Original art by John Moran - deviantART Site · Used with permission.
Part 1
"She's lying to us," Simon said.
I was in Chicago, on a boat with Simon d'Argent, and he was telling me that the architecture tour-guide lady was full of it.
She had just said that the Chicago Flood of '92 had been caused by a crack in the old tunnel system. She said that pressure from pile-driving was the culprit. Simon said no.
"C4 was the culprit," Simon told me out of the corner of his mouth. "I wasn't there, but a good friend of mine was. He had something trapped in the old tunnels, and he set off an explosion to keep it there." He turned to look at me. "Enjoy the tour. When it's over, we're going to see Dixon."
I didn't know who Dixon was, but I had a guess that he did the same type of thing that we did. Not that what I usually do is so out of the ordinary. I have a license to investigate things for people who pay me to do so. About a year ago, I crossed paths with Simon during a job, and it kind of threw us together. Oh, I knew him before that through a mutual friend, but we never worked on anything. At the time, he was major-league gumshoe, and I . . . well, let's say that I didn't even have an ad in the Yellow Pages.
We had reached the turn-around point of the tour, and one building kept poking me in the head. Not literally . . . but I found myself thinking back on it more than any of the others; the old Post Office building filled me with a vague dread, a nebulous sense of foreboding that would slip away if I concentrated on it. I wasn't sure what it was about the old structure . . . yes, it looked like a giant mausoleum, and it had been deserted since 1996, but I didn't think either of those things was it.
The time-killing tour wrapped up, and since parking in downtown Chicago is serious business, we had a ways to walk before we got to our rental car. I was kind of excited to meet Dixon . . . I had been working with Simon, and some of the things we did were different, to say the least. That whole time, we hadn't worked with anyone else, and I was hoping that Dixon would not be just like Simon. Yes, he knew his stuff, and was an excellent resource, but he was so difficult to work with. He was a control freak, and he didn't play his cards close to his chest, he played them behind his back.
We hunt monsters, basically. Someone once asked me why I do so, and the only thing I could think of is that someone has to, and I'm not spectacularly good at much else. I have yet to figure out why Simon does it, and I'm not sure I want to. His mind is probably a very scary place.
It was a long, cold, quiet walk back to the car. That didn't bode well for me. Simon wasn't verbose, but usually he had something to say about the headlines, or advertising campaigns, or something; he was one very opinionated cynic.
We got to the car, and then we were off to see Dixon.
Part 2
We were driving south, out of downtown Chicago, and I knew that Dixon's address was up north in Arlington Heights, so I figured that we were not going to Dixon's house.
"Going to see Dixon at work, then?" I looked over at Simon, who shook his head.
"More like, at rest," he said with a small smile.
"What, he lives in his office?"
The smile dropped off a tad. "He doesn't live anywhere." Simon glanced over at me, tipped his head. "Dixon's dead. We're going to his funeral."
Ah, well. At least I was wearing black.
The funeral at Oak Woods Cemetery was . . . different. Not so much the dead guy going into the ground part, but the people there; talk about cross-section of life. White-haired, bespectacled professor types stood next to greasy-haired biker thugs stood next to underwear model fashionistas . . . and there was at least three other men there that had the same look that Simon did. The "when will it be my turn" look, the thousand-yard stare into the Outer Dark.
When will I start to look like that?
The service was mercifully short, and when it came his turn to put something on the coffin, Simon stepped up and placed a small amulet there. It was a lovely jade-ish star, and when he put it down the other three men with the look all nodded their approval. Simon nodded back, collected me, and we were back in the car shortly.
We rode in silence. I was quiet in deference to Simon, and Simon? Well, I never knew what was going on behind those piercing blue eyes. He could have been grieving, he could have been thinking about dinner. I like Simon d'Argent, but the man is cold. Anyway, I wanted to ask about the green amulet, but I didn't want to be the one to break the silence.
