He Who Walks in Shadow (33 page)

I was wrong.

We moved forward, pushing through the night made manifest. We had not walked for long before we saw him.

He stood in the midst of it all, his great yellow cloak caught up in the wind, its edges gleaming with unnatural luminescence. His arms were raised, and the sound of discordant piping floated down from the heavens, where clouds swirled in a vortex of purple fire. Whatever fate had brought him to that place to summon, it was coming.

Carter reached into his pocket and drew forth the Oculus. He held it in the palm of his hand, as if its very presence in that place would activate it, would enflame the fire legend held burned within it. But it simply sat there, cold and small, a flawless gem that was as worthless to us as a lump of coal.

He opened the
Incendium Maleficarum
, finding almost immediately the page he sought. He scanned it with his index finger, mumbling as he did. Then he held the Oculus in the air and recited three lines, an incantation in a language I did not recognize. We waited…and still nothing happened.

Carter glanced at Rachel. Something passed between them. It was then that Nyarlathotep noticed us, or at least acknowledged our presence.

“You came, dear Carter. Of course, you did not disappoint.” He lowered his arms as green flames seemed to dance about them. “I knew you would come. I knew that I would see you again. We are drawn to each other, don’t you know? Two adversaries, down through the ages. How many times have we met in a place such as this? If only you could remember, as I do.”

Carter shouted above the howling wind. “And yet every time, it seems, I come out on top.”

The old adversary grinned. “Yes. I suppose I am Prometheus, and you are the eagle sent daily to peck at my hubris. One is left to wonder who the hero of this tale might be, but the ending is not in doubt. Not anymore.”

“I have the Oculus,” Carter said, holding it up between his thumb and his forefinger. “You cannot escape its power.”

Nyarlathotep laughed, and it carried on the wind and off into whatever lay beyond that place.

“Yes, my dear Carter. You do. But you do not know how to use it. And even if you did, you have not the heart to do what must be done.”

Carter faltered, and so did my strength. I had assumed he had discovered the way, at the last moment, as it always had been before. That he knew what was necessary to save the day, to win the battle, to emerge victorious. Another story to tell, another legend to weave. Maybe not this time.

Then Carter spoke, and I knew that I had misjudged. The truth was far more terrible than I could have imagined.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I know all too well.”

He drew aside the coat he wore and unsheathed a dagger, long and curved, the kind that had but one purpose—the drawing of blood for sacrifice.

Nyarlathotep’s smile grew wider than should be possible, his face a mass of sharpened teeth, shark’s teeth. “Oh, do you now? But do you have the strength to do it? Can you live with yourself if you do? We cannot die, Carter. We sleep, and we dream, and a time will come when even death shall fade away, and we will rise. But you must live with what you do today. Sleep will not come so easily for you, and when it does, you will wake screaming, the taste of blood in your mouth, an image of
her
burned into your eyes. Can you do it? I wonder. But there’s not time for delay. Enough words. Time to choose.”

The world hung in the balance. I was rooted to the spot on which I stood. If I had been compelled to move to save my life, then death would have taken me as sure as the sun rises in the east. I was paralyzed by that place, by the one who stood before us, but so much more by the choice I now realized that Carter had to make.

The knife shook in his hands. He looked up at Rachel, tears in his eyes. All the while Nyarlathotep stood perfectly still, watching. He made no move to stop him, no effort to interfere.

He was enjoying this bit of sick theater.

“Rachel…” Carter murmured.

“It’s all right,” she said, and her face shone, her countenance that of an angel. “I understand. I understand everything now. Do what you have to do. For me. For everyone.”

Carter stepped forward and grabbed Rachel by the neck. He pushed back her head, the vein throbbing with every beat of her heart. He raised the knife to the sky, and lightning cracked through the glowing haze.

For an instant the blade hung there, suspended, gods and men enraptured, unable to turn away. For an instant only, and then it fell. If I had had more of my faculties about me, I might have looked away. But if I had done that, I wouldn’t have seen what happened.

