The stairs ended, met by a path sloping deeper into the unknown. The torches ended, too. Jesus held his war hammer aloft like a lantern. It glowed enough for them to see the walkway ahead, but not enough to see their destination until they reached it.
“Where are we?” Lucifer asked in a whisper.
“When the wooden steps ended we were under the Atlantic Ocean. Now there’s no real reference point. We’re under everything at once.”
The path stopped at a carved door. Symbols, runes, and inhuman figures were etched deep in the stone. The suppurating moss grew thick in the cracks surrounding the door, but none extended onto the black stone itself.
“When we step through, we’ll be somewhere else entirely. Don’t wander off too far. And be careful what you touch.” Perhaps Lucifer should have come in a Red Skull costume after all, at least then he could keep his hands in his pockets.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” A seam cracked down the center of the door. Jesus pushed the door halves apart, revealing only darkness beyond them.
Wooden torches flickered to life when Jesus and Lucifer stepped through the doorway and into a vast cavern. Once again, only the nearest torches burned, though more were visible at the far point of their half-light. Unlike on the staircase, though, very little color showed in the things illuminated here. Everything was cast in muted orange, sepia tones.
Even knowing what he was seeing, and allowing for the lack of color, it took Jesus a moment to recognize the figure that greeted them: a twenty foot tall, centipede-like, shark-finned shape, as if carved from basalt, yet breathing almost imperceptibly.
“What is it?”
If now things are shown as through a mirror darkly, some revelations are more opaque than others. “A who as much as a what. Gravtox’ch. Nineteenth of all created beings.”
They walked through the cavern, lit only thirty or forty feet at a time. Ancients unaware introduced to the only slightly less ancient by name and number. Nyarlathotep (34th), Azathoth (26th), Gog-Shuggurath (41st). At last Jesus and Lucifer came to an empty pedestal.
If creators count their most recent project their favorite, still the one they hold the tenderest soft spot for is always their first.
“I’d like to introduce you to Cthulhu, but he’s gone.”
Lucifer edged closer to the empty pedestal, his eyes never leaving the slowly moving jawbone of Gog-Shuggurath, teeth grinding endlessly in his sleep. “Yes, well, too bad. Have to meet him next time. Let’s go.”
“Don’t worry about Shuggsy, there. We need to find Cthulhu.”
Lucifer trailed closely behind Jesus as they wandered through rows of almost-frozen not-quite statuary. The click of his taloned feet on the stone floor the only sound.
“Why don’t you go that way,” Jesus said, pointing down a darkened alleyway toward the center of the room. “Try to draw him out with the noise of your footsteps.”
Light seeped out of the cracks in the floor, leading Lucifer on as he walked on his heels and stepped forward on the outside edge of his feet.
Jesus continued on a few paces, then doubled back and watched
Lucifer’s progress. “Four, three, two,” he whispered.
A gray shadow slithered along the ceiling. Bat wings spread and Cthulhu—no one else it could be—soared momentarily, then dropped to the floor with a wet thud.
Lucifer spun and whipped his tail at the creature. A lobster claw grabbed the tail, reversed the arc, and swung the devil around like a rodeo day lariat before smashing him to the ground. Cthulhu leapt on Lucifer’s stunned and sprawled body.
Jesus ran forward, swinging Mjolnir with his right hand while he unclasped his cape with his left (no need to give him any leverage). The hammer’s stone head hit square in Cthulhu’s ribcage, peeling him off Lucifer like a golf ball from the rough. Cthulhu landed on his back; the tentacles surrounding his mouth stretched around behind his head to keep it from smashing to pulp. His exposed face was alive with razor-sharp teeth.
Jesus advanced, holding the hammer above his head. He brought it down over Cthulhu’s midsection, but the creature spun and deflected the blow with his left wing. The right wing stretched out as he turned and knocked Jesus spinning.
Lucifer was on all fours, shaking away the stars and cobwebs. Cthulhu looked at Jesus raising himself up off the ground, and sprang for the easier target.