We were back in the city proper when Simon stopped the car. "Wait here," he said, and walked off into an alleyway. I had my cell phone out and was dialing a mutual friend's number, someone that's worked with Simon before, to see if he knew how long I should be respectfully quiet for, because it was killing me. I don't want to say that I'm a motormouth, but I was really curious about just what was going on.
Simon made it back to the car before the guy answered. Damn. He had a rifle case in one hand and a dark blue gym bag in the other. Everything went into the trunk, and I hung up the phone.
"Provisions," Simon said, and we were off again.
We stopped again at a two-story brick house a couple of blocks from downtown. Simon jingled a set of keys at me, told me we were home. I shook my head.
"You stopped in an alley, got a rifle and a house?"
"Yes," he said, handing me the luggage to carry. Then he said, "Networking pays off."
"Is that why you brought me, so I could network?" I hefted the bags. "Or was it so I could carry your shit for you? Because you sure didn't introduce me around."
"Wrong time for it," he said and held the gate open for me. "Besides, I didn't want to jump the gun. I'm pretty sure we're going to have a Thing to Do, and I want to watch you in action before I introduce you around as my associate."
He opened the door.
"And, you carry bags really well."
Part 3
Simon was off at the reading of the will, which left me alone in the lovely house we were staying in. The lovely house with no television or radio. We had power, thankfully. I did some bodyweight exercises and calisthenics to stave off boredom, then afterwards, a good hot shower. That only killed two hours, and I had no idea how long Simon would be gone for. Out of curiosity--and boredom--I took a look inside the rifle case and bag he brought out of the alley.
"Oh," I said to the empty house.
Inside the case was a beautiful AK-74, the slightly newer cousin of the AK-47 Russian-made assault rifle. And in the gym bag were two .45-caliber Ruger P90 seven-round automatic pistols , along with ammunition for both gun and rifle, bits of cloth and gun oil. I got to work, and in minutes everything was field-stripped and assembled around me on the floor. A guy I know owns a gun shop and occasionally pays me to do this type of thing.
That's how Simon found me an hour later, when I had just finished cleaning and inspecting the last piece. He put down a battered leather trunk, heavy by the thunk it made, and sat on the couch, amused.
"Put those back together, I'm probably taking them back."
"But why?" I was crushed.
"Those won't be any help." He waved at the trunk. "Come and see."
Dejected, I reassembled the guns, making sure everything slid where it ought to, and joined Simon on the couch, where he had the trunk open. Inside, there was a tattered journal, an answering machine, a rectangular block covered in foil, one box of bullets, a car key and remote, and a fist-sized leather pouch.
"Wow," I said. "It's a treasure trove."
Predictably, Simon ignored me until he had something for me to do. He handed me the answering machine. "Go plug this in," he said as he started to leaf through the journal. I plugged the machine in, and a red digital "1" blinked at me. I pressed PLAY.
The message started with, "Dixon, this," and then immediately became garbled with static and something else. The only other intelligible words were "goth" and "awake."
I pointed at the answering machine. "That is riddled with EVP." Simon nodded and wet back to the journal. EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. It might be some kind of psychokinesis, or a way for the dead (or aliens, maybe) to be heard by us. I'd heard it before, and a friend of Simon's has a computer program that filters out all the garbage and leaves just the message from elsewhere. I put the machine back in the box with a mental note to send it off to be filtered later that day.
Simon put the journal down. "Dixon was one busy, busy man. It's going to take me a while to get through the meat of his journal." He picked up the foil covered block. "This is C4," he said. "We're going to need blasting caps if we want to use this. Here," he said, and tossed it to me. I don't believe I've ever moved so fast.
It didn't explode.
I walked back over and looked at the block. "Stable," Simon said. "You can set it on fire, and it won't go off."
His cell phone rang and I put the C4 back in the box along with the leather pouch and set it in the corner, open.
"Yes," Simon told his caller. "Not today. Probably not tomorrow, either." He hefted the journal. "Maybe the day after. Look, I brought someone up from Texas with me, his name is Eric Wice. Sure, send him over to pick him up. Okay, talk later."
