The Tree of Azathoth, page 1
THE TREE OF AZATHOTH
The Cthulhu Armageddon Series, Book Three
By C. T. Phipps
A Mystique Press Production
Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press digital edition 2023
Copyright © 2023 C. T. Phipps
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
C. T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The Bookie Monster.
Bibliography
Novels
The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)
The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)
The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)
The Kingdom of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #4)
The Tournament of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #5)
The Future of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #6)
The Horror of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #7)
I Was a Teenage Weredeer (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 1)
An American Weredeer in Michigan (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 2)
A Nightmare on Elk Street (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 3)
Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)
Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)
The Fall of the House (Red Room, Vol. 3)
Agent G: Infiltrator (Agent G, Vol. 1)
Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Assassin (Agent G, Vol. 3)
Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)
The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)
Tree of Azazoth (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 3)
Lucifer’s Star (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 1)
Lucifer’s Nebula (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 2)
Straight Outta Fangton (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 1)
100 Miles and Vampin’ (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 2)
Vampiraz4Life (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 3)
Wraith Knight (Wraith Knight, Vol. 1)
Wraith Lord (Wraith Knight, Vol. 2)
Dark Destiny (Predestiny, Vol. 1)
Destiny’s Paradox (Predestiny, Vol. 2)
Brightblade (The Morgan Detective Agency, Book 1)
Space Academy Dropouts (The Space Academy Series, Book 1)
Daughter of the Cyber Dragons (The Cyber Dragons Series, Book 1)
Revenge of the Cyber Dragons (The Cyber Dragons Series, Book 2)
Space Academy Dropouts (The Space Academy Series, Book 1)
Space Academy Rejects (The Space Academy Series, Book 2)
Space Academy Washouts (The Space Academy Series, Book 3)
Psycho Killers in Love
Anthologies (as editor)
Blackest Knights
Blackest Spells
Tales of Capes and Cowls
Tales of the Al-Azif
Tales of Yog-Sothoth
DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS
Visit the Crossroad Press website for information about all available products and its authors
Check out our blog
For information about new releases, promotions, and to receive a free eBook, subscribe to our Newsletter at the bottom of any page on our website
Find and follow us on Facebook and Twitter
We hope you enjoy this eBook and will seek out other books published by Crossroad Press. We strive to make our eBooks as free of errors as possible, but on occasion some make it into the final product. If you spot any problems, please contact us at crossroad@crossroadpress.com and notify us of what you found. We’ll make the necessary corrections and republish the book. We’ll also ensure you get the updated version of the eBook.
If you have a moment, the author would appreciate you taking the time to leave a review for this book at the retailer’s site where you purchased it.
Thank you for your assistance and your support of the authors published by Crossroad Press.
Table of Contents
* * *
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Bonus Short Story
Afterword
Glossary
Foreword
By C. T. Phipps
* * *
John Henry Booth lives rent free in my head.
It’s interesting that Cthulhu Armageddon was never meant to be more than a standalone book, but I couldn’t help but write the sequel, The Tower of Zhaal, because I had more stories to tell with the character. The apocalyptic wasteland hero who, unfortunately for him, was doomed to become a monster as the alien blood in his veins tore away his humanity. In the end, there was never an ending other than eventually succumbing to the beast within.
Except, he survived.
Quite against my will, John Henry Booth would appear in novellas in the Tales of the Al-Azif, Tales of Yog-Sothoth, and Tales of Nyarlathotep anthologies. A version of him would show up in The Future of Supervillainy, apparently escaping from his own tragic ending to a universe more suited to a Lovecraftian superhero, if such a creature can be said to exist. He even has a doppelganger that showed up in the Andrew Doran series by Matthew Davenport according to said figure.
This is annoying because there’s not meant to be a continuing series of stories in cosmic horror universes. The nature of cosmic horror is the universe is meaningless—if not actively malevolent—and there’s only a slow slide into oblivion awaiting us. The continuing adventures of someone who manages to escape that fate again and again can only undermine that position.
That was when I realized that is John’s thing, though. What fundamentally has always separated the Cthulhu Armageddon series from other cosmic horror works is that John is aware that the universe is pointless and malevolently hostile. He lives in a post-apocalypse hellscape. Every day he chooses to get up is a victory because his existence is blood on his teeth, a curse on his tongue, and a pair of pistols in his hands.
