this is the wrong time—”

  “Not at all, Kristen,” Howard said. “In fact, you’ve come at just the right time. It’s an amazing coincidence, in fact, or perhaps not a coincidence at all. Something entirely unprecedented is about to happen, and you’re here to see it. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if your arrival wasn’t the final signal that, truly, Tulu is rising. We felt it, and now that you’re here, the prophecy has been confirmed.”

  “Do you all live as (savages) primitive people?”

  “We live in trailers not far from here, dear,” Howard said. “We have TV, you know. That’s where they get their English lessons!”

  She waded a few steps closer. Was this some kind of Society for Creative Anachronism, like Civil War reenactors making everything authentic, down to the last detail? The men’s skin looked scaly, just like that of the Tulu followers in Papua New Guinea. The women’s breasts were uncovered and pendulous. This was more than some kind of playacting, but they made the whole thing seem no weirder than the swingers’ clubs researched ad nauseam by some of her male Anthropology 101 students.

  “Won’t you join us?” Howard asked, the children’s circle opening up a space for her. “We’re not cannibals, if that’s what you’re worried about. Some of our grandfathers and grandmothers were, certainly, but we catch fish or grow what we eat. Also, on Feast Day, I drive to KFC to bring back a couple of Bucket Meals.”

  She smiled at his warmth and waded toward the worshipers, the water getting shallower with each step until she was out of the mire and standing on merely moist ground. She was silently invited to join hands with the youngest tribe members, who opened a space for her in their circle. “Howard, may I ask a question?”

  “I can only imagine it will be the first of many. Of course.”

  “What is Tulu?”

  As one, every head whipped around to indicate the small but singular idol on top of the altar. They started mumbling then, all of them, even Howard turning his back to Kristen to face the idol. Their words were nothing like English, or the Papuan Kristen had learned, or any kind of Pidgin English, or Slavic, or anything she could identify. It was altogether alien. Then, again as one, the congregation fell silent, and Howard and the other elders held up their hands in joy or supplication or both.

  “Tulu,” Howard said as he looked into her eyes, “is risen.”

  A shearing agony ripped through Kristen’s head, as scorching and corrosive as if someone had poured molten lead into her eyes and ears. She tried to scream but nothing but a choked click came out of her. She fell to the ground and writhed like an epileptic in grand mal. Her gyrations of absolute torment made her flop into the shallow swamp water. Was she having a stroke? The pain made her unaware of anything that might be happening to the members of the worship group, but after just a few seconds of the exposed-dental-nerve horror, she could tell she was breathing in the foul water and insect larvae and disease, but she could do nothing to keep herself from drowning. She hoped she would drown, actually—the horror inside her head would have to stop then. Between the crushing of her skull and the ingestion of swamp water, her vomit bloomed out into the green water like an undersea volcano. Then tunnel vision turned everything black but the fetid green marsh.

  After a minute or so, the brutal pain stopped, as if shut off by a switch, and as the tunnel opened up again, she found herself lying flat on the moist land of the tiny swamp island. When she was able to focus her teary eyes, she could see the older children of the outmost circle, the ones who must have pulled her from the water and saved her life, looking down at her with concern.

  They hadn’t fallen down.

  They hadn’t been tormented. If anything, they looked fresher and happier than before.

  No, the group was obviously thrilled she was alive and actually—though Kristen herself could hardly believe it—didn’t seem to have suffered any pain or discomfort at all. Howard gently pushed through the small throng and offered her a hand. “Tulu protects, even as He takes what is His.”

  Still woozy, Kristen could hear Howard, but she couldn’t understand the meaning of his words. It was English—she knew all the words and recognized that it was a declarative statement, but what it meant was utterly missing.

  The next thing Howard said, though, she understood with perfect clarity as he and two other cultists (yes, okay, they were cultists) lifted her from the mire to a standing position.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up. You are the one who will tell our story. You will tell the world what is happening. You w
ill tell them about Tulu.”

  Jackpot! she thought, and then passed out, flopping face-first into the soft muck.

