The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming

by Stephen Jones

  But Special Agent Carter doesn’t go near those spaces, he does not approach any of the women and men he’d once found and trained so carefully—they’re too important, too valuable. He’d as soon run a knife through the Mona Lisa as touch a hair on their collective heads. No. Randolph goes to the very lowest level of the headquarters, down where only a few weak-and-yellow-as-piss light bulbs offer any relief from the black.

  His original dreamers, his mad squad, used to prefer the darkness to the light, lest they see their own reflections in some surface and realize what they’d become, how their insanity had decayed them. No one, it should be noted, had ever been transformed the way Randolph had, but he suspects that’s a matter of exposure—he’s clocked more hours in the Dreamscape than anyone on his team. Partially because the original dreamers didn’t live that long, partially because the new ones are valued and protected in a way the mad never were; not regarded as “disposable” or “one-use.”

  All are gone now, the delirious dreamers.

  All but one.

  Dolly is the last of them.

  It’s not her real name, but when she was taken into the Arkham Asylum, there was no one who knew what it was; she just kept answering all questions put to her with “Dolly.” A symptom of her condition was that in the Dreamscape she was perfectly able to communicate with him about what she’d seen and heard and felt—one of his finest early warning systems, really—but she never could recall her own name. They’d spoken often in the early years, even after the mad ones had been replaced. Special Agent Carter had been fond of her, which was probably why he’d left her until last.

  He’ll miss her when she’s gone.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Randolph.”

  Dr. Appleton’s traditional sangfroid is shaken to its very core. He’d been woken from his slumber by the ringing of the phone by Randolph’s bed. When he realized his friend wasn’t in either his bathroom or connecting lab, he knew where he’d find him; he didn’t hurry as much as he probably should have. Though he’s seen a lot in his years at the League, this one takes the cake, although frankly the idea of cake, of any kind of food, makes him feel thoroughly queasy.

  Special Agent Carter is sitting on the concrete floor of cell 66A—which houses no more than a thin metal bed with a whisper of a mattress and a blanket the thickness of a rumor, a small desk (unused to the best of anyone’s knowledge), and a visitor’s chair (one leg twisted, perhaps in the struggle, perhaps a long-term infirmity)—and around him are the remains of the mad dreamer known as Dolly.

  It’s the reddest mess Orme’s ever seen, and all the gods—Inner, Outer, and Elder—know he’s seen plenty of Randolph’s messes. Of course, Orme’s always known what started to overcome his patient two years ago, and Orme has covered Carter’s tracks, like a good friend—a best friend, an only friend—to the best of his ability. Somehow, however, Professor Brady found out—she is a cunning and clever user of information—but she’d simply asked for reassurance that their most special of special agents was a danger to no one but the insane remainders of an old order. When Appleton had given it, Miracle Brady had nodded, and he got the feeling that Randolph was safe, as long as his usefulness to the League outweighed the demands of Brady’s lightly balanced moral compass. And to date, Randolph had continued to deliver . . . at least up until the closing of the Gates.

  Now this . . . what would happen now that Randolph had emptied his larder? Would Orme’s next additional duty be to source new bodies? New mad dreamers with one function only? To feed Special Agent Carter’s strange tastes? Or—and Orme isn’t entirely sure if this is better or worse—was this incident, coupled with the closing of the Gates, the last straw? Would one of the longest-serving agents of the Human Protection League find himself incarcerated forever in the very subterranean cells he had helped create?

  “Randolph . . . oh, fuck it all, Randolph?”

  Special Agent Carter looks up in resignation. There’s something of the hangdog about his expression—he knows he’s done bad, but hasn’t felt able to do anything else. He might well welcome permanent confinement, thinks Orme. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the newest crisis might just be the thing he needs to save his mutated buddy one last time.

  “I’m sorry, Orme, I couldn’t help myself.” Randolph shakes his enormous head. “It’s getting so difficult.”

