Arkham Horror- Ire of the Void

by Richard Lee Byers

  Toward the end of his account, the homing instinct became a veritable pull to indicate he was nearing his destination. This time, he followed straight where it led.

  The other pathways blurred and faded. After several more steps, only the one he and Schmidt were traversing remained, zigzagging up to a right-angle notch of an endpoint. He sensed the barn beyond.

  Something in his manner must have communicated his elation. Schmidt asked, “Is that the way home?”

  “Yes!” Norman answered. He hurried forward.

  “Wait!” the physicist cried.

  For a moment, Norman didn’t know why Schmidt was alarmed. Then he felt what the younger man had: the malevolent scrutiny of an entity just out of view.

  The Hound didn’t remain that way for long. Perhaps it had lurked in hiding until its prey ventured close, but now, sweating bluish slime, eyes like black pearls staring, it sprang out of nothingness onto the trail to block the doorway back to Earth.

  25

  Norman opened fire. The Hound snarled as the bullets struck but stalked forward anyway, as though the wounds were as inconsequential as gnat stings. After a few seconds, the tommy gun clacked empty.

  Now there was no choice but to flee, or at least he imagined so for an instant. But as he turned, howling sounded at his back. The rest of the pack was closing in fast. If he and Schmidt turned tail, they’d simply run into the creatures.

  Norman felt a surge of emotion. For a moment, he mistook it for a recurrence of the terror that had so often afflicted him of late. But it wasn’t. Here at the end of his race, with the normal human world just yards away but out of reach nonetheless, fear had given way to anger.

  Blast it, it wasn’t fair that he’d dared and endured so much only to have it come to nothing! He could die, he surely would die, but he wasn’t going to fail. Schmidt had to get away.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Norman said. “I’ll advance to meet the thing. Provoke it into focusing its attention on me. When it attacks, you dash past it and on through the breach.” He just had to hope that, even though he was the one who’d cast the spell of opening, Schmidt would be able to pass through from this side without him.

  “No,” said Schmidt.

  “Don’t be quixotic. It’s better that one of us live than neither, and if that’s the best we can achieve, logic indicates it should be the young genius with a bright future before him. Now do as I told you.”

  Norman took a deep breath and walked forward, and, seemingly in no hurry, savoring the moment, the Hound prowled toward him. Its neck curved like a question mark to counterbalance the crocodilian head stretched out far ahead of the rest of its body. Its tongue writhed through its jagged fangs, and its stench suffused the air.

  “Well,” said Norman, “what are you waiting for?” He raised the Thompson gun to club the creature with the butt end.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance. The Hound reared and backhanded him, swinging one forelimb in such a way that the claws didn’t pierce or rend him. Everything shattered into confusion, and when he came to his senses, he no longer had hold of the weapon and was lying on his back with the creature crouching over him.

  The long tongue writhed at him. The Hound touched the point to Norman’s forehead, then poised it before his right eye, then pressed it lightly against his throat, as if playing with its now-helpless prey. Then, seemingly tiring of the game, it plunged the needle-sharp member into its prey’s shoulder and began to suck his blood.

  The pain was hideous. Norman thrashed and battered futilely with his fists.

  Then the Hound’s body hitched to the side. Schmidt was pushing on it. He hadn’t fled to safety after all, merely waited until the Hound was distracted to launch an attack.

  Unfortunately, the effort had accomplished nothing. The creature had only shifted position slightly, and now, slipping its proboscis out of Norman’s flesh for the moment, it twisted to bring its jaws to bear.

  As it turned, though, Schmidt’s hand slid in the Hound’s coating of slime, and his finger jabbed into one of its round little eyes. The creature flinched and faltered. Injury and the attendant pain couldn’t truly stop it, but they could balk and fluster it for an instant.

  “Push it again!” Norman shouted. “Fast!” He scrambled to his knees, planted his hands on the Hound’s body, and shoved. With both men pushing, the beast lurched sideways off the edge of the path and toppled into the gulf.

  The sudden absence of resistance made Schmidt stagger forward to the brink. As he teetered, Norman threw his arms around the younger man’s legs, anchoring him until he regained his balance.

  Afterward, Norman peered over the side. He half expected to see that, as he himself had done when the satyr surprised him into a fall, the Hound had landed on a path just a few yards down and was even now rallying to hunt its prey anew. But there was nothing but gray emptiness directly below for as far as he could see.

