The Devourer Below

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by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells


  Ruth did not deign to reply. She had opted for slacks and sensible shoes. She adjusted her hat, and glanced in the rear-view mirror, trying to spot in the dirty, cracked glass a hint of Banks and the others following them. She had found an excuse with Charlie. A providential headache. No movie tonight. She repeated to herself that all would be well.

  Collins drove the car out of town, along the road to Dunwich. The trees closed around them, and the road wound through the hills, all twists and turns.

  “Is it far?” she asked.

  “Nervous?” He looked at her, and she wished he’d keep his eyes on the road.

  “Curious, actually.”

  “We’ll be there in a quarter of an hour. Then there’s a short walk up the hill.”

  The rearview mirror reflected only darkness. Collins started humming a repetitive, dirge-like song. Ruth lit a cigarette and ignored his coughing.

  They drove in silence, the road trying to surprise them with humps and tight bends, and finally they passed a standing stone, placed in the ditch like a sentinel. Collins gave a satisfied sigh and turned right, into the woods, past a narrow wooden bridge. He parked in a small clearing, next to three other cars.

  “Come,” he said. He took a lantern from the back, and she offered him a light. Then they started through the trees. “Mind your step,” he said, holding the light high.

  They followed a dirt path uphill through the undergrowth, and passed two more standing stones. Ruth tarried for a few breaths, leaning on the rough surface of one of these. She strained to catch a sound of someone following them, but all she heard was a faint breeze through the bushes, and an owl hooting in the distance.

  “Are you coming?” Collins snapped.

  Up ahead, she caught the faint glow of more lanterns.

  “Here we are!” the man announced, waving his light and coughing again.

  A broken chorus of greetings welcomed them.

  Olivia was standing in front of a grassy knoll, a perfect inverted bowl, crowned with stones like fingers pointing at the sky. There was a passage, like a corridor leading down into the earth. A distant sound, coming through the ground, like a rhythmic humming.

  “Oh, here comes the special guest of the soiree,” Olivia said, when Ruth entered the circle of lights. She turned to the side and gave a sign. With a faint cry, Charlie was pushed forward, and staggered on the uneven ground, trying to keep her balance. Ruth was fast to catch her in her arms.

  “What does this mean?” she blurted. Her heart raced and her mind reeled. This was not supposed to happen. She felt momentarily lost.

  “You make such a great couple,” Olivia leered. “Our hosts insisted you share tonight’s feast. They seem to have a strange romantic streak.”

  “The more the merrier,” Collins chuckled.

  A balding man in a tweed jacket harrumphed at their mirth, and scoffed. There were others waiting around, black shadows among the black trees.

  “Are you alright?” Ruth asked, in a whisper.

  Charlie nodded. She was pale, and her heart beat like a mad drum against her ribs. Like that first time, the night everything began, Ruth thought. “Hush,” she breathed, like she had done back then. She ran her fingers through Charlie’s disheveled hair.

  “Here they come,” she said. The man’s laugh died.

  Hunched shapes were emerging from the earth. Ape-like and silent, they fanned out in front of them, standing just outside the glow of the lanterns. They smelled of earth and musk and something sweet and sickening.

  “All is ready,” the man in the tweed jacket intoned.

  One of the black shapes detached itself from the shadows and came close to Ruth. Charlie went rigid, her eyes wide, as the thing stretched out a clawed hand and caressed Ruth’s face.

  You have brought your mate. This is good.

  “Oh, God–” Charlie moaned, “It’s in my head!”

  Suddenly she was pushing against Ruth, trying to disentangle from her embrace. The black dog-faced ghoul took a step back, looking at her with his burning red eyes. He tilted his head to the side, frowning.

  There was a bang, loud, like a thunderclap. A bullet caught the ghoul in the shoulder, and it spun around and crashed into a bush.

  Ruth tackled Charlie, and together they rolled on the ground as bullets started flying, the rattle of the automatic weapons tearing through the night. The cultists and the ghouls scattered screaming as a flame arced through the air and smashed into the entrance to the barrow, erupting into a ball of fire. Pressing Charlie down, Ruth caught a glimpse of Collins staggering back, the front of his shirt soaked in darkness.

