New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (6 page)

For an interminable time, he limped through the dark passages, once coming within a few meters of an exit, but because he had long ago forgotten just who he was and what he was looking for, he ran back into t

md howled a bowel-emptying cry into the sear of the

In.

Then he was awed to silence, for the landscape he’d entered was familiar enough to remind him that he was dreaming. There was a white horse nearby standing still as rock, its eyes an evil pink. Sea grapes and palmetto hung limp from long trelises above shocks of colourless grass. To the left was the sea, silver as mercury around a small boat with a black stick of a man standing in it, waiting.

White huts squatted on the right, each with a scant window. Everything was perfectly still and white. Even the sky was white - except for the sun. It was black. Seeing it, Henley felt his muscles melt, and he dropped to his knees. It was a fibrous black, an imense spore, too painful to stare at. He rubbed his yes and blinked.

He blinked. Nothing changed. The Javer sea was steaming beneath the virus star, a black haze meshed to the sky.

A thin breeze picked up, and Henley watched several shy leaves littering away towards the ironwood posts the corral. The white horse remained motionless, its pink eyes were staring. Closer now, the boats aw

confusion of the maze to escape the shadows that ~ut

fuming away into an unbearable brlghtness.~a s features were visible. They were bristly and was a long

time later, after he had distilled all ~ick, dull gaping. The puffed lips moved, but Henley memories from

the blood-wallow of mammals, that~ard nothing. The face was moronic, the forehead

~: ........ ~ ~ ~ ' ing light his fi&und and bulging, filling up the sockets so that the aga,,, apF~ua~, ........ Xlt of smok o o , _ _ _

~;~; .... ;,~ .~. nd

remembered with a shudder, he had to stare up from under the skull. An idiot's face. The lips continued to move in a whisper. As then the breeze shifted and was full of patterns as pressed by.

The silky curves or air carried a voice, scrawny and wicked: Shut your ears big, let the darkness come unrolling from your eyes and your fingz blow longer all in the stillness. Shut your ears Henley.

Henley straightened as if struck. The voice was horrible. He tried to heave himself to his feet, but the effort collapsed him, and he squelched into the mud. The heat of the black sun thudded against the back his neck.

He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to will himself awake, but the dream was unbreakable.

So there he lay, feeling as if he were wrinkling smaller in the alien light, drying out to a dusty ch that

whispered away in the breeze, scattering through an incommensurable darkness.Black.

A darkness that was palpable. A thick oozing mass of black. Immense galleries of space, choirs of distance and at their centre, a mountain of black convulsing, engulfing all sound, all light.

With a terrible shriek, Henley wrenched awake. He was in a bed in a darkened room.

He was sitting perfectly still in his hospital bed, Henley t utterly transformed. The room was empty, but that s

only an appearance that confuted reality. The darkness of the room was cellular and shifting, its ative silence humming - a mockery of the void, the flute emptiness that he had just risen from. That dream deadhess was still there, but it was disguised, king as an emptiness at the centre of all things, rapacious black holes invisible behind reflecting surges: walls, a night table, a window...

tt first light, a doctor came in with his medical trt. Henley could see through him, sensed the doc"s surprise at finding him awake, saw his body disolve into a cloud of atoms, a confusion of energies temporarily united, and, at their centre, blackness.

The doctor unwrapped Henley's foot, and for the first time since waking, Henley stared at his own body. He could see through it as well, but at the foot there was something different - it was leaking darkness. Threads of blackness radiated from it, shafted up along his leg, his knee. Seeing it, he remembered the sharp rock, remembered hiding the cache beneath trees, remembered...

all he could sense at first. His eyelids tugged open! 'Henley their mineral stare facing a wall.

Gradually sou~

sifted through, and he heard footsteps, sensed a fa~ medicinal stain on the air. He was in a hospital, al that

realization calmed him. Yet there was no chance to wonder what had happened because it was s~

happening. The very air around him seemed to pulse with the massed blackness of his nightmare -

Easton snapped awake.

Christ! Where am I?'

The doctor looked up with a benign but puzzled expression. 'Relax, Mr Easton. You're in good hands.'

Ralf prowled the carpet of a consultation room St Vincent's Hospital. He was exhausted, having been able to sleep only in snatches for the last week.

No - not a nightmare. Reality! here were fever sores at the corners of his mouth, and He had been gangplanked into a perpetual nig! walked with a slight limp. Nervous as a rat, he shuffled from corner to corner, hands deep in vate room, and when Ralf entered, he essayed a pockets. He was of average height with flat downwa~nile. Ralf went over to him directly, without smiling,

slanting snake eyes and a pachuco haircut. Bene~d leaned close to his face. 'Where is it, coconut?'

his madras shirt he carried a butterfly switchblur Henley kept smiling. He made a small feathering and strapped to his leg under his trousers was~esture with one hand and stared remorselessly into specially modified bayonet. His face was smoot~h ~l~e flat dark good-looking, with flameporcelain,

sun-dark and scribbled with many fine b10~bright hair, eyes. He was jawline clean as a knife, and grey glasswrinkles.

,[~plinter eyes that looked a little crazy from the medi-

When he heard the scream, he stopped in his traC~ation. 'Since when did they start letting baboons in

and his charred eyes narrowed. It was Henley. Hh:c~ere~'

sure. Though he had known him only briefly, 'Don't loose-lip me, Easton.'

certain that he recognized something about that 'How'd you find me, Ralf?'

the . . .'

a whimpering quality that he associated with 'When you didn't show last week It wasn't a scream of pain. It was fear. 'Last week? How long I been?'

An hour later, a doctor came in - young, thin-bon~~ 'Don't you know? You been out nine days. The only

with long intelligent hands. 'He's come around.' good thing that happened to you is that I tentwentied

'What's wrong with him?' before Gusto or his bad boys did. They'd have left The doctor shrugged. 'No idea. It's the zaniest Ca,nothing for the hospital but a cleanup bill.'

tonia I've ever seen. He sent off theta waves the wh~ Henley closed his eyes and shook his head. A weight time he was out - the EKG of an alert person. Yet!heavy as heat lay on the back of his neck.

And

there refused to respond to any form of stimulation, his e~ere memories, ugly nightmare memories, of

darkwere dilated, his blood sugar way down. In some Winess, a maze, a black sun, a horrible whispering...

it's all related to the wound on his left foot. That th~ 'I laid out a lot of coin to et ou this rivate box'

g Y P ,

~m 1 refused to start heahn until about forty

s' p y ' g ' -~Ralf went on. He reached into his pocket and pulled minutes ago. Fibrinogen was actually dissolving at t~ut a jangle of dog tags. 'Your brother's plates. I figured

wound site.' they'd do more good here than they would where he's

'But he's going to pull through, isn't he?' itrashed. I used them to convince the meds that you

'I think so. His vital organs, nervous and lyr~nd I are kin. It was the only way of taking charge.'

systems, are all unaffected.' 'What about Gusto?'

Ralf released an audible sigh, ran a hand over i Ralf shook his head, contentious. 'He wants your face.

'When can I see him?' ears, clown. He figures you ripped him. What else is

'Now, if you like. He's remarkably alert for all ~. the stooge to think after more than a week? The best

been through.' thing for you to do is tell me where that skeejag is so I Henley Easton was sitting up in the bed ~i :can Tighten him up.'

60 New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos The Star Pools 61

Henley rubbed the back of his neck. A retinal af~ ~trian landscape - a parking lot. Henley recognized

image of the black sun seemed to be hovering befo ~Ralf's car and watched dumb-faced as a black man

in

him. Everything looked dark, outlined by a soft my iduck trousers unholstered a pistol and knelt down in

cal shine. ' No way, huckster. You'd just run it.' the back seat of an adjacent white Chevy. Then, just

'What?' Ralf's face darkened with indignation. 'r!as swiftiy, the image splintered.

your cover man.'

Henley looked cool and arrogant. 'You were my br~neeR~pf laidkiad.c'allused hand on Henley's shoulder. 'You rest,

cover man, and he was minced at Ngoc Linh.' Henley blinked, rubbed his temples. With cold objec-Ralf's emotional valence swung from indignation,~tivity, every rift and flaw in the opposite wall, every

fury and then to remorse with unnatural swiftneipore on Ralf's face, stood out sharp as glass. For a

'Yeah. Well, budroe, you'll be on your way to a famemoment he had felt as if he was leaning outside

reunion if you don't gratify Gusto. He wants those t~imself, teetering on the brink of a nightmare cliff

kilos.' ~that mawed beyond the particled world. Now he was

'And he can have them. I'm in this for the payoff I'~imself again, and it was difficult to imagine that not going to run it.' ~hat he had seen was real. But he couldn't take the

'Fine. Then tell me where I can cop.' chance -

'Forget it. Only I know where it's hidden. We ~ 'Hold on, Mike. There's a roofer waiting for you in a together or not at all.' !white Chevy wheelside of your car.'

