Black Wings IV

by Edited by S. T. Joshi

  And there’s poor Topa, dead at seven, he with his orphan past, his miserable now, his nothing tomorrow. The Spanish have killed another of her Incan people. Topa.

  She must take care of her people.

  The garua is a paste, the white of an old man’s eyes as he dies. It smears her eyes, nose, and lips. Her hand shakes.

  From the shadows, the creature says, “You have already unleashed the fourth realm. Now complete the ritual and restore Incan rule to Peru.”

  All that is needed is an urpu of blood, the sacrificial offering that opens communications among the three—no, the four—realms of being.

  Diego weeps hysterically, “No, please, I beg of you, no, please don’t kill me.” He’s blubbering, the old fool, more frightened of death than a little boy. She sees him for what he is; and he might be worse than the murderers of the Shining Path. He represents the Spanish oppressors who destroyed all Incan civilization and all her people.

  She places a gold headdress on Diego and one on herself. She thrusts a spiked club into his hands. “Now fight me, old man,” she hisses, but Diego remains in the dust, crying. He’s injured, and it’s not a fair fight, but was it fair when the conquistadors showed up and mass-murdered her people?

  She rips the headdress off him, hears a rasp from the creature, knows she’s done the right thing. It’s the ancient way. The Cult of the Dead. The funerary ritual. And who better to do it than Quilla of the royal blood? She reaches for a ceremonial knife. It glitters in the dark.

  She’s not a killer. Can’t do it …

  “Take the gold, be rich…”

  These are Diego’s last words.

  And Quilla Saparo screams a Quechua curse, and she raises the knife with both hands and slams it into his neck, and the blood gushes into the urpu.

  DARK REDEEMER

  Will Murray

  Will Murray is a lifelong Lovecraftian and the author of several celebrated Mythos stories. Enormously prolific, he has written more than sixty novels in series ranging from The Destroyer to the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, which includes Skull Island, pitting the Man of Bronze against the legendary King Kong. He also produces Radio Archives’ successful Will Murray’s Pulp Classics line of audiobooks and ebooks, which includes works by H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt.

  1. Disturbing Contacts

  WHEN HIS CELLPHONE RANG, DR. ROBERT WENTWORTH was on his way to work at the National Reconnaissance Office of the Department of Defense.

  “Wentworth.”

  “We have a man down,” a low voice told him.

  Wentworth stiffened. “Is it safe to to go the office?”

  “Unknown. Redirect to Location B.” The line went dead.

  “Location B,” Wentworth muttered. “That means Non-Local Affairs. Damn. I hate Non-Local Affairs.” He pulled a skittery U-turn against traffic and shot north.

  Dr. Wentworth had never been to Location B. That was how secret it was. Not simply black, but superblack. But he knew the address. As Deputy Director of NRO, this was mandatory—personal beliefs notwithstanding.

  Seventy-five Tacoma was not what he expected it to be. A rambling white clapboard home zoned as a business 30 miles from the NRO’s Chantilly, Virginia, headquarters. The wrought-iron sign read: Victoria Venkus Tea House. Fortunes. Palmistry. Astrology.

  This was Location B, otherwise the main station for the Cryptic Events Evaluation Section of the NRO, AKA Non-Local Affairs, colloquially derided as the “Weird Desk.” CEES’s mission was planetary defense.

  The lot was full with customer cars. Parking his maroon Lexus, Wentworth stepped out into the sweltering late October heat and hurried to the back door. A short flight of steps led to a wooden landing too small to be called a back porch. By the time he climbed it, his suitcoat was soaked and plastered to his back.

  Face dark with suffused blood, Wentworth pressed his leatherette ID card to the back-door glass while thumbing the buzzer.

  The door was open by a violet-eyed woman who simply murmured, “In the attic.”

  “Your name?” Wentworth demanded upon entering, his nose wrinkling at the pungent scent of nag champa incense.

  “Call me Cassandra.”

  Up a flight of suffocatingly winding stairs, past the second-floor living quarters, she brought Wentworth to a locked door. The pale brunette opened it with a silent keypad.

