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CTHULHU.
Joe Nazare's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has appeared in such venues as The Zombie Feed, Pseudopod, Damnation Books, Shroud, Star*Line, Death in Common, and Butcher Knives & Body Counts; forthcoming tales will be published in Stupefying Stories and Nameless. Since August 2010, Joe has been writing the blog Macabre Republic (www.macabre-republic.com), which is devoted to the study and celebration of American Gothic in literature and culture.
Story illustration by Mike Dominic.
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The Masked Messenger
by David Conyers and John Goodrich
Harrison Peel counted the dead as more covered corpses rolled into the Marrakech morgue. They weren’t really humans, rather the dissected remains of their flesh, bloody in leaking body bags. The sharp, coppery smell of blood filled the room, reminding Peel of an abattoir.
Lounging next to Peel was Fabien Chemal, a spook with Morocco’s DST intelligence agency. Chemal mumbled something in Arabic about being inconvenienced by the gory spectacle. While he watched junior spooks and morgue attendants catalogue the grim remains, he offered Peel a cigarette. Peel refused, wishing instead for a good strong coffee.
“How many dead?” Peel wiped his sweaty hands on cotton pants. It should have been cold in this place. That’s how they would have done it back in the NSA. Cold to keep the body parts preserved for proper forensic analysis.
Chemal shrugged, lit his cigarette. “We don’t know yet. At least eighteen dead: five Americans, two Germans, one Spaniard. The rest were my people, but I guess your people won’t care about that.”
“I care.” Peel said as he stood. The smell of death and smoke felt constricting from his seat in a corner. “The NSA care, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
Chemal raised an eyebrow. “I get the impression, Mr. Peel, that you were a little eager to come in person, rather than send a subordinate?”
Peel didn’t know precisely what Chemal’s rank was in the murky hierarchy of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. He did know that any time he didn’t spend with Chemal he would spend being tailed. They were controlling him, and this would make his job here more difficult than it needed to be.
The morgue was in the basement of Marrakech DST offices. At least one more level existed beneath their feet, reserved for DST’s prisoners and interrogation cells. In this building, the dead warranted more respect than detainees.
“Some personal reason perhaps, Mr. Peel?”
Peel ignored Chemal’s question. The Moroccan’s tone sounded too inquisitive, as if Peel were under interrogation. “You said you don’t know how many died in the blast? How’s that? And secondly I’m not sure it really was a blast. To me the bodies look like they’ve been sliced to pieces. Thousands of pieces?”
“They were … They still will be?”
Peel’s stomach felt empty. He was confused, but then everything about yesterday’s terrorist bombing in Jemaa el-Fna square lacked any resemblance to sense. The blast had been invisible, soundless. People were shredded where they stood in the Marrakech market. Yet their clothes, wallets, purses, souvenirs and the pavement beneath them remained untouched. It was as if invisible demons had mutilated their victims with razor sharp teeth and claws.
“Do you know that some of the victims died before the blast occurred, hours, even days before?”
“I don’t understand?”
Chemal shrugged. “Neither do we … really.” His burned-down cigarette hung precariously from his lip as he reached for another. Perhaps his need to smoke was only a need not to smell death. “Of the eighteen dead, two were market vendors who would have been in the square at the time of the blast, had they not been shredded three days earlier. The German pair were found in their homes two mornings ago in the same mutilated state.”
Feeling anxious, Peel rubbed the back of his head where it itched. He saw a pattern now, and wished he didn’t. Yet he’d been right to come so far, these people needed to know what he knew, if only they would let him help. “There’s more, isn’t there Mr. Chemal?”
“Yes.” The Moroccan lit a new cigarette from the embers of the last one. “Three more have died in the twenty-four hours since. Same cause of death: spontaneous shredding.”
“And none were in the square at the time?”
“They were when the blast went off.” He caught Peel’s stare with a sardonic grin. “You came all this way Mr. Peel, all the way from Maryland, U.S.A. Can you tell me what it is that’s happened here?”
