Dead Jack and the Old Gods, page 8
“I’m an inpatient. I can come and go as I please.”
19
From The Daily Specter
Black Powder Puts Supernaturals Into Coma
By Janus Sweeney
Black Powder, the new drug sweeping the Five Cities, has a new side effect, according to multiple sources. It puts people into a perpetual sleep, and hundreds of good supernaturals have already succumbed to this fate.
Liza Gobble of The Broken Lands used Black Powder only once, according to her mother. She’s a straight-A student in her third year at Goblin Town High. Little Liza had gone to a grog party and on a dare taken Black Powder. Her friends had to carry her home, where she now comfortably rests in her bed. She’s been there for the past week, unable to awaken. Her dear mum feeds her barley soup every night.
The Mayor of ShadowShade, Ed Varkiss, has vowed to stop the Black Powder trade until it’s deemed as safe as fairy dust, but so far he’s been helpless in slowing the drug’s spread.
For the time being, he’s imploring supernaturals in the Five Cities not to use Black Powder. “If you must get loose, please take fairy dust or mummy dust, even a bottle of Devil Boy,” the Mayor says.
20
Oswald’s Journal
You might think I’m a bad person because I killed Alberic. (At least, I didn’t leave him in a bathtub in the Home for the Cosmically Insane.) But Jack thinks I’m a bad person if I misspell a word in one of my reports. As I remember the circumstances of Alberic’s death, I am feeling guilt and remorse. I don’t harbor any love for Alberic, but he is responsible for my life, as thorny as it is.
I remember now the first moment of my life. I didn’t have eyes then, but I could see. An old man, perhaps human, looked upon me. His ears were pointed and his eyes were yellow and had a peculiar almond shape. Not unlike a cat. I’d get used to this gaze as Alberic would often stare at me without expression while I stood inside my glass prison. Sometimes he’d scribble notes in a small leather-bound book. This time, he didn’t write in his book and I wasn’t behind glass. I lay upon a metal table, Alberic looking down at me. He poked me in the midsection with a pencil. I jerked and his catlike eyes grew. He poked me again, harder, and got the same result. He poked and prodded me in the arms and legs and head. He nodded each time. Slowly I sat up and then stood before my maker. He immediately threw a glass container over me. I didn’t pound on the glass. I didn’t try to escape. I just stood there. Like him, I was curious, but unlike him, I didn’t feel threatened. I was naïve on the day I was born.
In the ensuing days, Alberic would remove me from my glass enclosure and perform other tests. He would expose me to extreme heat and extreme cold. He would stretch my limb to the breaking point. He even cut small pieces off me with a scalpel. Then the next day, the flesh—perhaps that’s the wrong word—would always grow back.
He had a cat. A fat black cat with eyes like Alberic’s. She had a name. What was it? Yes, he called her Mabel. I distinctly remember him calling the cat Mabel, and one of my first clear thoughts was wondering if I had a name, too. But Alberic never gave me a name. To him, I was only a science project. He would stroke Mabel’s black fur as he wrote in his book with the other hand. During the day, Alberic was my tormentor. During the night, Mabel took his place. The feline would sit in front of my prison and watch me with hungry eyes. Sometimes she would scratch at the glass, her sharp claws screaming against the glass. One night Mabel batted at the container and nearly tipped it over. I feared that the glass would shatter, angering Alberic. I rushed toward the tipping glass, and somehow my arms stretched out like taffy and pushed it back. That’s when I discovered I had special abilities, and by then I was wise enough to hide them from Alberic.
21
Driving Mr. Looney Bin
“Where are you guys taking me?” Herb asked from the backseat of the Studebaker. “Are you guys going to kill me?”
“Why would we kill you?” I raced down Fifth Avenue. I didn’t know where I was going, probably back to the office. I just wanted to get as far away from the Home as possible.
“Oh, okay.” He sounded disappointed.
