The Tree of Azathoth, page 6
“Robert Junior and Howard,” I replied.
“Yeah,” Jessica said, absently. “So the Booths always say. It takes a while to warm to me. You’re faster than most.”
I looked down at Jessica’s hand and saw a wedding band. “You said Booth’s other wife.”
Jessica didn’t respond for a moment. “Booth and Associates. I’m a Booth.”
Ah.
Chapter Six
* * *
“I see,” I said, taking that interesting new factoid into account.
“I take it we weren’t married in your world?” Jessica asked.
“You married him in this one” I said, deflecting.
“You’re deflecting,” Jessica said.
“You’re very good at this,” I replied.
“Almost like I’m a detective,” Jessica replied.
I smirked. “Almost.”
“Let me guess, it was that whore, Mercury,” Jessica said, with a lot more resentment than came from just fighting over a man. Of course, the Mercury and Jessica I’d known had shared a deep and passionate dislike of one another for many other reasons. Some people just didn’t gel together no matter how hard they tried and neither had tried very hard.
“No, it was more the fact you were dead,” I replied. “Before that, it was your husband, the other Jessica’s husband, Robert Senior.”
“I notice you didn’t defend Mercury to the whore comment,” Jessica replied.
“The one I knew literally owned a brothel in the town we lived in,” I replied. “Good honest work.”
“Of course you’d say that.” Jessica rolled her eyes.
“You disagree?” I asked, looking out the window and passing a family dressed in black with veils over the men as well as the women. Underneath, I could see the itchy, dark-scaled skin of Deep Ones. It was interesting to note I could feel the supernatural all around me under illusions, but these did not hide their true nature. Were they unable or unwilling to undergo such magics or were glamours for sale like cosmetics so that only the very rich could possess them? What made humanity desirable and inhumanity not? It was a question I normally wouldn’t have thought to ask but twenty years in the Wasteland had broadened my idea of aesthetics.
“Let’s just say the sex workers of the city rarely have a say in who they sell to,” Jessica said.
“Well, that’s different,” I replied.
“Is it?” Jessica asked.
“That’s slavery,” I replied. “I kill slavers.”
Jessica smiled. “Well, take a good look at the City. You’ll find a lot of that around here too, even if it’s technically illegal under the Laws of Carter.”
“I think I’m supposed to find him,” I replied.
“Good luck.” Jessica snorted.
I looked at her sideways. “I take it he’s not an easy man to find?”
Jessica shook her head. “You’re talking about the mythical god-king of this island in the chaos. No one has seen or talked with Randolph Carter in centuries except for your son.”
“My son,” I repeated.
“Yeah,” Jessica nodded. “The City’s most famous director and owner of the only movie studio in the world, at least if you define the world as the city limits. Supposedly, Randolph Carter was the one who led Gabriel and the other Arkhamites here. It’s also what inspired him to make his movie about the City’s founding.”
“Interesting,” I said, staring at her. “That’s a place to start at least.”
“My John wasn’t close to Gabriel,” Jessica said. “At least he’s not a fascist. The Knights of Arkham would be shutting down his movies if not for the fact it’d cause riots.”
“I haven’t seen him in twenty years,” I replied. “I was always closer to Anita. Is there any news of her?”
Jessica shook her head. “Sorry.”
Jessica mentioned my daughter earlier so either she was lying, or it was referring to a different daughter. Either way, it was fascinating to think both of them had arrived here. Here, perhaps was a place they could escape the curse of being Kastro’vaal. However, it occurred to me this was also a place where humanity might be even more dangerous than monstrosity.
After all, decades had passed for me like the passing of hours. Would I grow old and die here? Mercury had wanted to escape that possibility more than anything. I had given it little thought. Death as a man was better than eternity as a monster, but now the thought was repulsive if it meant my children dying. Perhaps them being Kastro’vaal would not be such a bad thing if it meant centuries or even millennium more of life. Perhaps I was also simply rethinking my own immortality since I was simultaneously here chatting with a doppelganger of my Jessica while my corpse was rotting in a coffin next to the cops I’d just killed.
“I admit, a movie director wasn’t what I expected of him in life,” I replied.
“What did you expect?” Jessica asked.
“A wizard,” I replied, dryly. “Either that or a madman.”
“So you did predict he’d work in cinema,” Jessica said, pulling to a stop next to a street vendor.
“What’s here?” I asked.
“I thought you were hungry,” Jessica said. “The best food in town isn’t from restaurants.”
“I find that claim extremely dubious,” I said, watching her purchase two tubes of meat inside a long casing of bread with chili on the top. She also purchased drinks that were full of ice, a concept I was still getting used to. In the Wasteland, you had boiled water, boiled tea, boiled coffee made of something other than coffee beans, animal milks, and various kinds of alcohol.
This one seemed to be a kind of iced tea, which seemed to defeat the purpose of tea. Still, it was drinkable.
“Enjoy your hot dog,” Jessica said. “Just try not to think about where the meat comes from.”
I stared at her.
