Kthulhu Reich

by Ken Asamatsu

  “What on earth is the matter with you?! Stop flopping around like dolls. Stand like men! Like soldiers!” the leutnant shouted, frowning as he studied the men’s faces.

  What is the matter with them, though? Their faces are pale as sheets of paper, bags under their eyes.... And their lips are as blue as if they’ve been swimming for hours. And then he thought, What will I see if I look at their necks? Just as he was about to call out—

  “The mayor has arrived, Leutnant. This village is called Ruschetenţi. It’s a farming community located in the east-northeast Carpathians, on the far, downward slope,” Corporal Neyer said, his back straight as a rod.

  “Oh, well done, corporal. And does anyone here speak German?”

  When Weill turned to face Neyer, he saw a corpulent older man in a three-piece suit standing with the elderly village priest. The priest was as thin and white-haired as some mountain ascetic. A Greek orthodox cross hung from his neck.

  “The mayor speaks a little broken German. The priest is quite fluent.”

  “I am Dimitrie. Village mayor. We cooperate.”

  The fat man held out his right hand.

  “We appreciate your help.” The leutnant shook his hand and then proffered his to the priest.

  “And your name, father?”

  “I am called Avram. Leutnant, please forgive me, but we have two humble requests to start with. If you please.”

  “Do you, now? What are they?” the leutnant asked as he shook Father Avram’s hand.

  “The first is that you and your men will please stay away from the Roman ruins outside the village. The miliarium there must not be damaged. If you please. And the second.... For your three dead men. If you please. Let me give them burial in the traditional Ruschetenţi way. I will tend them with my own hands.”

  “You want me to give you my men to bury? Just what kind of funeral will you perform? What honors does a priest of Romania, ally to the glorious Third German Reich, have in mind for its soldiers?” the leutnant asked, his voice full of mockery. Father Avram answered coolly, with no trace of anger on his face at this treatment.

  “I will sprinkle the three men with holy water, and pray over their bodies. I will carry out an exorcism and then I will drive a stake through their hearts. If you please. And after that, we will bury them in the churchyard with a hawthorn branch and a honeysuckle branch in the coffins.”

  “What?!” The leutnant had unwittingly stepped forward as the priest spoke. When the man finished, Weil grabbed him by the lapels and began striking his thin, intelligent face with all his strength.

  “You! Jew bastard! Who are you trying to fool with that superstitious nonsense?! Filthy untermenschen! I’ll sent you all to hell! The first to die will be the lucky ones! Well?! What do you have to say now, you Jew priest bastard?!”

  He struck again. And again. And again.

  It was a wonder the leutnant’s own fist didn’t shatter.

  The sight was so shocking that Neyer and Dimitrie could only stand there in dumbfounded silence, unable to try to stop him.

  When Leutnant Weil returned to his senses, he’d beaten the priest to the ground. The old man’s face was swollen, and crimson blood flowed from his nose. It looked like two or three front teeth and one further back had broken loose.

  Did... did I really do that?

  The leutnant was shocked at his own strength. He looked at his right hand but found that it had gone to his holster as if of its own volition.

  It drew the Walther p38 and aimed it at the priest.

  “It appears your blood pressure is up, Father. Your face has gone all red. We should relieve the pressure a bit. It’s very unhealthy, I’m sure.”

  His mouth spoke on its own now.

  A gunshot rang out. The priest’s body jerked once.

  “Mayor Dimitrie, I do not wish to waste ammunition. From now on, anyone who refuses to cooperate will be executed—but not shot. They will be impaled! A stake of green wood driven from their assholes up through their mouths while they still live” the leutnant said coldly, and holstered his weapon again.

  Behind him, he heard the cries of children and the elderly flung at his back.

  “Țepeș!”

  and

  “Dracul!”

  “What was that? What did they say?!” Leutnant Weil turned aside and muttered to himself, his voice dead. Those things last night, didn’t they sing that same name? I think I remember something... .

