Quebec City in Flames

by Nelson Rusk

  Commercial kitchen and cooks, circa 1900.

  I walked away from the man until I was out of his sight, then went through one of the double doors leading to the kitchens. Some employees stared at me. I acted like someone who knew what he was doing and no one asked me questions. Every time I met an employee, I asked where Mr. Beaumont was. All of them gave me indications that brought me closer to my target.

  I walked through much of the kitchens in this way before arriving in front of a thin, small man with a slender face and shaggy brown hair, lowering a basket of poultry into a stove. A beard of a few days' length covered his cheeks with a dirty color, giving him the animal look that my imagination had attributed to him. I was sure it was him, but I asked him the question to make sure. When he turned to answer, his gaze crossed mine for a few seconds. He read in it something he did not like since an expression of surprise clouded his features. Without answering, he turned around and took off in a hurry through ovens and cutting counters. I had anticipated that he would run away and rushed in his direction, jumping at him with the speed of a wildcat. My furious leap sent both of us crashing into a metal cabinet under a granite counter.

  We grabbed each other on the damp ground, panting, hissing, spitting, and struggling in silence; neither of us wanted to draw attention to this altercation, each for his own reasons. We rolled around the aisle several times, taking turns in controlling one another. We had no time to deal blows. Only our hands moved, looking for a grip, feeling to find a weak point, closing again to tear off, crush, strangle.

  I felt him weakening for a moment. I renewed my grip on him and squatted on his slumped body, one hand on his face and the other on his throat. He tried to do the same but soon realized the precariousness of his position. In desperation, he let go of me and trashed his body from side to side. His hands slammed all over the place, looking for a gun. I remembered my anguish when a sectator grabbed me in the same way and I neutralized him with a torch. A desperate animal is at its most dangerous.

  I decided not to give him that chance. Letting go of his throat, I raised my upper body and grabbed the gun in my pocket. I pointed the gun at his face, holding him on the ground with my other hand. I waited. He continued to struggle for a few seconds but stopped when he saw the 20-cm steel barrel. "You move and it is your end. I will not hesitate to kill a mangy dog such as you," I told him without a hint of doubt. A threat backed by an iron will to carry it out is all the more formidable. He remained silent. His eyes showed a glimpse of fear, complemented by an air of defeat. His muscles relaxed. He seemed ready to comply.

   “All right, Beaumont. If you want to live, you will do what I tell you to do, and nothing else. Understood?

   Yeah,” he spat reluctantly.

   “Excellent. Something tells me you were involved in Alise's abduction.” I pressed against his throat as I pronounced her name, making him grunt. “Whether this is the case no longer matters. What I want to know is, where is she now? "I put the gun under his nose to emphasize my point.

   “The Messenger will sacrifice her tonight for the great ascension. There's nothing you can do," he said all at once with his weasel-like voice, which I hated from the very first word.

   “We will see about that. Guide me there. In silence, without grumbling. If you try to warn anyone, I will shoot you.”

  He did not answer. Instead, he stared at me with his sneaky eyes, until a malicious grin appeared on his face. I would have preferred him to have insulted me in lieu of this silence full of innuendo. Despite the extreme disgust I felt for this man, I needed him. Rising, I dragged him with me by the collar. I pushed him in front of me with vigor, not concealing the pleasure I felt from the pain I gave him. When he seemed ready to comply, I put the weapon away. "Lead me to where she is and I will spare your life. "It was impossible for me to decide whether this was a truth or a lie. Still, the threat had the desired effect. He set off.

  To my surprise, Beaumont did not go in the same direction as I had arrived. We left the kitchen from the back, which suited me because it was less animated. We passed under a large staircase going up to our left and right to reception rooms on the second floor. I followed my hostage closely, on the lookout for any sudden movement. He seemed pacified for the time being. Or maybe he thought he had a better chance of getting rid of me by allowing me to reach my destination than by preventing me, which was not a comforting thought.

