He Who Walks in Shadow (29 page)

“A ne a mai. Ma lei. Ma dooz.”

I pulled the trigger, and time slowed down. The bullet struck William. The fire extinguished. The evil fled. And for one brief moment, what had been William was with us again. For one brief moment, before he died in my arms.

I held him there. I did not feel the cold. I did not feel the wind. I felt only this man, this boy, the only son I had ever had, the life gone from him. The things I have seen in this life. The evils. And yet it was then I finally lost the last shred of innocence I still held.

I had murdered him. Whatever else could be said for what we did, for what we had to do, it all came down to that. I had murdered him, and long before that moment. When I took him away from Rachel. I might as well have put a bullet in his brain.

“Carter…”

I looked at Henry and I could not bear the pity in his eyes.

“We have to go, Carter. We don’t know what else is out there.”

I clutched William’s body close to mine. “Go get a sheet, from the horses. Go get it and bring it back.”

“Carter, there’s no time…”

“There’s time! We aren’t leaving him. Not like this. Not here.”

Henry and Rostov exchanged worried glances. But they both knew that I would not be moved. They might leave me there, but I would not leave William.

“Come, doctor. We’ll go together and get the sheet. Leave him for now.”

I nodded to Rostov in thanks. Henry said nothing. Soon, I was alone.

I wept. Wept for all that had been lost, all that had been sacrificed. I let myself fall into despair, to question all that I had done, all the choices that I had made. Every turn I had taken now seemed to be the wrong one. And I wondered what future was now forever foreclosed, what doors were shut, what paths untraveled. For William. For Rachel. For their children that would have been. For their child that would be. All of it, lost. All of it, sacrificed. And I had done it on purpose. I had made that choice. It was the power that I needed, and I had taken it.

So deep in my own sorrow was I that I barely noticed that the shadow in which I sat had retreated. The sun was still absent, the gloom that covered the copse of trees total, but the darkness around me had lifted.

A glow moved amongst the bone-white cabers. I lowered William to the earth and stood, my grief replaced with rage.

“Come out!” I said, drawing my pistol. “Show yourself!”

The light seemed to move away. I ran to the nearest tree, throwing myself behind it. Even in the cold, the sweat broke across my brow. I led with my gun, glancing around the trunk. The light faded into the distance. I would not let it escape.

I ran after it, heedless of the danger, the skeletal remains of the forest whooshing past me in a blur. My feet did not stumble, my path was true. Hatred drove me, revenge prodded me on. I wanted to see Nyarlathotep again. I wanted to kill him one more time. Even if it was at the cost of my own life.

I ran after the light until I seemed to plunge into its midst, until it surrounded me, bathing me in its luminance. Yet no torch, no man-made fire cast it. It was the cloak of a power beyond anything I had experienced in that frozen tundra.

Before me stood William.

He was alive. Smiling, standing relaxed with his hands in his pockets, that cocky gleam in the eye that we all loved. My mouth fell open, and for a long moment in that dim glow we gazed across the middle distance at each other. I turned and looked back from where I had run. Through the trees, I could see the shadowed figure of William’s body lying on the cold earth.

“Who are you?”

He shook his head and grinned, putting one finger to his mouth. “Shhhh!”

The sound filled my mind. The apparition turned away, a pirouette completed in half-time, and began to walk further into the forest. I watched him go, rooted to the spot. He turned back and looked over his shoulder. He beckoned to me, his hand moving as if through water, and I knew I must follow.

It wasn’t William. Of course it wasn’t. He was dead, and I had killed him, and no power on earth or in heaven could bring him back. In hindsight, it was foolish to follow, there, in a place of so much evil. But that voice in my head, the one that I had heeded so many times before, told me that whatever spirit moved through the trees that day was benevolent.

I kept pace. William never wavered. When he came to a clearing, he stopped. He did not turn, not until I arrived. We stood together, side by side, on the shore of a small brook, nothing more than a creek.

