CARNACKI: The New Adventures (4 page)

“It wasn’t Helen of Troy anyway, was it, Sippy? It was Bru
tus. Sippy’s a relative, donchaknow,” Bobbie went on. Carnacki looked at the young man, who shrugged helplessly.

“Family legend, what?” he said, jerking his chin at the sword on the ground. “Bit of olive in the mix, you know . . .”

Carnacki looked hard at St. Cyprian. He could easily have passed for Greek, or Italian, or Spanish. There was something of the old Roman emperors about him, a faint resemblance to the images on old coins that Carnacki had seen. He looked again at the sword: it was trembling on the floor. He could feel the vibration stretching up through his legs, like the tread of an approaching pachyderm. Dust sifted from the ceiling, and the sound of ancient stones grinding against one another filled the crypt from column to corner.

“Out you go,” Carnacki said, hefting his Webley meaningfully. Boko blanched and grabbed for
Florence. Bobbie opened her mouth as if to argue, and Carnacki fired a round into the floor. “Out, I said!”

Boko and
Florence hustled Bobbie towards the stairs. St. Cyprian didn’t move. The young man’s head was cocked, as if listening to something. “You as well, Mr. St. Cyprian,” Carnacki said.

“I—” St. Cyprian began, his eyes darting to the sword. “I can hear something.”

“That is almost certainly not good,” Carnacki said. He glanced towards the pentacle.

“I heard it before, when I was down here a few weeks ago,”
St. Cyprian said absently. “As if something were calling my name.”

“Definitely not good,” Carnacki said. He looked t
owards the stairs. St. Cyprian’s friends were already gone, having fled up the stairs. Carnacki grabbed the young man’s arm and hauled him tow the exit. “I need you out of here now!”

And then something
moved
. The floor trembled and squealed, as if jostled by an earthquake, and a vast, indistinct shape, composed of dust and shadows and stinking of the grime of forty centuries, was suddenly
there,
between eye-blinks. A shape that might have been a hand slammed flat across the door to the steps, blocking it. A bulbous mass thrust forward, and a thunderous cacophony vomited forth from a crevice that might have been a mouth. A second hand-shape stretched from the shadows, lumpen talons spread. Carnacki knew in that moment that the hand’s quarry was the young man whose arm he held. With a salty curse that would have made his old bo’sun proud, he jerked St. Cyprian away and sent him tumbling to the floor even as he raised the Webley. The pistol crashed once, twice, three times, and the monstrous appendage was jerked back.

A roar shook the crypt. It seemed to emanate from every stone and possessed a raw force that almost bu
ffeted them from their feet. Carnacki dragged St. Cyprian to his feet and propelled him towards the pentacle. They stumbled to a halt as a second shape, more horrifying than the first, bulged out of the darkness and lumbered between them and sanctuary. The humped slopes of what might have been shoulders and the mashed crown of a primordial skull scraped the ceiling of the crypt. Twin hell-lanterns blazed within the soupy morass and a wet, gelid slit split open, expelling a rush of foul and noisome air.

Carnacki risked a quick look back and saw the first shape gathering itself, as if to lunge. They were like great fog banks, their hazy movements possessed of a malign intelligence. “What—what
are
they?” St. Cyprian hissed.

At the sound of his voice, the shapes swelled and a
nother roar rung out, nearly deafening Carnacki. He raised his Webley and fired, and the thing surged back. Grabbing the back of St. Cyprian’s coat, he shoved the young man forward. “Get to the pentacle,” he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. “We’ll be safe within the lines.”

“I think you have a funny idea of safety,” St. Cyprian said, but he did as Carnacki said.

Carnacki followed more slowly, trying to keep both of the shapes in sight. They followed slowly, though whether they were more put off by his pistol, or the presence of the pentacle, he couldn’t say. When they were inside the pentacle, he faced the younger man. “Now, while we’ve got a moment’s peace, care to tell me why you came here?” he said, cracking open his Webley to reload it.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” St. Cyprian said. He leaned down. “Is it the colours, then? Is that what does it?”

