Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (69 page)

There was some mumbling among the group then, until Montrose signaled for them to quiet down.

“I know it’s risky, but what other options do we have?” Seeing no objection, he proceeded. “Now here’s my plan. I see no reason for delay, so we conduct the break-in Wednesday after midnight. I think we’ll have a good chance of getting away with it, as I don’t think Lilly will expect us to strike so soon…that, and he just might be stupid enough to think we really believe Nodens himself would take a hand in so minor an adventure. So, I’ll only need a couple of you to come with me, the others will go to the field and prepare it for the ritual so we can start as soon as possible after we get the stones back. I don’t want to take a chance that Lilly or anyone else will guess what we’re up to, and interfere before we’re through. So, Jessica and Kent, you’ll come with me. Farley, you take charge of the field.”

“Right,” nodded Farley.

“You’re dismissed.”

As the others filed out, Montrose motioned for the two remaining to sit down around the little kitchen table.

“Jessica, we’ll use your car for the job,” opened Montrose. “Mine might be recognized by a guard or something. It won’t matter if anyone sees your car either because after it’s all over, we’ll have long-since crossed over to the Dreamlands. When we get to the university, you’ll wait in the car while Kent and I conduct the actual break-in.”

Jessica nodded but said nothing.

“Kent, you and I will go down to the school by bus during the day and hide in the faculty building until after midnight. When everyone’s gone, it ought to be easy to find Lilly’s office and, if it hasn’t been left unlocked, we can get in with the old credit card trick. When I was in his office I checked and made sure the lock on the office door was an old one that has been changed.”

Kent grinned. “Know where we’re going to hide?”

“There’s an old furnace in the basement that’s not used any more. All we have to do is remove a service panel and there’s plenty of room inside to hide for a few hours. I did some exploring before I went up to see Lilly.”

“Sounds like a plan all right.”

“Where do you want me to wait?” asked Jessica.

“Out on French Street, just on the other side of the south campus wall. If all goes smoothly, me and Kent should come over that wall about 3:30 a.m. Any questions? Okay. Kent, I’ll meet you at the bus stop on Main Street at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.”

Things ended up going better than expected, with Montrose and Kent coming over the wall closer to 3 a.m. than 3:30. With them were the stones, which they kept in a heavy mail bag taken from the Dean’s Corners Post Office. Remaining at the wheel, Jessica drove calmly through the darkened streets of Arkham until reaching the highway, where she picked up speed but taking care not to exceed the limit. About an hour later, they were moving along the Aylesbury Pike into Dunwich, where scattered streetlights finally vanished altogether. Avoiding the downtown so as not to attract the attention of the town’s lone patrol car, Jessica followed a circuitous route along the narrow, winding roads that crisscrossed the farming community’s back country. Finally, with lights dimmed, Jessica pulled the car off the road and into a disused turnoff on a reverse slope from the Fitch farm.

The thick woods around them were pitch dark, lying as they did in the shadow of a hill that rose steeply across the road. Overhead, stars twinkled in a clear sky but there was no moon. Using a small flashlight with a pencil-thin beam, Montrose led the way past a pair of other vehicles parked deeper into the woods, cars left by Farley and the others who had preceded them to the ritual site. A faint trail led past thick, ancient oaks as the ground rose toward the crest of the slope then downward again and over Petawag Brook. At last, after hopping a stone fence, they emerged into the field where the others waited.

“You got the stones?” said Farley, stepping out from under a patch of birch trees whose boles glowed whitely in the starlight.

“Yes,” replied Montrose motioning to the mail bag that Kent held over his shoulder. “Is everything ready here?”

“Absolutely,” confirmed Farley as the others began to emerge from the shadows. “The holes have been prepared to the prescribed depth and the preliminary words of warding have been recited at the proper times.”

“Good. Let’s bury the stones and get our robes on.”

The final preparations were completed quickly and the group separated to remove their clothing and slip into their robes; the few women moving off by themselves for the purpose displaying a modesty that would later be discarded, along with the robes, when the time came to make the passage into the Dreamlands. For it was written that Earthly possessions of any kind would be a hindrance to a successful transition into the protective arms of Nodens.

