Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) (35 page)

Kate took the lead, and leapt through the portal between worlds, crossing into another dimension in space and time. Finn followed her with a resigned shrug.

Oliver took one more look at the hideous creature and its crackling weapon and decided that Finn might be right.

“God help us all,” he said, and jumped through the portal.

* * *

Cold, red light shining in his eyes woke him. Oliver groaned in pain, feeling every muscle in his body ache. He felt strung out, like he’d been stretched on a medieval rack. A curious sense of dislocation spun in his belly, and the light beyond his eyelids felt wrong. He sat up, his entire body trembling like a terrified hound afraid of its master’s wrath.

He opened his eyes slowly, letting the red light filter into his senses.

His first thought was that he was dreaming. Somehow he had lost consciousness and was now staring out over some fantastical dreamscape. Had the creature pursuing them along the hallway of the boarding house managed to render him unconscious? Was he now lost in a fantasy?

The landscape around him was soaring and craggy, like they’d landed in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. As colossal as the Rockies were, however, they were little more than hillocks compared to these towering escarpments that clawed the black vaults of the sky. Lightning arced between the titanic peaks, and the thunder of them was like the coming of the end of the world.

The ground and surrounding rocks were lit by a strange phosphorescence, as though the cliffs themselves glimmered in the dimness with their own internal light. A red sun shone in the glowering sky, but its radiance was dim, as though its energies were all but spent and its raging core was now winding down to death. Distant forms moved languidly in the sky, black shapes against the deeper dark of the sky. Oliver thought these shapes had vast wings, out-flung like enormous bats, but it was impossible to be certain.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet, looking around for his companions, now that he had accepted this was no dream, but hideous reality. Kate and Finn lay nearby, both picking themselves up and looking around in wonder. Kate had opened a gateway through the gulfs of space and reality, but where had it led them?
 

Looking around, Oliver saw that he stood at the top of a towering cliff, at the base of which a vast wasteland of turned earth spread for uncounted miles in all directions. Enormous stone monoliths, colossal tomb structures, and city-sized mausoleums—like the graveyard of an entire world—marked its rugged width and breadth.

“Dear heavens,” said Oliver. “This is a world of the dead.”

Crawling forms, humanoid but rendered minuscule by distance, scavenged in the ruins of the vast cemetery, worrying the flesh of uncounted corpses and sucking the marrow from the bones. Hundreds of carrion eaters dug the grave earth with bare hands, and hungry eyes turned in the direction of the cliff, as though aware they were being observed by warm beings of succulent meat. Packs of them loped toward the cliffs, and Oliver shrank back.

Surely they were too high to reach?

Finn came alongside him, his eyes wide and disbelieving. He wrung his hands like a guilty man and walked like a drunk, blinking furiously in the hideous reality of this dreadful place.

“Holy Mary Mother of God!” exclaimed Finn. “Where in the name o’ the wee man are we, lass? Where have ye taken us to?”

Kate shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” said Oliver. “You opened that…doorway and led us through, and you don’t even know where we are? Well, that’s just wonderful. Good job. Well done.”

“Easy, Doc,” said Finn. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

Finn turned to Kate. “We are alive aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” said Kate. “You’re breathing aren’t you?”

“Aye, ye have a point there, lass,” agreed Finn. “And that’s a damn sight better than we’d be faring if we hadn’t gotten out of that place, eh?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Oliver, massaging the back of his neck. The strange sense of dislocation still tingled the extremities of his limbs, and his mind struggled to accept the notion that they could have crossed over such incredible distances to this impossible place in a single step. “But we need to figure out where we are and get back to Arkham.”

“Agreed,” said Kate. “I think I know how to reset the sphere to get us back home.”

“Good,” said Oliver. “Then get to it, Miss Winthrop.”

Kate gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t have it,” she said, “you were the last one through.”

“Well I don’t have it either,” said Oliver.

“You didn’t bring it with you?” cried Kate.

“No one said I was to bring it!”

“You really don’t have it?” said Kate. “But that was our only way home!”

“Oh, and I was supposed to know that? You’re the damn scientist here.”

Kate turned away, her hands planted on her hips and her face flushed at what she saw as his willful stupidity. Oliver bit back an angry comment, realizing how pointless it would be, and said, “Let’s think. There must be another way out of here, wherever here is. We found a way in, so it stands to reason there must be a way out.”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,” snapped Kate. “We could be trapped here.”

“Hey!” called Finn, moving to the edge of the shelf of rock upon which they stood. His neck craned to look back at the crags behind them. “Anyone got any idea what that place up there might be?”

Oliver picked his way over the rocks to stand beside Finn, and followed his gaze up the mountainside. His jaw dropped open in amazement at the sight above.

A colossal cityscape of blackened, soaring, cyclopean towers occupied the summits of the mountains. It was impossible to assign any kind of scale to the sprawling necropolis, for its funereal towers rivaled the mountains for their monumental size. Oliver’s eyes itched just looking at this towering city, for it appeared to be damnably close one moment and an unreachable distance away the next.

Yet even among such sinister peaks, one edifice soared taller than the rest, a crooked mourning tower studded with lancet windows that glimmered with black light and deathly fires.

The sight of so nightmarish a vision of mortality was almost too much for them. Kate gripped onto Oliver’s arm, and Finn steadied himself by dropping to his haunches and lighting a cigarette he pulled from behind his ear. The sepulchral city squatted like an evil spider brooding over death-haunted halls, and a palpable sense of dread, loathing, and fear bled from the city’s lightless garrets and abandoned cloisters.

