by Ken Asamatsu
It fell onto the rubble but continued flopping.
“The lance! Quickly, point the lance at the safe!” Clara called out to Hess, her voice a scream.
Hess quickly raised the sacred spear of Longinus and pointed it at the safe.
“Iä! Iä! Hastuuur!” Hess focused his will and intoned the incantation.
The pink shaft of light again flared from the spear tip. It struck the jittering safe dead on, and a glutinous green light burst from the metal box and dissipated into the surroundings.
For the first time in his life, Goto heard a non-living thing scream. The safe shrieked like a tortured animal, high enough to shatter glass, as loud as the brakes on a train. His skin prickled with goosebumps.
“It is done. Go!” Hess ordered his six underlings through the window. Three of them trained flashlights on the safe, which now lay motionless. It appeared to be a simple small, black safe.
They must have felt safe now that it had stopped moving and shrieking. Seven men reached toward the safe and then the door opened on its own, allowing a green simian creature to come leaping out.
The flashlights illuminated it for only a moment, but that was enough for Goto. He cried out to Clara.
“Move, it’s coming!”
As Clara and Goto turned to run, the seven men erupted in panic. A soft black cap fluttered to the ground as the green something latched onto one man’s face, wrapping octopus-like limbs around his head.
“Get it off!” The man screamed, his voice muffled by the creature’s body. But when his comrades reached to pull it off, needle-like quills erupted from its back. They finally understood, then, just how unnatural the creature from the safe truly was.
It had the overall shape of a frog, with a bristly wormlike abdomen and four tentacles instead of limbs. But what truly made the thing disturbing was its face: that of a thin, middle-aged man with a pointed beard.
“It’s like that thing in the basement! It’s one of Mergelsheim’s demons!” Clara screamed.
“That face. . . it’s the same as the thing that bit me!”
“Such demons take on the face of the one that summoned them. It’s a caricature of Mergelsheim’s own face.”
The sound of the magus laughing victoriously echoed in the distance.
As if encouraged by the sound, the beast bearing Mergelsheim’s face began its slaughter.
It started with the man it clung to, ripping the flesh from his face. He fell, a ragged scream coming from the glistening red bone where his lips had been. The creature leapt to the next nearest man, vicious claws protruding from its tentacles. It slit his throat in a wide smile, and blood spurted over it as it moved to its next victim.
“The spear! Use it on that thing!” Goto screamed at Hess.
Hess finally stepped inside the ruin. Still dumb with shock, he waved the spear back and forth.
The demon moved so quickly, he couldn’t track it with the spear.
“Hurry! What are you waiting for?!” Goto screamed, and then a hand gripping a pistol flew past his nose. It belonged to the third victim and had been sliced off clean, as if by a sword.
As the third man flailed on the ground, blood spurting from his now handless arm, the demon attacked his fourth victim.
The man fired his pistol, but the demon, moving too fast to see, buried two tentacles in the soldier’s eyes. The blinded man’s bullet ricocheted off a wall near Goto and Clara, and then struck the head of the flailing soldier, pulverizing it.
The screams of the fourth victim suddenly ceased. The demon’s tentacles had found his brain. His knees gave out and he fell, his mouth still open. The demon slipped from his face, freeing its tentacles with a pop. Clara averted her gaze from the gaping red holes where the man’s eyes had been.
Damn! If we don’t do something, we’re dead. Struggling to regain his calm, the intelligence officer reached out to grab the severed hand and its gun. He pulled the hand away and gripped the Bergmann-Bayard tightly.
Meanwhile, the demon seemed to have grown interested in Hess. It was dodging in, trying to get to the Deputy Führer.
Hess’s holy spear thrust toward the leaping demon.
“Iä! Iä! Hastuuur!”
A pink shaft of light slashed through the darkness. It pierced the creature’s body dead center, and there was an ear-shredding shriek.
Rotting flesh spread through the darkness, spattering the ruined walls.
“Behold, I am victorious!”
Hess, a self-satisfied smile on his face, began giving orders to his remaining men.
