“That photograph, is that your wife?”
“My fiancée,” Peel explained. He slipped the picture from the book so Lathanty could look at it. Then he took the engagement ring from his pocket where he could touch it whenever he felt alone and lost. He showed her the ring, but didn’t let it go.
“Beautiful.”
“She died before I could give it to her, just over a year ago, so she’s not really my fiancée.” Peel explained quickly not wanting the unasked question to linger. “It was my fault. I got her messed up in this world of secrets and deceit, and it cost her.” He didn’t add that Nicola had been torn to shreds by an alien monster born in another dimension. A death all too similar to Souad Benhammou’s passing. His trip to Morocco was stirring old feelings.
“You must miss her?” She handed back the photograph.
“Every day.”
“What would you do to bring her back?”
“Anything,” blurted Peel. Then he looked to Lathanty, intrigued by her peculiar question. “But she’s dead. I just have to accept that, don’t I? Move on. She’d want me to do that, not wallow in self pity.”
Lathanty looked to The Masked Messenger which Peel held tight in his sweating hands, as he slipped the photograph back inside. “That’s an interesting book you’re reading Mr. Peel.”
“You’ve read it?”
“Let’s just say I’m well acquainted with its content.”
Peel didn’t want to ask, but suspected she was implying knowledge of the original. That version had been written in Arabic in the early Eighteenth Century by a woman called Sharinza, the same woman who was supposed to have founded the Sisterhood of the Masked Messenger. A more chilling thought; Lathanty might have even read the even more ancient tome that had influenced the original Masked Messenger, a tome known in obscure academic circles as Al-Azif. That book would later inspire many translations and become famous as the most comprehensive and terrifying guide to cosmic horrors this world had ever seen, the Necronomicon. Not that Peel had ever laid eyes on any of these manuscripts; he knew them only by their fearsome reputation.
“It’s an interesting book Mr. Peel. Five hundred fables, most of them concerning a dark god called the Masked Messenger, Nyarlathotep, and how she offers power and salvation to those who ask for it. There is, of course, always a price.”
“I thought most of the protagonists died horrible deaths.”
That thin, almost nonexistent smile again. “That’s because most of them bargained poorly. Did you ever read the tale of Sharinza herself, how she walked into the deep Algerian desert in search of the Temple of the Masked Messenger, forgotten for eons, buried under the Saharan sands?”
Peel remembered. It was the very story that mentioned Tamegroute, the town which had been playing on his mind since their departure. It was also the first story in the book, a prologue of sorts. Sharinza had found the temple, met with a god, then returned to her homelands. She brought untold horrors back with her, horrors that unfolded into four-hundred-and-ninety-nine more tales of death, madness and destruction. Some of those horrors were not too dissimilar to the weapon Souad had used in Marrakech.
“You should read it again. Sharinza bargained for the life of her lover.”
Peel felt his heart flutter. “And did she get him back?”
Lathanty looked away. “Read it again Mr. Peel, find out for yourself.”
Udad wandered the streets of Marrakech seeking some surcease of his pain, finding none. He considered assaulting the Westerner, gunning him down like a dog in the street. But the police retaliation would be swift and certain. He would be a martyr, all his sins forgotten, but how would he know for certain that the man was dead? It occurred to him that he didn’t even know the name of the butcher who had laid hands on Souad. Frustration welled up in him. What could he do?
Defeated, he returned to his small, sparsely-furnished apartment.
On his small cot was a cardboard box. There was no address, no note, simply the box, held closed with tape. Listless and sore from a day of volatile emotions and physical abuse, Udad opened the box without interest.
The book inside was old and beautiful. He ran his fingers over the raised, flowing script on the leather cover. The Masked Messenger. He had never heard of it. A small scrap of paper stuck out of the thick sheaf of pages. Udad opened to it. It was a note, unsigned, but in Souad’s careful, well-practiced hand.
If you have the courage to avenge my dishonor at the hands of the Westerner, this is the key.