Oliver stared at the vast tower, its peaked summit surrounded by ghostly clouds of lightning-shot mist. Spectral images flickered within that mist. Tantalizing images burned into Oliver’s retina with each arcing bolt of electrical discharge. Streets, houses, and parks, each achingly familiar and homely. With a start, Oliver recognized these images as snapshots of Arkham, phantom traces of the world they had left behind.

“God in heaven!” said Kate. “What a horrible place!”

“We’re in Hell, aren’t we?” said Finn. “Oh, Jaysus, we’re in bloody Hell.”

“That might not be too far off the mark, Mr. Edwards,” replied Oliver, looking at the soaring tower and the fading echoes of their own world. “But I think I see a way out.”

“Up there?” said Finn. “Tell me your jokin’, Doc.”

Oliver shook his head and looked down the cliff to the continent-sized graveyard. Hundreds more eaters of the dead were swarming toward the base of the cliff, clawing their way up its sheer sides to feast on the three of them.

“If we want to see our world again, Mr. Edwards, we’re going to have to climb out of Hell.”

“No way,” said Finn, shaking his head. “I ain’t going anywhere near that place. It’s cursed is what it is. Evil!”

“It’s either that or get eaten alive,” said Oliver.

Finn looked down at the creatures swarming up the cliff.

“Let’s climb,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

No light illuminated the tunnel as Rita navigated her way through the twisting, brick-walled darkness with her outstretched hands. The depth of the water was inconsistent, sometimes leaving her less than six inches of air to breathe, sometimes a few feet. Its movement was sluggish, but the stench was foul beyond imagining. Years’ worth of human detritus had been tossed into the pool and carried via the sluggish tidal action toward the river.

At least that was where Rita hoped it led.

She pushed herself onward, despite the pain in her joints, the ache in her belly, and the fatigue that begged her to let her body rest. She had no idea if she was being pursued, but couldn’t risk a moment to find out. If Latimer was coming after her, there was nothing she could do about it. All she could do was get the hell away from here as fast as she was able.

Tears streamed down her cheeks at the thought of having left Amanda behind, but what choice did she have? Surely without her there, the red robed priest would have no leverage to force Amanda to confess the substance of her dreams.

Rita tried not to think of what they might do to Amanda as a reprisal for her escape. Every time her tired muscles threatened to give out, she reminded herself what might happen to Amanda if she faltered. She focused her mind, shutting out the pain and fear, and concentrated on just moving forward. This was a long-distance run, nothing more. The same dedication that drove Paavo Nurmi to win five gold medals at the Paris Olympics spurred her on, and Rita harvested every scrap of energy and determination to continue.

She had no idea how far she had traveled or how long it had been since her escape. All sensation of the passing of time and distance were meaningless in the blackness. The tunnel seemed never-ending, but it had to end somewhere, didn’t it?

Rita splashed forward under the water as the tunnel dipped suddenly. She swallowed a mouthful of reeking liquid, tasting the acidic bile of its contamination. Rita cried out and spat the brackish fluid out, coughing as dribbles slid down her throat to her stomach. Floundering in the water, she felt the pull of current, and let it take her. A scum of liquefied bone and fat filmed the water’s surface.

Christ, how many girls have met their end here? Ten, a dozen? More?

Rita came closest to giving up then, her gumption as close to the edge as it ever was when she hit the wall in a long run. But, as always, she found that extra reserve of strength and character to push through the pain and the desire to give up.

With an angry snarl, Rita pushed her feet to the bottom of the tunnel and pressed on, her second wind surging through her like a cure-all tonic. She felt the surge within the tunnel increase, a definite wash of tidal movement, and cried out as she realized she could see distant flickers of splintered light on the fractured surface of the water. The thought that she might be nearing the end of the tunnel gave her fresh strength, and she threw herself flat and swam with powerful strokes as the current picked up.

The force of the tide increased sharply. Rita was too weak to fight it. She let it carry her through the last of its debris-garlanded length. Frothing bubbles and swirling currents spun her around as she shot from the mouth of the tunnel. Water closed over her head, and she fought for breath as she bobbed up and down like a spinning top.

Rita broke the surface intermittently, popping up for air and gulping whole lungfuls of icy water. The frozen chill of the water sent a spike of adrenaline through her, and Rita thrashed her arms as the current swept her through the deep waters of the Miskatonic.

She saw lights on the shore, pinpricks of lamps, and electric streetlights, but she couldn’t make out where she was. A looming black shape rose out of the water, a stone pier of a bridge, and Rita screamed as she passed beneath it, hearing the rumble of railroad stock and the braying of riverboat horns.

The water continued to buffet her, spinning her around until all sense of left and right, up and down, were completely lost to her. Rita dug deep for a last reserve of energy, but she was empty. She had nothing left to give. Her thoughts turned toward Amanda as she let herself go, her body finally claimed by the river.

She sank beneath the river, but no sooner had the water closed over her head than she felt solid ground beneath her feet. Rita’s head broke the surface and she dragged a heaving gulp of air into her lungs. Her feet scrambled on the soft sand, and she thrashed her arms, digging great handfuls of dirt as she hauled herself onto the shore.

Rita wept with relief, lying in the mud and letting cool air fill her lungs as her head grew heavy and her sight dimmed. She lay there and probably passed out for a time. It was hard to be certain. All she knew was that by the time enough of her strength had returned to allow her to lift her head from the mud, it felt like no time at all.

The sky was beginning to lighten, and in the dim twilight Rita saw she hadn’t yet reached either shore of Arkham, but had pitched up on the island between the West Street and Garrison Street Bridges. That meant she was closest to the north bank. She groaned as she realized she would need to swim to shore.