He paused in his work of cladding the structure with piled stones and squirmed around on his belly to stare at the two of us.
“The gate is prepared. The sleeper awakens! Ph’tagn! Cthulhu nyah!” Parker screamed to the sky.
Jamie tightened his grip on my hand, dragging me closer even as I dug my heels into the cold stones.
Parker clawed at his twisted leg, tearing the fabric of his trousers, exposing swollen and putrescent flesh. Gibbering, with spittle flecking his scruffy beard, the mad sailor seized the offending limb and pressed his broken nails into it. The skin ruptured under his burrowing fingertips, oozing foul pus. I moaned in horror as he tore chunks of his own muscle away from the bone.
With blood streaming from his hands and torn leg, Parker offered the chunks of himself up to the darkening sky. With a monstrous howl he cast the torn parts of himself upon the driftwood pile.
James tugged on my arm. “Look and see,” he insisted.
The compulsion to raise my eyes and stare into the void beyond the door was irresistible. I squirmed, desperate to twist free of James’ grip and cover my ears against the shrieking howls and demonic utterances spewing from Parker’s throat even as my little brother pulled me closer to the edge.
The darkness beyond the door the lunatic had made now glowed like a mirror in a dark room, hoarding scraps of light and illuminating terrors. A figure waited in the dark reflection; both familiar and unsettling, a memory that beckoned. I reached the edge of the portal, extending my hands to grip the salt-dried wood of the frame to keep myself from plunging into the void. I gazed into the abyss and saw myself. My hair shone, my eyes were bright, and my face filled with the innocent certainty of youth. Then, as a cloud passes over the moon, the visage changed. I saw my father, his hand raised in fury, the iron poker striking down on my head. He beat me until mother lurched into the scene, desperately clawing and driving him away. I lay crushed and still, framed by blood as my mother wailed and cradled my limp form. The mist of memory swept over the scene and I lay in my bed, bandaged and asleep as the moon and sun fled through the sky, and the swell of my belly marked the quickening passage of time. I lay still, sleeping like the dead. The child came and I did not stir. No Sleeping Beauty awaiting the kiss of her prince, I lay and withered, tended by mother and fed through a yellow tube and glass bottle that hung over my bed.
The babe harvested from my womb squalled, and then crawled. He stood and walked while I lay in darkness. He was raised by his grandmother, and she called him James, her son.
“That which is not dead can eternal lie,” James intoned at my side. I knew the truth of it then. I had lain on death’s threshold for two years or more before awakening to confusion and loss of memory. The face I now saw reflected bore the scars of my father’s fury, they tracked around the sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks of my long coma. I reached up and touched the softly unnatural depression in my skull where the bones had been crushed by the poker’s blows. The sagging tilt of my eye, and the dull expression in my eyes, I was the Fool made flesh, older than I remembered, no longer a girl on the verge of womanhood. A cage of flesh and bone, my mind and soul alive and vibrant but my voice and visage muffled by the simpleton my father had made me.
My howl rose in shrieking harmony with that of the mad sailor as darker forms came forth from the emptiness where I had lain. They took shapes that did not materialise in measurable dimensions. These were timeless things, drawn here by the devotion of Parker and the siren call of my own presence between life and death with James, my child, formed as I lay in the half-dead void. We three were the catalyst: the lock, the key and the light that called them to our world. They were entities beyond human understanding, reaching for the door and gibbering in glorious salutation. Their deliverance was at hand.
I cried out and turned away from the insanity that whispered of an end to it all.
“Hannah!” the voice of my father, stricken with terror, pierced the rising tempest before me. I saw him running up the beach, returned from the sea, the hurricane lantern in his hand. “Hannah!”
“Father!” I cried out. Though now I heard the voice from my broken face. “Faghaahh!” Less human and more the inhuman dialect uttered by Parker in his madness.