The devil sensed the move and skittered behind a pedestal. J’golnorak read the inscription. Lucifer looked over the top of the stone slab at Jesus grappling with Cthulhu and then up at the almost-statue. From within a spiked and barbed hermit crab shell J’golnorak opened his galaxy of five hundred fiery green eyes and met Lucifer’s stare. As one, they snapped shut and he returned to his dreams.
Cthulhu broke free of Jesus’ hold and half ran, half flew toward the figure cringing behind the fifth being of all creation. If he heard Mjolnir roaring through the air behind him, he paid it no notice until it landed between his wings and dropped him to his knees.
The battle hammer continued flying for a moment. It cracked the pedestal in front of Lucifer, then bounced over his head and landed twenty feet behind him.
Jesus jumped onto Cthulhu’s back, pinning his wings flat. He reached up beneath Cthulhu’s arms and locked his fingers behind the base of the creature’s skull. And squeezed.
Cthulhu shrieked as the pressure grew. Again his tentacles stretched back behind his head. Several wrapped themselves around Jesus’ neck while the others went after the interlaced fingers.
Jesus looked toward Lucifer. His voice, a raspy whisper. “My hammer.” Lucifer stood, glanced over his shoulder. “No.”
“My. Ham. Mer.” The syllables as brief and weak as the breaths that produced them.
“You used me as bait, so no.”
Jesus opened his mouth once more, lips twisting out a word in silence. Mjolnir flew through the air, hitting Lucifer in the shoulder as it passed by. Lucifer rocked forward, his face entering the sepulchral blackness of J’golnorak’s shell. Something rattled deep within it.
Jesus lifted Cthulhu’s torso off the ground and the hammer slammed him below his ribs. When the tentacles released, Jesus broke his full-nelson. He reached an arm over Cthulhu’s shoulder and around his throat, locking the sleeper hold in place with his free hand before the creature could re-draw the breath that had been knocked out by the hammer.
The tentacles reached back again. Around Jesus’ hands, his neck. But there was no strength in them. A minute later Jesus collapsed on his faintly snoring first creation.
SILENCE—except for the sibilant hiss as the petals fell off the orange flowers and drifted down into darkness—marked the first half of their walk back up the stairs. Then, just as the stone steps gave way to wood, Lucifer asked, “Why?”
“What exactly?”
“All of it. The fight, your disguise, me being there.”
“In the time before yours, Cthulhu was my right hand. A warrior. A destroyer. To return him to his slumber without the fight would be to deny his nature. So we fought and now he dreams of the battle.”
“But the pretense. Why not fight as yourself?” “Should I reveal my true self to you, Lucifer?”
The only reply was the scratch of talons on the wooden steps, then the scrape on cement.
“And me, why did you bring me there—and up among your little pets?” Lucifer looked down at the red scales covering his arms, body, legs. “To humiliate me in front of them?”
Jesus laughed, remembering the opacity of difficult revelations. “What they don’t understand could choke Jörmungandr.”
The name sounded familiar. Lucifer looked over his shoulder, down the darkened stairwell, and tried to remember all the names carved into the pedestals. “He’s not another of them, is he?”
“Norse myth. The shortsighted serpent that spites itself to bring about the world’s destruction? Tell me this story isn’t news to you.”
THEY STEPPED IN
TO THE HALLWAY outside the custodian’s closet. “What’s to stop me from going back and waking him up?”
“Be my guest.”
Lucifer opened the door and flicked on the overhead lights. The wall behind the coveralls at the far end was painted a flat beige.
“It comes and goes. Here, a few other places, when Cthulhu wakes up.
If you’re in the right place at the right time, like I said, be my guest.” Lucifer’s eyes flicked to the janitor’s closet.
“But what was it our friend Milton said about you preferring to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven?”
Lucifer beamed, as if he had thought up the line himself.
“How would you feel about serving in hell? The Old Ones would love that place. Why pull down heaven and earth when you can have your dreamworld ready-made?”
Lucifer’s eyes flicked again to the janitor’s closet.
