Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

by Jonathan Green

  It seemed to Leyh’r as if the entire landscape had been so suddenly thrust up from the sea that the water sought its way back to the ocean in torrents.

  The heavy clouds lent a greenish preternatural cast to the light and violent gusts of wind drove the rain almost horizontally across the Fell, reducing visibility until Leyh’r and Skalliger lost sight of the remains of the Order entirely. Still, they had one concern and it drove them on. They had but to head in the direction from which the emanations of dread issued, pulsing out in great waves that threatened to swamp their resolve.

  Crashes of thunder added their tumultuous reports to the chaos, answering the rumbles from beneath the ground as if two vast and primordial titans clashed. Leyh’r had no doubt that it was Nodens wrestling with the waking Old One.

  “Goemagot stirs!” bellowed Skalliger over the storm.

  “We have to be at the Stones when the stars are right or else all is lost!” Leyh’r called back, as the storm lashed around them.

  Assailed by another wave of unutterable dread, Leyh’r recited Belshim’s formula, a ward of protection from the Pnakotic manuscripts, attempting to furl the sails of his mind against the psychic tempest lest they be torn to ribbons, and all that was Leyh’r wrecked and sunk without trace.

  However, his mind, more frail than it had been in his youth, gave way to the supernatural assault. His wits broke free of their moorings and Leyh’r vanished beneath another swell of malevolent terror, forgetting all purpose and design, clinging only to the guilt that weighed him down, drowning him in anguish and remorse.

  He stood upon a rock, his tattered mantle clinging to his slight frame, his threadbare white hair and beard plastered to his head. His hands grasped at unseen things; fleeting memories illuminated by the lightning before they were lost and scattered to the winds like leaves in a hurricane.

  Merwin, his wife; beautiful, serene, smiling fondly at their two young daughters laughing in the sunlight of Troynovant’s gardens, the babe Cordelia at her breast.

  Merwin, her face red, contorted in anger and abhorrence as she raged at him, beating him with such small fists.

  Merwin lost, silent, eyes vacant.

  Merwin...

  “Merwin!” Leyh’r beat at his head and let out a tormented howl of grief. “Oh, why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life and you no life at all?”

  VII

  Skalliger despaired as his King, on whom everything still depended, snatched at phantoms in the storm. He seized Leyh’r by his arm, but the old king shrugged him off, his attention caught by something else. Leyh’r cocked his head, listening intently.

  Skalliger drew his sword, stomach clenched tight in anticipation of he knew not what. “Who’s there? Make yourself known!”

  Skalliger could not bring himself to call what crawled out of the tempest a man. Naked but for a cloth around his loins, his skin was a confusion of bruises, cuts and abrasions, his hair knotted and bedraggled and his body smeared with the filth of the Fell.

  He loped cautiously toward Skalliger, all the while flinching from some invisible assault. “Beware the Foul Fiend!”

  “What’s that it says?” asked Leyh’r, peering curiously at the stranger.

  “The Foul Fiend has led me here through whirlpool, bog and quagmire!”

  “What are you called?”

  “Called? I had a name once. Edgar.” At his mention of the name, the man’s limbs spasmed in a fit that quickly passed. “The Foul Fiend took it, fouled it and left me with nothing and so will he do to everything else when he awakes, walks Albion’s hills once more, and builds again his old demesne. Poor Tom’s a-cold.”

  Leyh’r crouched down on his haunches to inspect the creature hunkered on the ground, his back to the rain. “I saw you and I thought a man a worm.” He nodded sagely. “So are we all in face of the Old Ones.”

  Skalliger noticed that mention of the Foul Fiend seemed to draw Leyh’r from his phantasms to something like his purpose and dared to hope that this benighted creature may do Leyh’r some good.

  In the distance he spied a titanic ruin.

  “My liege!” Skalliger yelled through the storm, half-blinded by the rain. “Over yonder lies some refuge. Come. Let us wait out this present squall there.”

  He led Leyh’r, who continued to talk in earnest with his new companion, out of the stinging rain and biting wind and into the relative calm of the ruins.