Peel wouldn’t catch his stare. “You said the bomber is still alive? I need to speak to her before I can give you definite answers … if I can do even that.”
The DST agent glared. “Be my guest,” he snorted, and waved to indicate that they should now leave.
He escorted Peel downstairs, past two Royal Moroccan Army privates, their Steyr AUG assault rifles and unblinking stares guarding the only entrance. Deeper in the smell was of shit and perspiration.
“What do we know about her?” Peel asked as the corridor grew dark and confining. He didn’t look in any of the cell’s peep holes, afraid of what he’d see. Even the air felt more constrained down here.
“Her name is Souad Benhammou. She’s not talking, but we suspect she is a member of Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. MICG, a terrorist organization as Wikipedia likes to label them. Our information suggests that someone from the West is funding them, in all likelihood someone in the United States.”
“You have evidence of this?”
“Nothing substantial. We do suspect she’s related to the wealthy Benhammou family, although they are denying it.”
“And who are they, exactly?”
Chemal laughed throatily. “The Benhammous? They’re ‘Arabized’ Berbers who made their fortunes long ago in phosphate mining. A rare breed--wealthy Berbers I mean.”
“Interesting?”
“Perhaps.” He stopped outside a cell, took a large metal key from his pocket. “You really want to talk to her? She hasn’t responded to any of our interrogation methods, any of them, and it’s been over twenty-four hours.”
Despite his misgivings, Peel nodded.
“Well good luck then.” Chemal’s tone was flat. He sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else.
The door was opened slowly, betraying its weight when Chemal pushed his whole body into it. Hesitantly Peel stepped inside.
In the tiny cell, a thin woman sat against a wall stained with trickles of dark water. Dressed in a black jellaba, only her face and cuffed hands showed. Dark eyes stared through Peel and the wall behind him. She looked like she’d been staring at nothing for a very long time. When Peel stepped closer he saw that her hands betrayed the usual third-world interrogation technique bruises, and several circular cigarette burns. It was Chemal’s crushed filters that littered the concrete floor. Peel cringed, wondered who was the enemy here.
“I’ll leave you to it.” Chemal locked Peel in.
Peel sat opposite the young woman on the only other chair, where she had to stare through him unless she wanted to break her gaze. She didn’t.
He spoke to her slowly in his disjointed Arabic. “My name is Harrison Peel. Once upon a time I used to be a Major with the Royal Australian Army, fighting terrorists like you. Now however, I work for America’s National Security Agency as a consultant. I still work in counter-terrorism, but these days we’re against a different breed of terrorist. Men and women who’ve made deals with dark gods, alien gods … You know what I’m talking about: the real gods.”
There was the briefest flicker of her eyes. Slight enough that if Peel hadn’t been paying attention, he would have missed it.
“I’m here because you have a weapon, an explosive device that works outside our perceptions of space and time. A weapon beyond the limitations that you and I and everyone on this world is trapped inside, called cause and effect.”
Her concentration broken, she looked at him th
rough tired eyes. When she answered it was in English. “What would you know of these things?”
“A lot more than you could imagine,” Peel too switched to his native tongue because it was easier for him, “perhaps, or perhaps not?”
“The weapon was a gift, a gift from the Masked Messenger.”
Peel raised a questioning eyebrow. “Nyarlathotep?”
Her blood-shot eyes grew large, and she trembled. With that single word Peel had finally rattled her.
She spoke softly now, but there was no mistaking the venom in her tone. “It seems you are well versed in the shadowed world.”
Peel gave a tiny smile, remembering his own haunted past, and where he’d read the name Nyarlathotep before, words that had left him cold. “Yes, unfortunately.” He leaned forward, whispering. “Let’s start at the beginning shall we? I know you’re not Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as you’d like everyone here to believe. From some reading I did in a very old book, I can see that you’re really a member of a secret sect which calls themselves the Sisterhood of the Masked Messenger.”
