As with Katryn, I saw Peter’s swing coming before it connected. This gave me time to duck under it, albeit just barely. Peter wasn’t the same caliber of warrior as Katryn but he was still an R&E Ranger—the best of a hungry and violent race of survivors. So I didn’t feel guilty about jabbing my fists up into his ribs, a cheap shot to repay a cheap shot.
“Oof!” Peter choked, before recovering quickly. Kneeing me in the gut, he punched me across the face with a fierce blow that sent me spinning backwards. Hitting the ground with a thud, I threw a punch at Peter’s abdomen and then head-butted him across the chin, recovering my resolve.
Katryn reacted first, her outrage over the display clear. Pointing at Peter, she shouted, “As your priestess, I command you to stand down!”
“No. This one is mine,” Peter growled. Reaching over to a nearby bench, he grabbed a tire iron. “You both disgust me. He’s not even a person.”
“You’ll pay for that remark,” I said, seeing his weapon. Our encounter had gone from a brawl to a life-and-death struggle.
Katryn seemed stunned by his stupidity, momentarily senseless. “You have sworn away your life.”
“Leave him to me,” I said, rising up. “I’m going to enjoy killing him.”
That was when Peter came at me with his newly acquired weapon. Grabbing some sawdust off the ground, I threw it in his face, temporarily blinding him.
“Monster!” Peter shouted. His blow missed and I promptly pulled the tire iron from his hands before throwing him into a nearby pile of machinery.
“And proud of it,” I said.
If Richard heard our struggle, he wisely decided to stay out of it. The door to the guest room remained firmly closed, limiting our conflict to the garage.
Peter immediately got up, charging at me and beginning another series of brutal swings at my face. His attacks were wild and emotional, in direct defiance of his CQC training. Had I not been overwhelmed with anger myself, I could have easily disabled him and sent him painlessly to the ground. Instead, I blocked each of his blows before starting to punch him in the face with purely the intent to hurt.
Jackie and Katryn looked on as Peter regained some of his senses, his mouth dripping blood from my earlier blows. Jabs, kicks, and grapples followed as we sought to beat each other senseless.
Peter wasn’t as strong or as skilled as I, but he was faster and his blows were unrestrained by mercy. There was darkness inside him that was almost palpable, a darkness driving him to hit harder and faster than he normally would have.
Peter’s anger was a distinct advantage as I held myself back, pulling my punches when they could have shattered bones. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do him any permanent lasting harm and that was hurting my chances.
Then he picked up a wrench.
“Fuck it,” I said, grunting in rage. Seeing him swinging it toward my face, I quite simply went nuts.
Blocking the wrench with my tire iron, I kicked him savagely in the stomach before ripping the weapon from his grip. I then struck him across the face with my weapon. He was lucky he wasn’t killed instantly. Instead, he just hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“I’ll …” Peter started to speak, spitting out teeth.
“No, never again,” I said. My shoulder started burning again as I felt a hate within me I couldn’t remember feeling before but seemed to drown out all other feelings.
Pulling him up by the dog tag and lifting the wrench over my shoulder, I was ready to kill him. Then I began to hear music. Not the retro tunes of Richard’s jukebox but something from another world: a weird, alien piping mixed with unnatural-sounding flutes and surreal stringed instruments which drowned out all other sounds.
In the background, there was chanting. The voices were not all human, each speaking the same word over and over again: Azathoth, Azathoth, Azathoth, Azathoth, Azathoth.
Azathoth was the name of the Dunwych god of creation and destruction. Supposedly, he’d created the universe in a fit of madness. I had no idea why I thought of him and the terrifying music devoted to his glories. Yet, I could feel the music running through my body as my shoulder burned. The act of murdering Peter was like an action sacred to that dread god.
Dropping the wrench from my grip, I blinked. Slowly, the bizarre music quieted and eventually faded away. What the hell was happening to me?
Realizing I was still holding a nearly senseless Peter, I ripped the dog tags free from his neck. “You do not deserve these. You are a disgrace to the United States Remnant and the city of New Arkham. You are a horrible example of a human being, a slaver and scum. Get out of my sight. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
Peter looked up to me and spit blood against my chest, defiant to the end. His courage didn’t last long however, because he immediately ran off afterward. Watching him flee like a coward, I wondered why I’d spared his life. A smarter man would have killed him then and there.
I couldn’t do it, though. Not when I didn’t know if it was me that wanted him dead or something else inside me. The fact I couldn’t tell the difference frightened me more than I could put into words.
