The Tree of Azathoth, page 22
“Millennia?” I asked.
“I have more than nine lives,” Blackman said. “Many, many more.”
“Yes, well, it was me or him. It. Me or it,” I said, struggling to find my footing. Everything seemed different now.
“No, I meant you eating the baby,” Blackman said.
“It wasn’t a baby!” I said, shouting up to him. “It was a representation of my alien heritage. I think.”
“I know what it looked like,” Blackman said. “So, you’re a shoggoth now?”
“Something like that,” I said, looking around for something to wear. I wasn’t about to start trying to replicate clothes. That might have been possible, though. I didn’t know the extent of what I could do now.
“Does that mean your children are blobs in human form or they’re human forms that can become blobs?” Blackman asked. “Do you still even care about that sort of thing?”
I found a nearby room full of costumes and, thankfully, it had a yellow suit that was marginally presentable. It even had a canary yellow fedora which I put on. I did feel a bit peculiar putting on a stranger’s—possibly my son’s—underwear but the fact I did struck me as absurd in and of itself. I eventually found both the Silver Key and Mercury’s Gift among the wreckage of the orgy chamber (ugh) as well.
“Why do you even care, Blackman?”
“I have my reasons,” Blackman said, suddenly appearing behind me.
“I feel…human enough,” I said. “I suppose shoggoths are similar enough to humans that when they assume the shape of one, they become one. Sort of like the Kastro’vaal. I am full of different sorts of patterns in my mind, though. It’s nothing I want to test.”
I’d killed a shoggoth while I’d still been—mostly—human so I didn’t think they were invincible creatures. I was now stronger, tougher, and faster than any human. I could shapeshift to a degree, though my fears of changing self were more a fear that I wouldn’t be able to return to my present form, but this wasn’t about gaining power.
This had been a desperation move to survive and it was a line that once crossed could not be uncrossed. I’d thought I’d come to terms with being a monster before but it seemed it was a lesson I would have to continue to learn over again every day until it either stuck or my now-alien existence ended.
“Yes, it’s a shame you couldn’t have accepted being a shoggoth or Kastro’vaal on Earth,” Blackman replied. “You’d have been a decent mid-sized creature there. Unfortunately, you’re now in the Dreamlands and the City is a droplet of water in the ocean of chaos that is Azathoth’s domain.”
Just who was this cat? “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is the Xothians—that’s a rough approximation of Cthulhu’s race’s name in the human tongue—are nothing more than an afternoon biscuit to the kind of things that are found out here.”
I stared down at the cat. “Oh joy. You’re never going to let me enjoy any sense of security or hope, are you?”
Blackman smiled at me. “You killed an avatar of Zum-Trivalis. So, take some pride in that. However, if the world rested on the back of a giant turtle, you’d be best to avoid the creatures that eat turtles around here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, staring at him. “Turtles?”
“The gaps in your knowledge are frustrating, John,” Blackman sighed. “You are a deep well in many places, for a human, but a shallow pond in others.”
“Do I have to worry about a planet-sized turtle?” I asked. “I feel like asking should be silly but it’s not the strangest thing I’ve encountered.”
“No, John,” Blackman said. “There are no planet-sized turtles.”
“Ah,” I replied.
“I think,” Blackman said, pausing, “Wait, it depends on how you define turtles. One is the enemy of a giant spider that hunts children.”
“Stand back!” A human voice spoke nearby, causing me to become momentarily distracted. At this point, I’d been so terrified and beaten that I’d purged through my ability to become alarmed.
“Now what,” I muttered, responding more lethargically than I probably should have.
It was Vincent Keaton accompanied by what I could only describe as the reanimated corpse of Malcolm Jones, the detective having had his throat slit and shambling along with a pistol raised at me. Vincent Keaton, himself, was carrying a crystal rod in front of him that I recognized to be one of the Great Race of Yith’s super-scientific devices.