The blade swung down and cut only air. Carter held it by his side, a look of almost unimaginable failure in his eyes, matched only by the desperation in Rachel’s.

“Father! You must.”

But it was over. Carter couldn’t do it. He couldn’t have raised that blade again any more than if his muscles had been shredded, his tendons gone.

Nyarlathotep laughed.

“I knew it,” he said with triumphant hate. “I knew you could not do it. You are weaker than the other ones. Far weaker. And now it’s too late.”

He brought his hands together in a mighty crash. The churning chaos above us flashed with an evil radiance and then fell to the earth, stopping directly behind where the demon stood. The swirling darkness was more than it seemed. It was a door, a portal to the place beyond. And through that door those who had ruled the earth in the long ago would return.

“I go to prepare the way.” He reached out his hand. “And I’ll take that.”

The book flew from Carter’s grasp as if it were pulled by a rope. It rocketed across the distance and slammed into the demon’s waiting claws.

Nyarlathotep turned and stepped into the portal. A howling echoed across the plain.

“Oh, God,” Rachel moaned.

Carter looked from her to me, and the pain that had been etched into every wrinkle suddenly melted away. Resolve replaced it.

“We follow,” he said. “This is not over.”

With that, he broke into a run toward the spiral of night in our midst. Rachel hesitated for only a moment before she followed. I was right behind her. I didn’t break stride, even as I watched them both vanish before my eyes.

Statement of Henry A. Armitage, cont’d.

The passage was extraordinary, and beautiful. I would say that it was
as if
we had left this world and become beings that could traverse time and space and dimensions, but I believe that was, in fact, what occurred.

Stars, burning masses of celestial fire, streaked by us. Nebulae, constellations, entire galaxies, were nothing to us. What beauty. What wonder. And I considered myself blessed to see something no one, save my friends, had ever witnessed before.

Yet the price to stand witness to such glory was high indeed, for then we looked upon horrors the likes of which have never been imagined.

Everyone, if honest, is afraid of the dark. And yet, few if any have ever experienced its depth. In those moments, we were bathed in it.

We passed into a region of time and space beyond the world of light. And as the stars faded behind us, it seemed to me as though we were coming to a great wall, an ink-black curtain, a Stygian veil that separated the lesser darkness from the greater. I did not want to pass beyond it, but I had no choice. I tried to scream, but I believe the sound echoed only in my own mind.

It has been my habit, in the years I have known him, to criticize Carter’s inability to describe properly the things he has seen. I have mocked the many times he claimed that there were “no words in the English language” to encapsulate the wonders of the invisible world he has witnessed with his own eyes. But in that moment, I repented my judgment. Still, in the interest of completeness and for the scientific record, I will attempt to describe what I saw.

Beyond the veil was chaos. There were stars, yes, but unlike any I had ever seen before. They shone down darkness, not light, on worlds that were as black as if formed from coal and pitch.
Things
moved there, winged and tentacled things, mad amalgamations of form undreamt of even in the wildest fancies of the Pharaohs.

You disbelieve, don’t you? I see it in your eyes. No, don’t bother to protest. I understand. If I hadn’t witnessed it, I wouldn’t believe it myself. I’m not even sure how to explain what I saw, what I experienced. And I did see, but not with my eyes. Through something else, another sensory organ altogether, one vestigial and primordial.

But I know this now, as surely as I know anything—there are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, and beings that move within both.

I can’t say how long our travel lasted, whether an instant or an age. One moment we were speeding through that eternal void. The next, we had come to rest on an endless plain, a flat sea of granite. The air glowed red, and the sky was clear and empty, save for four dark stars that, even as we watched, slid across the black dome above. Three in the center, so close that they seemed as though they were fused, and one at the bottom. It was the sign of the crawling chaos, the mark of Nyarlathotep, the alignment we had been waiting for.

“Come on,” Rachel said. “We don’t have much time.”