  We ended up in the café wing, which offered refreshments and drinks to the castle’s guests, and to occasional visitors. Tourists crowded the place, but there was anonymity in the abundance of faces and we proceeded without difficulty. We took a seldom-used turn in the main room. After a few turns, we arrived at a door flanked by a deep stone frame and an arch lintel.

  Beaumont made sure that no one was looking at him, then pulled a wrought-iron key out of his trouser pocket. It looked like the key I still had in my possession that opened a door to the basement. My prisoner inserted the key and opened the heavy door, entering as soon as space allowed. I followed him closely. As the light faded with the closing door, Beaumont searched the top surface of a ceiling pipe with his hand. He grabbed an oil lantern hidden there. The man turned it on at the minimum intensity required to see.

  As with the other entrance, a staircase led down to the basement. We went down it. The smell of rot that reigned here awakened bad recollections. Now that we were alone, I noticed that Beaumont was giving me furtive glances. I urged him a few times to keep moving forward. I soon realized that what I thought were attempts to distract myself was more like a desire to talk, unquenchable for some people. Beaumont seemed such a person. I reasoned that there was nothing wrong with letting him talk if it allowed me to gather information about the cult. I allowed him to do so when he began talking again. As expected, he could not resist:

   “You have no chance of surviving. You must have guessed so yourself. When you see the master, certainty will overcome you as it did for us.

   Is that so? And who is this master? How will I recognize him?" Beaumont's face twisted in a slow and evil grin of which he seemed to have the secret.

   “You'll know when you see him... You'll know.”

  Beaumont stopped talking for a moment as we reached the large room with two floors and a raised ceiling. I redoubled my surveillance of the surroundings. Here, it was obvious we were on the cult's territory. Unable to resist taunting me when he already saw himself triumphant, my prisoner rambled again:

  “He's not human, you know. And even if the centuries he has lived among us are enough to place him on the throne of humanity, he's but a messenger of the divine. Immortal but servile. Mr. Roussin, do you know the prodigious pleasure of serving greater than oneself?” he said as he turned around, his eyes filled with a morbid and misplaced adoration. “Do you know the feeling of losing yourself in the immensity of an ideal superior to yourself? I have noticed in my fellow human beings a modern indifference, some elusive mal-de-vivre hidden under the cover of a growing nihilism. These terrible evils are the cruelest of all those afflicting humanity. So, I ask you again, Mr. Roussin: would you not exchange the sad insignificance of your existence to become one with an absolute ideal?”

  This time, I was the one who stopped. Beaumont continued for a few steps before pausing and turning around.

   “And what would this concept be, destruction? The abduction and sacrifice of innocent people in the name of a faceless cause?

   Our cause has a face. If the stars are aligned, you'll be so lucky to see it.”

  His last sentence was a barely veiled threat. I ignored him and, with my gun, waved at him to keep moving forward. We arrived at the trapdoor leading to the passage that sank into the rocky ground. He went first. I followed him closely, both to keep an eye on him and to stay in the consecrated circle around the lantern. In the deep darkness into which we entered, all light was a source of life. This thought led me, when we reached the bottom of the abyss, to demand that he
give me the lantern. I would rather have my destiny in my hands than be at the mercy of this fanatic. He complied begrudgingly, pathetic even in his most trivial actions. Everything about this man repulsed me.

  At the bottom of the long vertical passage, my recollections of the place were diffuse. My inability to turn on a lamp, the excitement of being chased, and the labyrinthine nature of the underground corridors on this floor had nullified my sense of direction. Despite my reservations, I followed Beaumont through the maze, aware that he could lead me to a trap without my knowledge.

  We took several turns in what I assumed was the basement of the old Château Saint-Louis. Despite the location’s state of deterioration, it was possible to detect its former wealth. Decayed uniforms, broken and charred rifles, and rusty swords hinted at the building's military vocation. I was drawn from my musings when Beaumont stopped in front of a door whose apparent solidity differed from that of its wretched counterparts. He gave me a brief glance before turning its handle and entering. I followed him.

