He Who Walks in Shadow (17 page)

“Time is running short,” Dubois said, “and we have a ways to travel yet.”

We climbed into a couple of pickup trucks. I rode in the cab of one with Dubois, while most of the men settled into their beds, checking and rechecking the rifles they carried.

“You expect a fight?” I asked. He nodded.

“Mmmhm. That’s what we got last time. Can’t imagine why this would be any different.”

Our truck led the way, and we hadn’t gone far before we left civilization behind entirely. The swamps and thick woods we had traversed aboard the train did not prepare me for the utter desolation of that world. And yet, even though the green jungle was thick around me, the stench of rotting decay was in the air as well. For this was a dying world, one struck with some disease that went beyond the ordinary realm. Something older. Something more foul.

We rumbled along the broken pavement until the pavement itself ran out. Now it was dirt and rocks, a one-way road that barely deserved the name, a trail that the swamp was gradually swallowing. It seemed that we were no closer to much of anything when we turned off the main path onto an even more perilous lane, but we had not gone far before Dubois pulled behind a copse of trees and killed the engine. “We walk from here,” he said, turning to me. “Wouldn’t want to give away our approach.”

The twelve of us piled out, each man removing an electric torch and switching it on. Dubois addressed his troops briefly, telling them that they had his full faith, his full confidence. They had been with him the longest, and many of them had seen the cult’s foul doings in the swamps more than a decade before. Today they would extinguish its flame, once and for all.

“Let’s go.”

We crept back to the main road, staying in tight formation on either side, ready to dive into the forest at the merest sound of an approaching vehicle. The night was growing thick, and it was only then that I noticed something peculiar. We were in the midst of a great swamp, surrounded by wilderness for a hundred miles, maybe. And yet I heard nothing. Not a bird, not an animal in the brush, not even the insects that normally teem about. No mosquitos feasted upon us. No ancient-eyed owls watched our approach. We were completely alone. It was as if they had foreseen some coming doom that we could only imagine, the maw of which we were now walking directly into.

We’d gone maybe a mile when Dubois held up his hand. “Do you hear that?” We all stopped, craning our necks to try to hear better, to catch some semblance of sound. It started off as a murmur, a thumping echo that I might have mistaken for the beating of my own heart. But it was too regular, even for that. Too deep. That throbbing rhythm, that howling bass. Conga drums, pounding through the night.

“Check your weapons,” Dubois whispered. “We’ll be upon them any second.”

Suddenly the forest changed, and it was only when I peered deep into its depths that I saw why. We were in a town. You would barely know it, since the jungle had claimed it back for nature, but there were buildings in the gloaming of the swamps, covered in vines, long, green arms breaking through signs that read “Oldman’s Apothecary” and “Village Café,” all collapsing under the weight of kudzu and Spanish moss. The road was no longer dirt but rather cobblestone.

Dubois gave a signal, and we extinguished our lights. In an instant, we were plunged into a black darkness that swallowed us whole, and I had to fight with all my being not to go running headlong into the wilderness.

The moon was bright that night, though, and the sky clear of obscuring clouds. In only a moment, my eyes had adjusted and I could see as well as, if not better than, before. We continued on, and it was no time at all before we came to the empty city square, as dead as if it were the end of the world. And at the head of that square sat a towering cathedral, made all the more glorious by the vines that wreathed it in green. I almost didn’t notice the flickering lights from within.

Dubois glanced at me before nodding to his men, flicking his hand left and then right. The detectives filed out, forming a rough cordon around the building, surrounding it. They were the hunters. We were the hounds meant to flush our prey. I followed the inspector as he made his way around the old church, searching for some weakness, some point of access. We swung wide of the door; a direct entry would not do. From within, the sound of discordant piping had joined the bestial thump of the drums.

I saw it before Dubois. A ladder, wrought iron, added to the side of the building for easy access, some time before the cathedral was abandoned forever. I tapped the inspector on the shoulder, disheartened by his startled reaction. If I was looking for a rock on which to lean during this journey, he was not it. I gestured toward the ladder. He followed my eyes, nodding back at me when he saw it.

We began to climb.

