Résumé With Monsters (28 page)

Philip nodded. "Yep. I'm in the glamorous world of data entry."

They discussed their lives. Amelia was greatly relieved to learn that Philip had a new girlfriend, excessively so, actually.

"That's very romantic," Amelia said. "I mean, her coming all the way from Florida because she read your book."

"Where did you meet your fiancé?" Philip asked, to change the subject. He wasn't really interested, and Amelia's reply went by him. He was annoyed by Amelia's undisguised delight in discovering that his interest now lay elsewhere. True, he had been a difficult lover. There was the mail cart incident, his housebreaking, and even at the best of times he had his obsessions, quirks that would have tried anyone's patience. But she didn't have to be so unseemly in her relief. A light, slightly rueful pat on the hand accompanied by a quiet, "I'm so happy for you" would have sufficed.

If he hadn't been miffed, he might have spoken with more care. Who knows? When Amelia began talking about her job at
Pelidyne
—she was a coordinator of publications—any fool could have seen that she was excited. Her immediate supervisor was leaving, and it looked like the position would go to Amelia. Anyone could tell that what was wanted here was a hearty congratulations ("terrific," "way to go," "good luck," et cetera).

Instead, he listened to Amelia talk enthusiastically about
Pelidyne
, its benefits package, its prestige, it wealth, its employee incentives, and then—perhaps he even interrupted—he said, "I have reason to believe that not all employees are upwardly mobile. I have reason to believe that there is a subterranean network of decayed, atrophied workers living in the walls and in derelict parts of the building. I suspect they are cannibalistic and that they are in thrall to Dagon, which is, of course, just another name for the Old Ones."

Almost anyone could have told him that this was not the politic thing to say. He needed her trust if he was going to help her. This confrontational approach was doomed.

Amelia narrowed her eyes and stiffened, straightening her back. She glared at Philip. "Still seeing monsters," she said. "Still not in the pink of mental health, are we?"

They argued. It was a longer argument than Amelia usually indulged in. Apparently she had thought more than a little about Philip since last seeing him. "Monsters!" she screamed. "I'll tell you about your monsters. Your monsters are cowardice and laziness and self-pity and arrogance and anything that gives you an excuse to run away. Look at you, Philip. You are forty- five years old and you are working as a temp, sitting in some stupid cubicle doing data entry. Why?" Amelia stood up. "Monsters. That's right. Because monsters are always sabotaging your chances. Hairy house-sized spiders from outer space. Yep. Old Philip could have amounted to something but a space octopus from
Yuggoth
stole his dreams."

Amelia was on a roll. She listed Philip's monsters, getting most of the names right, and described the specific ways in which they had interfered with his life. Philip was impressed. He had not realized that she had been so attentive to the details.

The irony, of course, was that her litany about MicroMeg and its horrors was ransacked from her own subconscious—Philip had never even tried to tell her the grisly specifics—and what she spoke of mockingly was dreadful fact, buried deep in her memory beneath layers of denial.

Oblivious to this truth, she railed on. "You don't have to be a shrink to see what you're up to. It's a responsibility dodge, that's all. You want to be the eternal child. Wait till your new girlfriend figures that out. And unless she is a moron, she will figure it out. She may like your book, but I don't think she is going to be delighted when she learns it is also your life."

Amelia stalked off before he could respond, and Philip was left to finish his ham sandwich (chilly,
leatherlike
fare) with only his thoughts (equally indigestible) for company.

As he chewed, his resolve solidified. The easy course now would be to wash his hands of her, to shrug and get on with his life. He would not do that. He would rescue her in spite of herself.

And to do that, of course, he had to learn the exact nature and extent of the threat. He shivered. The thought of hunting down the lair of that little, misshapen and degenerate man sent a cold, bleak wind blowing through him.

He could not afford to contemplate what lay ahead. His nerve would fail if he stood too long at the gate. And so, after lunch, he dialed Dan's Texas Bar-B-
Que
and asked to speak to Sissy.

"I've got to work late tonight," he told her. "Don't wait up." He was tempted to add, "If I don't come back at all, don't come looking for me. Don't alert the authorities. Forget you ever heard of
Pelidyne
. Go back to Florida. Marry. Raise children. Live a good life. The Old Ones don't know you. We are of no interest to them unless we directly interfere with their purposes. You are safe in their shadow." Instead, he said, simply, "I love you."

"Hey, are you okay?" Sissy asked.

Philip could hear the lunch crowd din behind her. Someone shouting from the restaurant's kitchen, a cash register ringing, a door banging open.

"Sure," Philip said. "I've just got a deadline here, and I've got to put in some extra hours. I didn't want you to worry." He hung up.

He knew the drill. He waited until the evening rush was at its height, the lobby filled with milling office workers frantic to get home. He signed out, turned, uttered a theatrical "Damn it!" and imitated, for anyone watching, a man who has just remembered something left behind in the office. He turned and darted back to the elevators, got in one that was just dispelling its clot of workers, and punched the button for the basement.

He got a turkey sandwich from a vending machine, found an office full of broken chairs and dusty filing cabinets, and crawled behind a desk to wait.

6.

He leaned his back against a wall and closed his eyes, waiting for the building to clear. He had no plan.

He woke suddenly when something yanked his feet, jerking him forward. The back of his head thumped the carpet.

Ooph
!

He tried to rise, but the speed with which he was dragged forward kept him off balance. His legs were numb, wrapped in steel bands. He tried to lift his head, to see his attacker, but he could not. He was being dragged rapidly across the darkened room. He thought he heard a voice, or voices, but he could distinguish no single word.

