And whatever it was now, it was Robin no longer.
Struggling to draw breath, she quivered in total, mind-numbing fear, knowing that they would surely die here. Williams was unreachable; from where he lay curled into a tight, little ball, all she could hear were the whimpering sounds that a small, frightened child might make. The hellish creatures around her were watching with glowing, bloodshot eyes, their blunt, canine snouts twitching in inhuman hunger but, as she fumbled after the wand, her eyes were drawn yet again to the being in the vortex. It was like something straight out of Dante’s Inferno; how could have they ever hoped to defy it?
Her groping hands finally found the end of the tether; it was broken and the wand long gone, probably buried under all the rubble from the collapsing wall. Shuddering and twitching, she sank the rest of the way to the floor, her semi-vacant eyes wandering down to stare at the thing now controlling Robin’s body as it continued to speak.
“So, you thought to stop the mighty Nathrotep from taking his place upon the Earth?” it said. “You and your pathetic little lover? All by your insignificant selves? Ha!”
The chamber rang with the sounds of its mockery, accompanied by the powerful droning of the huge entity from where it writhed within the swirling gateway.
“Now I, Ezra Jedidiah, will lead the world into a new era, and I shall show the race of man pain and suffering like it has never known before! The oceans will rise and the winds shall rip across the continents! The ground will shake, and fires shall blaze across the heavens! This will be the beginning of a new age – the age of chaos! All the minions of my master shall arise, unfettered and unrestrained, spreading out across the land and destroying any who dare to oppose us. Pah! Man is nothing! Just an ill-mannered child race full of weakness and self-delusion. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be again! They will walk no more between the spaces, but through them, and they shall wreak their vengeance upon all of mankind! And I... I shall become a god!”
Tears rolled down Terry’s face as she watched the priest raise his arms in triumph, the flying creatures screeching out their devotion as the massive ancestral being thrust one of its three, pillar-like legs through the dimensional rift. It was coming over into the mortal realm and there was nothing that they could do to stop it.
Just then, a patch of darkness detached itself from the wall, gliding across the intervening space like a wraith out of a madman’s fairy tale. As it swept forward, flying across the pitted flagstones, it slammed into Robin’s body, shoving her out of the path of the oncoming deity.
Gasping in shock, Ezra sprang up from where he’d slid to a stop along the rocky floor. “How dare you!” he sputtered.
The figure now standing in the place of the would-be godling raised its arms to the hood of its pitch-black robe, ignoring the trembling of the air, the angry warbling of the mystical, flying serpents, and the vibrant outcry of the enraged demon.
Lifting the cowl from her face, Carol LePrade glared down at the image of her husband now reborn within the countenance of their only child.
“You may have destroyed all that I hold dear, may have taken the one thing that matters most to me in all the world,” she cried, throwing her head back and spreading her arms wide to the cascading energy, “but you will never know the power that you seek! I will now take your place! You will die with the rest and only your ashes will remain, for I, Carol LePrade, will become the new master of all humanity in the age of chaos yet to come. I will be the chosen dispenser of all the Messenger’s commands. And. You. Will. Be. Nothing!”
Rumbling out a throaty chuckle, she turned to the writhing monstrosity.
“Oh, Nathrotep, soul of the outer gods, thou who rejoices in the baying of hounds, spilling of blood, and the beating of the eternal drums, accept me! Let me be the one true disciple of all you propose! Accept me!”
“Stop!” Ezra shouted, causing an almost imperceptible lull in the scattered, intermingled vocalization of the other servitor races. “You will not deny me my rightful place, you filthy whore! I will not lose everything my ancestors strived for, will not fail in my sacred right to become the next high priest! The secrets that my forefathers gained, the hidden knowledge they accumulated, will not be usurped by one such as you!”
Sweeping his arms up, he called out to the Hunting Horrors, sending them forward in an unsteady tide of wavering black flesh, flowing through the air in sinuous unison.
