The Tree of Azathoth, page 16
Truth be told, I knew very little of Hastur and everything I did know about the Great Old One was contradictory. Sometimes he was a monster, a god, a place, or an idea. The legends around Cthulhu were mostly consistent and the same for the Other Gods. Hastur worshipers were utterly inconsistent as to what their god was, wanted, or how he appeared. Was he a god of shepherds, artists, madness, decay, magic, undeath, disease, or all the above? Some utterly insane stories—which was saying something given the things I’d encountered—stated he was Cthulhu’s brother, while others named him as the son of Nyarlathotep.
My own association with the Great Old Ones and the gods above them told me he was probably unfathomable and all those beings attempting to touch his—or her or its—mind were just driving themselves mad. The Great Old Ones did not want our worship and did not answer our prayers. Thank God (with full awareness of the irony).
“Yes,” Martha said. “Ezekiel King’s power ebbed and almost vanished under New Arkham. He was an old man brooding over past glories when he made the long trek across the Wasteland to the City with the rest of us. He soon found himself invigorated and funded Gabriel’s film studio once he’d made a fortune in narcotics as well as other illegal items.”
The idea of items being illegal was strange enough to me, even those that might be lethal. In the Wasteland, no one cared what you did to your body as it was your responsibility. It ended in plenty of dead bodies the next morning, but caveat emptor.
“It’s good to know someone made out well,” I said, not commenting on the fact that apparently all of the refugees had done so because they were alive when the world ended and apparently in a land of immortality. Mind you, that should have been more reassuring than it was but I couldn’t help thinking that it portended even worse consequences.
“Not as well as you think,” Jessica said. “They were supposed to do a production of the King in Yellow play and it ended up being a production that resulted in complete disaster. Gabriel eventually bought out Ezekiel’s share in the business before releasing a bunch of hits: musicals, easterns, and comedies.”
“I imagine he had a lot of time in two hundred years,” I muttered, rounding the figure a bit.
“As long as they have guns and skin, it’s a Booth film,” Martha replied.
I tried not to laugh before it occurred to me. “So, what you’re saying is our son crossed a crime lord and cheated him out of a fortune in movie residuals?”
Memories of my son and the uncomfortable relationship he’d had with Detective Booth flooded back. They were not as vivid or impressive as my other visions, but were scattered images and reminiscences that provided me a few insights I might otherwise have not possessed. Really, it felt like cheating, as if the puppet master behind all this wanted me to know.
Gabriel drinking heavily and surrounded by beautiful, half-dressed partners of both sexes at sleazy parties.
A woman I didn’t recognize disgusted by his behavior and reaching out to me. She was important to Gabriel.
A failed attempt at reconciliation between us.
Gabriel covered in tattoos, partaking in the worship of Hastur and the wild revelries his parties were only an introduction to.
A typewriter writing by itself.
An antediluvian door, built by nonhuman dreams.
“Get out, Father. You cannot understand what I am building here.”
The door opened.
A darkness spilled out and consumed everything.
“Yep,” Jessica said, shaking me from my vision. “Gabriel had more enemies than friends. Men and women easily fell in love with him but just as easily fell out. He was also a wizard as well as a ruthless businessman. Both of those types are prone to pissing people off as a matter of course.”
“So, it might not have been the White Gorilla who killed him,” I replied.
“Indeed,” Martha said. “That is an unfortunate possibility. Though I would not hesitate to kill Franz anyway.”
Martha, clearly, was more concerned with the enemy she’d made than her own son’s death. It was more callous than I’d expected even from her but, apparently, she was two centuries older. I was surprised she was recognizably human in her behavior.
With that, I arrived at the gates to Yellow King Studios.
The Yellow Sign was marked above it.
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
The Yellow Sign was a symbol I’d seen thousands of times in the Wasteland. Like the Elder Sign, it became synonymous with a desire by the scattered survivors of humanity to take back some measure of control from the Great Old Ones that had conquered the Earth. But just as the Elder Sign was a tendril-like star with no power behind it other than what a human soul could place into it, so was the Yellow Sign just three crescent moons on top of one another unless you could will enough magic into it to have power.
Symbols of power were like that. The pentacle, the cross, the eye and the pyramid were all sacred to countless individuals throughout history but unless believers bled part of their spirit into them, they were just drawings. That was the nature of all glyphs and lettering to an extent. All writing contained a bit of the essence of the author, but only that which was made by a dreamer could wield power of its own.
This Yellow Sign had power.
I did not know if my son had forged the symbol himself or had somehow enchanted it, but it caused me to suffer a terrible migraine looking at it. The Yellow Sign was linked to inspiration and madness both. A person could contemplate its power for years, only to become one of the greatest artists in history or a gibbering lunatic. It was profoundly irresponsible to put it out in a public place—if not outright evil—but I knew my son’s proclivities.
Or Detective Booth did.
It was a test.
“John?” Jessica asked. “Are we going in or not?”
“Yes,” I said, driving up to a security guard’s station. It had a barrier gate but little in the way of other security. I struggled to figure out what I was going to say when the guard, an obese man with pale pock-marked skin and gills on one of his double chins looked at me only for a moment before opening the gate.