“Partly, yes,” Carnacki said, casting a wary eye towards their spectral antagonists. The monstrous shapes paced in the depths of the crypt, circling the pentacle like gigantic tigers. They had gained no more solidity in the minutes since their manifestation, but he could feel the hatred rolling off of them. They gave off a very real psychic miasma, and the air had gone quite damp and cold. After a few moments, however, he noticed something strange—the entities seemed reluctant to draw too close to the xiphos, where it still lay on the stone floor. They shied away from it, like beasts from a hunter’s torch. “That sword of yours,” Carnacki said—“where did it come from?”

“I told you, family heirloom,” St. Cyprian said. The young man swallowed audibly as one of the things drew too close for comfort. “Passed down through umpteen generatio
ns, from the founding whatsit . . .”

“Brutus of Troy,” Carnacki said, clicking the Webley back into place.

St. Cyprian looked at him. “That’s just a bally legend. It’s a bit of fun, what?”

“Tell them that,” Carnacki said, gesturing to the m
align shapes that crowded around them. “You mentioned being down here earlier—several weeks ago, perhaps? Why?”

St. Cyprian looked away. A vast face, yards across, swirled into being and the tubes of the pentacle flared, the filaments humming like wasps under glass. The face was grotesque in its proportions, and its jaws opened impossibly wide to display a ragged palisade of grav
estone teeth that champed idiotically at them. Voices washed over them, and St. Cyprian visibly wilted. Carnacki steadied him gently. “Easy,” he murmured. “We’re safe for now. What happened several weeks ago?”

“I—I came down to explore, you know, for a lark, that sort of thing. They say Guildhall was once the site of Brutus’ palace,” he said in a subdued tone. “I brought the sword
—I don’t know why. I thought it seemed appropriate. Something startled me. I—I cut myself, spilled a bit of port.” He raised a hand. For the first time, Carnacki saw it was bandaged. “The whole place went barmy. I could . . . hear things, see them, and then it was all snuffed like a candle flame.” He rubbed his head, as if it pained him.

“What did you hear?”

“Greek chappies,” St. Cyprian said. “I went to the Continent for a bit, learned the lingo, ate some brioche, saw Byron’s grave, that sort of rot. I know Greek when I hear it. Only . . . it wasn’t any dialect I recognised. It was similar, but . . .” He trailed off.

“What else
?” Carnacki said. The generator was making a rattling noise. The filaments were vibrating at speed. He looked up and saw the outline of giant hands pressing down towards them, and repressed a shudder. The things were strong; how long had they been down here, he wondered? How long had their essences battened in the dark, awaiting some signal to come roaring back into the light in grandiose monstrosity?

St. Cyprian clutched at his head. “I saw vague shapes, massive things waging war,” he said hoarsely. As he spoke, the things seemed to grow angrier and dust sifted down from above and cracks appeared in the cei
ling and walls. The shapes roared silently and struck out at the crypt. The bandage on St. Cyprian’s hand had turned from white to pink to red. Carnacki raised two fingers and cut two of the Signs of Raaaee into the filmy air, though he knew it wouldn’t do much good. Not if his growing suspicions were correct.

It only took a little nudge, with the right kind of brain. Certain men resonated with the spirit world like a tuning fork, their blood and thought acting as meat and drink to the Outer Monstrosities. Bains had been that way, as had Aster and the American, Wilcox. Carnacki himself had something of that sensitivity. St. Cyprian appeared to have it as well. His eyes had become unf
ocused and feverish. Sweat coated his skin in a greasy film, and a thin trickle of red crept from beneath the bandage on his hand.

The hairs on the back of Carnacki’s neck stiffened as he watched the drop of blood fall towards the floor. He looked up, suddenly aware that the spectral giants had ceased their assault upon the protective envelope of the pentacle and were now merely
. . . watching.

A tiny spatter of red painted the stone. One by one, each of the glowing tubes burst, the filaments crisping. St. Cyprian was jerked from his feet by a foggy paw, and he screamed in fear and pain. Carnacki cursed and levelled the Webley. After the dull silence of the pentacle, the roar of the Webley stung his ears. He fired again and again, and the shots tore wispy canyons in the formless shapes that tugged and tore at St. Cyprian like two dogs fighting over a toy.