  “Țepeș is name of old nobleman in Walachia. Leutnant sir is like him, just like him, strong like nobleman. The people say it,” Dimitrie answered, a cold sweat breaking out on his pale face.

  “Hmph. Flattery will get you nowhere. Forget all that. Is there a radio in the village? Of course not. Very well. How far is it to the nearest town with a telegram office?”

  “Maybe thirty miles southeast down mountain. There is town. Stagecoach come in five days—”

  “Stagecoach?! Idiocy. I’ll send two of my men in a truck. Send someone from the village to guide them.”

  “Yes. Yes. Alexandru!” The mayor called out a name and a young man approached fearfully. The mayor gave him a quick explanation.

  “Corporal. Dispatch two of the men in a truck.”

  “Jawohl!”

  While Corporal Neyer called up two men and gave them their orders, Leutnant Weil asked himself, Why did I kill the priest like that?

  His chest filled with terrible self-loathing. His tongue was sticky with a thick, stinking film. He looked upwards once again.

  The cliff. The castle at the top. A tiny window opened in the wall. An even tinier face appeared in the window and stared at Leutnant Weil.

  “I’ve done as ordered,” the corporal said.

  “Well done.” The leutnant lowered his eyes from the castle and, seeing the mayor, beckoned him over with his chin. The man rushed over in a panic.

  “Now, for our other needs. We require lodging for fourteen men until the truck returns. Naturally, all will need food as well. I want a place to park the half-track and its mountain gun. We also need enough fuel to reach the next supply depot, and someone who speaks German.”

  “Given the distance, the two in the truck won’t be back today, so more accurately we need food for twelve men,” Corporal Neyer added from behind the mayor. He wore a resigned expression.

  The mayor thought for a moment. His wide-open eyes fell on the priest’s corpse, which had yet to be cleared away. The man’s head had been pulped, and the cross hanging from his neck was smeared with blood.

  Mayor Dimitrie made the sign of the cross with his right hand. Then he looked up with a determined face.

  “The village is poor. We no have food for so many. No room. But... Mistress of Poplar House, Countess... .” His voice trailed off and he made the sign of the cross again.

  “What? This countess in Poplar House can help?” Weil asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Yes. And you can put truck by miliarium. I mean, old Roman rocks. Outside the village, and lots of space.”

  “Hm. That only leaves the gasoline.”

  “I think Countess can help gasoline too. Everything she wants, she gets.”

  III The Miliarium Inscription

  With mayor Dimitrie as a guide, Leutnant Weil and Corporal Neyer left the rest of the men behind and headed toward the old Roman ruins.

  The Countess was apparently from a family so aristocratic that someone as common as the mayor was forbidden even to speak their name; the Count was a scion of a legendary ancient Romanian bloodline, and they lived in Poplar House at the top of the cliff. The 1,111 steps leading to the castle began at the spot outside the village where the miliarium could be found. It was the only way to get there.

  “So then, where is this... miliarium, they keep calling it? This relic of the great Caesar?”

&n
bsp; Leutnant Weil stared out at the ash trees lining the road. There were twelve of them. They did not look to be of much use as a windbreak.

  First of all, the trees aren’t even around the village, they’re out by this stone. And they’re all clustered around the foot of those stairs, out there... .

  He thought he heard Neyer, walking near the frowning Leutnant, mumble something like “Ash wood. The Romans used to think it had magical properties to protect people from evil,” but that might have been his imagination.

  “Did you say something?” Leutnant Weil turned to ask Corporal Neyer, but the mayor interrupted before he could answer.

  “Oh, yes. Miliarium is there. Behind the trees. The stairs start there, too. And there is Poplar House.”

  It was almost as if he was trying to keep him from talking to the corporal.

  They went through the trees and then the whole of the cliff face appeared in front of them, towering over Weil and Neyer.

  It was a massive wall of raw stone. And hard as it was to believe, the stone steps were carved directly into the face of the wall, all the way to the top. 1,111 of them....

