He Who Walks in Shadow

by Brett J. Talley

  It wasn’t William. Of course it wasn’t. He was dead, and I had killed him, and no power on earth or in heaven could bring him back. In hindsight, it was foolish to follow, there, in a place of so much evil. But that voice in my head, the one that I had heeded so many times before, told me that whatever spirit moved through the trees that day was benevolent.

  I kept pace. William never wavered. When he came to a clearing, he stopped. He did not turn, not until I arrived. We stood together, side by side, on the shore of a small brook, nothing more than a creek.

  William gazed down into the depths of that shimmering water. A mad notion struck me that perhaps this was the only free-flowing water for a thousand miles, all else locked beneath a sheet of solid ice. And yet, other than its mere existence, there was nothing remarkable about that little stream.

  A thought came to my mind, unbidden. A voice that was not mine, nor any I had ever heard before. It was not spoken. William continued to stare into the stream as if within its shallow depths resided the most beautiful image in the world.

  The words were hazy at first, jumbled. It even struck me that perhaps they were in a language I did not know and, in fact, had never heard. Then the haze began to clear, and though the words did not change, I could understand them as if they were my native tongue.

  Fire and flame. That’s what the old legends foretold. That is the how, but not the why. The stone will come to him who is worthy of it. To him who is willing to sacrifice, to give all to save all.

  A roar filled the air. The light that surrounded us was outshone by a fire from above. A column of flame fell from the sky. It thundered down and crashed into the stream where William still stared. The water hissed and steam boiled up from the earth. My gaze matched William’s, and I saw it. He turned to me and smiled.

  The light faded, the darkness returned, and I found myself still kneeling next to William’s dead body. And yet, in my clinched fist, I held…

  * * *

  Journal of Henry Armitage, July 28, 1933

  “And that is how I found it.”

  Rachel held the small jewel in the palm of her hand, and she looked as stunned as I felt. The ruby-colored diamond burned with an inner flame, and I thought that if one so desired, one could illuminate the night with its light. For more than a decade she had worn it around her neck, concealed in that golden globe with the Arabic script that Carter had purchased at a bazaar in Marrakesh. And he had never mentioned it.

  I stumbled towards the desk where they sat. “You never said anything,” I said. “Even when it became clear we would need it. Why?”

  Carter looked up at me and smiled. “I would have told you, old friend. But I knew that if the Eye had returned, so would Nyarlathotep. I had to keep the stone hidden. And that meant keeping the knowledge of its existence to myself and keeping the Oculus in a place of utmost safety. I could think of none better than with my daughter.”

  “It’s so small,” Rachel said. She laughed. “I thought it would be bigger.”

  “I have a feeling,” said Carter, “that in this case size may be deceiving and that perhaps it will grow to meet whatever challenges we face.”

  “And yet, with the staff destroyed…” I could not finish the sentence. Even the thought filled me with despair.

  “Our mission is more difficult,” said Carter. “But I must believe that the solution will present itself. That our situation is not hopeless. That faith is all we have left.”

  “To those who wait beyond the veil,” I quoted, “the men who teem across the surface of the earth are little more than insects, ants to be swept away by the cleansing fire.”

  “The Necronomicon,” Carter said with a wry smile. “Doesn’t leave much for hoping, does it?”

  “Well,” said Rachel as she held the crystal out to her father, “then at least we will make them feel our sting.”

  “Yes,” Carter said. “That we will.”

  “And where do you propose we look for Nyarlathotep?” I asked. “Have your books told you that?”

  Carter leaned forward on the desk and clasped his hands. “No, they have not. They didn’t need to. Herr Zann proved that as long as there is breath, there is the possibility of redemption. And he used the last of that breath to give us the last piece of the puzzle.”

  Carter stood and walked to one of the bookcases that adorned the walls. He pulled down a narrow folio and turned to us.

  “‘Beyond sky,’” he said, “‘where the gods came down and set their foot on the earth.’ That is all he told me.”

  “And what does that mean? Where is beyond the sky?”

  “Not the sky.”

  He opened the book and dropped it on the table to where Rachel and I could see it. It was an atlas of the British Isles, turned to a page that showed us the north of Scotland.

  “Beyond Skye,” he said, pointing to the isle of myth and legend. His finger traced west to a group of tiny outcroppings in the midst of the North Sea. “To the place the Norse Sagas named Alfheim, and the Romans Basilia, and the ancient Britons Avalon, and the Celts Caledonia. It is where they say the gods came down to earth, and it is where they will return. One of these islands. We just have to identify which one.”

  “Then that is where we will find him.” We both turned to Rachel, and when she looked up from the map, her countenance was not one I had seen before on her, and not one I particularly liked. It was determined, yes, but anger and hate rippled just below the surface. “And we’ve not got a moment to lose.”

  Chapter 37

  The Diary of Rachel Jones

  July 29, 1933

  So it goes.

  Today we make our way to England and then to Scotland beyond. Henry, ever the organizer, booked passage for us on a trans-channel ferry immediately after leaving my father’s room. He didn’t need help, and I stayed behind.

  We talked of everything and nothing, and it was as if we weren’t watching the clock tick down on the end of the world. I suppose this must be how soldiers feel, on the eve of battle, when the next day might be their last. And yet whatever might come seemed so far away in those moments. I had my father back, and that was something.

  He had done what he thought was necessary. There was a time when I wouldn’t have understood that. He knew that about me, and he kept the truth from me for no other reason than that I couldn’t have handled it. There are those who would never forgive such a seeming betrayal. I understand that sentiment, too. If someone had asked me about it before, I’d probably have been squarely in their camp.

  But the old saying that you cannot judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes has proven true. After what I have seen, after all that I know, I have come to fully understand.

  Guillaume…

  I would say that I was a fool, but that would be a convenient lie. To be a fool is easy. To be fooled, forgivable, particularly in this case, given the one doing the fooling. But it was not so simple, not for me, not for him. Thinking on it too much is enough to drive a woman to madness, but I believe that there was truth in those moments we shared, however dark and damnable they ended up being. And yet…

  Losing him is not like losing William. Of course it’s not—I knew Guillaume for a matter of days. But to see him die. To know what took him. And to know that it was the same as that which took William.

  I hate him. I hate him with as much fervor as I have ever loved anything. And I will see this through to the bitterest of ends.

  * * *

  Journal of Carter Weston

  Passage from Mont Saint-Michel to England proved more difficult than expected. First, a train to Granville, a small fishing village some twenty miles north of the Mont. Then, a boat, if one can call it that. It was little more than a fishing trawler, really, and I wondered by what hook or crook Henry had procured it. From Granville we “sailed” to the isle of Jersey, where we caught a trawler to Guernsey, ending our cattle tour with our arrival in the port of Southampton.

  It was a somewhat ignom
inious beginning to our grand quest.

  Yet our spirits were high. Unfortunately, by the time our epic Channel journey came to a close, the sun had long since set and the last train north long since departed the station. So there we were, a day lost, the constant drizzle of a late spring rain soaking us to the bone. We retired to the Dolphin, an ancient inn in the heart of the city and one of the finest such establishments in Southampton. With tomorrow not assured, it seemed wise to eat, drink, and be merry.

  As we stepped into the lobby of the Dolphin, the rain ceased, the clouds broke, and the moon shone through. It was near to fullness, and the rain-slicked cobblestones glistened in its light. From the docks the harbor bells rang, and the people of Southampton went about their business, oblivious to the danger that surrounded them. I wondered how often it was so, how many near misses with disaster the human race has endured but blindly, how many nights of peace and quiet for the many tipped towards disaster, a fate only avoided by the sacrifices of the few.

