The Tree of Azathoth, page 9
“The only person who matters in that sort of opinion is yourself,” Blackman the cat said. “What does another man’s good or evil count when every man or woman’s universe is their own private domicile?”
“That sounds very much like the opinion of a cat,” I replied.
“Or a god’s,” Blackman replied.
“Same difference,” Jackie said.
Eventually, Jackie brought the car to a large train tunnel extending underground with its railway ending in iron blocks. Graffiti of several languages was written on the white stone of the exterior, some of it legible enough to read their obscene meanings. Not everything in the city was supernatural in meaning and tagging for its own sake was something that had managed to survive right until the end of my world.
“Here we are,” Jackie said, bringing the car to a stop next to the edge of the tunnel entrance.
“This is the entrance to Ghoultown?” I asked.
“Yep,” Jackie said. “One of them at least. There were plans to make a subway system for the city but the ghouls took over everything and demanded tribute to use their tunnels. The city council refused.”
“Ah,” I replied. “Not very smart of them.”
“No kidding,” Jackie said. “Hordes of rats, backflowing sewage, and missing children dragged down to the lower depths eventually convinced them to do a tribute system.”
“Tribute?” I asked.
“Corpses,” Jackie said. “Every unclaimed corpse in town and a lot of donated ones are dropped down here, wrapped in bedsheets.”
I nodded. Similar kinds of arrangements had been made in Scrapyard despite the bigotry and xenophobia they’d displayed toward hybrids like her.
“What a waste of good corpses,” Blackman said, dryly.
“The ghouls do keep the sewers and drains working at least,” Jackie said. “They might be willing to do more but the Knights of Arkham refuse.”
“I see,” I replied. “And Jessica went down here to look for the missing cats?”
“Yes,” Jackie said. “A few hours ago. She should have been back by now. On the plus side, as long as she’s got her Tear of Tsathoggua, the ghouls should leave her alone.”
I nodded. “I picked up a similar rock from the desk.”
“Good,” Jackie said, taking a breath. “Now you just have to worry about all the hundreds of other horrible things down there in the dark.”
“I’m not exactly helpless,” I said, patting Mercury’s Gift through my coat.
“Oh yes, a gun,” Blackman replied, sarcastically. “Because that will certainly terrify the forces beyond.”
“I’m not sure the City isn’t the beyond itself,” I muttered.
“Don’t overestimate your ability to deal with things, Booth,” Jackie said, referring to me by my last name instead of dad. “The City is kept from the worst of the supernatural by the Dreaming King’s barriers and wards. An enforced sense of normality and sanity as a bulwark against the ephemeral that is absolute outside our little community’s bubble.”
“I have no idea what you just said,” I replied.
“Shit is weird here but not nearly as weird as it gets outside the city,” Blackman translated.
“Uh huh,” I said, understanding that just fine.
“The Warrens underneath are a lot weirder,” Jackie said. “I just thought I’d warn you.”
“Jessica should have waited for me,” I said, opening the passenger car door and stepped out into the night just as a light rain began. The water tasted acidic and smoke-filled, which irritated me as only someone who depended on the rain for life could feel.
“Time is of the essence in kidnappings,” Jackie said, stepping out of the car. “Particularly when the suspects are known to eat cats. I would have gone with her but she wanted to make sure you were guarded while you were asleep.”
“I don’t need guarding,” I said, dryly.
Jackie unfurled an umbrella and picked up Blackman, carrying him around in place of a gun or other useful tool. Then again, for all I knew, a talking cat might be better than a pistol against the Things Below. Capital T, capital B.
“You died of gunfire, John.”
“Everyone has to die sometime,” I replied.
“That is a very stupid statement,” Blackman replied. “No one has to die unless they’re mortal and such is a condition everyone should be actively seeking a cure for. It’s only those too stupid or inept to find such a thing who should.”
“Are cats immortal?” I asked, half-curious about what sort of rules applied here.