She went back to saying nothing again. Chemal was right, she would indeed be difficult to break. He wasn’t sure he had the will to break her, or if he really should.
“What I don’t understand, Souad Benhammou, is how you triggered the bomb without being killed.”
She permitted him one more flicker of her eyes, one more acknowledgment that he existed. “Who said I survived?”
It took Peel several seconds to notice his whole body had gone cold. He toppled out of his chair, stumbled backwards against the cell door, to smash his fists against its coarse metal.
“Chemal!” he cried. “Chemal!” he screamed.
He looked back to her.
She smiled for him, briefly. Then her face lined with a dozen crimson lacerations. Her shape seemed to fold, crumpled into her falling jellaba. Her heart, before it collapsed into a dozen slices with the rest of her meat, pumped one final time, spraying Peel with the last of her living blood.
A fist slammed into Udad Benhammou’s mouth with a meaty thunk, nearly knocking him out of his chair. Only the handcuffs that fastened him to the steel table saved him from a fall. Fabian Chemal looked around the small, dingy cell, as if seeking answers from anywhere but his silent prisoner.
“Your sister is a terrorist, Udad, and so are you. When is the next planned attack? Who is the target?”
Udad looked down at the American football Chemal had placed in his lap. Earlier the interrogator had put on gloves and rubbed the unclean pigskin over Udad’s bloody face. The man was a disgrace to everything holy, nothing but a Western puppet. Udad did not let his hatred show. He did not speak, allowing the interrogator to read what he wanted from Udad’s silence.
There would be a reckoning, and this dog would receive his reward.
Chemal lit another foul cigarette, and waved the cherry-red tip threateningly close to Udad’s eye.
“In the old days, we would have sewn filth like you into a pigskin and dropped you in the river. You are nothing but an Al-Qaieda puppet, a fool who wants to murder women and children for some ignorant interpretation of Al-Qur’an.”
Udad did not react. He merely stared into a corner of the room. The red glow of the cigarette moved away from his eye.
“Unfortunately, we have a squeamish Westerner who seems to think he can walk into another country’s affairs. Typical cowboy.” He punctuated his annoyance by putting out his cigarette on Udad’s forearm. Udad heard the sizzle of his burning flesh, but the pain was less to him than the itch of a mosquito bite.
Vaguely, Udad heard a scream, and then another. Chemal took no notice of it until a thickset man came through the cell door to whisper something in Chemal’s ear. With a look of annoyance, they both left, and Udad was alone in the dirty concrete cell.
He’d barely had time to think before Chemal was back. He placed a boot on Udad’s chest and shoved. The chair would have tipped over but for the cuffs that locked Udad’s wrists to the steel table. Chemal leaned his weight onto his prisoner, and the joints in the Udad’s arms protested.
“Seems our American got a little excited. I hope you weren’t too attached to your sister.”
“Souad?” Udad had thought himself immune to pain. Chemal’s face became a mask of triumph, and Udad realized he had spoken aloud.
“She’s a bit of a mess--you probably wouldn’t recognize her anymore.” He searched Udad’s face before going on. “I don’t know what he did, but the blood he got on the lightbulb makes the whole place stink.”
Udad closed his eyes and tried not to imagine what the cursed mongrel had done to Souad, but the reek of burned flesh suggested too many things. She was in Paradise with the martyrs, but the assurance only brought him scraps of comfort.
Chemal gave Udad a spiteful shove that nearly dislocated his shoulders.
“Unfortunately, our enthusiastic but careless American has managed break what could have been a valuable source of information.” He shrugged, then moved his weight. “You are, therefore, free to go.” Chemal kicked the chair out from under Udad, slamming his face against the sharp edge of the table. Udad could feel blood slowly oozing down his forehead, and wondered how badly he had been cut.
Chemal stalked out of the cell. Some time passed before a hard-faced officer unlocked Udad’s cuffed wrists. Less than five minutes later, the prisoner found himself outside police headquarters, back among the familiar busy streets of Marrakesh.