"Who is Eric Wice?"
"You are," Simon told me. "An associate of Dixon's is coming to get you, I want you to go with him and check something out. See what they got. And here," he dug into his shirt pocket, "take these. One, three, two, six." It was an ATM card and an ID.
"Why the fake names, Simon? How come I never do anything in my own name, but you always get to be you"
He sighed. "We'll talk when we're through here. Ah, better take a gun after all."
A car pulled into the driveway behind our rental.
"Okay, that'd be Chuck. Tell him that I'll call Luke when you guys get back."
I turned and picked up one of the P90's. "Hey!" he said, and I turned back to him.
"Don't embarrass me," he yelled as I left.
Part 4
The big .45 dug into my back as I rode with "Chuck." He looked to be about the same age as I, and he was working with/for somebody else, so I figured that whatever his name was, it would change when this particular job with me was over.
"Where we headed to?"
Chuck turned to me for a second, then back to the road. "Downtown," he said in a Southern drawl, and I blinked. He shifted in his seat, and I saw a big, silver revolver on his belt.
"We're goin' down into the tunnels," he continued. "Mah boss says that Dixon stopped somethin' down there, and you and me are goin' to check on it, make sure it's still stopped." He nodded toward the glove box. "Flashlights and map in thar."
"What part of the South are you from?"
Chuck was quiet for a moment, then he stopped the car at a red light. "Look, we're workin' on this thang together 'cause we been told to." He shook his head. "Don't mean I like it. Or you. So just keep it in your pants, y'all hear?"
I snorted, the light turned green, and we drove on in silence. Chuck didn't look like he was from the South. Aside from the big revolver, that is . . . he was dressed like a Chicagoan; blue jeans, yellow work boots blue Cubs windbreaker and matching ballcap. I, on the other hand, hadn't taken any pains to look like a native. Black BDU pants, steel-toed gym shoes, grey ribbed long sleeve shirt and a black field jacket. This month I had a goatee, but that was fleeting. Simon had me change my appearance often if we were working on something like this, and that meant shaving or not, haircuts, gel, shades, zero-prescription glasses, whatever. The only constant was the pain in my ass.
We pulled into an alley and parked. Chuck led the way to a sewer manhole and we pried it open, then down we went. He snapped on his flashlight once we were down, and I had a brief flashback of another job; great flapping wings and burning eyes. I closed my eyes against it and when I opened them Chuck was looking at me intently.
"It's nothing," I told him. "Just memories. Where are we?"
He squinted at me, then pointed at the map, showing me a red X and a route to take, also penciled in red. We were off.
We walked in silence for an hour, maybe ninety minutes when we heard something. Something other than our own footsteps and dripping water; there was a snuffling in the dark ahead, a loud brutish sound. Chuck doused the flashlight, an the tunnel went completely black.
"Quietly," Chuck whispered, and feeling our way forward in the dark, we came to the last turn we were to make. The snuffling sound came again, closer this time, followed by what sounded like a large bulk rolling over.
Whatever it was, it stunk. There was a stench of something maybe fermented? The sounds gave me the impression the thing was asleep, so I turned on my flashlight. Chuck followed suit . . . the cold beams of light showed us a beast, something like a cross between a man and a skinned dog. Chuck gasped.
"Ghoul," he said, and the thing in the tunnel opened its yellow eyes.
The ghoul shambled to its feet slowly, baring its fangs at us and growling loudly. I took two or three steps backward until I was against the tunnel wall; that's when I felt the gun digging into my back again. I drew it out and clicked off the safety, but Chuck stayed where he was, rooted in place, while the ghoul had moved off to my left, putting Chuck between us.
"Chuck, get down," I said, and was surprised at how calm I sounded. Chuck didn't move, but the ghoul moved forward quickly, so I did, too. I got to Chuck before the ghoul did, so I pushed the gun over his shoulder and fired two quick shots at the ghoul. The bullets hit it in the torso, and it jerked back a step. It started moving sideways. My ears rang. Chuck, or whatever part of him that was still there with me, kept his flashlight trained on the thing.