“So, about the Necro—” Herb let out a low cry. I forgot he didn’t like to hear that word. I tried again. “The book we were talking about. Can I ask you a few questions without your screws getting loose?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
“Look, I understand this is a sensitive issue for you, but it’s important we get some answers.”
“Just lock that book away, and forget about it. I’m not helping you guys, and I don’t want anything to do with it. If you’re not going to kill me, you can let me out.”
“If I promise to kill you, will you help us?”
“Jack!” Oswald yelled.
“Maybe,” Herbert said.
“Consider it done. I’ll snap your neck after I get some answers. What do you know about the book?”
“Why do you care about it?”
“Because someone who seems like bad news is looking for it, and I think if he gets his hands on it there’s going to be big trouble. I’m trying to find out how big.”
“Someone’s looking for it?” Herb’s voice shook.
“He came through a vortex in Witch End. The witches who were guarding it went loco after meeting him. He calls himself Harbinger.” Herb started slapping his head. “Have you heard of him?”
Herb only moaned. The witches said he had a face that wasn’t a face. A man who was not a man. A god who was not a god.”
“Are you fookin with me?” Herb said. I could hear the tears in his eyes.
“I wish we were.”
Herb was breathing heavily now. “The stars are right.”
“What did you say?”
“The stars are right.”
“That’s what the witches said, too. They said he plunged from his world to this world.”
Herb went into a dreamlike trance, saying, “When the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky.” Then he keened like a wounded animal. “Oh, oh, oh. Why did you let me out? Take me back. Take me back to the Home.”
“We can’t take you back. We need you, Herb.”
“Then let me out of the car.”
“Who are ‘they’?
“Stop the car!” He was hyperventilating bad, taking deep gulps of air. In between gulps, he shouted: “Stop the car!” Then he started banging on the back windows.
“I think we should stop,” Oswald said. “He’s no good in this state.”
I pulled over and Herb jumped out. He went to a brick wall and bashed his head against it.
“Cut that out,” I said, and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“We’re fooked.” Herb fell back against the brick wall and slid down until he was sitting on the ground. “I don’t believe it. Have you ever heard of Nyarlathotep?”
“No. Should I have heard of him?”
“Nyarlathotep. The Crawling Chaos. God of a Thousand Forms. Stalker Among the Stars. Black Pharaoh. Faceless God. Messenger of the Old Gods. Now he’s calling himself Harbinger.”
Herb looked up at the blood-red sky and the dead stars, black pinpricks. “I had hoped it would be eons from now. What a terrible time to be alive. If the stars are right, it’s all but over. Nyarlathotep is here to usher in Armageddon. He needs the book to awaken the almighty Cthulhu, the eternal dreamer, and when that happens say goodbye to Pandemonium and the rest of the known universe. When Cthulhu arises from the sea, the three portals will open—and guess who’s coming through?”
“Some bad shit?”
“Some real bad shit. The Old Gods.”
“The Obsidian Tower covered the first portal. I assume the Bone Tower and the Lucifer Tower are where the other portals are located.”
“Bingo.”
“Let’s get you back to the office. A few hits of Devil Boy and you'll be right as rain.”
“Do you have any fairy dust?” Herb asked. “I could use something a bit stronger.”
“We might just get along, kid.”
Herb softly sobbed all the way to the office. I felt bad for the looney. He was clearly running away from the Necronomicon and now he sat only a few inches away from it.
When we got to the office, I set him up with a couple of Devil Boy shots. I didn’t think he’d be any good after some dust, so I tried to delay that as long as possible.
“How did you get mixed up with the book?” I asked after I threw back a shot.
Herb sat across from my desk. Oswald sat on the couch, writing in his diary. Get it all out, Oz. Cross all those T’s and dot all those I’s.
“A friend of mine had heard of it and he knew I worked at a bookstore. Mort had it right out in the open. He had no idea what it was. Neither did I, for that matter. My friend and I would read it in Mort’s shop. We never took it out of the store. We were too scared. At first it didn’t make sense. It seemed to be gibberish, but over time it did make sense. At least we think it did. Then the bad dreams started. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I began to see the gods while I was awake. That’s when I went to the Home.”
