Nathrotep

by William H. Nelson

  Above them, the violence of the building storm writhed and, as if summoned by his fearful glance, lightning flashed lengthwise across the heavens, striking somewhere far off in the distance. As he counted under his breath, thunder snarled, causing Terry to peer back at him with a face gone ashen in the twilight. He could tell that she was catching the same vibrations of otherworldly influences that he was. The image of the house, briefly illuminated by the flash of lightning, superimposed itself on the surface of his retinas, and he couldn’t shake the sinking feeling of dread as the first sporadic puckerings of rain struck his cheek like a jealous lover. Jamming the gun tightly into the crook of his arm, he moved forward, focusing on the job at hand. All too soon, the locked front door of the building confronted them from out of the shadows. Gritting his teeth, he pulled a crowbar from his pack.

  The ancient lock snapped under his attentions and he was surprised to find himself grateful. It’s not as if I’ll feel any safer inside, he thought, pushing the doors open with a nerve-wrenching squeal. It was just that being out in the open made him feel strangely vulnerable. Once inside he hoped he’d be better able to control his emotions. Pulling out his own flashlight, he took a deep breath, then entered.

  They found themselves in a long reception hall. The air was stagnant, ripe with the smells of moldering wood, ageless dust, and other fragrances as yet indefinable. They jumped as lightning flashed once more from behind them, outlining the darkened hall with split-second clarity. It did nothing to lighten the mood, however, as they made their cautious way toward the staircase located at the other end of the corridor. It was an unpleasant place, with peeling paint covering the walls and piles of trash littering the blackened, hardwood floor. Although a few paintings were still in evidence, they could see that all of the artwork depicted unnerving scenes and dismal-looking people. Darkness ruled this place; they could feel it clutching at them as they moved up the stairs, their feeble beams of light cutting a narrow path through the shadows.

  Resisting the impulse to search the second or third floors, they didn’t even pause at the landings. It was their intention to go straight to the top, starting with the attic and working their way down. Although the house was large, he figured that it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours to search the entire thing. As they moved upward, gusts of chill, night air slipped through unseen cracks to howl down the deserted corridors, making an ominous counterpoint to the pattering rain and swelling thunder as they neared the top of the final staircase. It was there that they began to notice an unpleasant odor. Choking, Terry stumbled a little, almost knocking them both down.

  “Good God!” She coughed, covering her mouth with a bandanna she’d yanked from her pocket. “What is that horrible smell?”

  “I don’t know,” Williams replied, wrinkling his nose in disgust and then straightening his glasses. “Maybe some animal died up here...”

  Pulling the neckline of his shirt up to cover the lower half of his face, he moved forward, leveling the shotgun with trembling hands.

  The smell worsened as they approached the attic door. It was creaking back and forth, its hinges shrieking out a message of warning that chilled them further as they crept along the deserted hallway. Reaching the door, Williams pushed it open with the barrel of the gun, moving his foot to stop its angry protests.

  In the uneven light they could make out a room some thirty feet across. The ceiling, slanting down from the peaked roof, gave the impression of shrinking dimensions and, as they eased along the left-hand wall, they could see that the chamber was littered with debris, but otherwise quite empty.

  Then they saw the hole.

  It was ripped into the wall directly opposite them, the ragged splinters of the gaping wound suggesting that violent tearing had recently taken place there. They edged forward, trying to get a better look at their discovery, and the smell intensified, forcing them to breathe only from their mouths to keep from retching. A void loomed beyond the hole, some kind of hidden place that had held its secrets for long ages. Now, looking at the wooden splinters littering the floorboards, they could tell that it had recently given up whatever vile, long dead knowledge it had protected for so many eons.

  Williams clutched the shotgun more firmly and noted that Terry had moved off to the side, covering him as the beam of her flashlight illuminated the irregular opening. There was something in there, something... unclean. And even though he knew he must now cross that unwholesome threshold, he was quite certain that he did not want to see what lay beyond it.