The gun in my hand only held seven rounds. I slipped around Chuck to the right, dropping my flashlight and snaking his revolver out of his holster as I passed, then moving out and away from him. The beast tracked me, then took a step. I had enough of the dance, so I unloaded Chuck's six-gun into the thing, then dropped it. The ghoul collapsed on itself, still snarling at me, then gathered itself like a coil.
"Shoot it," Chuck said, and it sprang, howling.
I pulled the trigger as fast as I could and hit the ghoul three times before it hit the apex of its long jump. It came down, I sighted carefully and time stood still for a moment . . . the ghoul lurched forward. I waited until I saw my reflection in the thing's yellow eyes, and pulled the trigger again.
The top of the ghoul's head disintegrated to a brownish mist, and it dropped at my feet, dead.
I picked up my flashlight and walked over to Chuck. "Anyone in there," I said, and he tore his eyes from the corpse of the thing and looked at me.
"I think I'd like my gun back."
Part 5
Chuck was studiously not looking at me as he reloaded his gun, so I figured that I'd look elsewhere also. I shone my flashlight around the dead-end we were in, and the wall of rubble in front of us told me that we were there, where Dixon blew some shit up.
"Man knew what he was doing," I said, looking at how evenly the cave-in had settled. I could imagine how he had done it, laying the explosives in two spots, then either herding the something into the trap, or being chased by it. I had long ago decided that I wouldn't use myself as bait for anything unless there was no other way, and wondered just what the hell it was Dixon had trapped down here.
Chuck shone his light at the base of the pile and said, "Check that out. It looks like tar." He walked over and bent down close. He reached out.
"Chuck," I said, "we don't know what that is. If you have a jar or something, put some in it, but I don't recommend touching it." He looked up at me, nodded. "So, yeah," I continued. "What's your name Chuck? I mean, this week?"
He smiled a bit, and said "Charles French. I don't like it."
"Me, either," I said, and we both laughed.
"I don't have a jar or nothin', but I got a camera. I'll get some pics of this and . . . that over yonder, and we should be on our way."
Chuck took pictures of the cave-in, the small lake of tar and the ghoul, while I picked up my shell casings. I really didn't think I needed to, but better safe than not.
We trekked around the tunnels for a while longer until we found the other side of the cave-in, and happily there was nothing there waiting for us. Chuck breathed a big sigh of relief.
"Look," he said, "what happened back there," he shook his head.
"Ah, shit," I said. "Maybe Alan Quatermain isn't scared of anything, but I still have nightmares about my first ah, encounter. So what? If you hadn't kept your light on that thing, I would have been sunk. We would have been sunk."
"You think Luke or Simon ever showed their yella like that?"
"I don't know Luke. And I don't think Simon's human."
We both laughed again, an ascended into daylight.
Part 6
When we made it back to the house, there was a big motorcycle parked behind Simon's rental. We pulled in behind the big bike and went inside. There, in the living room, was Simon and another man, one from the funeral the day before. Introductions were made all around, Simon met Charles French and I met Lucas Agrippa.
Lucas was a big bear of a man, as tall as Simon but broader through the shoulders. He kept his long black hair tied back into a braid that went halfway down his back, braided goatee to match, and he wore denim and boots. He had a deep, timbrey voice that would have been great for radio, he was quick to smile and seemed generally glad to meet me. In short, he was not Simon.
I wasn't sure if I trusted him.
Spread out on the table was a larger version of the map that Chuck and I had slogged through the sewers and tunnels by, along with a large map of the city itself. It looked old, with additions drawn in a neat hand and taped in place. Notations were scribbled everywhere, and a large laminated sheet sat by the side with an expanded legend.
"Wow," I said. "Dixon was a busy man."
There were all kinds of things on the map, from lizard men under Wrigley Field to a Deep One cult-thing near Lake Michigan. Ghouls nested under three of four cemeteries, and I gave a little involuntary shudder, having just found out what they were. Haunted hotels, cursed plots of land, possessed ATM machines; if it made a bad episode for somebody, it was there on the map.