“You should have killed him,” Katryn said, watching him leave. “Now you’ll have to do it later, if I don’t get to him first.”
“I know.”
Jackie looked at me from over the edge of the convertible, her eyes briefly looking like Richard’s. For a second, as the last of the music faded away, I swore I could see the canine visage of a ghoul superimposed over her human features. I saw her red hair growing out of her ghoul-like head, a hideous sight given her normal cuteness.
Shaking away the hallucination, I took several deep breaths to calm myself. “I’m sorry, Jackie. A girl like you shouldn’t be witness to that sort of violence.”
“It’s okay, Mister Booth. I saw my Da kill plenty of people before,” Jackie said, looking at me with a dissonant cheerfulness. “I’m sorry you didn’t kill him.”
“Me too,” I muttered.
What the hell was wrong with me? I didn’t get a chance to think about that because Katryn took my hand and whispered, “When you were about to kill Peter, I saw something in your eyes. What did you see?”
“Nothing,” I said, pulling away.
Katryn half-closed her eyes. “Do not lie to me, John. You had the look of a high priest in your eyes. Either that or a man who has the blessing of the Awakened Gods upon him.”
I gave her a sideways glance. “I don’t feel blessed.”
“Blessed or cursed is relative.” Katryn took a deep breath. “Tell me what you saw. You can trust me.”
I couldn’t but I’d invested heavily in our alliance. “I heard something, music and strange voices. They were chanting the name of your creator god.”
“Azathoth, the Creator and Destroyer. The Blind Idiot God has taken notice of your quest.” Katryn sounded awed. “Him or his messenger, Nyarlathotep. Perhaps a sorcerer did not place that mark on you, but the gods themselves.”
“Blind Idiot God?” Jackie asked.
“Azathoth is the maker of the universe according to Dunwych mythology, but he’s a gibbering, mindless abomination. They believe he will eventually destroy the universe as effortlessly as he made it,” I explained, remembering all I’d learned from the Necronomicon and my earlier conversations with Katryn.
Jackie’s eyes widened. “Wow, the Dunwych have awesome gods.”
“I’ll try and keep my enthusiasm contained.”
Katryn’s eyes became so cold, I believed she was about to kill me. “Do not mock our faith.”
“I’m not,” I said, lying. “If you say I am blessed by alien gods, I will take your word for it.”
I had my own suspicions about what had happened, too. I’d died at the hands of the nightgaunt, genuinely died. Somehow, this had activated the Hand of Nyarlathotep that had been placed on my skin long ago. Jessica was currently having her life-force drained to heal me and somehow this was also putting me in touch with eldritch forces, possibly ones associated with the Dunwych’s so-called gods. If my theory was true, it was all the more important that I break the bond between me and Jessica. The Mark could be doing irreversible damage to me, making me into something … less than human. Worse still, I could be becoming something more. It was better than the idea I’d always had something other inside me, but not by much.
“Are you okay, Jackie?”
“Oh yes, I love it here,” Jackie said. “Can I stay?”
I thought about that and decided, increasingly, she was half-ghoul and doomed to become like Richard. Death would be a kindness but I wouldn’t be able to do that to a young girl. Better she be with her own kind. “I’ll think about it.”
“Whatcha thinking about, Mister Booth?” Jackie asked, obviously seeing I was deep in thought.
“Nothing important,” I said, smiling.
Katryn leaned in and gave me one last kiss, this one long and lingering. Pulling back, she gave me a slight nod before walking out. “Keep the spear, John. You may need it. Also, be nice to the one you care for. You will need her.”
“Do you mean Jessica or Mercury?”
“Yes,” Katryn said. “Watch over the child, Jackie as well. I feel your fates are intertwined.”
I was now more confused than ever. “Alright.”
I walked back into the guest room, my eyes giving one last glance toward her as she disappeared out the front door. Inside the chamber, Richard had drawn a mystic circle on the ground with pig’s blood. The symbols inside seemed to pulse and shift like the ones on my knife. Once more, the sight of the spellwork made me ill, causing me to look away.
I’d seen more than my fair share of debased rituals in the Wasteland. Spells designed around summoning horrific monsters, assuming unnatural forms, and even raising the dead. More often than not, these enchantments enacted a horrific toll on their casters. Those who dabbled in the arcane arts usually ended up deformed, insane, or both. It bothered me I had to seek the assistance of sorcery to save Jessica’s life, even sorcery worked by someone I trusted as much as Richard.
“I hate magic,” I muttered, shutting the door behind me and locking it.
