Dead Jack and the Old Gods, page 14
“If we can’t destroy it, then what?”
“We have to keep it out of the bad guys’ hands. Didn’t we already agree on that?”
“Good luck with that. Blow the damn thing up. What’s the worst that could happen? The universe is going to be destroyed anyway. Do I have to remind you that you opened the damn portal that allowed Harbinger in?”
“We need to go. Get to the Outer Lands. Now.”
“I really don’t want to go there.”
Shadows moved atop the embankment. I was pretty sure they weren’t ghosts.
Stuck between a rock and a horde of ghosts.
“We’re going through the haunted amusement park,” I said, and put the Necronomicon in my inner pocket. What could incorporeal spirits do to me?
The ghosts had finished feeding. Ratzinger, Herb, and Ingrid lay on the dirty ground, gray as the ghosts that drained them of their blood.
I scooted around the murder scene, and the ghosts followed.
“I don’t have any blood in me,” I said to the spirits. “It’s just black sludge. You won’t like it.”
Something slashed my arm with razors claws, tearing into my flesh.
I moved faster, and more claws slashed at my face and arms. Teeth bit into my legs. Oswald, I saw, wasn’t following me. He stood with his back to me looking up the embankment. Screw him.
The wraiths screeched and moaned. Figures swirled before my eyes, haunted faces with bloody teeth.
I punched and kicked, but I couldn’t connect with anything. Incorporeal bastards. Then invisible hands grabbed me and pulled me away. I went up the embankment.
I stood, facing Harbinger. The tall, robed figure stood atop one of the only upright headstones in the graveyards. He held the severed head of Werewolf Hitler. It was still alive. His Charlie Chaplin mustache twitched as he bared his wet fangs. Blood dripped from the bottom of his throat.
Oswald was there, too. He stood next to me. His eyes were two big O’s as he stared at Harbinger.
“What’s wrong with you, dunzy?” I shook him, but he didn’t respond.
The fog lifted and I could see hundreds, maybe thousands, of cultists gathered behind Harbinger.
“You have something of mine,” he said, in a voice as old as stone and just as hard.
I wanted to say something smart, but I only managed: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Harbinger had a face. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. But for the life of me I couldn’t describe it. He looked like everyone and no one.
He threw Werewolf Hitler’s head toward me. It rolled and stopped at my feet. The Shaggy Fuhrer opened and closed his mouth.
“You have wasted enough time,” Harbinger said, and reached out an arm that kept growing. I didn’t try to stop him. I couldn’t. I was helpless. I just stared at his face trying to make sense of it as he reached into my inner pocket and removed the Necronomicon.
“You cannot join us, zombie,” Harbinger said. “You walk in darkness with the soulless. He may join us.” He pointed at Oswald. Oswald twitched.
“You can have him,” I said. “He’s no friend of mine.”
Oswald twitched again. This time more violently.
A flash of light blinded me – and the next moment I was in the air, high above the Wood.
“I thought you were under Harbinger’s thrall,” I said to Oswald, who held me by one hand as he floated away from the graveyard.
“I was but I fought it and snapped out of it. Sometimes you can fight an urge, you know.”
Oswald landed on 45th Street and 9th Ave. No one was on the streets. ShadowShade was a ghost town, figuratively speaking. They were either with Harbinger or hiding in a hole somewhere.
“I didn’t need your help,” I said.
“And I don’t need your help. I’m going to fix this myself. I opened the portal and I’m going to fix this. Without you.”
I didn’t know what to say to the pipsqueak, so I lit a Lucky Dragon. Then: “So what about all this talk of us getting closer?”
“Not going to happen. You can see that yourself. You can’t do it. And we don’t have time to wait. I can do things you can’t. Besides, I’m no friend of yours.”
“Go ahead and take my soul. It’s not like I need it. Good luck with it.”
“I tried, Jack. You had plenty of opportunities to make things right. Now it’s too late.”
“Okay, Oswald. You go save the universe. I’m gonna have a drink if any bar is open.
“Same ol’ Jack,” Oswald said, and flew off to be a hero.
35
Oswald’s Journal
I love to fly. I never got a chance when Jack was around. Being so short and low to the ground, it’s liberating to be among the stars. I feel powerful. I never felt powerful with Jack. Only small and weak and pathetic.
As I flew off, to Lucifer knew where, I felt like a new man. I felt like a man. It was a new beginning. Without Jack. And I would fly all I wanted now.
36
Welcome to the Doom Crew
I wandered around the city for a few blocks. Cars and buses and trucks sat in the middle of the streets. Some store windows had been smashed in. The only people I saw were looters, scurrying out of stores with armloads of stolen goods.
On the corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, I found an open bar. An ancient goblin with crossed eyes stood behind the bar. An even more ancient troll with a red-veined nose drank a gin and tonic, and a typical moleman sipped a bright orange drink for a little straw.
Thank Lucifer. Some things hadn’t changed. It was good to know not everyone was a cultist.
“Give me a triple Devil Boy,” I said, as I sat between the troll and moleman. The bartender nodded and grabbed a bottle.
“How is it out there?” the troll asked. “Did the world end yet?”