  Zak was ecstatic.

  The Children of the Graves had reacted far better than expected to his powerful summons and had accepted his generous offerings with relish, meeping and yammering in delight as they pledged to him their service. His powers were tremendous now, almost beyond imagining. Soon, oh, yes, very soon indeed, would he complete his part of the ritual, and then release all of the carefully hoarded power back over to his new master. He hugged himself as he sat in the darkened chamber deep beneath the house, the chamber that the Children had guarded throughout eternity. Candles began to wink on as the master completed another part of the complex working and a muffled scream echoed up from the altar stone. It made Zak laugh, sending peals of mirth upward into the limitless spaces above.

  “Zak,” came the harsh, yet vibrant voice, silencing his maddened cackle. “Your duties are not yet finished. You have done well to serve me, and soon you shall receive your reward.”

  Groveling forward on hands and knees, Zak licked at the feet of the mighty one, clutching at one thin ankle with a trembling hand.

  “But first,” the voice grated, “there are further tasks I would have you attend to...”

  “Anything, Master! Name it and it shall be done!”

  Slowly, a small hand descended to cup his chin, lifting it up so that his eyes were captured by the master’s cold, hard stare.

  “There are others above and one of them has that which cannot be permitted to come here; a symbol of ancient power worn around his accursed neck. Liberate it from him and destroy it, and then you shall be free to enjoy all the things that have been promised to you. Behold!”

  The shadows parted as some of the malformed, canid-like Children scuttled across the floor bearing an old, dirt encrusted casket. His friends, their snake-like forms writhing in expectation, fluttered in and around the partially rotted box as the lid was pried loose by the Children’s scrabbling attentions. Zak was mesmerized. Inside of the upright coffin rested the putrefied body of a young woman. A low, throaty sound escaped from her mummified lips as her arms stretched forward.

  “Zaaa... kkkk...”

  Weeping and choking on ragged sobs, he staggered to his feet, shoving past one of the hissing Children with no regard for his own personal safety.

  “My love!” he managed to gasp, sliding into her embrace as the cadaverous form of their son scuttled about them in glee. After giving her a long, sensuous kiss, he disengaged, turning once more to prostrate himself at the feet of his master. Taking the outstretched hand, he held it with great reverence, gazing into the master’s smoldering eyes with a face slackened by worshipful devotion.

  “I will do what you ask, oh Great One! I will destroy the talisman he carries, even if I have to rip his head from his shoulders to get it!”

  Gesturing for the others to back away, the master placed a hand on Zak’s brow, sending further instructions into his maddened thoughts. Then, Robin LePrade smiled, the thin light of the candles tracing the lines of her distorted face as she gazed out at the ‘family’ she had reunited at long last.

  14

  Williams could feel his heart pounding as they approached the hole in the attic wall. Struggling against his near rampant fear, he squinted through half-fogged glasses while trying to steady his shaking hands. It was not going to be easy entering that unwelcoming void. The stench pouring out of it saturated the air, worming its way through the thick material of his shirt. Glancing at Terry, he could tell she
was having similar problems, the bandanna she’d tied around her nose and mouth even less a deterrent to the clinging odor. Standing just behind him, the flashlight shook in her grasp as she tried to keep the .44 steady with her other hand. Swallowing the dry queasiness in his throat, he edged forward with the shotgun at the ready, shining his own light into the rupture.

  As he stepped over the jagged threshold, he took in the unusual dimensions of the room beyond. It appeared to be formed from the adjoining eves of the attic, creating a somewhat triangular shape, with the two sloping sides meeting in the far corner. Driven by some unknown compulsion, he crouched down to study the floor, and felt a tingling sensation erupt near his throat. The flashlight dropped from nerveless fingers as his hand flew up to clasp the pouch that hung there. It was warm and vibrant to the touch, as if tremendous amounts of energy had suddenly sprung to life within it. Leaning back, he scanned the area, eyes now widened in growing panic.