“Time is getting short, Lucifer. Cthulhu and . . . other things . . . are waking up more frequently. Your rebellion isn’t against me or the Father or Spirit, it’s against your true nature.”
If creators favor their most-recent handiwork and have a nostalgic fondness for their first, where does that leave everything in between?
“Lucifer,”—what would get through to him?—“remember.”
“Yeah, well, I’d say ‘Thanks,’ but. . .” Lucifer disappeared in a cloud of sulfur-yellow smoke.
Jesus nodded. Walking in places he wasn’t wanted was never comfortable. “Understood.”
Out in the main hall Jesus leafed through a cardboard box of old comic books, looking for silver-age issues of Mr. Miracle with Jack Kirby cover art. He was admiring a copy of issue 1 when a flash of red across the room caught his eye. Red Skull. Lucifer matched his gaze for a moment, then ogled the half-dressed She-Hulk walking down the aisle toward him. After she passed he raised a bone-ridged eyebrow at Jesus.
“Remember,” Jesus mouthed.
Lucifer turned up the collar of his black, military-style trenchcoat and followed after the She-Hulk.
Jesus turned back to the box of comic books, but realized he was just stalling. Lucifer was no longer in his charge, and other than being an annoyance the devil was limited in what he could do directly to the humans. With a glance over his shoulder, Jesus stepped through the side door into the deserted hallway.
Upon his return to heaven he entered the Hall of History and saw that the statues of “Colonel Tom” Parker and Elvis Presley were back— Gabriel’s idea of a joke. Jesus took off his winged helmet and placed it on top of Elvis’ pompadour. Didn’t help. He removed it and walked down the ages to replace his costume until the next time it was needed.
WAY STATION
KEVIN LUCIA
I’m not the problem, Franklin,” Andrew Slater snapped into his cell phone, “the problem’s your publishing company. If they were really marketing Forever War, the sales wouldn’t be so horrible.”
“Careful,” muttered his friend and literary agent Martin Goersky as they navigated their way through the thick party crowd. “Don’t poke a tiger with a stick, Drew.”
In the penthouse suite ballroom of Boston’s Ritz-Carlton, writers of all kinds flowed in different directions; chatting with old acquaintances, hitting up new ones, suffering through introductions to folks they wouldn’t be caught dead with out on the street. Movie producers and screenwriters mingled with them, not a part but associated, like distant members of the same family; and here and there an author chatted with a director or producer they’d been roommates with at either Vassar or NYU.
It was a gala event, the annual Book Expo Writers’ Ball, an opportunity for writers to fellowship; some basking in the glow of their monetary and literary success, others taking pleasure in mingling with fellow wordsmiths sharing their passion for the written word.
Of course, some came for the free booze and to complain loudly at their publishers over their cell phones, attracting undue attention and heated stares. Martin glanced around him as he and Andrew approached the balcony overlooking the city, feeling a slow, red flush of embarrassment rise past his collar. He nodded and smiled weakly at an acquisitions editor he knew who glanced askance at them as they made their way through the crowd, and he whispered, “Andrew, remember how you’ve always said making sure you didn’t make an ass of yourself in public was basically my job? Well—you’re kinda not letting me do it.”
Andrew held up a hand, waving him off into a frustrated silence as they stepped through the open sliding glass doors and onto the mercifully empty balcony. The cold winter air nipped hungrily at Martin’s skin, and he turned up his blazer’s collar as a meager defense against the biting wind, stuffing his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders.
“Listen, Franklin,” Andrew continued coldly, “that’s crap, and you know it. With Shades of Darkness and Outside Man, you arranged book signings, television and radio spots, speaking engagements, book tours everything. The most you’ve done this time is put book trailers on YouTube.”
They stopped at the balcony’s railing, and Martin peered over the edge, looking down upon the luminous rivers of headlights, neon signs, and streetlights. From up here, the sounds of city life were distant, surreal, and with just a little imagination, Martin could be persuaded he looked down upon a distant world from an ethereal domain. The perspective of snow softly cascading downwards towards the streets was disorienting, and Martin reached out and grasped the smooth, black wrought-iron railing to steady himself.