Their change of clothing completed, the group reassembled in a loose circle outside the five points formed by the warding-stones. Ordering his thoughts, Montrose began reciting words from the ritual of Selection: “Oh, great Nodens! Holder of the Keys, Confidant of the Elder Gods, Wise Protector! Heed the pleas of your faithful servants! For years, we have proffered our faith and loyalty, preserved your name, and performed all that had been instructed of us in those records where you have deigned to express your will. Now, at the expressed time, upon the eve of the Release when the Old Gods are to be released and loosed upon the Earth again to rule as they did in the olden times, we beseech you to grant us the reward that is our due and protect us against the coming storm!
Ia Nodens! Sfaug ntruit phingli phan! Sui gilphon chhic nar. Ia Nodens!
”

Quiet descended upon the scene as Montrose ended his imprecation. In the dark woods that bordered the empty field, a soft wind had arisen and, as the trees round about whispered in the night, a strange thing began to happen within the space bounded by the five stones.

Some among the worshipers gasped, taking involuntary steps backward but not far enough to break the circle. Their surprise perhaps betraying the fact that their faith had not been as complete as it might have appeared. But wonder now held them in thrall, preventing any further retreat as they joined the others in gazing at the thing that was happening within the confines of the five warding-stones.

There, a vision began to form, a pillar of three dimensional space that stretched from a few inches above the furrowed ground of the field upwards into the sky. Within the pillar there was a sense of movement, although nothing could be seen to stir. Beyond a vague glow on what seemed to be a distant horizon, darkness dominated a blackened landscape that beckoned anyone who dared to look upon it.

“The Night Land,” murmured Montrose, leaning in. “That future era of the Dreamlands wherein the Old Gods are free and great Nodens presides, his role as gaoler ended forever!” Turning, he faced the others who had gathered together in instinctual security. “We can escape the fate that awaits the rest of mankind! We have followed the dictates of great Nodens to shape the present such that a future timeline could be created that will likely lead to the proper era; the era in which the Old Ones will once again rule the Earth as they did in days of old. We have slain the proper actors, sacrificed from among ourselves, as the ancient writings have indicated. Now, we perform the ritual of Selection and our moment has come! We are the fortunate few! We are the chosen ones! We will dwell in the House of Silence forever! All we need do is to step across this threshold that Nodens has provided.”

Turning back to the pillar that still stood silently before him, Montrose shed his robe to stand naked before the looming dark. “I am ready, great Nodens! Ready for the reward you have prepared for your faithful servant!”

With that, Montrose passed from the world into the Night Land beyond, followed quickly by the others as each in turn left the last of their Earthly accoutrements behind.

The first thing that Montrose noticed upon arriving on the other side was the familiarity of the landscape around him. Quickly, he realized it was the same as the one in his dreams, dreams he now realized had been visions sent to him by Nodens. But the elation he had felt only moments, or perhaps it was eternities before, quickly dissipated as the malignancy that permeated the atmosphere immediately pressed down upon him like a physical thing. So divorced were his senses from the environment around him that it was only pain inflicted by the stoney ground that told him he had been forced to his knees. The discomfort brought him to his senses somewhat and suddenly, far from delivering a sense of freedom, his nakedness only made him feel vulnerable. Tears lining his cheeks, he struggled to his feet and at last he noticed the others around him. They too were disoriented, unsure on their feet, their white, naked bodies already streaked with dirt and ash.

In the far distance stood the great pyramid of his dreams, and emanating from it, like waves of mental energy, were the hopes and desires of trapped millions. They seemed to be urging him on, to come to them where they resided in the only remaining safe-haven in Night Land…a hostile environment dominated by enormous things they called Watchers, and other lesser creatures that wandered the devastated landscape in blind search of hapless prey.

“We have to get to that building over there,” gasped Montrose, using all of his strength to take a single step. “Oh great Nodens! Have your faithful servants been forsaken? Where are your protecting arms?”

