Worlds of Cthulhu Page 2

  “Abraham,” I confessed, “I’m not above a dalliance now and then, and I’ve put my fist through the belly of many a rascal.”

  He ignored my words, so I took my courage in hand and asked, “How were you summoned, Abraham?”

  To this he only shook his head. He crooked his finger at me as best he could through the thick glove that covered his hand. We tramped onward through the fresh snow. The great dark lake loomed at the bottom of the slope.

  When we reached the hut with the stove-pipe Abraham knocked on the door and spoke briefly in the language I recognized, now, from his conversations with Chang Chu-Mei. The response from inside was a murmur so low that I was not sure I heard it at all. Abraham lowered his head and mumbled a few more words that I did not understand. He pushed the door open and stepped into the hut.

  I followed him.

  An iron stove must have warmed the hut somewhat, but I felt no less cold inside than I had outside. I shoved the door to, behind me. Embers glowed in the stove; through openings in its door they cast flickering light into the room.

  Sitting cross-legged facing the stove was the oldest man I had ever clapped eyes on. His head was bare and his skull was shaved. He wore a long scraggly beard. He was wrapped in a robe that looked like the toga Julius Caesar himself wore in the history book Father Phinean taught us from back in Kilkee.

  The old man’s eyes were open and bright with life and with the reflected glare of the embers. He smiled ever so slightly at Abraham, then sighed and closed his eyes and his soul was gone. Gone to wherever souls go. Ah, if I’d expressed that doubt back in Kilkee, Father Phinean would have clouted me for it, but here in America one is free to think what he thinks and to ask what he asks, is he not?

  King Abraham leaned over the old man and drew his eyelids down over his eyes. Then he leaned farther and pressed his lips to the cold brow of the dead priest. He straightened, then, and nodded solemnly, and said, “This is why we are here, John O’Leary.”

  “To bury this man?” I asked.

  “No. Others will tend to that, and the body matters not in any case, John. You’ve much to learn.”

  Oh, I knew that. He was telling me nothing new.

  “This is very bad. This is why we are here.”

  So saying, His Imperial and Apostolic Majesty King Abraham indicated a thing that the old man had held in his two hands. Even in death he held it, nor did Abraham ben Zaccheus touch it at that moment.

  It was a statue, some seven or eight inches high. It seemed made of stone, but so cunningly done that it could have been a real, living thing. In the red glow of the embers from the old man’s stove, its color might have been purple or blue or gray, I could not tell.

  I moved my hand toward it but to my great surprise Abraham struck me aside. He had never struck me before and I stood waiting for him to explain.

  “For the good of your soul, John, do not touch that thing. Your thick gloves may offer some small protection, but you would regret for all your days if you touched it.”

  “But the old man is holding it,” I replied.

  “The old man studied for a hundred years, John. He could work wonders that even I could only marvel at. He could handle the statue, but you dare not, believe me.”

  He looked around the inside of the hut until he found an old wooden box that must once have held raw victuals. He placed the box beneath the statue and carefully pried the old man’s hands apart. With a dull thud the statue fell into the box. Abraham drew a bandanna from a pocket of his heavy coat and covered the statue. Then he rose to his feet and proceeded toward the door. He held the wooden box in both his arms. I leaped ahead and cleared the way for him.

  We walked from the hut, from the Chinee village, now left without a single inhabitant. At length Abraham halted and knelt in the snow. He laid the box on the cold snow. He uncovered the statue. Now, in the glare of the full moon, I could see it properly, and wish I had not. It was the foulest, evilest thing I have ever beheld. It looked a little like a man, but its head was something like that of a squid, like they sell on the wharfs in San Francisco. Its face was horrid to behold, a mass of feelers, and its body was all scaly and rubbery looking. It had arms and legs something like a man’s but more like a frog’s, with prodigious claws on its fingers and toes. Its shoulders sprouted long, narrow wings that it might have used to fly through the air like a bat or through the sea like a devilray. It squatted on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with characters in some script that no human mind had ever imagined.