  Tomorrow we go north, to Skye and beyond.

  * * *

  It is late. Or perhaps it is early. There is no clock in this room, and the empty night tells nothing. I have had a dream, and I cannot wait till morning to relate it. I must record it now, while it is fresh in my mind, in the event that the details thereof might be of help to us all.

  Sleep came quickly to me, an unusual if not altogether unwelcome development. Now, in the glow of a pale electric light, I wonder if a dark power brought the spirit of Hypnos down upon me.

  I remember only that as I began to drift into slumber, I heard a soft tinkling somewhere in the night, as if a mirror had shattered, casting broken glass upon the floor. When my eyes opened, I was no longer in Southampton or England or on this earth. I was somewhere else entirely.

  I stood upon a high mountain. My familiar clothing was gone, and I wore the black robe of a Benedictine. A mighty wind whipped up from below, driving the pitch black clouds that boiled and raced above me. I was glad that they obscured the sky, for somehow I knew that whatever floated above them was not meant for the eyes of man, and that to see it was to invite insanity.

  I looked out over a vast, stone plain, a flat sea of granite that continued on to the far horizon, endless and infinite and empty. From the dark clouds above, the whip-crack of thunder sounded as a great lightning bolt, larger than any I had seen before, slashed down to the stone in the outer distance. The smell of distant rain filled me.

  “Leng,” I whispered to myself.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The very sound of the words chilled my blood. I turned to find him waiting, and never before in my life have I felt so small, so naked, so alone. He was seated in a chair made of stone. Another sat across from him, empty, a small tor forming a table between them.

  “This is only a dream,” I said, but I found no strength in the assertion. Nyarlathotep smiled, and the perfect, pearly white of his razor-blade-straight teeth only made him all the more uncanny.

  “Isn’t everything?”

  He gestured at the seat across from him. I stood, unmoving.

  “Come, Carter Weston. There will be a time for unpleasantness in the future, of that I am sure. Not now. Sit a while. Think of all we have to discuss.”

  He pointed again at the stone chair. I stepped forward and he rose, as if he were the courteous host and I a guest in his home. I suppose in a way, I was. The two of us sat down together, he and I, and so the game began, far more literally than I expected.

  He sat across from me, his fingers steepled. He wore the sallow robe that was his trademark, and his eyes shone from a face that was long and lined with the burden of command. He had no hair, either on his head or his face, and I wondered if that contrivance was simply too much for him to create. That perhaps of all the things he had mastered, hair was not one. Or maybe he simply did not care to fabricate it. But of one thing I was sure—the legends were right; he really did look like an ancient pharaoh.

  He waved his hand across the stone. It rumbled and cracked, dust and smoke erupting from the crevices that formed beneath his hands. Shapes rose from the rock, its surface darkening in spots as if burned by a fire. When the figure on my right resolved into the image of a castle’s turret, the shocking realization of what I was witnessing broke across me like a wave.

  “You play, I presume?”

  I nodded.

  “Then you can play with me. It is, I have found, a singular invention of your race, perhaps the only one for which you merit attention. A diversion unlike any other. A mirror of life, where power is gained only through loss.”

  I picked up the king. It pulsed in my hand, hot to the touch.

  “And what do I get if I win?”

  That almost reptilian smile returned.

  “Why nothing, my dear Carter. I am not here to make deals or wagers. This is but a friendly game. Something to occupy our time, while we have our little chat.”

  “Well,” I said, for no other reason than defiance, “I guess we know who will take black.”

  The grin broadened beyond what might be possible for a human being. “Quite.”

  I picked up the white pawn that sat before my king and moved it two spaces forward, e4.

  “So it begins.” His long narrow fingers clasped the pawn across from mine by its head, which, in the pale orange light of whatever fire burned in the sky above us, looked like a skeletal face caught forever in a scream. e5. It was then I made the decision—I would throw everything I had against him. If I were to lose, I would lose with style. f4, attacking his middle pawn.