I was not entirely convinced that the rust-rotten iron would hold us, but it was our best bet. If I was to fall to my death in the midst of that swamp, then so be it.

Our target was an opening high on the cathedral wall, a window I suppose, meant to provide ventilation and light during happier times. It still might, if we could squeeze through it. I had my doubts about Dubois, raised as he was on the sumptuous fare of Louisiana, but he managed to pass with little effort. I followed him, and we found ourselves on the inside.

The sound which had been growing with intensity as we climbed boomed through the dank attic of the church. Light seeped through the wooden slats of the floor, illuminating motes of dust that swirled and danced around us. I found myself stifling a sneeze, knowing that such a mistake would be the end of us both. We crawled forward on our hands and knees, careful not to make a sound, though I wondered if our weight alone was raining down the accumulated dirt and detritus of many decades on the adherents below. Not that they would have noticed in the frenzy of their exultations. We were in luck, in any event, for, not ten feet from us, a great square had been cut in the floor, a veritable skylight through which we could peer without fear of discovery.

We crawled forward, every creak of every beam sending lightning bolts of terror into the pit of my stomach, and yet the sound of drums and pipes and now human voices was enough to drown out all sound, if not all fear. There was a smell too, a combination of burning smoke and something sweet I couldn’t place.

And then we peered over that edge to below and looked upon madness made flesh.

The cathedral floor was a shambles of all that is holy. Rotten pews and prayer kneelers had been torn up and shoved into piles along the side, save where the boards would serve a purpose. The wood had been fashioned into crude St. Andrew’s crosses, though I knew well that this ungodly crew had another name for the implements of death that surrounded the gathered mass in a large semi-circle.

“The mark of the harbinger,” I dared to whisper to Dubois. “The sign of the cult of Nyarlathotep.”

Would that they had been empty. The people—three men, three women, and worst of all, a boy who could not have been more than seven or eight years old—that hung, spread-eagled, from them were beyond saving. I knew then what the smell was; it was the scent of rotting flesh, mingled with the smoke from the torches that illuminated the room. The skin hung loose and low from the naked bodies, and in places—especially around the face—it had peeled off altogether. The stench was overwhelming now, and I marveled that I hadn’t recognized it earlier.

The cultists numbered a couple of dozen. Their god was no respecter of persons. Among their ranks were men and women, young and old, rich and poor, black and white. At their front stood a single figure, its long, black robe decorated with strips of fabric in every color, head wrapped in a crimson scarf that seemed to climb into the sky. A priestess of Nyarlathotep, or so her bearing said, though there was nothing soft or feminine or motherly about her. She was the sword of the god, the bringer of his vengeance, the sower of his destruction. Lying before her on what must have been the cathedral’s once-holy altar was a youth, a man of perhaps eighteen. He was nude, and no bindings held him down. He was either there of his own volition or, more likely, drugged for the sacrifice.

Dubois removed his pistol and a whistle from his pocket. Once he gave the signal, his men would rush the building, and in the confusion we hoped to take our prisoners without violence. But if they had weapons, Dubois was prepared to take down anyone who threatened his men. He put the whistle to his lips, but I stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. He looked at me, and without words, he knew I wanted to see more. The woman below began to cast her spell.

When she spoke, I was surprised that her words were not English or French or even Creole. They were much older—Sumerian—an ancient tongue from the ancient people who first wrote of Nyarlathotep, before the Egyptians gave him the name by which we know him best. I record her words here, as closely as I can. The translation, though rough, conveys all the truth of those dread utterances.

Her voice started as a whisper, rising to a murmur, and then soaring to a roar. “Alal. Alla xul. Nisme! Ati me peta babka! Kanpa! Taru! Iksuda! Negeltu xul labiru ensi ersutu!”
Destroyer. Dark god. Hear me! Throw open the gate between worlds! Remember! Return! Conquer! Then shall the old gods awake and restore their dominion over the earth!

A roar shook the foundations of the old church. It was below, above, and around all at once. The cultish fires flared, and yellow smoke poured from their flickering flames. The sallow fog gathered around the altar. Reaching tentacles probed upwards, wrapping the body of the boy, covering him in a blanket of golden mist. The youth breathed deep, sucking the yellow smoke into his lungs.