'Sure, and just how long before you're mobile? I co~~ 'Huh?'

be so much fish chow by then.' 'Call it a case of the dread. Fever jitters. But stay 'We go tomorrow.' isharp.'

'You think you'll be all right? These meds don't ev~ 'Yeah. Sure.'

know what's wrong with you.' When Ralf left, Henley leaned back and closed his Henley nodded, but his eyes were glazed over, h~yes. A cold magnetic brilliance was running along the face distracted. The afterimage of the black sun h~urface of his skin, and he seemed to sense that eerie

expanded so that it covered everything like a ~hispering he had heard in his nightmare, sensed it film.

Ralf's face was a reflection in a dark rn~r~e way the deaf hear sounds through the small bones wormed

with far-off, unaccountable lights. The ro0~f their heads. Somewhere deep within himself the suddenly

seemed foreshortened, and Henley was st~ightmare was continuing, an evil pushing out into ing through

mistings of shadow. A blue light wh0~he world. He had a feeling that if he let himself he source seemed

to be somewhere behind the bed s~uld fall towards it, that it was pulling him fused his vision, and movements other than wt~a~ ! He stared at the wall directly opposite, tried to root knew were there attracted his attention. Anot~rnself in its cracks, but it was beginning to shimmer. scene was superimposed on the room. It was a ped~e was certain that it was starting all over again.

62 New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos The Star Pools 63

Then, just as he was reaching for the call switch The man rubbed the side of his head and looked up solidified. He was suddenly warm, and the sunli ~th a scowl. 'Gusto wants his scag, plain-brain.

What

slanting through the blinds was reassuring, yello~ ou expect - CIA?'

wine ~: 'Yeah, well you tell Gusto it's his soon as I cop it. My After a moment's thought, he reached out, and t~uch ~as laid up or he d have had ~t by now.

time he pressed the buzzer. When the nurse arriv~'He wants it right away, marshmallow.'

he was sitting at the edge of the bed, wearing, ~'Sure, sure. Everybody's double-time. You think I'd hoped, his most alert and gracio,u,s smile. 'Would still be in the country .if I was runnin.g it? Come on!'

mind getting my clothes, please? I m signing out. He pulled the man to his feet, pushed him back a pace, and retrieved the Walther. 'Tell him he can have it Ralf left the hospital through the service garage emerged at Twelth Street and Seventh Avenue. car was

parked in the Wavefly Building's lot, ant approached it the long way. When he got to the con

~omorrow,' he said, backing up to his car. 'Same drop.' Ralf threw the gun under the seat, slid behind the wheel, and drove off.

For nine days, since Henley turned up at St Vinof

the lot, he froze. There was a white Chevy park :ent's in a coma, he'd kept on the move, not daring to

near his car. ~~turn to his fiat. He knew Gusto would kill him. The Without hesitation he circled the lot ~[~nan had a notorious temper. But handling the hit man gave him some confidence, and he decided to get back

approached the Chevy from behind. When he ~ig~ . .

his apartment He c~rcled the block slowly once and

within four cars of it, he lay down and bellycraw~tø ú .

oped the lobby cautiously Nonetheless, as soon as he

until he was alongside its left rear door. From wh~c . . ú .

rv ~ut h~s key m the latch, he reahzed that he had

he lay, he could see the latch was up. He su eyed~~

surrounding cars as best he could. No one was in si~~)lundered. _

The door of the opposite apartment burst open, and

In one fluid movement, he unsprung his butterfly bl~ '

and jerked open the door. ~o men pounced on him, shoved him into his rooms.

There was a black man inside who was peer through a drillhole on the opposite door. Ralf burst in and the man swung around with a Walther automatic in his right hand.

Ralf was quicker. He chopped the gun out of his hand with a slash of his arm, then pulled him into a sitting position and boxed him on the side of the head.