  At the foot of the cliff stood the remains of some kind of marble standing stone, with twenty meters of bare earth spreading in every direction.

  The ground looked as if it had been burned by acid. Not a blade of grass to be seen, and the soil itself looked dead and gray.

  It’s like a bombing range... the leutnant thought to himself as he trudged over toward the ruined standing stone. It appeared to be the remains of some marble statue set atop a pedestal, but 2,000 years of mountain weather had eaten the statue away to almost nothing. Only the pedestal now remained.

  On closer inspection, he could see another, much older pedestal under the massive marble one. It was made of some unidentifiable metal, now terribly corroded.

  “Now what have we here? It looks like the stone has some kind of inscription. Corporal, can you read it?” The leutnant pointed to the marble pedestal.

  “Let me see,” the corporal said and bent over. He struck a match and held it close.

  “Nos serva ivppiter, it starts. Keep us, oh Jupiter. Oppidum serva ex periculo mavors. Save our town from calamity, oh Mars, god of war. Nobiscum esto contra miros nigros pugna, favne montes, tene sivane neca ac serva malitiam veterem neca, apollo nos serva... .” The corporal trailed off, completely absorbed as he continued reading the Latin silently.

  “And? What does it say, corporal?!”

  “I think it’s something like this,” the corporal said, standing up and turning to the leutnant with a grim look:

  “Fight the people of the dark with us, gods of the mountains. Guard us, gods of the woods. Slay the great Not-to-Be-Named, kill it, and save us. Slay the ancient evil, Apollo, and save us all.”

  The corporal’s gaze seemed to fill the leutnant with an eerie nervousness, and he flinched a little when he asked, “S-so, then, what about the inscription on the metal below?”

  The answer came from an unexpected direction.

  “It reads thus: ‘Tibi magnum innominandam, signa stellaram nigrarum et bufoniformis Sadoquae sigillum,’ To you, the great Not-to-Be-Named, signs of the black stars, and the seal of the toad-shaped Tsathoggua.”36

  A woman’s voice called out and the sound was like the chiming of a crystal bell.

  “Who goes there—?!” Leutnant Weil cried out as he turned toward the voice. As he did so, a cold, black wind came blowing with such force it took the breath away.

  The next moment, the leutnant’s consciousness began to drift.

  IV The Countess of Poplar House

  It was as if he viewed the world through fogged glass....

  Leutnant Weil climbed up the 1,111 steps after the mysterious woman. She had already sent the mayor back to his village. His only other company was Corporal Neyer, walking in the same dream-fugue.

  The woman wore a hooded cloak—It’s called a mantle, the leutnant thought blearily.

  I’m dreaming. Yes, that’s it. In reality, I’m still seated in that rocking truck. I’ve dozed off from all the exhaustion trying to get through the fog, he thought to himself through the haze.

  Just then the mantle’s hood turned toward him.

  He could see lustrous black hair falling from the hood to her breast, framing and contrasting a face of pale beauty, with sensual crimson lips that seemed to blaze in the dark. Those lips carried a slight smile.

  ((This is no dream. All of this is real, Leutnant Weil. Welcome to the Count’s second home.))

  That lovely voice filled the leutnant’s ears.

  No, that couldn’t be a voice. For they were now high on the stairway, surrounded by a frightful wind howling over the cliff face and drowning out all other sounds.

  This is the Count’s second home.... Does that mean this woman is the Countess the mayor spoke of?

  ((Indeed, leutnant. I am the Countess he mentioned, but I beg you, call me Katarina.))

  The answer flowed into the leutnant’s head as the woman, looking only ahead, sprang easily up the steps, though the two healthy soldiers were gasping for air.

  Can you read my thoughts?

  ((Ohoho... Your mind, my good leutnant, is as open to me as my own hand.))

  So, you’re a kind of mind-reader. That should make this easy. Do you know what we need? the leutnant asked silently, feeling almost cunning. He gave a quick glance toward the bottom of the cliff. The military truck had already left town. The half-track and mountain gun, mere specks from this height, were still moving toward the ruins. It looked like the soldiers were going with them.