I’d witnessed their use at Miskatonic University, the real one, back on my world before the Yithians had carried forth the consciousnesses of their cultists to join them in the far future of some parallel history. Vincent radiated a sense of strange power that caused me to take a step back, confusing me as I had no idea why my instincts were suddenly extremely on alert after having been face-to-face with a demigod.
“Hello, Mr. Keaton,” I said, dryly. “What are you doing here?”
“You broke the spell on Studio Thirteen,” Vincent spoke. “You brought it back to reality after we hid it.”
“You and Gabriel,” I said, taking his meaning.
Vincent aimed the crystal rod at me like it was a magic wand and since I’d seen them disintegrate people like flash paper, I took the threat seriously. I understood Blackman’s warning now. I may have gained a bit more durability and strength due to my transformation fully into a monster but there were an infinite number of things bigger than me still. I’d also shown how regular humans could be threats to Kastro’vaal/shoggoths if they had the right equipment.
“Yes,” Vincent said, staring at him. “My people were wrong, you know. We thought we could just simply pick a new race after humanity’s extermination and start anew, just like we did after the war with the Unimaginable Horror and Flying Polyps.”
“I really don’t care,” I said, perhaps not saying the best thing to a man who was clearly unhinged.
“But the future changed!” Vincent said. “Changed! The time we were meant to visit vanished and we had to move to another world in another reality. So many of our kind were lost when the timeline was overridden. If that can happen, all of our plans were pointless! Your son saw that! He knew we had to seek new avenues of power.”
“Vincent was your son’s lover,” Blackman explained.
“I gathered that,” I replied. “I question the ethics of him being involved with a body-snatching psychic parasite, no matter how learned.”
“Shut up!” Vincent screamed. “My people abandoned me! Left me behind when they made the ascension! Even when they took so many human consciousnesses with them! Gabriel gave me life and purpose! Before it was ruined!”
I realized the source of his agitation. “You were the one who killed him, or at least his avatar.”
Blackman turned his head in a typical cat-like fashion. “That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?”
“Yes!” Vincent snapped. “Yes, I did it!”
“Holy shit,” Blackman said, turning his head back. “I guess I owe you a water dish, Booth. You’re a better detective than I thought.”
“Give me the key!” Vincent said, holding his free hand out. “You can’t be allowed to give it to the White Gorilla.”
I had no intention of doing either.
“First tell me why. Also, why Detective Jones is a zombie.”
I had the suspicion that Vincent had been the one to summon the avatar of Zum-Trivalis, or at least activate a preexisting spell to bring its effigy to life. Summoning magic was the most unpredictable kind of sorcery, relying on tearing extradimensional rifts and bringing forth beings into three-dimensional space or creating bodies for which to project their consciousness into this universe. Both almost universally relied on the once-thought discredited science of vitalism, though, to provide the necessary power.
Which was a long way of saying that Vincent had probably slit Malcolm’s throat when the latter wasn’t looking and used the blood to summon the Great Old One—or just Old One? I’m not sure if there was a word for “mid-range alien god.”—I didn’t know how that had led to him shambling about as a reanimated, but I figured if Vincent could bring a statue to life then he probably could raise his victim’s corpse as backup too.
“Technically, Detective Jones is now a revenant not a zombie,” Blackman corrected.
Vincent aimed the crystal rod at Blackman and said a word that was incomprehensible even by my standards. Blackman jumped to the side before a bolt of glowing force struck the area he’d been standing, creating a foot deep hole in the marble floor. Blackman appeared on the beams above our head in the ceiling, once more moving faster than the eye could see.
“Don’t taunt the murderer, Blackman,” I said, debating what to do since I was out of bullets and not exactly trained in the use of my newly acquired shoggoth powers.
“I am not a murderer,” Vincent gave the most futile defense ever. I don’t think there’s any father in any world who would accept the word of his son’s killer, at least any who still loved their boy. “Everything I have done has been for the purpose of survival or helping your son.”