  New York City, USA

  40.7°N 74°W, 10400 km from the Event

  Just shy of 2 p.m., Martin Storch had been awake for about ten minutes and frankly, staring bleary-eyed at the rococo ceiling of his room at the Algonquin, he didn’t care for it. Technically speaking, he had been awake on and off all morning, roused by his assistant every hour on the hour since calling it a night long after it had technically become morning. Percy (staying in the other half of the suite) opened the connecting door and shook Martin awake, handed him a Bloody Mary (with less alcohol each hour until he awoke for the day) with a bit of celery, and stood by his bedside while he staved off any hangover. It worked, as it always did, keeping alcohol always in his system, making him more intoxicated each day as midnight approached, then slowly tapering off to the lesser—but still significant—amount that he began the day with. Avoid hangovers: Stay drunk was a favorite aphorism for Martin Storch. This was the ritual they observed every time he was to appear on television or talk at an important conference, meaning that Percy never got into solid REM sleep that night. But his loyal assistant sucked it up and was allowed to sleep in on non-television days to catch up. Fair enough, Martin always thought. Bless that Percy.

  Whenever a Vanity Fair or Harper’s Magazine did an interview with him or maybe just a feature on him, his drinking inevitably came up as a topic. He had been slightly annoyed at first, but then accepted it as part of his “brand.” Often three sheets to the wind, he nonetheless was famous for offering utterly sober analysis on everything from the most rarefied of subjects, such as how the Pope’s retirement affected those who pledged their entire lives to serving the Church, to the pulpiest and “lowest,” such as his towering tome defending the philosophy and writing of his favorite fictionist, H.P. Lovecraft.

  Utterly sober analysis from an utterly besotted mien raised hackles while he knocked down those who let his love of wine prejudice themselves against him. It was always a terrible misstep on their part, and it soon ceased to be an issue with all but the most desperate (or naïve) of his debate opponents.

  Martin wanted to look his best for the telly debate on Colbert, which would be taping in just a couple of hours. Thank goodness he had a system; he would be packing a flask—actually, a bottle—to ensure he stayed relaxed and in character as the West’s favorite insouciant high priest of irreverence. Hated or loved, he was listened to.

  “His best” for the debate was an expensive cream blazer, an expensive open-collared shirt splayed over his lapels 1970s-style to show his fish-belly–white skin, and expensive jeans that sagged a bit, not able to crest his barrel chest and midriff and so settling in more around his hips than his waist. Let whatever Bible-beater he was to spar with wear a poly-blend suit—

  No, he admonished himself, as he had to do almost every time he was going to face one of the faithful for a nice bloody argument (Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Scientologists, he had defeated them all). Treat your opponent with respect. No ad hominem. You have logic and facts on your side.

  It was a philosophy that had served him well through hundreds of on-stage and televised debates in the past twenty years against various factions of the religious-industrial complex, not to mention those who would dismiss writers such as Lovecraft, Bloch, or Pugmire. He had done this again and again since he had finished at Oxford and begun his climb to fame—or perhaps his slide into notoriety—as an essayist, curmudgeon, skeptic, and (he would often say as an ironic aside) a sad example of what passed as a wit in Britain, not to mention the States, these days.

  Oscar Wilde could outquip me with half his brain tied behind his back, Martin had said in interviews before with a faux-rueful smile. Good thing my assassins murdered him sixty years before I was born.

  The door opened and Percy stepped through, starting a bit when he saw that his boss was, technically, awake. “Mister Storch, you’re awake,” he said with a pleased smile.

  “Christ, don’t remind me,” Martin said, and reached for his drink, which by this time had just a breath of vodka in it. He sipped at it and said, “Mary is losing her touch. Give her a little help.” He held out the glass and Percy topped it with more vodka.

  Percy chuckled at Martin’s comment and demand for more alcohol more out of duty than amusement, since his employer told him the same joke, mantra-like, every morning when he was (relatively) sober and finally ready to rise.

  The assistant had thought maybe the ebbing of alcohol content was what actually awakened Martin, a crisis of ethanol deficiency, and this was his automatic response to welcome the day … with more booze. Percy appreciated Mister Storch’s staunch magnanimity when it came to not looking down upon his “servant” assistant. Such disapprobation from Martin would leave a wound, so sharp was his rapier wit.

  Martin downed the rest of the tomato juice and munched the celery, allowing Percy to make another for him, this one a bit higher in octane. “So who is it tonight?”

