PYRATE CTHULHU - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (vol.2) Read online

  But no. Instead, Oxford remains a twisted fun house version of itself and the populace remains howling at the moon.

  Clyde—my spell-slinging partner in government-sponsored world saving—and I exchange a look. Clyde puts a finger to his ear.

  “Tabby,” he says to our handler back at MI37, “any chance you know what’s going on?”

  “Dimensional portal’s definitely closed,” Tabby says. “QED Nyarlathotep’s not as dead as he looks.

  Twenty or so of Nyarlathotep’s cultists are scattered around us waiting for the concussion to kick in. Except one of them starts to laugh.

  “You really thought just stabbing him would work?” He laughs harder.

  And to be honest I rather had. But I don’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing me admit it.

  “Oh pants,” says Clyde. “Great big bloomers. We can’t kill him outside of his home reality, can we?”

  Wait… Now we realize this?

  The cultist laughs harder still. “And you closed the portal.”

  So we can’t even get him. Oh bugger and balls.

  And then Clyde mutters a few words under his breath. And next to him time and space bend. Like a bubble rising through viscous liquid.

  “Ta-dah.” He indicates the reborn portal.

  The cultist stops laughing.

  It should be a satisfying moment, except-

  “Wait,” I say. “We seriously have to go into a dimension representing humanity’s collective fears and madness?”

  “Well,” Clyde says, “the travel brochure mentioned something about beaches.”

  I give him the finger because I’m not at my most eloquent in the face of certain death.

  “Also,” Tabitha adds, “top him, get back, and close the thing in thirty minutes or less. Otherwise permanent world buggering. OK?”

  Perfect. Just bloody perfect.

  “Tick tock.”

  I brace myself and step through.

  Another time. Another place.

  As it turns out, humanity is afraid of pretty weird stuff. At least that’s the only reason I can think of that a giant version of Snuggles the teddy bear is trying to kill me with a meat cleaver.

  We’re in something that looks like an airport terminal. Stepping through the portal put me six feet above the floor. With a feeling like slipping out of jello, I fell to the floor. And there was Snuggles. Six feet tall, eye buttons dangling on threadbare strings, a cleaver the size of my chest balanced in one hand.

  “Passport!” he giggles and takes another swing at my head. I duck. He buries the blade into a cement pillar. He tugs it free with an adorable chuckle. A stitch bursts in his arm at the effort. Stuffing spills loose.

  This is typically the point at which I cower and wait for Clyde to sling a spell that makes him seem more like a walking missile launcher than most people you meet. Except, when I look over, Clyde is sitting with his hands over his eyes, screaming.

  Seriously? This is Clyde’s personal hell? Really?

  Snuggles takes another swipe at my head. I duck, roll, come up behind him. Snuggles wrestles the cleaver out the floor. Another stitch pops while he giggles madly.

  And I am not particularly good at this whole fighting thing, but at times like this you do what you have to do.

  I kick at his loose arm. More stuffing spills. I kick again.

  Snuggles looks back at me, his cotton line drawn up in a smile. “Playtime is over,” he says as sweetly as can be. He heaves on the cleaver. I kick one last time.

  Another stitch pops. Snuggles heaves. The whole joint gives way. He staggers back uttering things no beloved children’s character should ever say, still laughing between the curses.

  At this point, opportunity and the cleaver are the same thing so I grab them both. I stagger under the massive weight. Snuggles’ detached arm still clings to the cleaver. I swing madly, spin round and round.

  And then the blade buries itself in Snuggles’ gut, and he chuckles one last time and lies still.

  I stand up sweating hard. And now would be a great time for me to snap Clyde out of it. Because I can see the Care Bears coming and they have machine guns.

  Case File #7:The I in Team

  Every time I fight unspeakable horrors from alternate realities, I am reminded of the value of teamwork. Say, for example, that I am forced into a dimension of fear and madness to act as the government-sponsored assassin of its avatar, Nyarlathotep, then back-up is about my favorite thing in the world.

  So now, forced into a dimension of fear and madness and acting as the government-sponsored assassin of its avatar, Nyarlathotep, it’s really not an awesome time for my partner to lose his shit.