  26

  “Are you all right?” panted Schmidt.

  Norman inspected his shoulder wound. It was deep, but it wasn’t spurting. The Hound hadn’t punctured an artery. “I’ll survive” he said, standing up and applying pressure with his hand. “What about you?”

  “I’m all right, too.”

  “Then let’s move.” As they hurried up the path, Norman added, “You should have done as I told you.”

  “Are you truly complaining?”

  Norman smiled. “Well, maybe not as such.”

  With Hounds baying in the maze behind him, the two scientists stepped from the end of the path back into the barn. The whiskey-scented space was dark. Norman had been gone long enough for day to turn to night.

  He felt, or imagined he felt, a slight, sourceless trembling that reminded him of being in proximity to Doyle Jeffries’s printing presses. It made him hesitate for an instant, and then he decided that in all likelihood he was simply feeling his own shakiness, brought on by fear, exhaustion, and the shock of his injury. In any case, there was no time to stand and puzzle over the source of the sensation.

  “Wait just a moment,” he said, then stooped, groped, and found the bundle of dynamite. He lit a match and then the fuse which, once it flared to life, provided a bit of illumination. “Blow up the corner and you destroy the doorway. Or at least I hope so.”

  “Look,” said Schmidt. He sounded ill.

  Norman turned. The debris on the floor was shivering. After another second, the shaking became forceful enough for scraps of wood and pieces of broken glass to clink together.

  “The Dholes,” he said, feeling sick himself. He should have remembered the Hounds had one more ally and thus potentially one last trick to play.

  Something immense and vermiform, distantly related to the Hounds, perhaps, exploded up from the center of the floor and, coated in sludge, swayed back and forth. All but featureless beneath its mask of muck, its head brushed and bumped the rafters as it seemingly took its bearings.

  The creature would orient on one of them in another moment, and it had better be the one who had the desperate idea of how to contend with it. Norman pulled a stick of dynamite from the bundle awaiting the touch of the flame crawling up the fuse. Then, sidestepping along the wall, he shouted. “Look at me!”

  The huge head swiveled, tracking him. The mouth opened wide, clearly discernible now despite the gloom and the curtain of slime dripping over it.

  Norman took out the fresh matchbook he’d procured for this expedition and struck a match. He started to touch the flame to the dynamite as the Dhole’s head hurtled down at him.

  He flung himself aside and just avoided the enormous creature’s jaws. Unfortunately, the frantic evasion blew out the match.

  More quickly than anything so huge should be able to recover, the Dhole reared, oriented on him, and struck at him a second time. Once again, he barely managed to keep the thing from snatching him up in its jaws.

  He faked a sidestep left and then dodged right instead. That confused the
Dhole long enough for him to strike a match and set the entire matchbook burning. Surely that much fire wouldn’t blow out!

  The Dhole struck. He lurched out of the way and, teeth clenched against the pain of the flame searing his fingers, touched the burning matchbook to the dynamite’s remaining nub of fuse. It caught, and he threw the explosive. The Dhole was huge enough and the barn sufficiently spacious that he hoped to land it where it would hurt the creature but not Schmidt or himself. With luck, its body would actually shield them from the blast.

  The enormous head descended at him, and then the stick exploded. The Dhole flew into convulsions that hurled wood and glass through the air and crashed portions of its bulk against the walls.

  In this confined space, the gigantic worm was scarcely less dangerous in the throes of agony than when trying to kill. Norman retraced his steps and found Schmidt scurrying along the wall to meet him. They hurried onward together.

  A flying piece of crate bashed Norman on the hip. A second later, his peripheral vision revealed something huge hurtling in his direction. He recoiled, jerking Schmidt back with him and, charred and torn by the grenades, the Dhole’s tail slammed into the wall and smashed a section outward.

  The two scientists ducked through the hole and rushed on to the Bearcat. The roadster was halfway down the drive when the bundle of dynamite exploded and blew out the southwest corner of the barn.

  Schmidt’s better judgment told him to keep moving, but he found he had to see what would happen next. He pulled the brake lever and twisted around in his seat for a better look.

  Quicker than he would have imagined, leaping yellow flame engulfed the barn. Perhaps the spilled liquor provided an accelerant. In any case, nothing enormous and wormlike was crawling out of the conflagration. Still shaky with adrenaline but somewhat reassured nonetheless, he drove on.