“Welcome, Mr. Booth,” the security guard said.
I didn’t respond before driving in. “It appears I’m known here.”
“You were a regular feature here,” Martha said. “You served as Yellow King Studio’s fixer?”
“Fixer?” I asked.
“You fixed things,” Jessica said, disapproval in her voice. “Drying out drug addicted talent, handling labor disputes, intimidating journalists, and sleeping with the occasional star.”
The interior of YK Studios was mostly row after row of hanger-looking studios, a large parking lot, offices, and other mundane facilities. I found myself somewhat disappointed as I’d half expected the place to look like some of the giant outdoor sets I’d seen from above. Instead, Gabriel’s facilities seemed far more closed off and secretive. The only thing of true note were the large number of police cars and a crowd gathered around Studio Fourteen. Strangely, the numbering for the studios went one to twelve then fourteen, skipping over the thirteenth. It was an odd bit of superstition to abide by in a place with real magic, but I knew plenty of otherwise learned individuals who put stock in astrology.
“That doesn’t sound like me,” I said, bringing the car to a reserved parking lot. I didn’t know who it was for, nor did I care.
“Doesn’t it?” Martha asked.
Great, now they were teaming up against me. “Let’s just say that I had a very different impression of Detective Booth.”
I didn’t want the memories that came to mind when they spoke about his activities here. They were a marked contrast to the ones where I was attempting to fight slavers or rescue children. Wild decadent parties, beatings delivered in back allies, and affairs in dressing rooms. There were a few murders as well, but I couldn’t tell what my reasons were, whether they were justified or just for profit.
“My Booth was a great man,” Jessica said, sounding wistful but not as reverent as before, despite her words. “However, he would do anything for Gabriel. It was his way of making up for being absent from his life—”
“For two hundred years?” I suggested, not sure I could cope with the unnatural, otherworldly nature of time here. It was strange that was the one thing that I couldn’t cope with after a lifetime of the weird and strange.
“Yes,” Martha said. “It is the nature of time that it exists within a bubble. A million years could pass between areas of the Dreamlands and only a few moments in the physical universe. This little pocket universe we dwell in might have a whole vast life equal to the universe we came from, but it could pop with no sign it ever existed.”
“Is being an enormous killjoy a thing you and Booth share naturally, or is it something you taught to one another?” Jessica asked.
“I’m not interested in philosophizing,” I said, something that would be a lie at any other time. “I’m trying to solve my son’s murder. If he was involved in shady activities, that creates more suspects.”
“Like I said, Booth,” Jessica uttered as she grimaced, “your son has an endless list of enemies. Also, if you’re going be asking about shady activities, you’ll find every man, woman, child, and other in the City are guilty.”
There was an uncomfortableness to her reactions, as if we were touching on an area that bothered her. So much of this Jessica seemed to be enjoying the life of a detective but she’d alluded to how her relationship with the other Booth had been less happy than she’d initially implied. I understood that as well. She was a beautiful, living soul but this place had a falseness to it that could easily crawl into your brain and eat away at the happiness one might have achieved.
Jessica was a Jessica, but not my Jessica. She was a product of magic and dream, that seemed almost undeniable now. But who had created her? Me? Detective Booth? The Dreaming King? Some other supernatural entity that was attempting to manipulate me? It would be easy to let paranoia and suspicion undermine any emotional connection we might forge.
I also understood the hints she and Martha were both making that I’d done terrible things on behalf of my son. This part bothered me less than it probably should, I was under no delusions that I was a good man and I’d lost those feelings long ago in the Wasteland.
And just like that, I was once more in the past. It was becoming annoying now and I was wondering if these were really my memories or if someone was pulling me through time. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to result in me passing out during the middle of driving or the middle of a firefight.
“We’re using them as bait,” I muttered, staring out from the top of the cliff face onto the valley below. Gamma Squad was standing beside me, and we had numerous pieces of observation equipment erected, some of it looking brand new as if they had been vacuum sealed since the Pre-Rising Era. There were cameras, instruments to measure radiation, gas-powered generators, and even an old television set hooked up to a barely functioning computer. The Council of Leaders had gone all out for this mission.
Visible from my vantage point was the collection of ramshackle houses and stores that made up the village of Blacklung. Blacklung had been strategically chosen by the Council of Leaders working with Doctor Curwen to determine the best place to implement their plan. It was a relatively small community of a hundred and fifty souls and was known for mining coal from the sides of the mountains we were presently standing on.
Coal had been useless as an energy source in the latter years of the Pre-Rising Era, a dirty and finite resource compared to better alternatives, but the needs of humanity had changed greatly in the wake of the world’s end. Still, the Council was willing to sacrifice the community if it meant an end to the Color. It had proven a less than popular idea with those who were being entrusted to carry it out. Myself included.
“Nothing gets past you, Captain, does it?” Stephens said, He was smoking a cigarette and I could tell that he was far less comfortable with this plan than he let on.
“This is the best way to lure the Color out,” Schmidt said, trying to keep a dignified presence. “The creature will be drawn to the life forms within the town, and we’ll use the weapon to destroy it.”
