The man in yellow didn’t make any move, but as if at some signal, one of the creatures edged forward. It was bulkier than the rest, its long fingers thick and muscular rather than twig-like. Like a malformed albino spider it moved carefully forward over the statue’s front limbs, then onto the podium on which the statue reclined. From there it walked with terrible intent upon its ten legs, five at the front and five at the rear, past the feet of the man in the yellow toga and up to Caesar’s twitching body.
The Dictator had rolled ono his back by now. The blood from his skull wound was pooling on the marble behind him. He moaned, when he saw the thing, but apparently he didn’t have the strength to pull away. It reached out with its front second and fourth fingers, using them like antennae, to touch his face. The tips of the fingers gently stroked his cheeks. Then, with a febrile motion, the creature sprang onto the side of Caesar’s head and slithered around to the back. Caesar began to scream – a weak, pitiful sound – as the creature adjusted its position, readying itself so that one of the hands could slide down inside his toga and the fingers of the other could grip his neck. Once it was secure, it slid a thick middle finger up into the hole in the base of Caesar’s skull with a sucking sound that made Casca’s stomach twist.
“There,” the man in yellow said. There was satisfaction in his voice. “Now you will go back and accept the crown for us. Do our bidding. Follow our will, as was agreed.”
Caesar lay there, whimpering. There were tears squeezing out from behind his screwed-up eyes. Casca felt something he had never felt before for the man and never thought he would – pity.
Caesar pulled himself up to his feet, slowly and painfully. It seemed to Casca almost as if he was being manipulated by invisible hands, like some human-sized puppet. In fact, when Casca glanced at the back of Caesar’s head he couldn’t even see the hand-creature any more. Some of it was hidden inside Caesar’s toga, of course, but surely something would have been visible? But no – it seemed to have blended with Caesar’s body, disguising its presence.
Caesar turned to go – or was turned to go. Looking at his tear-streaked, agonised face, Casca felt sorry for him. Whatever was happening may have been his choice originally, but not anymore.
Casca pushed himself away from the stone of the portico and moved as quietly as he could to the temple doorway. He had to get away before Caesar left, and saw him. Perhaps there was still something in the man that he could appeal to, but Casca couldn’t take the chance.
He stumbled blindly through the streets of Rome, his brain a confused morass of flickering thoughts that wouldn’t cohere into anything sensible. Had those braziers been burning some incense which had caused him to hallucinate the whole thing? Had he fallen down, hit his head and dreamed everything? He wanted to run his hands across his head looking for injuries, but he was terrified that he might find blood at the base of his skull.
Eventually, more through luck than judgement, he found himself outside Brutus’s residence. He knocked wildly on the door, and the slaves half-led and half-carried him through the vestibule, across the atrium and into the dining area.
Brutus and Cassius were already there, lying on couches around the central low table that was rich with plates of oysters, fish, poultry, olives and stuffed dormice. As the slaves laid Casca gently on the third couch, the two men made as if to rise. Casca waved them back down with a weak hand. A slave handed Casca a flask of wine, which he drained in one long series of gulps.
“What have you seen, my friend?” Cassius asked gently.
“You would not believe me,” Casca said, shaking his head. “There is no way that I could tell this story without it sounding like the ravings of a madman.”
Cassius and Brutus shared a glance, and there was something in their expressions that persuaded Casca that they knew something he didn’t. So, haltingly and punctuated by several more flasks of wine, he told them what had befallen him.
At the end of his story there was silence for a while. Casca realised that he was starving, and took the opportunity to grab food from the table. It was, as befitted Brutus’s rank and reputation, all delicious, and all perfectly prepared. There was even a shallow dish of garum sociorum – the fish sauce made from mackerel that was, ounce for ounce, more expensive than the finest of perfumes.
“You don’t believe me,” he said eventually, through a mouthful of tuna. “I don’t blame you. I hardly even believe myself.”