  “Let’s get away from here,” she hissed, and she ran in a squat, dragging Charlie along. Hunched over, using her free hand and feet, she scampered through the undergrowth. She slipped and fell, and Charlie helped her up. They ducked behind a tall tree as the tight beam of a reflector swept the vegetation. Fear and anger were a taut ball of cold in her belly.

  They stood motionless, holding on to each other, pressing against the bark. Charlie was crying. Ruth tasted her tears with a kiss, and hushed her.

  Then the guns were silent. Light beams cut through the dusk. Voices were calling. The fire was roaring, eating at the trees. The whole top of the barrow was aflame, the stones standing out black against the liquid brightness of the fire. Men were coming in from their hideouts. Ruth thought she caught a glimpse of Special Agent Banks, holding a Tommy gun, and the woman, Lita.

  “Let’s go,” she hissed.

  They ran through the ferns, not caring about the noise, the low branches slapping at their faces. Charlie squealed as she stumbled and fell, her hand slipping from Ruth’s.

  “Come!” Ruth gasped. She tried to pull Charlie back to her feet, but the redhead pushed her away with both hands. A question lingered on Ruth’s lips as a line of fire seared through her side. She cried out in pain, and turned.

  “I guess we owe all this to you.”

  The dancing light of the hilltop flames turned Olivia Dyer’s face into a grotesque mask, her eyes wide and crazed, her makeup smeared in dark streaks, her lips a ragged gash. She had lost her hat, and her hair was a wilderness of dirt and twigs. She had lost her shoes, and her dress was torn. She held a large knife in her hand, the ornate triangular blade glinting, red with Ruth’s blood.

  Ruth pressed a hand to her side, wet, her heart pounding in her fingers.

  “Two more bodies,” Olivia leered.

  She lunged, pushing the blade forward. Ruth dodged, her side burning, and slammed into a tree. The blade swished close to her face, and she kicked out at Olivia. The other woman backed away and moved in a circle. With a snakelike twist, she grabbed Charlie by the hair, pulled her head up.

  “The girlfriend first, then,” she hissed. She poised her blade to cut through Charlie’s throat. “I want you to see this.”

  Charlie’s eyes were liquid pools of fear. “Run!” she cried.

  Instead, Ruth jumped at Olivia, crashing into her. Charlie cried again as the two women rolled through the undergrowth, grappling with each other. They stopped against a tree stump, Olivia sitting astride Ruth. “I always knew it would end like this…” Olivia chuckled and lifted her knife. Charlie rushed her, screaming, grabbing her arm and wrenching the knife free. Olivia hit her in the face with her other elbow. Charlie fell back to the ground.

  Olivia took a deep breath and looked around for her knife. From beneath her, Ruth grabbed her by the wrists. Olivia cursed and tried to wrestle free.

  Then two large furry hands cradled Olivia’s face and twisted her head around. Her neck broke with a sound like a dry branch. Her face frozen in a surprised expression, Olivia fell to the side and was still.

  Charlie scrambled to Ruth’s side, and the two women crouched in the bushes, holding each other. A familiar ghoulish face looked at them. There was dark b
lood pouring from a wound in his shoulder, and his eyes burned brighter than ever.

  There was the noise of people moving in the underbrush. They are coming, he said. Come with me. Below. We will be safe. Your mate too.

  Charlie was shaking as though in a fever. Ruth held Bob’s gaze and shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Bob was still for a moment. The hunters were coming closer.

  One day, maybe.

  Ruth’s breath was ragged. “Maybe.”

  And why not? she thought. The dog-faced creatures were honest, clean. Pure, in their strange way. They saw the world for what it was, and did not try to change it. They did not blackmail or betray each other. They had no guns, no knives. Maybe they’d let her make amends for what she’d done to them. It would be good, to finally live without hypocrisy. Free.

