Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

The First Church of the Star doubted Maya Dommel’s decision to make a sacrifice out of Henry. “He is closed to us,” they whispered to her. “He is on fire for his god,” she replied. “He only needs to be brought to ours.”

Ah! You may ask, what god did the First Church of the Star worship, if they refused Azathoth the Ultimate? According to their logs, they worshipped an intangible force that resides within all creatures: the will to improve, strengthen, and prosper — the will, that is, to make one’s self a living god, and one’s body a beating testament.

Henry LaCloak had tapped into that force at a very young age, when he first won a foot race against his brother. Pursuit of the force had defined his life, just as it had defined the Church. He met Maya Dommel when she asked the team’s public relations department if he would co-sponsor a food drive for a local sports team, and Henry LaCloak immersed himself more deeply into the Church than any other recruit ever had.

“All your sacrifice, all your sweat, this is what it was for,” Maya Dommel whispered to him as he knelt at the altar of St. Sasha, “This is why you are a winner. This is why you have never been second-string. You are the nectar of the heavens. You are the reason we are alive. This will be your ultimate victory.”

“When?” he asked.

“When you have become all that you can be on this mortal plane. Then you ascend.”

All threads began to unravel when Henry tried to spread the word of this bastardized First Church of the Star — to his nervous coaches and ‘roid-raging teammates, the scandal-hunting reporters who spent nights camped outside their locker room, the little children in the pediatric cancer ward who received chemotherapy in Henry’s 9 jersey. Maya Dommel urged him to be silent about his newfound passion but he believed he had found the key to all things and he had only ever wanted to use his athletic prowess to inspire others. When Henry scored touchdowns he now made shooting star gestures. “God was on our side today,” he said after a come-from-behind win, “And I just want to thank the First Church of the Star for, uh, showing me why I was made a winner. So I could be the vessel for glory. God bless you, and God bless this city.”

None of the unenlightened knew what to make of this, and Henry grew alienated from his team. Freak , they called him. Bible-thumper. Satanist. A kicker on his team finally agreed to attend a service with him on one rainy Sunday, and despite Maya Dommel’s attempts to sanitize her message, the blind cannot be subjected to the light too quickly. The kicker asked Henry, “Why are those crazies so obsessed with you? Aren’t you scared of what they want?” Henry said that the Church only wanted the same thing he did: it wanted him to win. Henry was cut from the team after the season was over, citing a disruption to team harmony. It was the first time he had ever failed, as an athlete or a leader, and he came hysterically weeping to the First Church of the Star, where he pulled a switchblade across his throat and sacrificed himself.

Here the full scope of Maya Dommel’s error became apparent. The city could not care less for most of its athletes. They were drug addicts, child-beaters, rapists, dog-fighters — criminals who had been lucky to be blessed with phenomenal muscular and skeletal build. In this the city fundamentally misunderstood the Champion spirit — their foolish finger-wagging only served to blind them from the simple, absolute truth of victory, which supersedes all other supposed facts. But the city did love Henry LaCloak, their hero, who reminded them that there was some good left in their vile city. They came a-calling when he vanished. There was no body for them to find, but using their trickery and technology, they were able to show that Henry LaCloak’s blood had once dripped upon the gleaming altar that Maya Dommel had erected in her pauper’s church, the First Church of the Star.

So it came to be that red-haired Maya Dommel was placed in a human prison whose walls her legion could not penetrate, and sentenced to reside there for the rest of her years. Stories circulated for decades of a cannibal prisoner with a head of flames at Gossling Penitentiary, but flesh alone would not sustain her — not the flesh of those unclean sinners greased with heroin and greed, and especially not after the eye of Hyperon Talta looked away.

The remnants of the First Church of the Star scattered to the four corners of the known Earth, running like rats into the small, hidden places between buildings whenever they sensed that a triumphant disciple of the Church of the Holy Star was nearby. An attempt was made to recover Jimmy Spell, as he was a blood-relative of St. Sasha, but he had burrowed like a termite into an architectural crevice and moved below ground, leaving behind slanderous warnings in the nation’s subterranean train systems — warnings which were, fortunately, too cryptic for the uneducated to understand.

These had been lean times for the true Church of the Holy Star, which had kept afloat on the unripe, semi-sweet bodies of young athletes who were not yet at their pinnacle but were more easily overpowered. Many had to be kept in cages and bled at length to prolong their usefulness, though the drop-off in the quality of their juices was precipitous. The undernourished Church members gnashed their restless teeth and complained that Maya Dommel’s heathen splinter church was feeding just fine on willing sacrifices in the Rust Belt.

“We chase something greater,” said Professor Kettle, as Hyperon Talta’s long leather-gloved fingers softly clenched both sides of his head. “We must make our break with the past. Sacrifice is over. Surrender is over.” In the end the flock accepted this; they knew firsthand, now, that sacrificed blood would never taste as rich as spilled blood. It is the difference between an insect trapped in amber and a buzzing fly. There is simply more iron and punch in the latter.

And so, while the false First Church of the Star was hoisted upon its own petard, the Church of the Holy Star continued its holy quest to find its way to Azathoth the Ultimate. Hyperon Talta took up residence in the vestry of the church, counseling the elders and bringing joy to the children through magical binoculars and enchanted gyroscopes. The Church knew it was blessed; Azathoth’s emissary could have taken his wisdom anywhere in the world (and perhaps he was doing God’s work elsewhere, but such is the nature of omnipotence that the Church of the Holy Star never felt his calm eagle-eye waver, not even for a heartbeat), and so committed its best and brightest to Hyperon’s makeshift training camp.

All throughout 1993, the Church of the Holy Star perfected its rendition of the Canticle of the Hunter. For those unlucky enough never to have heard it, this is not a song like those children’s hymns performed in common ecclesiastical choirs, nor a tearful anthem for a hamstrung nation. It is a calling, closer to the ritual war-chants that human sport clubs have used for decades to support their team and intimidate the enemy: “Rock Chalk Jayhawk,” “Glory Glory Man United,” “We Are Penn State,” “I Believe That We Will Win.” The Canticle of the Hunter had no words, only sensations; no gestures, only dreams. To observe a solo performance of the Canticle of the Hunter is to hear nothing but a faint growl emitted from a focused, open mouth. It is also to feel wildly compelled, at a biological level, to join. You may not believe at first that you know how, nor even what the singer is doing. But your mouth will drop before you know it. Because above all else, the Canticle of the Hunter is a demonstration of overbearing and undeniable will. A will that is too great for any individual human to refuse.