The Tree of Azathoth, page 10
“The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is meant to be a trilogy, or quartet, called the Dream Cycle. I think Gabriel is always changing his mind about how many movies is supposed to compromise it,” Jackie said, cheerfully. “He’s been having a helluva time making the sequels, though. Not everyone wants to hear the whole story of Randolph Carter’s life. The Silver Key has been tied up in production for a year.”
“How does Carter’s story end?” I asked.
“Poorly,” Blackman said. “Carter sought to become greater than the Great Ones and ascend to be something beyond them. Unfortunately, he sought the aid of the true God of Gods and Yog-Sothoth showed that enlightenment was a curse rather than a blessing. He ended up mad and trapped in a body of an alien from a long dead race with both of them struggling for control in perpetuity.”
“Sounds familiar,” I muttered, thinking of my own condition.
It made me wonder—my mind was going to some very strange places lately even by my standards—that this might be some sort of deranged hallucination drawn from my desires. That I had created this fantastic world whole cloth as a chance to achieve a nonexistent redemption. Jessica, Jackie returned, a human-ish civilization thriving, and a quest to save everyone to keep my mind occupied. Maybe I wasn’t in Nyarlathotep’s or Randolph Carter’s snow globe, but in a fish tank or dying dream of my own choosing.
“Yes, I thought you’d see some similarity,” Blackman said, not knowing about my existential crisis. “The Dreaming King is either Carter after he’s managed to reach an accord with his inhuman self, a future incarnation of Carter, or someone else entirely. Time and space mean nothing in the Dreamlands, so he could be from the far future, past, or something that never happened.”
“None of which explains how you ended up wiping out the zoogs,” I replied.
“He’s just ashamed,” Jackie said.
“I didn’t know cats could be ashamed,” I replied.
“I’m ashamed we didn’t do it ourselves,” Blackman said, approximating shame. “Cats do not rely on the help of others. Instead, we turned to the humans for help.”
“You had the Knights of Arkham slaughter them all,” I said, taking a guess.
Blackman didn’t respond for a moment before his tail thrashed once from side to side.
“Yes. We called upon the favors from Randolph Carter’s allies and spun tales of great gold, gemstones, and other wealth held by the zoogs. We also spun tales of horrible rites, evil deeds, and malignant plots by our ancient enemies.”
“Justification for a massacre,” I replied.
“Yes,” Blackman replied. “Such a strange thing to need, but humans must feel there is some moral element to killing. Even when it is nonsense. In any case, almost all of them turned us down among the city fathers and priestesses, except for Franz Jermyn.”
An image entered my head of an obese…no that wasn’t the word, a solidly round three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man with a grotesque square face that was topped with a bald scalp. He had a long pair of mutton chops down the sides of his face and a thick but oddly positioned beard under his chin. His proportions were all off though not unbelievable, even familiar in some way, with a great white suit that he supplemented with a walking stick covered in a golden idol of Azathoth’s All-Seeing Eye.
“The White Gorilla,” I replied.
Jackie snorted as if I’d said something deeply funny.
“Man, he hates that name.”
“A sorcerer of some repute from the Pre-Rising time,” Blackman said. “Known even among us cats. Whether his world was destroyed by the Great Old Ones as well or he came from your world but fled to the Dreamlands before its destruction, he managed to gain much cultural cachet among the Arkhamite refugees as a purer example of humanity than the mutants most of mankind had become.”
Given Franz’s simian countenance, he was either being literally accurate given humanity’s evolutionary origins or grossly lying to a gullible audience. Mind you, the information I’d gleaned from the Black Cathedral told me humanity itself had never been pure. Apes and ape-men had been experimented on by the Elder Things to enhance our intelligence, contact with the Great Old Ones’ dreams had mutated others, and natural evolution as well as mutation had done the rest. There was no such thing as a pure human being, and I wasn’t even sure if such a thing would be desirable after seeing how overwhelmed we were by the least of the universe’s terrors.
“And he killed the zoogs for you,” I replied.
“Yes,” Blackman said, sounding rather disgusted. “It was the arrogance of my race that we could leave the job to our human servants and not have it screwed it up, but they slaughtered most of the zoogs on Pyre Night.”
“Pyre Night?” I asked.
“What they celebrate here instead of Halloween,” Jackie said. “Which I suppose is every day here.”
“We didn’t celebrate it in New Arkham,” I said. “I can’t imagine why.”
“We killed them all,” Blackman said. “The ones pretending to be human, the ones living their old selves, and everything in-between. Only a single one survived by the end of the week.”
“And now it wants revenge,” I said.
“Ha!” Blackman said.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“So human,” Blackman said. “Zoogs do not feel an urge to revenge any more than they feel a hatred for the kits they have killed, eggs they have eaten, or ghoul babes they devour. The last of their kind has different motivations.”
“Which are?” I asked, wondering how much of this information was simply blind prejudice versus the factual description of an alien creature’s ecology.
“I have not the slightest idea,” Blackman said. “Humans and cats can barely understand one another while being from the same basic material universe. Zoogs come from a far different world. However, it has involved stealing twenty kits and devouring their parents. I suspect most of them are still alive and I would like to keep it that way.”