  Although the partial shelter of the ancient ruin gave them some respite from the storm, Skalliger did not wish to dwell upon what foul purpose it might have been put to when it was first raised here.

  The roof had long since collapsed and the rubble worn and weathered was softened by lichens. Most of the building stood open to the elements, but one intact section provided a windbreak from the worst excesses of the storm.

  Skalliger ushered Leyh’r into a cove, along with the unkempt madman calling himself Tom – for the name Edgar seemed to provoke in him such dread that his body rebelled against it.

  A voice from further in the shadows called out a warning.

  “Come no closer, I beseech you. If you are of sound mind and limb and uncorrupted by the spawn of Goemagot, come no closer. I am a broken man. Vile and unnatural copulation has been my sin!”

  The man stepped from the shelter of the shadows, his hand groping clumsily along the wall, his fingers and nails bloody and ragged from such wear.

  “It is not the Foul Fiend,” said Tom, after consideration “for of eyes he has a hundred. This poor man has none. See there, the unhappy hollows of his face?”

  Skalliger peered at the man. “I know you,” he said. “Are you not Earl of Gloucester? How came you here?”

  “Sir, having no eyes, I smelt this place out, its preternatural stench leading me here that I might yet see some mischief on my ill-begotten bastard’s scheme. There is harm set against Albion by one who would liberate dread Goemagot from his dreaming, whose sigils and signs are seared into my very mind. They craze my wits and I have no eyes left to shut against them. My whoreson Edmund, who I did beget with a Deeping One in abhorrent union, has vowed to see the Old One rise and his unnatural fortunes with it.”

  Leyh’r reached out, touched the old man’s face and nodded in sympathy. “I know well the guilt a father bears.”

  Gloucester cocked his head and winced. “I know that voice. Is’t not the King?”

  Leyh’r sighed in reverie. “Aye every inch a king, yet not so, for I lack a queen. I had one once, but she discovered my duty; to wit that my life has been forfeit since my coronation as was my father’s before him and his before him.

  “For those of royal blood are, by Divine succession, the Priest-Kings of Albion. Our duty is sacral and sacrificial, that at the end of our days, or when the need arises, we give in ritual our life and blood so that Goemagot the Great Old One remains a-bed.

  “Conceiving three royal daughters of Albion, my sweet Merwin then by unhappy chance conceived the arcane knowledge that their sacred lives, too, were forfeit. That the children she bore me, and those they might bear in turn, could one day face the same fate as I by virtue of the blood they shared. My queen, her maternal instincts o’erwhelming her Royal duty, grieving my perceived betrayal at our daughters’ fate, fell into a rage and from there into a melancholy, and thence into a madness from which not even her children could rouse her. So, confining her to keep her from harm or harming, one day in the grip of a lunatic fit she escaped and leapt from a high tower rather than bear a son and heir to inherit such a dread mantle.”

  Leyh’r hung his head. “I have mourned her ever since and sought a way to right the wrong I did her.”

  Gloucester gasped. “Disowning and banishing Cordelia.”

  Leyh’r nodded. “It is not all, but I hope that saving one daughter from the curse of Albion’s Blood is enough. Now I go to make my peace and perform my sacrificial duty ‘ere the stars are right, that Goemagot may not yet wake.”

  “Then we must go, my lieg
e,” Skalliger declared. “We must brave the storm again to reach the Stones, but the way is treacherous and we may not make it.”

  “Then it is madness to go out there,” said Gloucester. “Here is a way that delves into the earth, and under it. I have taken refuge in it before and it leads to a passage.”

  “This is Goemagot’s domain,” countered Skalliger, “and I have no doubt the Fell is but the barrow that entombs him. If he sleeps yet, then we may reach the Stones in time.”

  VIII

  Gloucester felt his way along the gigantic blocks, his fingers inching over glyphs that Skalliger could scarce see, but those illuminated by bursts of lightning told a story he had only previously known from forbidden texts. Here, in carvings made by some primeval hand, he saw glimpses of great cities populated by amphibious men serving monstrous creatures, the sight of which was mercifully all too brief, underscoring the fact that the places through which they now walked were once sovereign to greater powers than Man. Giants once walked here. This land, of which Albion was nothing but the surviving promontory after the greater share of it sank beneath the waves, was theirs and would be again if Leyh’r failed.

