Twice Upon an Apocalypse- Lovecraftian Fairy Tales, page 10
“What are you talking about?” It was a rhetorical question; I just couldn’t believe she was serious.
“I’ve learned all the chants and invocations of the ritual. I’m summoning Father Dagon. I know he’ll grant my request. We’ve served the Temple and the First Race faithfully and well. We’ve sacrificed everything for them.”
I ran down the steps and over to where she stood, grabbing her by the shoulders. She was too proud to back away or try to shake my hands off. “Luella, you can’t. You don’t dare be so presumptuous.”
“You whimpering coward! We’ve earned this. You’re such a boot-licker, you wouldn’t have asked for anything if I hadn’t kept after you. We’d still be scavenging the beach for scraps in Hingham!”
“I can’t let you do this, Luella. I’m your husband. I’m obligated to stop you for your own good . . . ”
She laughed. “You’ll stop me? How? The words are in my mind, Henry. I can perform the ritual anywhere.”
I let go of her. She was right; unless I drugged her or murdered her myself, I couldn’t stop her. “This is too much, Luella. You can’t keep on pressing your luck like this. Of all the humans on earth, we have the least reason for complaint. Things will never go back to the way they were. It’s foolish to keep wishing for more.”
“Don’t you want to be as powerful as they are, Henry? Don’t you want to be immortal?” She watched my face as I struggled unsuccessfully for a reply then said with contempt, “Oh, that’s right. You’ve already got that honor, haven’t you?”
I turned away and walked toward the arched doorway into the reception hall although my appetite was gone.
She was right about one thing: I was a coward. I couldn’t stay with her when she prepared to perform the ritual at midnight. The full moon hung low in the sky, its leprous yellow light seeping through clouds like rotted veils. The sea beneath it was black and featureless, its surface seeming oily and unclean. I sat outside the partly open doors to the reception room, staring down at my hands. My fingers were getting thicker. It was harder to clasp them together. I shuddered when I heard Luella’s voice speaking the inhuman words, imitating the squeals and gurgles of their arcane syllables—Iä! Iä! Cthulhu ftagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtaga . . . how could she pronounce them so perfectly? She had always been a good singer and clever with languages, but . . . the air was becoming so humid, it was hard to breathe. Drops of water were condensing on the walls and running in short little rivulets. There was a tangible stench, like a storm-battered beach covered with dead fish and seaweed under a blistering hot sun. Strange how those smells were bothering me less than they used to.
For all that, I still covered my head with my hands, hunching down, when I heard his voice. I’d heard it before, in the Temple, but this was different. It was as though the thunderous roar of a tidal wave had been shaped into speech. Was Luella really standing upright before him? I couldn’t bear to look. I heard Luella’s voice speaking, at first defiant then frightened. I heard his response, first in their language then in English—
“So. You would be as a god, human?”
I could tell from the sounds there were at least a dozen of them, and Luella screamed but once. After that, there was only the hideous sound of tearing flesh, and bones ground between teeth of metal and stone, that went on and on. I blocked my ears, but I could no longer close my eyes easily, and I saw the single line of blood that trickled out the door into the foyer, moving this way and that like a blind worm feeling its way across the floor. But it ended finally, and at last, I knew I was alone on the first floor of the great house.
I wiped tears off my cheeks; the way things were progressing, they were likely the last tears I’d ever shed. Poor Luella. But maybe it was just as well. I sighed, finally. It hadn’t been much of a marriage anyway.
THE LITTLE MATCH MI-GO
Michael Kamp
Based on The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson
The world is dead.
Humanity is dust, snuffed out by the arrival of the Old Ones and frozen solid on the plains of old Terra. The star spawn has risen and hurled Earth from its orbit into the deepest, darkest regions of space, where Mankind has perished in grueling, suffocating anguish, cleansing the universe of their foul presence.
Little did Professor Eckhart suspect his actions would have such vast consequences when he unwittingly released the Old Ones from their captivity, following his experiments with ancient texts and a certain unholy artifact from before the dawn of Man.