  “What is it, Doc?” Terry’s asked. “What did you find?”

  Risking a glance back, he could see her dim outline just beyond the flashlight’s beam. She was peering into the room, the gun held ready as she tried to see what was going on.

  “It’s...” he began, but the rest of the words died on his tongue. The tingling was growing stronger, pulling at his neck, trembling at an almost subsonic frequency. Retrieving the flashlight, he played the beam along the floorboards, illuminating what was drawn there. An acrid taste flooded his mouth as he rocked back on his heels, trying, without much success, to keep from gagging.

  As Terry’s light joined his own, her reaction coming as a frightened gasp, they were able to trace out the extent of the vile markings. The floor was covered in archaic diagrams, diabolical pictographs, and other obscene imagery. Overshadowing it all was a large pentagram. It covered the entire space, encompassing the lesser drawings with an air of perverse authority, running over, around, and through them, joining them as one. Williams caught his breath as the vibrations from the Elder Sign grew more powerful, pulsing at his neck like a living, breathing thing. All of the carefully orchestrated pattern was drawn in blood.

  “My God!” Terry said. “Most of these symbols represent forms of the darkest arts. As for the rest, I just can’t say; I don’t know enough about the workings behind such things to be able to decipher them. If I wasn’t so damn scared, I’d be excited about this discovery, but things being as they are, I say we just get the hell away from here. This place is beyond evil.”

  Climbing to his feet, Williams turned to agree with her, but stopped as a sudden cascade of sound erupted around them.

  It was a high-pitched, animalistic chittering that reverberated throughout the enclosed space with ominous clarity. Scanning their surroundings, their flashlight beams moved from corner to corner in a vain attempt to locate the source of the unsettling noise. As the illumination moved along the floor and up the sides of the walls, the chittering increased in volume, growing even more frantic. Then, the beams of light reached the corners of the roof and they cried out in abject terror.

  Stuck in the rafters was the body of a young man. Or, to be more precise, what had once been a body; it was torn to shreds, some of the tortured flesh plastered across the ceiling, but most of it just hanging over the struts like a butchered animal. This was the source of the smell, and, most likely, the source of the diagram’s blood. More than that, it was the source of the horrific sound.

  All along the ceiling, covering the rafters, and in every darkened crevice, swarmed huge, rat-like things. They’d been feeding in silence until the beams of light had interrupted their gruesome meal. Now they were enraged. Beady eyes glared out from folded, desiccated faces while razor sharp teeth gleamed from hundreds of screeching mouths. In a frightening wave of repugnance, the horde of creatures poured from their places of concealment, boiling down the walls and spreading out across the floor. Williams backpedaled toward the exit, dropping the flashlight as he pulled off a shot that slammed him through the jagged edge of the hole. Terry was squeezing off round after round, firing into the teeming multitudes as they came surging toward them, but the bullets seemed to have little effect.

  Regaining his balance, Williams continued to fire as he staggered across the floor. Each time he sent a round into the pulsating wave of creatures, his arms were nearly wrenched from their sockets. Soon, he realized, he would run out of ammo. Knowing it was their only chance, he turned and pushed Terry out the attic door, following her and slamming it hard behind him. The door vibrated with the impact of the creatures as they pounded against the other side, chewing, clawing, and scrabbling at the ancient wood. Realizing the door wouldn’t hold for long, he rushed Terry to the stairs and then bolted down them, heading for the lower levels.

  It occurred to him that they were already running for their lives and hadn’t even begun to uncover the answers that they’d come here to find. He glanced down at the pouch around his neck as they reached the second story landing. The Elder Sign was still vibrating, even more so as they neared the bottom of the stairwell. It was the only connection they had. Somehow, the bizarre relic was responding to whatever was going on in this godforsaken place. It was the key to all of it, he just knew it.

