The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 3, page 24
“I’ve been having some of our intuitive assets look at this.”
“What are they getting?”
“A sense of a lull. When the precognitives peer ahead into the probability horizon, they don’t detect a point in futurity where Dagon again takes up arms against Cthulhu.”
“You know how psychics are. I wouldn’t rule out anything.”
“Believe me, I don’t,” said Cranston flatly. “This might only mean that Dagon has made no decision, hence no future trajectory is manifesting as yet.”
“Do we have any new leads on whoever might have influenced Dagon to take up arms against R’lyeh?”
“Nothing concrete. A few report a weird name floated up from their subconscious when they attempted to focus in that direction. But the name doesn’t make sense.”
“What is it?”
“Different ones decode it differently. The presumed pronunciations aren’t consistent. But it sounds like Calkroo, or something close to that. But you know how these prehuman words roil the tongue. They don’t translate into human speech with fidelity. Consequently, we don’t have anything like a definitive spelling.”
“That name isn’t suggesting anything to me, beyond a faulty transliteration of Cthulhu,” pondered Van Christo. “How about I feed it into Nodens?”
“You’re welcome to. Until you can figure out the correct spelling, I’m not sure what good it will do.”
“Maybe Nodens can figure out the proper spelling.”
Van Christo went off and presented the problem to the AI technical team.
The department head looked at the sheet of paper on which the tentative spelling “Calkroo” had been written and said, “This sounds like a misapprehension of Cthulhu.”
“It does. But trust me. It doesn’t represent Cthulhu.”
“Do we know that the C is not actually a K?”
Van Christo shook his head in the negative. “We don’t know anything definitive. We just have variations on these two syllables.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
It took less than half an hour for the technical head to step into Van Christo’s office door to report, “I may have something for you.”
“Give it to me.”
“The Necronomicon mentions a Void of Khalk’ru.”
“That sounds like a place-name. I don’t think that’s it. We’re assuming the name of an hitherto-unidentified entity, conceivably a Great Old One.”
“That’s what Nodens produced. If it helps, the Necronomicon doesn’t equate Khalk’ru with Cthulhu either.”
“Understood. Thanks for trying.”
Going to his electronic Necronomicon database, Van Christo typed in the search string, “Void of Khalk’ru.”
What he found could be reduced to a single paragraph:
The One Who is Not to Be Named alone knows the Void of Khalk’ru. For the indwelling Void of Khalk’ru arises from the Outer God who is rightfully called the All-in-One and One-in-All. When this One appoints the hour, the Lightless Timeless Boundless Void will spawn, and the avatar will seek the gate. Only the One who holds the key knows the hour and the gate. And only He will give birth to the Void that is both empty and full. Until that unknowable hour, the one who watches will watch the one who sleeps. Upon that hour, the one who sleeps must surrender to the one who watches. Just as Creation once commenced from nothingness, annihilation must inevitably consume all Creation, returning it to a new nothingness from which a fresh and fecund Creation may or may not manifest, according to ancient laws that are nothing more than the whim of the Living Patient Void.
Van Christo printed this out and took it in to his superior.
Director Cranston read over the printout and his voice frowned in sync with his dour expression. “Sounds like a dead end. I don’t know what the Void of Khalk’ru could be. But it reads like a locality, or at best a condition, not an Elder God.”
“I don’t disagree with you. But I’d like to point out that it’s ambiguous. The One Who is Not to Be Named is confirmed to be another phrase for Yog-Sothoth, who is also called the All-in-One and One-in-All. I don’t know if Yog-Sothoth is the one who watches, but the one who sleeps has to be Cthulhu.”
Cranston read the paragraph again.
“I’ll give you that much. But otherwise, there’s nothing here to go on. if I were to venture a guess, I would assume that the Void of Khalk’ru refers to the darkness outside our own universe in general. Maybe the chaos-matrix in which Azathoth squats on his throne, or the lightless domain of Yog-Sothoth. If it’s an entity, I think it would have been mentioned more prominently by the Mad Arab.”
“I’m going to agree to disagree on that point,” said Van Christo. “Just reading the name communicates a weird feeling. As if I know it, but I don’t remember from where. That sensation gives me the cold shivers.”
“If Cthulhu had an enemy out there beyond our space-time, his name would be prominently invoked in the Necronomicon. It probably is. But I don’t think the instigator is called Khalk’ru. Keep working on this.”
Van Christo stood up. “Whatever was going on, as Nodens analyzed it, it’s unknowable to the human imagination. And will probably never be known. What it portends only future events might ever illuminate. Possibly those events lie in the incalculable future beyond our time.”
“We cannot know their minds, or understand their thinking. They operate so far above our terrestrial consciousness, it is beyond our Earthly comprehension. File this under a paralysis of analysis. That’s all I have for you today. Dismissed.”
As he returned to his office, Van Christo felt a peculiar sensation. It was a feeling of being watched by something remote and non-human. Other CEES personnel reported that unnerving feeling from time to time. It came with the job. The remote viewers especially complained about what came to be called the “hitchhiker effect.” After they returned from viewing a Denied Area or off-world target, the impression of being followed back and monitored by discarnate intelligences remained with them for days and sometimes longer.