“Check the safe. It should contain a mask of platinum.”
The two surviving men rushed to the safe, without even wiping the cold sweat from their faces.
Goto rose, carefully concealing the Bergmann-Bayard in his suit pocket. With a sigh, Clara stood up as well.
The men lifted the still-open safe. Goto saw the mask within, and frowned.
What sane man would want such a thing. . . . The mask was perfectly sized to fit over an adult’s head, and the face resembled a Caucasian man’s in overall size and shape.
However, the features were anything but human. It was a narrow, triangular face, with sharply pointed ears and chin. There was nothing like hair to be seen, but from the brows dozens of odd feeler-like appendages, like those of a sea anemone, dangled down. The eyes slanted sharply upwards and were narrow, reminding one vaguely of Asian eyes but in a totally inhuman way. The nose was sharp and long, and the mouth was bent in a haughty sneer.
Goto watched as a man took the mask and held it out to the Deputy Führer.
“This. . . It truly is the mask of Yoth Tlaggon. It looks just like Steiner’s sculpture of the Face of Ahriman!” Hess seemed deeply moved as he accepted the platinum mask.
He handed the holy lance to an underling and held up the mask reverently.
“What do you plan to do now?” Clara asked, her voice unsteady.
“I plan to know. . . everything. I will plumb the mysteries. I will gaze on Thule. I will learn the true history of the Germanic people. . . and the future of the Third Reich,” said Hess with ecstasy in his voice. Then he raised the mask to his head.
“Stop! That thing is not meant for mankind!” As Goto stepped forward to stop Hess, his two men pointed their weapons—gun and spear—at him.
Goto gritted his teeth and stepped back.
“Be at ease, we won’t kill you just yet. No, we’ll do that after I’ve told you of the wonders I see. You have earned at least that much.”
Goto tried to buy time to draw the gun from his pocket, and he stared intently at Hess, then at the mask.
The mask was slipping over Hess’s head.
And then. . . .
Clara gasped, as if trying to hold back terror. “Oh. . . .”
Goto’s eyebrow twitched.
“The mask,...” Clara said. Goto nodded slightly.
They had both seen it.
When the mask settled onto Hess’s face, the countless feelers had twitched and the mouth had changed shape.
“It’s. . . smiling,...” Clara whispered.
VI Reich of the Occult
Hess settled the platinum mask over his face. His deep-set eyes looked out at Goto from behind the narrow eye slits.
“The lance!” Hess barked at his henchman, who handed him the holy lance of Longinus.
With the mask and the holy lance, Rudolf Hess was no longer the mere Deputy Führer of the National Socialist Party.
He’s like a priest of some medieval demonic cult! The grotesque spectacle sent chills down Goto’s spine. Is this truly Berlin in 1937? Have I gone back in time to the age of witch hunts?
Hess again intoned his incantation. “Iä! Iä! Hastuuur!”
And with barely a break in the sound, another incantation came from t
he darkness.
“Iä! Yoth Tlaggon!” When the magus’s voice fell silent, a green glow began oozing from the holes of the mask like pus.
Through his mask, Hess uttered a muffled scream. “The light! What is this light?!”
He dropped the holy lance and reached up to remove the mask. But as the visions began to take hold of him, he seemed to hesitate.
“Are. . . are these the Akashic records? Do I see the distant future? Or the ancient past. . . . Aaagh. . . . This structure, towering taller than the Alps. . . . What titanic beings could have built those cyclopean monstrosities?!”
Mergelsheim’s cackling voice came from the darkness. The magus alone laughed his laugh and spoke to Rudolf Hess. “Look—and see everything. Go beyond space and time, great Deputy Führer. And then tell Hitler all that you witness!”
Hess thrashed as if he’d lost all control of his body.
The two underlings trying to wrest the mask from his head were thrown aside by his flailing limbs. He fell against a wall of the ruin, his masked face scraping against the scorched surface.
“What is this?! Our glorious soldiers, dying in the snow. . . . Mussolini hanging upside down. . . . Berlin burning!”
