“Wow, this is totally not what Earth’s sky looked like,” Richard said, walking up ahead of me. “What’s that smell in the air, oxygen? Geez, man, you have got some weird ideas about what the twenty-first century smelled like. It was mostly carbon monoxide and poison.”
“Please be quiet, Richard, I want to appreciate this.” I ran my arms through the dirt around me, making an angel, before standing up. I was no longer dressed in camouflage, but instead in my R&E uniform. My father’s leather Stetson was affixed prominently to my head along with his weather-beaten duster to my back and I saw my heavy assault rifle nestled up against some nearby rocks.
Amazing.
In what was becoming a running theme in this trip, I saw I was once more on the side of a cliff face. This one overlooked a vast sweeping vista consisting solely of gravesites. They were marked with swords, guns, and other weapons of war in place of headstones. In the center of the seemingly endless military cemetery, a spiraling tower stood, which spun infinitely into the air. The tower vaguely resembled the same architecture which compromised the Black Cathedral, but was majestic as opposed to ominous.
“Where are we?” I asked, stunned by the sight.
“The Dreamlands. Specifically, the Fields of Blades,” Richard said, glancing over the cliff face and taking in the somber landscape. “The Jungian archetypal representation of the endlessness and futility of war. Wow, John, your subconscious is a real vacation spot.”
“I don’t put much faith in psychology.” I took a deep breath. “What does the tower represent?”
“It’s a tower, John. It’s probably where the Elder Things live. Remember, we’re just using your dreamscape to find them.”
“Anyway, why are you here?” I had been under the impression this would be a solo mission. Then again I knew very little about the Dreamlands; he probably thought I needed a guide.
“No way am I leaving you out here—oh shit.” Richard pointed in the direction over my left shoulder. “On your six!”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the decaying form of my dead father. “Shit.”
The rotted corpse was dressed in a tattered version of the uniform he was buried in. Half of its face was blown off by the shotgun blast which had killed him. The air reeked of its rotting stench, as if it had been dead for a week. I was surprised I’d missed it while breathing in the fresh Dreamlands air. Spinning me around with its desiccated hands, the zombie-like creature proceeded to grab me by the throat.
“Not my son!” it gargled through a twisted, mangled jaw. Its grip was tight and vice-like as I struggled to pull its fingers free from my neck.
“You’re not my father!” Pressing my hands against the creature’s face, I struggled to push it back before pressing my thumbs into its eyes. Both fingers slid straight into the soft tissue, the half-rotted orbs collapsing beneath the pressure I applied.
The monster emitted an inhuman growl before pulling back, clawing at its bleeding eye sockets. I tried to maneuver myself out of the way but the monster proceeded to slam one of its huge arms against my face, sending me to the ground.
“Not my son!” it screamed again, charging its eyeless body at me. Tackling me to the ground, it once more tried to strangle me.
“Need help?” Richard said, acting as if there was nothing to be concerned about.
“Shoot it!” I screamed, struggling to maneuver my hands around its neck. Each breath was more difficult. In a few moments, I’d be dead if Richard didn’t intervene. I was not going to give this bastard the chance to finish what he started three decades ago. “Shoot it, now!”
“Fine,” Richard muttered before walking over to where I’d once stood and taking up my heavy assault rifle. The weapon proceeded to fill the creature’s chest with holes. Despite being undead, it seemed pained by the action. With a quick motion, I snapped its neck and sent the monster spiraling to the ground.
“Feel better?”
“Give me my gun.” I extended my hand towards Richard, looking at the strange dream creature on the ground.
“Sure.” Richard handed the gun to me.
I proceeded to aim it at Richard, not bothering to look from the corpse on the ground. “Never joke around when my life is in danger. I wouldn’t do the same with you. If you ever do something similar again, I’ll kill you.”
I meant it, too. As beneficial as I found our partnership, I wasn’t about to risk my safety. I would kill whoever I had to in order to get to Alan Ward. He would pay for killing my squadron and if I had to sacrifice others to do it, well, then, so be it.
“Sorry, was just a joke.” Richard shrugged before glancing down at the corpse. “Take a look at it.”
Slowly, but surely, its features began changing from a deformed representation of my father to something else entirely. The final result was a creature the size of a small horse. It stood taller than my father, at least eight feet, and was a mass of deformed muscle. It possessed claws more akin to knives than talons and a mouth that looked like it made up eighty percent of its face. Below its waist was a pair of kangaroo-like legs, ending in cloven hooves. If Richard was hard to look at, this creature was absolutely ghastly.
“A ghast,” Richard appropriately named it, pinching the ends of his snout. “The ancestral enemies of ghouls.”
“Do they normally assume the form of loved ones to stalk someone?” I asked, appalled at the intimacy of the violation.
“No.” Richard looked distinctly uncomfortable. “They’re ghasts, John. They don’t do the whole ‘fascinated with humans’ thing my race is famous for. They eat, sleep, fuck, and kill.”
“Like humans,” I said, struggling for breath. “So this creature is unlikely to have assumed my father’s form on his own?”
“You could say that. Of course, they also die in sunlight so I’m not sure what the hell is going on with this particular one.”