  But Clyde Marcus Bradley, MI37 field agent, geek, cat-lover, and bloody wizard is lying on the ground whimpering, while I’m stuck with defending us from a reality gone awry.

  Untethered nightmares come at me. Balls of blades, steely and sharp; beings of arms and bone, scratching, clawing; creeping insectile horrors; nuns with switchblades; rats the size of terriers; tentacular masses, sticky, viscous, and clutching. I scavenge weapons, improvise barriers. I duck blades, catch punches, wrestle limbs. I am beaten, blackened, bruised. I come up with something in my teeth. I am an animal. I am pissing terrified.

  Space ripples and changes about us. Maybe we are traveling, some dream logic carrying us along like a current through rooms of living flesh, of bone, of chitin, rooms threatening to drown us, rooms I cannot bring myself to describe.

  I can feel it slipping in behind my eyes. After-images of travesties that clamber into my brain and breed. I lose track of what is real in a place where everything is unreal. And I need to pull back. I need to get him good and grounded. But there is no ground. There is just Clyde, just me. Circling. Falling. Falling again.

  I land. A plain. Some tundra. A dust cloud on the horizon. I pick myself up. And Clyde is still there, right next to me. And I know something big is coming. I just need to get to him, to get us both away. I start to run, but dream rules apply. My limbs do not obey me. Each step is a tottering nightmare of minimal increments.

  And the cloud. The cloud is fast, is impossible in its speed. Closing. Closing. And in the dust I get an impression of hooves, of horns, of teeth.

  “Clyde,” I yell. “Clyde!” I’m begging him. He has to help. I was never built to be the man alone.

  Finally I am at his side, I slap him, shake him. His head lolls. His eyes roll. “Come back to me,” I whisper. The cloud comes closer.

  He is not going to snap out of it. He is gone. I am alone.

  I gather him up in my arms. I stagger. Another step of glacial slowness. The cloud’s thunder shakes this world.

  And it would be so easy to slip away, to give in, to let the madness take me, to be consumed by this reality.

  But there is a home, a place to get back to, friends and family. And Kurt Russell movie marathons. And bacon.

  And screw this. Clyde and I are getting out of here with Nyarlathotep’s head on a bloody platter.

  I turn. I face the cloud. It’s almost on me now. Massive. Thundering.

  Just a cloud, I tell myself. Just dust and wind. I don’t know the rules of this place, but I know the rules of dreams. Of nightmares. And I pray that they apply.

  The cloud breaks over me. Just dust. Just wind. It scours my cheeks. Hoofbeats crash around me. Just echoes. Just the boom of the wind.

  And then peace. Then a breeze. I open my ways. The cloud has blown away. I still hold Clyde.

  Reality slips. I stand in a corridor full of doors. I can hear scampering about and above me. And I know I can hear the rats in the walls.

  I am still afraid. I would still favor flight over fight. But fight I will. Because I can face my fear. Because now, Nyarlathotep, you get bloody yours.

  Case File #8:Interrogation

  I never thought I’d say it, but once you get used to a dimension of fear and chaos, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it’s driven my partne
r, Clyde, insane, and yes, it does keep trying to kill me with more and more depraved horrors, but, well it could be worse.

  Take the field of flying knives I have to traverse. Blades whirl, shearing life from plants, small rodents, the odd offensive-looking rock. But a little concentration on my part, and I manifest a titanium steel umbrella and, with Clyde balanced on my shoulder, I cross the place in relatively safety.

  Nightmare logic.

  And when I reach a river of blood leeches—each creature a foot long, each with a spine-filled maw reaching for me—I just think hard and then I have wings. Clyde and I sail over them easy as blinking.

  Seriously, I’m like the Green bloody Lantern in this reality. It’s awesome.

  Really the only serious fly in the ointment is that if I don’t find its ruler, Nyarlathotep in the next fifteen minutes or so, all of regular reality is going to be permanently buggered. And I have no idea where I’m going.

  Fortunately I’ve always been more of a beta male, so stopping to ask for directions isn’t a serious dilemma. If only I could stop people trying to kill me long enough to ask.