A life of study and gathering information led him to first acquiring and then understanding how to activate said artifact, but nothing could have prepared him for the dying hours of humanity. It was glorious in all its horrifying splendor, choking the infection of life from the sacred surface of the planet while the star spawn resumed their rightful place at the top of creation.
The suffering of billions of souls marked the birth pangs of the new order and initiated a time of prosperity. No longer would the seed of apes soil the world with their presence or defecate on the order of things with their self-proclaimed place at the center of creation.
Everything was dark now.
No sun, no moon, no skies to blot out the pitch-black emptiness of space through which the little frozen speck of a planet had been hurled.
It was heaven.
Not for the little Mi-Go.
While the rest of its brethren had returned to Yuggoth, it alone had been left behind on the icy surface of the newborn world. A new era had dawned, but there was to be no rest for this little one.
Find Ghatanothoa, they said. Bring the light to Ghatanothoa, and let the prison crumble.
Hideous Ghatanothoa trapped beneath Mount Yaddith-Gho in sunken Mu. Free him, and set him loose on the universe.
Poor little Mi-Go.
Stranded on a world frozen solid with no markings left intact, it could not locate fabled Mu. Flittering hither and dither, it searched the peaks and depths of the dead planet, looking for the gargantuan entity, but all in vain.
Too much had changed for little Mi-Go to figure out, and no help was forthcoming from its brethren.
To return empty-handed would mean death, so the little Mi-Go fought to keep its antennae from freezing solid and beat its wings ever faster to prevent them from icing over.
So cold.
So lonely and cold here now that life had gone.
The little Mi-Go dashed through crumbling cities, circling the skeleton skyscrapers and downtrodden ruins, looking for any landmark it would recognize. Often, it had to hide when a rogue Moon-beast approached or the huge Dholes wormed their way across the landscapes. A few times, the titanic shape of an Old One moved across the continents, and the Mi-Go trembled along with the world.
Mu was nowhere in sight.
Exhausted, the little Mi-Go landed atop a pile of frozen dead. The mound of Man-corpses began to shift, and Mi-Go almost lost its balance.
Tall ruins surrounded the plaza, and the Mi-Go fluttered its wings in despair. How would it ever find the entombed Ghatanothoa amongst all this snow and ice?
It broke off the head of a nearby corpse and brought it up toward its antennae. Had this ape-seed known the location of fabled Mu? Could it be snatched from the ape-seed’s brain?
The little Mi-Go opened up the head in excitement, but the joy was short-lived. The brain had been destroyed, broken beyond any hope of getting information.
It despaired and threw the useless hunk of meat and bone against a broken wall, shattering it into a red-grey mist.
It picked up a smaller specimen of ape-seed and opened it up, but it was the same. They were all the same—as useless in death as they were in life.
Bringing forth the artifact it had been given, the antennae moved nervously. It was only to be used for freeing Ghatanothoa, but if the little Mi-Go perished, who would search the dead world?
The artifact felt warm to the touch. A raging star caught within a fragment of another universe to be released by the touching of spheres. So much heat.
An alien nebula filled the black heaven as Terra tumbled through the void, and carbon dioxide fell like snow upon the mangled ruins. The antennae of the little Mi-Go sagged. It was so far from home and had so much to search. Too much for a little Mi-Go.
If only it could unleash the raging star—just for a little while. Just to chase away the cold and ice so it could resume the search.
It was strictly forbidden. Non-existence would be the punishment were any other Mi-Go to find out. But they were far away.
The Mi-Go paused a while, spreading out its antennae to search for any sign of intrusion. Then, it triggered the artifact.
A blinding light shone forth, and the violent fury of a star unleashed engulfed the plaza. A huge bubble of gas rose toward the heavens, oxygen and carbon dioxide freed once more, while the ruins were baked and shook like leaves in a storm. Even protected by the artifact, the little Mi-Go cringed back, drawing in its antennae lest they be singed in the blazing heat.