“It’s still hanging on.”
The bartender slammed the bottle in front of me. “On the house,” he said.
“Thanks. Do you have a radio?” I asked
“It went dead about an hour ago,” the bartender said. “The last thing we heard was the newsman shouting about an infestation of black crabs and that all these people were flooding into the Wood of Shadows. The newsman was talking about the end of days, but then the broadcast went out and never came back. I figured that was the end of him.” The bartender laughed a weaselly laugh.
I picked up the Devil Boy. The bartender didn’t bother giving me a glass, and I didn’t feel like asking for one.
“No better place to wait out the end of the world,” I said. “To the Doom Crew.” I titled the bottle into my dryer-than-usual mouth, gulped down half the bottle and savored the sweet fire as it went down my throat and into my belly. It felt good.
The troll and moleman held up their glasses and imbibed with me.
“ShadowShade can burn for all I care,” the troll said. “I preferred the Other World. I used to get off on seeing the fear in the humans’ eyes when they’d come under my bridge, and then beg for their lives. Who’s afraid of a troll in Pandemonium?”
“You’d think things would be better for a moleman here, since we don’t have to hide,” the moleman said, “but that’s what we prefer to do. Hide underground, stay in the shadows, be anonymous. But not here. No. Everything’s out in the open. It blows.”
“How about you, zombie?” the barman asked. “How have things been worse for you in Pandemonium?”
I had to think about that. I didn’t have to put up with Oswald in the Other World. That was a plus. But then again, I was a voracious zombie who ate Lucifer knew how many people in the Other World. Then again, I didn’t care about eating people. Not in the Other World.
“I grew a conscience.”
The three other members of the Doom Crew looked at me strangely.
“So, no more ‘all you can eat’ at the human buffet?” the barman said.
I nodded. “Guilt is not a hungry zombie’s friend.”
My homunculus pal infected me with guilt and anguish when he attached himself to me.
“So, you became more human,” the troll said.
That struck me as odd. No one had accused me of being human. I didn’t feel human. More like a monster.
“Humans are full of emotions,” the troll said. “That’s what makes them weak. They’d be caring right now if they’re world was about to end. Not us.” The troll took another gulp of his gin and tonic.
“I bet they ain’t too happy in Witch End,” the moleman said and laughed.
The troll finished his drink and slammed the glass on the bar. “Three Devil Boy specials,” he said.
“You got it, Triptrap.”
The bartender immediately slammed three shot glasses before each of us and one for himself, grabbed a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of Devil Boy in the other. He poured equal parts into the shot glasses.
“To Armageddon!” he said. But before we could get the glasses to our lips, the liquor bottles behind the bar shook and clattered together. The ground rumbled. The floor felt like it was made of rubber. Then bottles were falling and exploding on the floor. The chandeliers swayed. Why was there a chandelier in a bar? The troll fell off his chair. I headed to the front door, but the bar swayed like a ship in bad waters. I had to grab onto the tables and chair to keep from going down. I reached for the door handle and nearly went flying when I yanked it open. The outside light hit me like a fist. Windows were bursting. A fire hydrant down the block was geysering. I stood on the sidewalk, my arms held out to steady myself. A ghostly blue beam of light shot up from far away to the northeast.
“That’s coming from the Bone Tower,” the troll said. He had just exited the bar. The Bone Tower sat in the northwestern corner of Monster Island.
Another beam shot up from Witch End. I had no doubt it came from the vortex.
The shaking stopped.
“The second portal is open,” I said. “It’s over. They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” the moleman asked.
“The Old Gods. The Elder Ones. Bad shit. Once the third portal is open, they’re going to flood into the Five Cities.”
“How do you know this?” Triptrap said.
“I was trying to stop it from happening.”
“Doesn’t look like you did a good job,” the moleman said.
“We were up against powerful beings,” I said.
“What happened to the others? They get eaten?”
“My partner abandoned me and took off. He thinks he can beat them alone.”
“Sounds like a piece of shit, your partner,” the barman said. “Let’s go back inside. We still have some bourbon left. I want to be blackout drunk when these old guys show up.”
The word “partner” smacked me in the face when the barman said it. I had just referred to Oswald as ‘my partner,’ didn’t I? We had made a deal before he covered the Pandemonium Device with his body and absorbed the explosion when Zara destroyed it with her hammer. He would be a partner in the agency and get his name on the office door. I never did get around to that. He never brought it up again. Well, he was in a long coma and I had forgotten about it. Lucifer, it was a long coma. I carried him around for months. You didn’t abandon Oswald then. A stupid voice said in my head. It sounded like Oswald.
The troll and moleman returned to the bar.
“Are you coming?” the bartender said.
The two blue beams of light pulsed. I looked uptown toward Lucifer Tower. I couldn’t see the tower from here, but there wasn’t a light coming from it like the other two. There was still time. Herb had said they needed to wake up Cthulhu and then the third gate would open. In between are a bunch of rituals and sacrifices. It’s a whole thing that could go on for hours.
“There’s time,” I said.
“Time for what? To drink. I’ll meet you inside.”
“Wait.” I grabbed him by the arm. “Do you have any Black Powder?”