“This temple…” Cassius said, waving a piece of bread, “did you by any chance feel a vibration through the stone, or hear a sound like Vulcan’s hammer being struck repeatedly?”
Casca felt a surge of sudden joy. They knew. Or at least, they knew something. He wasn’t mad!
Or perhaps they were all mad. No matter – they could be mad together.
Cassius could obviously see from his face that the answer was yes. “Nobody knows to which god the temple is dedicated, but it was built by foreigners from a country named Carcosa, whose location nobody seems to know. Caesar visited Carcosa on his way home from Egypt, although none of his soldiers or crew will speak of it, on pain of death. The sound has been heard by our agents, although none have traced it to a cause. Workshops beneath the temple perhaps – building weapons.”
“Weapons?” Casca repeated, confused.
“We believe,” Brutus added, “that Caesar has somehow fallen under the influence of some Carcosan cult. He worships their god now, not Jupiter and the gods of Olympus. Whatever he does, he does for them and not for Rome.” He frowned. “Some kind of take-over is planned, an invasion from the inside, and it is up to us to do something about it.”
“But what of those creatures?” Casca asked, shuddering at the memory. He couldn’t quite reconcile what he had seen with what Brutus and Cassius were so calmly suggesting.
Cassius shrugged. “Some Egyptian cults use snakes or scorpions in their rituals, that much we know. The Minoans were known to venerate bulls, at least according to the ancients. Whatever these creatures are, they must come from Carcosa, and they mean something to the priests of the cult.”
“I think,” Brutus said slowly, “that we must all agree – Caesar cannot be allowed to take the crown. To have as Emperor a man in thrall to a foreign religion – he would either change Rome into whatever these priests want, or he would destroy it.” He paused. “He must die.”
“He didn’t look well,” Casca pointed out. “I’m not sure he’ll make it past the ceremony of coronation.”
“We cannot take the chance,” Cassius said insistently.
“He will have guards around him,” Casca went on. “He is protected at all times! And even when the soldiers aren’t there, his general – Marcus Antonius – is always present.”
Brutus raised a hand to halt the developing argument. “At the Capitol,” he pointed out, “when Caesar approaches to enter, his guards disengage to form a ceremonial line. There are senators enough there, ready to greet him. If we attack then, in the crowd, we can cause enough confusion to cover ourselves while we withdraw.” He looked over at Cassius. “We will need a base to withdraw to, out in the countryside, and we will need enough soldiers loyal to our cause to protect us and to engage the forces of his supporters afterwards.”
“Gaius Octavius will form up against us,” Cassius said thoughtfully, “as will Marcus Aemilius Lepidus…”
We’re discussing killing Julius Caesar! Casca thought with a horrified thrill as the two men debated calmly, but then he remembered again the temple, and what he had seen, and he knew that what they were considering was right. History would judge their actions well, if of course history ever got to know about the cult of Carcosa.
“But who strikes the fatal blow?” he interrupted, hoping that neither Brutus nor Cassius were going to try to talk him into it.
He wanted to be on the outside of the crowd when it happened.
Or, preferably, in the middle of some remote forest. This would be a real test of his negotiating skill.
“Cinna the poet?” Casca exclaimed, surprised. “What use will he be? Sharp words are his weapons.”
“Someone will need to write about us, and what we do.” Brutus smiled. “Best to have a poet on our side who can do that.” He gazed from Casca to Cassius and back again. “If we are to do this then we all strike. We all kill Caesar together so that none of us individually does so. Is it agreed?”
It was agreed. Brutus and Cassius sent messengers out to their fellow conspirators to tell them to meet on the steps of the Senate the next morning. Caesar would arrive late, and with pomp and ceremony, as was his wont, and they would be ready. Casca accepted Brutus’s offer of a bed for the night. He knew that Brutus was more concerned that he would run off and hide if he was left alone, but the truth was that Casca didn’t want to be alone. He was worried about what might happen to him on the way home, or while he was tossing and turning in his bed.