“Only ones from Saturn,” the cat replied. “The rest of us reincarnate.”
I stared at the cat.
“What?” Blackman asked.
“I’m trying to tell if you’re joking,” I said, shaking my head.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Blackman asked, looking very much like an ordinary house cat that somehow had gained the power of speech.
“Do you have liquor in the City because I think I need to get loaded,” I replied.
“Yeah, but it’s illegal,” Jackie said.
I stared at her. “That’s the first genuinely horrifying thing anyone has said since I’ve got here and I’ve talked to a demon tree over my own corpse.”
Seriously, what the hell was wrong with this place?
“Alcohol has to be imported or made locally from fungus or kelp,” Jackie said. “So the majority of booze comes from the demihumans. Hence illegal.”
“Fungus,” I replied.
“You don’t see much grain around here, do you?” Jackie asked. “Let’s just say you’re going to get used to eating things that grow in the dark and are fed shit.”
“Just as long as they don’t talk,” I replied.
Jackie didn’t respond.
“They don’t talk, do they?” I asked.
“Not after being fermented,” Jackie said.
“I am rethinking leaving the City for another part of the Dreamland,” I muttered. “Is Narnia real?”
“Yeah, like they’d let you in Narnia,” Jackie muttered, surprising me as I wouldn’t have thought her familiar with it. Then again, the ghouls might have had far vaster libraries and knowledge of the human race than New Arkham’s expansive town library. “Also, I don’t know if the fungus talks. I’m just saying as a ghoul, I’m not particularly concerned about whether or not my food formerly talked or not. The circle of life.”
“Eat, die, get eaten, shit it out,” Blackman said. “We all end up the same compost unless you’re an immortal cat from Saturn.”
“Are you coming, Jackie?” I asked, looking over at my daughter—whether by my reality or another one’s it didn’t matter to me. I was potentially leading her into danger, and I couldn’t tell if it was the right decision or not.
“I’m not going to abandon you again,” Jackie said.
“You’ve never abandoned me, Jackie,” I replied.
“Yeah, I did, in the Wasteland.” Jackie looked down. “I left you to go be with my people, only once I was with them, I realized we didn’t have anything in common. Ghouls are the most human-like of all the immortal races and yet it was still like being in another time, place, and reality when dealing with them. You raised me to be too human. We could have been together, me and my son, Mercury, all of us, but we all went our separate ways.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied.
“Don’t be,” Jackie said. “It’s better to be human than a monster. However affable.”
“Ha!” Blackman said.
“Are you going to throw him at whatever’s down there?” I asked.
“Don’t tempt me,” Jackie said. “But Blackman has his own benefits. Especially if we’re going to be tracking down Jessica in those tunnels.”
I severely questioned that, but I wasn’t exactly an expert on any of the people here in this strange place either. “I’ll let you lead the way.”
Jackie nodded. “I suggest you also get the shotgun from the car. It may not be as effective as your pistol against certain things, but there are plenty of people down there that buckshot is effective against—and deterred by.”
“Are you armed?” I asked, opening the back, and seeing a pair of shotguns inside. There was also a rifle.
“I will be,” Jackie said. “I never learned the hang of sorcery like Mom.”
I thought of Mercury and the fact she’d—or at least some version of her—had ended up here and apparently gone off with yet another John. It sounded ridiculous, but I wasn’t sure by what standard I could measure that anymore. This City was the stuff dreams were made of, which was less a literary illusion than a statement of fact.
Handing Jackie her rifle and taking a shotgun for myself, Blackman jumped down on the ground while Jackie kept the umbrella with her free hand. Apparently, keeping the cat dry until we reached the tunnel was something that warranted not holding the weapon properly. Of course, wiser heads than me had long observed that cats were the owners in their relationship with humans.
Apparently with ghouls, too.