Simon looked on the map like he was looking for something really specific, Lucas looked at it like he was a kid with his first dirty magazine. The more eager the expression on his face, the less I trusted him. His eyes lit up as he scanned over the symbol drawn over the Chicago History Museum, but he said nothing. I looked idly at the legend; that symbol didn't appear there.
I was sure I didn't trust Lucas.
"Hey, Simon," I yawned, "I'm going to take a catnap for a bit, you want to hear about the tunnels first?" He waved me on, and I went to the living room, picked Dixon's journal out of the box, and made my way up the creaky stairs. I plopped myself down on one of the beds and started skimming.
About an hour and a half later, I found the symbol in blue drawn on the upper right hand corner of a page about three-quarters of the way through the book. I read the next four pages with a sinking feeling in my gut, then tore them out and folded them into my pocket.
I was right not to trust Lucas Agrippa. He was after the Ring of Mordiggian.
Um, whatever that is.
Part 7
After what seemed like forever, Lucas and Chuck left for the day. On the way out, Lucas said that he'd like to take a look at Dixon's journal, and Simon said maybe the day after. Then they were gone and we ordered pizza.
"How well do you know Lucas, Simon?"
Simon turned to me with a raised eyebrow. "Going on fifteen years now. We've worked some things together out on the East Coast, kept in touch, shared notes. Why?"
I chewed thoughtfully for a while. I opened my mouth to ask if he trusted Lucas, but his cell rang, and he held up a pre-emptive finger.
"Simon," he answered, and I could hear the screams clear across the table. I only made out one word: ghouls.
"Grab the guns and the box," Simon told me as he gathered up the maps and papers strewn about the table. I really wanted to tell Simon about Lucas and the ring, partially because I thought he should know, and partially so that he could explain what the fuck it meant. Dixon left some explanation of how he got the ring, and what he thought it might do, but not anything for sure, and I was hoping that Simon would know more about it.
I gathered up all the assorted crap we got from Dixon and ran outside, dumped it in the trunk. I handed Simon the .45's and got into the car, AK-74 in my lap. We backed out of the drive and tore off down the street.
"Simon," I said, and he shook his head.
"Not now," he said, and took a corner at terrifying speed. Not two minutes later, we screeched to a halt in front of a single-story brick home and piled out. "Back door," Simon said and charged the front. I ran around the back of the house, found the back door hanging on its hinges. I went in, rifle at the ready, but found nothing. I moved forward from the kitchen into the dining room. It was a shambles, but nothing else.
"In here," I head Simon yell, and I went into the living room. Simon was kneeling over a red mess in a Cubs jacket. I saw a boot sticking out from under the overturned couch, and I nudged Simon. We went over, and I flipped the couch while he covered. Lucas was there, unconscious. Simon slapped him twice, hard, and Lucas sat up, bellowing. He looked at Simon, then me, then what was left of Chuck, and he blew all his air out, his already puffy face puffing out more.
"Goddamned ghouls," he said.
We helped him to his feet, and he started babbling.
"They came through the back, big sonofabitch out in front. Ate Viz's face, kept screaming about the black pearl, where was the black pearl?" He looked at us, confused. "What in the fuck is the black pearl?"
Simon sat him down on the couch, then led me over to the wrecked dining room. "Did you put everything in the trunk?" I nodded. "Good. That black ball in the leather pouch, that might be the black pearl, and I don't doubt that ghouls are at our house right now."
"Simon, I don't trust Lucas," I blurted out. Simon nodded.
"Good. Me, either. Before you showed up, he was pushing pretty hard to get Dixon's journal. I don't know why yet, but for now it'll keep. It'll keep. Let's go get a hotel room. Leave him."
We drove away, and I told Simon what had happened in the tunnels, what we found.
"Lake of tar?" He considered. "We go back there tomorrow."