A cold thrill moved through him. She had known. She had known what would happen to her. Emotions warred in him. He had never been more proud of her, and yet his anger quickly resurfaced--he could not tell her how brave she had been.
He spent a sleepless night reading--starting with the page Souad had marked. Udad quickly realized that the forces of Hell were contained in the book. The Masked Messenger was clearly the work of the Great Deceiver, but the resources of the enemy could be used against him by a clever and righteous man. His comrades at the Combat Group viewed him as useful because of his money, but Udad knew he was destined for more than just providing funds for the revolution.
It was nearly dawn when Udad, his head spinning from the things he had read, collapsed on his cot and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.
He was awakened some time later by a sense of motion in his room. Instantly, Udad was out of his cot, machete in his hand.
It was not a policeman that stood before him, but a woman. She held no weapon.
“Who are you?” He demanded with a strong, harsh voice.
“I cannot tell you who I am, but our aims are similar. We both knew Souad, and we both seek justice.” Her voice was soft and mellifluous, like honey on the tongue.
He lowered his weapon, but did not put it away. In his small, dull room, he could make out that one of her eyes was covered with a white film. She was properly and modestly veiled, even though it was inappropriate for her to be in the company of a strange man unescorted.
“I don’t trust you. You are probably a spy.”
“I knew your sister, and I helped fulfill her last wish by getting you that book.” She gestured toward the tome that was lost somewhere in the shadows.
Udad was torn. He’d heard strange rumors of a sisterhood of devil-worshipers but he refused to believe that Souad would have done anything so blasphemous. Whoever this woman was, he would have to be on his guard. If he kept his head about him, he should be able to use this woman even as she attempted to use him.
“I doubt that you ever knew Souad. I should kill you simply for sullying her name with your tongue.” He made a half-hearted gesture with his machete.
“Souad spoke many times of her younger brother Udad, the brave boy who would stand up to his father when he was only fourteen. How she used to chase you round the yard after you snatched the book she was reading. And how you became serious and studious after a chance meeting with an Afghan mujahid.”
“Enough.” There was nothing unmanly about tears, but now was not the time. “Say what you have to say, then leave.”
“Come with me.” She beckoned him to the doorway. “And we will talk.”
Naked and bloody, bathed in cubes of sunlight dissected by the windows of wrought-iron grills, Peel screamed from the highest tower in the Tamegroute Kasbah. Every muscle in his body flexed and burned as another jolt from the car battery sizzled his flesh. In his time in the Australian Army he’d been trained to resist interrogation, but not torture. Fabien Chemal wanted information Peel didn’t have, and he was determined to use any extreme to obtain it.
Peel’s pain had hardly begun. To remind him that his current torture was nothing, a bucket of petrol wafted its acrid odors just out of reach, but just within eyesight. And Chemal liked to smoke cigarettes.
“Please, I told you,” Peel sweated, gritted his teeth. “I don’t know anything about the Combat Group.”
Rope sat quietly next to Chemal, a delicate finger poised
at her mouth as if she were watching nothing more than an engrossing film. Chemal wouldn’t look at her, but Peel had little choice. She asked the questions while he administered the pain. Despite their roles, she was colder than he. Together they were formidable interrogators, and Peel was afraid he was not far from breaking, telling them all the lies they wanted to hear. And when he had branded himself a traitor, they would wipe their hands of him, a cheap and nasty death as his reward. They would abandon his body to the Sahara, never to be seen again.
“You were talking to me in the truck yesterday,” she asked firmly, “discussing the terrorist organization, the Sisterhood of the Masked Messenger?”
“You were there, that is what we did.”
Her eyes looked to Chemal, who was hot and bothered, then to Peel again. Her mouth hinted a smile, as if she knew a secret that neither man did. “You’ve heard of the Temple of the Masked Messenger, haven’t you, Peel?”
“Yes,” he tensed, hoping that his answer would not bring him another electric shock. Thankfully it did not. “You know this, so why do you keep asking me?”