Even as he made his desperate plea, Montrose suspected that there would be no reply, but there was. Somewhere in the darkness around them there was movement, or at least something big was closer to them than it had been before. Suddenly, the sense of its presence was closer than ever; it towered over their heads like a mountain and, like a looming avalanche, they felt its weight pressing upon their tiny, insignificant selves.

“Run!” Montrose heard himself say as he turned from the pyramid and stumbled in the darkness. He cut himself on some sharp rocks but never noticed as his fingers dug in the loose, ashen soil and he scrabbled like some insect, desperate to avoid the descending hammer. Around him he heard the wailing cries of his fellow worshipers, some former classmates from his days at Miskatonic University where they had first fallen under the sway of the Cthulhu Myth Cycle. Now, as he looked, they scattered in all directions, blinded by the dark, falling into hidden pits, becoming mired in sinks of tar. Sobbing, he muttered a last plea to the god he had worshiped all his adult life. There was no response, and his disordered mind wondered if he had been betrayed. Like rats down their holes, his thoughts skittered along corridors of memory; bits and pieces of increasingly scattered experiences flashed across his mind until settling on a single incident recalling something someone had said to him once, in a different lifetime: something about the utter impossibility of alien minds making themselves understood by human beings. As panic began to well up inside him, Montrose wondered: had he been wrong about Nodens? Could he have misinterpreted the god’s intentions? And then a far worse thing occurred to him: what if the god had understood his human servant? What if the only thing in question was the meaning of the word “reward?” Then, as he scrambled desperately toward a dim glow in the surrounding darkness, the fate of his friends long since driven from his mind, he found himself falling into a pit at the bottom of which writhed an oily mass of giant slug-things. He screamed in mad terror, trying uselessly to halt his slow slide toward those hungry, searching mouths and it was then, in the last glitter of sanity in a shattered brain, that the final horrifying revelation occurred to him: Nodens had not betrayed them. Nodens had kept his word. There was no miscommunication. He was to be rewarded. The only thing was, to the alien Nodens,
nothing could be finer than for a human to be consumed by the spawn of the Old Ones!

Bob Price has done a great service for Mythos readers in recent years by his vigorous defense of pastiche in general and the Derlethian take on it in particular. Well, that’s how I feel about it anyway. In his first editorial in issue #7, Bob described a personal revelation that, in effect, brought his appreciation of the Mythos full circle; from his early days of wide eyed wonder in the first flush of discovery through a period of pretension and elitism to, more recently, a more simple acceptance of the elements in the Mythos that lend themselves to clearer, more forthright stories unencumbered by an author’s need to avoid the appearance of being too slavishly attached to Lovecraft’s original stories If I’m assuming too much of an interpretation of Bob’s words, then I’m sorry, but I don’t think I am. Because you see, much the same thing has happened to me.

My first exposure to Lovecraft (besides such films as
The Dunwich Horror
and
Die, Monster, Die
which I saw before I ever heard of Lovecraft), was when I picked up the Ballantine Books paperbacks in the early 70s (you know, the ones with the weird heads with either shards of glass or coiled worms sticking out of them?) which duly knocked me out. Slowly, I discovered the wider Lovecraft circle and enjoyed them, I was reading anything associated with Lovecraft, them as well. By that time, I was reading anything associated with Lovecraft, mostly pastiche. But slowly, as the available sources dried up, I had to content myself with newer product. Here, in the beginning,
Crypt of Cthulhu
helped with its frequent all-fiction issues that featured mostly rare stuff by established authors; but soon, that material started to dry up and I finally found myself in a literary desert of “new style” Lovecraftian fiction in which authors, swallowing the elitist line of the times, decided to write Mythos yarns that bore as little relation to the HPL originals as possible. This wild experimentation was a total flop to me. Maybe I didn’t take my Lovecraft seriously enough, it was always good, entertaining, escapist fun for me, thus perhaps, my attraction to pastiche. My interest in Mythos fiction became mostly a nostalgic one. When I was in the mood to recapture a bit of my youth, I liked to read a good Mythos “yarn” (as Robert Howard used to say). How could the tortured, punkish, new style Cthulhu story be construed as fun?