  Another door opened on a sealed room. A lighted sign said: SESSION IN PROGRESS.

  Wentworth growled, “What’s this?”

  “RV chamber,” Cassandra explained.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Remote viewing. We have a non-responsive viewer.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’ll show you, sir.” Unlocking the door, she led Wentworth into an egg-shaped chamber where a man lay on a waterbed. Everything in the room was gray. Ceiling, rug, walls. Even the jumpsuit the sleeping man wore. He lay on a gray sheet. In the claustrophobic space, the very air appeared somehow grayish…

  “He’s been like that over sixteen hours,” Cassandra reported. “The session was scheduled for ninety minutes. They never go out more than two hours.”

  “So what’s the problem? Wake him up.”

  “We can’t, sir. He didn’t return. It’s never happened before. Even the old Star Gate unit never lost a viewer to the Ether. They always come back.”

  “Come back. Back from where?”

  “We call it the Matrix of all Creation. It’s too complicated to go into now, but while the body lies before us, still functioning on an autonomic level, his mind went out there into the Void. It simply didn’t return. We don’t know what to do. The Star Gate manual doesn’t cover this eventuality.”

  “Run it down for me,” Wentworth snapped.

  Cassandra sighed breathily. “Our section has been experiencing some rather disturbing contacts. It manifests itself as what medical professionals classify as sleep paralysis. SP is a REM-sleep parasomnia characterized by unusually vivid paralyzing dreams in which the afflicted party experiences—or imagines—a non-physical intruder in his bedroom. Sometimes he sees or senses the thing approaching. The intruder is invariably threatening in a malevolent way. Usually the subject feels a crushing and over-powering weight on his chest, but cannot move a muscle. He becomes certain that death is imminent.

  “Upon awakening,” continued Cassandra, “the afflicted party is temporarily paralyzed and still caught up in a extremely suffocating terror syndrome. That phase will fade within three to five minutes. The intruder is most often described as an evil black cloud, a shadowy witch or hag, or a dark man. It is never present upon awaken—”

  “Dark Man! That sounds like Nyar—”

  Cassandra cut him off. “We don’t used the N-word in this building, sir. Against regs.”

  “But you know who I mean,” growled Wentworth.

  Cassandra nodded. “After two of our viewers were victimized, we went to countermeasures. The problem persisted. It was ultimately determined to take the fight to the enemy.”

  “Which enemy?”

  “Target N is considered a lower-level entity, as these beings go, so it was deemed an actionable target. And now look at poor Manton.”

  Wentworth looked away. “Seal the room until further notice. Generate a full report ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir. But what other action do we take? CEES is clearly under assault by outside forces. We can’t stand down without risk of further psychic attacks.”

  “Take no action until you hear otherwise,” Wentworth snapped. “And for future reference, don’t use the P-word around me. It’s against my religion.”

  Wentworth flew down the stairs. His Lexus slithered out of the lot, nearly running down three teenage girls coming to get their cards read. He cranked the air conditioner up as high as it would go, inwardly praying that the heat wouldn’t break 100 as it did last Halloween.

  On his way to NRO HQ, Dr. Wentworth stopped at Holy Thorn Church to light a candle to Saint Andrew. Tha
t helped him shake off the tendrils of superstitious unease creeping into his soul. He hurried back to his vehicle, eager for its air-conditioned comfort, and shot north.

  As DDNRO, Dr. Wentworth believed implicitly in science, whole-heartedly subscribed the NRO mission of safeguarding America through a web of recon satellites. He saw himself as one candle dedicated to holding back the eternal night of ignorance.

  But as the mission of NRO shifted after its 1992 declassification to include environmental and what were euphemistically called “external” threats—threats from outside time and space—Dr. Wentworth rediscovered the comforts of his childhood Catholicism.

  Striding by the sign that read, “The Nation’s Eyes and Ears in Space,” Wentworth passed through three security stations before reaching his office. It was spare and spartan; the only concession to his personal beliefs was a hollow crucifix hanging on the wall containing two short white candles and a tiny bottle of holy oil reserved for Extreme Unction.