“You said Harbinger needs the book to awaken Ka-choo-choo?”
“Once he has the book, he needs to gather thousands of cultists at R’lyeh, the sunken city. Then they perform a very long and tedious ritual.”
“Cultists? Why would people worship these gods? They sound like assholes.”
“They’re brainwashed. Cthulhu comes to them in dreams. He calls to us. He gets in your head and never leaves. After a while you don’t have much of a choice. In the end, you either go insane or worship Cthulhu. Or both.”
I saw Oswald get tense. He stopped writing in his little diary.
“Where’s R’lyeh?” I asked.
“It’s here but on another plane.”
“How do they get there?”
“Through your dreams.”
“How do we kill these Old Gods?”
“I don’t think you can. They’re eternal. They were around before the universe began.”
“But there must be a way to stop them? How did they get trapped in another dimension?”
“From what I could gather there was a war between the Old Gods and new gods. Interdimensional beings known as seraphim beat them and banished them to another dimension.”
“Interdimensional beings, huh? I’ve run into a few in my time. If they beat them once, maybe they can do it again. I think we’re going to pay Dana the Leprechaun Queen a visit in the morning.”
“Didn’t you say you had fairy dust?”
I opened my lower desk drawer. “Just a tiny snort, though, kid. We’re still on the clock.”
22
Oswald’s Journal
The dreams are torture. Every night, dread fills my soul.
The dreams are no longer coherent or linear. No more mini horror movies in my mind. Now they’re montages of hideous images. Every night, I witness the slaughter and horrors of the Old Gods’ invasion, the terrible future that awaits if we don’t stop Harbinger.
Last night, the beasts feasted on Pandemonium’s young. Baby fairies roasted over fiery pits. Newborn ogres were cracked open like eggs and scrambled in huge pans. Werewolf cubs were impaled on thousand-foot claws.
And everywhere the sickly green moss and fungi and slime. The living ooze dripped from the buildings and throbbed in the streets, clung to the brick walls and concrete pillars.
The slime was as ubiquitous as the sense of dread. Around every corner there seemed to be a monster, a superior and infinitely evil intelligence, waiting to pounce.
I awake every morning screaming. Jack doesn’t seem to notice or care. I’ve stopped trying to tell him about my dreams. This journal was a good idea. At least I have somewhere to put them and sort out my thoughts. Sometimes I find myself leaving the book out in the hopes that Jack will read it, but he has never so much as glanced at it. He’s a stubborn fool sometimes.
23
Ladies’ Night at Finn MacCool’s
Dana the Leprechaun Queen hates me. Most leprechauns hate me. Most supernaturals hate me. But Dana may have a good reason. I killed several of her lackeys. Well, sort of. The first one was an accident. He tripped in a dark alleyway and cracked open his head. Fine Flanagan was practically dead when I began to eat his flesh. Absolutely beyond recovery. The other leprechaun was crushed by a fallen demon when the lep was in the process of killing me. But Dana doesn’t care how any of those deaths occurred. She still blames me.
It didn’t matter. Dana’s leprechauns had once caught Pandemonium’s resident interdimensional beings. So, if anyone knew how to find them, it was that redheaded queen.
Dana’s lair or headquarters or throne room or whatever she liked to call it sits underneath an Irish Town pub called Finn MacCool’s. Finn MacCool’s is full of rowdy drunken leprechauns who sing sad songs and get wasted on lager. I try not to go into leprechaun bars, but since leps are the biggest dealers of fairy dust, I often find myself inside them.
I debated whether I should bring along Herb, but I figured he could be of value. If nothing else, I could use him as a shield.
I opened the front door to Finn MacCool’s and the sour-piss smell of beer punched me in the face. It was a particularly rowdy night as a lep band played. Two fiddlers fiddled and a singer sang, while the other leps were kicking up their pointy shoes doing jigs.