As he closed his office door, Van Christo couldn’t shake a chilly feeling. Something like the coldness of deep, dead space seemed to have infiltrated the room in his absence. Patient eyes he could not see were observing him. The impression was distinct, indelible, and difficult to shrug off.
It was as if focusing on the Void of Khalk’ru caused that vacuity—whatever it was—to awaken to his existence….
A quote leaped into his mind. He could not recall the author.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Taking the chair before his computer, Van Christo input the quote from memory, then hit Search.
The author was Carl Jung. After reading the quote’s background, he could not figure out why that sentence had bubbled up from his subconscious. It slowly dawned on him that its origins were not the subconscious, but a deeper, more crepuscular place—the unconscious.
Refreshing his memory of Jung’s theory of the unconscious, a deeper chill took hold of him. The man had postulated that the unconscious was composed of knowledge and imagery inborn in every human being, and shared with all of mankind, past, present, and future, as if encoded in one’s innermost being, perhaps connected by ancestral memory—a concept once dismissed as rank superstition, but which has re-emerged as possessing validity. Genetic memory was the new term for it.
This realization only added to Van Christo’s growing sense of impending dread… and made him all the more determined to discover where he had first encountered the non-human word, Khalk’ru.
For if it turned out that he had never come across it in his reading, that meant that Khalk’ru was a concept residing in the deepest, darkest, least accessible burrow of his mind.
As he dwelt on the problem, something seemed to awaken deep inside him. Van Christo had a shadowy mental image like a crocodile or octopus cranium lurking half-submerged in water, its hooded eyelids sealed shut.
Then—those coldly inhuman slit-pupiled eyes opened wide!
“Has my unconscious become aware?” he wondered. “Or could this be—Khalk’ru?”
That night, ordinary sleep failed to come. Something within him was awake. His brain refused to slide from Beta brainwave consciousness through to the natural progression to Alpha, Theta, then finally the Delta state. He was stuck in Beta. Or was it Theta? He could not fall asleep. His mind raced. Hours passed. But when the alarm clock buzzed, he found that he was neither tired nor sleepy.
Driving to the office, he put in for vacation time. He felt an internal call, like a psychic summons, to some far distant place. Where it was or what this unknown place was called, Van Christo did not know. He only knew the deep inward urgency of locating it.
He also felt unseen eyes observing him…. He refused to give that observer a name. But it felt simultaneously outside of him, yet also a part of his innermost being. He told himself that it must be his unconscious mind, somehow conscious. He prayed that it was.
For if it was not, it could only be the forever black emptiness called—Khalk’ru….
THE SUMMONER OF KHALK’RU
1. HOUSE OF KHALK’RU
I had come to New Orleans in search of a phantasm. That’s how I thought of him, or it, or whatever it was.
I had only one thing to go by: a name. Khalk’ru.
The Void of Khalk’ru was mentioned only once in the Necronomicon. But that suggestive phrase plucked a weird cord in my mind that would not cease vibrating. I recognized it. But my brain held no conscious memory of its meaning.
I had nothing else to go on. As the Deputy Director of the Cryptic Events Evaluation Section of the National Reconnaissance Office, I was not without resources. I had access to what we euphemistically called “non-local” intelligence.
You can replace the term non-local with psychic if you prefer.
Before leaving on my vacation, I paid a visit to one of our top psychic readers, the ones who serve the paying public but also functioned as intuitive informants. Never mind her real name. It’s not classified, but a lot of psychics don’t use their real names for various professional reasons.
She called herself Liz. That might or might not have been her given name. People in the intuitive consulting business guarded their privacy more than many celebrities. She radiated a Zen-like aura of calm spirituality that seemed to clash with the hammer of Thor amulet hanging from her neck.
I sat down with her on my last day of work duty. “Just read me to start with.”
With some of these readers, stuff just tumbles out. It’s not very useful because most of it you already know. But the degree of accuracy will tell you how “on” the reader is.
Instead of saying anything specific, she asked me a question. “Why do I see New Orleans around you?”
That stopped me cold. During my early weeks with the organization, I screened new psychics. One of them had told me if I ever got a chance to go to New Orleans, I should do so.
I never got around to it. Now Liz was saying it.
“Never been there,” I said, “but go on.”
Liz shuffled her Tarot cards, laid out six in a row, and read them as if reading a sentence composed of block letters. She was using the Thoth deck. Many of our top readers did.
“I’m hearing a strange name. Dwayanu.”
That one gave me chills. My birth name was Dwayne van Christo, but I detested my first name. I never used it professionally. My parents had told me they had named me after the lead actor in an old situation comedy about a high school kid and his innumerable girlfriends.
I watched a couple episodes and thought it was dopey. I thought the star was dopey. I stopped using the name as soon as I got out of high school, but stopped short of changing it legally. Capitalizing the v in Van gave me an acceptable new first name.
“You’re on,” I said. “Keep going.”