  In privacy, he familiarized himself with RV protocols, starting with the old Department of Defense definition used during the Star Gate RV program:

  “The acquisition, by mental means, of persons, places, and events remote in time and space normally blocked to ordinary perception.”

  Two versions had been developed: Coordinate Remote Viewing, which seemed to be almost a form of automatic writing, and Extended Remote Viewing, an adaptation of shamanistic-style out-of-body soul travel. Both depended on the “viewer” being blinded to the true nature of the target, and cued off a set of encrypted coordinates representing a temporary space-time address for the target.

  To Wentworth’s skeptical eye, it sounded like so much voodoo….

  Sleep paralysis proved to be a recognized medical condition, not previously linked to star-born threats. That much was a relief.

  Finally, Wentworth called up a secure file with the cryptic word NYARLATHOTEP. Categorized as an indeterminate threat entity of unknown origin and objectives, Nyarlathotep was first manifested in modern times when a once-obscure writer of pulp horror stories experienced a nightmare centering on this being, so intense and powerful that he got out of bed to transcribe an account of the contact. It was classified as a “contact” because the subject later testified that he began writing his account before fully awakening. That was back in 1920.

  Within a month, Nyarlathotep sightings were being reported globally at an average of three per week. For that reason, the Lovecraft experience was retro-classified as a Presumed First Contact.

  Wentworth made a nervous sign of the cross after reading that. Then he picked up the phone and speed-dialed CIA.

  “Walter? Remember Star Gate? Yeah, that. Know any retired viewers? You do? Put me in contact. Your nation will be grateful.”

  Three hours later, Wentworth was back in the dismal gray room looking down at the still body of NRO Viewer #28, Manton Marrs. The close air was moist and had that attic smell. In accordance with the latest emergency Federal guidelines, the air conditioning was on low to conserve precious power.

  “It’s all-gray because it cuts down on the noise-to-signal ratio,” Carl Muirhead was explaining. “Any noise or color perceived before the viewer drops down into an Alpha brainwave state can influence his subsequent perceptions.”

  “Skip the technobabble,” Wentworth bit off. “What do you make of him?”

  Muirhead noted the placid features, the gently rising and falling gray cotton chest. “Could be stuck in Theta. That’s the bridge between waking Alpha and the Delta sleepstate. Most Extended RV is done in Theta.”

  “Can he be unstuck?”

  “The brainmind, maybe. But his spirit is out there. Really out there.”

  “Well, reel him back in.”

  Muirhead frowned. “Can’t be done. But possibly I can go out and fetch him.”

  Wentworth visibly shook. “Gives me the creeps when you say that….”

  Muirhead eyed Cassandra, waiting outside the chamber. “I’ll need the coordinates he was working.”

  “I’ll get them.” She departed.

  “Coordinates?” Wentworth asked. “What good will they do?” “All RV is done off coordinates to blind the viewer to the target, so as to inhibit aol—analytic overlay.”

  “Say again?”

  “Imaginative associations,” Muirhead said softly. “Tell someone to RV the moon and his imagination will paint the moon he knows. But convert that target to a set of encrypted coords, and all he’s got to go on is the data coming off the signal line—the train of signals emanating from the target. It’s how we avoid frontloading.”

  “You’ve lost me completely.”

  “Sorry. I was with the Star Gate unit for seven years. RV is second-nature to me. The problem here may not be the viewer, but at the target site he was run against. I need to figure out which it is.”

  Cassandra returned with a file. “The tasking started with an Open Search Outward,” she supplied. “We couldn’t assume a lone attacker, so we tasked the viewer to go to the central source of the attack. Here is his first session report.”

  Muirhead scanned the top page. The coordinates were a set a numbers:

  3748

  6455

  “Pretty sketchy stuff,” he murmured, skimming the session report. “Mostly auditory impressions—pounding drums and anti-coherent music.”