  I finally strike gold in a castle that drips gore and is chock-full of tiny gremlin-like creatures armed with stilettos. An old-school suit of armor makes maneuvering difficult but renders their attempted stabbings utterly ineffective. After a few attempts I finally seize one around the midriff and heft it to eye height. It kicks and spits with its full eight inch frame. Really, if it wasn’t so full of bile it’d be quite adorable.

  “I’m looking for Nyarlathotep,” I inform it.

  It lunges for my eyes, hurling its blades at the grills in my armored mask. I flinch back and fling it away. Possibly a little too hard. It hits a wall and becomes an ugly stain.

  I keep the next one further from my face.

  “Which way to Nyarlathotep?”

  It suggests some awful things I should do to my mother.

  “I’m not a violent man,” I tell it, “but I can apparently crush you like an insect.”

  More profanities follow. Small he may be. Easily intimidated he is not.

  “Please?” I venture.

  Further obscenities. And then my jaw starts to tremble, because all of this abuse is delivered by a voice so high it’s barely in human hearing range. And then I laugh. It doesn’t feel at all appropriate as chunks of viscera rain down the castle walls, but I’m starting to become immune to the shock horror aspects of this place.

  As soon as the sound is out of me, the gremlin shrieks and does its best to claw its way out of my hand. I’m so shocked I stop laughing and stare at it. It recovers slowly. I chuckle. It slams its body backwards, wrestling an arm free to cover its ears.

  “Nyarlathotep now, or I bust a gut all over you,” I tell it. Not the most threatening thing I’ve ever said, but it has the desired effect. The thing grimaces and screeches, and jabbers, and around me the walls of reality flex and then-

  I stand (and Clyde whimpers) on a cliff overlooking a barren, dusty plain. Rising from the center, like red wax dripping toward the sky, is a many-spired citadel.

  “Nyarlathotep,” the gremlin gibbers at me. “Nyarlathotep!” Looks like the sort of place an extradimensional avatar of fear and chaos would call home. I nod my thanks to the gremlin and then throw it over the edge of the cliff.

  Seriously, the murderous bastard could have brought us a little closer.

  Case File #9:Citadel

  As citadels that are the embodiment of sheer terror go, Nyarlathotep’s is pretty imposing.

  I mean, to be fair, he benefits from having built it in a nightmare reality based on humanity’s collective fears where things like gravity and physics are apparently spongier than I’m used to, but still, he deserves points for effort. Blood colored spires, statues that actually scream, non-Euclidean angles — he went the whole nine yards.

  Still going to kill the bastard, of course.

  I lower Clyde, co-worker, friend, and currently dribblingly insane person off my shoulders. I check my watch. If time obeys the same rules here as back home I’ve got about twelve minutes to get this done. Time to take some shortcuts.

  Fortunately, the best thing about a nightmare reality is that nightmare rules apply. I concentrate, sprout wings, and take to the air.

  Hell yeah, I do.

  I sweep down over spires, twist between towers, work my way deeper and deeper into the heart of the complex. A vast central tower looms before me. I aim for a window near its peak, tuck in my wings, clutch Clyde tight to my chest—

  —and tentacles explode out of one wall and smash me into the tower.

  And, yes, that would probably be the worst thing about a nightmare reality: nightmare rules apply.

  I fall, scrabbling against the tower’s sheer surface. I try to clear my mind, to focus. My fingers elongate, develop suckers. I latch on. One arm spirals away, elastic and strong, wrapping around Clyde.

  I climb the wall. It ripples beneath me.

  I jump as the first spike erupts from the wall’s surface. I fall, but re-summon my wings. I seize Clyde. I climb. The spikes eject from the wall at speed. Jagged rain.

  My body is steel before they strike me. I shelter Clyde and they clatter away.

  And screw wings. I’m from the twenty-first century dammit.

  A moment is all it takes to get a jet engine strapped to my back. Going up.

  The tentacles lash out as I jet upwards, but I angle away, roasting them with afterburners. They blacken, curling and falling away. Take that you bastards.