“And you turned to Booth and Associates,” I replied.
“Franz Jermyn was no longer receptive to our entreaties once he found the zoogs’ treasure troves had been exaggerated,” Blackman said. “Your predecessor and Jessica were, by contrast, possessed of an exploitable sense of self-important heroism.”
“Tell me, is it common to insult the people doing your kind a favor in catdom?” I asked, annoyed.
I had no issue with the cat’s casually arrogant, even megalomaniacal, attitude. I’d dealt with many people over the years who were self-important fools. Most of them wore uniforms and were officers above Captain. However, it wasn’t my pride that was prickled by the four-legged fiend, but the casual insult he was throwing toward Jessica and Jackie. They were the ones risking their lives for the young of this particular group of sentients. They deserved respect and I wasn’t about to let any lip toward them slide.
“You’re being extremely well-compensated for your efforts,” Blackman said. “Or, at least, Jessica is. Also, bluntly, I can’t act differently. If I could, I would to better manipulate you.”
“Don’t take it personally, Booth,” Jackie said. “Literally everyone in this city is an asshole.”
“So I’ve noticed,” I muttered.
“Not you,” Blackman said, leaping up back into her arms. “I promise you will be spared when the revolution comes.”
“Aww,” Jackie said, rubbing the cat. “That would be so much funnier if not for the fact you just admitted to genocide.”
“Is there any sign of Jessica?” I asked. We’d been traveling for close to an hour and a half through the underground. Ignoring how much the environment was getting to me, I was wondering just how far she might have been able to get ahead of us on foot.
“Yes,” Blackman said, his voice troubled. It was the first sign of emotion from the cat that wasn’t tinged with monstrous arrogance. “There’s also the zoog.”
“What about the kits?” Jackie asked, showing she had not had her sense of empathy destroyed by her experiences in the Wasteland. It made her more human than human if you considered that feeling to be unique to our species (and yes, I recognized the irony that neither of us strictly qualified).
“No,” Blackman said. “I do not sense them.”
I reached into my coat, well Detective Booth’s coat, and drew out Mercury’s Gift. The weapon weighed heavily in my hands and a power radiated out from it that seemed to be resonating with the unnaturalness of the air. I checked the chamber and made sure that six bullets, each marked with a rune, were inside. I had two extras in my pocket once the existing bullets were expended.
Not many.
“Which way?” I asked, looking down a trio of black circular tunnels that included one leading to a purely natural cavern formation.
That was when I heard a series of gunshots from the natural cavern formation and I ran into it, ignoring my companions as I descended into the darkness. It was, in hindsight, a profoundly stupid thing to do, but that would include a preternatural number of my decisions anyway.
The Hand of Glory hovered behind me but began to flicker within the darkness of the craggy interior of the cave that was covered in a disgusting slime that oozed and pulsated along the walls. The smell became something wholly different and repellant, assaulting the senses but unable to be put into words except for its nauseating effect.
I struggled to keep up my pace but found myself slowed down as my feet sloshed into a disgusting black ooze that reached up to my ankles. Turning around a corner, I saw three armed men dead in the slime with their chests and faces opened by gunfire. They wore body armor and masks that were decorated by a flaming sword with an eye sigil I didn’t recognize.
Against the wall, shot in the stomach, was Jessica. She had a gun in her hand and was shaking with agony as she struggled to keep her insides in.
“No,” I said, approaching.
“Stay back!” Jessica said, pointing her weapon at me.
I stared at her. “Jessica, it’s me.”
“John is dead!” Jessica’s voice spoke, a mixture of terror and anger. “You’re a dream! You can’t trust anything here.”
I didn’t approach further, not interested in having tracked her down here only to be shot in the face.
“We need to get you to a doctor. We can do some field medicine down here.”
“Prove who you are!” Jessica shouted. “The knights won’t fool me again.”
I turned around to call to Jackie but found the cavern tunnels behind me were gone. The natural caverns we were in were, apparently, nothing of the sort. Indeed, turning my head, I saw the caverns past Jessica had also changed. We were in a location that was not limited by actual physics or geometry.
“Fuck,” I cursed, wondering if there was any possible way out of this situation. “We need to cooperate here. I am John and you’re going to trust me.”
Jessica kept the gun trained on me despite the fact she was dying. “No.”
That was when, at the other end of the shifting cave, I saw a figure come into view. It was longer rather than taller, hunched over and crooked in form, with a body covered in disgusting, filthy, patched, white fur. Its body was somehow both rat-like and snake-like with large hindlegs that supported a long slithering tail.
Its face, though—God its face—was an unholy amalgamation of bat and rat with enough human-like qualities to be expression-filled. Giant, drooping ears came across from its sided while, its eyes were pearl-like, iridescent orbs that lacked any irises but seemed full of milky-white fluid. Its mouth, if mouth it was, dripped with floppy expressive tentacles that each had an underbelly of teeth.
I knew in a moment that the creature was a zoog, the Napper, and its spindly, spider-like fingers reached out in the dimly lit cavern toward me. The words coming from its mouth were remarkably human and enunciated perfectly, which made it even more uncomfortable to realize it was speaking with the sound of multiple men.