Our makeshift group descended into the tunnel and I immediately noticed we were going to be drenched in blackness the moment we descended into its depths. That was going to pose its own issues even if Jackie, as a true blooded ghoul, could see in the dark as if it was daytime.
“I have an electric torch if you need me to light it,” Jackie said. “It’ll announce our presence, though.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said, putting the shotgun on the ground and rubbing my hands together before whispering a minor guttural invocation not meant for human speech. A little will-o-wisp emerged from my hands and became a free-floating hand with a glowing ball inside it.
“What the hell is that?” Jackie asked, looking at it.
“A Hand of Glory,” I replied. “I don’t know much witchcraft, but Mercury made this for me as a symbol I can conjure with my mind. It’ll illuminate the area for yourself and any friendlies but no one else. Perfect for thieving and ambushes.”
“Huh,” Jackie said. “I don’t think that’s how Hand of Glories are supposed to work.”
I picked up the shotgun and shrugged. “If you say so.”
We headed into the darkness of the abandoned train tunnel and I was immediately set upon edge. The place had the looks of a massive construction project that had been abandoned halfway through with old, dried blood on the wall, a few pitiful attempts to construct an Elder Sign, and roaches the size of man’s fist.
“The ghouls live down here?” I asked.
“The ones who don’t want to live with humans,” Jackie said. “There’s some humans down here as well.”
“Humans?” I asked.
“There’s always people more at home with the monsters than their fellow men,” Jackie said. “Supposedly, there’s ways of making humans into ghouls if they eat the right food and swear themselves to the right gods.”
“Is that true?” I asked.
“Fuck no,” Jackie responded. “Just another story about humans who want to escape the looming specter of old age and death. You’re either born a ghoul or you’re not.”
“That doesn’t mean some stories aren’t true. Human blood has always been needed to refresh the inbred bloodlines of the Earth dwellers.” Blackman walked beside us, surveying his surroundings with boredom. “The legends of the Fair Folk stealing away children in the night come from ghouls. Changelings are left in their place to gain new knowledge and eventually return to their kind. Very different from the zoogs who simply seek meals.”
I could feel a hundred tiny eyes watching us from the shadows, looking through the eyes of the rats and vermin or simply staring at us from other realms that were invisible to the naked eye. They were not hostile for the simple fact we had not been attacked yet. At least, that was what I told myself.
I pulled the glyph-covered stone from my pocket and displayed the symbol of Tsathoggua, holding the shotgun with my arm. Presenting the stone seemed to have an immediate effect and I soon felt all of the viewing eyes vanish. Whoever this god was, apparently his symbol was enough to open doors that might otherwise be closed. We had safe passage.
For now.
“This way,” Blackman said, jumping through a hole in the wall. “Jessica went down this hall a couple of hours ago.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Magic,” Blackman said.
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
Chapter Ten
* * *
The journey through the cracked and ruined tunnels of the City’s underworld was one that awakened inside me a claustrophobia I hadn’t known I had, especially given I’d journeyed in much deeper caves investigating the Unimaginable Horror. However, the empty and cramped conditions as we passed through halfway completed passageways was something that crawled up my skin in ways I didn’t quite fathom.
Perhaps it was the fact that I sensed danger everywhere around me but it never manifested itself or abated. The tension was worse than any actual monsters I might encounter here. Those, at least, could be fought or run away from. Or, if neither was possible, then death was a certainty. Instead, it was the ever-present anticipation that was driving me crazy. The light of the Hand of Glory only provided the barest illumination that distracted from the oppressive tight atmosphere. Even the air was driving me mad with a disgusting tinge of old rotted meat, grease, dust, and other unidentifiable smells assaulting the nostrils.
I didn’t know if I’d find Jessica at the end of this tunnel, serving as the proverbial light, or if it would be a literal dead end. It was at that moment I realized the silence was getting to me as well since I was now thinking in weird metaphors and narrating my own actions. It less of a jump from my normal behavior than I was perhaps comfortable admitting but something I deeply hoped to avoid.
