Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

It was time to get it. The wind had picked up while we were in the forest, and now it was whipping cold from above and behind, driving the stink of that dead boar through the pines as if it were ready to gouge our heels with its tusks. Russ set down the bag with the sandwiches and the beer. We weren’t going to need it now. We started toward the depot as the sun dipped behind the treetops. In an instant, afternoon slipped into twilight.

The wind didn’t slacken, and the sign above the platform swayed on thick chains. As we drew closer, I recognized the station’s name. New Anvik — the same town I’d seen circled on the map I found in the Nash’s glove compartment.

Right now, it was our destination.

It looked like it had been all along.

Gravel crunched beneath our boots as we crossed the station lot. I brushed a hand along the Ford’s hood as I passed by. The metal was as cold as a witch’s tit, which meant the car had been sitting there a while. Russ trailed behind me as I climbed the stairs that led to the station platform, and together we followed a raised walk around the front of the building. All the while, a single hope stuck in my mind — that the depot was a one-man operation, and we’d only find the station agent inside.

That’s exactly what we found, but not the way we expected.

“You’d better give me that shotgun,” Russ said as we neared the door.

I stopped dead in my tracks, turning only to meet my brother’s eye. It was as green as a piece of polished jade, and clear of cobwebs.

“Welcome back,” I said, thinking I understood.

Of course, I didn’t understand anything.

But I handed the Winchester to Russ.

And we moved toward the open door.

Deep notches marred the molding, as if someone had gained entry with a dull axe. I didn’t have time to worry about that any more than I’d worried about the dead boar, because the Ford was still parked out front and I wanted the keys that cranked its engine more than I’d ever wanted anything in my miserable life. So I nudged Russ and he took the lead, stepping into the dark room like a golem with a trench gun.

His big shadow spilled across the floor, joining other shadows that pooled on the waxed hardwood. I flipped on the light as I followed my brother inside. With the shadows gone there was nothing much in the office except a couple of desks. It didn’t take a detective to figure out they’d been moved — both rested at odd angles against the far wall, and the legs had gouged long scratches along the hardwood floor. As near as I could tell each desk had traveled about ten feet. And judging by the damage to the plaster wall the desks had moved fast and hard, as if they had been bucked across the room.

There weren’t any car keys in either desk. No cash box, either. Between the two desks another open door waited, a large sliding panel that led to the warehouse. Maybe the keys to the Ford were back there . . . and maybe something else, too. Maybe some boxed freight we could snatch, or a bag of mail. If we could grab it fast, I’d take it . . . but I sure as hell wasn’t going to hang around a second more than necessary.

Dull electric bulbs glowed from tin cowls set high in the warehouse ceiling, spilling yellow circles of illumination on the floor. In the middle of the largest circle stood another desk, its surface reflecting light from above in yellow shards, as if tossing sharpened knives back at the timbered crossbeams above. A broken mirror lay on the desktop — that explained the reflected shards of light. And in the middle of the desk, an open box waited. The box hadn’t been opened neatly. Ragged slices crisscrossed the top, and rusty patches the color of dried blood had splattered the cardboard, as if someone had shattered the mirror and sliced into the box with the broken fragments.

Bits of broken mirror smashed against the hardwood floor as I brushed them off the desk. A glance at the top flap indicated that the package was addressed to a man named Smith in Auburn, California and had been mailed from a university in Massachusetts. That told me nothing, so I upended the contents. A sheaf of papers dropped out, followed by a statue attached to a chain.

The statue wasn’t huge by any means, but it was large enough that I couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it around his neck. Russ snatched the chain before I could get a close look at the thing. I only saw that it was fashioned from jade, and it looked like a hungry Doberman with the wings of a gigantic bat.

The chain swung back and forth as Russ dangled the statue before his good eye. Broken mirror-shards on the desktop caught the idol’s image, and green light splashed against the warehouse walls. I barely noticed it because that sheaf of papers was still nestled between the reflected idols, and to me those papers were just as tantalizing as the statue itself.

I unfolded the pages and started reading. I didn’t know if it was a letter or a story. All I knew was that the writer began by describing his strange partnership with a man named St. John, and then he turned to the subject of a statue they’d dug up in a European graveyard . . .

And just then Russ started reading, too. The jade statue lay cupped in his left palm like a miniature pet, and once again my brother’s eyes were glazed with cobwebs. He was staring down at an inscription carved in letters I didn’t recognize. His lips moved slowly, deliberately, and the whispered words that spilled from them were the same words I’d heard him use outside the dead man’s house . . . the words I’d always taken for gutter Deutsch .

Quite suddenly, I understood those words weren’t German at all.

They were another language altogether.

A language no one understood this side of hell.

In another moment, those words were buried by another sound . . . a scuttling percussion that erupted from a garbage can next to the desk. It was a twin to the night sounds I’d heard coming from the bathroom at the dead man’s house, and a chill capered up my spine.

Russell’s lips snapped shut, cutting off his words.

The garbage can tipped over and banged on the floor, dumping more broken-mirror shards.

A severed hand crawled through the mess, dragging a gnawed and splintered wrist.

The hand moved across the floor like a giant spider.

In another second it crossed through the doorway that adjoined the station office where the dead station agent stood, pointing at my brother with the bloody stump of his right wrist.

The agent was a bucket of gore dressed in a suit — face torn to ribbons, mangled lips hanging in shreds. Those lips slithered together like a pair of hungry grave-worms, and above them the thing’s eyes shone with a stark blue brightness that made a glacier seem warm. Whatever the station agent had become wasn’t anything close to human anymore. Its bloody teeth cut words in the absolute silence of that dark warehouse, and though I heard those words I knew they were meant for Russell alone.

“You unearthed the idol,” the thing said. “You used its power to survive, and you hoped you had left it behind in the trenches with the corpses of all those soldiers you murdered in the Master’s name. But you cannot escape the Master, any more than you can escape His talisman. It is risen from fallow killing fields just as the Master is risen, and it has found you just as He has found you, for the leash you occupy is a long one. The killing will never end, for this time the Master will bring you to heel like a prize bitch. This time you’ll wear a brimstone collar, and you’ll be forever at His side.”

The words slapped Russell out of his daze, and he hurled the idol into the darkness. A quick whirling motion and the Winchester thundered in his hands. The agent’s corpse flew backward in a red shower, thudding against the office floor. Before the smoke cleared, the scuttling hand disappeared into the shadows.