As the light washed over me, everything was more vivid than in life. The sights, smells, and emotions. All of it.
I could recall the colors of the sky on the day I was born and remember what the taste of a meal was a decade ago. These were the memories the orb stored and shared among the human ghosts who dwelled within its folds. It wasn’t limited to sharing memories either, but crafted dreams of stunning reality born from the most hidden desires of those souls it contained.
A girl named Marissa dreamed of her dead parents, abundant crops, and marrying the boy down the road.
A boy named Obed dreamed of becoming a great warrior, killing hundreds of opponents, then setting himself up as ruler of Kingsport.
Marcus dreamed of the Pre-Rising world he’d heard about in stories and swung from skyscraper to skyscraper on over a city long since dead.
The babe, Josefina, only a toddler, simply dreamed of growing up to become the woman she never would.
Camille dreamed of watching her parents die over and over again in the most horrifying manner possible.
James relived losing his virginity in a way which wasn’t the clumsy manner of two newly pubescent children fumbling with each other.
Paradise.
But like all heavens, it belonged only to the dead.
I was alive.
Wasn’t I?
The memory I relived was one I’d almost forgotten, so drowned out in the struggles of daily life it had been. It was five years ago; I was returning home from a riot suppression at one of the collective farms which supplied New Arkham and the Remnant with its food. I’d been involved in killing a dozen farmers and the burning of their houses. The smell of charred flesh and wooden buildings stuck in my nostrils and I remember throwing up like I’d still been a cadet. I was supposed to be an elite soldier but this hadn’t been the work of a Recon and Extermination Ranger—it had been simple butchery.
Yet, what choice did I have? There were close to five hundred thousand citizens in New Arkham alone and any interruption in the flow of grain, mushrooms, rice, or other foodstuffs would mean mass starvation. My chief loyalty had to be to the people of the Remnant. The greater good trumped everything, even if I felt sick about it.
Right?
Walking through the front door of my single family house, a relative luxury when most had to bunk together in barracks, I saw the lights were off and my children were in front of the static-filled television. It was well past midnight and they should both have been in bed, but:
Fourteen-year-old Gabriel was sleeping on the carpet with his hands in his pajamas, his arms wrapped around my copy of Unspeakable Oaths with his head resting on the cover. It wasn’t the kind of reading material my wife or I encouraged him to read, but he’d been sneaking into my private book shelf since he was ten. The white-haired boy had always been a troubled child but I loved him anyway.
Sitting on the couch was the half-awake form of my platinum-blonde-haired teenaged daughter Anita. She kept her hair cut short and was wearing a pink t-shirt with the R&E logo on the front and a pair of black bicycle shorts. Anita blinked when I opened the door and smiled at my arrival. “Hey, Da.”
“Hiya, Scout,” I said, smirking. “What are you doing up so late?”
“Waiting for you,” Anita said, keeping her voice low. She was fifteen now and about ready to take up a trade. Anita had made no secret of the fact she wanted to join the military and had aced every possible test for advanced long-term training.
The possibility frightened me. I didn’t want my daughter getting herself killed in a misguided attempt to make me proud.
“Where’s your mother?” I said, putting my finger in front of her mouth and walking over to sit down beside me on the couch.
Anita gave me a sour look then turned away. “She’s staying at a friend’s.”
“Ah,” I said, knowing what she meant. I didn’t blame Martha Booth for having taken up with other men. Our relationship had been forced on us by the Council, an attempt to breed psychic soldiers as if humans were just another animal to be husbanded. Neither of my children had displayed Martha’s gifts, though it was still too early to tell with Gabriel. It wasn’t like I could cast stones either. I spent time with prostitutes as well as a number of married Remnant women in similar situations. I’d thought about explaining that to Anita but, well, where the hell would I even begin?
“Who’s been taking care of you in the meantime?” I asked.
“Aunt Eliza,” Anita said, flipping off the television with a tape-covered remote. There was still a little light coming in through the windows from the moon outside.
“Ah,” I said, thinking about the General’s wife. “We’re lucky to have her.”
“Yeah,” Anita said, turning back around. “She took us shooting.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Well, she took me shooting. Gabriel spent the entire time reading your creepy books.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“I’m getting good,” Anita said, brightly. “I think I’ll be the best at the tryouts next month. They may put me straight on the path to becoming an R&E soldier!”
Gabriel stirred in his sleep a bit before turning over and continuing to slumber. He was muttering in his sleep. “T’hyahaha Shub’Niggurath N’awtqnk. Ia Hastur. Uyyh’aagh.”
I looked at Gabriel, recognizing that chant from when I summoned Nyarlathotep in the Dreamlands, but dismissing it as a trick of the dream. “Before you take those tryouts, I’d like to mention something.”
“What?”
I thought of a man trying to shield his wife and child while bullets flew through the air and chemical bombs were thrown. I thought of the burning houses where other soldiers from neighboring squadrons hadn’t bothered to force the inhabitants out first. That was just what I’d seen today, not even a fraction of what I’d had to do in order to protect New Arkham.
Had to do.
“Being a soldier isn’t the only way you can make me happy,” I said, looking at my hands. I’d cleaned off the blood but the stains were still there in my mind.
Anita looked like I’d hit her, something I’d never do regardless of how often my father had done the same to me. “I just want to make you proud, Daddy. I want to protect people.”
How did I explain to her that wasn’t what it was about? That there were monsters in the Wasteland but also people? That preserving order in New Arkham was as often about being the boot that kept down those who were supposed to be in your charge?