“Sure,” I said, not wanting to antagonize the crazy person. “So why did you kill him?”
“I… sacrificed everything,” Vincent said. “I taught him everything I knew; I changed my essence so that I became contaminated—”
“Contaminated?” I asked.
“I cannot hold a form long without burning it out,” Vincent muttered. “The touch of the Yellow King is inside me.”
It was clear the Yithian was mad now. Anything I got out of him would be disjointed or misleading. Still, I was finally getting answers. “Why did you turn on him? Why did you try to kill me.”
“I was wrong about what he planned to do,” Vincent muttered. “I did not know how he would change himself. It cannot be allowed to complete its transformation. It must be cut off from the rest of the Dreamlands. It cannot spread and gro—”
A gunshot rang out and Vincent fell forward before he struggled to raise his crystal rod against me, only for a second shot to sound and cause him to collapse. Almost immediately, whatever control Vincent had over the reanimated beside him failed and the mutilated corpse of Malcolm Jones dropped its gun and started to feast upon the actor.
Vincent was still alive and the sounds he made were ghastly. It said something about how jaded and cynical I’d become that my initial thought to seeing a man eaten alive was that it was unusual for a reanimated to engage in cannibalism.
Before I could move to grab either the crystal rod on the ground or the gun dropped by Detective Jones, the White Gorilla walked in with a new companion holding a smoking gun. Much to my disappointment, I saw it was Martha.
“Hello,” Franz said, cheerfully. “I do believe you have something of mine.”
Martha aimed her gun at me. “I’m afraid our relationship has reached an endpoint, John.”
Well, shit.
Chapter Twenty-Four
* * *
I searched Martha’s eyes for any sign of a secret plan or gambit she was working on. Finding none, I searched instead for an enchantment or mind-control that might have been worked by the White Gorilla like some storybook wizard. No, there was no sign of that, either. Instead, there was simply the steely determination of a New Arkham Loyalty Officer that had committed herself to her present course of action.
There’s something of a truism in that people often trust self-interest over altruism. That a person who presents themselves up front as ruthless, conniving, and duplicitous is somehow more honest than someone who claims to be without guile. The cynics among us believe everyone must be a little bit of a hypocrite or a schemer so they see wearing that as a badge of honor to be superior to honest presentation of forthrightness.
Which is to say that I’d severely misjudged Martha and was a fool for doing so. She had betrayed me before by testifying against me at the show trial I’d received in New Arkham following my ill-fated invasion of the Black Cathedral. Martha had betrayed the Council of Leaders to install a puppet government in Kingsport not long before our home had been destroyed by a Cthulhuoid entity. Finally, she had openly admitted to being a part of my assassination with the caveat that Martha had not expected my survival. Right before asking me to kill the White Gorilla for her.
All taken together, it led me to an inexplicable conclusion: Martha Peasley Booth, mother of my children, was a snake. It was an example of Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation being the correct answer. One that I had repeatedly ignored out of a desperate willful blindness akin to humanity’s own toward the myriad occult terrors that had existed ubiquitously beside them since the day their ancestors had first crawled out of the primordial ooze.
“I see you have once more reevaluated your loyalties,” I said, sighing and raising my hands. I knew the bullets in Martha’s gun were quite capable of killing a shoggoth as I could sense them with my new alien senses from twelve feet away. They were made of R’lyehian gold and marked with blood magic that had required the sacrifice of an innocent for each cartridge. It made me suspect that the late Vincent Sage’s spirit had likely been bound to his body so it could not escape as it was devoured by the ravenous reanimated still chowing down on him.
“You are incorrect,” Martha replied. “My loyalties have ever remained with a single individual: myself.”
The White Gorilla watched on, silently amused at this family drama enfolding before him.
“How prosaic,” I said, frowning. “You are not just betraying me here. You are betraying our child.”