“No, no, it is not the future you must see. It is the past!” Mergelsheim said, his voice choked with laughter. “See, then, the age when Thule was still in the far north! When Atlantis was known as Kusha and Lemuria called Shalarali. An age before the rule of mankind over the earth. Iä!! Nat Yoth Tlaggon!”
Rudolf Hess shrieked.
To Goto, it sounded more like the howl of a wild animal than any sound a man could make.
The terror-filled scream went on, sounding as if it would shred Hess’s very lungs. Then he began to speak.
“Huge. . . the tentacles. . . the countless eyes! Oh, it glistens like a slug! Scaled and rugose and. . . how? How can such a thing’s eyes be filled with such terrible intelligence?! Oh, God in heaven, how?!”
“You speak of God? Fool! That which you see now is a true god, worshiped by the ancient rulers of the world. You gaze upon the face of Yoth Tlaggon!” The magus spat, his voice full of contempt.
He sounds so close. . . Goto thought, and looked away from Hess’s despairing figure. His two men were staring at their commander in horror. They were clearly in no condition to fight.
Now’s our chance! Goto reached toward his pocket.
When the light oozing from the eye holes reached the wall, a human silhouette appeared. The shadow instantly began to take on solidity.
Soon, a middle-aged man appeared with his back to the wall. He was tall and wore an old-fashioned black frock coat. His long hair was combed back from his long, thin face, and a pointed beard hung from his chin. It was a face very familiar to Goto, for it had adorned the demon that had gnawed on his hand, and the one that had slaughtered Hess’s men. . . and it was much like the face on the mask of Yoth Tlaggon.
Clara gasped. “Mergelsheim?! But. . . no! He’s eighty-seven years old! How has he grown so young?!”
“I am not bound by the rules of mortal man, child,” the magus replied as he advanced on the suffering Hess.
Hess abruptly stopped screaming.
The Deputy Führer stood with his back to the wall, but as they watched he slid to the ground.
“Anyone who looks on Yoth Tlaggon is driven senseless. When they awaken they will either be a saint, or mad.” When the magus drew near, Hess’s remaining men screamed like children and ran away. “I wonder, then, which way this Deputy Führer of the Third Reich will turn when his eyes open once again,...” Mergelsheim muttered as he reached out a claw-like hand to the platinum mask.
I can’t let him take it! Goto drew the pistol from his pocket and aimed it at the magus’s back.
Guessing what he was planning, Clara drew a pentagram in the air and chanted: “Cen, thorn, rad!”
The Bergmann-Bayard spat fire and Clara’s pentagram traced a line of fire through the air.
The bullet punched into the magus’s heart as the brilliant pentagram sliced through his neck.
There were a few seconds of silence.
Then, the magus’s head slid off its frock-coated body and fell to the ground. The bearded head rolled and bounced over the rubble, ending up facing the Goto and Clara.
“We. . . we did it!” Goto lowered his gun and turned toward Clara.
Then, the magus’s severed head smiled. The headless body silently bent over and picked the grinning head up off the ground.
“Well done! No one has managed to take my head off since Count Cabreras! I do believe that earns you some reward.” The magus’s severed head leered as he spoke.
“You have my permission to take the mask to Himmler. After all, I have no further need of it.” The body walked toward a wall, still holding its head. It seemed to flatten with every step, its color fading and turning black, so that when it reached the wall it had become a mere shadow that then disappeared into the darkness at the base of the wall.
“I guess it really is over now,” Goto sighed, and Clara nodded, her face pale. The two went to Hess, still lying senseless, to retrieve the mask.
“Well done! Now, we shall be able to find Thule!” Himmler sat at his massive desk in the Reichsführer’s office at SS headquarters. He seemed deeply satisfied.
“Is the Deputy Führer alright?” Goto asked Himmler, frowning. Himmler’s rimless glasses flashed as he answered.
“Hmph. All that nonsense about being a saint or a madman? Hess was a madman even before he joined the party. I find it difficult to imagine he could grow even more so. . . .”