The bouncer stopped us at the door.
“It ain’t ladies’ night,” said the lep with a spotty white beard. He flashed a nasty grin.
“I need to see Dana,” I said.
“Who’s tat? Don’t know any Dana.”
“Your queen. The woman who lives downstairs.” I stomped on the ground like I was doing a jig. “Maybe she can hear that.”
“We ain’t even got a downstairs. I’ll have ta ask ya three to leave.”
“Tell her it’s Dead Jack.”
The bouncer perked up at that. His rheumy eyes got a bit clearer. “Is tat so?”
“I’d like to talk to her about Fine Flanagan.”
“Wait here, ya zombie scumbag.”
The bouncer lumbered off to the bar. He whispered in the bartender’s ear. The barman looked over at us and nodded.
“Do you think it was wise to bring up Fine Flanagan?” Oswald asked.
“Wno’s Fine Flanagan?” Herb said.
“Just a dust dealer Jack ate.”
The bouncer came back with the bartender, a skinny lep who came up to the bouncer’s shoulder. The bartender spit in my face. The loogie hit me below my left eye and ran down my cheek.
“Flanny was the finest of men,” he said in a trembling voice. “He din’t deserve ta go out tat way, dinner for a fookin ghoul.”
I swiped the spit off my face with two fingers and flicked it on the ground.
“Sully, take ‘im to Dana,” the bouncer said. “And make sure ya go the long way.”
The little bartender took us to a door beside the bar. A sign in the middle of it read NO ADMITTANCE. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a key.
The door opened to a dark stairwell.
“After you three,” he said.
“There isn’t a banshee or James Cagney or some other Irish monster down there waiting for us, is there?” I asked.
“Go find out, ghoul.”
We took our chances. The bartender was the last through the door, and when he got on the other side, he used the same key to lock it.
I looked at him. “To keep the riff raff out,” he said as a way of an explanation.
The narrow stairwell twisted and twisted as we made our way down. Dim fairy lights guided us.
“How’d Fine taste?” The bartender’s voice boomed against the stone.
I knew I was taking a chance coming here. I could have handed them the revenge they’ve been wanting.
“Wanna find out?” I said. “I might have some of him stuck between my teeth. Come down here and give me a kiss.”
The bartender hurdled over Oswald and Herb, and pounced on me. We both went tumbling and spiraling down the stairs, all the way to the bottom, where I landed on my back, the bartender on top of me. I pushed him off me and stood. He got to his feet and immediately began throwing lefts and rights, his tiny infant fists barely registering. I palmed the little guy’s head and pushed him out of reach, his jabs missing me by a good six inches.
“Why don’t you let Dana mete out the punishments?” I said.
Exhausted, the lep stopped swinging. I let him go. And then he stomped my foot.
He trudged off toward a large wooden door studded with black nails. He pounded on it in da-da-DUN-DUN rhythm, and the door swung open to reveal a bright and opulent room.
The room was dark green, draped in red velvet and silks, hand-carved furniture and gold pots all over the place. Dana sat at the end, on a large throne of burnished wood. As far as I knew, Dana was the only female leprechaun in the Five Cities, and unlike the male leps, she was nearly average human height, about five-foot-two, taller than most of the males, who were usually no bigger than five-foot.
She also didn’t dress like the males. No pointy shoes for her or silly buckles. She wore tight black slacks and boots, an emerald green blouse. Long red hair cascaded over her small shoulders. Two leps in leather jerkins stood at attention beside her.
The bartender bowed before his queen. “The murderer Dead Jack wishes ta speak with you, M’lady.”
Dana looked me over with disinterest, and then gave me a wicked smile. “He does, does he? You’re dismissed. Go tend bar.”
The bartender shot me a dirty look and left the throne room. I stepped before the leprechaun queen, bowed, and said, “These are my associates, Oswald and Herb.”