William gazed down into the depths of that shimmering water. A mad notion struck me that perhaps this was the only free-flowing water for a thousand miles, all else locked beneath a sheet of solid ice. And yet, other than its mere existence, there was nothing remarkable about that little stream.

A thought came to my mind, unbidden. A voice that was not mine, nor any I had ever heard before. It was not spoken. William continued to stare into the stream as if within its shallow depths resided the most beautiful image in the world.

The words were hazy at first, jumbled. It even struck me that perhaps they were in a language I did not know and, in fact, had never heard. Then the haze began to clear, and though the words did not change, I could understand them as if they were my native tongue.

Fire and flame
.
That’s what the old legends foretold. That is the how, but not the why. The stone will come to him who is worthy of it. To him who is willing to sacrifice, to give all to save all.

A roar filled the air. The light that surrounded us was outshone by a fire from above. A column of flame fell from the sky. It thundered down and crashed into the stream where William still stared. The water hissed and steam boiled up from the earth. My gaze matched William’s, and I saw it. He turned to me and smiled.

The light faded, the darkness returned, and I found myself still kneeling next to William’s dead body. And yet, in my clinched fist, I held…

* * *

Journal of Henry Armitage, July 28, 1933

“And that is how I found it.”

Rachel held the small jewel in the palm of her hand, and she looked as stunned as I felt. The ruby-colored diamond burned with an inner flame, and I thought that if one so desired, one could illuminate the night with its light. For more than a decade she had worn it around her neck, concealed in that golden globe with the Arabic script that Carter had purchased at a bazaar in Marrakesh. And he had never mentioned it.

I stumbled towards the desk where they sat. “You never said anything,” I said. “Even when it became clear we would need it. Why?”

Carter looked up at me and smiled. “I would have told you, old friend. But I knew that if the Eye had returned, so would Nyarlathotep. I had to keep the stone hidden. And that meant keeping the knowledge of its existence to myself and keeping the Oculus in a place of utmost safety. I could think of none better than with my daughter.”

“It’s so small,” Rachel said. She laughed. “I thought it would be bigger.”

“I have a feeling,” said Carter, “that in this case size may be deceiving and that perhaps it will grow to meet whatever challenges we face.”

“And yet, with the staff destroyed…” I could not finish the sentence. Even the thought filled me with despair.

“Our mission is more difficult,” said Carter. “But I must believe that the solution will present itself. That our situation is not hopeless. That faith is all we have left.”

“To those who wait beyond the veil,” I quoted, “the men who teem across the surface of the earth are little more than insects, ants to be swept away by the cleansing fire.”

“The
Necronomicon
,” Carter said with a wry smile. “Doesn’t leave much for hoping, does it?”

“Well,” said Rachel as she held the crystal out to her father, “then at least we will make them feel our sting.”

“Yes,” Carter said. “That we will.”

“And where do you propose we look for Nyarlathotep?” I asked. “Have your books told you that?”

Carter leaned forward on the desk and clasped his hands. “No, they have not. They didn’t need to. Herr Zann proved that as long as there is breath, there is the possibility of redemption. And he used the last of that breath to give us the last piece of the puzzle.”

Carter stood and walked to one of the bookcases that adorned the walls. He pulled down a narrow folio and turned to us.

“‘Beyond sky,’” he said, “‘where the gods came down and set their foot on the earth.’ That is all he told me.”

“And what does that mean? Where is beyond the sky?”

“Not
the sky.
”

He opened the book and dropped it on the table to where Rachel and I could see it. It was an atlas of the British Isles, turned to a page that showed us the north of Scotland.

“Beyond Skye,” he said, pointing to the isle of myth and legend. His finger traced west to a group of tiny outcroppings in the midst of the North Sea. “To the place the Norse Sagas named
Alfheim
, and the Romans
Basilia
, and the ancient Britons
Avalon
, and the Celts
Caledonia
. It is where they say the gods came down to earth, and it is where they will return. One of these islands. We just have to identify which one.”

