Roger Zelazny - A Night in the Lonesome October

«Dirt from one of your own caskets,» the vicar replied, «mixed with pieces of my church's altar stone relic, left over from more papish times. Fingerbone of St. Hilarian, according to the records. You require your consecrated soil, but overconsecration is like the difference between a therapeutic and a debilitating dose of strychnine. Do you not agree?»

The Count muttered a reply in a foreign language, as the wolf disappeared with Lynette; and I realized that, from all his talks with Larry, plus his knowledge of drugs, and the samples he had obtained, he had succeeded several days ago in developing his own ideal dosage, and I had just witnessed the Great Detective's greatest disguise yet. I howled a «Well done!» into the night. Later, a «Good luck!» came back to me.

The inscription glowed brilliantly now. Whether the deaths of Morris and MacCab had contributed to this was hard to tell. The vicar looked up and saw that Lynette was gone. He glared at Jill.

«You should have told me,» he said.

«I didn't notice till now,» she replied.

«Neither did I,» said Nightwind.

The vicar picked up the sacrificial knife which he had dropped, moved back to his position, and drove the blade into the ground at his feet.

He straightened then, repeated the word of power, and said another. Immediately, his face became the snouted, tusked visage of a boar with a shredded ear. This lasted for perhaps a minute before Larry's eyes opened. He turned his head, saw that Lynette was gone, looked immediately to the altar, saw she was not there either. He tried to rise, failed. I wondered how serious his condition was. True, there was a lot of blood, but head wounds are often that way. Even a silver bullet still has to hit something major. Larry tried to crawl forward, succeeded in moving perhaps half a foot, paused, and panted.

The vicar spoke another word. Graymalk was suddenly striped like a small tiger. This, too, passed quickly. Tekela was starting to look like a vulture. Suddenly, Jill was an ancient hag, bent far forward, hooked nose almost touching her jutting chin, strands of white hair hanging about her face. I glanced at Jack and saw that he suddenly wore the shaggy head of a great brown bear, yellow eyes staring forward, saliva running from the corners of his mouth. Looking downward, I saw that my fur was blood-red and moist; and I felt as if horns jutted from my brow. I had no idea what I might resemble, but Graymalk drew back in alarm. The boar spoke again, and the word rang like a bell in the chill air. The Count was suddenly a skeleton wrapped in black. Something unseen passed high overhead, laughing like a demented child. Pale mushrooms sprang up all about us, and a shifting of breezes brought me sulfurous scents from the fire. A green liquid flowed outward from that blaze, spreading in bubbling streams. The chanting now seemed to contain all of our names. MacCab had become a woman whose painted face began to peel off in long strips. Beside him, Morris was now an ape, his long hairy arms reaching to the ground, and he leaned to rest upon his knuckles. His mouth was opened wide, showing an enormous expanse of teeth and gums. Larry was now a bleeding man sprawled upon the ground. The air before us shimmered and became a mirror, giving this entire prospect back to us. Then our reflected heads detached themselves and drifted leftwards. It was a strange feeling, passing out of one and into another, for I seemed unmoved, though I felt the sudden weight of the bear-head, saw the hog's drift by to settle upon Jack's shoulders. Graymalk suddenly wore an overlarge one, horned, demonic; Jill, a small striped cat's head, and so on along our crescent. Then the bodies shifted to the right, and I was a cat with a bear's head, lying flat because of its weight, my heart thudding like a steam engine. Jack had become a boar-headed demon. Again, the laughter rang from overhead. If I were not my body or my head, what was I, sprawled there amid the mushrooms and the stench, another wave of chanting rolling in my ears? Illusion, it must all be illusion, mustn't it? I never knew before and I still didn't know. The mushrooms blackened, shriveled, and fell when the hot green flow reached them. Our images in the mirror wavered, became splashes of our dominant colors, flowed together. I looked downward again, but everything was hazy. Upward then, at some half-noted change. The moon had gone blood-red and was dripping upon us. A shooting star cut past it. Another. Another. Soon multitudes of them rained down the heavens. The mirror cracked, and Jack and I stood alone at our end, our forms returned to us, as a great gust of wind out of the north blew away the haze. The others came clear, also, restored, in their piece of reflection. The starfall lessened. The moon grew pink, then turned back to butter and ivory. I sighed and held my place, felt Graymalk's gaze pass over me. The green tendrils from the fire began to congeal, lavalike. For a moment, I seemed to hear a collection of animal sounds from within the flames, baas, nickers, whinnies, whimpers, a sharp barking, several varieties of howling, the coughing of a giant cat, a croaking, a mewling cry. There followed a stillness, save for the fire's own cracking and snapping.

I felt a familiar tingling in the air. The time had come for the opening. I glanced at Jack and could tell that he felt it, too.

Larry dragged himself another foot forward.

I was looking at the vicar as he spoke the final word. I saw the Count's left hand twitch. But apparently the vicar did, too, and he stooped and raised the pentacle. Something dark fled forth from the Count's ring, but the vicar caught it in the pentacle bowl and it was reflected off into the night. It was probably too late for killing the man, anyway, for the opening was definitely beginning. The vicar stooped again, raised the icon, and placed it upon the Count's chest. The ring did not flare again. All in all, as I regarded both Larry and the Count, I was forced to a sort of grudging respect for the fellow. He was much better at his business than I'd have guessed.

«Jill,» he called out, «use the wand now.»

Jill reached inside her cloak, produced the wand, raised it. Oddly, the growing brightness of the stone halted for a moment. Jack had his wand out in an instant, raising it and training it upon the same target. I heard the heavy footsteps again, this time approaching us. The rectangle began to brighten once more, and a great depth occurred within it, swimming with colored lights. The cries from the banefire grew louder and louder: «Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Hail to the Black Goat!» The music also increased in intensity, and the moon blazed like a beacon overhead. Larry began dragging himself farther along. The experiment man came into view off to the right, heading toward us. I glanced at Jack. Beads of perspiration had formed upon his brow. I could tell that he was pouring his will and spirit into the wand, but the opening continued.

The experiment man lumbered up to us.

«Pret-ty kit-ty,» he said, pausing in front of Jack, which might have killed anyone else, but he already smelled of death and seemed aware of nothing untoward.

Suddenly, the opening was arrested, the Gateway lost some of its depth. The experiment man stooped and quickly snatched up Graymalk.

«Pret-ty kit-ty,» he repeated. Then he turned and walked away in the direction whence he had come.

«Put me down!» she cried. «I can't leave now!»

He sat down just beyond the firelight and commenced petting her.

Larry continued his crawl, steady now. Depth returned to the Gateway. I thought I saw a tentacle stir within it. Then something large and amorphous seemed to be drifting our way.

«This isn't working well,» I heard a small voice say.

I sought its source.

Bubo's head had emerged from the left side pocket of Jack's coat.