by Byron Craft
I stood up, no longer in control of my own movements. My brain buzzed with dark thoughts and the whispering of many tongues. I walked stiff legged to the black monolith drawing the dagger from my belt as I moved, all the while fighting against the powerful control. With an involuntary movement I made a stabbing, sweeping motion of my arm and sent the blade into the slit at the base of the windlass.
I could no longer see this world. Images of smoky skies obscured my vision. Wild streams of violet midnight glittered with dust of gold; the giant red eye of Jupiter glowed luminous. A crimson pillar of light streaked out, skewering Mars reaching down to earth.
The handle of the dagger loomed up out of a vortex of dust and fire. A silent command compelled me to pull the blade switch. I staggered stiffly amongst the vortex raising my head above it to a sterile blue twilight where with a burst of will, I never dreamed that I possessed, I screamed, “I won’t do it...I won’t,” over and over I screamed summoning an inner strength that seemed to come from somewhere else.
Tearing loose from the last grip of control and pulling the knife free I tossed it to the ground. I dove onto the pile of earth created by my digging and scrambled on all fours to the open grave. The coffin lay at my feet. The amulet was foremost in my thoughts. I had to get it.
I bent over and picked up the lantern and squatted down nervously trying to pick a focal point in which to stare at. I was afraid to chance a look at the machine again for fear of what might happen and squeamish at the thought of viewing my uncle’s corpse.
Before I threw back the lid I imagined the grizzly job in progress and hoped that I could avert my eyes from his decayed remains while removing the amulet from around his neck.
The damp wooden cover hadn’t been nailed down and it slid off the moldy oblong box easily. I screamed idiotically and my madness dissolved into hysterical laughter because the shrieking corpse of Heinrich Todesfall swiftly rose to a sitting position...a nightmare caked and clotted with moldy shreds of flesh and hair. It was no longer a dead man passive and silent. Its face was contorted in diabolical fury and its jaws were dripping a yellow ooze. I knelt frozen before it, the sight of those white nostrils and those black eyes burned into me.
The Tanist’s corpse crawled out of the grave toward me. A white fleshy hand touched the serpentine dagger. The earth trembled again. Aroused from my state of shock enough to become aware of my dead uncle’s intent I ducked to one side just as he lashed out with the sharp blade piercing my left shoulder. I felt a stabbing pain and scrambled from the edge of the open grave.
The ground pulsated and shook. I saw the mound in the glade visibly move. It rose higher and higher as a great pressure beneath it pushed upwards. The earth sighed from the hidden force passing puffs of pinkish smoke through newly formed cracks expelling the gas into the night air. The earth held, the pressure relaxed and the mound receded some becoming quiet.
The shoulder wound throbbed keeping me alert. Behind me I detected a movement. It was one of the living dead my wife told me about. It came out from behind a tree, dirt crumbling off its newly risen form. It was clad in the remains of an American army uniform. I thought I was going to be trapped between this creature and what used to be my great uncle. Instead, it ignored me keeping its distance, turning slowly as if harkening something’s approach. Another of the living dead soldiers appeared at the edge of the wood listening, watching. Even Todesfall had lost interest in me and had turned away.
I crept quietly, closing the gap between us. He was inserting the dagger in the base of the windlass. I flew across the remaining distance and tried to wrench the dagger free from his grasp, but I was too late. His strength was superhuman. He held me off with one hand as I watched him pull the ancient lever.
A beam of energy sliced through the atmosphere and was intercepted by the machine. Burning with cosmic energy from the stars, the windlass channeled the beam through its interior until it flashed out through its many mirrors, cutting across the field into the glowing patch of fog. There was a terrific explosion and a crater appeared over the spot where the mound used to be. In the confusion following the blinding flash I lunged with a free hand to grab the knife and broke loose from Todesfall’s grasp.