Liz offered up her impressions. I don’t need to repeat them here, as they were personal, but she was cooking.
When she ran out of steam, I asked, “There is an unusual name I want to run by you.”
“Proceed. I will attempt to tune into the energy of the individual.”
“Khalk’ru.”
Liz closed her eyes and meditated on the name. I thought she shuddered slightly.
“I am sorry. I feel blocked. But I have seen that name.”
“Where?”
“In New Orleans. The establishment is called the House of Khalk’ru. I once stood on the threshold, and I felt such a wave of negative energy, I changed my mind and retreated.”
“Where in New Orleans?”
“In the Bywater, about a mile east of the French Quarter.”
“Tell me more.”
The woman fell silent. Her eyes flew open. “He watches you.”
“Who?”
“Khalk’ru. He is watching now. He is watching us. He summons you.”
“For what purpose?”
Closing her eyes again, Liz considered my question.
“He says you must go to the House of Khalk’ru and reclaim the ring that is rightfully yours.”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“He says it will become clear to you once you obey. He expects obedience.”
“Can you tell me more about him?”
Liz seemed not to register the question. “Further, he says that he is the key to your problem. But you are also a key. You are the key that unlocks him. Once you do so, once you fulfill your sacred duty, he will help you destroy your greatest enemy.”
“Ask him why he would consent to do such a thing?”
“He says that it serves him just as it serves you. He is withdrawing his mind. His consciousness is closing off.” She paused. “He has fully withdrawn.”
Liz opened her eyes. She shivered. “I don’t like his energy. I feel very cold.”
“I feel the same,” I admitted.
“You must go to New Orleans.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
* * *
I was on a plane the next morning.
It was monsoon season in Louisiana. My plane landed in a furious mid-afternoon thunderstorm. I had booked a bed and breakfast in Bywater, not many blocks from the Mississippi River, in the Upper Ninth Ward of NOLA, as they styled the city of New Orleans these days.
The Bywater neighborhood was colorful, quaint, and uncannily quiet. It reminded me of Georgetown in D.C. The houses were painted in parade colors. When I first walked through, it seemed to be filled with cats and the odd lizard, slinking and scuttling about the streets, which were in places still littered and choked with leftover hurricane debris.
The occasional Creole cottage was shuttered and seemingly abandoned, the front yards choked with weeds, wrought-iron gates rusting.
I had done a Google search for House of Khalk’ru and found nothing. That didn’t bother me. I could feel a tug inside of my soul. I knew I was being guided here. I didn’t like the feeling, but I went with it. I trusted it. But not fully. When you search for answers to the unknown, you take certain risks. It’s unavoidable.
The commercial buildings in the Bywater were largely limited to a variety of modest restaurants and corner bars. Their whitewashed sides were peeling. They looked as though they had been peeling for decades.
In my line of work, I try not to call attention to myself. Yet I entered one of the bars and struck up a conversation with the bartender.
“House of Khalk’ru? I never heard of the joint.”
It was the same at the second bar. But at the third the bartender thought there used to be a place by that name in the French Quarter back in the 1970s. “Psychic reading parlor,” he said. “I think it closed down.”
This was disheartening news.
“Could it have relocated?” I asked.
“Not that I ever heard.”
I finished my beer and walked back to the bed and breakfast, enjoying the colorful house fronts with their varied architecture. It was after dark and a lot of the houses were unlit. It made me feel as if a surprising number were unlived in. Later, I came to understand that a great many people worked in restaurants and other places that operated late into the night. The houses were empty because the occupants were still at work.
Regardless, it gave the neighborhood a forlorn, half-deserted tone. I’d understood that successive hurricanes had driven out a great many professionals, including medical professionals. The odd abandoned home gave me a feeling of a city that was slowly expiring.
During my leisurely walk, I came across a corner general store. The window display suggested it was more of a New Age place. It was still open. So I pushed into the door.
The modest place sold various herbs, smudge sticks, and other such paraphernalia. I looked over the stock after nodding to the proprietor. Just to open up a conversation, I bought several sticks of incense.
As he was ringing me up, I asked, “I haven’t noticed any reading rooms in the Bywater.”
“It’s because there aren’t any. They’re all in the Quarter. Tourist traps, most of them. Peddle a lot of Voodoo notions.”
“Ever hear of one called the House of Khalk’ru?”
“Spell it for me.”
I did, including the apostrophe.
“Yeah, that does sound familiar. But not in the Quarter. There is a place just down the street, at the other end of this block. Corner building. It’s usually shut tight, but the window sign says House of Khalk’ru.”
“What is it?”
“No idea. Heard it used to be a brothel in the old, old days. I don’t know what it is now. Ain’t never seen it open for business.”
The proprietor handed me my bag of incense. I thanked him and left.
I walked down the block and was surprised when I came to the white building on the corner. I had expected it to be further along.
The entrance door glass was blocked by blank brown paper. There was a long plate glass window around the corner. In a lower corner was a modest cardboard sign. In faded lettering was a name that made me squint in the moist darkness. It read:
