by Rick Dakan
The high priest and priestess of Cthulhu processed into the middle of ring of fire, and so entrancing was their spectacle that at first I didn’t notice the four other figures in black robes who followed behind them carrying a large black platform about six feet square on their shoulders. Behind them came four more “cultists,” each bearing a thick black length of wood with sharpened points, like giant stakes for killing some very large vampire.
“Jesus,” Conrad shouted into my ear. “How many followers does he have?”
“Who knows?” I said, although I don’t think he heard me over the grumbling, atonal bass note. For all I knew these were just caterers or college kids he’d paid to help out. Calling them “followers” seemed like it might be a bit of a stretch.
As the fluorescent painted dancers scrabbled in the dirt towards Shelby and Kym, clutching at the hem of their robes as they passed, the pair made a circuit around the central fire, making sure that all the observers in the surrounding darkness got a good look at them. As they walked, the robe-wearing cultists drove their stakes into the ground in the central clearing just next to the large central fire. The others then placed the black platform on top of them, forming a kind of dark stage about four feet off the ground. Then, at some unseen signal the painted dancers swarmed upon Shelby and Kym, obscuring them from view for a moment and then lifting them up into the air and bearing their priest and priestess up onto the platform.
The sound finally cut off and there was a moment of silence as Shelby turned on the stage and extended his arm out towards the crowd, his hand like a claw clutching at the onlookers’ souls. “Ia Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn!” he shouted, his voice coming over the speakers. There was obviously a microphone of some sort hidden in the mask. The dancers and robed cultists answered Shelby’s invocation in kind. But the priest didn’t seem satisfied. He spread both arms out towards the crowd and again cried, “Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!” This time several crowd members joined in with the cultists. Nodding his head in approval, Shelby repeated his cry a third time, and now most of the crowd joined in, including Cara and, almost to my own surprise, me.
“The Curse of Cthulhu be upon you all!” Shelby said, his voice relayed through the speakers from every angle. “Know that your doom is inevitable and imminent! Hail Cthulhu! Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!”
“IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!” We all shouted in response.
“Know this great truth,” Shelby continued. “Know that Flesh is but Flesh. Thoughts are but Thoughts. Cthulhu cares not one whit for you or your sad, miserable fates. Cthulhu sees you as nothing but what you are — fleeting patterns of stardust that come together like momentary dreams and are then forgotten. This is the one and only truth Cthulhu gives you. The one and only truth you need ever know. Words are but Words. Life is but Life. And death and disintegration are all existence promises any of you. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!”
“IA! IA! CHULHU FHTAGN!” The cultists and crowd cried once more.
“And so in honor of these truths, these Revelations of Cthulhu, we heed his call in the only way fitting of his greatness,” Shelby said, raising his arms up above his head. “With a sacrifice!” he shouted.
“A sacrifice!” came the shout in return, this time from only the dancers and the robed cultists. This was an interesting turn of events, I thought.
He reached down and took up a black velvet bag from one of the robed cultists. It looked exactly like the one the bouncer at the warehouse’s entrance had drawn our wooden medallions from earlier. “I now leave to utter entropy and chance who will be called upon to be tonight’s offering.” He held open the bag to Kym, who reached into the bag. She took a long moment rooting around in the sack before drawing forth a wooden token — a half-sized version of the sigils we all wore around our necks.
Kym held it up above her head and call out, “Supplicant 23! Your time is nigh!” She had a microphone in her mask as well, and her strong, clear voice cut through the night, a hint of some Caribbean accent. Between the disturbing mask, the outlandish cloak, and the firelight playing over her sweat-sheened nude body, she was quite a striking sight.
We all looked around, but no one seemed to be responding. “Number 23!” Kym cried again. “Come forward!” Not everyone had understood what was going on at first, but now I could see people explaining to those nearby, showing them the numbers on the backs of their medallions. I looked over at Cara, and she smiled with relief as she showed hers — number XCII.
“Over here!” Someone shouted from our left. It was a well-dressed, yuppie-looking man in his forties. He was pointing to the small-framed, scared-looking young woman standing next to him. She was staring at the medallion in her hand as if it were some kind of strange, unpleasant bug.
“Step forward,” Kym said, pointing at the young woman. She looked up and shook her head, giving a nervous giggle.
The man standing next to her urged her forward, his hand at the small of her back. I wasn’t sure if they were together or not. Still she resisted, taking off her medallion and trying to give it to the man, but Kym would have none of that.
“Cthulhu has chosen you!” She declared from the stage. Or was it an altar? “There is no escaping your doom. Bring her forward.” Three of the nude dancers leaped up from the dirt and capered towards her. The chosen victim gave what looked like a very nervous laugh and seemed to shrink into herself. The three cultists, two women and one man, took her by the arms and started to pull her toward the circle. She seemed to give a token resistance, but when the rest of the audience started clapping in encouragement, she went along.
As she approached, Kym and Shelby started chanting in a low voice, “Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!” over and over again. The other cultists joined them, and soon the rest of the crowd started chanting along as well. When she arrived at the altar, they passed her off to the robed cultists, who lifted her up onto the altar. She stood between Shelby and Kym, shaking a little as her eyes darted back and forth between the two nude, masked officiants.
“Bring forth Cthulhu’s Maw!” Kym shouted. One of the robed cultists produced another black bag and drew out some sort of large collar-like object. He handed it up to Shelby who then held it high over his head. It was a black wooden or metal oval, about two feet in length and several inches thick. White inch-long teeth surrounded the entire circumference: wicked, curved teeth that left perhaps ten inches of open space in the maw’s center.
“Are you ready to feel Cthulhu’s kiss?” Kym asked the victim.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“It matters not,” Kym said, grabbing hold of the woman’s arms and holding her in place. Shelby did something with the maw, because it swung open on a hidden hinge, allowing him to fit the ring around the woman’s neck. It snapped closed, the teeth making slight indentations into the woman’s skin. She stood stock-still now, her head held straight up and down.
Kym released her, and Shelby took hold of the small woman from behind by her shoulders. Kym’s hand disappeared into her cloak, reaching behind her own back. She pulled out a two-foot-long steel blade, its mirror smooth surface gleaming in the firelight. She raised the sword over her head and once again, louder than ever, shouted, “IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!
“IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!” the crowd shouted in response.
“Oh Great Cthulhu!” Kym said, “High Priest of the Great Old Ones! Dead but dreaming in your great city of R’lyeh, we offer this woman’s life to you. Not as a sacrifice. Not as an offering. We take her life knowing that all are doomed in your sight. We slay her so that the rest of us might see your truth!”
The poor sacrifice seemed in a trance, wide-eyed and terrified as she mumbled something none of us could hear. She was not struggling, although I couldn’t tell whether that was because of Shelby’s grip or pure fear on her part. Kym brandished her blade above her head, turning in a circle so all of us gathered around the fires could get a good look. Then she brought the tip of the blade down so it pointed right at the sacrifice’s
neck.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” Kym said, pitching her voice low and strong, although I only know that now because I looked it up later in the story “The Call of Cthulhu.” At the time it sounded like gibberish, except for the Cthulhu part. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” she repeated again, her voice louder. Now Shelby joined her for a third repetition and then a fourth. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” they said, as the robed and nude cultists alike joined in, all of them chanting in low tones.
Cara tugged on my arm and pointed to the sacrifice. “Look,” she said. The sacrifice was still mumbling and still looked very scared, but now that her tormentors were all chanting the same gobbledygook, I could read her lips well enough to see that she was repeating the same phrase as the rest of them. Had she been chanting this Cthulhu rant all along or just got caught up with the rest of them?
As the chanting went on, Kym started to shake all over. All over except for the hand holding the sacrificial blade, which was steady as a rock. Like a woman possessed by some spirit, her body convulsed and contorted. She somehow shrugged off her feathered cloak, leaving her dark, nude body exposed to the firelight, covered in a sheen of sweat. The chanting reached a fever pitch and then just stopped. Kym froze in place, her body twisted into what looked like a very uncomfortable position.
She pushed the sword forward a couple inches, its tip penetrating the collar around the sacrifice’s throat. She pressed a little harder and the woman winced in pain. Then Kym drew the blade back out and plunged it forward again. It sliced through the woman’s neck in one swift motion, with several bloody inches of it coming out the other side.
The sacrifice gurgled as blood streamed down from both sides of her neck, drenching her dress. She fell back into Shelby’s arms as the audience gasped.
“Holy shit!’ Conrad said, stepping back and summing up what all of us seemed to be feeling.
Kym had let the blade go as the woman fell. Now she raised both arms and shouted once again, “IA! IA! CTHULHU FHTAGN!”
Shock and confusion spread through the audience. Had we seen what we thought we’d just seen? The cultists and some of the audience returned Kym’s chant once again, but others were just shouting. Some started towards the ring of fire, others backed away into the shadows. I saw one person crying. Kym squatted down beside the blood-drenched body and ran her hands up and down her torso and neck. When she stood up again her hands were covered with blood, which she proceeded to smear over her bare chest in great, red globs. Beside her Shelby did the same, covering his hands in blood and then shrugging off his cloak so he was also naked except for his Cthulhu mask. After he’d covered himself in her blood he stood up and the two of them jumped from the stage.
Shelby and Kym each dashed out into the crowd, moving in opposite directions towards the shocked onlookers. Meanwhile, the nude dancer-cultists swarmed up onto the stage, obscuring any view of the poor sacrificial victim. I lost track of where Shelby and Kym had gone, but heard screams and then something that sounded like laughter coming from the other side of the fire circle. Conrad, Cara, and I all craned our necks to get a view. Shelby and Kym seemed to be doing something to the people in the crowd. Then the knot of dancers around the stage broke up and dispersed out into the crowd. They too had blood covering their faces and hands. I looked back towards the stage and saw the robed cultists had picked up the woman with the sword through her neck and were carefully placing her down on the ground.
I felt a wet, warm hand on my wrist as someone grabbed me from behind. It was one of the nude dancers, a thin, pale man with greasy-looking hair. He held his up his left hand, covered in blood and said, “The Touch of Cthulhu?” I pulled my wrist free and recoiled, shaking my head. He didn’t press the matter and turned away, ignoring Conrad and Cara as he withdrew into the darkness. I raised my wrist, now wet and sticky with cold blood and gave it a smell. What did blood smell like? Not like this. I carefully stuck the tip of my tongue out. My suspicions were proven true.
“Stage blood,” I said, recognizing the minty but unpleasant taste.
“Well of course,” Cara said, laughing. “What did you expect?”
“You never know with Shelby,” Conrad said. “After a show like that and some of the other stuff we’ve seen and heard, I wasn’t sure what to think. I’m still not.”
“Touch of Cthulhu?” asked a voice from behind us. We all turned around to see Shelby standing there, his body and hands still drenched in blood. “It’s good for your non-existent soul,” he said, the first time I’d caught a hint of non-seriousness from him or any of the “cultists” all evening.
“Oh hell, why not?” said Cara as she took a step towards Shelby.
He reached his bloody hand towards her and slowly, gently touched her face, smearing it with blood in a caressing motion. His hand moved down her neck and only stopped when it reached the fabric of her dress. Cara seemed to enjoy the entire process, her eyes closed and her head thrown back to expose her neck. Feeling a stab of something that had to be jealousy, I stepped up next to her and said to Shelby, “Me too.”
Shelby broke his gaze away from Cara and turned towards me with a smile. Only then did he remove his hand from Cara, rubbing it for a moment on his own blood-soaked chest before pressing it against my forehead and face. He gave me a light shove, and then threw his hands up in the air, evoking a Christian faith-healer at work. “Hail Cthulhu!” he shouted.
“Hail Cthulhu,” I said, still caught up. The stage blood dripped down into my mouth, sticky and thoroughly unpleasant.
“And you, Conrad?” Shelby asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Conrad said, still a few paces back from the three of us.
Shelby moved towards him. “What? The spirit of Cthulhu isn’t moving you?” he asked.
“Not that much,” said Conrad. “This is a new shirt.” I could tell he was trying to keep his tone joking and light to cover the fact that he was uncomfortable.
“Oh, just the face,” Shelby said, moving closer, his hand outstretched. “Just your handsome, all-American face.”
Conrad held up his hands, palms out. “Hey now, come on, Shelby, I’m serious—”
Shelby’s palm shot forward, snaking between Conrad’s blocking hands to take hold of his face. Shelby twisted his grip, like he was squeezing an orange on Conrad’s nose, leaving the thick, red stage blood all over his face.
“Fuck!” Conrad shouted, recoiling back and slapping Shelby’s hand away. “Jesus, man, what the fuck?”
“Hail Cthulhu!” Shelby shouted, rocking his hips forward and back in a salacious gesture that caused his penis to flop up and down. Cara and I couldn’t help giggling at the sight, but Conrad looked like he was going to punch Shelby. Before he could do anything though, the “high priest” of Cthulhu leaped backwards, spun on his heel, and rejoined the swirling mix of blood-soaked cultists and soon-to-be blood-marked guests.
“That was just plain fucked up,” Conrad said, trying in vain to wipe the blood from his face without getting any on his clothes. All he succeeded in doing was getting the goop all over his hands.
“Oh, come on,” Cara said. “It’s no big deal.”
“I told him no.”
“That was your first mistake,” I said. “When did Shelby ever take no for an answer?”
Conrad looked around at the fire, blood, nudity, and chaos that surrounded us. “Certainly not tonight,” he said. “This is fucking nuts.”
That this was all crazy seemed to be the general consensus. I watched as several small groups tried to make their way back into the warehouse before they too got smeared with blood. But almost as soon as they went into the dark passageway from which we’d all entered this outdoor ritual area they came out again. It looked like the way back inside was barred. That was a somewhat alarming thought. What if one of these fires got out of control or someone hurt themselves?
I was ab
out to go investigate for myself when a deep rumbling sound erupted from all around us. A low, bass growling that I felt in my stomach, the noise had an animal yet alien quality to it that had not the slightest hint of pleasantness. Looking around, I saw that all the cultists were retreating away from the fire and into the darkness. I saw a few mouths moving, but couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. Back by the supposed exit, word was spreading that we were locked in as more and more people bunched up there, trying to leave.
The growling sound grew louder, seeping across the ground and rattling around in my gut. Then another sound joined in, sounding like it was coming from above. The flapping of great leathery wings and some sort of vicious, wet, squawking. I looked up, but the night sky was dark. There was nothing moving up there of course. Speakers in the trees? On the roof?
Then came a whoosh of flame, like a fireball exploding. I felt the heat on the back of my head and turned to see that all the ritual fires had grown to twice their normal height. Pyrotechnics hidden within? They had also started to give off thick clouds of dark smoke. In the center of the flame and smoke I could make out Shelby and Kym on the dais, facing one another, their hands raised above their heads. Together they both shouted, their voices amplified by microphones and piped through the speakers so they drowned out even the growling and the flapping.
“CTHULHU HAS COME! CTHULHU IS HERE!”
The fires whooshed again, and even more smoke came pouring out of them, completely obscuring Shelby, Kym, and the rest of the ritual circle. As the smoke spread out over the rest of us, so did the stench, a rotting, sulfurous stink. The monstrous sounds grew louder and louder until they just melded into one horrifying noise that made everyone plug their ears. This was particularly difficult since many were also trying to cover their mouths and noses to avoid the awful-smelling smoke. Within moments it was impossible to see or smell anything. The smoke obscured the sole source of light — the fire— and the sound made it impossible to move or think. I couldn’t even see where Cara and Conrad had gone. I thought maybe I heard people screaming somewhere, but that could have been part of the recording.