Martha scoffed. “It is ever your failure that you cannot look into my mind, John. If you could then you would see I am a more evolved organism than most. The emotional attachments that form the basis for so many societal taboos—friendship, family, and patriotism—are absent from my kind. As a psychic, I can interpret them as the biologically-driven claptrap they are. My consciousness, higher and purer, interprets matters through the lens of an emotionless driven logic. There are allies, enemies, and useless background noise. The first two can switch places at any given time.”
I stared at her. “I see. So, our family has always meant nothing to you.”
Martha snorted. “I do admit to a certain disgust at the realization I was carrying the child of an alien organism. However, it was our father’s wish for me to do so in hopes of continuing his transhumanist wishes.”
“Our father?” I asked, feeling stupid and disgusted. “All of the psychics of New Arkham were his biological children.”
“Ha!” Franz said. “Gabriel is a child of incest as well as cosmic miscegenation. To think you look down upon my illustrious pedigree.”
I felt disgusted. “We are very different, Martha.”
“Yes,” Martha said, moving her finger to the trigger. “I am still human, however evolved, while you are not. Your mother never recovered from the ritual by which Doctor Ward lured her to where he was possessed during the deed. Her alcoholism and self-hatred was comforted only by her husband until she confessed the truth to him and he beat her to death. So take comfort, Booth, you are at least consistent in ruining every family you come into contact with.”
“Not yet,” Franz said.
Martha shot him a glare. Their relationship was not as cordial as she would like it, perhaps because Franz had Martha’s number well before I did.
“The Silver Key,” Franz said, holding out his hand.
“I don’t have it,” I lied.
Franz chuckled again. “Oh, John, you really are a character. Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a horrible liar?”
“No,” I replied, but Martha had many times.
“Give the key,” Martha replied. “Otherwise, I’ll begin seeing how many bullets it takes to destroy a creature like you.”
Blackman had gone into hiding and I didn’t blame him. I was already trying to formulate plans about how to get to the late Detective Jones’ gun or the crystal rod on the ground. Unfortunately, barring mastery of a form I didn’t have anything close to mastery of, I didn’t know how I’d do that.
“It seems that I have a vested interest in not giving you the key since you would kill me either way.”
“I guess we can just kill you and search your corpse,” Martha said, pausing. “I won’t slay you if you’ll stay human or become a bunch of slime.”
I didn’t believe her.
“No!” Franz said, raising his hand again. “He might have been smart enough to hide it.”
I was, in fact, not smart enough to hide it.
“What do you suggest then?” Martha asked, looking with annoyance to the man beside her.
“There is one thing worse than death to a man like Mr. Booth,” Franz said.
“I dunno, I find death pretty intimidating,” I said, doing my best to sound flippant. I was going to go for the crystal rod. Perhaps my new status would give me an advantage in speed over the human psychic and gorilla-human hybrid.
“Slavery,” Franz said.
My blood ran cold, and I made a running leap toward the rod.
“Chagt’ah vol’um vask molk zadahi!” Franz lifted his Azathoth eye tipped cane and started speaking the language of the Elder Things.
It was a hideous, nightmarish, and awful thing that shook me to the very core. It also brought back terrible memories of past lives where the monstrous slave lords of a dead civilization had experimented on me for millennia. Chunks of flesh were hacked off, injected, irradiated, and analyzed in hopes of creating a more perfect servant.
I remembered encountering one of the last living Elder Things in the city of Shak’ta’hadron. The creature had given his control spells to the ghouls living there to have the shoggoths become their slaves. The Elder Thing had been willing to pass on his people’s knowledge to a race he considered to be inferior in hopes of recreating a shadow out of time. I’d felt the shoggoth’s suffering and even today debated the morality of my next action. It was a great horror I’d done even compared to my many other sins, I had unleashed the enslaved shoggoths in a murderous killing frenzy. Slavers or not, the ghouls had included children.