He slept badly, his head filled with dreams of white crawling shapes, and when he was finally woken by one of Brutus’s slaves, and was ceremonially washed and dressed, he felt like a man preparing for his own execution.
The sun was shining out of a perfect blue sky, and the ancient stones of Rome seemed to glow in its cleansing light. Casca could hardly believe what was about to happen, or indeed what had happened the night before, but as Brutus led him by the arm and helped him into a litter he slipped a knife inside the folds of Casca’s tunic.
“For later,” he said. “Wait for my signal.”
The Senate was to meet in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, located on the apex of the Capitoline Hill and positioned so that the entirety of Rome was spread out beneath it. The slaves carrying the litter were gasping and sweating by the time they had climbed the hill and pushed their way through the crowds that always assembled to see the business of Rome carried out. As Casca stepped from the litter he looked around at the various shrines, altars, statues and victory trophies that were displayed in the open area outside the temple. They marked the history of Rome – its triumphs and its failures, its conquests and its defeats, its people and its soul. And, if they didn’t succeed in their business that morning, they could bear witness to Rome’s ultimate failure.
“Stiffen the sinews,” Brutus murmured, taking Casca’s elbow. “What we do, we do for Rome.”
He led Casca across to a group standing on the steps leading up to the temple’s immense pillars. Cassius was there, as were the others who had been named the night before – Decius Brutus, Lucius Metellus Cimber, Gaius Trebonius, Caius Ligarius and the poet, Helvius Cinna. They each swapped dark glances that, Casca thought, should have been enough to give away their purpose to any soldier nearby. They virtually stank of conspiracy.
A stir in the crowd drew his attention. He glanced past Brutus and Cassius and saw a litter approaching. It was, of course, bigger and more resplendent than any other litter, and carried by more slaves than was necessary. Soldiers in gleaming metal and polished leather armour followed it. The litter drew to a halt amid cheers and applause from the crowd, and, after a dramatic pause, Julius Caesar climbed out.
He looked pale, Casca thought, and his eyes were shadowed as if he carried a great weight of worry. As he turned to acknowledge the adulation of the crowd with a languid hand, Casca tried to get a glimpse of the back of his neck, but he could see nothing untoward.
“I shall engage him in conversation as he approaches,” Brutus said quietly. “When I shout ‘Tyranny is dead!’ then we all fall upon him. Is it agreed?”
“Yes,” came the reply from everyone gathered around him.
As his guards moved to form a line along the lowest step in front of the temple, Caesar drew his toga around him and swept towards the conspirators. It seemed to Casca that he took a deep breath before he moved, as though bracing himself, or summoning what little strength he had left.
“Great Caesar,” Brutus said smoothly, moving to intercept him, “might I petition you on behalf of Publius Cimber, brother of Metellus here, who you have banished from Rome for reasons that –”
“Bother me not here,” Caesar snapped. “If you bend and pray and fawn for Publius Cimber then I spurn you like a cur. Know that Caesar does no wrong.”
He tried to push his way past the knot of conspirators, but they drew closer about him. Caesar’s face twisted in anger, but it seemed to Casca that there was something else there – gratitude, perhaps, or relief. He seemed to know what was coming.
Brutus opened his mouth to say something – probably the fateful words – but Caesar raised a hand to the back of his neck. His face convulsed, and he seemed to Casca, who was behind and slightly to his right now, that he was trying to tear something away. For a moment there was nothing in his clawed hand, but then Casca saw it – a white hand emerging from the folds of his toga, its skin moist and maggoty – that clutched at his neck with four of its fingers and would not let go. The middle finger, however, extended up into Caesar’s hairline, where a thin line of watery blood trickled downwards.
Casca couldn’t help himself. He grabbed for the knife inside the folds of his own toga and lunged at Caesar’s back. He heard shouts from the crowd, and thought he could make out Brutus shouting, “Tyranny is— !”, but his blood was roaring in his ears like a waterfall, blocking everything else out. He swept the knife up, and then down, skewering the fleshy white hand to Caesar’s neck. Blood spurted, but so did a thin, yellowish fluid. The hand convulsed, fingers digging hard into Caesar’s neck.