  He wipes his hand and pincer fastidiously on Dolly’s gray smock, a strange delicacy, as if he wasn’t sitting in a puddle of her blood and guts—Randolph is no great fan of offal, preferring the muscle meat and the marrow cracked from bones with his lobster’s claw. Both of Dolly’s legs have been gnawed clean, the ribcage picked pristine as if by a flock of birds. Only the arms have any flesh remaining—Randolph would be keeping them for later, a misplaced abstemiousness.

  “We need to go, Randolph.” Orme tries to keep his voice steady. “Now.”

  “Where?”

  “Professor Brady needs to see you urgently.”

  “Oh, I’ll tidy up first, Orme.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Randolph. Events have outflanked us. You’ll simply have to face her as you are.”

  Special Agent Carter looks down at himself, at the gore-encrusted pajamas with their blue and red stripes, his bare feet with their coating of rapidly drying ochre. He looks up at Orme with a distressed gaze and says, “Oh, dear.”

  “Come along, Randolph, we’ve bridges to burn.”

  As he helps his friend up, Dr. Appleton thinks he hears a scraping sound in the shadows of the cell, but when he turns there’s nothing to be seen.

  When they knock and enter the professor’s office, it’s apparent that Randolph’s state of disarray is hardly the biggest crisis on Miracle Brady’s mind.

  A very large cat sits on the right-hand corner of her desk, a lavender light around it like a halo, whiskers like épées, eyes yellow, teeth sharp and long, its expression displeased. Although, thinks Randolph, it’s so hard to tell with cats. The professor’s expression, on the other hand, is all too easy to interpret.

  “Ah, Special Agent Carter. This is Atalal, a Cat of Ulthar. I believe you’ve already met. She assures me I’m not dreaming”

  “Naturally not. The cat is dreaming, Professor Brady.”

  “Of course the cat is dreaming.” Miracle closes her eyes briefly, as if she might be developing a headache or seeking the balm of slumber herself. “Atalal brought us a gift.”

  “Hardly a gift, professor,” says the cat censoriously—sarcasm makes no headway with felines, whether from this world or another. Its yellow gaze and Miracle Brady’s blue one shoot in the same direction. On the coffee table sits a head dripping blood onto the rug in the sitting area, red-black soaking almost with a sigh into the face of the woman with snakes for hair. “Consider it a call to arms.”

  “Atalal tells me there’s a struggle going on in the Dreamlands . . . ,” Miracle Brady says, almost as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  “As I already told you, Randolph”—again that separate pronunciation of the “l” and “ph”—“Kadath has fallen. Nyarlathotep has declared against his father, Azathoth.”

  “The Blind Idiot God and the Crawling Chaos,” breathes Orme.

  The cat gives him a withering look.

  “But the Cats side with neither one nor the other,” says Randolph. He pats the front of his blood-soaked pajamas as if that might help his appearance, as if the feline is royalty . . . and maybe it is.

  “Yet we are concerned with survival, and to remain neutral now would mean our own—and your—demise.” Atalal begins to lick a forepaw, then thinks better of it: hard to maintain dignity with a foot in one’s mouth. “Azathoth lies wounded, and Nyarlathotep has disappeared. The borders of the Dreamlands are crumbling, and a great war is coming. The Queens have sent for you, Randolph, on the insistence of their Vizier.”

  “Who are these Queens?” asks Miracle Brady. Randolph shakes his head. In all his travels he’s encountered no such bei
ngs of this title.

  “And this Vizier?” echoes Orme, extracting nothing more than a shrug from Randolph, and an impatient hiss from the cat.

  “They are who they are, and they call.” Atalal turns her body subtly, clearly shutting out Brady and Appleton, addressing Randolph alone. “You are summoned, and we are in need. Your old friend gave his life in this battle, will you do any less? Make his sacrifice worth nothing?”

  “Who?” But Randolph looks once more at the coffee table, peers more closely at the features on the head that is already going black and green and purple with rot. Now that he stares hard enough, he can see the eyes are open as if in accusation; he knows that nose, that chin, those heavy cheeks . . .

  “Kuranes!”