  “Good,” Norman said. “The hard part’s done.”

  Schmidt peered at him. “What’s the easy part?”

  “Stane believed the sites on your list form a sort of pattern that makes it easy for the Hounds to find their way to Arkham. By that logic, if the pattern ceases to exist, it will spoil their road map. Well, we’ve already made a start, and thanks to some checking I did at the Advertiser, I know three of the other locations are empty houses. I have cans of gasoline in the trunk, and I intend to finish the evening with a little arson.”

  27

  When Schmidt and Norman entered the Science Department, colleagues clustered around to congratulate the physicist on being found safe and sound—give or take—and the astronomer on discovering him lost and disoriented in a patch of woods west of town.

  It seemed to Norman there was something tentative about the felicitations that came his way. Probably people still thought it odd that he had ever lost track of the eminent visitor in the first place, and they might well find the whole fabricated sequence of events—the chance fall, the concussion, wandering off in confusion, and all the rest of it—peculiar.

  Surely Doyle Jeffries did. The journalist knew the derelict houses that had burned were locations on the physicist’s list. But in lieu of any better explanation, he had printed the two scientists’ account as they’d provided it.

  Norman found the approbation of his fellow faculty members, uncertain though it might be, pleasant. A part of him would have been happy to linger and savor it, but that bit was no match for the imperative that had driven him for a decade, and when the two of them could manage it politely, he shepherded Schmidt to his office.

  Schmidt peered into the corners before entering. His ordeal had left him haggard and jumpy, Norman hoped not permanently so.

  He too was prone to start at shadows and unexpected noises and bolt awake from nightmares. Yet paradoxically, when residual fear was not nagging, he felt surprisingly well. As though the hellish episode had been good for him.

  He removed the books and journals from the extra chair so Schmidt could avail himself of it. Then he set a stack of notes and astronomical photographs in front of him.

  “This is everything that might be relevant,” Norman said. “The rest—,” he waved his hand to indicate the remaining contents of the office, bookmarks, Moore Push-Pins, and all, “—amounts to false leads, all of it.”

  He all but held his breath as Schmidt went through the material. At length the German looked up and said, “I’m sorry. All you did for me, and in the end, I don’t have anything for you.”

  It was disappointing, but not, Norman realized, as bitter a blow as it might once have seemed. “That’s all right. I appreciate you trying.”

  “So what becomes of us now, my friend? Are we safe?”

  Norman shrugged. “In theory, a Hound could emerge from any corner anywhere and anytime, but under normal conditions, it’s not something that happens often. If destroying the pattern threw them off our scent, we should be fine. Of course, you change your odds if you go searching for discontinuities again.”

  Schmidt shivered. “Not likely. Yet we made incredible discoveries. If they don’t amount to an entirely new paradigm, they come close. There must be some safe way to study them.” He smiled for an instant. “And to pursue such research without the scientific community deciding the researcher is hopped up.”

  It was good to hear the physicist slip into American slang. It seemed a promising sign for his eventual recovery. “Good luck with that.”

  “What about you? Will you keep chasing the mystery of the missing stars?”

  “Yes.” But he would try to keep obsession from isolating him as it had before. His students and colleagues deserved better of him. He deserved it of himself.

  “Do you know how?”

  Norman thought of the Livre d’Eibon and the six volumes of Stane’s notes sitting in his bookcase at home. “I have an idea.”

  About the Author

  Richard Lee Byers is the author of over forty fantasy and horror novels including Pathfinder Tales: Called to Darkness, Blind God’s Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel, The Reaver: The Sundering Book IV, Black Dogs (first in his new “Black River Irregulars” trilogy), The Ghost in the Stone, and the books in the “Impostor” series. His novel The Spectral Blaze won Diehard GameFAN’s award for the Best Game-Based Novel of 2011.

  Richard has also published dozens of short stories, some of which are collected in the e-books The Q Word and Other Stories and Zombies in Paradise. The Fate of All Fools, his first graphic novel, is now available, and he is also working on new electronic games.

  Richard lives in the Tampa Bay area and is a frequent guest at Gen Con, Dragon Con, and Florida SF conventions. He invites everyone to follow him on Twitter @rleebyers, friend him on Facebook, and add him to their Circles on Google+.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Welcome to Arkham

  Part One: The Barn

  Part Two: The House of Powder Mill Street

  Part Three: Tindalos

  About the Author