And I knew.

“This is no sacrifice,” I whispered.

An explosion roared from Dubois’s pistol and through the church. A bullet ripped off the back of the youth’s skull. Another roar followed quickly, but of a completely different quality. And if I hadn’t known better, I would have said that this hate-filled cry erupted from a demonic maw that formed in the midst of the now-dissipating fog.

What followed was chaos. Dubois was now firing wildly, as many in the cult had drawn weapons and were shooting toward the ceiling. The front doors of the church burst open, and in poured Dubois’s army. With their guns added to his, the battle was short-lived. When it was over, a dozen cultists were dead, the same number in custody.

The enigmatic woman who had led them had escaped, seemingly vanishing into thin air. I had caught her eye, just after Dubois fired his first shot. She had gazed up through the portal that framed our faces. And when her eyes met mine, I would swear that a dark smile crept up the corner of her mouth.

Was that the end of the New Orleans coven? Who can say? But I think we had stumbled upon something far more significant than a simple cult, dedicated to some lost and forgotten deity. We had seen something much older, and much more dangerous. This handful of devotees had come within moments of calling forth the dark one himself, the black messenger of Azathoth. And if even they were able to come so close, then what hope do we have of stopping others in the future?

I visited her grave before I left New Orleans, the voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. I left the offering of bourbon and I made the three x’s on her tombstone, as so many devotees seeking favor from beyond the veil have done before me.

But my wish was different. My wish was that neither she, nor the dark god she served, would ever return.

Journal of Carter Weston

July 25, 1933

“Carter Weston. The last time we parted, I swore I would kill you if we met again.”

He stood twirling his ivory-handled cane in his hand, glaring at Henry and me. For a second, I was concerned.

“Well, Marcel, I certainly hope you are as good at keeping your word now as you were back then.”

Henry glanced at me nervously, but then the man at the head of the table where we sat burst into laughter. He kicked back a chair and fell into it.

“I was never able to resist your charms, Carter, even if you are a son-of-a-bitch.” He called for a waitress and ordered a Beaujolais and three glasses. “I always preferred Beaujolais,” he said. “Like men, it is better when it is young. Neither it, nor we, it seems, age well.”

“I don’t know about that, Marcel. You seem as though you are doing quite well for yourself, despite the years.”

“Yes,” he said, lighting a cigar. Marcel offered one to Henry and me. He declined. I did not. “It took me awhile to get over our last encounter. You cost me a fortune.”

“Well, that artifact you discovered and I…disposed of…would have been quite dangerous in the wrong hands. And it tends to be from those hands that the largest sums will pass. You always did believe in the philosophy of the highest bidder.”

Marcel smiled. “I didn’t get in this business to lose money. But you are right, my friend. You are right. I realize that now. Not much comes with age, but maybe wisdom still does. That little trinket was a score that was too big for me. Too big for anyone, I suppose. Still, it was worth a lot of money.”

“Perhaps I can make it up to you today.”

The young woman, the only other person in all of the Café du Marché—what one might call a “rustic” establishment well off the beaten Parisian paths—arrived with the wine. She uncorked it, pouring three full glasses. Marcel raised his. “Well, to making up old debts then.”

He took a sip and gestured with his glass toward me. “I’m not surprised you had something in mind. I didn’t suppose you wanted to talk about old times. You never struck me as the sentimental type.”

“No,” I said, smiling. “Straight to business then?”

Marcel nodded, and I knew that, whatever he might say, he still remembered what I had cost him a decade before.

I had known Marcel since we were both much younger men. Marcel had been a French lieutenant in the Great War, and after watching most of his friends and countrymen cut down in a conflict that shattered the world and slayed a whole generation with nothing to show for it, he decided he had given enough of himself. From then on, fortune and glory—with an emphasis on
fortune
—were his watchwords. He became a procurer of rare antiquities. A grave-robber to some, but a good one. Our paths had crossed many times over the years, but it was when Marcel came into possession of a rare and exquisite diadem which he procured from a questionable trader on the Massachusetts coast that we had our little disagreement. It was fortunate that we were able to intercept Marcel and “liberate” the artifact from his possession before the Walpurgis moon shone down on Devil Reef.