The Devourer Below

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by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells


  “You horrible child! I’ll make you pay for this! I was going to make your death gentle, but now I’ll let the ghouls gnaw you down to the bone before I take your head with my axe! Get back here!”

  Never.

  Wendy turned and ran.

  She didn’t know where she was going. The woods were as unfamiliar now as they had been when she was first drawn into them, and although it was marginally easier to see, that didn’t seem to make much of a difference to her feet. She tripped over what felt like every second root and fallen branch, and everything she touched was covered in a slimy moss that clung to her skin even when she scraped at it with her fingernails. Twigs caught in her hair and pulled at her face and shoulders, like they were trying to hold onto her. It made her fight harder to get away, her heart pounding so hard that she could feel the thud of it in the tips of her fingers and the end of her nose. By the time she emerged from the thickness of the forest onto the bank of a completely unfamiliar creek, Wendy was exhausted and utterly out of breath.

  A creek… She certainly hadn’t come anywhere near this on the way in. Where had she gone wrong? Where did this creek emerge from the woods? Wendy considered trying to cross it – it couldn’t be more than six or seven feet wide, and the current didn’t look terribly fast. She took a step closer to it and gazed into the water, hoping to get a feel for its depth.

  The water was black, even in the wavering light of the moon. Not green touched with silver like the waves out in the bay, or even the oily brown of the murky water around the docks. This water was simply black, swallowing all hints of light. Even her reflection barely had a chance to appear on the surface of the slow, sludgy water before it vanished.

  Right. That’s settled. Wading across it was not an option, and there was no way Wendy was touching that water if she could help it. She was too short to have any hope of jumping it. Perhaps if she followed it downstream she would get back to the edge of Uptown.

  Wendy turned around and promptly screamed, so startled that she nearly did herself in by falling into the water. Coming forward at a shamble as she exited the line of trees was Mrs Duncan, her teeth bared in a grim rictus, one hand gripping the top of the axe like the head of a cane.

  “You,” she snarled, pointing a knobby finger at Wendy. Any hints of satisfaction in her face were completely gone, evaporated in the wake of their earlier, violent encounter. “Do you have any idea what this pathetic show of force of yours could cost me? They’re waiting for us, waiting for you, and the longer they wait the greater their hunger. I won’t be responsible for leaving Umôrdhoth in need, do you hear me?”

  Wendy’s amulet was practically vibrating against her chest. She gripped it with one hand, holding the other out for balance as she backed away from Mrs Duncan. “I won’t go with you!” she shouted, finding strength in her own defiance.

  Mrs Duncan straightened and lifted the axe over her head. “Then I will carry your corpse there across my own back!” she shrieked, and threw the axe end over end straight toward Wendy.

  Wendy wasn’t sure how she saved herself – whether her sudden fall was from her old worn boot slipping on the slick surface of the mossy forest floor, or whether her amulet had really become as heavy as it suddenly seemed to be, dragging her down to the ground just in time for the axe to sail over her head and into the water behind her. There was a splash, and a few droplets of water hit the back of her neck. They were so cold on her skin that they seemed to burn.

  “My axe!” Mrs Duncan sounded stricken, her cruel expression melting away into fear as she stared at the dark water. “No, my axe!” She started forward, as though she might somehow retrieve it from the terrible waters, when a dark, sibilant laugh seeped out of the woods.

  Wendy stared in astonishment as two pairs of darkly shining eyes blazed into existence behind Mrs Duncan, who spun awkwardly to face the sounds coming from a yet-hidden mouth. “I was bringing her,” she said quickly. “I promise, I was bringing her for the master, like you asked me to.”

  “You speak the same words so often, they cease to have any meaning,” the beast on the left said as it stepped into the moonlight, hard to understand through its mouthful of jagged teeth. Wendy stared, unmoving, caught somewhere between horror and a terrible sense of satisfaction by her worst fears being realized. Her mother had warned her about creatures like these.

  “I will bring, I will bring, I will, I will… but you have brought us nothing but a chase,” the beast went on accusingly.

  “I swear, I was leading her straight to you!” the woman pleaded. “I am one of the truly faithful, I would never try to cheat you or the Devourer Below! Please, you must believe me.”

  “Umôrdhoth hungers,” said the creature on the right, its shining eyes rolling like marbles within their sockets as it looked back and forth between the two of them. “And we hunger.”

  “The girl shall go to him,” the first one said decidedly, a twisted smile stretching its lips. “While you shall be for us.”

  “No!” shrieked Mrs Duncan, rearing away from the monsters in a last-moment effort to escape their hungry maws. “I am faithful, I am a good servant of Umôrdhoth, you cannot do this to me!”

  Wendy almost reached out to grab Mrs Duncan by the hand, to pull her away from the beasts in a hopeless attempt at evading death even though the woman had admitted to leading her into the woods to be killed, but it was too late. The monsters fell on her, their ravenous mouths poised to rend, and a second later the screams started.