  “King’s gambit?”

  I nodded.

  “Accepted.”

  I watched him, seated in a cold stone throne, yellow cloak tangled in the dying breeze, as he moved a pawn to capture my own, exf4, and I wondered.

  “So why this?” I asked. “Of all the ways that you could have appeared, why this one?” Bishop to c4.

  His mouth twisted into a smirk.

  “What we are and what we seem, these things are all illusion,” he said. He casually dropped his queen across the board, putting my king in check. Qh4+. “When Dr. Henry Armitage asks you to his house for a drink or for dinner, you dress for the occasion, do you not? And not just in any attire, but in that which is appropriate. I learned long ago that of all the forms and fancies I might take, this is the one that pleases men the most. And of course, your mind is such a fragile thing. So easily damaged by the truth. If you were to see me as I am, well, it wouldn’t be pleasant. For you, at least.”

  I moved my king to f1 and temporary safety, and he responded by harassing my bishop with a pawn to b5. Perhaps I was feeling fragile, because I took it. Bxb5.

  “I remember,” he said, “I watched a boy once, a child no older than three.” Nf6. “He had a treasure that he seemed to value above all other things. A common hen’s egg, nothing special or important.” While he talked of eggs, I challenged his queen, Nf3. “I’m not sure how he got it. Whether his mother gave it to him or whether he found it. But he clung to that little white ovoid as if it were the most precious thing in the world.” Qh6. “Of course, you see where this is going. He was clumsy, as your kind often are, even when childhood has fled from you. And he dropped the egg. And it did what eggs do. He wept for it.” d3. My center was secure.

  “That is what your mind is like, that egg. I hold it in my hands. And it takes so little to crack it.” Nh5. “So if I were to reveal my true form, if you were to see me as my father made me, then I think you might break, right before my eyes. And I would hate to see Rachel mourn for you, as that boy mourned for his egg.” Nh4.

  At this point, I felt rather secure in my position. The center held by my forces; our material, even.

  “You can leave Rachel out of it.” I said. Qg5. Now he was harassing my knight. Nf5 to save him.

  “Oh, but it was not I who brought her into it.” c6. Now my bishop was under attack. So I threatened his knight, g4. He didn’t seem all that concer
ned. “That was your friend Henry. And you, of course. From the moment she was born.” Nf6.

  “This is between us,” I said, as another crackle of lightning scarred the plain below. Rg1. Nyarlathotep’s laughter drowned out the thunder.

  “No, my dear Carter. No, it is not. It never was. And it never could be. You are but the player on the stage in the moment, whose career passes in the blink of a season, never to rise again. Before you were, I was. When you are gone, I will be. This that I give to you now is the greatest gift one of your kind could ever hope to receive. How many times have men fallen upon their knees and called in vain to gods who do not hear, who do not see? I see you, Carter Weston. I hear you. And you would do well to hear me.”

  cxb5.

  He had taken my bishop right from underneath me. And there was nothing I could do to strike back. A shadow of a grin passed his face, and I did not know if it was a reflection of what he had said or what he had done, that haughty face of triumph. Or maybe I had misread it altogether. Either way, I would not go so easily into the night. h4. The grin faded. For my sacrifice, I had gained a tempo on his queen. She was trapped in a box, both literal and figurative. She was in retreat, Qg6.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What could you possibly want from me?” I advanced a pawn forward, closing the noose around his queen’s throat. h5.

  Here, if I had not known it to be impossible, I would have thought that he faltered, as if he were uncertain. The mask of composure, of supreme confidence, had slipped. His move was a simple forward jump one square by the queen. Qg5.

  “You don’t have to die, Carter. And neither does your daughter. This world will be changed, yes, and many will perish. But some will remain.”

  “As slaves.” I slammed down my queen, Qf3.

  He tilted his head to one side. “Alive.” Ng8. He was in retreat.