“Do you know where this Temple of the Masked Messenger is? Is that where the Sisterhood is to be found?”
“I don’t know exactly,” his voice sounded hysterical even to his own ears. With every second he was expecting the next burning jolt of electricity. “All I know is that the temple is located somewhere in the Algerian Sahara, somewhere south of Tamegroute. Please, that’s where you’ll find the people you’re after.”
In a hurry to get to his feet, Chemal toppled his chair. He punched Peel in the gut, hard, and then again, harder still. Despite his bindings, Peel doubled over, grunting as air was expelled from his lungs.
When he could breath again he sobbed. He didn’t want to die, not like this, not upon a misunderstanding. “Why are you doing this to me?” He looked to Lathanty hoping that she might offer some compassion, but all she would do was smile thinly. He hated that smile now. “Please?”
“You bastard!” Chemal lifted Peel by his bloody chin. “You’ve confessed. There is no salvation for you. All I can do is put a stop to the pain, but only if you first tell me what I want to know.”
“But I’ve answered all her questions.”
“Her questions?” Chemal eyebrows crunched into a frown. “What are you talking about Peel? It’s just you and me.” The DST agent looked about the darkened stone room. He looked right through Lathanty Rope.
Peel became confused. Rope was standing right next to Chemal. Couldn’t he see her?
“I’ve confessed to nothing. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m trying to help you both!”
“Both?” Chemal stepped from Peel, took three deep breaths as he wiped his sweaty brow. He lifted the tape recorder still spinning on the cell’s only desk, rewound it for a few seconds, and then pressed play.
Peel listened through bloody ears, and couldn’t believe what he heard.
CHEMAL: When you thought I was sleeping in the movie truck, you risked a telephone call to your contact with the Combat Group? Don’t lie now Peel, I heard every word.
PEEL: You were there, that is what we did.
CHEMAL: You’re the western spy who’s funding the Combat Group. You sold them the weapon.
PEEL: Yes. You know this, so why do you keep asking me?
CHEMAL: So how do you fund them exactly? I want names, places, accounts, and dates. Especially places.
PEEL: I don’t know exactly. All I know is that the temple is located somewhere in the Algerian Sahara, somewhere south of Tamegroute. Please, that’s where you’ll find the people you’re after.
The tape was stopped. Wiping sweat from his face Chemal drew a cigarette from his pack. His first smoke since the interrogation commenced. “That a confession Peel, if I’ve ever heard one.”
Peel felt his gut blacken and knot. It was Chemal on the tape, not Lathanty Rope. How could they both be asking him questions, but he could only hear one of them, the single voice that wasn’t recorded?
Then Peel understood.
Lathanty Rope.
An anagram of Nyarlathotep.
When he caught her eye, the smile she gave had grown large, and was nothing less than evil.
“You don’t exist, do you?
She said nothing.
“You don’t exist outside of my own mind, do you … Nyarlathotep?”
“I exist Mr. Peel, even if only you can see me. But that’s how I wanted it. That’s how I always wanted it.”
“Who are you talking to?” Chemal’s eyes glanced to the room’s dark corners, his eyes frantic.
Peel ignored him. “What do you want with me?”
“What do I want? What do you want, Major Harrison Peel?”
Peel didn’t see Chemal splash him with the bucket of petrol. The combustible fluids burnt his eyes, clawed at his nostrils and lips. His whole body convulsed. Fabien had his cigarette in his mouth. He lit it, drew upon its smoke. Now he had it in his hands, ready to flick it away. “Names Peel, I want names.”
Peel screamed.
Lathanty slid close to him, whispered in his ear. “You want to escape this place, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Peel sobbed.
“Give me the names,” roared the DST agent.
“You’ll agree to do something for me,” Lathanty spoke over Chemal, “just like the Sisterhood promised to deliver something to me after I gave them that weapon. In return I’ll save your life, and perhaps I’ll bring your fiancée back.”
“Anything,” Peel sobbed again, “anything.”