“Interesting,” I said, struggling to get as much oxygen down my bruised windpipe as possible. “Go on.”
“If it’s protected by magic, whoever set this stuff up has some serious juice behind his or her spells. That kind of magic has not been seen since the days when Atlantis, Mu, and R’lyeh were only half-sunk.” Richard reached down and parted some of its fur, revealing tattooed sigils to the Elder God Hypnos.
I’d read about Hypnos during my studies under Doctor Ward. He was a deity of sleep and dreams, equally likely to do good or evil. Supposedly, only the most powerful sorcerers attempted to harness his power since one could never tell whether one’s entreaties would be met with favoritism or retribution.
Richard then said, “Yep, this is big-ass sorcery here. You don’t call on this guy unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing.”
“So you’re saying someone sent this thing after me? Dressed, for lack of a better word, as my father?”
“Someone who knew you were coming to the Dreamlands, yes,” Richard said, blinking his large dog-like eyes. “Got any suspects?”
“One.” Dammit, things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. “What now?”
Richard looked out to the tower. “We walk.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“As long it takes.”
Chapter Sixteen
“As long as it takes” turned out to be seven weeks, three days, and eleven hours. The travel time bothered me until Richard explained it would only be seconds in the real world. Either that or we’d starve to death and our problems would be over anyway.
In the end, there was plenty of food and water to be found within the Dreamlands if you knew where to look. We traded with a tribe of nomadic Horned Men, fought several winged horrors from Leng, enjoyed the hospitality of several cloven-hoofed succubi, and paid our respects to the many warriors whose dreams were buried here.
By the end of our journey, we were exhausted and worn to the quick but perhaps a little bit wiser. Standing less than a yard from the Elder Things’ tower, we both stared upward as if
to try and catch a glimpse of the tower’s top. A futile gesture since the tower appeared to be literally infinite in its height.
Far away, the tower had looked like it was a gargantuan but comprehensible structure that was only a few miles away. Now that we had reached it, we saw the tower’s true nature was unfathomably greater. The building’s mass defied description and we were less than ants compared to its Olympian presence. Even the Great Old Ones would have felt terribly small at the foot of the enormous building. The staggering fact was, there were doors and windows built into the tower for beings who would not even see us for their height. I could not imagine the mass of the beings inhabiting this tower, what sort of life they lead, or how they would react to us.
If they noticed us at all.
“You know …” Richard looked down and started to roll a cigarette, having stolen some Ulthar tobacco from the Horned Men we’d met. “That is one big fucking tower.”
“Yeah,” I said, not looking away. “It really is.”
“Getting through the front door is going to be tough,” Richard said. “And by tough I mean impossible.”
We were right in front of the tower’s single visible door; unfortunately, there was seemingly no way to open it. It would take unimaginable force to budge it even a few degrees. Had a small crack existed under the door, we could have easily fit underneath it, but no such space was present. It was hundreds of feet high and probably dozens of feet thick. I saw no way to break it open, especially not with the minimal equipment in our possession.
“This is going to be difficult,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Were the Elder Things this big?”
“I don’t think so,” Richard said. “I’ve never actually met one, mind you, but they used to live in Antarctica. I’m pretty sure this place would be visible from Earth on Jupiter.”
“You have a point. The fact something like this can exist baffles me,” I shook my head. “So how are we going to get in?”
Richard shrugged his shoulders. “Not my problem.”
“Thank you,” I said, sarcastically. “I’m glad I can count on you.”
“Hey, I’m just being honest.” The ghoul threw his hands up in the air. “I have no idea. You’re the brains here, Soldier Boy. I’m just the guide.”
“Maybe we should just knock?” I suggested, not really having any answers for tackling a problem of this magnitude.
“Somehow, I don’t think that would work.” Richard pointed between us. “Dress code and all.”
Richard’s Hawaiian shirt had mostly rotted off him, leaving him looking more like a regular ghoul—naked and animalistic. The rain and the yellowish spores we’d encountered had mostly eaten it away. My own clothes were now covered in mud, thread-worn, and looking like they’d been through hell and back.
“Fine,” I said, trying to think of other options. Then I remembered an old saying my father had taught me: The only thing infinite that can be held in a man’s hands is a thought. It was a Zen koan he’d picked up from a Wasteland mystic named Carter. Now, I could see the wisdom in it, especially here. “Richard, close your eyes.”
“Why?” Richard suddenly tensed. “What are you planning?’
“Just do it.” I tried to focus on the fact this was my dream. Even if it somehow linked up with a greater “Uber-Dream” all beings shared, it was still formed by my thoughts and ideas. That meant I had the power here.
“Okay.” Richard finally obeyed my command, shutting his furry eyelids.
Doing the same, I imagined Richard and I were tall enough to walk into the tower through the front door. I stepped forward, putting my hands out, believing I had enough force to move mountains. Everything would depend on my believing the impossible, something I tried to do at least six times a day.
