“Svist ch’shultva ulveshtha ikravis…”
And Wilmott stepped toward them, his empty hand outstretched to tug at the chain and padlock that sealed them in, his own mouth beginning to move, no thought or instinct in his head save to join them.
The vicious report of a shotgun, and the patter of stone fragments falling from the buckshot-marred ceiling, shook him from his trance.
In the entryway to a perpendicular hallway Wilmott had previously overlooked in his distraction, stood Woodrow Hennessy. He gripped his weapon in corpse-knuckled fists, and twisted fabric of makeshift plugs protruded from his ears.
“I told you to leave, God damn you!”
Had Wilmott been more together, more himself, he might have heard not only the fury but the horror and grief burdening the man’s outburst.
But he was not, and did not. Howling in confusion and in fear, the professor spun and raced back the way he’d come.
He sloshed through pools, stumbled over corpses, scraped his hands as he scrabbled back through the open window. Even in the pitch dark, he only barely remembered to keep hold of his lantern. His thoughts – all those not wrapped up in the litany, endless, pounding – were of escape only. In his panic, then, it seemed to make sense that the monstrous rustic with madmen locked in his cellar would be far less keen to pursue him into the wild than back along the road.
By the time his pounding heart had slowed and his head ceased spinning long enough for him to recognize the downsides of such a plan, he was already hopelessly lost.
Hours passed. Wilmott shivered violently, soaked to the waist. Beneath the dark waters, the mud had finally sucked the oversized boot from his left foot, forcing him to limp with fear that he would step on something piercing, slicing… or biting.
Unnamed creatures shrieked in the distant dark. The swamp rippled in the wake of swimming things.
From the muck below and the cedars all around, limbs snagged at his clothes, at his skin, making him start with frightened cries no matter how tightly he tried to keep his lips shut. Surely they were only branches, roots, vines. Yet in the flickering light of his lantern and in his thoughts – which felt ever warped, ever more sluggish, compressed in some mental vise – he could have sworn he saw them moving, flexing as they reached for him.
And that light itself had begun to fade, its dancing growing ever more frantic, as the flame licked thirstily at the last few traces of oil.
They both flared, then, the firelight and the panic together, in a final burst.
Before him, half-sunk in the swamp, vine-wrapped and coated in slime, was a black stone. He peered at writings carved in an alphabet unlike any he had ever seen before and could not possibly read – and yet which seemed, at some level below the conscious, perhaps even beyond the sapient, familiar. It tugged at him, a sensation that felt as physical as it did emotional. A shiver began at the back of his neck but died before it traveled far, as though his body no longer remembered how to move.
His lantern died, to reveal another source of illumination, coming up through the swamp behind him.
“Professor!” Woodrow Hennessy’s voice was hoarse. He must have been calling out for some time. “Professor, can you hear me?”
He stepped into view, water sloshing around his calves. Wilmott Polaski tore his gaze from the stone, advanced toward the newcomer, and responded in the only way he could, with the only words he knew.
“Isslaach thkulkris, isslaach cheoshash…”
Hennessy might not have heard him – he still wore the plugs of fabric in his ears, seemed more frightened of what he might hear than of braving the swamp while deafened – but he clearly recognized the recitation all the same.
With a scream of fury, of guilt, of denial, but above all else of fear, he raised the shotgun toward the oncoming professor and fired.
Find Litany of Dreams in your local gamestore and everywhere books are sold.
Contributors
By day, EVAN DICKEN studies old Japanese maps and crunches numbers for all manner of fascinating research at the Ohio State University. By night, he does neither of these things. His work has most recently appeared in Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Strange Horizons, and he has stories forthcoming from Black Library and Rampant Loon Press.
evandicken.com // twitter.com/evandicken
GEORGINA KAMSIKA is a speculative fiction writer born in Yorkshire, England, to Anglo-Indian immigrant parents and has spent most of her life explaining her English first name, Polish surname and South Asian features. Georgina is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop where her first novel, Goddess of the North, started life as a short story.
kamsika.com // twitter.com/gkamsika
JOSH REYNOLDS is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories, including the wildly popular Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He grew up in South Carolina and now lives in Sheffield, UK.
joshuamreynolds.co.uk // twitter.com/jmreynolds
THOMAS PARROTT lives in middle Georgia, US with his wife and three cats. He is the author of several short stories and novellas set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
DAVIDE MANA was born and raised in Turin, Italy, with brief stints in London, Bonn and Urbino, where he studied paleontology (with a specialization in marine plankton) and geology. He currently lives in the wine hills of southern Piedmont, where he is a writer, translator and game designer. In his spare time, he cooks and listens to music, photographs the local feral cats, and collects old books. He co-hosts a podcast about horror movies, called Paura & Delirio.
karavansara.live // twitter.com/davide_mana
CATH LAURIA is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She is a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, suspense and romance fiction, and has a vast collection of beautiful edged weapons.
twitter.com/author_cariz
DAVID ANNANDALE is a lecturer at a Canadian university on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games. He is the author of many novels in the New York Times-bestselling Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universe, and a co-host of the Hugo Award-nominated podcast Skiffy and Fanty.
davidannandale.com // twitter.com/david_annandale
CHARLOTTE LLEWELYN-WELLS is a bibliophile who took a wrong turn in the wardrobe and ended up as an editor – luckily it was the best choice she ever made. She’s a geek and fangirl with an addiction to unicorns, ice hockey and ice cream.
twitter.com/lottiellw
Table of Contents
Cover
Arkham Horror
Copyright
The Devourer Below Running the Night Whiskey
Shadows Dawning
The Hounds Below
Labyrinth
All My Friends Are Monsters
The Darkling Woods
Professor Warren’s Investiture
Sins In the Blood
Litany of Dreams
Contributors
The World of Arkham Horror
World Expanding Fiction
The Devourer Below Page 25