  Wendy fell back against a nearby tree and shut her eyes, gripping her amulet so tightly she had to be nearly crushing it. No amount of wishing could block out the noise of Mrs Duncan’s grisly end, the way her screams became bubbling gasps and finally one last moan before dying off altogether. Wendy’s own breath stopped for a moment and she just stood, shuddering, for a long second, before she finally opened her eyes and peeked out at the grisly scene.

  The feasting hadn’t stopped. The beasts were gorging themselves. Wendy should try to run while they were distracted, and hope that they didn’t care to hunt her down. Or…

  It had been a long time since she’d used Mama’s amulet like this. She hoped she remembered the right words… She hoped her efforts were enough to save herself.

  Wendy opened her eyes, opened her mouth, and began to speak the secret words passed on to her by her mother. The amulet’s shivering slowed, taking on a more familiar cadence, a secret heartbeat that Wendy somehow recognized and that knew her in return. She stared at the beasts, who were slowly pulling away from Mrs Duncan’s mangled corpse, casting their eyes around the edge of the creek as though…

  As though they couldn’t quite tell where she was, even though she was chanting not five feet in front of them.

  Wendy never quite knew what the effect of using the amulet would be; it seemed to give her different results every time. Distraction was good, but could she do more? She increased the force of the words, putting more power into her voice, more determination into her own will.

  She was not going to die in Arkham Woods. Not at the hands of Mrs Duncan, not sacrificed to some ancient god, and not eaten by monsters. She was going to survive and save James, they were going to make it back to Riverside, and soon she would get her family back. She just had to keep her faith, and, most of all, she had to keep her nerve.

  The beasts stopped twisting their heads and sniffing. They stopped moving altogether a moment after that, falling as still and silent as statues. Even their glittering eyes looked as dull and cloudy as shards of sea glass. Perfect. Now all she had to do was quietly pick her way between them, find her way out of these hellish trees without alerting any other monsters or their followers to her existence, and break James out of his locked room.

  Right. Simple.

  Wendy straightened her back and inhaled deeply, ignoring the scent of decaying wood and coppery blood that invaded her nose as she
did so. She took one firm step forward, then another, then–

  Crack! Crack! The heads of the two quiescent beasts burst apart like rotten melons, spraying foul effluvia all over the nearest trees, the ground, and Wendy herself.

  What in the–!

  Wendy spun wildly, looking for the source of the shots. Was she next? Should she run? Surely she wasn’t next, otherwise she’d be dead… But who could have done it? Who out here could possibly be interested in helping instead of harming her?

  There was a noise of crackling twigs in the shrubs just to the left, and Wendy stared at them, still holding her amulet and wishing to the heavens that Mrs Duncan’s axe hadn’t gone into the creek. “Who’s there?” she called out, hating the tremors in her voice but unable to still them completely.

  A tall, indistinct silhouette appeared, a creature with horns protruding from the top of its head and a hand filled with fire, and for a moment Wendy’s heart froze with fear. Then the man stepped out of the tangle of branches, and the horns were only two twisted limbs behind him, and his fiery hand was the torch that he held.

  Just a man… a man that Wendy recognized. He was staring fiercely at the carcasses of the two ghouls, like he was searching them for something.

  “Ah… Mr Edwards?” she said after a moment. As he looked over at her, with the grim lines on his face deepened by the flickering torchlight, for a moment Wendy was convinced she was done for anyway.

  Then his eyes widened and he holstered his gun then held the torch farther out in front of him, lighting a clear path for her. “Wendy, ain’t it? Ha! I was hoping I’d find you ’fore that old devil-worshipper sank her claws in too deep. Took me a bit o’ time to work up the nerve, if I’m honest,” he added, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand.

  Oh, heavens. What had a man like Mr Edwards seen that made him scared to be out here? Not that it mattered right now – all that mattered was the fact that he was here. He’d come to help her, which was far more than anyone other than James had bothered to do in what felt like forever.

  He was a hero.

  Right now, her hero was walking over to the corpses and taking a long, hard look at what was left of their hideous faces. “Damn,” he muttered. “Ghouls. Not the creatures I was hopin’ for after the time I ’ad out here, but still, better ’em gone than you or me.” He looked at the leftovers of Mrs Duncan lying between them and grimaced. “Reckon we’ll leave ’em and the lady here for the night, eh? Although she didn’t turn out to be much of a lady, in the end. We can tell the undertaker about ’em tomorrow, if you even wanna bother.”

  He straightened up and nodded his head back the way he’d come. “There’s a trail runs right next to Hangman’s Creek through here,” he said, then set off back into the trees. After a final look at the murderous creatures – all three of them – who had nearly killed her tonight, Wendy hurried after him.

  It felt less terrifying with Mr Edwards as her companion instead of the terse Mrs Duncan, but lighting a single torch didn’t turn the darkness into day. She heard scritches and snuffles in the distance, and for a moment she thought she detected the sound of chanting again. Oh lord, was he going to lead her to the cultists? Was he one of them too? But… no, he didn’t seem the type. A bit of a scoundrel for sure, like a ship’s captain who always saved a little space in their hold for something of dubious legality, but not an actual murderer. Except of monsters, apparently.

  “Who were you looking for?” Wendy asked as they headed back toward what she hoped was the hostel, where, with luck, James still slept. It wasn’t her business, but the way he’d stared at those ghouls had made her curious.