Part 8
We passed through our neighborhood around the same time as two or three blue-and-whites. Simon decided that it was a bad idea for us to have a chat with Chicago's Finest just then. We continued on to a hotel.
Unloading the car, I noticed something about the box. Besides how heavy it was . . . or rather, why it was so heavy.
"Man, check this out," I said, stepping into the room. Simon came over and I sat the box down under a lamp. "Look at that. It's like, a wire net or mesh sandwiched between layers of lead." I furrowed my brow at Simon. "Why would he do this?"
Simon looked blankly at me, then concern grew in his face.
"That is a good question. Everything that was in the box goes back in. Now."
We busied ourselves with putting stuff back. "You are spooked, therefore, I am spooked. Please tell me why I'm afraid," I said to Simon.
He sighed. "Wire mesh around something acts as a Faraday cage, uh, a kind of shield that blocks out electrical fields. But since it's lined with lead, that makes me think that the one the box is made out of was intended to block something in. So, everything in, until we know what it is we're dealing with."
We then taking turns sitting in the uncomfortable chair with the machine gun while the other took a shower. And I needed one, too. I was rank.
Later, after we were both clean and about to sleep in shifts, I remembered something Lucas had said.
"Chuck's name was Viz?"
Simon nodded. "Well, his nickname. His name was Graph Lenin, Viz for short. He could see auras. Or, with supernatural beings, if there was a part of it living in a different dimension, he could see that, too." Simon looked thoughtful. "Maybe that's why he froze up down in the tunnels when you ran into the ghoul. Seeing all of something like that can't be pleasant."
I chewed on that for a while.
"How do you know this? Does Lucas know my real name?"
Simon smiled. "No, no worries there. I know about Graph because I introduced him to Luke. The only of my associates that know your name are your associates, too." I took that to mean John Chang, the cop I was trying to call earlier.
"And that is why," Simon continued, "we do what we do with the names. Lucas and Viz are from Boston, but when Lucas is actively working on something, he doesn't stay at his house . . . because if he was followed, like tonight, not only would he be in danger, but his neighbors and family, as well. And, if anyone gets caught, anything we know, whoever has got us knows." He shrugged. "So, the less we know about each other when working like this, the better." He picked up the AK-74. "Get your sleep, Mr. Wice. We've got a big day tomorrow. I'll wake you up around three."
Simon snapped the lights off and I closed my eyes, trying to sleep. It took a long time coming, as all the dangers of the job were coming home to me. Charlie French, or Graph Lenin, whom hours before had been my companion through a rather harrowing ordeal, now lay dead somewhere, just so much meat without a face.
Without a name.
Sleep, when it came, was not tranquil.
Part 9
I slept late after my last watch and didn't get up until Simon kicked me out of bed. He left me enough time to get ready before checkout. Not too long after that, I was back under the city, map in hand and flashlight shining.
I navigated us to where I was just the day before, but it was different. There was no ghoul (Simon had told me to expect that) but the rubble had shifted. There was no lake of tar.
"This is very bad, you know," he told me as he toed a chunk of concrete. "What you boys found here yesterday was most likely a shoggoth." That meant very little to me, and I said so.
"You never pay attention," he sighed, and shook his head. "These . . . things were created billions of years ago. They were used mostly for construction, but they could be anything they were needed to be."
"Construction," I said. Simon looked pained because, clearly, I didn't get it. I was more and more used to this.
"Construction. They built the vast, underwater cities their masters lived in. Shoggoths can form their tar-like bodies into whatever was needed for the task set for them. They could be dump trucks, front load shovels, excavators, bulldozers, cranes . . . whatever."
I smiled, and Simon seemed happy that I had gotten it. "So, all we need is a cement mixer, and we could have a full set of Constructicons, then?"
He closed his eyes and his lips were moving. I think he was counting down from one hundred in Latin.
"Look, I know that this irreverence is a coping mechanism of yours, and that's just great, but you need to take this seriously." He looked at me. "I don't know if we can kill a shoggoth. Or even . . . hurt one. I don't know what Dixon did to keep it here, so just can it."