“I don’t but Gus was talking about it before all this craziness started.”
“Gus?”
“The moleman.”
I shambled into the bar. The moleman was lying on his back on top of the bar as the troll poured various liquors into his open mouth.
“Gus, do you have Black Powder?”
He swallowed a stream of Devil Boy, coughed, and said, “Yeah, they were giving the stuff away. Can you believe that?”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure, if you really want to get wasted.”
Gus the moleman sat up, patted his pockets, and came up with a baggie.”
He handed it to me.
“I need to get to R’lyeh,” I said.
“Never heard of it.”
“You have to dream yourself there with this stuff. That’s where this whole thing is going down. Maybe I can help Oswald, my partner, but I’m not sure how it works. Do I just take this stuff, go to sleep, and wake up there?”
“Sounds like magic to me,” Triptrap said. “There’s probably a magical phrase you need to recite. Magic is about intention. When I used to hide under bridges and didn’t want people to see me, I’d repeat to myself, ‘Make them blind, their eyes bind.’ That did the trick.”
“Where can I take a nap?”
The bartender led us to a storage room filled with crates and barrels and old broken cash registers. It also doubled as his bedroom, apparently. In the middle of the room sat a filthy, sweat-stained mattress, a flattened pillow, and a balled-up blanket.
“You sleep here?” I asked, probably with too much disgust in my voice.
The bartender answered back with a defiant “Yeah, what’s it to ya?”
“Any of you fellas want to come along?” I asked. “See this R’lyeh?”
“I’ll pass,” Gus said. “Sounds above my pay grade.”
“I’ll go,” Triptrap said. “I could use a vacation.”
“How about you?” I looked at the bartender.
“Nah. I gotta look after this place. Someone has to serve the poor unfortunate victims of the Armageddon.”
“Do you want the mattress?” I asked Triptrap, hoping he’d take the offer. The mattress looked infested.
“I sleep standing up. It’s an old troll trick.”
I sat on the mattress, Triptrap stood between two columns of crates, and Gus and the bartender remained in the doorway.
“You two are just gonna stand there?” I said.
“I’ve never seen anyone take Black Powder before,” Gus said.
“Me neither,” the bartender added.
I opened the baggie of Black Powder. Right off I could tell this was the real deal. The powder was fine and twinkled in the light.
“Here,” I said to Triptrap, “open your hands.”
The troll held out his palms and I dumped half the contents into them, about half a gram. “I know it’s a lot,” I said, “but we don’t have much time.”
Triptrap nodded.
“Get ready to go to La La Land,” I said, held the baggie up to my nose, and inhaled the entire thing. Triptrap did the same. It wasn’t like the smooth fire of fairy dust. The Black Powder burnt like cordite in my nose and filled my head with smoke. I felt flush. My head heavy.
I leaned back and lowered myself onto the mattress, the springs poking me in the back.
“Wait,” Gus said. “You forget your magic word.”
“Right,” Triptrap said.
I closed my eyes, and let my mind wander. I thought of the Necronomicon. I had opened the book. I tried not to read the damn thing—I really did—but one phrase kept coming up and I couldn’t get it out of my head: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. It was the same phrase that looney wrote on the walls at the Home for the Cosmically Insane. It had to mean something important.
I could see the words scrolling across my closed eyelids, each letter framed in bright neon. I didn’t know how to pronounce the words, but I gave it my best.
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,” I whispered.
And softly, dreamily, I heard Triptrap repeat the phrase just as I spoke it. I felt myself drifting away, getting heavier, sinking into the mattress. Then I heard someone say, from far off: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
I kept repeating: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. The words getting fainter and fainter. I wasn’t sure if I was still saying the words or if it was only in my head. The last thing I heard was Gus saying, “They’re fading away...”
Then I drifted away just like the time Oswald flew me over the Wood. Weightless. Into the void.
37
In His House at R'lyeh
Darkness still.
Was I dreaming?
I was aware but couldn’t tell if I was standing or lying. I didn’t know if my eyes were open or closed. I tried to speak. Hello! But it was only a faint echo that got swallowed by the darkness.
I tried to lift my head, but it was too heavy, too cumbersome.
What if I couldn’t wake up? What if taking Black Powder just put you in an eternal sleep? It didn’t matter. It was the only chance I had.
I looked into the darkness and sensed something approaching, something blacker than the darkness. A shadow within the shadows. I opened my mouth to scream. My heart—I had a heart?—pulsed. The muscle strong and anxious now.
The shadow got closer. It was upon me. I tried to scream again, straining my throat, but nothing came out. Then the shadow overtook me—and the scream exploded from my lungs. I heard it echo in the darkness—and that’s when I woke up. The scream from my nightmare echoing in my head.
I stood in a city of shadows. Enormous structures rose up on either side of me, their tops lost in the black sky. Dead stars, gray unblinking dots stared down at me.
Were these the stars the crazies were talking about? The ones that were supposedly “right”? They didn’t look right to me. No. They looked very, very wrong.
As I moved, the angles of the structures changed. Now they crowded in on me. Now they sloped away. There were no windows or doors. The city felt alien and dirty, the same way the Necronomicon felt when I held it.