  “Now, John O’Leary,” Abraham said to me, “now you know. Now you know what evil truly is.” He covered the statue once more. He stood then, and told me to take the box but not to touch the statue itself.

  We had cast our shadows in the moonlight, so dark against the pale snow that they seemed almost blue. But there was a crack from behind us and the snow around our shadows became suddenly orange. I turned and saw that the old man’s hut had burst into flames. As Abraham and I watched, the conflagration spread to the other shacks in the Chinee village, and in the wink of an eye the village was no more.

  “As well,” Abraham said. “It’s as well. Come now, our night’s work is just beginning.”

  He led me through more stands of trees and more snow-covered hillsides until I had no idea where I was, save that the moon remained a bright lantern among the stars and the lake a dark presence. I wondered that it was not frozen in this cold winter, but there was no white on its face except for the reflection of the moon. I was inclined to ask Abraham where we were going but a single look at his face, his great dark eyes and spade-shaped beard streaked with white, told me that I would receive no answer and that it were best to hold my tongue.

  At length Abraham halted and laid a thick-gloved hand on my elbow. With his other hand he pointed to still another village. This one was made of Indian tents. I’d seen others on the Great Plains on my way to California, but this was the closest I had ever been to them. The camp looked newer and more prosperous than the dying Chinee village that now smoldered far behind us on the snowy hillside.

  “The Washoes.”

  I asked what he meant.

  “The Washoes,” he repeated. “They lived here before the white man came. They named the lake, although the white man’s name for it, Tahoe, is a corruption of the Washoe name. He nodded toward the village and said, “Stay with me but do not put down your burden, and do not let the covering come from off the statue.”

  Ah, I was not so happy to hold onto that statue, but I was more than happy to leave it covered by Abraham’s bandanna.

  Abraham went to the largest tent in the camp. He motioned me to stay outside while he went inside and conferred. I heard his voice, and others, but the language was a new one to me. Surely it was not Chinee.

  After a time Abraham came back out of the tent. A tall fellow followed him, his hair long and black, his face like a hawk’s. He ignored me. He went to a couple of other tents and got a man out of each. He had to be a chief, that was clear. You see, there are kings everywhere. On Rooshian Hill, Abraham was king. Here, the chief was king. I know I said that Indian kings are called Rogers, but this was a different kind of Indian. These kings are called chiefs.

  The chief spoke to his men in their language, and then Abraham spoke to them some more in their language, and then we set off down the hillside, through the snow, toward the black lake. I carried the box with that statue in it. For a piece of stone seven or eight inches tall and carved to look like a squid-bat-fish-man, it was heavier than it had any right to be and it kept getting heavier and heavier as we walked.

  At last we reached the lake. The Washoes had boats there, flat-bottomed, square-prowed wooden things that would hardly draw any water. Nobody spoke, nor was there any need for anybody to speak. Abraham and I climbed into the boat and sat ourselves down. There were no seats in the boat, just the flat wooden floor or
hull or whatever they call boat bottoms, and we sat there, Abraham facing front and me sitting behind him. The Washoes climbed in behind us and pushed off from shore and started to paddle.

  This was the strangest thing I had ever seen.

  I looked over the edge of the boat and the water was so clear I couldn’t see it at all. We seemed to be floating in air, propelled by the Washoes’ paddles. The moonlight was so bright, the water so pure, I thought we were flying over the lake bottom.

  And then I saw fish swimming beneath us. Gray Mackinaw and speckled rainbow trout, Kokanee salmon with their fancy red scales and cutthroats with their scales striped like tigers and spotted like leopards, and other things, great turtles, and less wholesome things, things with tentacles and claws and feelers like the ones that the little statue had on its face.

  I felt something strike my face and thought it was burning me like acid until I realized that it was only water. It was water, splashed by one of the Washoes’ paddles, so cold that my face didn’t know whether it was scalding or freezing.