"You don't look too worried."
He sat down on a piece of masonry and pulled Dixon's journal from a jacket pocket. "I don't look worried right now because the shoggoth isn't here. Later, if we run across it again? Then I'll be worried. Now hush."
He skimmed through the journal, and when he was about halfway through it, he let out a small grunt!
"I found this yesterday," he said, and began to read:
"Tonight, I plan on leading the beast into a trap. At
great risk, I have poured through an ancient text for
he correct spell to stop the shoggoth. I can't kill it
outright, but I've found that I can separate its
consciousness from its body, and once I seal it off in
a box I've had made for this, the shoggoth will be as
good as lifeless, so much tar.
"I don't know if destroying the separated mind will
discorporate the beast itself, and I am loathe to experiment,
as at this time I have no back-up plan. My explosives are
set, and I have made it known to sources that will surely tell
my foe that I will be expeditioning in the tunnels tonight. I'm
well-armed against his ghouls, and he knows it, so I'm sure that
he will unleash the shoggoth."
Simon closed the book and laughed.
"When we took the Black Pearl out of the box, it must have called to the body somehow. And the ghoul, it may have been here so that it may tell its master if the beast ever awakened."
"Well look at you, Nancy Drew," I said. "None of that really helps us, does it?"
Simon got a glint in his eye.
"Oh, on the contrary. I think I know exactly what we need to do."
Part 10
Simon spent the rest of the afternoon calling around to Dixon's known confederates in the Chicago area, telling them that he had figured out (from the journal) who the anonymous foe was and how to deal with the problem. He said that he would do so this night, and it would be in the guts of the old post office building.
When I heard this the first time, my stomach gave a little lurch, and a small voice began to jabber in my ear about how I had felt when I saw that building. The dread I felt when thinking about it was no longer vague, and I knew that something bad, maybe something fatal might happen there in just a matter of hours. Beautiful.
My doubts and fears, of course, didn't make a dent in Simon's cheer.
"Fear is good," he said. "Keeps you alive."
That evening, we broke into the abandoned post office with relative ease.
"See?" Simon smiled at me. "We're being helped."
"By whom? Someone trying to aid us, or someone helping us into a trap?"
"Either way, this little chapter ends tonight."
I had serious misgivings. Not only were we waltzing right into a trap, but Simon had taken the Black Pearl out of its box and I had it in my pocket.
"I feel like bait," I told Simon.
"You are bait." Oh. I didn't bother to point out that I had decided not to be bait unless there was no other way. He wouldn't have listened.
"Here, take the C4 put it in your other pocket." Simon handed me a half-ball of putty, looking to me like two bowls stacked together. "When I tell you, slap them around the Black Pearl and seal the halves together."
We walked on in silence. I was again carrying the rifle and Simon the pistols. "I thought you said these wouldn't do anything against the beast," I said, and he shushed me. I shushed, and I smelled them.
Ghouls.
A door opened to my right, and I turned to see one, a big one, shambling out towards me. It reached out, and I shot it twice in the face. It stumbled back, clawing where I had shot it and roaring. Simon was off to my left somewhere, yelling and shooting, and the corridor stank of cordite and rot.
The ghoul I shot surged forward again, and I shot it, dead this time. Another came out of the same doorway, and one dropped out of the ceiling, and I ran, firing back over my shoulder. I turned down a branch hallway, right into a dead end.
"Well, shit," I said, and flicked the rifle to full auto.
When the ghouls caught up to me, I mowed them down and stepped over the bodies back the way I came. More appeared out of the shadows, and I shot them as they charged, yelling the whole time that I had had just about enough of this, the Black Pearl, Chicago, ghouls, and Simon . . . who I, of course, then ran into. I started laughing uncontrollably.
He slapped me, hard. "This way," he said, and pelted through a set of double doors labeled Main Sorting Area.
I followed him into the vast room, and he stopped me from closing the door. He held a gun to his lips and crouched down, watching the opening.