“You seem awfully certain it is a zoog,” I said, ending the silence as we moved along the edge of a storm drain.
“The zoog,” Blackman corrected. “He is the last of his kind. The Shadowwalker, the Stealer of Kits, and the Eater of Young.”
“The Napper,” Jackie said.
“Such a stupid name,” Blackman said without a trace of irony.
“How did he become the last of his kind?” I asked.
“Simple, we killed the rest,” Blackman said.
“Oh,” I said, remembering I wasn’t exactly dealing with a moralistic race. Every cat was a psychopath as humans labeled such things, as free and unbidden from good or evil as the Great Old Ones. They had their pets, slaves, and families—nothing else mattered. Any cat “owner” would tell you so.
“Randolph Carter created this city in 1927, though it wasn’t colonized really until 1947,” Blackman said, giving me some insight into the City’s history. “I’m referring to the common era calendar of your world, Booth, if that provides you some context.”
I’d complain about being condescended to, but I suspected all people who talked to cats had that problem.
“I’m familiar with that time keeping method.”
Honestly, it was a meaningless distinction. The Rising had disrupted the cause and flow of reality so that generations passed in one part of the world while others flowed like a trickle of molasses. Had twenty years passed since I’d confronted Alan Ward in his cursed temple or was that just how long it felt? Did it matter to mostly immortal beings?
“Good,” Blackman said. “Humans have no natural predators, just as they have no natural prey, a reflection, perhaps, of the insignificance of your race. It does, however, mean that men are often confused about the ancient age-old feuds between the species of the Dreamlands. Gugs and ghasts, ghouls and nightgaunts, flying polyps and yith, the Elder Things and the people of K’Tulu.”
“Cats and zoogs,” I said, doubting that most of those things were genetically encoded to be enemies versus culturally.
I didn’t know how chasing down a bunch of missing kittens related to my quest to find the Dreaming King or how any of this was relevant to my life. I’d seemingly stepped through the Looking Glass and gone from a dead and dying world into a vibrant—albeit crooked caricature—living one. The fact it seemingly came at the cost of stealing another Booth’s life was just the bizarre topping to the food I was consuming. Yet, the cats seemed very much alive and Jessica, dream or not, cared about helping them, so I saw no reason not to. I just hoped I wasn’t about to come across her corpse in the most bitter twist of fate imaginable.
“Precisely,” Blackman said. “Several cats assisted Randolph Carter on his quest for ascension. Though it went horribly wrong, it was a favor that was not forgotten. When the Dreaming King opened the City to countless races fleeing the Great Old Ones and their nightmares, cats were given a special place among the city’s ranks.”
“So, the Dreaming King is Randolph Carter,” I said, wanting to solve that particular puzzle sooner than later. I needed to find out who this Dreaming King was and how to locate him, even if I didn’t entirely trust the guidance of who had set me on this path. All I knew is that if it wanted you to do something, the supernatural had very effective ways of enforcing your behavior.
“Possibly,” Blackman said, disappointing me. “The Dreaming King is a Great One, what you would call one of the small human-like gods of Earth. Bast, Nodens, Odin, the Nailed One, and so on. Powered by dreams and mortal faiths that sustain them in whatever Elysiums they build for themselves in the Dreamlands. The Great Ones are insignificant compared to the Great Old Ones and even more so to Nyarlathotep and his masters, but respectably powerful in their own way. Carter sought such knowledge for himself and almost achieved apotheosis.”
“Almost?” I asked, surprised. “I saw his life story in the theater.”
Blackman gave a sputter of indignant contempt, which was surprisingly cat-like yet recognizably human as well.
“Your son only told part of the story. Which is typical for humans when being paid. They love to drag things out if there’s more profit in it.”
“If you say so,” I said. I’d grown up in a society that barely used money since every part of our society was distributed by the military. I understood that this kind of distribution of wealth had been uncommon in America beforehand and even disdained.
