A Night in the Lonesome October (32 page)

    
"I stand with him," he said, "to close you out."

    
Vicar Roberts stared at him and licked his lips.

    
"I would think one of your sort more inclined to our view in this matter," the vicar stated.

    
"I like the world just the way it is," said the Count.
 
"Pray, let us begin."

    
The vicar nodded.

    
"We shall," he said, "to its proper conclusion, with the Gate thrown wide."

    
The Count tossed a twig and a small parcel into the flames.
 
The fire moved in its colorful dance, crackling and chiming, burning a hole in the night, through which the voices, now chanting, emerged.
 
Shadows constantly moved past us, over the altar, and across the face of the stone.
 
I heard the howl again, much nearer.

    
I looked at the vicar and saw him flinch.
 
But he straightened and performed an opening gesture.
 
He spoke a word of power, deeply, slowly.
 
It hung in the air and resonated afterwards.

    
The inscription on the stone began to glow a little more brightly, and now, very faintly, I could discern the formation of the door-like rectangle come to frame it, that configuration which earlier had sucked Graymalk and me through to our Dreamworld adventure.

    
The vicar repeated the word and the rectangle came clear.

    
Within the chanting, I could now hear faintly "Iä!
 
Shub-Niggurath!" being repeated, as if in response.
 
Ahead of me, Graymalk had risen to her feet and was standing very stiffly.

    
The vicar turned then, rather than proceeding to the next phase, and moved slowly to the cloth on which the sacrificial blade rested.
 
To his rear, I noted that the Alhazred Icon had also begun to glow.
 
He knelt and raised the blade with both hands, bringing it to his lips and kissing it.
 
Then he rose and turned toward the altar, Tekela still upon his shoulder.

    
And there came a movement from my right, beyond Jack and the Count.
 
Another dark shape was moving to join us.

    
The vicar had taken but a single step ahead when a great, gray wolf moved into the firelight and rushed past him toward the altar.
 
Larry Talbot had arrived, apparently in reasonable control of his faculties.

    
He seized hold of the girl's left shoulder with his teeth and dragged her down from the altar.
 
With that rapid backing motion I had seen him employ before, he dragged her quickly before us toward the north, whence he had come, to my right.

    
The report of a gunshot filled the air and Larry staggered, a dark blot appearing and spreading high upon his left shoulder.
 
The vicar held a smoking revolver, pointed in his direction.
 
Larry continued moving almost immediately, however, and the vicar fired again.

    
This time there was blood on the top of Larry's head, and he uttered a moaning sound as his jaws fell open and Lynette dropped to the ground.
 
Larry slumped forward then, and the shiftings of firelight and shadow swam over him.
 
The chanting continued...”Iä!
 
Shub-Niggurath!”...against the strange music.
 
The vicar pulled the trigger again.
 
There followed a clicking sound from the pistol, but no discharge.
 
Immediately, he drew it near and worked the hammer.
 
Suddenly, as he released it, there was a sharp report and the round kicked up dirt near the south end of the altar.
 
The vicar hurled the weapon to the ground, perhaps having cast only three rounds.
 
Homemade bullets. . . .

    
"Get her back onto the altar!" the vicar ordered.
 
Morris and MacCab immediately departed their positions and moved toward the supine girl.
 
Larry's sides were still heaving heavily, and his eyes were closed.
 
There was a lot more blood, on his head, neck, shoulder, now.

    
"Stop!" the Count said.
 
"Players are forbidden to move a sacrifice once the ceremony is in progress!"

    
The vicar stared at him.
 
Morris and MacCab halted, looked back and forth from the vicar to the Count.

    
"I never heard of such a restriction," the vicar said.

    
"It is a part of the tradition," Jack stated.
 
"There must always be a small, even if only symbolic, exit open to a sacrifice in this.
 
They may go as far as they can.
 
They may be stopped.
 
The place where they fall becomes the new altar.
 
Do otherwise and you destroy the pattern we have created.
 
The results could be disastrous."

    
The vicar pondered for a moment, then said, "I don't believe you.
 
You're outnumbered.
 
It's a closer's bluff, to make things more awkward for me.
 
Morris!
 
MacCab!
 
Put her back!"

    
The Count stepped forward as they advanced.

    
"In a case such as this," he said, "the opposing parties are permitted to resist the desecration."

    
I heard heavy, clumping footsteps in the distance, but they seemed to be passing the hill rather than approaching it.

    
Morris and MacCab had hesitated but then they moved forward, reaching for Lynette.

    
The Count flowed forward.
 
No single limb seemed to stir, but suddenly he was there beside them.
 
Then he raised his arms, out to the sides, his cloak dependent therefrom; and he moved them forward, completely engulfing the men within its folds.
 
He stood thus for only an instant, arms across his chest, before a succession of snapping sounds could be heard.

    
He opened his arms and they fell to the earth, to lie at odd angles, blood emerging from their ears, noses, and mouths.
 
Their eyes were wide.
 
They did not breathe.

    
"You dare?" the vicar cried.
 
"You dare to touch my people?"

    
The Count turned his head slowly, raising his arms again.

    
"You presume," he said, "to address me so."

    
He flowed toward the vicar, but much more slowly.
 
The music came clearer and clearer, the chanting louder, the inscription brighter.
 
And as he moved, I beheld a silent form in the shadows to my right, whose presence had first reached me in the form of his scent, which I recognized from an encounter in a wood by moonlight.
 
He approached soundlessly, the stranger wolf.

    
The vicar's hand snaked out from beneath his cloak, casting something toward the Count.
 