“It’s mass murder,” Private Thomas Garcia said. Garcia was a thin but tall man with glasses and a shaved head. “Let’s not pretty it up any more than what it is. Every person in that valley is going to die. And even if they survive the Color, they’re going to die in the subsequent explosion.”
Jessica remained silent during the entirety of our arguments, caught between her desire for revenge and the fact she would be sacrificing more people to die at the hands of the thing that had killed those closest to her. I’d tried to reach out to her but there could be no healing, no salvation, until the monster in her nightmares was destroyed. Which was problematic if you were dealing with a creature that might well be immortal.
“Do you have any better ideas, either of you?” Stephens asked, cutting to the heart of the argument.
The Color had left a devastating and horrific trail of destruction in the wake of its movements. The Post-Rising world could hardly have been called lush, but it had been living and growing even if humanity had been struggling. The Color was a sign that even this had been hubris in the face of a hostile universe. It had left fifteen villages akin to Blacklung as ash, with the bodies burned so thoroughly inside and out that they crumbled at the slightest touch.
Strangely, it had not been the deaths of my fellow humans that had horrified me most—save perhaps the sanity blasting sight of what I’d found in cribs—but the devastation to farmland and animals. The delicate equilibrium of the Wasteland’s ecology constantly shifted in the best of times.
The Color’s seemingly random feeding patterns were annihilating the food sources of much of the east and if it was not stopped long before it devoured the whole of humanity’s survivors, we would be reduced to killing each other for a scrap of bread or a piece of meat. Stories of cannibalism were often exaggerated scary tales or confusion over the fact that ghouls did not kill for their meals, only scavenged, but they were not wholly untrue either.
“No,” Garcia said, coldly. “I don’t.”
But I knew the truth. Doctor Ward had developed a way to lure the Color to the location we desired. It had not been shared with the others because it relied on ancient invocations and words found in a book called The Unimaginable Horror. Combining them with the secrets of the Elder Gods found in the Re’Kithnid, and a set of incense sticks coated in the fat of stillborn children would bring the Color hundreds of miles off course to our trap for it.
There was no need to offer up the village of Blacklung as a human sacrifice to the accursed thing, but Doctor Ward had agreed to it anyway. There had been some vague justifications that it would weaken and solidify the creature to be more vulnerable to the atomic weapon while it was feeding, but I had asked few questions. It seemed inconceivable that a man as wise and learned as my teacher would kill hundreds of people for no other reason than to provide a cover for the fact that he was a practiced black magician.
How foolish I’d been.
Now, hearing the instruments in front of us start to go wild and seeing a nightmarish glow begin to appear over the horizon, I knew it was too late to argue.
The Color had arrived.
“John?” A voice interrupted my movement across the Wastelands of my dead world, bringing me back to the present.
It was Jessica’s voice.
“Yes,” I said, blinking.
“You wandered off again,” Jessica said. “Are you okay?”
“The Kastro’vaal are creatures that exist between time and space like the Hounds of Tindalos or the Time-Eaters,” Martha said, dryly. “You might well be finding yourself wandering in and out of your past here in the Dreamlands where time does not exist. It was a condition that affected the other John. At least toward the end.”
“Great,” Jessica said, not commenting on the fact Martha claimed to know her husband better than her. “You’re saying John’s narcoleptic now?”
“I’m not a Kastro’vaal,” I said, lying to myself. “Not anymore. I’m human here.”
“If you say so,” Martha said. “We are all the stuff of dreams more than flesh. As malleable as thought.”
“Thank you,” I said, misinterpreting her.
“But you are a monster, John, at heart,” Martha said. “So, a monstrous dream you remain.”
I was ready to lash out at her over that comment when there was a knocking on my window. Much to my surprise, it was Jackie, wearing the cap of a cab driver and a jacket that she was sticking both hands into as if for warmth. Presumably after taking time to knock on my window.
“Jackie, what are you doing here?” I asked, feeling stupid after asking the question.
“Enjoying the view,” Jackie said. “What do you think? I work for you guys. I headed here as soon as I heard the news on the police bands.”
“I see.” I should have guessed.
“Is there any reason the Wicked Witch of the West is in the passenger seat?” Jackie asked.
“I assume she means me,” Martha replied.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jackie said.
“You shouldn’t be here, Jackie,” Jessica said.
“And you should?” Jackie asked, semi-accusingly. “I have every right to be here as much as anyone else. There was a time I’d loved Gabriel, you know, before he proved himself to be a piece of crap. I’m here to find out who killed him and polish them off before I figure out whether to piss on Gabby’s grave or cry or both.”
“You have the strangest vernacular,” Martha said.
“And you’re a bitch,” Jackie said. “Which I can say as a female ghoul.”
It took me a second to get the joke. “You and Gabriel were involved?”
“It feels like a hundred years ago,” Jackie said. “Hell, it may have been. Time moves weird here.”
“So, I’ve heard,” I said, uncomfortable with the prospect that I might be the youngest person here by far. I also felt as if I’d missed a great number of events, like jumping into the middle of a book series. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any way to resolve that other than sitting down and asking for two centuries worth of details.