  The party continued to edge their way down to the gloom. Here Nature stood on the very verge of her confine and other laws held sway. Water that seeped down ran in unnatural directions. The walls and angles seemed wrong and confused the eyes, inducing a nausea. It was all they could do not to flee.

  Only blind Gloucester seemed sure of his footing. “Take my hand, let me guide you. I have not eyes to deceive,” he said.

  Leyh’r placed his hand on Gloucester’s shoulder and Skalliger on his, while Poor Tom, with no mind left to lose, made his own way, canary-like, watching for signs of the Foul Fiend.

  Even with their eyes closed, they were not immune to the strange geometries of the place. “I think we go the wrong way. We labour down precipitous slopes into the depths and I fear we may fall,” protested Skalliger.

  “Nay the ground is even,” declared Gloucester.

  But it was not enough to take it on faith. Skalliger opened his eyes. The space was lit my some faint luminescence from deep below only serving to confirm what his other senses told him. “Nay, ‘tis horrible steep, the walls rise and others drop away and the angles of the stone… Methinks we look down from a dread summit into a bottomless pit.”

  “Close your eyes lest your brain turn and your deficient sight send you tumbling into the unnatural abyss to which these perverse geometries are but the brink. I tell you, the ground is even!” declared Gloucester.

  Leyh’r heard Tom sniff the air in long draughts, and caught a hint himself of a foul odour that almost made him retch as it drifted up on some warm updraft from unspeakable depths.

  “The Foul Fiend. I smell him. He comes, he comes!” Tom cried.

  Leyh’r reached out blindly, laying a palsied hand on the crouching madman’s shoulder, seeking to quiet him, remembering that it did as much in thunderstorms for Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, Merwin’s favourite dogs.

  As the unnatural stench assailed his nostrils, Skalliger let go of his liege’s shoulder and drew his sword. Hearing a gelatinous heaving and slapping, he opened his eyes again.

  “My lord! Flee! Oh, gods –”

  Skalliger managed to scream before something wet and heavy abruptly silenced him and dragged him into the depths.

  The rest hurried as fast as Gloucester’s hands could find the way and they soon felt the cold wet breeze on their faces, and the rocks became wet and slippery under their hands as they emerged onto the surface of the Fell again.

  Rain, driven by a chill wind, began to saturate Leyh’r’s robes anew. He listened briefly for sound of pursuit, and heard nothing but the wind shrieking over the blasted heath. They had come out under the summit of a large hillock atop which stood a circle of seven large stones, each twice as tall as a man.

  Leyh’r’s shoulders slumped. The weight of his duty was almost tangible now and his fragile mind buckled under another wave of malign emanations from the Old One below, the psychic assault beginning to crumble what fragmentary resolve remained.

  “Enough. Let it be now. The stars do not pause in their journey and neither must I. The hour draws near.”

  He looked to the blind Gloucester and to the madman, Tom, who had got him this far. He would ask no more of them. But his body was frail and he was exhausted mentally and physically, and he loathed himself for it.

  “Fellows, take me but to the crest of that sacral hill. I have one last act as King that I must yet perform; my final abnegation.”

  He could have wept in gratitude when they each took to his side and step-by-step the three of them laboured against the buffeting wind until they reached the summit. There, the great stones rose about him and in the centre stood the stone altar, stained dark with the Blood of Albion, where his predecessors had sacrificed their lives.

  He clapped his companions on the shoulders. “Go now, there is work to be done that is not for the likes of thee. Bid me farewell and let me hear thee going.”

  Edgar took Gloucester’s hand and began to tug at it, urging the blind man away.

  “Come, sirrah, come. The Foul Fiend approaches!”

  They had reached the edge of the circle, when from the shadows of the nearest standing stone stepped one whose skin was like to the stones themselves, wet and glistening with a batrachian sheen. Edmund, sword in hand, his wide eyes nictating, herded them back.

  “No, stay. The great Goemagot awakens and I would have you witness my rise before you fall.”

  A surge of indescribable terror rippled through the circle, paralysing the trio with fear and loosening bowels. Their minds roiled in its wake and the men sank to their knees crying out in anguish.

  Only Edmund seemed immune. He strode over to where aged Leyh’r clung to the altar, his hands pressed in a rigor against the stained and weathered stone, his thin skin clinging to his bones like damp cloth. He took the ceremonial blade from Leyh’r’s scabbard, weighing it in his hand.

  Leyh’r looked up almost without comprehension, his body still gripped by a peristalsis of fear.

  Edmund leaned down. “Oh, I do not mean to kill you. Not yet. I need only delay your death until Goemagot awakes.”

  Tears welled up in Leyh’r’s eyes and he slumped against the altar stone. The passing convulsions of fear leaving him drained and defeated. His entire life had brought him to this point. Everything he had sacrificed, all he had lost, and he had failed.

  Edmund circled the stones, holding the blade aloft in triumph and calling out in an ancient tongue that had not been heard on those hills for eons.

  Lightning spat angrily around the stones. The ground rumbled its defiance in return.

  “Beneath Albion, Goemagot has dreamed!” cried Edmund with apocalyptic zeal. “Now he awakens!”

  One of the great stones toppled as the bulk of the hill heaved upwards. Goemagot stirred. Thick black pseudopods burst from the earth, writhing mockeries of the stone sentinels that had stood there immobile since time immemorial.

  Seeing the great tentacles, Leyh’r despaired until a terrible thought took hold. The ritual required only blood and death. The ceremonial sword was an affectation, quick and painless, but it was no longer in his possession. And yet there were other methods of self-sacrifice, if one were desperate enough.

  “Oh Leyh’r, Leyh’r, Leyh’r! Beat at this gate that let thy dear folly in and thy dear judgement out!”

  He smashed his head against the altar stone. Again and again he dashed his skull against the rock, speaking the words of the ritual, punctuating them with pain and blood. But it was too slow. He would lose consciousness before he died. Despondent, he collapsed.

  IX

  Curled up and whimpering, a moment of lucidity forked though Tom’s mind like lightning, a moment in which he fully knew himself again but briefly; a candle guttering against a draught. He must act before the flame went out.

  Naked and b
leeding and with an incomprehensible bellow of rage, he launched himself at his half-brother, driving him to the ground, the ceremonial sword spinning from his grasp.

  Edgar, feeling the tide of madness rise to swamp him once again, seized the sword and thrust it into his half-brother’s body.

  Edmund’s eyes met those of his strange sibling in pained surprise. He watched as Edgar’s keen intelligence struggled vainly against the madness that threatened to consume him again, even as death clouded his own vision.

  Edmund pulled Edgar toward him and hissed venomously, “My death comes too late, brother. I have murdered the Daughters of Albion, Goneril by poison, Regan by dagger. The bloodline is finished. Nothing now can stop Goemagot. Nothing...” And with that, the Deeping One’s unnatural spawn died.

  Edgar recalled that he could not read the words in the book Edmund had shown him, yet even written down they contained such power as would strip a man of his mind. He wondered, did the words need to be spoken aloud at all?

  He crouched by the bloodied, semi-conscious Leyh’r, opened the satchel and took out the parchment containing the words of the ritual.

  He pulled the sword from Edmund’s lifeless body and thrust the parchment onto the point of the blade, intending to drive both into the body of the waking giant, trusting that intent alone would suffice to complete the dread ritual, or at least do some harm. Pushing the parchment down to the hilt he turned, ready to impale the unspeakable creature.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the sheer immensity of the creature as it now reared high above the stones and in that one brief fantastic glance, the afterimage of the creature seared itself on his mind’s eye with such terrible force that what was left of his sanity, and Edgar, burnt away. He dropped the sword, envenomed with words so ancient the human tongue could barely speak them, and howled in anguish.

  Gloucester crawled towards the sound, sightless, groping at the wet earth until he came upon him and stroked the face that he would never see again.