I should have figured it out earlier, but John Henry Booth is Conan the Barbarian’s distant descendant, perhaps literally since 10,000 years means that the Cimmerian’s DNA has probably infected everyone at some point. I wasn’t writing pulp horror where our protagonist is destined to die because they read the wrong pulp fantasy. I was as much inspired by Titus Crow and Roland Deschain as Conan and those people are monster slayers of a peculiar sort.
So, I decided to write a detective novel. Why a detective novel? I suppose it’s because John has survived enough Westerns that it’s time to switch genres. Either way, pulpy noir detective fiction is something I wanted to see done right in a post-apocalypse setting.
John has successfully evaded all my traps to kill him in much the same way that Sherlock Holmes survived Reichenbach Falls. I may yet someday doom our protagonist, but now I must write a noir mystery taking place in the Twilight of the World. I fully intend to make John Henry Booth pay for this affrontery, but he’ll continue living as long as I make him suffer for it.
Bwhahaha.
Chapter One
* * *
I dumped the body of the murderer into the center of the leather and fur tent that I’d dragged him. He was already starting to stink from three days in the desert heat despite my best efforts to preserve him so that there could be no doubting of his identity. Mind you, there was a decent chance the man I dumped the body in front of might want my death far more than that of the one I had killed.
“You killed Liberty Jones,” Mister Death said, now an old and weathered man. He was once six feet in height and built like an Olympian, but the years had weathered him down to a skeleton. He still had his long silver hair, but his face was wrinkled like a raisin, and he no longer wore his characteristic eyepatch, simply leaving his missing eye for all the world to see. Today, he was wrapped up in blankets and looked close to his name.
Mister Death was the father of Katryn, a woman who had once claimed me as both a slave as well as husband, only for me to eventually kill her after she succumbed to the monster within her. They w
“Yes,” I said.
Liberty Jones was a peculiar sort of man for me to hunt as he wielded no magic, worshiped no gods, and seemed as human as any other survivor of that dying dwindling race I could no longer call my own. He was, however, a killer of children. Somehow, the former New Arkham refugee had learned enough skill to slip in and out of Dunwych communities after doing his best to slit the throats of their children one after the other. I’d heard that he’d been responsible for fourteen deaths and all of their trackers had been unable to bring him low.
I was no friend to the Dunwych, hating my brief period of slavery underneath them and their pagan worship of the Great Old Ones who had destroyed our world. I wasn’t a great believer in “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. Not even the fact that I’d long since discovered I was not human myself had changed my desire to spit in their many eyes to simply let them know that I was alive, however long that may be. Still, I hated any creature that would prey upon the few hopes for the once-vast human race. I also needed a favor and figured this was the one gift I might give to achieve it.
The interior of the ceremonial tent was sparse, with a fire pit, a few bookshelves containing ratty tattered old yellow volumes, a trunk in the corner, and a crude chemistry set that was laid out on a cloth mat for some sort of experiment. There were several clay vases and a few glass bottles filled with a variety of liquids and powders beside it. Along the sides of the tent were hung blankets showing strange sigils and patterns that had meanings lost to me or, perhaps, simply had always been meant to look pretty and nothing more.
It was a far cry from the once great lodges of the Dunwych that I had passed by on eight-legged horseback. Most of the Dunwych’s towns and cities were abandoned or simply nonexistent now. It had taken me two of the three days I’d travelled since killing Liberty Jones to track this nomadic pack of survivors down. It was simply bad luck that Mister Death was the man in charge of them, bad luck or providence.
“You haven’t changed much in twenty years,” Mister Death said, pulling out a long glass tube and rubbing its interior in a smoke box of some kind before lighting the glass tube’s tip with the edge of his fingers. Such casual use of magic was incredibly foolhardy but, I suppose, so was living in this depraved fallen world. What was the worst that could happen? Monsters appear? Monsters were everywhere and getting worse.
“Age will not be what kills me,” I said, looking identical to the way I’d appeared in prior decades. Indeed, I might have looked a little bit younger as I had refined the process of shapeshifting. I had grown more comfortable with my inhuman nature, but my image was that of a black man in his forties, not the alien twisted thing that my ancestors had been. I may not be human by birth, but I was by choice, no matter what the Crawling Chaos said. Right now, I was dressed in a tattered Stetson, leathers, and a heavy coat for the burning desert that seemed to swallow more of the grasslands every day.