  Inside, I expected a continuation of the sordid state prevalent on the rest of the floor. Instead, I found a refurbished antechamber, cleared of all rubbish and decorated with an impressive assortment of paintings, relics, and trinkets. I ordered Beaumont, who was heading straight ahead, to stop so I could inspect the incongruous works.

  A painting of an impressive size caught my attention. The scene there was one of disgusting familiarity. A Hindu demon stood by a long procession of men and women that spanned an entire chamber of massive proportion. Priests of the abomination had tied each soon-to-be martyr on crude stone altars. Tanks and stills of proportions beyond comprehension interposed between each sacrificial victim, pumping their vital juices. The terrible process had reduced many martyrs to a deflated envelope, with the others soon to follow. Presiding over the ceremony, the demon was relishing the scene with rapture, all his features showing the strongest passion and pure malevolent avarice. The painter of the work had shown a maniacal attention to all the details that made the scene horrible. Such a work would not have had its place in any modern exhibition hall. Its blasé style was extended to its extreme limits.

  I moved on to the next room, which was not to be outdone on the horror side. Other paintings decorated it. This time, a bas-relief caught my attention. Half a meter high and about five meters wide, it represented a scene that would have been the fantasy of a pyromaniac. Flames and pyres followed one another so quickly that it was difficult to interpret what was happening. As soon as the eye fixed on something, it immediately detached to glue itself onto something else. In some places, the relief seemed more accentuated than the perspective would have allowed, and I had to approach it to see that it was only a trompe-l'oeil executed by master craftsmen.

  Seeing that Beaumont was waiting for me in the next room, I followed him there. I was about to say something to him when I saw a spherical sculpture occupying the entire center of the room. About four meters in diameter, the sculpture represented a sprawling entity with a hollow and empty interior, except for a gigantic orange stone with changing hues. The similarity between this abomination and the entity of my dreams was staggering.

  I went around the work, my eyes fixed on it, walking along the walls of the room. I stopped my tour in front of the gaping hole in its center. I remembered what I had seen in my dreams and could almost return there with my mind's eyes. The flames, the abominable heat, the noise that deafens the mind and prevents any rational thought. Without my knowledge, my eyes had fixed on the orange jewel that shone like a pulsating heart in the center. Its color changed, spinning, spiraling, disappearing, and then reforming. I saw worlds overflowing with life purged by fires of cosmic proportions. Stars left burned after an unstoppable blaze ravaged their surface. Entire galaxies devoured by a cavity of infernal heat where all the matter of the universe dissolved with ease, digested again in a primordial soup.

  I was obsessed with this vision when a dazzling pain resonated in my skull, echoing along my spine. I crashed with force to the ground. For a moment, I swayed before the gaping abyss of unconsciousness that loomed before me. The sight of a blunt object plunging down galvanized me into action. I rolled sideways and heard the crash of rock against rock. My vision still blurred, I crawled away from the noise. I stood up, leaning against a wall to support myself. Beaumont, screaming curses impossible to comprehend, renewed his assault. I let him pounce on me, dodging and using his momentum so we both fell backward, him first.

  Again, a shock echoed in my head. This time, the foggy veil that covered my vision was more difficult to dispel. I was no longer sure if I was lying, kneeling, or sitting. At any moment, I expected to receive the final blow. It did not come. Little by little, my vision came back. I distinguished the shape of my opponent on the ground. A continuous stream of blood flowed from a large cut that split his scalp. I had been lucky not to suffer the same fate. I saw the probable cause of Beaumont’s injury up close: a step leading to a raised wall depression. Inside it was a massive chest of wrought metal, about two meters wide by one meter deep. I approached to look inside. Ashes almost filled it to the brim. On the front of the chest, I deciphered through the illuminations an inscription in Hindi or Bengali, followed by its apparent translation into English:

  Lord Azathoth, outer god and multi-cosmic entity

  Accept the essence of those sacrificed in your name

  The flames of your wrath washed and purified them

  For the cycle of creation and destruction to be eternal

  Realizing the meaning of this inscription, I contemplated the chest with a fresh horror. How many screaming and gesticulating victims had the flames consumed over the years to serve the vile designs of the cult? How many kidnappings and unsolved disappearances could be attributed to these fanatics who had shed all traces of humanity like a useless cocoon? How many sectators had to infiltrate the Quebec City police to ensure that such a massacre continued to go unnoticed? I walked away from the chest, whose significance I could not bear without feeling my knees bending.

  I went to the room that Beaumont was about to enter before I stopped in front of the abominable sculpture. I had resigned myself to continuing without him. His injury was serious. Even if I wanted to help him, I could not. I left him behind, dying and unconscious. The strange conformation of the next chamber was easy to recognize. It confirmed the suspicions I already had: I was in aide-de-camp Phillips' quarters.

  The floor of the room dropped by about three meters. The bottom was reachable through a series of steep steps. I went down the stairs, taking care not to slip on the sticky granite. In Robert Muir’s time, a huge stained-glass window covered the back wall of this depression. Unfortunately, the 1834 fire had not been kind to the work. The heat had melted the stained glass into a huge mass of petrified, shapeless, and chaotic glass, infiltrated into the interstices of the slabs and openings. The bright colors that made up the original scene—a Hindu demon according to witnesses—were still visible in the translucent heap. In the light of my lantern that pierced the darkness, the glass revealed imprecise shapes, which my inflamed mind interpreted as filthy and blasphemous images.

  With careful steps, I climbed over the ruins of the stained-glass window and then went into the corridor behind. This one was carved out of the rock. Here too, the fire at the Château Saint-Louis had left its mark. Thick, damp soot blackened the century-old rock. The pungent smell typical of the detestable oil used by the cult was pervasive. I progressed down the hallway with caution, trying to avoid holding onto the sticky and dirty walls.

  Corridor carved in the rock.[2]

  I had been hearing the unholy song of the worshipers of the filthy god Azathoth for a few minutes when I arrived at a T-intersection. I knew in the depths of the left tunnel was the exit to the Plains of Abraham that Robert Muir had used to escape the explosion. As if they had learned from the mistake of leaving their lair too open to intrusions, the worshipers had not cleared this issue in the last nine
ty years. Logs had collapsed from the ceiling. The massive earthquake following the detonations that wracked the underground had dislodged entire sections of stone walls, spreading them over the floor. The state of disrepair of this path was such that I doubted that I could follow it to the exit.

  The tunnel going in the opposite direction, on the other hand, still seemed regularly used. The cult’s members, for all their flaws, did not lack diligence. They had cleared most traces of the explosion that shook the underground a hundred years ago. The songs I heard came from there. I proceeded cautiously through the corridor. I estimated chances were good that Alise, in whatever condition she was, was at the end of that corridor, as was the source of the evil I had come to unearth. Every step brought me closer to this ultimate source of malice in the heart of Quebec City for a century. I was unsure if I would have the courage or strength to end it, but I had to try. For all those who had died from the sect's infamous acts. For all those who would die if it continued. For Robert Muir. For Alise.

  My heart tightening in my chest, I turned the corner at the end of the tunnel. I was not ready for what was waiting for me on the other side. The first sensation that seized me was the diabolic hymns, whose intensity increased to a level I would not have thought possible. The waves of atonal sound struck me like a punch in the stomach. It was difficult for me to catch my breath. It was not so much the deafening noise that affected me in this way, but rather its unhealthy, dissonant character from another world. The melody was indescribable. It respected none of the common conventions and opened the door to a world of unreal acoustic impressions. It was difficult for me to concentrate on any other activity when I heard it. It was so foreign that it demanded with an utmost urgency to be listened to, recognized, and understood. But its true meaning always escaped me, leaving me empty-handed in my quest.