The other conspirators threw themselves on Caesar, hacking and stabbing, but Casca stepped backwards, hiding the knife within his toga. As the crowd screamed and surged, as the shocked soldiers advanced, he moved in the other direction. Eventually he turned and ran.
He didn’t know where to go. Not home – if anyone was looking for him then that was where they would go. Not to Brutus’s residence, for the same reason. If there was some gathering place for the conspiracy to retreat to in order to prepare for the inevitable attack by Octavius and Lepidus then he didn’t know its location, but even if he did then he wouldn’t have gone there. He just wanted to run to the middle of some forest somewhere and just sit there until all the hubbub and hullaballoo had died down.
Inevitably, however, his feet drew him to the Carcosan temple. As he stared up at its distorted lines, and felt rather than heard the regular pounding from somewhere inside it or beneath it, he knew that there was unfinished business there. Brutus and the others thought that assassinating Caesar would be enough. It wouldn’t. Whatever was in the temple had to be destroyed as well, even if it cost Casca his own life.
There was an old, twisted tree growing out of the pavement to one side. He reached up and snapped off a branch.
Reluctantly he climbed the five steps and entered the temple.
It was hot inside. The bald man with no eyes was absent, and Casca stared up at the strange and disturbing statue that dominated the inside of the temple. Perhaps he had misremembered it, or perhaps the flickering of the braziers and the strange geometry of the walls and ceiling was confusing him, but it seemed to him that the statue’s head had been canted to the left the last time he had seen it, but now it was pointing downwards, and slightly to the right. The myriad of blank marble hemispheres that were its eyes could, of course, have been looking in any and all directions.
He held the dry branch that he carried up to one of the braziers until it caught alight. If there was anything there that could be burned then he would burn it.
Casca could hear the sound of metallic tapping, or thudding, or clicking clearly now – more clearly than on the previous night. It seemed to be coming from around the back of the statue, and he followed the noise, circling the creature’s st
one flanks until he reached its rear, where he found a dark opening. He went through, holding the burning branch in one hand and the knife in the other.
Steps led downwards. He followed, until he found himself in a subterranean corridor, lined with damp brick from which green strands of fungus sprouted like the hair of a corpse. The metallic thudding was louder now, like the beating of Vulcan’s own fiery forge. He followed the corridor to a corner. Bracing himself, because the thudding noise was shaking the very brickwork now, he turned the corner.
He found himself in a long catacomb with an arched roof, but the architecture took second place to the thing in the centre. It was… actually, he didn’t know what it was.
There were wheels the size of waterwheels and cartwheels in there, whirling around madly, but they were made of flesh rather than wood or metal, flesh that was marbled with muscle and fat, and they were each encircled by jagged ivory teeth that meshed with the teeth of other wheels so that they all rotated in opposing directions but each driving the others. There were also great coils of muscle that seemed to be gradually unwinding, thick rods of glistening horn covered with thorn-like spines which rotated endlessly, and heavy knobs of bone that swung back and forth on lengths of tendon as thick as Casca’s arms. In the middle, dimly visible through all the moving parts, Casca thought he could see leathery bellows inflating and deflating with a regular pulse. With a sick feeling in his stomach Casca realised that the wheels and rods and coils appeared, in some cases, to be impossibly passing through each other, as if they were occupying the same space.
Altogether it was a vision of complete madness: organised, regular and yet completely, entirely alive. The thudding sound it emitted echoed through his chest, making it hard to breath. That might have been a benefit, because the whole cellar was permeated with a cloying smell of faecal matter, sweat and bile.
What made his head swim was that, although the catacomb was on finite size, with walls and a ceiling, when he looked at the thing moving ceaselessly in the centre he knew he was looking at something vast, something without boundary or limit.
Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu Page 15