But the towering deity wailed out a string of alien phrases, thrusting its second leg through the curtain of shimmering magic. It was now standing two-thirds of the way through the swirling gateway, its slithering throat tentacle writhing out across the vaulted ceiling and knocking bits and pieces of stonework down from the shadowy frescoes that resided there.
As his minions scattered, confused by the conflicting commands, Ezra tried desperately to regain control. However, the mighty Nathrotep spoke again, its thundering voice echoing off the chamber walls, and the Hunting Horrors reformed, their seething masses boiling back toward Ezra in a cloud of writhing chaos.
With a snarl that was more than half-mad, Ezra gestured, lashing out with the power at his command and scattering his would-be attackers like leaves upon the wind.
Carol’s harsh laughter rang out in peals of derision.
“You can’t even control your own minions!” she scoffed, “What good are you to the mighty lord you profess to serve so well?”
Contempt curling at her lips, she stood taller in the shelter of the monstrous being’s limbs. The huge, three-toed claws of its feet had scored deep gouges in the floor to either side of her, and its glistening, grayish-pink flesh accentuated her black-robed features in supernatural clarity.
“You are nothing!” she cried. “See how I so easily wield your stolen power...”
With that, she gestured to the Hunting Horrors, her hands moving in intricate patterns as she hissed at them in their own language. Instantly they rushed to obey, flying once more in great droves toward the reeling form of Ezra. With a scornful wave of his hand, he flung them aside yet again.
“You think to defy me, woman? You think that the tiny bit of knowledge you’ve stolen will sustain you in your treachery? Pah! You are the one who is nothing! I have not even begun to use the power that’s been granted me. But I can see now that I’m being tested, that I’m being given the chance to prove that I am worthy of such power...”
His hands wove through patterns of immense complexity, and Carol was suddenly slammed backward by an unseen force, turning around and around as she spiraled up into the air. Ezra crowed out in satisfaction.
“You see?” he bellowed. “You cannot prevail, for I am the master here!”
With a great roar, the mighty god lashed out, capturing the struggling woman and raising her to its slithering tentacle far above. Showers of stone cascaded down from the ceiling as the slimy appendage slathered across the surface of her body, moving to envelop her in its wet embrace. Ezra howled in rage, realizing that his dark lord was probing her for the latent abilities needed to become the next high priestess in his stead. He could not let that happen.
He would not allow it.
In dumbstruck confusion, Terry watched as the creature coiled its repellent tentacle around the embattled woman, but as the strange altercation played out above her it jolted her back into a frenzy of motion. With a strength born out of desperation, she showered blows down upon Williams where he lay drooling upon the floor. Yet there was still no response from him. They had failed; everything they’d started out to do, all the lives they would have saved, including their own, were now forfeit. The earth would become a wasteland of destruction, and they’d all soon be dead, or far worse.
Rocking back and forth, she keened out in helpless pain, unaware that the pitiless entity was feeding upon her rampaging emotions. Overcome by the soul-shattering realization of all she had lost, her remorse became unbearable, and she began to beat on Williams’ prone body with greater force
, needing him to get up, to take charge again like he’d done so many times before. But instead he just lay there, wide-eyed and blubbering. Sobbing helplessly, she sank back to the floor with nothing left to give.
Her unsuccessful attempts at waking Williams from his catatonic state went unnoticed by Ezra. Lifting his hands, the very hands that had once belonged to his only daughter, he uttered the words of an unclean spell, knowing that it was the only chance left for him to reclaim his birthright.
A tremor rent the air and surrounding walls as a dark cloud boiled up from Robin’s battered head, something as black and twisted as a cancerous growth. As her limp figure collapsed to the ground, the terrified subhuman creatures fled from the chamber, leaving Terry alone to face the remaining serpent minions and the dark lord that they all served.
22
The puppets continued their noisy, sharp-lined play as her fingers smeared blood-soaked patterns on the ground, but Terry had lost interest in dramatic posturings. Williams had stopped his babyish mewling, and she was quite content to be lying there by his side making lazy doodles in the dirt.