“Ny’gar al’ta al’bah Hastur Ya’gnac Ulgar Tsa’gorrah Mul,” the Napper spoke as I felt the reality around me become an oppressive weight that froze me in place. The Napper was the god of this pocket dimension, its Dream Lord, and we were nothing more than the food for its larder.
That was when the Hand of Glory spell ended, and we were plunged into total darkness.
Chapter Eleven
* * *
The Napper ran up against me and grabbed me, something I could only experience with every sense except for sight. The smell of its breath was rotted meat and a horrible stench of sulphureous water that would have killed an ordinary man. I imagined, in a moment, that its mouth was open with rows of sharpened teeth to rip my throat clean from my body.
The shotgun was useless against the monstrous beast-man because the Napper was right up next to me. Nevertheless, I pushed it up into its mouth before it decapitated me, wedging it between its jaw like a staff. The Napper ripped it from my hands and tossed it to one side. That was when its eight-fingered hands wrapped around my throat and face at once.
The creature hadn’t yet torn into me when a flare was broken and filled the room with glowing red sparks. Jessica had ignited the object, taken from the side of one of the dead soldiers on the ground before she shoved it against the side of the zoog despite her injuries. The cat-eating creature yowled and screamed as the flames singed its all-too-mortal flesh.
Taking advantage of the distraction, I pulled out Mercury’s Gift and fired it into the chest of the zoog, then firing a second round into its overlarge dinosaur-like calves. The creature’s wails were ear-splitting as it swung around its tail and caught me in the chest, sending me backward against the wall behind me. It was like being hit by a car, but I wasn’t some meek scholar or inbred aristocrat fearing strange smells. I was a warrior hardened by the Wasteland and stayed consciousness. Anger and fury powered my actions as I met the zoog’s terrible gaze. The flare was still burning, seeming some long-lasting brand of it.
Its eyes stared at me with blazing malevolence, and I unloaded two more rounds into its chest. The creature coughed up some hideous, blackish substance on the ground, clutching its injuries before starting to run away. My next two rounds missed it, striking the stone around the caverns as I could see reality start to shift around us. The tunnel it exited down vanished in a shimmer and the one behind us returned.
I hated extra-dimensional angles.
A part of me was tempted to go after the giant rat-man but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I also had a much larger part of me that wanted to go to Jessica’s side. Rescuing intelligent cats—even if I believed them to be real children—didn’t matter to me as much as the safety of the woman I’d seen come back from the dead. Call it selfish, callous, speciesist, or even evil, but it was how I felt. I’d hardened my heart against any but a small tribe of people that I loved and cared for, even if I would have given my own life for a stranger’s child.
“Jessica!” I said, rushing to her side and moving to check her wound. “I’m sorry! I should have been here faster!”
“Go…” Jessica muttered, clearly in a bad way. “After that son of a bitch. Don’t let him get away with…the kids.”
It showed the difference between us in that moment. Jessica had overcome all of her past prejudices against nonhumans and was more worried about their safety than her own life. It was, honestly, almost too good to be true and reminded me that the real Jessica—if such a thing existed—had tried to kill me as a mercy.
Still, I was ready to go as a dying request from her. The sheer unfairness of it was something that threatened to rip away the last bits of remaining sanity I possessed. I felt, in that moment, a beating of something alien and evil within me. No, not evil. Primal. A creature that did not ascribe to any Earthly morality and looked forward to ripping the Napper apart as the only thing it had in common with the human John Henry Booth. With the burning flare on the ground, bobbing up and down in the water but not extinguished, I swore the shadow on the wall became the image of a Kastro’vaal warrior again.
“John!” Jackie’s voice shook me out of my moment of oblivion. She was coming down the tunnel that had reappeared behind us, with Blackman in tow. The cat leapt from her arms and moved up to Jessica’s side, staring at her.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered to Jackie. “We missed one another. It was my mistake. Jessica needs medical attention and I’m going after that thing. I got four shots into it but I don’t think that’s enough to take it down.”
Rather embarrassingly, I recalled that my revolver was out of ammunition and I took a moment to put my remaining two bullets into it. The magic woven into them was hopefully giving the Napper the pain of a lifetime. I had no idea just how strong it was, only that they should have been able to put down an elephant from space.
“You should have gotten in six,” Blackman said.
“Shut up!” I snapped, angry at his behavior in the face of Jessica’s. “I promise I’ll get whoever—”
That was when Jessica stood up, wiping away the blood off her stomach to reveal a completely uninjured smooth surface.
“What the fuck,” I said, in less than polite tones.
“I seem to be alright,” Jessica said, looking as confused as everyone else in the group.
“Interesting,” Blackman said, looking her up and down. “Now let’s get back to killing the zoog.”
“Did you do this?” I asked, looking down.
“No, John,” Blackman said, licking its right paw. “You did.”
“What?” I asked, almost simultaneously with Jessica.
“She is your familiar,” Blackman said. “Born from a wish.”
“Explain,” I said.
Blackman looked up. “No.”
Well, that was direct. “Why?”
“It amuses me,” Blackman said. “Perhaps when the zoog is killed, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