  Pausing in the secluded darkness, he caught his breath as they reloaded their weapons. The look in each other’s eyes was enough to convey their shared feelings of dread so he didn’t bother trying to discuss what had happened. Then, as they collected themselves for a final dash down the remaining steps, he became aware of something just at the edges of their perception. Rising above the wind, the thunder, and the hellish fury of the scrabbling rat-like things, even above the echoes of their own harsh breathing, was a deep, reverberant chant. It was coming from somewhere far below, perhaps even from the hidden tunnels themselves.

  On the floor above them, they heard the attic door give way in an explosion of splintering wood. Williams glanced toward the front door on the main floor below; there, he could see more of the foul creatures pouring in through the doorway, no doubt summoned by their brethren’s maddened squealing.

  Clasping the pouch around his neck, he felt the fear slowly recede as he was overcome by a sense of sudden clarity. He knew then what they needed to do. There could be no escape for them now. Instead, they must go down, deep into the bowels of the house. The answers they sought, and perhaps even their own salvation, could only be found at the source of that horrid, guttural chanting. Something was down there, something far more terrifying than he could even guess at, but that was where they must go in order to overcome this madness.

  From somewhere within himself, he found the courage. Adjusting his glasses, he shouldered the shotgun as he studied Terry in the wane illumination of their remaining flashlight. She was pale, but her compressed lips and hooded eyes said it all; she had come to the same conclusions.

  They would confront this unknown threat together and, God willing, they would put an end to it once and for all.

  Candlelight flickered and danced in the age-old vault of sacrifice, reaching through the mist shrouded darkness to wash over the cloaked figure standing before the pitted altar. Back within the towering shadows, the hideous canine minions writhed and chanted, adding their combined power to the ongoing ritual. The figure, raising its arms toward the vaulted ceiling, called out in forgotten tongues, appealing to the beings beyond time and space, striving with arcane might to open a rift in the planes that would allow the mighty Nathrotep to descend from the heavens. Swirling throughout the air and joining their whispering voices to the cadence, swam the viperous, snake-like beings, their jet-black coils moving in intricate, hypnotic patterns. This time, there would be no girl sobbing in fear at the back of that unhallowed vault, for these were not the frightening dreams of some unsuspecting child.

  Unlike the nightmares he’d been using to batter down his daughter’s mental defenses, this was reality.

  Ezra Jedidiah, Grand Master of the Cult of the Messenger, reveled in his newfound
freedom. His ancestors had been drawn here over a hundred years ago, forming the cult around this ancient nexus of power. They had been ordered to open a gateway, a portal into the world of men and, in return, would be granted power beyond anything they’d ever imagined. So, they had made an unbreakable pact; the undertaking would be built upon throughout the ages, to be passed down from generation to generation, until the gates of the monstrous cataract could be torn asunder.

  And now that pact was about to be fulfilled.

  It was only by the sheerest luck that Ezra had had the chance to implant a portion of himself into the psyche of his daughter at the time of his death. And it had condemned him to an eleven-year vigil embedded within the minds and deeds of others. His faithless wife had done this to him, and she would pay for it a thousand times over before this night was through. As Robin had lain on the altar stone watching him burn in agony so long ago, he’d buried himself within her, the initial splicing of their minds done quickly as the flames consumed him. She’d been the one being offered up that night, flesh of his flesh being the ultimate sacrifice, but his wife, Carol, had turned on him right before the dagger’s plunge. In her moment of ultimate betrayal, she had destroyed him with a fiery candelabra and then whisked the child away to safety.

  Deep in thought, Ezra moved to kneel at the corner of the altar platform, a speculative frown creasing his girlish features as he dug through the pile of scorched remains that rested there. Invading the mind of the psychopath had been another fortuitous move on his part. It was by his will alone that Zak had been persuaded to kill his ex and then flee with the unborn child that fateful night. Mastering the sharing of spirit with his daughter at the same time as he was setting the compulsion within Zak to return had been difficult, but Ezra had managed it all too well. Then, he had been forced to remain hidden within the folds of Robin’s developing mind until his unsuspecting servant could be lured back to facilitate his release.