The enormous expanse of featureless landscape stretched before me once again. The plains of Leng, I knew now, although where those particular plains, and the planet they occupied, might actually be was as much of a mystery as before.
Depraved clouds hung in repellent masses from the sky, unwholesome crimson lightning issuing from one to the next. The black disk, more dreadful than in my previous visions, occupied a large section of the heavens, the coruscating waves of foul energy flaring and diminishing in strobe-like fashion around its perimeter.
Words came to me, their very presence on my tongue creating an unpleasant flavor in my mouth, a taste of otherworldly corruption.
“IA ZI GURRA KAAPA! ANU TULUMUUN TIAMAT! WAAYR AZATHOTH!”
Searing pain ran down both my sides. I looked down and saw my skin bubbling with boils and pestilent sores that oozed foul ichor. As I watched, my flesh parted, peeling away from my bones like roasted meat. Writhing tentacles erupted from my rib cage, casting away the remnants of what I was and revealing that which lay beneath. Squid-like appendages, too long to have remained hidden inside my human shell, burst forth in all directions.
“Prepare the Gate!” I cried out in a voice much deeper than my own. “Cthulhu! Hastur! Yig! Summon thy forces and prepare to rise again. The time of the Wakening approaches. Those that wait Beyond shall wait no more!”
A growling, stentorian thunder rolled across the inhospitable plain and vibrated underfoot in subterranean response. The ground before me cracked open in violent fashion and gouts of rancid, polluted fluids spurted upwards, their stinking presence defiling the already tainted air even further. I choked back bile as the thing within me breathed, relishing the poisonous atmosphere, and—
—I woke, my hands clutching at my chest, my breath rattling in a throat still burning from the memory of Leng’s fetid air.
In the predawn light, shadows and shades of gray occupied my room like ghosts, turning it into a faded photograph whose colors had been sucked away by passing years.
I took a deep breath of the clean, unsoiled breeze wafting in through my open window.
Something moved in the shadows. My heart kicked into overdrive with a thump! before I discerned it was no monster lying in wait for me. Melissa sat at my desk, staring at me with the same empty gaze she’d had the day before.
“You know.” My tone was as dead as her eyes. It was an accusation, not a statement. For the first time in my life, I felt truly angry with her.
“The whole town knows, Sean.” She moved her chair closer to the bed, her face never losing that blank, reptilian look. “You must be aware of that by now.”
“How long?”
“Have I known?” She shrugged. “Since before we moved to New Hope. In fact, it’s why we moved to New Hope. Your parents moved here for the same reason. The whole town is here because of you, in a way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. No one could. Did you read all the texts?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was struggling to keep from screaming at her. I wanted to run through the room, breaking everything in sight. The only thing that kept me on the bed, immobile in my cocoon of reluctant acceptance, was the realization that it would do no good. Fate had me firmly in its grasp.
“Then you know it’s not an exact science. Would it be this year? Last year? Next year?” The corner of her mouth curled up in a wry smile. “Hell, would it even be you? It could have been Owen. Or even your own child. All the hundreds of years of planning, of watching, and all anyone could predict was that it would be someone descended from your parents. Can you imagine trying to explain that legacy to you, to anyone, in a sane fashion?”
I took a deep breath. Sane? Nothing was sane about this. “So now what?”
Melissa shrugged. “Now we wait. The next step is up to you. You can either fight it or accept it. If you accept it…” She leaned forward, placing her hands on my legs. The thin blanket was no barrier to the sensual feel of her rubbing me. “Then anything you want can be yours. You’ll have access to powers you’ve never dreamed of, and the freedom to do with them what you wish.”
Her hands moved further up my body, caressing my most vulnerable areas. Against my will, I found myself responding, her gentle touch blending together with my memories of a special night in my backyard two summers ago, a night of exploration that ended with us taking each other’s virginity. “An experiment”, Melissa had called it afterwards. Two friends learning the biology of sex. She wouldn’t date me, though, because she felt it would ruin that same friendship. I’d been heartbroken at her rejection, but it was still the most magical and wonderful night of my life.
And it was the most secret of secrets of hers that I carried, because she’d never let anyone do that again. In fact, she’d told all her boyfriends she was a virgin and intended to stay that way until marriage.
Now she was looking at me with something in her eyes I’d never seen before, something that said virginity, even fake virginity, was no longer an issue. She confirmed it with her next words. “And of course, you’ll have me. If you want me.”
I did. She knew it. I saw something clearly now. Her whole relationship with me had been an act, designed to bring me to this very place. The friendship, the puppy love, the night of experimentation. Then the pulling away, staying close enough to keep me interested but distant enough so there was no chance of us having a real romantic bond that might lead to me possibly falling out of love with her after only a few months, as teenagers can do so easily. And no chance of her wasting her time if it turned out I wasn’t the One.
She’d played me for a fool, used me, set me up. I should have been furious with her, but instead I only felt anger toward myself for being so easy a mark.
Worse, I wanted to pretend I didn’t know she’d duped me, just to keep her hands plying their magic on my groin.
“What if I fight it? According to what I read, it’s been done before.” I knew the answer, but I had to hear it from her.
“That way lies madness, and death, for you. Even if you succeed, you’ll only be delaying the inevitable.” Her palm slid away, back toward my knee.
“A delay of ninety-nine years.”
“We’ve waited that several hundred times over, Sean. We’re nothing if not patient.”
By “we”, I knew she meant the descendents of the original Followers of the Old Ones. Even after all the centuries since the great wars had resulted in the banishment of the Elder Gods to the far reaches, victims of internal strife and mankind’s unexpected revolt, pockets of worshipers still existed. Tiny groups populating small towns like New Hope, located in mystically aligned places around the globe, vortexes of otherworldly energies.
Through a freak confluence of genetics, time and place, I was the potential earthly vessel for the one unholy deity who held the power to open the Gates to the Other Realms and bring forth the Elder Gods once again, a resurrection guaranteed to turn the Earth into a nightmare hell of chaos, bloodshed, and destruction. I was the key that could either open that door or close it for another century.
Melissa’s hand slid under the covers and resumed stroking me. I thought about my life: forever the outsider, separated from others my age by the twin faults of high intelligence and a love of science, two crippling attributes for a teenager. What would my future be if I remained loyal to my race, to humanity? Another year of torture in high school, followed by college, where I’d similarly be a freak because of my young age. Then graduate school, and a research position with a big company. A wife, if I was lucky.
That’s if I even lived that long. According to the tomes I’d read, the struggle to control the demons within usually led to insanity.
Or, I could be the king of the world.
Savior or destroyer.
How did one make a choice like that?