“Yes, you are the last Kastro’vaal,” Mister Death said, sucking in the smoke produced by his strange smoking implement. He blew it out to one side, and it filled the room with an unearthly but not altogether unpleasant smell.
“Perhaps,” I said, thinking of my children.
The Kastro’vaal had been an alien shapeshifting race akin to a shoggoth, possibly even related if somehow the Elder Things had managed to acquire some of them to experiment on from distant dimensions. They had the peculiar ability to breed with any other species and lay their offspring within them, birthing children that would eventually come into their own decades or centuries later.
One of the Great Old Ones, albeit not one who had ever visited Earth, had wiped them out so completely to make sure they’d never even existed in this timeline. Nyarlathotep, the only alien thing approaching godhood who had any interest in lesser beings, had saved my father to breed more of his kind—though I wasn’t sure that was our proper relationship. The Crawling Chaos was a liar after all, and there were signs that I was more akin to a reincarnation. Other times, I wondered if I’d been turned into a monster rather than born one. A whim of a mad god or a prank was entirely in keeping with what I knew of the Dark One.
I’d never been able to find my children, Gabriel and Anita, after I’d been separated from them. I wanted to warn them about their unholy blood and that it might overtake them. If time and history proved accurate, they should have found out years ago. A part of me hoped they never would and had either died or would die ignorant of their inhuman heritage.
“Katryn was one of your kind or something similar,” Mister Death said, seemingly uninterested in Liberty Jones. That did not bode well for our future dealings.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But she didn’t survive the change, at least not in personality. She became as the Great Old Ones: wild, free, and killing with impunity. Also, totally inhuman.”
“I would argue killing with impunity is a good sign of humanity,” Mister Death replied. “Where is that redheaded harlot you used to travel with?”
I’d have taken objection to Mercury being described as that, but she’d actually owned a brothel for a decade. “She left me.”
We’d found one another after the destruction of New Ulthar, Mercury having gotten our daughter Jackie and her baby free, but our parting had followed shortly thereafter. I tried not to think about how the doom that had come to New Ulthar had been Mercury’s doing to save my life, but love made us all monsters in the end.
“Ah,” Mister Death said. “She could no longer stand sharing a bed with a monster?”
In truth, she’d gotten more comfortable with that than I ever had. “She’d grown more uncomfortable with the fact she was getting older while I was staying the same age. I told her I would be beside her through thick and thin, richer or poorer, and until the bitter end. That just pissed her off.”
“Ha!” Mister Death smirked. “Women.”
“Mercury wanted to live forever as well and is seeking that in the Wasteland or other dimensions,” I replied. “I don’t know if I ever will see her again or if I’d even recognize her if I did.”
I should have abandoned her for destroying New Ulthar but, in the end, I didn’t have the capacity to judge mortals anymore. The Wasteland had carved away humanity’s morality until only survival remained—survival and obsession with what was yours.
“And the ghoul child?” Mister Death asked.
I was getting really tired of him prying into my personal life.
“Jackie has gone off to live with her people, the change overcame her last year. She took her child, Baby John, with her. The ghouls have retreated to caverns not of this world.”
“That is the fate of the Dunwych.” Mister Death nodded. “We have begun the exodus.”
“The exodus?” I asked.
“It means exit,” Mister Death condescended.
“I know what it fucking means,” I muttered, half wondering if I should just gun the old man down then and there. If he was still human enough to be killed, I’d have to slaughter all of the Dunwych tribals outside, though. It might have been worth it. Especially since I’d done worse over the past few decades.
“Then why ask?” Mister Death said, laughing.
I stared at him.
“You are no fun, John,” Mister Death replied. “This world is on its last hours, a few decades at most, and I have no intention of leaving my race to the tender mercies of what comes next. The Tree spoke that we must flee to the Dreamlands.”
I had no idea who this Tree was. The possibility of an escape intrigued me, though. “The Dreamlands?”
“A place you and I are both familiar with,” Mister Death replied. “Great dreamers like Randolph Carter, Abdul Al-hazred, Titus the Crow, Keziah Mason, and others have created safe pockets within that may yet become their own fantastic realms. Certainly, places less hostile than this dead doomed place.”