The ceiling rolled by overhead, panels of darkened fluorescent lights passing like black, rectangular clouds. He was in the hall then, speeding along the carpet on his back.

Wham
! A door was sprung open. Stairs. Great. The back of his head counted stairs. Thump, thump, thump, thump. He lost count.

He regained consciousness in a dank, chill room where the reek of oil and burnt rubber mingled with the familiar, frightening stench of long-dead fish.
Paralyzed
! he thought—and scrambled to his feet in wild, arm-flapping panic. No. He was all right. He was—

He was staring at row upon row of cylindrical, glass containers, each one perhaps eight feet tall, each containing an upright human body. The naked bodies floated in a bright green liquid and large, viscous air bubbles crawled over white flesh like sentient, translucent slugs.

Philip sensed that he was far from
Pelidyne
, that he had not merely descended steps into some subterranean chamber but that he had crossed a boundary of rational, physical law and now inhabited another dimension.

"Drone," a voice said. It was a hollow, mechanical voice that had no specific location but seemed to come from above.

"Identify yourself," the voice boomed.

Philip shouted his name at the ceiling.

"I will consult my data. I have consulted my data. You are a transient contract drone on a time-limited assignment. Time log would indicate that you have left the premises. Either you are lying about your identity or, rightly identified, have practiced deceit in declaring your exit."

"Well, actually—" Philip began.

The voice interrupted. "I am proceeding with physical identification."

Blinding lights burst on overhead. From between dark pillars, crablike robots scuttled forth. They were the size of large dogs and moved with unnerving speed. One came from behind Philip. It announced its presence with a high whine, and Philip turned as it enfolded him in bands of steel. Something whirred near his ear, and his shirtsleeve fell away, cut by a thin beam of red light. Spidery fingers encircled his elbow. Something stung his arm, and Philip stared at a translucent bubble that floated in front of his eyes. The bubble turned red, filling—he was certain—with his blood.

It disappeared, and another machine, this one tall and made of what looked like black, shiny plastic, leaned forward and pressed some filmy,
rubberlike
material against Philip's face. He screamed, certain he was being suffocated.

As he screamed, the thin membrane spun away, and Philip saw it, in the shape of his own howling face, spin toward the illuminated ceiling, dwindling like a kite whipped into autumn skies.

The machines backed away, leaving Philip on his knees, sick with terror.

"Your identity has been verified," the voice said. "You are, however, unauthorized. I am only a second generation servant of
Yog-Sothoth
. I will summon your own kind."

A siren began to wail.

A man in a uniform immediately burst through a door.

"What's going on here?" he shouted.

Philip found himself staring into the cold eyes of Hal Ketch,
MicroMeg's
security guard.

Ketch nodded his head slowly. "It's like the Disney dolls say." He flashed a cold grin and drew his pistol. "It's a small fucking world."

Ketch led Philip from the room at gunpoint. As they passed the green, bubbling tanks, Philip recognized Gladys
Fenninger
. Her hair miraculously retained its bird-winged shape even while immersed in green fluid.

Philip was surprised to discover that Gladys had a pretty good body: firm breasts, perky nipples, a flat, trim tummy and soft, rounded hips.

"Move it," Ketch snapped. "Don't gawk at the prizes."

"That's Gladys
Fenninger
," Philip said. "She's my supervisor."

"Not anymore. She won a ticket to
Yuggoth
. Employee of the Month.
E.O.M.'s
automatically go. She's history at
Pelidyne
."

"Jesus."

Ketch turned. "That's sharp,
Kenan
. Matter of fact, Jesus was taken to
Yuggoth
, although the Elder Ones are embarrassed about the whole thing. He got away from them briefly. You want to see an Elder One oscillate and turn purple, just mention Jesus."

The door in front of Philip swung open and he entered a dark corridor.

"Don't try to run," Ketch said. "I'll shoot out your spine, and you'll spend the next couple of millennia as a smart switch in a temporal gate."

"Huh?"

"Trust me, you wouldn't like it."

The corridor was dank, the fishy smell powerful—although not, Philip noted, incapacitating—and the walls were covered with gray fungi that writhed unpleasantly, that seemed, indeed, to sense the passing of Ketch and Philip and stretch to touch them.

"You don't want to brush against these walls," Ketch said, as though reading Philip's thought.

Ketch indicated a corridor to the left, and Philip ascended three stone steps and entered a darker passageway. They came to a rusty, metal door. Philip pushed it open at Ketch's urging, and a din of voices and machinery poured out.

They entered a vast, cold room and proceeded quickly along a raised catwalk. Philip clung to the shaky metal railing and peered down into what he later came to identify in his mind as Office Hell.

Here was where the little man had come from. The floor of the room was filled with desks and computers and laboring ghoul-workers. Some wore shreds of old office clothing; some were naked. All had dead-white, leprous flesh. The floor of the room was strewn with paper, printouts, and bones. Philip saw a pile of skulls next to a broken water cooler. Screams, cries, shouts, and hideous laughter filled Philip's head. A thin, tinny radio played, something with violins and flutes, yes,
Yesterday
. As Philip watched, a fight broke out between two men. One of them, thin and stooped, wore nothing but a hat. The other wore a ragged coat. The hat man pushed the other against a desk, and a computer monitor toppled off, smashing with an explosive sound that ignited a chorus of human whoops. A fat woman in a red dress rushed to the defense of the pushed man and other workers quickly joined the fray.