Immediately, the flowing ceased and the Count stiffened.
 
In the meantime, shielded from the vicar's view by the Count's body, the stranger wolf entered the firelight, took hold of Lynette's shoulder and continued what Larry had begun, dragging her back into the darkness.

    
The Count was suddenly less than graceful.
 
He swayed.
 
He took an awkward step toward the vicar, whose hand dipped beneath his own cloak to emerge and repeat whatever he had done.

    
"What, is it?" the Count asked, reeling toward the vicar, who retreated before him.

    
Then the Count fell.

    
"Dirt from one of your own caskets," the vicar replied, "mixed with pieces of my church's altar stone relic, left over from more papish times.
 
Fingerbone of St. Hilarian, according to the records.
 
You require your consecrated soil, but overconsecration is like the difference between a therapeutic and a debilitating dose of strychnine.
 
Do you not agree?"

    
The Count muttered a reply in a foreign language, as the wolf disappeared with Lynette; and I realized that, from all his talks with Larry, plus his knowledge of drugs, and the samples he had obtained, he had succeeded several days ago in developing his own ideal dosage, and I had just witnessed the Great Detective's greatest disguise yet.
 
I howled a "Well done!" into the night.
 
Later, a "Good luck!" came back to me.

    
The inscription glowed brilliantly now.
 
Whether the deaths of Morris and MacCab had contributed to this was hard to tell.
 
The vicar looked up and saw that Lynette was gone.
 
He glared at Jill.

    
"You should have told me," he said.

    
"I didn't notice till now," she replied.

    
"Neither did I," said Nightwind.

    
The vicar picked up the sacrificial knife which he had dropped, moved back to his position, and drove the blade into the ground at his feet.

    
He straightened then, repeated the word of power, and said another.
 
Immediately, his face became the snouted, tusked visage of a boar with a shredded ear.
 
This lasted for perhaps a minute before Larry's eyes opened.
 
He turned his head, saw that Lynette was gone, looked immediately to the altar, saw she was not there either.
 
He tried to rise, failed.
 
I wondered how serious his condition was.
 
True, there was a lot of blood, but head wounds are often that way.
 
Even a silver bullet still has to hit something major.
 
Larry tried to crawl forward, succeeded in moving perhaps half a foot, paused, and panted.

    
The vicar spoke another word.
 
Graymalk was suddenly striped like a small tiger.
 
This, too, passed quickly.
 
Tekela was starting to look like a vulture.
 
Suddenly, Jill was an ancient hag, bent far forward, hooked nose almost touching her jutting chin, strands of white hair hanging about her face.
 
I glanced at Jack and saw that he suddenly wore the shaggy head of a great brown bear, yellow eyes staring forward, saliva running from the corners of his mouth.
 
Looking downward, I saw that my fur was blood-red and moist; and I felt as if horns jutted from my brow.
 
I had no idea what I might resemble, but Graymalk drew back in alarm.
 
The boar spoke again, and the word rang like a bell in the chill air.
 
The Count was suddenly a skeleton wrapped in black.
 
Something unseen passed high overhead, laughing like a demented child.
 
Pale mushrooms sprang up all about us, and a shifting of breezes brought me sulfurous scents from the fire.
 
A green liquid flowed outward from that blaze, spreading in bubbling streams.
 
The chanting now seemed to contain all of our names.
 
MacCab had become a woman whose painted face began to peel off in long strips.
 
Beside him, Morris was now an ape, his long hairy arms reaching to the ground, and he leaned to rest upon his knuckles.
 
His mouth was opened wide, showing an enormous expanse of teeth and gums.
 
Larry was now a bleeding man sprawled upon the ground.
 
The air before us shimmered and became a mirror, giving this entire prospect back to us.
 
Then our reflected heads detached themselves and drifted leftwards.
 
It was a strange feeling, passing out of one and into another, for I seemed unmoved, though I felt the sudden weight of the bear-head, saw the hog's drift by to settle upon Jack's shoulders.
 
Graymalk suddenly wore an overlarge one, horned, demonic; Jill, a small striped cat's head, and so on along our crescent.
 
Then the bodies shifted to the right, and I was a cat with a bear's head, lying flat because of its weight, my heart thudding like a steam engine.
 
Jack had become a boar-headed demon.
 
Again, the laughter rang from overhead.
 
If I were not my body or my head, what was I, sprawled there amid the mushrooms and the stench, another wave of chanting rolling in my ears?
 
Illusion, it must all be illusion, mustn't it?
 
I never knew before and I still didn't know.
 
The mushrooms blackened, shriveled, and fell when the hot green flow reached them.
 
Our images in the mirror wavered, became splashes of our dominant colors, flowed together.
 
I looked downward again, but everything was hazy.
 
Upward then, at some half-noted change.
 
The moon had gone blood-red and was dripping upon us.
 
A shooting star cut past it.
 
Another.
 
Another.
 
Soon multitudes of them rained down the heavens.
 
The mirror cracked, and Jack and I stood alone at our end, our forms returned to us, as a great gust of wind out of the north blew away the haze.
 
The others came clear, also, restored, in their piece of reflection.
 
The starfall lessened.
 
The moon grew pink, then turned back to butter and ivory.
 
I sighed and held my place, felt Graymalk's gaze pass over me.
 
The green tendrils from the fire began to congeal, lavalike.
 
For a moment, I seemed to hear a collection of animal sounds from within the flames, baas, nickers, whinnies, whimpers, a sharp barking, several varieties of howling, the coughing of a giant cat, a croaking, a mewling cry.
 
There followed a stillness, save for the fire's own cracking and snapping.