by Sean Hoade
“That’s when I heard the screaming. Human screaming, coming from very close by. I guess my Hippocratic Oath kicked in, because I immediately left off the search for more of the pricklypoppy and waded around a cluster of trees. And there they were, this Tulu-worshiping group of what looked like inbred Pacific Islanders, although all of them had surely been born here in the States.”
Kristen wondered how urgent the need for her to believe immediately could have been considering the length of Howard’s story. But she shut that away and refocused on what the man was saying.
“One of their number’s young men—his name was Sinamoi—had slipped on a stump and fallen into a mud hole, where his momentum pushed him forward and made his femur snap like a tree branch. It was a horrible injury out here where there was no Western medicine. His leg would grow gangrenous and he would most likely die.”
“But you were there.”
“Exactly. Without a thought to my corporate masters, I fished the supposedly magical pain-killing plant out of my bag and gestured that he needed to ingest it right away. He did and fell into a deep sleep where no pain, apparently, could reach him. I set his leg and formed a makeshift cast from leaves and whatnot. When Sinamoi awoke, he was still in some pain, but a lot less. I gave him the rest of the plant to chew as he needed it. We became fast friends and when he told me—in broken English, hand gestures, and pointing at the idol—of their faith, it just clicked with me. It wasn’t until later that I learned the tribe was panicked about losing Sinamoi, since he had been designated ‘the keeper of secrets’ when he was just a little boy.”
“I fell into Tulu worship hard. I let my apartment in Long Island go, let my furniture rot, let my relatives have my stuff. I wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids. So I stayed here and learned from this boy and his tribe.”
“That’s really interesting, Howard, but, um … what does it have to do with Tulu? And wouldn’t the tribe already know the medicinal value of plants they had lived among for decades, maybe centuries?”
“Their time was spent in worship of this tentacled, alien-looking god through the odd icon that sits even now upon their altar. They did little else except eat and sleep and copulate, always dedicating their actions to Him. They don’t care about anything else, except enjoying one another’s fellowship.”
“Okay, so they were (ignorant) unsophisticated to Western eyes and thought you had performed a miracle with the plant. So how did you become one of them, let alone their leader? Did they perform miracles for you as well?”
Howard smiled. “Actually, they did. Some of them spoke enough English that we were able to form a pidgin much like Tok Pisin after being together for a few weeks—”
“A few weeks?”
“I know, I know. We were of one mind, and they chose me to be the keeper of secrets after Sinamoi. I just left all of that American crap behind. I was declared missing, I assume, even dead after the requisite seven years, but by that time I was not just a fellow Tulu worshiper, but the chief of the tribe because of my ability to communicate with the outside world, something that will be needed when He rises.”
“No offense, okay? Anthropologists are taught to observe and not to judge. But a medical doctor and researcher coming to adopt the animist beliefs of a primitive culture, even to become its leader? That’s incredible!” Kristen was speaking blasphemy against her training, but this was real and right in front of her face. She could be academically and politically correct later, when she wrote up this fascinating case and got onto a tenure track at last. But this was incredible, literally, and that was what would arrest the attentions of hiring committees. However, for now, she said to Howard, “Did you fall in love with a girl in the tribe? Or just go completely insane?”
Howard reared back and laughed at this, not mockingly, but warmly. “The Tulu tribe had its own ‘medicinal’ plants to share with their miraculously arrived healer who came just in time to save their beloved Sinamoi.”
“Ah. Hallucinogens.”
“I suppose, but of a variety that I had never encountered in my travels and, unlike A. albiflora, was unknown to botany, pharmacology, or anywhere in the wider world. In a very solemn ritual, they made tea using this plant and bade me to drink it.”
“So you fell for a bunch of hallucinations and joined a cult?”
For the first time Howard spoke to her sharply: “Shut your mouth and open your mind if you want to survive the rising of Tulu. If you won’t, you can get the fuck out of our area and die somewhere else.”