  Ruth squeezed Charlie’s hand. “We’re safe now,” she said, slowly. Just like that night, a million years before. But different.

  Ruth cast a glance at the dead, pathetic remains of Olivia. She was already free, she realized. She cleared her voice. “I will not hide anymore,” she said.

  It would be good, she thought, when the moment came. Good for the both of them.

  Her heart was slowing down. “One day,” she nodded to the ghoul.

  The creature held her gaze for a long moment. Then he walked away into the dark, dragging Olivia’s body with him.

  The Darkling Woods

  Cath Lauria

  There was something decidedly strange about this place.

  Wendy thought it might be the effect of the woods. She’d never been this close to the woods beyond Arkham before. The docks were where she made her home these days, she and James. Not that the docks didn’t have their fair share of strangeness, with odd patches of lurking darkness that smelled like anything but the sea, and strangers striding off boats with eyes too deep and far too bright, with dull, gray-skinned fingers that swayed like seaweed on the ends of their arms.

  There was plenty of creep on the docks, people and things to look out for. It was different when you were used to it, though. Riverside was made of a strange that Wendy recognized, and did her best to avoid. There were lots of ways to keep out of the path of the ones that seemed wrong, lots of other people to make a living from.

  Back in Riverside, people called kids like Wendy and James “urchins” if they were feeling charitable or “little thieves” if they were being, well, rather more honest. Wendy had learned early, after her mother was taken away, how to lighten her fingers so a mark never felt her lift a watch or a wallet. When her usual feathery touch turned unfortunately hammer-handed, she learned how to dodge a grasping arm or duck a blow from a cane and run to a safe place – leastways, as safe as anywhere was in Arkham.

  It was a risky life, but it was all danger she knew and understood. Wendy hadn’t been living on the docks by herself as long as lots of the other kids, but she was a fast learner. When she felt that warning tingle, when a situation was going bad, she knew to hotfoot it.

  But she couldn’t count on that tingle working the same in all places. What was odd in one part of Arkham might be normal in another, the same way all the kids along the docks knew not to steal from the laborers there, just the travelers. Maybe strangers got treated the other way around here in Uptown. There was no other explanation Wendy could think of for why, in this run-down hostel, which was just a few short steps away from Arkham Woods, she and James were being treated like actual guests.

  It was very unsettling.

  “Oh, you poor things, get in out of that rain,” the woman serving a drink to a glowering man at the back of the room had exclaimed as soon as Wendy and James stepped through the door of the hostel. She’d smiled brightly at them, the friendly look marred a bit by the numerous gaps where she was missing teeth. Being out a few teeth was nothing new, but most people, full set or not, didn’t go around beaming like that at strangers.

  “What’s a pair of sweet children like you doing out by themselves on an evening such as this?” the matron went on, leaving her sole other patron behind and coming over to shut the heavy wooden door behind them. It closed with a bang that startled James so badly he jumped, and cut them off from the fading light of the sun. Without it, even though there was a fire lit and candles here and there on the tables, the inside seemed terribly dark. No fancy electric lights for a place like this.

  “I know everyone who lives in Uptown,” she continued, wiping her hands off on the dark fabric of her skirt. “But I’ve never seen the pair of you before. Are you… vagrants, perhaps? Orphans?”

  Well, they sort of were vagrants, but Wendy had never heard anyone sound so excited before about wandering children. It made the hair at the back of her neck prickle. And as for the other…

  “We’re not orphans,” she said firmly, although James actually was. The younger boy looked enough like her that they could fool people into thinking they were siblings, and right now Wendy wasn’t too keen to let this woman think they were all alone. “Our mother sent us ahead to get a room,” she lied blithely, and James squeezed her hand so hard her knuckles cracked. “We can pay,” she added. It was true for a single night, at least, although one night away from Riverside wouldn’t be long enough to cool Marvin’s wrath. Wendy would think more about placating the leader of the Water Street Runners later, though.