One step and I was upon the machine reaching out to switch it off. Then, something seized me by the throat from behind. Claws dug into my neck, their sharp edges burned into my skin. My hands went instinctively to my throat working at the powerful grip. Furry animal fingers came in contact with mine. I shifted and rocked from side to side trying to wrench it loose. I found I could turn around freely. No one or thing stood behind me. A heavy cold and clammy wetness sat on my shoulders. The fiery pain became unbearable, it tightened its hold and teeth gnawed at the back of my neck. I reached over my shoulder grabbing a handful of flesh and hair and with a downward bending motion tore the thing loose sending it flying headlong through the air.
The pilot demon struck the edge of the headstone. Its skull cracked, belching dirty white ooze.
I stood there gasping for breath. The oversized head foamed and frothed continuously. I watched its little body slide down the slick granite surface where it sank like a lifeless rag doll next to the windlass.
Todesfall turned toward me. He withdrew the knife from the machine and ceased his preparations. The action within the device stopped. He slowly stepped away from the headstone and began gliding toward me with a wolfish grin on his pale, black lipped face.
Remembering the Luger I drew it out and at point blank range squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened...it wouldn’t fire. I kept at it cocking the breach several times ejecting live ammo into the air as I backed away, but the trigger was stuck fast. The safety had been rusted shut out of neglect. The gun was useless. I gave up and looked around for something else to use as a weapon. My great uncle raised the dagger and came at me. I picked up a segment of dead tree limb lying on the ground and swung it at him. The branch connected squarely against his side. Again, I struck out, bringing it down upon his chest but the blows glanced off of the decaying body doing no harm.
I swung one more time, taking a firm grip on the makeshift club, I took aim, pivoted hard and with a quick sweeping motion knocked the dagger to the ground. Another object caught my eye kicking up the dirt as it fell. It was his hand. It was torn loose at the wrist from the rotting carrion by my club.
My uncle’s corpse lying in its coffin for six months must have lost the pliability of his flesh, deteriorating into a fragile puffy mucous, his bones becoming dry and brittle also lost their strength, the vitality of life gone only the reanimation of dead tissue remained. I made a quick double take and found my adversary equally surprised. He wasn’t outwardly displaying any signs of pain but his look told of astonishment. I rushed him. The amulet hung on a thin gold chain around his neck. I was upon him tearing it loose before he realized what had happened. The amulet came away freely in my hand. The chain, broken, still draped across his chest, parts of it disappearing into the folds of his neck where it had taken root in his flesh.
Before I could back away he grabbed me with his one remaining hand and planted the stump of the other firmly in my belly. He lifted me over his head and threw me into the open grave. I glanced off an earthen side, my head narrowly missing the edge of the coffin. Laying there, amazed that I was still conscious, I heard him growling like a wild animal. My great uncle’s corpse appeared over the edge, enraged, his dead face hissing down at me.
Taking hold of the shovel, he tried to spear me. I dove out of the grave dodging the shovel’s end. I managed to get to my feet only to be knocked down again. He struck me with the flat of the shovel and I went sprawling head over heals beneath an oak tree. The blow had caught me between the shoulder blades and I laid there spattering and coughing for air.
Dazed, I saw Todesfall advance then toss the shovel aside. He looked at me with a kind of triumph that was terrifying. He stretched his arms out toward the sky and his jaw began to work up and down. A fluttering of mov
ement caught the corner of my eye and the dagger skittered across the earth in front of me. Dumfounded, I looked in the direction it came from and saw the skeletal corpse of the American soldier retreat behind a tree.
In the moment that followed I heard my great uncle speak for the first time. His voice distracted my attention from the soldier. He was speaking the words that Ephraim Pryne had instructed to me. Never have I heard a voice like that before. It had a strange timbre and accent that was slurred and alien. He seemed to speak in syllables of burning ashes:
“Ya-r’Leh...g’wah Cthulhu
fhgtha...”