“Not exactly much farmland out here,” Jessica said. “Let’s just say a lot of the meat here comes from either the ocean or the rats.”
“And?” I asked, not particularly perturbed by the prospect of eating rodents. I’d eaten far worse things in the Wasteland.
“Our rats tend to have human faces,” Jessica said, dryly.
I stared at her, checking for sarcasm then looked at the hotdog before looking back at her. “I’m still eating it.”
Jessica smirked. “You did the exact same thing to me when I first came to the city. I’ve waited years to pay you back for it.”
I chewed down on the hot dog and it didn’t taste like it contained any human remains, though sawdust was a possibility. Hunger was the best pickle, and I wasn’t exactly going to be looking a gift horse in the mouth—a proverb I had never truly understand until I’d once seen a second head inside one rather nastily mutated nag’s throat.
“I’ll need to speak with Gabriel,” I replied. “Closeness or not.”
“You need to be thinking about getting out of town,” Jessica said. “My John, the late John, died trying to get in touch with his son. It’s where the police will be looking for you.”
“They think I’m dead,” I replied, wondering if my son was closer to his mother than he’d been before.
Martha Booth had married me out of obligation, not love, because all members of our society were supposed to have at least three children. We’d fallen short and Martha had never been particularly fond of the ones we had. To be fair, I hadn’t exactly been the greatest parent myself. The Wastelands had claimed my time and attention far more than they should have. But I granted myself the excuse that I hadn’t exactly had the best role models to draw from: my mother had been a drunk and my father had tried to kill me.
To this day, I wasn’t sure if my mother’s alcoholism had been related to the knowledge she’d conceived with a monster or if my father’s attempted murder of me was because of my inhuman heritage. Somehow, I doubted it and believed, instead, that he’d simply believed I was the product of more mundane adultery. Why? I hated my father more than any creature of the Wasteland or mad prophet of the Old Ones. I had no desire to muddy the purity of that loathing with an understandable motivation of transcendental fear.
Gods, I was a wordsmith in my musings, wasn’t I?
“Because you are dead,” Jessica spoke as if lecturing a very small child. “Is going home not an option?”
I blinked, pondering the barren emptiness I’d left behind. “There is no home left. Whether fled, dead, or vanished—the dunes are just empty. Once you couldn’t drive or ride a day without encountering another settlement. When I left, I had been suffering solitudes that lasted months on occasion.”
“Is that better or worse than a city of monsters?” Jessica asked, pulling us into a parking lot beside a structurally sound but rundown brick building.
“He who said hell is other people has never been truly alone,” I said, insulting Sartre. “I have no idea if this place is an illusion, reality, or dying dream, but it is better than the alternative.”
Jessica stared at me, opened her mouth, then closed it. “Your place is undoubtedly still being watched, John. I have a bunch of work to do in our office but there’s a back way into it. We can enter through the ghoul tunnels.”
“They’re still watching my office even though I’m dead?” I asked.
“In strange aeons—” Jessica shrugged.
“Please don’t,” I interrupted her.
“Let’s just say death is not the impediment that it used to be,” Jessica said. “Especially in our line of work.”
“Yes,” I said, dryly. “We solve…mysteries?”
It sounded so strange. I’d been a voracious reader during my youth and poured through much of the New Arkham library to memorize as much of the Pre-Rising World as possible. I knew that detectives had once been a popular genre of fiction but the Wasteland was full of mysteries. You survived by leaving them alone. As had been explained to me: “If you see a pure beautiful lake surrounded by bleached white skeletons, leave it the fuck alone.”
“Something like that,” Jessica replied, getting out of the car. “Justice by other means is still justice.”
“I’ve never found justice to be a particularly relevant concept,” I replied, opening the door and stepping out. “Law and order? Sure. Revenge? Absolutely. Justice? That seems to rely on too many universal absolutes I’ve never been able to prove exist as well as have plenty of evidence do not.”
“Call it what you will,” Jessica replied. “There are a lot of people in this city who don’t trust the police, hate the mobs, and loathe their particular religious communities. That doesn’t leave them with many options. The City is on an island surrounded by dreams and sometimes, the only protection you have is a gun for hire.”
“That’s a mercenary, not a detective,” I replied.
“Same difference some nights, ask the Pinkertons,” Jessica said.
“Are they friends of yours?” I asked.
I had to admit, her description of our job here was making me more suspicious rather than putting my mind at ease. I’d yet to find anything in this world, or any other world now that I thought about it, that amounted to a free lunch. Everything had a cost, even true love, and the idea of being any sort of “good guy” made me uneasy.
I’d done what I’d had to do to survive in New Arkham, the Wasteland, and as Sheriff of New Ulthar. Enforcing the law there had meant hanging men for stealing water, gunning down those people who were seeking their own justice, and often choosing which evil to side with in a conflict where there was no clear lesser one let alone good. Morality was a delusion for better men than myself and I wondered what it said about me that one of these better men was apparently, well, me.
Jessica walked to a basement walk-up next to the red brick building and started heading down. There was a little bronze sign that said, “Booth and Associates” in a language that I didn’t recognize. It only occurred to me how strange it was to be able to understand a completely foreign language when I was joining her in descending. Perhaps not all of my inner weirdness had departed.