I was rewarded by the feel of the stone giving way, slowly at first but gradually more deliberately. The tower didn’t become any smaller but its proportions shifted, as if the universe was re-orientating itself to my vision. Did the Great Old Ones see the world this way? If so, did that make the physical universe their dream? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. My musings ended when I felt the stone fall forward as if pushed down. It struck the ground with a titanic but not ear-splitting thud.
“Huh. It worked,” I said, opening my eyes. We were now standing in a tower built for beings only slightly larger than ourselves. If we had gone down the rabbit hole, we’d now just drunk from the bottle labeled DRINK ME.
“John, what you just did is impossible. The Dreamlands don’t work this way.” Richard looked almost offended at what I’d done. “If they did, I would have advised you to dream us up a damn plane.”
“I had considered that,” I admitted. “On my first day no less.”
“You might have mentioned that!” Richard’s voice was shrill and I actually heard growling in the back of his inhuman throat.
“I just figured you’d have told me if such a thing were possible. Besides, I was enjoying the journey,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I got a lot of thinking done while I was out. I think I solved a number of philosophical riddles I’d been long pondering. Like, ‘Why do good things happen to bad people?’ and ‘Where do my socks go when I put them in the dryer?’”
“Next time, save your weird-ass walkabout for when I’m not potentially starving to death in the physical world.” Richard looked about ready to tackle me. I admit, it felt good to pay him back for what he’d done during the ghast attack.
The interior of the tower was surprisingly homey, albeit not in a manner most human beings would find comfortable. The hallway was circular and uneven, as opposed to square, often looking like a size-shifting worm had dug its passages. There were torches along the walls, but each was tipped with a coral-like crystal instead of fire. What was recognizably furniture was present as well, but for bodies unrelated to any hominid ancestor.
“I’m not sure if I should be unnerved or reassured at the similarities,” I said, taking a moment to soak in the alien architecture.
“The Elder Things are carbon-based beings.” Richard warily began walking in. “That’s rarer than you think. I suppose in the grand scheme of things that makes them closer to our race than say, the Great Old Ones’ species or species-es. What’s the plural form of species?”
“Species. You said our race?” I asked, enjoying his crisis of language.
“You’ve adopted one of our kids; you’re an honorary ghoul now. Just don’t expect to win any beauty pageants.” Richard slapped me on the back.
His words confirmed something I’d expected for a long time. Little Jackie was a ghoul-human hybrid and doomed to undergo the same transformation Richard had undergone. “Richard, was … it painful?”
“The Change?” Richard’s voice grew very cold, almost sad.
“Yes.”
“Excruciating.” Richard’s voice, still human despite his canine mouth, changed only a little as he said that one word. That tiny change in his voice, however, spoke volumes.
“I’m sorry.”
The two of us soon found ourselves at a strange, twisting staircase, one which rose high up toward a star-shaped doorway. Beyond it, strange noises echoed and weird lights flickered on and off. We both paused at the base of it, not ready to make the trek up, even if our quarry was close at hand.
Richard took a moment to think before he started speaking again, “Listen, if you want some advice about Jackie, the best thing—”
And then he was dead.
The nature of combat is a violent, swift, unromantic thing. That was the first thing I’d learned as a soldier. One moment, you were standing next to someone you thought of as a friend and brother-in-arms, the next you were cradling their dead body. In Richard’s case, he was struck by a bolt of strange alien energy which passed through the front of his chest and out the other side like a gunshot. A massive, gaping hole was created by the blast, killing him instantly.
I had only a split moment to react before a second bolt was disch
arged in my direction. Reflexes are faster than conscious thought, however. I was able to maneuver out of the way of where my assailant was aiming. Long enough to privately vow I would kill whoever had taken my best friend from me.
Staring up at the top of the stairs, I saw the Elder Thing. It was not as sanity-blasting as some of the creatures I’d seen in the Wasteland. Yet, the creature was still alien and terrifying. It was a creature from another world, whose race had colonized the Earth when it was nothing more than boiling seawater. The Elder Thing stood eight feet tall with a barrel-like chest and starfish-esque appendages where its head and feet should have been.
It had other inhuman qualities which unsettled me just looking at them, such as stalks for eating and seeing in ways humans could not appreciate, but none of these interested me. The only things that did were the crystalline rod it held in one of its tentacles—the weapon which had killed my friend—and the fact it was Richard’s murderer.
“Murderer!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, forgetting all thought of how the creature might help me.
Lifting my heavy assault rifle, I poured the dream-based ammunition into the creature’s weapon. The monster didn’t seem to understand what I was doing, only moving its weapon to fire again as the tendril holding it was promptly shredded.
The Elder Thing let forth an inhuman shriek as blue and greenish fluids poured out of its wounds. The crystal rod shattered seconds later, disarming it. In that moment, a red mist came over my eyes, drowning out all reason. I continued firing into the monster’s chest, wounding it further until the magazine was empty.
The Elder Thing was badly injured from my assault, bleeding from multiple holes spread across its chest while letting forth wails of pain which no terrestrial animal could duplicate. Grabbing my rifle by the barrel, I charged up the stairs and slammed my body squarely into the Elder Thing’s chest. The creature possessed strength no human could match but the intensity of my anger drowned out all difference in our sizes.
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