He never finished the words. I scooped up the dagger and in one swift movement, propelled by the fear of the outcome if he finished the sentence, leaped up from the ground and lunged for his unprotected throat. I drove the knife into the jugular just below the jaw line and with both hands brought my full weight to bear against the handle slicing deeply, diagonally through the larynx.
He froze briefly in his tracks...then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards. I saw he was edging toward the open grave. In another instant he had lurched backward falling into the hole and was lost to view.
I found it difficult to stand and fell to my knees, grateful that it was all over. I was about to give thanks to God but the intermittent flashes of lightning kept on as if they hadn’t realized that the advancing tirade had been stopped. The negative lightning effect kept on as well and it hurt my eyes. The memory of my shoulder wound throbbed and between the claps of thunder I felt the earth move again.
It was a violent tremor, much stronger than anything I had felt before. The headstone slipped slightly on its foundation and I had to brace myself with one hand on the ground to keep my balance.
Beyond where the knoll was, was now a pit. Another quake shook and the earth shifted, splitting in two. A crack drove across the glade, intercepting the crater, stopping at the edge of the wood. There was a fluttering followed by dark shapes. Small black things raced out of the earth, resembling rats pouring out of a hole. More Pilot Demons, hordes of them, dozens, fifty...hundreds!
I stared in wonderment and curiosity as something moved in the pit, something big. A bulkhead of topsoil and a burnt brush angled upward, the dirt and dead plant life tobogganed off the slope. Gleaming, broken metal bands, as thick as a man and a slab of granite as big as a house, was revealed.
Oh God, that is what I saw. The door to the pit, the pit of N’Kai was opening. The five sided granite door stood perched momentarily at a right angle in front of the crater, the bottom edge sinking slowly, the soil beneath giving way under the stress of tons, then it toppled from an upward shove and cascaded down the slope tumbling end over end. The collision it made with the earth felt like the aftershock of a quake. The sound was deafening. The wonderful fortification of the Elder Race lay defeated, its thickly fashioned securing straps of alien steel severed by the cosmic force, the barrier was shattered.
Dead silence elapsed. The brush crawled with dark things and I knelt in trembling fear watching, waiting. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that no human could describe what I saw but it will be difficult to visualize by anyone whose ideas of contour and shape are too closely bound to common life. At the edge of the jagged chasm, a monstrous knobby shape reached up pulling and tugging and tearing at the earth. The shape reached out further, a giant three fingered hand groped. Many luminous disc like eyes appeared above the crater. A huge rounded bulk larger than the opening squeezed up slowly, glistening like wet leather. Its lip-less mouth quivered and slapped and tentacles writhed as the clumsy body heaved and pulsated.
It was no doubt the giant being Yath-Notep that my great Uncle had raved of in his notes. Armitage had told the truth and, as he had guessed, Yath-Notep had already been wakened from his slumber by the previous meddling of Heinrich Todesfall. All that remained was to unlock his cell door. The words had already been spoken months before.
For a fleeting second I wished that Jim’s M1 was undamaged and lay in my hands but I laughed out loud recognizing that the attempt would be like bows and arrows against lightning. The laughing became uncontrollable, my emotions were out of control and my voice rang out with peals of hysterical laughter.
The bulk rose higher and higher towering until its slimy body protracted out of the hole with a sickening sucking sound. Another flock of Pilot Demons swarmed out of the depths, taking to the air on invisible wings, surrounding their master.
The eyes were unblinking; scaly skin stretched tautly over the hairless head; a wattled bulge hung below a face, with slits on the sides that opened and closed continually pulsing, and the mouth, if you could call it that, extended nearly the width of its face so that when opened the top half of its head appeared to lift off displaying rows of tiny, serrated teeth.
The knife lay in the dirt before me and I dully recalled the medallion. I still clutched it tightly in my left hand. There were two short prongs on its bottom edge and during the struggle I had driven them into my palm. Relaxing my grip I opened my hand. It hung just below the thumb joint. I stared at it trying to recall why I wanted it before. Why had I risked life and limb for this thing? It was one thing to chase an unknown entity but quite another to face it. I had lost all sense of who I was in the outcome.