It was too important not to tell her. “I’m just trying to prepare you, Scout. Being an R&E Ranger, being any kind of soldier really, is hard and dangerous work. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years. Sometimes on missions which weren’t heroic. You’ve been taught in school the people outside of our borders are dangerous, evil savages. The truth is they’re just people. People who are hungry, afraid, or desperate will do things they wouldn’t normally. This doesn’t make them bad people. It just makes them less fortunate.”
Anita seemed to hear what I was saying. “What about the monsters, Dad? They took over our world.”
It was treason to say you sympathized with the creatures outside. “They’re a different story. Still, they’ve been on this planet a very long time. In many cases, longer than us. They’re also powerful. I’ve seen a lot of soldiers high on patriotism and vigor rush into situations where they think they can start taking the planet back from the monsters. That kind of arrogance gets them killed.”
“Shouldn’t we be trying to take back the planet?” Anita asked, surprised.
I took a deep breath, pondering how to explain what I was worried about. “Anita, I’ll support you in any endeavor you choose to take. However, if I can impart any single piece of advice to you, it’s this. Don’t worry about the Great Old Ones, mutants, monsters, or demons.”
Anita looked confused. “Excuse me?”
I pointed at Gabriel. “Worry about him. The job of a soldier isn’t to destroy the enemy, despite what you’ve heard in class or read in storybooks. The job of being a soldier is to protect those under his care. It’s what separates us from warriors and bandits. Those people who use violence to intimidate others. You won’t always be able to make your own calls either, as that’s what the chain of command is for. Sometimes you’ll be asked to do the wrong thing, though, and you’ll have to do it because that’s the way the system functions. If you remember Gabriel, your spouse in the future, your friends, and others—and let them be the ones you think of—then you’ll be able to be a good soldier. What helps them is to stay alive and keep your fellow soldiers alive.”
It wasn’t the best advice, full of holes really, but I’d always muddled through fatherhood.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
Anita put her hand on my mine and I put my arm around her. “I think I understand.”
I gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You’re the person I think of when I’m out there, Anita. You and your brother. As long as I have those I love, I’ll be able to endure anything.”
Anita gave me a hug and I held her tight.
That was when I heard the sound of an explosion and watched as Gabriel and Anita disappeared in flames. The memory was twisted and deformed even as I stood among their burnt skeletons in the ruins of our home. Turning upward, my heart beating so fast I felt like I was going to die, I saw the form of a Cthulhuoid horror standing over New Arkham.
It was a hundred feet tall with leathery bat-wings, the tentacled mouth of its ancient father, and a body both fat and repulsive. The creature drove men mad by its mere presence, causing them to kill their wives and children or be killed by them. In its terrible grandiose presence I realized I was not looking at a dream but reality. Not a precise vision of events but, even now, New Arkham was being destroyed by one of Ward’s creatures.
Unharmed by the explosion, I raised my arms to the air and screamed before falling to my knees. I begged in that moment for madness to claim me, only for laughter to ring in my ears behind me.
“It is your dream,” Nyarlathotep said, behind me. “If you do not like its contents then you should simply change the parameters.”
I looked over to him. “This is reality.”
The Black Soldier was standing among the ruins of my former house, looming over the bodies of Anita and Gabriel. “What is reality? Everything you experience exists in that tiny little brain of yours, a collection of wet matter and electricity. A dream is no less valid than reality as there is no way to tell the difference, really.”
I gritted my teeth. “Is that what you told Ward? Is that why he murdered those children and sent them to this place?”
“Yes,” Nyarlathotep said. “They live with the Small Gods of the Earth now. You could go there with your children now and dream for them the life you always wanted.”
“They’re dead.”
Nyarlathotep stretched out his hand and they became alive again before I saw a vision of them being evacuated by Hunter-13 craft as the rest of the city fell.
“How many died for that?” I asked, remembering his price for healing me.
“Does it matter?” Nyarlathotep asked.
“No,” I said. “We’re all doomed anyway.”
“Yes.” Nyarlathotep smiled. “When I was dreamed into life, I was given a terrible need to know your every little thought. To intervene in your prayers, dreams, and aspirations. To be the god humans wanted for me. Terrible, all-loving, all-present, yet sadistic enough to let all of the horrors of this world happen.”
I stared at him. “You’re like a kid with a magnifying glass.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here? Why me?”
“There is no answer to that,” Nyarlathotep said, walking forward and staring at me with his deep, soulless eyes. “So, why don’t you tell me why you are.”
“To kill Ward.”
“Not good enough.”
I closed my eyes. “To save the children.”
“Who you suspected would be dead from the beginning or, at least, beyond recovery. You even admitted killing Ward was more important. It’s just not important enough that you would come back to this place the first opportunity you could.”
I looked down at my shoulder. “To learn the secret of this. Ward didn’t put this on my shoulder, did he?”
“No. I did. I linked you and Jessica so she could survive. It was what you wanted and when you summoned me, it was what I performed retroactively. I turned back the clock and placed my mark on you both.”
“Then why did she awaken?”
“Doctor Takahashi’s work. Richard’s understanding of human anatomy has atrophied over the centuries.”
“I see.”
I closed my eyes. “Then the reason I survived the shoggoth, walked through the desert naked, and lived through the nightgaunt is … why?”
“The mark reflects what you are. What you were born to be.”
“A monster?”
“Yes.”
The Mark of Nyarlathotep wasn’t killing me, I realized that now. It was changing me. That was when I closed my eyes and looked into the past, searching not just my memories but my mother’s and I saw the terrible THING which appeared to her and brought about my birth. The thing whose touch had driven my mother to drink before a tearful confession of the truth drove my father mad. The Thing was inside me and the reason all of this was happening.
It was what I was becoming.
I screamed and awoke in Cthulhu’s Temple.