"See that?" He pointed. "They're not coming in here."
"The ghouls know that something far scarier than they is in here," a voice rasped from the shadows.
Simon and I looked around for the source of the voice. I saw him first and pointed at a tall man in a black hooded robe near another open set of double doors. His face was messy and red . . . it wasn't until I looked really closely that I could see it was Viz's face.
"Give me a break," I said.
Part 11
"Will bullets hurt this one?"
"Yours won't," Simon answered quietly," but hold that thought for now."
"Simon d'Argent, how good it is to finally meet you in the flesh," the figure hissed.
"And you are?"
The figure bowed. "You may call me the Dark Demon. I know, it's terribly theatrical, but," he waved his hands. "I do have a flair about me." Viz's eyes peered hard at Simon. "A bluff. You had no idea the Lucas is one of my . . . acolytes."
"It worked. So, what do you want, Demon?"
The figure laughed. "To watch," it said, and the black rectangle of the doorway next to him was filled with something more black. Ropy tendrils snaked out of each side and the shoggoth pulled itself into the room. It rolled toward us, and we bolted in opposite directions.
Of course, it followed me. I had the Black Pearl.
"Run!" The figure in black yelled at me. "Make sport of it! Give me your fear!"
And I ran.
I dodged from side to side through the room as black arms and tendrils reached out for me, batting shelves and sorting machinery aside like a child topples building blocks.
While I ran through the giant mail-processing room, I kept thinking back to all the other times in my life that I hadn't been fast enough; seventh grade PE, track in high school, running after a mugger in Mexico City--all these times, I just wasn't fast enough, and I wasn't going to be fast enough this time.
The memories were leeching the speed from my legs, and the gibbering monstrosity behind me drew closer and closer. I tried to fit the C4 to the Black Pearl, but my hands were working at cross-purposes, and I started to laugh again. I laughed hard and loud, crying at the same time.
It was true fear, mind numbing, soul searing terror. I stole a glance at what Simon had called "Demon," and its head was thrown back, mouth open and eyes closed, arms spread wide. God damn, it was eating my fear!
I yelled for Simon as I passed him, and he must have seen the fright etched on my face, because he gave me a thumbs up and receded into shadow, chanting loudly. Little by little, the pure horror I felt was draining away, until all that was left was just fear of being eaten by a shoggoth. Still scared, but at least I could think, and I could carry out the plan.
"Back this way now," I heard him yell, and I doubled-back to where I had started from. Simon stuck his head out from behind a shelf and tossed me the key and remote from the box, ducked out of the way of the oncoming shoggoth.
"The key is the detonator," he had told me on the way over here. I pressed the key into the putty, and ran right at the demon. I tossed it the Black Pearl, and Simon popped up and shot the demon with the bullets from Dixon's box. I dove through the open doors and pressed the red button on the remote.
Part 12
I woke up some time later in the backseat of the rental car feeling like I had been used as a dance floor. Simon was laid out in the front seat, not looking much better, eating a cheeseburger.
"So?" My voice sounded croaky. "We win?"
"Yep," Simon said around a mouthful of burger.
"What happened?"
"Dixon was right about two things. The first was that those treated bullets would work to weaken . . . the enemy. He's gone now, and it'll take a while for him to be able to successfully manifest or inhabit another body. His magic, if you will, was tied up in the shoggoth, and weakened as he was, when it went, so did he. Don't ask what it was, because I won't tell you."
"Fair enough. The other thing was the destruction of the Black Pearl?"
Simon nodded. "As was just demonstrated, when Dixon separated out the shoggoth's mind, that part wasn't as . . . durable as the rest of it. The C4 destroyed the consciousness, and when that happened, whatever made up the body of the shoggoth dissolved or dissoluted, or something. I don't know what. Nor do I know how Dixon did it, and that is troublesome."
"We can go home then?"
Simon nodded.
"We're done here, for now. We can go home."
I closed my eyes and thought about my unfinished business with Lucas Agrippa and the Ring of Mordiggian.