  “Hmm.” The woman’s expression went from overly warm to cool, the light of interest in her eyes waning into something distant. “I suppose I can put you up for the night, although your mother had better hurry. Doors around here tend to close as soon as the sun goes down, and this place is no different.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be here,” Wendy said. When their “mother” inevitably failed to show up, she would bank on the woman not kicking out a paying customer until morning.

  “Right.” The woman’s eyes narrowed a little as she looked them over more carefully. “No bags?”

  Wendy shook her head, soggy red curls falling across her forehead. “They’re with her.”

  “Show me your coin.”

  Wendy pulled a few silver coins out of the little coin purse she kept in the biggest, most obvious pocket in the front of her gingham skirt, careful not to let anything in her hidden pockets jingle. One of a pickpocket’s cardinal rules: always separate your stash.

  “Good enough.” The woman snatched the money from her hand so fast Wendy flinched. “I’m Mrs Duncan,” she said, more genial once again – probably because there was money to be made. “Dinner’s not quite ready yet, but if you sit over there I’ll have it out to you fast enough, then take you upstairs to your room once you’ve eaten.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Wendy led James over to the rough-hewn oak bench Mrs Duncan had pointed them toward and sat down, gripping the edge of it hard enough to threaten her palm with splinters. The room was warm, almost cloyingly so after a day spent cadging lifts on the backs of passing Model T’s and darting down alleys on their way from Riverside to Uptown.

  “Wen, what are you doing?” James whispered, as Mrs Duncan disappeared into what smelled like the kitchen. “We don’t have a mother coming! I don’t have a mother at all! I thought we were going to play the ‘poor alone children, let ’em work off their room and board’ roles with her.”

  “I know, but…” Wendy bit her lower lip. “I don’t think that was the right way to go for this one. Didn’t you notice how happy she seemed when she thought we were alone?”

  “Maybe she just likes children?” James suggested, a pitiable note of hope in his voice. “Stranger things’ve happened.”

  That was certainly true, and Wendy had seen more of them than she cared to think about. “It’s done,” she said at last, and James sighed. “And we’re getting a meal and a room out of it, at least. It’s better than sleeping out there.”

  James shrugged, wiping his running
nose on his sleeve. He’d been fighting a cold for what seemed like ages now. “We’ve slept outside plenty of times. There’s always someplace that keeps the rain off ya.”

  “It’s not the rain that worries me,” Wendy said, more to herself than to her companion. James was a carefree child despite living on the streets, not tough and rough like so many of the others. He didn’t see the badness in things unless they were right in front of him, and even then he didn’t hold onto them long, always content to flit on and on. Wendy… she had learned caution, after what happened to her parents. To her mother Penelope, who wasn’t crazy no matter what people said about “that Adams woman.”

  Wendy pulled at the neck of her dress to get a bit of extra air. The only other person in the hostel’s dining area was the man across the room, who was scowling down at the table as he nursed his drink, yet it was warm enough in here to make her sweat. Was she running a fever, or just still hot from their mad dash across town earlier today?

  Arkham was a big place, and getting from one side of it to the other took a lot of effort, especially when you were trying not to be seen. She and James had a real need not to be seen right now, particularly by the Water Street Runners, the gang of kids who ran the streets down by the docks. Marvin, their leader, had mouthed off to one of the burly, bad-tempered stevedores last week and been hit so hard for his daring that his face had puffed up like bread dough.

  He’d been holed up for days, his crew shadowing him anxiously, and it had been almost like a holiday for Wendy and James. No one stealing their scores, no one threatening them, no one talking bad about them and their family – or lack thereof. It was downright pleasant to work the streets for a few days there.

  Once Marvin could get around again, though, he was meaner than ever, lashing out at everyone smaller than him and demanding more and more tribute from people like Wendy and James, who were just barely able to get by. The night he caught sight of her amulet was the last straw – he’d instantly demanded it, even though it didn’t look like anything special. If he could take it, he would… but Wendy couldn’t let him. The amulet was more than just a memento from her mother – it helped her feel safe when the bad things got too close. She and James had run for it, Marvin’s curses following them the whole way down the street.

 

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