  King of Celephaïs, the greatest of dreamers, who’d once been of this plane but, upon his death, had been taken to the Dreamlands. Randolph, murderer, eater of flesh, surely damned, looks horrified by these remains. But did he know poor Dolly less well, for less time? He shakes his head.

  “What do you require of me?” he asks Atalal. Clearly he answers to the cat now.

  “To cross over into the Dreamscape. To meet with the Vizier and hear him out. That is all we ask.” The cat gives a bow, an inclination of the top half of her body only. It’s elegant and strange, as only a feline can be, serpentine without causing the panic an actual snake would. “If we fall, then so shall you all, just like dominos. Not all at once, but inevitably.”

  Randolph turns to Professor Brady, his expression set. “I suppose you’re going to refuse me permission again, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to be defiant.”

  “Oh no. You’re going. I don’t see that we’ve got a choice any longer. But you”—she points at the cat—“sleeping or waking, you’re staying here as a guarantee for his safety.” She leans forward. “And if you piss on my rug, I’ll use you as a mop.”

  Not that much later, back in Randolph’s room, Orme Appleton has plunged a syringe into the most prominent of Agent Carter’s veins. The doctor’s not happy about pumping morphine into a system that’s been swimming with cocaine for three days, but as Miracle Brady and Randolph himself observe, what choice do they have? In his encrusted pajamas, lying on top of the covers, Randolph curls his more human hand over his claw and closes his eyes.

  The professor tries to breathe shallowly; the air is stale, and there’s the whiff of blood from the man on the bed. She catches the contented smile that creeps across his lips, and she feels terribly sad for him. This man’s given his life for the League, to protect humanity, to keep the borders between the waking world and the dreaming safe; to hold back the other gods, and it’s made a monster of him, literally and metaphorically. When he comes back—if he comes back—she’s not sure what they are going to do. Not sure if she and her father can continue to turn a blind eye to his appetites; not sure if any of them will continue to be safe . . . what if he reaches the point where he doesn’t simply hunger for the mad? What if everyone in headquarters becomes a fit meal for Special Agent Randolph Carter?

  As she watches, the man’s bulk begins to quiver, then she realizes that’s not it—his actual outline is trembling and growing pale. Randolph is fading. This has never happened before—she’s watched him drop to sleep as a precursor to his travels many times before. Always his body remains behind. Always.

  “Orme! Wake him! Wake him up for fuck’s sake!” Brady turns toward Atalal, hands reaching . . . she’d probably grab it around the neck too, if the cat’s face didn’t reflect the same surprised terror she herself feels.

  As if the fading of Randolph Carter isn’t enough, just before he winks out of existence, Miracle Brady sees what may well be the worst thing she’s ever laid eyes upon—and there’s quite some competition for that.

  What she sees leaping for Randolph’s body, sink onto his great gut, blink in and out, is a rat—large, the color of mud and, if she’s not very much mistaken, with a face rather like that of a wizened old man.

  The man who steps through the shimmering purple-silver tear in the air is very different from the one who exited the bedroom beneath the Washington Monument.

  This Randolph is tall, stands straight, carries no eccentricity of limb with him here. Ironic that in the Dreamlands he can be as he wishes to appear, but in the waking world all the weirdness of the Dreamscape seeps back, breaking and marring his body so he’s a monster to the eye. No longer in blood-soaked pajamas, he’s attired in a beautifully tailored navy suit and white dress shirt (the French cuffs with understated agate cufflinks sitting the perfect distance from the hems of his jacket sleeves)—not ideal for traversing what appears to be the shore of a lake surrounded by a thickly meshed jungle, but it’s the way he wishes to be seen. His fedora sits at a jaunty angle on thick, black hair; his jaw is square, his eyes large and blue, cheeks smooth-shaven, and his nose aquiline. The white rosebud in his lapel smells strong and sweet.

  He’s too busy examining his environs, trying to get his bearings, so he misses the thing that drops at his feet after scrambling through the rapidly closing aerial tear, founders a little in the dry sand, then scampers away to the undergrowth to his left.