  A window looms. I blast towards it, faster, faster. And I’m outstripping the citadel’s imagination. I’m outstripping its speed to respond. I’m bloody winning.

  Except the window’s frame twists even as I slam towards the glass, the edges stretching, stretching, until it resembles something worryingly close to a smile.

  Glass shatters. A wall looms. I collide. Blackness descends.

  Later

  How long was I out? How long do I have left? Is it too late for reality? I look for my watch, but everything is black.

  “Clyde?” I say. No reply.

  “Always late,” a voice says.

  I recognize that voice.

  “I’m very disappointed, Arthur.”

  It’s my mother’s voice.

  A spotlight flicks on, a white circle of light on the floor before me. I hear footsteps. My mother comes into the circle. She’s bleeding. A great gash across her neck. She collapses, reaches for me.

  “Jesus!” I dash forward, grab her hand. She’s trying to say something I can’t hear. I read her lips. “Arthur…” There’s something she’s desperate to convey, but she can’t…

  And then it hits me. Nightmare rules apply.

  And this is a cheap bloody ploy.

  Lights. I summon them. Banish the darkness. My mother’s body wilts in their brightness. Becomes mannequin parts falling apart beneath cheap clothes. An illusion dismissed.

  The brightness illuminates a throne room, rich wall hangings, a velvet carpet, a magnificent golden chair. No Clyde. I can’t see him. But there, standing before the chair, waiting for me–my target, my goal. Nyarlathotep is home.

  And seeing him there, all traces of confidence drain away. No, they are violently expunged from my body. Seeing him there, finally, I am truly afraid.

  Case File #10:Rematch

  Fear. It’s easy enough to be ruled by it. There are a lot of things to be afraid of these days. Terrorists. Bioweapons. New Lady Gaga songs.

  My personal issue with fear is a little more immediate, though. It is seven foot tall, wears red robes, and goes by the name of Nyarlathotep.

  And I’m in his citadel, in his dimension, and in this moment, I realize I probably should have brought my gun. My best friend, Clyde, is a government-paid magician, but he appears to have disappeared into madness.

  Crap.

  Up until now it hasn’t been too much of a problem. Until now, I’ve been able to take advantage of this
being a reality other than ours, and just summoned things by concentrating hard. Apparently now I’m in Nyarlathotep’s actual house, that’s not an option. Not that I don’t try it. I imagine swords, guns, knives, bombs, even Donkey Kong on the off chance I can catch him off guard.

  No go.

  Nyarlathotep steps towards me. He’s got no gun either, but that’s not really an issue for him.

  Visions overwhelm me. Rush up at me from the floor, swallow me.

  —drowning here, swallowed by surfaces suddenly turned liquid. I can feel them pressing in. Insects scuttering forward, enveloping me. In my mouth, my ears, my eyes. Peeling back my flesh. And beneath I am something other than expected. There is no flesh here, no blood and bone. Hollow glass veins. Crystalline tendons. A hammer descending, to shatter me, obliterate me. Fear building, building. My heart beating faster in my chest until I fear even that. Until it is enough to shatter my fragile body. Overwhelming me. Drowning me—

  It could go on and on. Forever. There is so much to fear. To run from. Through the vision I can see Nyarlathotep, hand outstretched, pacing slowly towards me. And I know then that all thoughts of killing him are madness. Because fear can never be killed. It will live forever, beat in my heart forever.

  But there, then, I know too, that all of that doesn’t mean fear can’t be overcome too.

  I squeeze shut my eyes as the visions press in, but I push back. I gather my breath. I open my eyes.

  Nyarlathotep is a step away. His fingers an inch from my throat. I have one hope. One trick this place has taught me. I brace myself. And I laugh.

  In his face, I laugh. As loud and hearty as I can make. Trying to avoid the hysteria overcoming me. I laugh, and I laugh, and I laugh.

  His hand strikes me and shatters like glass. Nyarlathotep stares at it, disbelieving. He comes on, his arm grinding against me, splintering, fracturing, spilling to the floor in glistening red shards. And then his whole being smashes against me. And he is only so much dust at my feet.