The man who had nearly killed me for the shame of falling pregnant out of wedlock swept me up in one strong arm. The other swung the steel and glass lantern as Parker struggled to his feet and lunged at us. The lamp shattered against the sailor’s skull, drenching him in burning oil.
Parker fell back, arms flailing and the inferno engulfed him as he toppled against the altar he had made to the elder things.
My father cradled me. He wept as the burning man’s tinder set alight the driftwood pyre. I stared into the flames and saw eyes as cold as distant stars staring back at me before the way was lost in consuming fire.
I know they will come again, when the way is opened. When the stars align. When death is denied and a child is born.
Masquerades
Marty Young
Tom Holland stopped in the middle of the gravel road, toying with the small ring in his pocket as he watched the man approach.
The narrow forestry road slipped on past the figure and disappeared around a small bend, taking the deformed pines and the giant tussock toetoe with it, but the man was suddenly central to that picture, the world framed around him. There was something in one of his hands. It looked like a book, or a brick. Whatever it was, it was heavy and threatened to unbalance him as he walked. Despite the weight of that object, his stumbling gait was more awkward and jerky than it should have been, almost like he was unaccustomed to being upright.
Tom tried to ignore the crazy thought even as it formed but it quickly stained his thinking with shadows, and those shadows were drawn towards the man, darkening the already black clothes that he wore. Worse still, was how that darkness seeped from his clothes to billow behind him like some kind of midnight cloak that tore along the ground.
Tom went to rub his eyes clear of his tired hallucination but he paused, his arms half raised. That cloak: there were shapes within it, twisted and broken and roiling like storm clouds, pulling back against his forward motion.
“Hell—” The cut-off word was loud but scratchy, forced up through a throat full of scabs.
“What…” Tom whispered, his voice running out. The dense native forest lurking beyond the wilding roadside pines was suffocating; sweat beaded across his brow and down his back. The sun was still high but hidden behind storm clouds, adding to the humidity. Yet a shiver streaked down his spine and his flesh broke out in goose bumps.
He heard sounds now, too, a swirling wind full of voices, all deep and animalistic, the words jagged angles that cut his hearing to make him wince:
‘-fhtagn llllll-nglui-’
He backed up a step, glancing behind him. No one was in sight; only the bloody, deformed trees of what had once been the Maungataniwha Pine Forest. Many kilometres back, the gate that had locked off this once privately owned land from the public hung open and broken, the warning signs long since ignored and overgrown by the hordes that now came this way. He’d been surrounded by others as he trekked through the forest, men and women passing him in their hurry. Some would share a smile, a word, but not many. Most passed in silence, anxious for what lay ahead.
But now, somehow, he was alone with this stranger.
“Hello!”
The second effort was even worse than the first, sounding as if the word had drawn fresh blood from those throat wounds.
“Oh, get fucked,” Tom croaked, wincing as the weird whispers continued to stab into his head.
‘Y’ai ‘ng’ngah, Yog-Sothoth h’ee-l’geb f’ai throdog uaaah-’
“Hello, friend,” the figure giggled. It raised an arm with which to wave, but the gesture was all wrong. The whole limb wobbled bonelessly, the hand fixed at the extremity flopp
ing like a caught fish.
Tom’s legs almost gave out. He staggered himself this time in an effort to remain standing, stumbling away from the approaching nightmare. His vision narrowed to a sharp focus. But before he collapsed into screams, or turned and fled, the stranger called out and this time it was a very human sounding word.
“Hey.”
Gone were the wet, wrong sounds and the sharp whispers, and gone too was the cloak of shadows that flowed after the surreal figure.
“You don’t want to come this way,” the guy called as he closed the distance between them. “This is the last stop of salvation. Beyond here, our souls are in danger of disappearing into the darkness that masquerades as the light. Turn around, now, while you can!” He gestured with the small, thick book in his hand back the way Tom had come.
“I…I can’t,” Tom managed to say, shaking his head, trying to clear it of its confusion.
“But don’t you know what’s happening?”