  “Which show, or which sparring partner?”

  “Both.” He really didn’t have a trace of hangover. Paying due reverence to Mother Alcohol was the only religion he could stomach, and She showed Her appreciation.

  “It is the Late Show with Mister Colbert.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “I love that bastard.”

  “Do you?” Percy looked surprised for the second time in as many minutes. “He never seems to take your side.”

  “Precisely!” Martin said with a smile. “He butts out and lets me do the dismantling. Who is it tonight? I know you told me, but I have you to remember things for me while my brain just stays in the moment and dreams of oblivion.”

  “Very poetic today, sir,” the assistant said, his own British accent making it sound more like an ironic statement than any kind of compliment. “Your opponent tonight is your venerable friend, Archbishop Morley.”

  “Morley! Outstanding! He gives as good as he gets, that one. I assume you made our dinner reservations for after the taping?”

  “Indeed, Mister Storch. A full plate and a full bar shall await you and His Excellency.”

  This news got Martin to a sitting position on the edge of his bed. “Capital, Percy. I think Jimmy is the only one who can drink me under the table! He can—”

  Percy arched his back in a galvanizing seizure that sent him to the floor even as his vomit spewed in an arc as he fell. Martin felt a sharp pang in his temples, not a terrible pain but one that came on so suddenly it made him lose his grasp on the Bloody Mary, which splashed red all over the carpet and wall. It wasn’t the most acute pain he had ever felt—nothing like what had poor Percy screaming as he curled into the fetal position on the floor, palms flat against his temples. Still, even for Martin, it was damned unpleasant.

  It also made him highly dizzy. He pitched forward off the side of the bed and banged his head against the wall, which actually hurt his head more than the sudden onslaught of pain. He could hear Percy moaning desperately, almost screaming, still puking.

  Then, less than sixty seconds after it had started, the torment vanished. Martin regained his equilibrium and Percy regained consciousness, splashed with his own bile but otherwise looking more stunned and weak than having suffered any permanent harm.

  Martin looked at Percy and saw in the man’s expression exactly what must have been on his own face. “What,” Martin said as he forced himself to stand, “in the bloody fuck was that?”

  Percy peeled himself from the expensive carpet and gradually pulled his body into a standing position as well. (They both ignored the horror of his sweater vest for the moment.) Only then did they notice the apocalyptic cacophony taking place outside and twelve stories down. The assistant went to the window and looked down at West 44th Street, where dozens, perhaps hundreds, of automobile and bus horns sounded in long screams of indignity at the damaged front of every vehicle crunched against the
damaged back of the vehicle before it.

  “My god,” Percy said, then winced when he remembered how very little his employer cared for that interjection.

  Martin was used to people claiming the incredible and his obligation to relieve them of their credulity, but he could hear the horns—and now the sirens—himself from the streets below and stood to join his man at the window.

  “My god,” Martin said.

  “Was everyone in the city afflicted at the same time as we?” Percy muttered almost to himself as he stared at the mayhem. Every driver was outside his vehicle, staring at a crushed bonnet accompanied by a smashed boot. It was a good thing traffic never moved very quickly anyway on 44th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues—if this happened on open road, or on the American interstate where 88 kph was considered more of a suggestion than a rule … he shuddered to think. “And now, I gather, they have come out physically unharmed as well?”

  “You know I don’t form hypotheses before I have data,” Martin said, but jocularly and with a pat on Percy’s shoulder, agreeing with his man’s conjecture. “Get on the line to Colbert’s people, please. If we’re not getting bumped, Jimmy and I have a brand-new ‘miraculous’ event to debate.”

  “On it, sir.”

  “Good. Maybe you could go change now, brush your teeth,” Martin said and looked at the splotch near the wall. “I hope tomato juice is easy to get out of wool carpeting.” Not that it mattered—Colbert was footing the bill (and thus the damage liability) for the room, but there was no reason to be an arsehole about it.

  Martin stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. He took a moment to stare at his reflection in the mirror, getting in close to see his own bloodshot eyes, red not from a particularly bad bender (for once) but from his body’s reaction to whatever had just happened—to him, his assistant, and by the looks of it the whole of New York City.