  Nocturnal birds flew overhead casting their shadows on the lake that seemed to crawl along the bed, and then a great bird that shut us from the light of the moon and put us in total darkness for a moment until it passed off into the night. I watched it, a black, soaring shape that disappeared into the snow- and forest-covered mountains.

  At last Abraham spoke, a single word in the Washoe language. I cannot repeat it, it was so strange my tongue won’t get around it, but the Washoes dug their paddles into the clear water and our flat-bottomed boat glided to a halt.

  And now the strangeness of the night became more strange and more strange yet.

  Abraham stood up in the boat and signaled me to do likewise. I got carefully to my feet, not wishing to tip the boat and throw us all into the cold lake.

  Before I could stop him, Abraham put one foot over the side of the boat and balanced carefully, one foot on the water and the other in the boat. And then he lifted his other foot, carefully but without hesitating, and he put it over the side as well, and stood beside the boat. Yes, he stood on the water.

  He smiled at me and he held out one hand and I knew what he wanted me to do. I stood up and held the box in one hand and reached for him with the other, and when he took my hand I stepped over the side of the boat and stood beside Abraham ben Zaccheus the Hebrew King.

  The Washoes paddled past us and I watched them swing their little flat-bottomed boat in a circle and head back for the shore.

  The moon above looked as bright as the sun. The lake beneath our feet was clear and we could see the fishes and the other creatures going about their business, although one of the things with tentacles seemed to be awaiting a special treat.

  The box with the statue in it seemed so heavy, I was not sure how much longer I could hold it. If I put it down would it float? Would it be carried away? Would it come to the shore and be hidden there, like little Moses in the bulrushes where Pharaoh’s daughter found him so very long ago?

  It grew suddenly dark again, and I looked up and saw that black shape pass across the face of the moon once again. I was not so sure, this time, that it was a bird.

  Abraham reached with his free hand and jerked the bandanna from the stone statue in the box. I saw him tuck the bandanna back into his pocket. He released my hand with his, and I stood there on the water, wondering if this was the work of the Holy Spirit.

  I looked down at the water and thought that it was invisible, and that the Holy Spirit was invisible, as well. The Holy Ghost. The greatest mystery, I had always believed, in the great mystery of the Holy Trinity.

  That was another question that had got me a good clout from Father Phinean. Our priest was teaching us that God could do anything at all. There were no limits to His power. It was called arm-nippy-tents.

  No limits? No limits at all?

  No limits. That’s what arm-nippy-tents means, you nasty boy, John O’Leary.

  Could He make me invisible, Father?

  Now what did I tell you, John? God can do anything. Of course He could make you invisible.

  But then He couldn’t see me, could He, Father?

  He could if He wanted to.

  But what if He wanted to make me so invisible even He couldn’t see me, Father?

  And why would He want to do such a ridiculous thing?

  Well, Father, I don’t know why, but what if He wanted to, could he make me so invisible He couldn’t see me even if He wanted to see me?

  Oh, Father Phinean looked flustered. He just about foamed at the mouth, he did. And then, ah, you know what happened then, don’t you?

  Of course you do.

  The water must have been mightily cold, I marveled that it hadn’t frozen over. There were flakes of snow whipping through the air, and back on the shore I could see some bits of orange where the Chinee village had burned and farther away the lights of the Tahoe Tavern, but here on the lake itself Abraham ben Zaccheus was standing as calm and steady as a bishop giving Holy Communion and I was standing there with him wondering what was keeping me from plunging straight down into that black, frigid body of water.

  King Abraham pulled his thick winter gloves from his hands and shoved the gloves inside his coat. He reached for the stone statue in the box and grasped it with both hands and lifted it above his head.