Tom noticed the stained white collar tight about his neck, and the dust smearing his black outfit and turning his boots grey. He was an old man, a face all ridges and valleys, his dancing eyes more bloodshot than any iris colour. The remnants of his hair flapped about in the breeze, as if repulsed by the dark liver spots covering his scalp and desperate to escape.
“Tāne-mahuta has grown sick like his trees,” the Father said. “His legs grow weak. It won’t be long before he dies and the sky and earth come back together. Did you know gods could die?”
There was no evidence of the nightmare façade he’d seen before, but Tom raised his hands in peace and stepped past the Father, hurrying on, hoping he wouldn’t turn and follow, but that’s exactly what he did.
“Our gods aren’t gods, not really. They’re more than that, but much less, too. You’re heading to Te Kore, aren’t you?”
The void, the nothingness—only it wasn’t nothing. It was everything instead, the ultimate chaotic reality.
“Leave me alone,” said Tom, keeping a wary eye on the rambling man. And it was a man walking next to him, he told himself. Old and wrinkled and mad, but a man nonetheless. Stress had caused him to think otherwise. He was suffering how Mary had suffered in her last days, how she had suffered for so long.
“But you know it’s not what they say it is. You’re not another so easily fooled by wanton belief and desperation.”
“Are they different? Wanton beliefs and desperation?”
“At one time I’d have said yes, without a doubt.”
“But not anymore.”
“It’s already too late for you,” said the Father, dejected. “The devil’s got himself hooked on you well and good.” He batted at his head. Two quick strikes, as if clearing away a spider web, or trying to catch the last of his hair. He went to rub his stubbled cheeks but discovered the book clutched in his hand. He held it out in front of him and stared at it as if he never expected to find it there. With a grunt of disgust, he tossed it to the ground, stumbling a step as he did so. “You’ve heard what they’re saying?”
“What do you want? Please… Just…” He’d heard the stories, watched all the news footage. Trying to sort out for himself what to believe. What Mary must have believed, or wanted to believe. He stared at the bible the Father had thrown away. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“The rhythms. They’re all out of whack. That’s what caused the false Gods to come, and now this Swiss cheese world of ours has lost itself. It’s breaking further every day and there’s little we can do about it.”
Tom couldn’t help but look off to the mutated trees lining each side of the road, the knobbly, pulsing growths covering their trunks, the branches that flexed and moved like tentacles rather than wood. And every so often there’d be a weird, high-pitched trilling sound that would bounce through the forest like incessant birdcalls. But there were no birds here, and he didn’t know what could make such a sound.
Strange plants poked up from the leaf litter, odd violent shades of red and green that caused his head to ache whenever he looked at them. Even the drooping, plume-like flowers of the native toetoe in front of the pines writhed as though in twisted agony, their colours changing from the usual white to a vibrant, pulsing orange.
Whole towns, Te Pohue immediately south, Tutira, Putorino, and Raupunga, all the way to the coast of Hawke’s Bay to the southeast, where oceanic things had been stirring and slithering up out of the depths to die on the sand, worshipped by strange cults that had gathered there. Even the shores of Lake Taupo, eighty kilometres to the northwest. All had felt the impact of what had happened.
“People still refuse to believe,” the Father went on, staring at him, not needing his input for conversation. “Those who haven’t witnessed the madness themselves find it easier to disbelieve, don’t they? All fake news and propaganda. Because that would be accepting there was more, and that’s too much to accept.”
“Father,” Tom repeated. “Please. I don’t want any trouble. I don’t believe in your God. I—”
Don’t know what to believe, he finished silently.
He had walked for hours and his legs ached, his head pounded, and the chafing between his legs was getting worse. He wanted to curl up and be done with it, but he would reach Te Kore if it were all he could do.
And then he would know.
He increased his pace but so too did the Father, and for a moment the tread of their synchronised steps was the only sound in the newly alien world. There were no crickets to chirrup, or cicadas to trill. The forest lay poised about them, awaiting more. Hungry for more.