I looked back up at the thing that oozed up from a world of unknown nightmares. My eyes scanned what was left of the glade, the summer house door was still ajar, the main house stood unchanged with the smoldering remains of my car faintly flickering, and the grave open, but still ominous with its black evil headstone.
My movements were mechanical, not driven by any unseen force, but by the memory of Armitage’s dying words.
My hand found the knife and I crawled. On my belly I crawled under imaginary barb wire, under an invisible crossfire slowly creeping up on the enemy.
The knife slipped easily into the base and I heard the notches in the blade mate with its counterparts. I fumbled with the amulet in the dark for several seconds until I found the matching holes in the top of the windlass that corresponded to the two prongs. It clicked into place.
The mountainous bulk was by then outside of the pit wallowing triumphantly in the wet spring grass and began to spread its tentacles. Rising to its full height it stood boldly, stretching out its arms as if to pluck the stars from the heavens, while its mouth of razor sharp teeth yawned in twisted mockery at the moon.
“The amulet is the key, to reverse it.” I whispered to myself only half believing. I closed my eyes and pulled on the knife blade switch. The first blast had been preceded by a great shaft of light striking the windlass.
When I opened my eyes this time I was surprised to see an enormous luminous ball fired by electrical energy rolling across the glade in the direction of the crater. Close upon it came an awful thundering voice. It was deep and musical; powerful as a full orchestra, but as evil as the book of that Arab. It echoed out across the sky like doom and the windows in the schloss rattled as it died away.
Yath-Notep, his hope of freedom in jeopardy screamed in agony and raging frustration as tendrils of light shot up, entwining themselves around his titan form.
Seconds later a chill wind blew at my back. A sucking current of air was drawn into the pit creating a wailing howling torrent that pulled at the Pilot Demons who fled, attempting to escape their lord’s fate. From the depths of the Black Forest hundreds of dark forms were pulled, drawn into the sucking chasm.
It had the force of an atmosphere rushing in to fill a vacuum, though no trees appeared to move and no solid objects or even myself were affected other than Yath-Notep and his minions. The force was very powerful as one small demon demonstrated vainly trying to escape. It grasped the limb of a tree and was raked across the branches when the limb broke. Then Pilot Demon, limb and all hurtled through the night sky disappearing into the pit.
I had no idea how far reaching or exacting the power was until the next day after examining a hole in the lower panel o
f our screen door. The configuration of the opening made it easy to imagine. A pilot demon fleeing the disaster must have turned into its gaseous other self, slipped under the crack below the door and confident of its escape solidified on my kitchen floor. The perfect outline the head and outstretched arms made ripping through the screen wire was proof that it had misjudged the fantastic power of the Elder Race.
In my weakened state I observed Yath-Notep slowly sinking back into the earth, futilely trying to resist the all consuming pull. Screaming, its tentacles tore away towering pines like match sticks and in one last attempt to escape it stretched out a colossal hand, leveling the summer house in its grasp, dragging it and the foundation down with it. The demon of Sorti was cast into hell and only huge furrows from its plowing hands remained.
There is little left to tell before I passed out. The glade and the surrounding countryside lay quiet. Electronic fingers played across the crater healing the earth, sealing huge cracks and mending furrows. The energy programmed centuries ago lifted the granite slab slowly, carefully to a great height, then after precise alignment let it fall with full force of its several tons, corking up the hole sealing the evil genie in its earthly bottle. I heard crackling like arc welding, then a light tremor and what was left of the knoll fell inward. I remember Janet running up...I smelled ozone and everything became dark.
***
I recovered enough in a few days to send Janet ahead to be with her folks in the states, and through the recommendations of the bank, I engaged a property management firm to close the house and maintain its upkeep until its eventual sale.