  “Inteference was assumed,” she explained. “We then assigned a set of coords to this Matrix address and ran him against it. The first time, he aoled black holes. Then, on the second tasking, he…”

  “Black holes, you say?”

  “Yes. On the second tasking, he bounced off the membrane. Hard. Shook him up badly. Had to take the day off.”

  Wentworth interrupted, “Membrane? What membrane?”

  “In ERV,” Muirhead explained, “the viewer visualizes himself in a safe place in his mind. A sanctuary. Then he creates a vortex in that space, into which he mentally projects himself. It’s actually a quantum-level wormhole. Usually, you can feel your perceptual self going through a membrane at the opposite end before you drop into the target area. If he bounced off, that means a denied area.”

  “Denied! By whom?”

  “That,” said Carl Muirhead, “is what I’m going to find out.”

  “Have you ever dealt with this type of target before?” Cassandra asked quietly.

  Muirhead nodded absently. “In training, I worked a target where I found myself on a vast surface marked by a great blue star. There were several robed figures standing guard before a gigantic throne of some dazzling material. No sooner had I perceived them than they approached and ordered me in no uncertain terms to leave.”

  “So?” Wentworth snorted.

  “So this: I am not a person or even a ghost when I go out there. I’m a point of perception. I can’t be seen by human eyes. But they saw me.”

  “What was the target?” Cassandra asked.

  “The Throne of God.”

  “Jesus Henry Christ!” Wentworth exploded.

  “It made a believer out of me,” Muirhead said soberly.

  “Believer in what?”

  “Everything. That all possibilities are possible, and maybe no possibilities are mutually exclusive, but simultaneously possible.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is—as if the universe is actually a hologram, add some scientists now speculate. Then we have parallel worlds and alternate realities galore.”

  “God Almighty created the Universe!” Wentworth snapped back.

  Muirhead frowned absently. “Whatever. It’s long-ago created and we have to deal with it on its own terms, not ours.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to your voodoo, or whatever it is you do…”

  Wentworth stormed out.

  2. Dark Upper Regions

  “Has anyone tried CRVing this target?” Muirhead asked. Cassandra opened the top drawer of her cramped office desk. “As a preliminary probe, yes,” she said. “This was the resu
lt.”

  A half-dozen black rollerball pens spilled onto the desk. They were contorted into various arthritic shapes.

  Muirhead picked one up. “Melted?”

  “If only. Lab analysis indicates they were reconfigured on the molecular level.”

  “Any useful data come out of it?”

  “None whatsoever, captain.”

  “I’m retired. Call me Carl. Okay, I’ll need a place to cool down.”

  “Do you have a cooldown preference?”

  Muirhead pulled a CD sleeve from a pocket. “Brought my own mix. Thetawave entrainment track. Pink noise with an embedded binaural beat.”

  Cassandra nodded. “Once we find a place to store Viewer #28, you’ll be good to go.”

  An hour later, Carl Muirhead was lying on the gray waterbed listening to the buzzing pink noise fill his brain. He had once been based at the US Amundsen-Scott Research Station in Antarctica, and its harsh serenity appealed to his military mind. He mentally re-created its geodesic dome as his Sanctuary.

  While his brain and body cycled down into a receptive brain-wave posture, Muirhead mentally paced the cool austere interior, creating an imaginary strongbox into which he cast his fears and concerns. Also, all the frontloading he’d received thus far. In this case, frontloading came with the territory. He’d have to work through it.

  In the center of the dome’s floor lay a great well. A gray vortex churned in the well. The coordinates were chiseled into the rim. He has set them there as he visualized this space.

  When he felt ready, Muirhead would plunge in. But not before. He had to be free of all earthly thoughts.

  Even for a seasoned viewer, the line between the imaginal and the operational is a treacherous blur. So when his strongbox started to rattle, Carl Muirhead ignored it as an artifact of an active rather than receptive imagination.

  It refused to settle down. Mentally, he unlocked it. Out popped something black and rubbery, sporting an eggplant-blank ovoid instead of a featured head. It flung a long-handled spear at him.