James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

The gaslights sputtered and died. The throng of huddled acolytes exchanged worried exasperations, but the Swinburne-thing urged them to keep going. Their chanting increased, and Burton thought he saw a strange electricity crackling along the rough-hewn edges of the stone.

They heard a thunderous noise coming from the main double doors into the hall. “Battering ram,” said Abberline. “My boys are coming in.” He moved around Burton, gun raised in the dark. “Metropolitan Police! You are all under arrest!”

“Poppycock!” he heard the Swinburne-thing screech. “Who dares interrupt the coming of Yog-Sothoth?”

“It’s over, Algy,” said Burton as he stepped up beside Abberline. “Or whoever you are.”

A robed figure moved to confront him. Burton sent a fist into his face and the figure went down in a heap.

Lightning danced across the stone, blue claws arcing to the surrounding support pillars.

“How joyous!” said the Goforth-thing. “Look! Yog-Sothoth comes.”

There was a tinge of ozone and something fetid as the hairs on Burton’s neck stood at attention. A blast of cold air that whipped through his beard as he felt a vague sucking sensation, as of the sudden presence of a vacuum. He couldn’t see well in the darkness, but as his eyes adjusted he got an impression of movement coming from the stone, long, ropey tendrils stretching out, wrapping themselves around the surrounding pillars. Interspersed along their length were large pale orbs.

The Awakened had backed away, and were the only ones still chanting, most of it in their bizarre guttural speech. But one phrase could still be clearly made out: Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth.

“Hear us, Opener of the Way!” someone near Abberline shouted.

So transfixed were the Great Race’s thralls that no one tried to molest Abberline or Burton any further. They were all staring into the black void they all sensed rather than perceived was yawning open toward them. And through that limitless void something was coming.

Burton stood frozen, his heart hammering in his chest. In his mind’s eye he could see El-Yezdi, could hear him whispering from across an immense distance.

The Man of Truth is beyond good and evil. The Man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One. The Man of Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor . His forehead itched, and he reached up, feeling a series of cold lumps, the Wold-Newton stones embedded in the skin there.

Burton clenched his right fist, and found that it was made of brass. Afraid to break the illusion, he did not look down at it. He flexed the fingers, feeling the whir of tiny pneumatic pistons that could rend metal, crush rock.

We are with you , said Abdullah the Bushri, his whisper like a breath of hot desert wind. Burton clutched the handle of the gleaming scimitar with his left hand, the hilt cool and hard beneath his fingertips. The smell of Persian spices filled his nostrils, masking the fetid stench that came at them from the yawning opening.

He heard the sound of something wet sliding along stone, as if something very large was trying to fit through an opening much too small for its bulk. He sensed more of the pale orbs, and had the eerie feeling he was being watched by a million eyes, not unlike the sensation he got from being pursued by a shoggoth. But this was no shoggoth. Those loathsome creatures were nothing compared to the entity that was pulling itself into this world right in front of them. An army of shoggoths would cower in fear at this thing that loomed up before the assembly.

The pounding of the coppers attempting to batter down the door grew louder, more insistent.

“Yog-Sothoth,” said the Swinburne-thing. “Scion of the Nameless Mist. Opener of the Way, Beyond One, hear our cries. We are of the Great Race of Yith, whom you have gifted with the ability to move through Time. We wish to join you through the Gate. We wish to leave behind our earthly shackles and move through the facets of reality as you do. Please help us, and this world is yours.”

This world is but one facet of the All, and is already mine. The pitiful creatures who live within it are as base as the insects that grovel at your feet.

Burton and Abberline, along with everyone else in the room save the Awakened, clutched at their heads. The voice of Yog-Sothoth was deafening, and coming from inside their skulls. The entity was communicating with them through their minds, without words as Burton knew them.

He heard a high-pitched whine, and realized it was the stones the Awakened wore within their repugnant headpieces, humming in their mountings. Their ethereal vibrations made his back teeth ache.

“Beyond One,” said the Swinburne-thing. “Father of Nug and Yeb. Grandfather of terrible Cthulhu. You survey all facets of reality, but powerful as you are, you are locked outside the universe. We wish to give you entry, to impart your will on this facet. We implore you. We retrieved a Doorway to receive your magnificence, and have obtained the ancient and holy psychic stones to focus your power in this realm. All we ask in return is to traverse the First Gate.”

All who are deemed worthy may attempt passage through the First Gate. Let me through, and access to the All in One shall be yours.

“It’s a bloody deal with the Devil,” Abberline whispered beside Burton.

Burton considered the Inspector’s words. This Yog-Sothoth was no ordinary devil as he knew the term. He was much bigger, much more powerful.

What is that infernal hammering? Said Yog-Sothoth as the sound of the police battering ram grew louder, every impact threatening to send the formidable double doors exploding into thousands of splinters.

“The humans of this facet attempt to stop us,” said the Goforth-thing. “Even now they seek to sully this holy ritual with their presence.”

They annoy me .

The sound ceased. Burton and Abberline looked at each other, a cold realization stealing upon Burton as he realized what must have happened. Yog-Sothoth, using but a modicum of his power, had stopped the police in their efforts to break down the doors. How this was achieved Burton didn’t know, nor want to.

“Now see here!” Abberline shouted, an edge of fear in his voice. “Every bloody person in here is hereby under arrest. No more magic tr-”

Abberline seized and, panicking, dropped his pistol. Burton heard it clatter heavily to the floor as the police inspector fell against him, gripping Burton’s shoulder. “What is it man?”

Abberline didn’t say anything, but his panicking increased. He rubbed his face with his left hand, as if indicating the trouble sprang from that part of his anatomy. Burton squinted his eyes in the gloom, and in the pale light emanating from Yog-Sothoth’s globes he saw a terrible sight. Inspector Abberline’s mouth was gone. Not covered or obscured. Gone .

“These are the men who tried to stop us,” said the Swinburne-thing, pointing at Burton and the frustrated Abberline. “They are the ones who tried to prevent us from becoming conduits for your perfect will.”

Then they shall be the first to know what it means to bend to the will of Yog-Sothoth.

Burton felt his legs give beneath him, and he had the strange sensation that he was melting into the floor. Abberline looked at him askance, his expression frozen on a body that was now a mass of cubes. Burton reached for him with arms that were now giant lobster claws.

“Bismillah! Help me!”

As if in answer, the millions of cubes that now made up Abberline’s body fell clattering to the floor.

Burton wretched, but nothing came up. The assembled acolytes stared down at him with bulbous eyes on the ends of long, fleshy stalks. Burton wanted to scream. He squeezed his eyes shut instead.