As Andrew leaned casually against the railing, cell phone in one hand and martini in the other, Martin wondered how many drinks Andrew had already downed this evening.
In a biting voice, Andrew said, “You’ve published several other science fiction titles, marketing mine shouldn’t be any . . . poorly written? Then why’d you publish the first one and offer me a contract for two more, you pompous son of a . . .”
Martin cringed; Andrew never acted like this unless he was drinking, which happened quite often lately. He recognized the traits; a few more beers with dinner than usual, a constant beer next to Andrew’s iMac when the agent stopped by his friend’s studio apartment on 55th Street in Manhattan, and a fully stocked liquor cabinet.
Martin sighed bitterly as he glanced at Andrew, marveling at how the night’s shadows fell across his face, making him look like half a man. Andrew was drinking, just like so many other authors he’d worked with, and in Martin’s experience, the worsening habit could only mean one thing—bad business.
A train roared down the tracks, and Martin didn’t want to be in its path. “Of course I have a Myspace,” Andrew replied tersely. “I set it up myself; got over a 1000 people on my friends list, and I think I’ve sold more books there than you have in any store lately.”
“I set up the Myspace,” Martin mouthed quietly, tapping his chest, “I sold those books.”
Andrew waved a preoccupied I know, hold on for a minute hand at Martin, and then said with an air of finality, “You’re right, Franklin, we do have to meet. Martin will put together some stats on how much money I’ve made for you over the past few years,” Martin clapped a hand to his forehead and groaned, “and we can discuss whether I’m staying with Hammer-Fiske, or taking up either Putnam Publishing or Bantam Books on their offers. See you Monday morning.”
With that he flipped the phone shut, dropped it into his pocket, simultaneously taking a deep draught of his martini. He finished with gusto, met Martin’s aggrieved stare, saying only, “What?”
Martin struggled to his keep his voice steady and tone non-judgmental, ever aware of Andrew’s sour mood. “Listen, I don’t mean to be an ass Drew, but when we talked about being subtle earlier today, what’d that mean to you exactly?”
Andrew’s face hardened, hostility glinting in his eyes. “Don’t start, Martin.”
“Okay, okay,” Martin relented, raising his hands in surrender, “I’m on your side, ‘Drew, you know that. Hammer-Fiske is mishandling this project; I agree w
ith you, but,” he folded his arms and leaned against the cold metal railing, ever mindful of the icy drop behind him, “if you’ll remember, I told you three years ago you’d be better served seeking out someone like Tor or Baen Books to handle it; someone with an established name in science fiction.”
A maìtre d' sauntered out onto the balcony, oddly unruffled by the swirling snow, and he merely nodded as Andrew swapped his empty m a r t i n i glass for a full one. The waiter departed wordlessly, and as Andrew raised the glass to his lips, he groused, “Hammer-Fiske has published four science fiction novels in the past five years. They should know what they’re doing.”
Martin sighed once again; he’d been doing that a lot lately, because Andrew did nothing but ignore him. “Commercial Techno-thrillers are one thing, Andrew, they’re not hard-core science fiction, which Forever War is. It’s a great work; you’ll get no argument from me, and look how many other writers endorsed the first one—Timothy Zahn endorsed it; that’s amazing.”
Andrew’s eyes glittered over the martini glass as he asked between sips, “So you see my point, right? Zahn thinks my novel’s worth endorsing, and sales are in the toilet? How does that happen?”
Reluctantly, Martin pulled his hands out of their warm haven and spread them, pleading with Andrew to see reason. “Like I told you before you pitched it to Hammer-Fiske — they simply have no experience marketing science fiction. Net Force, Antidote, Psi-Kill, those are all commercially-minded techno-thrillers, not classic science fiction. Hammer-Fiske should’ve had you at dozens of Comic Book and Sci Fi Conventions by now; hooked you up with Dark Horse Comics for graphic novel prequels, something like that, but they don’t know what to do with Forever War—something I said three years ago.”
MIdnight Diner 1: Jesus vs. Cthulhu Page 2