She blinked as a tennis shoe-clad foot appeared in front of her.
Curious, but not at all startled, her eyes followed the leg upward until she could see the face of the puppet. He looked angry. This must be the brave hero, she thought, the play once more capturing her attention.
Not taking his eyes from the scene unfolding on the stage, the puppet knelt down and picked up the shotgun from the floor...
Wait a minute! Shotgun?
Memories blossomed within her, bits of elusive knowledge falling suddenly into place. It was like being drenched by a splash of icy water – the shock of cold realization followed by a discomforting regret. With torturous clarity, her sense of identity reestablished itself, and she remembered.
She struggled for breath then, like a drowning man desperate for air. It was a long, hard climb out of the pit of delusion that she’d huddled in, but inch by painful inch she began to reclaim what was lost. Not all of it, but enough of an agonizing awareness that it cut her to the bone.
Still, she met the pain head-on and rose above it.
The boy who’d grabbed the shotgun didn’t hesitate; a white-hot fury radiated from him as he advanced toward the massive creature. Raising the weapon, he pointed it at the struggling smudge of black so far above them and fired, jacking round after round into the chamber until the muscles of his arms were shuddering from the recoil.
The first shot struck Carol in the shoulder. The second and third shots took off the top of her head, showering the writhing god-thing with blood and sticky debris. The priest had barely enough time to scream before the body he now inhabited was reduced to so much dead weight. His loathsome shadow erupted from the corpse like a cloud of foul smog. It floated free, and Terry could that see it was searching for a new body to possess. As the haze of corrupted darkness turned toward her, she was hit by a momentary wave of paralyzing fear, but then the flying, snake-like creatures converged upon Ezra’s astral form in a flurry of agitated motion. The air became a whirlwind of slick, black coils, serrated wings, and roiling, flashing mists.
Nathrotep howled, dropping the blood-soaked corpse and taking the third and final step over the threshold.
Some of the boy’s angry focus dissipated in that moment. Stumbling backward, his face went through a series of uncontrolled spasms as he tried to regain his lost bravado. The throat tentacle, repugnant in its quivering elasticity, snaked forward, scattering the lesser minions as it rippled toward him.
Lurching into him from behind, Terry shoved him out of the way.
“Pick her up, then follow me!” she commanded, the tentacle hissing past them to flail against the far wall before writhing back up into the air.
He looked to where she was pointing, noticing, perhaps for the first time, the pale face of Robin nestled within the folds her tattered robes. Crossing to the altar, he dropped the shotgun and then gathered her into his arms, gazing intently at her bruised and battered face.
Terry shouted a warning and, as his head jerked up, he saw the gigantic, three-legged creature reaching toward him with its massively clawed hands.
As she saw the powerful entity reaching for the boy, Terry briefly lost the ability to form coherent thoughts. But then, driven by some mad compulsion, she bent down and ripped the pouch from around Williams’ neck. Drawing forth the pulsating Elder Sign, she cocked her arm back like the pitcher at a baseball game.
“Choke on this, you filthy bastard!” she cried, hurling the glowing talisman toward the shrinking gateway.
The howling of the creature rose to new levels as the shining object arched toward it. In a mighty effort to intercept the spinning relic, its claws shot upward, but the blazing artifact passed right through them.
And vanished into the rift.
Terry didn’t pause to witness the outcome of her actions; there just wasn’t time. Kneeling, she grabbed Williams under the arms and began dragging him toward the tunnel she’d seen Carol entering through earlier.
That’s when an explosion of rhythmic forces nearly knocked her from her feet. Squinting her eyes against the intense glare, she quelled her rising panic and motioned for the boy to hurry. But he was gazing down at Robin again, seemingly lost in thought. Struggling with Williams and cursing under her breath, Terry yelled, “Move it!”