“Yet, you own a copy of the Necronomicon,” Richard pointed out. “Can’t get much more magical than that. It’s the Koran of the Creepy. The Bible of the Black Arts. The …”
“Knowledge isn’t magic,” I interrupted, keeping my eyes closed before sitting down on the ground beside Richard. The Necronomicon contained a great deal of useful information beyond the spells inside.
“Sure it is,” Richard said, starting to draw pictograms in blood on my forehead. “All knowledge is magic. The problem is that knowledge is power and power corrupts. So, by definition, knowledge corrupts!”
“You just made that up,” I said, staring at him.
“Of course, I made it up. Who else would say something so wise? I was able to get the spell I needed from the Ghoul Elders living a few miles under the valley, but this is not going to be easy. I can’t just wave my hand and remove the bond between you and Jessica.”
“Just tell me what I have to do.” I waited for him to finish before shifting positions to Indian style on the ground.
“We need to go talk to an Elder Thing,” Richard explained, assuming a position identical to mine.
“An Elder … Thing,” I repeated, taking the same skeptical tone as Mercury had during our conversation regarding the Color. I vaguely remembered reading about these Elder Things in the Necronomicon but I’d been hoping they had some other name to refer to themselves by. Seriously, did I just walk up to them and call them things? It seemed rude.
“Don’t start with me.” Richard poked me in the chest with a clawed finger. “Their actual name is unpronounceable by humans. They’re big, powerful, and almost as old as the Great Old Ones. If anything in the universe can break this spell and restore your memories, it’s one of them.”
I wasn’t about to argue with him. “What are they doing in the Dreamlands?”
Richard shrugged. “Safer than remaining on Earth, I guess. Once they were the top dogs on our planet, millions of years back, ruling the world in their arcane tentaclely fashion. Then the Great Old Ones came from the sky and kicked them off their throne. The Elder Things had human slaves and shoggoths to look after them and lasted as a viable culture until the end of the last Ice Age. The few remaining ones fled from Antarctica to the Dreamlands about a century and a half ago.”
“That recently?” I was surprised the Old Earth’s governments hadn’t detected them.
“Humans are a dumb, unobservant species. You’d be surprised at how much shit was going down without anyone realizing it,” Richard huffed. “Er, no offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “My opinion of my fellow man has never been particularly high. How are we going to persuade this being to help me?”
“I have no fucking idea.” Richard coughed into one hand. “That’s your problem. Stop asking so many questions. You’re about to enter an alternate dimension through astral projection; most people would be fascinated by the shit we’re doing.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I then removed my shirt so Richard could start drawing more symbols on my chest. He also lit a set of candles which filled the air with a strange pungent aroma. I recognized the smell as Ghoul Dust, a powerful hallucinogen the underground race traded with outsiders. Its use was often said to cause insanity and death.
Great.
“What can you tell me about the Dreamlands?” I asked, as I started feeling a bit woozy. I knew very little about the place, other than it was a place priestesses like Katryn and psychics like Martha visited regularly. Professor Ward had speculated it was a quantum dimension adjacent to our reality, affected by the now-proven phenomenon of psychic resonance. Richard and apparently all ghouls everywhere considered it just as important as the physical world, which told me jack shit about what to expect.
“It’s the collected mental diarrhea of the universe. Every little thought you have is reflected there and so are the thoughts of everyone you’ve ever met. All of humanity’s puny little gods along with every little fool who’s ever been so foolish as to believe in an afterlife exists in the Dreamlands,” Richard said, pulling a leather wineskin out from under the bed and handing it to me. “Drink this; it’ll put hair on your chest. Admittedly, not as much as mine.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” I said. Taking a drink, I found myself coughing violently. The substance inside tasted like octopus ink mixed with blood.
“It wouldn’t be if it was just humanity’s delusions of self-importance and masturbation fantasies. The problem is it’s also every little single terrible thought and nightmare every other species in the universe has had. Let me tell you, the most miniscule thought of Cthulhu could destroy the collective dream worlds of an entire planet of lesser beings—you know, folks like us.”
“How depressing,” I said, coughing again.
“Hey, I didn’t make the world. I just try and live in it.” Richard shrugged.
I was tempted to ask when the spell would begin, only to have myself start going into convulsions. My mouth foamed over as my eyes rolled back into my head; every part of my body felt alight with fire. Finally, after several moments of agonizing pain, the entire world faded away. For a split second, I thought I was about to die.
Then, almost immediately, I found my eyes opening to an alien sky.