The mountain of dead rolled and heaved like the sea in a gale. Flesh boiled away from bone, spraying everywhere, before bones darkened and turned to ash in the blink of an eye.
The little Mi-Go sank into the broiling mass of Man-flesh, beating its wings desperately to escape and navigate the scorching air.
It was so pretty.
A sea of burning corpses amidst the glowing ruins of obscene buildings. The little Mi-Go felt moved through space and time to a happier place. A time of conquest and joy—a time of stealing the brains of ape-seeds and sending them into the depths of space, hunting the humans through the dark corners of their soiled planet.
Oh, to once more submerge the antennae in hot, steamy brain matter and slurp the raw, full taste of terror from the primitive beings.
And then it was gone.
The light disappeared, and darkness once more swallowed the plaza although the surrounding ruins glowed bright. The huge bubble of heat began to collapse at once, re-freezing both the vaporized meat and the atmosphere, which combined to an organic sludge falling on the plaza and Mi-Go.
The little Mi-Go waved its antennae around in an attempt to take in the last remnants of heat before it radiated out into the cold nothingness of space. The bone-ash covering the ground froze solid once more, and the little Mi-Go shifted its footing to not get caught.
Then it was off once more, leaving the sad, dark plaza to search for elusive Mu.
It flew across solid oceans, passing over wrecked warships and giant trading vessels, always reaching out with its mind—probing the depths for any sign of the hideous entity.
Suddenly, it picked up something—something huge and abnormal—and it flew with all the speed a little Mi-Go could muster toward the anomaly. There—in the middle of the ocean surrounded by nothing but ice, a structure rose toward the stars.
The little Mi-Go waved its antennae in joy and paced itself even harder.
Then, everything turned upside down. Space would not fit inside the alien city and became folded in strange ways. The little Mi-Go was too exhausted to realize the danger until it was almost on top of the bastard buildings.
This was not fabled Mu rising once more. This was not the prison of Ghatanothoa. It was the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh!
The little Mi-Go fled, darting across the icy plains of the ocean in a frantic attempt to escape before the atrocity within took any notice. Would that blasphemous horror even perceive a creature as small as the little Mi-Go? It had no intention of ever finding out.
Black, smoky tentacles stretched from accursed R’lyeh across the heavens toward the little Mi-Go, but it was too minute to warrant more than passing interest, and they were soon retracted. The timeless evil had no use or plan for a creature such as the Mi-Go.
Once more, it chased across the dark, ice-covered world, searching for sunken Mu. It searched the slopes of mountains, the vast corpse-fields of cities and the deep, secret caverns of the world.
Nothing.
Nothing but nightmares and abominable things from beyond the stars. Not what it was searching for.
In the middle of yet another frozen ocean, the little Mi-Go could fly no more. It landed without grace or dignity, its cold, slimy body sprawled across the ice as it caressed the artifact and clicked its claws in sorrow.
It could not go on. There was no hope.
Only one more time. Only a little bit of heat to keep the cold at bay. Just this once.
Antennae rose toward the stars, searching in vain for a glimpse of familiar suns, but this was an unknown part of vast space.
It clutched the artifact in frozen feelers and tried to lift one iced-over wing.
Then, it released the inferno once more.
An enormous amount of ice vaporized instantly, creating a geyser of steam that shot many miles into the air and carving out a gigantic bowl in the frozen sea. Battered by steam on all sides, the Mi-Go plunged down into the cavity, not daring to fly right away. The conflagration followed, and the bowl became a shaft.
For many miles, the Mi-Go plunged through the vaporized ice until finally it impacted on the seafloor, fluttering its wings just in time to avoid a terminal impact. A shroud of roaring flame followed, and for an instant, it was blind. The shaft grew to a cavern, and the heat baked the seafloor solid beneath the claws of the little Mi-Go.
It raised its antennae and took in its surroundings. A dome of ice kept growing, and wonderful heat still poured forth. It noticed huge, dark shapes in the ice that soon revealed themselves to be whales, now cooking and burning as they emerged from the frozen tomb only to melt away and join the water vapor in a new journey toward the black sky.