They walked, and the silence continued. The humidity grew, and Tom sweated. He kept glancing at the Father, waiting, expecting…what? He wasn’t sure, but all he saw were deep lines at the edges of tormented eyes, and sallow skin. In side profile, the man’s hunch was pronounced and Tom wondered how much it would take for him to fall over.
He was about to turn to the Father and demand an answer when the Father said:
“I had a congregation that came out here. They wanted to visit it, to see the miracle for themselves. A pilgrimage for the soul, they said. I told them not to, I warned them not to, but how could they resist? Moths to a flame.”
Suddenly Tom understood. He’d heard that story; it was what had drawn Mary here.
“Twenty-seven of them. Men, women, and children,” said Father James of the Raupunga Orthodox Church, known as the man in the photograph on the front page of newspapers, lying curled up in the forest, sobbing, silhouetted by brightness. “My flock. I failed them all. I should have stopped them. I should’ve known better.”
Tom shrugged.
“Do you remember? They tried to block off the first one but the Church wouldn’t let them, not this holiest of miracles. I wish the horrors had come sooner, before the Church had succeeded.”
“Urbino,” Tom whispered, remembering but not wanting to.
The Father laughed a bitter laugh. “The second coming, they called it. I guess it was, in a way.”
Mad cults claimed they had summoned the Great Old Ones from the depths of the universe and returned them to Earth where they belonged. Other groups said what the Father had alluded to, that mankind had broken Earth’s natural rhythms with our technological advances, and that disharmonious discord had torn open the fabric of our reality to let through nightmares. Yet more said it was nothing anyone had done, simply that the time was right and we were irrelevant in the overall scheme of things.
Regardless, too many doorways had opened all over the world, and the world lay ruined, forever ruined. The miracle had quickly turned to horror.
“Why are you heading there?” The Father suddenly glared at him.
“I told you, it’s none of your business.” Tom stared into the distance, imagining that the light he’d eventually find was already brightening the horizon. Would he be able to see it from
here?
“You don’t even know where it goes.”
“Isn’t that the core to faith? You believe what you want to believe and hold onto that with all of your heart, knowing it to be true, no matter what?”
“But don’t you see?” Father James spun and grabbed Tom by his shoulder, making them both stop. “We’re being fools. Never has faith led us in such blind ignorance! There are laughing demons and delighting devils waiting in that light. Mouths wide open ready to swallow us whole!”
“Get off me!”
“They thought our gods had come down from the skies to visit us, Puanga in the constellation of Orion, even Sirius, Rehua, eater of men from the highest of the skies, but we were misled. These, these, aliens are not our gods. They’re corrupt beings. Tipua, supernatural monsters! They offer no salvation!” The Father grabbed Tom’s arm. “I couldn’t save them but I can save you. I can’t let you do this!”
The heavy clouds and swirling winds that had risen as they walked created enough disturbed light to show Tom the truth again, to let him see what had hold of him. In place of hair was bone, cracked and splintered, and the sickly light gleamed upon moisture oozing from those fractures. The clothes sliding over its emaciated body were stained with old blood, and as torn as the face it wore.
“Friend—” It said, flashing teeth.
Tom screamed at the sudden sight.
Its face slid over its own hidden features like a rubbery mask, but this human mask did not fit, the eyes were empty holes, the nose dangled and bobbed, the mouth permanently open with the pocket of skin forming the jaw empty of bone and hanging down to sway with the creature’s step. Beneath this human façade was something not yet clear for Tom to see, something that resembled the shifting forms behind it, whispers of features with no real definition. Something he had no desire to see with any clarity.
The distended shapes within the swirling cloak of darkness whipped about in a frenzy, excited at what was happening, throwing up gravel and dust alike. They screamed out but from such a distance that their guttural words remained indecipherable.
Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud AU Page 17