  ((I know. I have known all, ever since you arrived in Ruschetenţi. My servants have kept me well informed.))

  He heard the howling of wild beasts rising from the foot of the cliff. It would soon be night.

  He suddenly realized that a brilliant light had appeared ahead of them. They had reached the top of the 1,111 steps before he knew it.

  The three stood at the top of the towering cliff before the entrance of a grand fortified mansion, a fifteenth-century mountain castle in the Eastern European style.

  The entrance itself bore a copper plaque coated with verdigris, and was lit right and left by torches.

  The leutnant was shocked to see that the copper plaque was inscribed with fraktur letters, and indeed in archaic German. He strained to read the writing.

  “Haus Zitter....”

  “Haus Zitterpappel. Aspen Hall, is it? That mayor’s German is terrible. At any rate, the plaque is certainly old enough.”

  “Aspen Hall.... What a wonderful name. Simply beautiful.” Corporal Neyer spoke as if half asleep.

  “Come, enter freely!”

  The Countess Katarina pushed opened the heavy wooden doors and they swung slowly open, squealing on their hinges. They revealed a wide hall that was outfitted directly from the eighteenth century.

  “This... is magnificent!”

  The leutnant entered like a sleepwalker, with the corporal behind him. The floors were laid with Persian rugs and piled with ermine furs. The walls were hung with Gobelins tapestries and racks holding weapons dating back to the Crusades.

  A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling, blazing with an outer ring of twenty-six and an inner ring of thirteen thick, white candles.

  There was a hearth to the east, with a warmly crackling fire, and the table opposite was set with wine and metal goblets. At the head of the table was a massive, ancient tome laying open, with another goblet set beside.

  “Who is in this portrait? An... ancestor?” the corporal asked in deep interest, staring up at a large portrait on the wall behind the head of the table.

  “Oh, no. That is my husband, the Count,” Katarina answered, as she threw off her mantle. She walked to the table and sat with a sinuous, catlike movement, holding back the
hem of her ancient crimson dress.

  The leutnant’s head slowly began to clear.

  What? But... that portrait must be hundreds of years old. The man’s clearly some Romanian noble, probably of the fifteenth century.

  It was every bit a portrait of Eastern European nobility. The man wore a crown with an eight-pointed star over long, flowing black hair. His bloodshot eyes peered from beneath a heavy brow, and he wore a beard below his aquiline nose. Staring at it, the leutnant felt it impossible that such a thing had been painted in the modern age. His thoughts came back round again.

  “Indeed. Well, my husband did order the painter to make the picture resemble his honored ancestor, Vlad Țepeș,” Katarina answered, displaying once again her skill at reading his thoughts.

  Țepeș! That name again! the leutnant thought, realizing it was the third time he’d heard that unusual name since the previous night.

  “Who is this Țepeș, anyway?” he asked as he sat down.

  “Would you like some wine? We can discuss what you and your men need while you drink, Leutnant.” Having skillfully manipulated Weil into drinking, Katarina turned to the corporal.

  “Would you pour yourself and the Leutnant a glass of wine, Corporal?”

  “Jawohl.” Corporal Neyer stood up and, taking the wine, filled his and the leutnant’s goblets. Then he walked round behind the Countess and reached out to fill her goblet as well.

  “No, thank you. Like my husband, I do not drink... wine,” Katarina politely demurred, and sent the corporal back to his seat.

  “Madame... where is the Count, if I may ask?”

  “He is now fighting the English by request of the Romanian military.”

  “Ah, then I see we are comrades in arms. I am heartened to know we have such allies here.” The leutnant then raised his glass. “To the Count!” The corporal followed suit and then the two put the goblets to their lips and drank.

  “Wonderful!” exclaimed the leutnant, pulling the glass from his lips, and the corporal nodded vigorously.

  “Shall I have some delivered to your men at the base of the cliff? I would be happy to help raise their morale,” Katarina said, smiling widely.