The shots distracted the entities, as they had before, and St. Cyprian fell heavily to the floor, his clothing torn to rags and his frame streamed with blood, though his flesh was unmarked. Carnacki charged towards him, hoping to get the young man out of the crypt as quickly as possible. If he could remove St. Cyprian from the point of manifestation, it might be enough to snuff it, at least for the evening, like removing oxygen from a flame.

“Come on up
!” Carnacki shouted, as he hauled St. Cyprian to his feet. “Up, damn you!”

His skin prickled with gooseflesh. He felt the thing rise up over him like a wave of pure, savage hunger, and he turned—
too slow,
some small part of his mind chattered—the Webley bobbing up, the hammer snapping down, the cylinder clicking tauntingly. And then, metal scraped on stone and Carnacki was shoved aside as St. Cyprian rose to his feet, the xiphos slicing through the colossal paw that had been ready to close about them. The scream that followed squeezed Carnacki’s eardrums painfully. St. Cyprian hacked and chopped at the coiling substance of the entities as they screamed and howled. Something in the sword—something about it—repulsed them. They hadn’t expected resistance, and he could feel the hold they had on the world, tenuous as it was, slipping. But a wounded animal is all the more dangerous. The hideous faces lurched and bulled forward, jaws agape, hell-lantern orbs blazing as they lunged for their tormentor.

Carnacki ripped the Monas Glyph from his coat and thrust it forward, spitting the words of the Incantation of Raaaee. The sigil quivered in his grip and he felt the protective shadow of the unknown forces of the
Outer Circle gather and flow through the loop of the sigil, carried by his words, and strike the entities, driving them back in a boiling, writhing mass of shapes and sounds. He shouted the incantation again and again until his voice grew hoarse and his throat became raw, and St. Cyprian moved beside him, the xiphos extended before him. Together they moved forward, step by step, pushing the entities back. The things lashed at them, but weakly, with barely more force than a spring breeze. The screams shrank to shouts, and then to whines and finally whimpers.

Just as Carnacki thought his voice would give out, the last wisp of ghostly effluvium retreated into the stones from which it had seeped, and the only the ec
hoes of thwarted howls remained to mark their visit. He lowered his trembling, aching arm and slid the still-warm sigil back into his coat with a sense of relief. His throat was scraped raw; he felt wrung out and squeezed dry of vitality. It took something from him to employ the Glyph. He coughed and glanced at St. Cyprian, who had collapsed back against a cracked column, and sank down to his haunches. The young man was breathing heavily, and the sword clattered from his grip.

“Where—where did they go?”

“Back into the past, where they came from,” Carnacki croaked. “Your blood, something in it, called them up out of the darkness, and now we have driven them back, at least for now.”

“For now,” St. Cyprian said, looking up, his eyes wide with horror.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Carnacki said. He pulled his pocket-watch from his coat and flipped it open. “Today, I mean,” he amended. “There are steps that can be taken to see that those things stay in the darkness where they belong, now that I know what I’m dealing with.”

“What were they?”

“Surely you guessed that, an educated fellow like you?” Carnacki said, glancing at the young man. “When Brutus built his palace here, he chained the last two giants of Briton to the pillars of his hall, so that all might bear witness to the might of New Troy. Gog and Magog is what we call them, though I wager they had different names once upon a time.”

“But—but that’s only a story,” St. Cyprian said, loo
king down at the sword. “It’s a myth, a fable.”

“Yes, it is. But cities are made of myths and fables. They creep in when no one’s looking, and grow strong.
London belonged to Romans and Britons and Trojans, and before them, giants. Whether there were actually any giants at all doesn’t matter; the people thought they existed, and that is enough.” He walked over to the young man and extended a hand. “Speaking of stories, I would very much like to hear about that sword of yours, Mr. St. Cyprian. I’m something of an historian, you see—professional interest, you understand.”

“You don’t happen to have such a thing as a good brandy, do you? I talk better with a bit of liquid encou
ragement,” St. Cyprian said, taking his hand. He allowed Carnacki to pull him to his feet.