Unholy Dimensions (38 page)

“But like you say, I don't understand it, so what can I tell people?”

“They must know some of it already,” the inquisitor sighed, shrugging. “That's why they sent you. But I wonder if they know the full scope of things. The full scope of our jihad. They must think this is all about silly human politics. That Saddam wants oil, or land, the material things you godless Westerners crave. Saddam is of the Inner Circle, Lieutenant. He is no Moslem. That is a young religion, a religion of mere men. It is his facade, like the name of Pazuzu. Saddam is the Man of the Blue Turban. The Man of the Apocalypse. He is a manifestation of the Faceless One. He is Nyarlathotep.”

“I don't understand any of this,” Hilliard sobbed abruptly, desperation electrifying his nerves. “I don't
want
to understand it...please don't tell me about it! Please just let me go...”

“You are very fortunate that I am offering you such a merciful death, Lieutenant. You destroyed many valuable grimoires, important objects...and you came very close to slaying one of Pazuzu’s children. A being that we were to have unleashed upon your people. A being to make their conceptions of demons seem like fairy tales for children...”

A breathless man burst into the room then, and began babbling to the inquisitor incoherently. Hilliard had flinched sharply at the man's dramatic entrance, but grew even more alarmed at the look that came over the inquisitor's face at this news...especially when the inquisitor shot a narrow-eyed glance Hilliard’s way.

The new man left, and the inquisitor bent to whisper in the blind man's ear. The old man nodded, his sightless gaze not wavering from Hilliard until he stood up and shuffled out of the cell, leaving the iron door open behind him.

“Come with me,” the inquisitor said gruffly.

“Where are we going?”

“More of your friends are on their way. They’ll be here soon. You should be happy, Lieutenant...they may have just saved your life. You're going to contact them. Tell them you're alive. Tell them to turn back.” The man grinned and flicked his cigarette to the stone floor. “I know you'll do it. I said you were brave, but only superficially. You're a coward with no solid commitment, no real faith, no true loyalty to your God, your country, your kind. You don't understand the glory of true servitude. You will live, Lieutenant. For now. Until those who slumber awaken.” He gestured. “Enough chat. Come on; we'd better be quick...”

Dazed by the revelation that he would live after having just absorbed the fact that he would die, Hilliard
floated unsteadily to his feet. Should he trust this madman, this Devil worshiper who believed that demons -- more so than chemical, biological or nuclear weapons -- were the greatest threats his country had to offer? But what choice did he have? If this place took another bombing he knew the labyrinth would cave in completely. And he would be buried forever amongst these people, his skeleton one day indistinguishable from the rest.

He shuffled out of the cell as wearily as the old man, the inquisitor taking his arm. Together they walked the narrow tunnels of these catacombs, a few times stepping over fallen stones, skirting partially tumbled walls. Dust was still trickling down from the arched ceilings. Men ran past them carrying weapons, supplies, and more of the ancient books.

And then they turned a corner and stopped. A group of nearly a dozen men were ahead of them, blocking an intersection of several tunnels, at least one of these fully caved in. The men were dragging something large and heavy out of one tunnel that looked mostly collapsed, and carrying it toward the mouth of another tunnel. The object they carried was long as a tree trunk and just as thick, but flaccid, drooping from their arms heavily. At first, Hilliard took the black, slippery-looking object to be the carcass of an immense python. Some pet, living idol, mascot. The tapered forward end he took to be the snake’s tail.

But then he saw that along the underside of the glistening black object were rows of suckers, much like those of an octopus...except that they were more diamond-shaped than circular, a translucent gray. And, impossibly, they seemed to be moving independently, their edges
slowly opening and closing. Could this be the limb of some gigantic cephalopod? Did the men expect to drag the entire creature through these tunnels by just one arm? The entire animal must be impossibly gargantuan. Could this hive connect with some vast subterranean pool, out here in the middle of the desert?

Just then the last man clambered out of the partially collapsed tunnel, bringing up what proved to be -- despite the fluctuating suckers -- the severed end of the arm. The end was a ruined mess where a falling ceiling had torn it from its body. There
was no blood, just a jagged wound in fibrous, stringy flesh, the meat white under the black skin. Dangling from the wound were a number of globe-like bladders or tumors, like obscene clusters of fruit, the largest the size of a beach ball. These globular organs were translucent and covered in webs of black veins. A sloshing sound came from the orbs, and was he imagining that shadowy dark shapes, vaguely human, fetus- like, were contained within them? Was the largest globe actually pulsing with movement, as if its occupant were restless to be born?

Hilliard heard a cry and jerked his head. The man at the front of the great limb had called out in fear as the pointed end wound itself around his neck. Another man moved forward, helped extricate the limb before it could cut off the man's air, held it in both hands as they continued toward the new corridor.

An anus-like pucker the pilot hadn't noticed before at the tip of the tentacle suddenly yawned wide into a straining toothless maw, but the man gripping this end maintained his hold. It was a good thing; the mouth had stretched wide enough to engulf...

.
..a man. And suddenly Hilliard understood the globes that hung from the shattered limb. Those figures inside the orbs were not fetuses growing...but men being dissolved into grotesque little dolls...

“It is a desecration that you see this,” said the inquisitor. “A blasphemy that you will live to remember it. But we have no choice. See what you have done to this child of Pazuzu, Lieutenant? But he lives. He will regain his body, in time. But those planes have to be stopped, first.” The inquisitor dragged him forward again, and they moved around behind the great limb and the struggling men.

“My God,” Hilliard whispered, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Sorry, it's too late for conversion; I don't think this god would have you. But how quickly one becomes a believer, eh, Lieutenant?”