Kristen blinked back sudden tears and could see her entire future career go up in smoke. “I … I’m very sorry, Howard,” she said as clearly as she could with her jaw tightening with shame and panic. “Please forgive me. Please … I would ask you to continue.”
The smile returned to Howard’s face as he examined Kristen’s and apparently saw something there that he liked. He said, warmly now, “Excuse my flash of anger, Kristen. You have to come to us for a reason, and you will be as a daughter to me. I do not want to see my daughter torn apart as Tulu begins his journey. You do not understand the opportunity you could lose here … not only to live, but, more importantly, to tell the world of our risen God.”
No pressure or anything, Kristen thought. “Thank you, Howard,” she said with care. “What happened after you drank the tea?”
Howard looked into the distance, like the memories filled his vision entirely. “I drank the tea and went into a … spell, I guess you would call it. Like lucid dreaming, only I was fully awake. I could control my thoughts and my movements, but as the tribe members spoke to me first in our pidgin and then in their R’lyehian language, I came to understand the meaning of their words and become open to visions of Great Tulu Himself.”
“Did he look like the picture on TV?”
Howard smiled but remained serious. “Yes and no. What is in the ocean right now is not fully Tulu, but only his essence—he is as mist in the physical sense until the Way is open. This is His “herald form,” not his corporeal form. It clears the way for the actual body and mind of the Old One, and for his companions and slaves as well. When the interdimensional opening was first made for the Way, a paraphysical shock overcame the Earth, too powerful for human brains. But that was just the start. When His herald form moves, as it will very shortly, an undulating wave of psionic energy will emanate as long as that remains in this dimension.”
Kristen nodded, not comprehending much of what Howard was saying, but filing it away for future reference for when she wrote the paper, maybe the book, that would bring her into the major leagues of academia. “So you drank the tea and went into a spell …”
“Yes! It was only then that the tribe told me that a ritual had to be performed in order for me to understand the Old One, for me to be protected by Him as well as from Him.”
“A sacrifice, like you told me?”
“Exactly like that, yes. Such a small thing, but my mind opened and I became attuned not only to the tribe’s language, but the meaning of their worship and the metaphysical reality behind what that idol represents.”
Kristen swallowed at these words, excited and terrified at the same time. Understanding another culture from the inside. Their rituals—their language! “The tea, then? It wasn’t hazardous to your health? You suffered no ill effects?” She knew that many plants in the bayou were poisonous, to say the least. They caused hallucinations, too, while the body was wracked with agony and the consumer ultimately died.
“Very safe, indeed.” Howard closed his eyes, as if searching his memory, then opened them and fixed Kristen with a serious look as one of the child members handed him a metal cup. “It is time for you to drink the tea, my friend. My daughter.”
Was this ethical? Was this stupid? Kristen’s mind raced. She didn’t want to end up a laughingstock like Wade Davis with his “researches” into Haiti’s zombi culture, breaking every rule in the book so that his findings were tainted at best and utterly rejected at worst. But sh
e was here, this was the time to show Howard and the rest that they could trust her, and drinking a cup of bayou hallucinogen tea was hardly the biggest “sacrifice” she’d ever made for her career.
She took the cup from Howard—it was warm, but not scalding hot through the metal—and poured it all down her throat in one bitter-tasting gulp. The taste disappeared almost as quickly as she swallowed, however, and she gave the cup back to him with a smile. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“No, sweetheart,” Howard said with a smile bigger than hers, “it’s the opposite. It’s good beyond measure. Do you see Him?”
“Him?”
“Tulu.”
“Ah … nothing yet. I do feel a little …” she said, and trailed off. She knew it was just the way that some native hallucinogens worked, but after just two minutes of drinking the tea she was presented with the illusion of the tree branches and vines dripping and curling all around them. It made her laugh. “Okay, not nothing. This is some strong shit.”