The little Mi-Go was reminded of foggy Yuggoth, where they all danced at the rim of the great crater, calling upon Shub-Niggurath.
It could almost see them now. Thousands of Mi-Go buzzing around, dancing and celebrating, calling forth the Darkness From Beyond.
Oh, to behold the splendor of Yuggoth once more instead of this forsaken shell. To once more fly free and dance and celebrate the coming end of everything, hunting the spawn of the outworlders and offer them up as a prize.
And then the artifact went dark once more.
The visions of Yuggoth disappeared, and freezing emptiness returned.
All alone, imprisoned by the dome of frost, the little Mi-Go could face the cold no more. If death would be the price of failure, then so be it. The artifact could not be used too often. It would destabilize the captured star, and strong wards were in place to secure the confinement.
Desperate, the little Mi-Go held the artifact up toward the shaft above, trying to catch the glint of a star in its dark surface, but it was too deep beneath the surface. The frigid cold seeped into the cavern, cooling the Mi-Go and putting a glazing of frost on anything still moist from the steam.
Then, it released the slave-star.
And when the visions faltered, it set it free once more. And again.
And again.
The gibbering beings orbiting the plummeting Earth would witness a small speck of light flaring up through a hole in the ocean.
Again and again it flickered, bringing a soft glow to the ice and sending up trails of steam as the planet spun madly through the darkest, most hostile regions of space. Mere sparks in the blackest of nights, fighting a lost cause, until finally, it went dark.
The world grew silent.
***
Many eons later, a stray Moon-beast stumbled upon the shaft in the ice and fell down.
On the bottom, it found a huge cavern, and in the middle, glazed over by frost and ice, lay the poor little Mi-Go. Its wings were frozen to the floor, its claws clutching the artifact and its frail antennae spread out forever—frozen solid as the body itself—still carrying the thought-image of distant Yuggoth. Still preserving the last glimpse of joy.
The poor little Mi-Go was dead.
Then eaten by a hungry Moon-beast.
FOLLOW THE YELLOW GLYPH ROAD
Scott T. Goudsward
Based on The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Dorothy groaned at the pain in her side and realized everything hurt. The sky seemed different. It wasn’t the same color it was before the storm. Pushing herself up, she looked around. The barn’s roof was on the ground, sans barn. The cornfields were gone along with everything else. She knocked on the doors of the storm cellar. It sounded dull and hollow. “Hello?” This can’t be good.
Dorothy brushed dirt off the door handle and pulled. It gave easily with a squeal of hinges. She peered into the doorway. There was no basement laden with food and water and survival gear. Just dirt. A tear rolled down her cheek, leaving a clean streak. Where was the house? The well? The corral? She scanned the flat, pock-marked landscape covered in grapefruit sized holes with scored edges and scrub weeds. Where was her family?
Blocking the oddly bright sun with a hand, she surveyed what remained. A soft buzzing filled her ears, but no matter where she turned, there was no visible source. She ran to the barn’s roof and scrambled up, tearing tiles and tar paper free. Using the battered weathervane for support, she checked around again. Not even a little height changed her view of the desolate countryside.
Clouds danced across a deep purple-veined sky. Darkness pooled in the depths behind them. She felt the presence of something. Something ancient and filled with rage lurked, waiting to pounce. A gust of wind assailed her, and Dorothy shrieked as she lost her grip and slid down the rooftop. The tiles dug into and ripped the overalls covering her legs.
Dorothy winced seeing her fingers damp with blood. Her legs throbbed with pain. She pushed herself up and groaned. Around her, the dust stirred in miniature eddies, spraying debris. Dorothy blocked her eyes again.
“I’d kill for some water.” Dorothy walked back to the bulkhead doors. The last time she remembered seeing her family, the storm was coming. Sirens were wailing across the countryside, screaming the tornado warning. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were hustling from the house, arms laden with food and bottled water. Dorothy dry swallowed thinking of a bottle straight from the fridge, sweating in the afternoon heat.