“So, what is it you need to get from Randolph Carter anyway? Or your son? I’m still not clear on that,” Jessica asked.
“The Tree of Azathoth told me that I needed to awaken the Dreaming King or keep him asleep,” I replied. “That it was the purpose I sought.”
“The Tree of Azathoth,” Jessica said.
“Yes, it’s a giant tree made of dead bodies and is apparently a god or the avatar of Nyarlathotep,” I replied. “It was made by the Dunwych people. A man who hated me put me in touch with it in hopes of it destroying me.”
Jessica stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Is there any way, shape, or form that explanation would make sense with more context?”
“Honestly?” I replied. “Not really.”
“You were pretty desperate in the Wasteland, weren’t you?” Jessica asked, pulling out a set of keys and opening a thick metal door.
“Yes,” I replied. “I wasn’t really too concerned whether Mister Death killed me or saved me.”
“You did kill his daughter,” Jessica said, pausing with her key in the door.
“What’s wrong? Is it stuck?” I asked.
“No,” Jessica said, frowning. “It’s just I had no idea who Mister Death was a second ago and now I do. I remember him, Katryn, and the Dunwych tribe.”
I stared at her. “Interesting.”
“If by interesting you mean terrifying,” Jessica said, her voice hollow. “I don’t know where I came from, Booth. It’s always bothered me, and all I know is that I’m meant to be here with you. That scares me because it means I’m not in control of my own destiny.”
“None of us are in control of our destinies,” I replied. “That’s why they call it destiny. We are all conceived in this reality without our consent, forced into confusing ignorant life, and obliged to navigate powers far beyond us until we finally have our existences cut short by the entropic powers of time. The only exceptions are the gods and gods above them, who I almost pity lacking such finality.”
Jessica looked up from the door and stared at me. “Jesus, I’d forgotten how fucking up your own ass you are all the time.”
“Well excuse me all to hell.” I frowned. “Also, did you always swear this much?”
“Fuck you,” Jessica said, stopping jiggling the keys in the door and pulling out a cigarette to light.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, frowning.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Jessica asked. “Booth hated it.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I replied.
“I just need a moment,” Jessica shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to see you, but this is a pretty big mental adjustment for me.”
“You don’t say,” I said, sarcastically.
Jessica glared. “Do you take anything seriously?”
“Humor is staring in the face of death and knowing there’s not a damn thing you can do about it,” I replied. “So, yes, I take everything seriously. I’ve just accepted that I’m the mouse of cosmic cats playing with their toy.”
Jessica smirked as if I’d said something amusing. “Funny you should mention cats. Okay, Booth, I won’t try and get you out of town. Not that I’m sure there’s much out of town. There’s here, Arabian Nights world, some places straight out of the Hyborian Age, and lands that just get plain weird. The City is pretty much it for civilized lands and that’s with a questionable definition of the world civilized. I’ll even try to sneak you onto your son’s movie lot. However, I need to take care of the case I’m currently working on. It takes precedence.”
“Even if your entire pocket reality is threatened?” I asked, remembering the implications of the Tree.
“It involves kids,” Jessica said, as if that was the finality of it. Which it was.
“Ah, yes, kids,” I said, remembering the final desperate mission of Gamma Squadron that had been motivated by an ultimately futile desire to save some innocents from Alan Ward’s mad plan. I had to wonder if he had been wiser than he’d first appeared. Were the children he’d sacrificed to the dream god Hypnos here somewhere, living their lives free from sin and horror? Or had he simply been yet another madman like I’d taken him to be?
“Yeah, kids,” Jessica said, continuing to jiggle the keys. “They change everything. Dammit, I can’t get this door open.”
“Let me try,” I said, taking over.
“Of course, John,” Jessica muttered. “Because I can’t figure out a fucking door.”
The door immediately opened for me. Weirdly, I could have sworn the key in the hole had turned silver in the light of the sun above.
“Goddammit,” Jessica replied.
I shrugged and walked inside.
Only to be swallowed by the same darkness that had flown from Mister Death’s opened throat.
Chapter Seven
* * *
I found myself in the dying hours of my Earth.
It was interesting to see how I’d returned to my world either hours later—or years—but in that time, the finality of my home’s destruction had been reached. I saw the world had been torn apart and it would have been a kindness were it to simply be reduced to cosmic dust like was inevitable for all living things.
No, instead, the time and space around the Wasteland was shredded like old, crumbled paper. There were rifts to the past spread throughout, some that I recognized and some that I did not. Time was folding in on itself like a piece of paper origami and would soon cease to exist. If such a concept made any sense at all when it seemed that all of time was about to cease to exist from beginning to end.
I could see my corpse on the ground for the second time “today”, for lack of a better frame of temporal reference. It was a blasted, beaten skeleton of bleached bones covered with alien matter rotting in the entropy of the world’s decay. The dust and ruins of the Dunwych’s last tribal settlement all around me.