Goto nodded slightly. And Himmler and Goebbels, and Hitler as well. . . . You’re all just as mad as Hess.
“And now for the matter of your reward.”
“Reichsführer!” Clara said, seeming to object. Himmler shook his head and held up one tiny hand to stop her.
“Have no fear, lieutenant. After Japan, Italy, and the Third Reich sign the Tripartite Pact, we will ally with the Soviet Union. We have already established a hotline between the Führer and Stalin. And what do you suppose Stalin said when the Führer told him of the Tripartite Pact?”
“I’m sure I could never guess at the thoughts of a communist,” Goto said.
Himmler sneered when he heard this. “He said ‘Fascism is a matter of taste.’”
On hearing this, Lt. Tatewaki Goto of the Japanese Imperial Army felt a shudder of fear worse than any he’d experienced seeing dark magic or demonic slaughter.
On May 3rd, 1937, Tatewaki Goto left the madness of the Third Reich behind and returned to Japan.
That same year, on November 6th, Italy and Spain joined the Anti-Comintern Pact between Japan and Germany, forming the Axis Powers.
Then, on August 23rd, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
On September 1st of that same year, Germany invaded Poland and sparked off the Second World War.
On May 10th, 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess boarded his own Messerschmidt and flew to England. Naturally, he was captured by the British Army and was imprisoned until his death on August 17th, 1987.
In 1938 and 1942, Germany made two polar expeditions: the first to the South Pole, the second to the North Pole. By all reports, both expeditions ended in failure.
And Himmler?
On April 29th, 1945, Himmler and Goering were expelled from the Nazi party for attempted peace negotiations. In May of that year, Himmler was arrested by the British army and committed suicide with a hidden cyanide capsule in his mouth.
As for the platinum mask, after the events of May 1st, 1937, the secrets of where it was taken, or who holds it, were lost forever to the darkness of history.
In the Wasteland of Madness
I New Swabia20
June 21st, 1939
> As I write this, I imagine that Goebbels is in the Olympic Stadium giving his grand Feuerrede as the bonfires celebrating Midsummer are fed with the books of degenerate authors.
But for us, the warmth of summer and bonfires and the beautiful green fatherland are distant memories as we huddle in the hold of the freighter Hölderlin, bound for Antarctica.
We have packed the ship with three of Germany’s latest snow crawlers, one disassembled Messerschmidt, and a massive supply of arms and gunpowder, to go off in search of the impossible: an Antarctic Paradise.
This is all the fault of Kapitän Alfred Ritscher, Nazi kriegsmarine and crackpot explorer, and his insane reports, not to mention the fawning idiots surrounding Hitler these days.
In 1938, the Führer became obsessed with a cryptic note scrawled in a copy of von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and he apparently gave a secret, direct order to Kapitän Ritscher to travel to Antarctica and proceed about 3,000 kilometers further south from the point the British call Queen Maud Land. From there he was to explore an area of roughly 600,000 square kilometers.
According to von Junzt, the area was heated by volcanic activity and had warm water lakes and lush vegetation, and in summer was warm enough to walk around in shirtsleeves. Of course, the idea that such a place could exist on a continent locked in eternal ice is purest madness—but the Führer was convinced.
Thus, Hitler himself allocated a massive budget from the national treasury, gave the Kapitän command of a team of eighty-two soldiers and scientists, and sent them off to the South Pole. Then Kapitän Ritscher began sending back reports, each more incredible than the last.
He apparently boarded a plane and flew over the area, dropping swastika flags every twenty kilometers, and officially claimed the land in the name of the Third Reich. Later, the Kapitän used snow crawlers and dog sleds to explore the area on foot.
They were first greeted by a mountain range towering 4,000 meters high and rivaling the Alps themselves, then terrain free of snow and ice, and even a warm water lake surrounded by flowering plants and lush, green forest.
Kapitän Ritscher brought back piles of photographs and film footage of this incredible scenery when he returned from his 107-day expedition via the Cape of Good Hope.