We didn’t have to think about where to go. The plain was vast, but it was not empty. A great tower stood in the distance. Around its crown swirled oily tendrils that seemed to reach down from the dark stars.

Toward it we raced.

“That wasn’t here before,” Carter said. “Not in my vision.”

“Mine either,” Rachel answered. “Maybe it’s always been here. Maybe he hid it from us. Or maybe it only appears when the time is right.”

I didn’t know what they were talking about, of course. They had shared something that I was not a part of. Only then was I coming to understand my role in all this. I was a watcher, a scribe. I would record for posterity what was to happen in that place, but it would fall to Rachel and Carter to see it done.

We ran across the plain, as fast as age and senescence would allow us. And I couldn’t help but wonder—when would we be struck down? When would the creatures that ruled this place decide to rip us apart? We could not survive, surely. We had come to stop them, to stand against unimaginable power and limitless hate. To prevent their conquest. Or perhaps, their liberation. That interference, they would not allow.

And yet, as the tower loomed larger ahead of us, nothing happened. Nothing reached up from the ground to pull us below. Nothing swooped down from the heavens to carry us away. I couldn’t understand it then. I don’t understand it now.

The tower was unlike anything I had encountered before. Sheer walls of obsidian. There were no doors, only a yawning maw of an entrance. No windows. I wondered if it were actually a tower, or if that was just the only way our minds could conceive of it. I wondered if perhaps anything we were seeing was truly real, or if to see the truth would lead only to madness. There was no time to ponder such philosophical musings then. We dashed up the mighty steps and into the void.

The maw opened into more stairs that curled around the wall and spiraled toward our destination. There were no images, no words, no sigils or glyphs. Just blank, black stone.

How long did we climb? An eternity perhaps. I am in no great shape, so I would have thought that after only a few stories I should have been exhausted. Whether because of the adrenaline pumping through my veins or something extraordinary—perhaps, for instance, we were traveling through a metaphysical space outside of the normal order—I never even broke a sweat.

Still, no matter what hallucination or flight of fancy might have beguiled us, there was one thing that seemed certain to me. As we rose, the sounds from above that drifted to us grew louder and louder. That music, if music it could be called, was unlike anything one would ever wish to hear, a discordant piping and manic drumming that made a mockery of melody. If sound could drive men mad, then that horrid noise would be a weapon unlike any before conceived.

Still we pressed on, until my thoughts were driven from my mind by that dizzying sound. A landing appeared before us, lit by a spill of pallid red light.

For an instant, we paused on the next to last step. None of us knew what we would see, what visions the next turn would present. And none of us knew what would be required of us. But I was certain that if the fool’s chance proved true and we succeeded, only two of us would leave that place alive. And, of course, I was right.

Rachel led the way. She was, I suppose, the bravest of us all. Even with all Carter and I had faced, I’m not so sure we could have made those last few steps without her. But when she led, we could not help but follow.

What did we see when we crossed that threshold, you ask? Only the beginning and end of all things.

The battlement of the tower was open to the mad sky. I chanced a glance upward and wished I had not. Titanic beings floated in the living blackness of space that swirled above, bleeding coils of multi-colored, tentacle-like things that groped and probed around the edge of the tower. In the midst of it all stood Nyarlathotep, his back to us, bending over something that we could not see, his great yellow cloak billowing in the wind. The unseen pipers and drummers continued their devilish work, and we stood silent, waiting for the last tumbler in the lock to fall into place.

Nyarlathotep, of course, sensed our presence. He looked up from whatever he hovered over and turned. He smiled, and for an instant the mask slipped, and I saw beyond it, to his true form. But only for an instant, thank God, for then I could dismiss it as a trick of the eye and save my own sanity. He held the
Incendium Maleficarum
in his hand, and I knew that it had finally returned home. There, in the place from whence it came, we all heard its song, dancing in the air with the pipes and the drums.

“You came,” he said, as he slammed the book shut with the sound of waking thunder, “to bear witness to the rebirth. To the wakening of our lord, Azathoth.”