Flinching like a startled dog, he glanced up and then ran for the tunnel opening. She only looked back once on that hellish place, but the scars of that moment would be forever imprinted upon her fragile mind. Nathrotep flailed the air with its fluidic appendages, raging against the bonds of fiery, white light that had wrapped it from head to toe. Of Ezra there was no sign – just the flying creatures swirling in angry confusion and then slowly fading into the nothingness of the between. As the ceiling began to crumble and the floor cracked open, she saw the beginnings of an end to that terrible chamber, an ending that would span worlds and send aftershocks of unequaled force surging all throughout the cosmos.
Then, they were fleeing for their lives.
Mark ducked into the tunnel and, as he felt Robin stir in his arms, he realized that she’d somehow become very important to him. He didn’t know why, only that he now had feelings for her that defied all reason. A memory surfaced; a flash of pale moonlight, an open window, the press of warm lips against his own. Shaking his head in bewilderment, he moved deeper into the gloomy passageway, striving to keep survival utmost in his thoughts. Not only for Robin and himself, but for the strange woman, whoever she was, that had saved them all. Glancing back, he could see her pulling the afflicted man along the uneven, rubble-strewn floor, but it was slowing her down.
Slowing them both down.
Anger surged anew, blotting out all other emotion except brutal rationality.
“Leave him,” he shouted. “He’s just dead weight!”
The look that she turned on him was one of such pain and violence that his boiling rage was all but eclipsed by it. Raising her right hand, she clenched and unclenched her index finger, almost as if she were pointing something at him, something that she no longer possessed.
Uncertain of what to do, he stood his ground, glaring back at her.
As she realized what she was doing, she shook herself a little, some of the fire going out of her eyes to be replaced by an edge of sorrow so deep that he gasped.
“We... we can’t just leave him!” She gestured with trembling hands, eyes sheathed in a glistening wetness. “He’s still alive! I... I just can’t!”
Leaning forward, he held Robin out to her. “It’s gotta be one or the other; we can’t carry them both and still make it – we don’t even know where this tunnel leads! Make up your goddamn mind! In case you hadn’t noticed, this whole shitshow is about to become... become...” he faltered, then in a softer tone, just below the high-pitched shrieking of the beast, “whatever the fuck this place is turning into back there...”
Terry stared a
t him, then glanced back at the tunnel entrance, the indirect light flashing across the tears spilling down her cheeks. Her agony all but squeezed the life from her, yet there could be no other solution. There just wasn’t time.
Leaning down with a barely suppressed sob, she kissed Williams on the cheek. “I love you, you know,” she whispered. Then, they were running down the tunnel and away from the horrors that lay beneath that ancient graveyard, the site that had inspired so much madness in them all.
Unseen by anyone left alive in that accursed place were the tracks of a single tear as it made its way down the pale, motionless face of Doctor Barnaby Williams.
23
The next few minutes were a blur as Mark ran through the dimly lit corridors which spiraled out from the central chamber and then angled upward to run beneath the graves of the old graveyard itself. While they made their way through this maze of interlocking tunnels, there were creatures coming out of the semi-darkness that were a nightmare to behold, but the beasts took no notice of them, seeming to be far more intent upon running for their own lives. Their high-pitched, canine cries resounded throughout the warren as Mark forged ahead, often shoving through groups of the fleeing creatures as they progressed down the eerily glowing passageways.
From behind them came the incessant throb of malevolent energy as they continued, always moving, never stopping in their headlong flight from that cavern where he’d first awoken. Fear was now their greatest motivator – fear of being overwhelmed by the creatures around them, of being overcome by the powers erupting behind them, or of simply being buried alive beneath the partially collapsing burrows. It was all this and more which drove him onward, never slowing, never looking back, until they reached a small chamber at the very end of the last, shadowy tunnel.
A dead end.
“My God,” the woman moaned, “w-what do we do now?”
Glancing around, Mark nodded at the broken casket that occupied the center of the small area. “Climb up – We’ll have to dig ourselves out.”
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