  The giant bird took another pass across the face of the moon and for just a moment we were in darkness there on the face of the lake, the only light the distant tavern and the Chinee village and the shining stars of the galaxy overhead. Then the statue flared with a light all its own. It sizzled there in Abraham’s hands, held above Abraham’s head, and then as if it had a life of its own it pulled itself forward and tipped head downward and dived straight down into the water, pulling Abraham and me behind it.

  As we hit the face of the lake it began to swirl and churn like the water in a wash-tub when the washer-woman pulls the plug. That glowing statue, I would tell you the color it glowed but it was something I had never in my life seen before and I can’t to this day put a name to it, that statue pulled us along behind it, swirling and swooping in a cold whirlpool, round and round, the only light the statue’s glow. I looked over my shoulder and saw a tunnel through the water above us and the black sky and dancing stars at its end. I looked down and saw the waters opening before us like the Red Sea opening for the Children of Israel and I let go a prayer that we wouldn’t wind up like Pharaoh’s army.

  There was a roaring in my ears and a great pinwheel of stars ahead of me and then with a thump we landed, Abraham and yours truly, standing there on a rocky plain surrounded by that whirling, roaring, funnel of water. A great fish whipped past and then one of those horrid things with the feelers and claws, distant relatives, I think, of the ugly thing that I’d carried from the Chinee village in a wooden box.

  The statue had landed with us and stood tilted a bit from the upright on its base. In front of us was something like nothing my eyes had ever before beheld. I could call it a city but it was like no city I’d ever seen, not Dublin nor London, England, nor Boston nor Chicago nor San Francisco. No, not even like the cities I’d seen only in pictures, not even the pillars and hanging gardens of Babylon or the pyramids and the Sphinx of Aegypt.

  It hurt my eyes just to look at the city, and my stomach churned when I tried to understand its angles and its shapes. It wasn’t the way a city should be. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with it. The closest I can come is to say it was crooked, but it wasn’t exactly that either. It was just wrong.

  But it was little. It was like a tiny town set up in the window of Gump’s Department Store on Post Street in San Francisco. The children would come to see that for a Christmas treat, and their parents would see the joy in their faces and it brought tears to my eyes when I thought that if Maeve Corrigan hadn’t been kicked in the head by a cursed Englishman’s horse we might
have married when she was grown and had kiddies of our own that we could show a miniature city at Christmas-time. There would be tiny houses and little trees and shops and mayhap even a miniature St. Padraic’s. There would be tiny horses and sleighs, and a pond made of a mirror surrounded by white cotton snow.

  Abraham was tugging at my sleeve. The village was growing before our eyes or we were shrinking, I could not tell. The thing on the statue was as tall as a man now or taller, or mayhap it was that Abraham and I had shriveled down to six inches or so of height so we were not even as tall as it.

  The thing climbed down off its pedestal and began flopping and hopping across the black stone like a creature part frog and part fish, part squid and part man. The feelers that were its face were writhing and whipping like living things, and it was making a sound with what had to pass for its mouth that was fit neither for man nor beast nor anything else made by the loving God but only for something that crawled out of the pit of Gehenna to work a mission of damnation on the world.

  The thing flopped through thoroughfares between horrid crooked blocks of spongy material that sagged and dripped like to make me puke back the fine meal I’d last consumed at the Tahoe Tavern. There was a stench in the air, and each step Abraham took or did I sent up a wet, squelching sound. Our footing had been solid black rock but now it, too, was spongy and unpleasant, as if the ground itself had become a greedy, living thing that with each step wanted to take hold on your foot and draw you down to a wet, dark, slimy Hell.

  There was not a soul to be seen in the street, if this could be called a street, but there were sounds in the city that I would never wish to hear again if I live as long as Methuselah. There was a distant, watery chanting and the horrid, flopping thing moved faster, as if it couldn’t wait to get to its destination.

  At length we came to a great building that must have been a temple. It had columns outside and pilasters and a tall, frightening roof. I felt cold at its very sight and wanted to halt, but Abraham tugged me along and I was barely able to lift my boots from the hungry, sucking stuff we were walking upon.