They would not feed their own men to the creature, would they? Perhaps it was an honor to sacrifice oneself. “The glory of true servitude.” Please let it be that, Hilliard thought. Please that ...and not the other possibility.

That
perhaps Hilliard hadn't been the only survivor of the two Vikings, after all.

They lost sight of the nightmare spectacle, turned a few more corners and stepped into a fairly large room. Atop a table rested a radio set. Men stood around the room with anxious faces, some gripping assault rifles. One of them was already holding a microphone out to Hilliard.

“Tell them you live,” the inquisitor repeated. “You have my oath that you will be freed. No one will believe what you saw. Until the day comes when they see Pazuzu's children for themselves, of course. Whole. And Pazuzu himself, when the stars sit right. But go back to your wife and dog for now, Lieutenant. Tell your friends to turn back.”

Hilliard staggered forward a few steps. Hesitated. Lifted
his arm slowly, as if under water.

He
pictured the Vikings in his mind, soaring on the desert winds. Small, yes, but steel. Angels of death... “spirits of the air who come raging violently”...

Coward, the inquisitor had called him. No loyalty to his kind...

A man wearing headphones gestured wildly, sputtered urgently. The inquisitor snapped, “They're getting nearer. Hurry, now!”

Hilliard accepted the microphone, moved it to his lips. He thumbed on the switch.

“Hello?” he croaked.

“Who is this?” crackled a voice that sounded as though it were filtered through a sand storm.

“Hit them!” Lieutenant Gavin Hilliard cried abruptly, finding his voice. “Hit them with everything you have! Hurry up!"

The inquisitor snarled something in Arabic and surged toward the American, to tear him away from the radio and speak into it himself. Other men rushed at him. Rifle barrels lifted...

And even as their hands found him, he coiled his own hand in the radio cord and with his right wrenched the microphone from the end of it.

And even as the microphone ripped free, Hilliard continued to shout hoarsely into it.

“Hit them!” he screamed. “For the love of G—

The Boarded Window

Alan
used his trowel to poke at the thing in the rain gutter.

It resembled a dead baby bird; translucent, purple-pink flesh devoid of feathers, crooked
limbs like rudimentary wings and legs. But it was as large as a full grown pigeon, or larger. A group of pigeons favored the roof of his mother’s tall old house, sleeping in the cornices and in gaping holes in the eaves. He guessed it was one of those birds, dead and decomposing. Still, it didn’t look long dead. And the mouth...he prodded the small limp carcass once more. The mouth looked more like it possessed lips than a beak.

Disgusted, Alan used the trowel to flip the animal over the side of the gutter to drop into the large trash barrel below.

He had decided to clean out his mother’s rain gutters himself, since neither she nor he could afford hiring someone at the present. The gutters had become more like flower pots in the past few years since his father had passed away; lush green plants filled this one stretch of gutter, no doubt seeded there by the tall tree which grew along the side of the sorrowful-looking Victorian. Alan had borrowed a ladder from a friend, and brought up with him a number of small trash bags to be filled with the plants and the layer of debris they grew in. When each bag was full he meant to drop them down into the bucket.

But the discovery of the bird or flayed squirrel or whatever it might be had distracted him from his project. That, and the broken attic window.

The window was visible from the ground; it ran diagonally, filling a space between a higher and shorter level of the roof where the attic rose above the second story. It consisted of three square panes, none of which seemed able to slide or swing open. However, one of the panes was broken at the corner. From the ground Alan hadn’t been able to see this, the plants in their trough helping to obscure the damage.

Another project. Alan sighed. Well, who else could help his mother tend to these things? For now he would simply go up into the attic and tape a piece of cardboard over the hole so that no pigeons or squirrels would get in there to make it their home.

He’d do that first. He hated heights, and now found he welcomed the chance to come down from the high ladder.

Before descending, however, he dared to lean closer to the window, near enough to touch it with his fingers if he had cared to stretch, which he didn’t. He tried to see into the attic from here. He had played in it as a boy, despite his father forbidding him from going up there. It had been years since he’d really looked around in there. He was trying to imagine this diagonal window from the other side, in relation to his memories of the attic rooms. He found he couldn’t picture it from the inside.

He couldn’t see into the attic through it, either. The panes might have been painted black inside, for all he could tell. The most he could make out was his own curious face reflected in the dirty glass, staring back at him.

When Alan stepped up into the attic a small creature hopped behind a box of books, thrashing its upper limbs. He gasped, became a frozen pose framed in the threshold. Then he heard the cooing, and saw the white droppings on the floor boards. Damn pigeons; how had they got up in here? Why did his mother have to throw bread out for them and encourage them to congregate? When he came further into the attic he saw that a window in this end had been propped open with a board. Mother. She must have done that to let some air in while she was up here one time, and had forgotten to close it again. Alan sighed. He’d have to close it and catch each pigeon individually and carry them outside. Yet another project. Maybe he should just go home, he thought.

For now he left the window as it was, and moved into the darker end of the attic, where the
walls angled closer together...

It was no wonder he couldn’t see through the window from the outside. It was thoroughly boarded up on the inside. This also explained why he hadn’t been able to recall the window from the inside from his boyhood; it had apparently been covered like this for many years.

Returning from the attic to borrow his father’s old tool box from his mother, Alan first gave her hell about the pigeons up there, and then asked, “Why did Dad board up that slanted attic window? On this end of the house, up over the back door?”

“Oh, my father was the one who did that. Your father started to take the boards off once so the attic would get more light, but then he changed his mind and boarded it back up again.”