Udad stumbled down the road, his mind in turmoil, his body aching. He could not risk contacting the Group. Not even through one of the anonymous mail-drops at an Internet Café. Chemal must have thought him truly stupid if he believed that Udad would lead the DST to his comrades.
Through tired eyes Peel watched the red sun rise over the High Atlas range. He muffled a yawn behind his hand, yet felt invigorated by the clean air outside the ramparts of Marrakech, so different to the stifling medinas. “Where are we going?” he asked Fabien Chemal, who lit another cigarette from his perpetually-full packet. He too was red-eyed.
“Tamegroute, near Algeria.”
Peel nodded, recalling that the town was situated on the edge of the Sahara not far from the Algerian border. Its location was about as remote as one could get in Morocco.
“Why there?”
“We’ve captured another Combat Group terrorist.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t expected news like this, and wasn’t certain if he should feel positive or cautious. He wondered why he hesitated, he’d heard the name Tamegroute before, but couldn’t remember where.
He looked at the truck that was to be their transport, hired to a production company shooting a film in Ouarzazate. In the enclosed tray were stage lights, power boards and other electrical goods that Peel couldn’t identify.
“The truck belongs to a cousin,” was all that Chemal offered in explanation. “He needs it to go to Ouarzazate, and so do we. From there we can arrange further transport to Tamegroute.”
When the two spooks were sealed inside the tray, the truck set off east into the High Atlas. Chemal was soon snoring. With no windows to enjoy the scenery, Peel opened his copy of The Masked Messenger to jog his memory concerning Tamegroute. He felt certain that the answer lay in the book.
Peel had bought this first English edition in Marrakech many years ago. At the time he’d used it to aid him with another similarly peculiar investigation in the Congo. Obtained from a scholar named Jamal Alhazred, this copy was a rare edition. Printed by Colombia University Press in 1930, it had been translated by the Professor Samuel Colbridge and then edited and compiled by Professor Rudolph Pearson. If the signature and bookplate were authentic, this had been Pearson’s personal copy.
As Peel flipped through the pages, he unconsciously removed his bookmark, a photograph of Nicola Mulvany and himself relaxing on a pristine beach in tropical Queensland. They looked happy, and this brought a tear to his eye. Not a day went by when Peel didn’t yearn to
have Nicola again, to share more moments like the moment in the photo, for the rest of their lives together.
“She’s very pretty.”
Peel snapped the book shut, hiding the picture within the yellowed pages. It was a woman who had spoken to him, from the shadows towards the back. When Peel saw her clearly, he saw that she had long dark hair, deep grey eyes, and a smile that was seemingly both sardonic and understanding. Peel couldn’t guess her age, but there was no doubt she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes upon. And yet he could not find it in him to feel attracted to her, as if there was an element in her chemistry that he recoiled from.
“I’m sorry I gave you a start Mr. Peel. I thought you were aware I was here.”
“Who are you?” He blinked at her.
“My name is Ms. Rope.” Her English was perfect. Her accent he couldn’t place. “But most people know me by my first name, Lathanty. I work with Fabien Chemal in the DST. Didn’t he tell you about me?”
Peel felt stunned, like he’d just walked away from a major road accident. “I … ?”
“What, Mr. Peel?”
“I didn’t know you were there. You just startled me--that’s all.”
She smiled thinly.
“What do you do Ms. Rope, I mean with the DST?”
“Let’s just say I’m an intelligence analyst.”
“Specifically?”
“Specifically, I advise on the obscurities in human relationships that are too subtle or too arcane for the average DST agent.” She nodded to Chemal who still snored. “When dealing with suicidal terrorists, often they prove to be fanatical experts on their religious texts. Understanding them and their sources becomes an important tool in determining their motives, and to find them before they strike.”
Peel nodded in agreement, even though he didn’t believe her. Women in Morocco fared better than in most Islamic countries, but few women were employed in the Moroccan secret service. And yet Chemal must have known about her, because from where he sat he could not have failed to notice her before he drifted off.
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