  The thing that does catch his attention is a creature that looks like a pig and a spider have mated—a gravid body, eight legs, a snout. Each of its feet has webbed toes, its skin is a strange pink-green, its wet lips peel back to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth stained with the red of the meal that’s lying beneath four of its taloned feet—whatever it was is no longer identifiable. Randolph ponders briefly, then sets the thought aside: if he’d looked something like that to Orme when he’d been founding feeding on poor Dolly.

  He stares at the wamp, wonders if it will charge him. There’s a gun beneath his jacket; casually he unbuttons and lets the right-hand panel of the fabric swing loose. Might this cause the beast to react? No. It dismisses him, lowers its head, and goes on with its feeding.

  “We have a truce, for the moment,” says a gentle voice. “Even with the worst of them.”

  Randolph swings around, seeking the speaker, and finds a man. Almost as tall as himself, but thinner—long nose, protuberant eyes, shoulders slightly hunched, and dressed outrageously like he’s some sort of pantomime sultan: Silken pants in green, a red shirt with far too many yards of fabric, a turban perched on his dark hair. An elaborate ornament weighs the front of the headdress down, a jade-green winged dog. The Vizier, Carter guesses.

  The man smiles self-deprecatingly. “The outfit is ridiculous, but the Queens like it. I am Ward Kindred, and I am so pleased to meet you at last, Special Agent Carter.”

  Randolph picks through his memories—somewhere he’d read a mention of that name, very long ago.

  “And how is it we’ve never met before, Mr. Kindred? I am a frequent traveler to these climes . . .”

  “Indeed, and I have watched your peregrinations with interest from afar.” He smiles. “The Queens prefer to keep to themselves. They prefer to take no sides in these gods’ petty wars.”

  “But that has changed?”

  “For the moment, survival is paramount, as I’m sure the Lady Atalal would have made clear. Where is she, by the way?”

  “My superiors have requested her . . . continued attendance.”

  “Ah.”

  Randolph can tell from Kindred’s glance, from that single syllable uttered, that he comprehends Professor Brady’s decision—a hostage for a hostage, all things in balance.

  “I’m sure her Ladyship will make the most of her visit.”

  As long as she doesn’t piss on the carpet, thinks Randolph, but keeps the thought to himself. “But this war, Mr. Kindred, the city?”

  “Your poor city, Mr. Carter, for it is the one you built to spite Nyarlathotep, the one he pulled back to spite you in turn—it was a wonder of all worlds, I must say—”

  “I knew it!” Randolph is exhilarated. “I knew I’d not imagined it.”

  “No, but it could not remain in your world. It was made
of the substance of the Dreamscape, as are the Outer Gods, which can seep through for a brief time.” Kindred’s eyes glance over Carter’s handsome shape. “The one slips off the other, can find no purchase. Kuranes came to us permanently only when he had died, when his essence was released from its Earthly bonds.”

  Randolph nods, a question on his lips which Kindred answers without its being asked.

  “But you, Mr. Carter, you are something entirely different. The Dreamscape adheres to you, grows on you as if it belongs there. You’re a peculiarly fertile field, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. A most bizarre melding. What are you precisely, Special Agent Carter?”

  “I cannot say. Is that why I’m here?”

  “The Queens need a knight errant, Mr. Carter—who is more errant than you?” His gaze makes Randolph wonder if Kindred knows rather more about his activities than Carter is comfortable with anyone other than Orme knowing. A light breeze springs up, bringing with it the smell of jungle rot; it ruffles the silk of the Vizier’s ridiculous shirt.

  A penny drops, Randolph’s eyes widen. “But you. You. You are Ward Kindred, you were the tutor!”

  The Vizier smiles gently, as if at an old, fond memory.

  “How did you remain here?”

  “Like so many rules, one might make an exception if balance is to be maintained. Human blood was spilled long ago in a place far from here, spilled into water, so a contamination we could not fix occurred. The balance had to be re-established, and I was the price, the atonement. Howard had to return to the everyday to fulfill his destiny.” Kindred’s smile widens. “How is the dear boy, by the way?”