“Then
that
is where we will find him.” We both turned to Rachel, and when she looked up from the map, her countenance was not one I had seen before on her, and not one I particularly liked. It was determined, yes, but anger and hate rippled just below the surface. “And we’ve not got a moment to lose.”

The Diary of Rachel Jones

July 29, 1933

So it goes.

Today we make our way to England and then to Scotland beyond. Henry, ever the organizer, booked passage for us on a trans-channel ferry immediately after leaving my father’s room. He didn’t need help, and I stayed behind.

We talked of everything and nothing, and it was as if we weren’t watching the clock tick down on the end of the world. I suppose this must be how soldiers feel, on the eve of battle, when the next day might be their last. And yet whatever might come seemed so far away in those moments. I had my father back, and that was something.

He had done what he thought was necessary. There was a time when I wouldn’t have understood that. He knew that about me, and he kept the truth from me for no other reason than that I couldn’t have handled it. There are those who would never forgive such a seeming betrayal. I understand that sentiment, too. If someone had asked me about it before, I’d probably have been squarely in their camp.

But the old saying that you cannot judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes has proven true. After what I have seen, after all that I know, I have come to fully understand.

Guillaume…

I would say that I was a fool, but that would be a convenient lie. To be a fool is easy. To be fooled, forgivable, particularly in this case, given the one doing the fooling. But it was not so simple, not for me, not for him. Thinking on it too much is enough to drive a woman to madness, but I believe that there was truth in those moments we shared, however dark and damnable they ended up being. And yet…

Losing him is not like losing William. Of course it’s not—I knew Guillaume for a matter of days. But to see him die. To know what took him. And to know that it was the same as that which took William.

I hate him. I hate him with as much fervor as I have ever loved anything. And I will see this through to the bitterest of ends.

* * *

Journal of Carter Weston

Passage from Mont Saint-Michel to England proved more difficult than expected. First, a train to Granville, a small fishing village some twenty miles north of the Mont. Then, a boat, if one can call it that. It was little more than a fishing trawler, really, and I wondered by what hook or crook Henry had procured it. From Granville we “sailed” to the isle of Jersey, where we caught a trawler to Guernsey, ending our cattle tour with our arrival in the port of Southampton.

It was a somewhat ignominious beginning to our grand quest.

Yet our spirits were high. Unfortunately, by the time our epic Channel journey came to a close, the sun had long since set and the last train north long since departed the station. So there we were, a day lost, the constant drizzle of a late spring rain soaking us to the bone. We retired to the Dolphin, an ancient inn in the heart of the city and one of the finest such establishments in Southampton. With tomorrow not assured, it seemed wise to eat, drink, and be merry.

As we stepped into the lobby of the Dolphin, the rain ceased, the clouds broke, and the moon shone through. It was near to fullness, and the rain-slicked cobblestones glistened in its light. From the docks the harbor bells rang, and the people of Southampton went about their business, oblivious to the danger that surrounded them. I wondered how often it was so, how many near misses with disaster the human race has endured but blindly, how many nights of peace and quiet for the many tipped towards disaster, a fate only avoided by the sacrifices of the few.

Tomorrow we go north, to Skye and beyond.

* * *

It is late. Or perhaps it is early. There is no clock in this room, and the empty night tells nothing. I have had a dream, and I cannot wait till morning to relate it. I must record it now, while it is fresh in my mind, in the event that the details thereof might be of help to us all.

Sleep came quickly to me, an unusual if not altogether unwelcome development. Now, in the glow of a pale electric light, I wonder if a dark power brought the spirit of Hypnos down upon me.

I remember only that as I began to drift into slumber, I heard a soft tinkling somewhere in the night, as if a mirror had shattered, casting broken glass upon the floor. When my eyes opened, I was no longer in Southampton or England or on this earth. I was somewhere else entirely.

I stood upon a high mountain. My familiar clothing was gone, and I wore the black robe of a Benedictine. A mighty wind whipped up from below, driving the pitch black clouds that boiled and raced above me. I was glad that they obscured the sky, for somehow I knew that whatever floated above them was not meant for the eyes of man, and that to see it was to invite insanity.