Howard laughed, and the tribe laughed too. They had gathered around them in concentric circles, exactly as she had first seen them at worship of the idol.
Now Howard said, slowly and deeply in order to catch her attention among the mind-based pyrotechnics going on, “I drank the tea, I was offered the sacrifice. At first I refused it, but then I saw Tulu, saw that He was due my supplication to live under Him when He rose, and I gladly performed what was required of me.”
Kristen had to close her eyes in order to speak. It was just as Howard had described—she could control her actions but it was very much like she was in a dream, with chimera and inexplicably meaningful visions dancing before her eyes and mind. “Wha … what was your sacrifice? I thought the tea was the sacrifice …”
“No, dear one. I was given a blade and sacrificed Sinamoi, the “keeper of secrets” whose life I had saved, and for that act been accepted into the tribe. I stabbed him in the heart as he smiled at me with love. The blood was terrible, but the joy was profound, in myself and in the tribe of Tulu. In Sinamoi as he died.”
Kristen’s eyes shot open again at Howard’s words—he murdered a child? As a sacrifice to their god? She noticed that the rings around her and Howard were closed, each worshiper holding hands to make the way impassable for anyone in the middle. The rings of people undulated in Kristen’s field of vision, and the dream became a nightmare from which she could not wake.
“I can’t do that! Murder someone? I’m a scientist, Howard—but I won’t tell anyone—I just have to—”
“He is moving. Kristen, you must do it now or be driven mad!”
Gaining in amplitude, the psionic wave reached the bayou at its crest.
“What? Howard, I—EEEEEEEEE!” Kristen wailed as the power of the wave ripped through her mind. “No. No, no, no, no, NO! GET AWAY! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—” She tried to run but immediately was held with the circle by the elders’ solidly interlocked arms. No one else seemed to be affected by this sudden horror and need to flee, to GET AWAY.
Howard was in her face. “Do you see Him? Do you see Tulu?”
“No! All I feel is—it’s gripping my heart! I can’t breathe! MOVE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” She dug her heels in trying to push her way through the circle—she didn’t consciously know it, but she was trying to push to the north, away from the psionic assault—but the cultists were too strong and she couldn’t get enough breath with the cold dread filling every inch of her to even make a real attempt. Icy fishhooks pulled at her heart, flooding her with electric fear and sudden nausea. She needed to get out, and get out in this direction, where the circle was tightest. “Let me go! Let me go! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Howard’s face was even closer now, and she could smell his rotten breath. It wasn’t like unbrushed teeth or even tooth decay—it stank of the sea. “This is what every nonbeliever will experience—panic unto death! Kristen, you must look at Tulu! Look at Him!”
The dread and panic had her almost too squeezed to pay attention to Howard’s words, but as he spoke this last, she could see his terrible breath spreading over her and around her, a green fog that soon blocked everything else out and dimmed her panic to a dull ache that seemed far away. She saw black spots in the fog, two sharklike circles like disembodied eyes. And now she could see one suspended above the others, three black circles making a triangle.
She was looking into the face of Tulu.
Tentacles undulated in slow waves before her. The face didn’t seem godlike, didn’t seem either benevolent or malevolent. It just looked alien. But it cooled the panic in her heart and filled her with … if not happiness or joy, then at least with …
Calm. This Tulu would bring her calm while the world under her feet was torn asunder and minds were ripped from so many other human brains.
But the face was so awful and terrible—made her so full of awe and sublime terror—that she let loose again: “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE …!” but it was more of a moan than a scream that broke as release and understanding filled her: “AHHHHHHHHHHHH …”
Again: “EEEEEEEEE … AHHHHHHHHH.”
The face of Tulu was still in her eyes and mind, but she could hear His tribe now around her moaning the sound with her: “EEEEE … AHHHH.”
EEE-AHH … EE-AH …
Ïa.