  Mr Edwards turned his head and grinned at her, a little manic to be sure, but also with an edge of anticipation in it. There was violence in that grin, but Wendy was quite sure it wasn’t violence that would be directed toward her. Her amulet was completely still against her chest. “When we get back to the hostel, I’ll tell you all ’bout the goat man,” he promised.

  Goat man? What in heaven’s name was a goat man? Some special kind of ghoul? Wendy had a sneaking suspicion that whether she stuck with Mr Edwards or ran back to Riverside at first light, she was going to learn a lot more about the underbelly of Arkham over the coming days.

  She reached up and grabbed her amulet.

  I’m going to need an axe of my own.

  Professor Warren’s Investiture

  David Annandale

  The anthropology department’s council meeting was over, and there were going to be drinks in the faculty lounge. “Some conviviality will do us good,” said Reginald Pyx, the department chair, as he ended the meeting. “A chance for us to toast the end of another term, and the start of the holidays.”

  A chance for you to grandstand some more, Peter Warren thought. Stretch the day out a little bit longer for us. Go on. Why not?

  “What odds the wine is going to be more of his personal production?” Vera Flemyng said quietly to Peter as they made their way down the hall, hanging at the end of the line of professors. Their footsteps echoed on the polished wood floors. Electric chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling, bathing the hall in a warm glow, though the far ends of the hall seemed to tremble slightly in deeper shadow. The classrooms were empty, but the smell of chalk dust hung in the air, making Peter’s throat dry and scratchy.

  “I’m not taking that bet,” he said to Vera. “We already know that’s what it’s going to be.” If Prohibition were ever repealed, Reginald would surely weep. For years now, he had used the absence of wine in stores and the legality of brewing it at home to foist his creations on the other members of the department at every opportunity.

  “It’s going to be mulled wine again, isn’t it?” said Vera.

  “In keeping with the season.” Peter sighed. “Did you try it last year?”

  “I was away sick, lucky me. I heard about it, though.”

  “It tastes like sweet tar.”

  Vera made a face. “Stop it. You’re going to put me off tar.”

  The faculty lounge was on the top floor of the humanities building. It had a good view of Miskatonic University. The December afternoon was dark, and a few snowflakes drifted down over the quadrangle. Peter took up a position near the window, a cup of the mulled wine in hand, determined to hold off drinking it as long as possible. In the center of the lounge, surrounded by a circle of dark-brown leather armchairs, Reginald held court, his voice loud and expansive, smothering all other efforts at conversation in the room.

  The chair of anthropology was five years younger than Peter, though he wore the gravitas of his position as if it granted him twenty years’ experience over everyone else. His hair had turned silver early, and was luxuriant, perfectly coiffed and swept back over his ears. Peter’s hair was gray, not silver. Gray. And it refused his efforts to comb it, sitting on his forehead in an unruly tangle. Reginald had no beard, his pencil mustache a statement of assumed glamour. Peter’s beard came to an aggressive point. He knew it made him look older. He knew it made him look angry even when he wasn’t. Only that happened less and less often these days.

  He also knew he should not be comparing himself to the chair. Or, if he did, it should be from a position of superiority. Reginald was an unworthy chair. He wasn’t a scholar. He was the performance of a scholar, an empty suit cavorting for an ignorant audience. He had published widely, oh yes. He was good at that. He had had articles in journals, but most of all, he wrote for general interest magazines and newspapers. His work had even been featured in the Saturday Evening Post. He brought anthropology to the masses. He made it exciting.

  He made it puerile.

  There was no originality in his scholarship. It was a regurgitation of all the standard orthodoxies, dressed up in a style that readers found inviting. The word made Peter’s gorge rise. Those readers didn’t know any better, and they never would, if this was all they ha
d to read.

  “You should tell us a ghost story,” said Reginald, grinning at Peter. “What better time of year?”

  Peter blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

  “A ghost story. Tell us one.” That grin. Infuriating. Insulting. “You must have plenty to draw upon. I won’t believe that you don’t.”

  “He’s baiting you,” Vera warned under her breath.

  I know. He took the bait anyway, as he always did. He couldn’t help himself. “I am not a collector of ghost stories,” he said.

  “Come, Peter,” said Reginald. “Don’t be disingenuous. You aren’t going to pretend again that you believe in all the occult nonsense you’ve been so assiduously gathering.”

  Peter drew himself straight. He raised his head, his beard jutting accusingly at Reginald. “I believe that we close our minds to secret knowledge at our peril,” Peter said, his voice louder than he intended. He believed what he said, and the words had seemed good and strong in the instant before he spoke them.

  Then Reginald chuckled, and his cronies joined in, and the words sounded defensive and trite.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Reginald said, making a show of trying to keep a straight face. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Condescending pig.

  “But tell me,” Reginald went on. “Where stands the work on your mighty tome? I mean, if we are to benefit from your wisdom on secret knowledge, then we need to be able to read the fruits of your labor, don’t we? Don’t we?”

  “Don’t say it,” Vera whispered.

 

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