He didn’t want to die like this, not to be burnt alive in some forgotten North African town in a country where no one would miss him, where no one would even acknowledge his passing. And the pain, he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like, to wail as his skin and flesh melted from his bones.
Chemal puffed his cigarette, allowed the flaming embers to grow. “I won’t ask again Peel.”
“Please?”
Lathanty’s face lost all its beauty, ran with streams of acid, burning away her coarse grey flesh and dark hair. Her clothes smoldered. When her eyes widened, they reflected the entirety of the cosmos itself. With a flick of her hand acid splashed across the Moroccan’s face.
Chemal screamed, held his hands to his melting eyes only to have his fingers dissolve to the bone. Sockets without lids smoked upon a skull without skin. Blood and caustic fluids mixed and boiled, and Fabien Chemal screamed louder than Peel ever had.
His lit cigarette fell from his bone tips as he crumpled upon his knees, and fell towards Peel.
Nyarlathotep caught the red ember mere centimeters from ignition.
In the shadows, Chemal’s skull cracked and dissolved exposing his brain, and finally the DST agent died.
All the while the dark god held the captured cigarette close to Peel’s face. “We have a deal Harrison Peel.” It wasn’t a question.
Peel looked into the grey face, burning with the same acid that had killed Chemal, but caused her no pain. “We have a deal,” he sobbed. In the shadows Chemal’s corpse was nothing more than black smoldering bones and bubbling corruption. It could have just as easily been him.
The Masked Messenger extinguished the cigarette between her index finger and thumb. Then she touched the ropes binding Peel’s hands and feet, dissolving them effortlessly. Too weak to stand, Peel collapsed on the floor.
She threw a bucket of water over him, invigorating him with its cold. “Get dressed,” she pointed to his clothes, “the desert awaits.”
Udad found the mysteries contained within The Masked Messenger profound and difficult. For all that they appeared simple, the book’s stories unfolded before the educated man, revealing disturbing possibilities. The power of it made Udad’s head spin. Surely he had lost his job by now. He had not left his apartment for days, and could not tell if his lightheadedness came from the dizzying insights of the book, or because he could not remember the last time he had eaten. B
ut just as prayer was better than sleep, The Masked Messenger was more nourishing than food.
He stood, and the floor spun treacherously under his feet. He understood the dangerous and unreliable nature of reality now, the fundamental betrayal with which Shaitan had deceived nearly all of creation. Udad had mastered those esoteric truths, understood that the web of lies had holes in it, and knew that acts supposed impossible could be accomplished if one perceived both the deceit and the truth.
He ran a rough hand through his sweat-soaked hair. His apartment was stuffy, smothering. In the days since his interrogation, the pain in his shoulders had eased, but the burn-scars on his forearms still bothered him.
“Udad?” The call was a harsh whisper, and he looked around, unable to locate the voice. Had he imagined it?
“Udad are you there?” Her voice drifted faintly through the door.
He jerked the door open to find the same women who had given him the book. She looked at him with a boldness that was unbecoming to her sex. And still, he moved aside and allowed her into his small, shabby apartment.
She looked him up and down, her good, brown eye seeing merely him, but the milky orb was piercing. “You have read the book. And now you see the world with new eyes.”
Udad could only grunt in response, his voice dry and cracked from disuse. Again, he wondered at her temerity, not only willing to speak with him alone, but to address him as if he were her student. She stood, back to him, looking over his barren apartment, betraying no signs of apprehension. She was unlike any other woman Udad had ever known, with the possible exception of Souad.
The memory of his sister was still a hot dagger in his heart.
“You do not know the risk I have taken in giving you that book.” The woman--whose name he did not know--was looking at him now. “Souad said that you were trustworthy, that you were the sort of man who could get things done.”
“Get them done, yes,” he echoed her distantly. His mind felt disconnected, jumbled, as if it were sand that had once been stone. “Is it true what the book says about the temple near Tamegroute, the one that Sharinza visited?”
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