“Ïa! Ïa!” Kristen chanted at last, everything coming together as her sisters and brothers came together in their joyful cries: “Ïa! Ïa!” She laughed out loud, tears streaming from her eyes in connection and understanding. “Ïa! Ïa!”
A cold blade was placed in her hand and the face of her new god faded from sight, replaced by Howard, her father in the Faith, on his knees before her, laughing and crying himself as he chanted what Kristen chanted and leaned his head back to expose his chest. It was a face in a dream
“No, Howard! I need you to tell me what to do!”
“Make the sacrifice,” he said as he beamed at her. “We shall be connected through Tulu and everything we know shall be shared. Make the sacrifice and join the Old One!”
In her lucid dream of reality, Kristen watched as her hand rose and then struck, plunging the knife into Howard’s bare chest and he fell, an ecstatic smile upon his face. Blood seeped from his grinning mouth. “You missed my heart,” he said. But she had obviously hit something important, because his speech sent forth a spray of arterial red.
Kristen’s hands flew to her mouth and she fell to her knees beside him. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—I’ve never done this before—”
That made the dying man laugh even harder. “You did fine, my girl. I go to the great Dagon now, to live forever in His kingdom under the sea. You know what Dagon is, don’t you?”
An image faded into her mind, and she saw an enormous Sea King, fishlike but not a fish, humanlike but definitely not a human. In the dark of the sea, the luminescence of his living city shone on him from below and revealed his vastness and benevolence. “He is … beautiful.”
Howard was fading but still smiling. He said slowly, “Dagon is the God of Gods.”
“But then … what is Tulu? I thought he was your God? Our God?”
“He is our Shiva. He is the Destroyer of Worlds. He clears the way for a new age of fear and death for those who do not or cannot believe.” He coughed up blood, staining his teeth as his smile grew wilder. He was fading fast now.
“What do I do now? What do I do with all of them? What do I do with this knowledge? Help me, Howard!”
“It was my job to await the one who would spread our dark gospel. You are here now”—he coughed hard, and Kristen’s face became dotted with red—”and you have performed the sacrifice of the one you needed. Now go and tell the world Cthulhu is to be worshiped—all of them are to be worshiped.”
“All of who?” she cried, although even as she spoke she could feel the knowledge entering her mind as her mentor slipped away. “I don’t … Howard? Howard!” But he didn’t answer except for a smile still upon his face even as he died.
And
Kristen knew her father in the Faith was dead and gone to Dagon because her mind—even the soul in which she had always been a resolute nonbeliever—filled with the love of the provider, Dagon; the love of the destroyer, Cthulhu; and love for the many, many others in a pantheon she had never before even dreamed of but now recognized each member as if they were standing together in a well-worn photograph from her childhood. She now knew everything about everything that mattered and that Howard had known. She now learned everything he had learned from sacrificing the young man raised in Tulu worship, the keeper of secrets whom he had he saved, and back to that man’s sacrifice of the former keeper, and back and back. This encyclopedic knowledge was the boon of her sacrifice, and of Howard’s. Of all of them.
I am a murderer, she thought as she looked at her victim. All for the good of Cthulhu.
She stood then, with a broad smile on her face and her own heart utterly eradicated of dread now, and sang out, “Ïa! Ïa! Tulu fthagn! Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Tulu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!” She knew the words that she had just called and exactly what they meant, knew every word of R’lyehian now, in fact. The chant meant Praise! Praise! Tulu waits and dreams! In his house at R’lyeh, dead Tulu waits and dreams!
The assembled tribe shouted it as loudly as it could: “Ïa! Ïa! Tulu fthagn! Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Tulu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!” And again: “Ïa! Ïa! Tulu fthagn! Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Tulu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!”
They found themselves turning to the idol on the altar, chanting again and again and again in R’lyehian, and Kristen could understand the ancient language as if it were sung in English: “Praise! Praise! Tulu waits and dreams! In his house at R’lyeh, dead Tulu waits and dreams!”