Ch.164Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (16)

The writhing, broken bodies of the servants crawl toward the exit. Abashina snapped her fingers. They withered away, spewing viscous saliva like snails.

Outside the destroyed lobby, fog pours in like a specter. Its writhing resembles countless tentacles. The fog picks up the obsidian dagger and scrapes at Arthur Black’s ashes. The ashes and dagger float up within the fog.

Abashina spread her arms to protect Aurora and me. But it doesn’t seem interested in us. It appeared to struggle just maintaining its form.

[You have committed sins. Giovanni failed to offer his share and took my life, so his sin is great. You, successor of Savio. Had you offered your life, Polard would have been safe. But now… the opportunity is gone.]

‘It’ clutched the obsidian dagger with both hands.

Click.

<Awakening 5/12 / Destruction 5/12>

The building trembles. Wood twists and stone cracks. With each explosive bang, debris falls somewhere with a pattering sound.

The fog swirls. Ear-splitting ruptures, buildings outside the lobby collapsing with heavy thuds, the earth protesting through the unjustly beaten ground!

The writhing fog, rubbing against itself, inserts countless tentacles into crevices, and this filthy thing with its white, twitching suckers ready to tear everything apart surges in.

[Welcome it!]

Bang!

The theater wall exploded outward. Fragments of heated stone and burning wood lash at the fog. Through the gap, something bright red shoots out. A stick of dynamite with a burning fuse.

As the flash erupted, I turned my head. Aurora lowered her stance. Abashina spread her arms. The shock shook the theater and shattered the fog.

“Welcome my ass, you’re gonna get your dusty ass beat on this foggy day.”

Creyfield walked out with his revolver aimed. A cigarette dangled from his mouth.

[Creyfield…! You!]

“Who the fuck are you to casually call my name, you piece of shit?”

The enraged fog surged forward.

But Creyfield wasn’t alone. Organization members with white gloves burst through the collapsed wall. Shotguns. Submachine guns. The fog scattered under the hail of bullets. Creyfield rushed forward, grabbed the obsidian dagger, and slammed it to the floor.

Bang!

[No!]

The clump of ashes dispersed. Creyfield struck the dagger again. With a crack, its tip broke off.

[No, no! Listen to me. I am a priest. If a priest dies at the altar, the god will be angry! He will sweep you all away, I can stop it. I can appease him!]

“This is why you shouldn’t humor these losers. Talk to them once or twice and they crawl all over you.”

[What…]

Bang! Bang!

“You’re crawling up because you want to, what’s so pretty about you that I’d let you? Did you think you were something because I was nice a few times? You’re nothing, idiot.”

[How dare you…! How dare you…!]

“But this bastard keeps talking back!”

Creyfield tossed aside the dagger. He went to an organization member holding a sledgehammer and took the weapon. Tap. Tap. After adjusting his grip in the air a couple of times, he brought it down lightly.

Bang!

“Won’t shut up!”

Bang!

“For one word!”

The knife broke. The fiend’s howl pierced everyone’s ears. The ashen form was engulfed in blue flames.

[Ia… Ia… Cthulhu Fhtagn!]

Click.

<Awakening 5/12 / Destruction 6/12>

The ashes disappear. The broken dagger turns into a black, viscous liquid that seeps into the cracks in the theater floor. Organization members rush in to support Aurora and cover Giovanni’s body with a coat.

Creyfield looked down at Giovanni, then bowed his head briefly and muttered something. He sat down on the shattered wall like it was a chair.

“Creyfield.”

“Assistant. Got any water? My throat feels parched. Alcohol would be better.”

“It’s not safe. It might be mixed with alcohol soaked in water from the Arkham West Reservoir.”

“So that’s what it was. Ha. Sister. It’s been a while. Your eye makeup is… impressive. Is it French style?”

“No.”

“That’s a relief. I’ve never been there myself. I have a phobia of France. Good Lord. Assistant. What happened here?”

I briefly explained what had happened. Aurora listened to the organization members and quickly gave some instructions. Some made a temporary stretcher and collected Giovanni’s body. Abashina stood beside Creyfield and me, glaring at the blown-open lobby entrance.

“I was trapped.”

Creyfield took a final drag of his Camel. He tossed the butt away carelessly and sighed deeply.

“Remember the cross-section Aurora showed us? There’s a ventilation duct there. I crawled in, and the performance was just starting. But as soon as the curtain call began, all the audience members grabbed their necks and twisted them sideways.”

It must have been the upper-class people who drank the contaminated alcohol. The song transmitted through the speakers must have played some role.

“What happened after that, I’ll just say it wasn’t good. Pretty disgusting. Anyway, the entire performance hall rose up. Corridors, rooms, and passages got mixed up like Jenga blocks. I barely managed to escape downward, but the exit corridor had disappeared. Instead, it had drawn in a ton of those black fellows.”

An organization member approached. He handed two clear bottles of liquor to Creyfield and me. Creyfield opened the cap and took a big gulp. He immediately covered his mouth and coughed, but color returned to his face.

I took a sip and felt like my throat was on fire. As I grabbed my neck and coughed, Creyfield chuckled.

“Anyway. I could hear something through the walls but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then there was a bang somewhere, and a motorcycle just burst in.”

Creyfield pointed to the motorcycle embedded in the wall. It was the Indian model Abashina had ridden in on. Abashina blushed with embarrassment.

“No need to be shy. Thank you, Sister. You saved my life. I’ll definitely attend mass this week. By the way, where’s the Father?”

“He’s evacuating people. Federal security agents, Polard police, firefighters, and civil servants. The fog is so thick that they’ve placed fire trucks and police cars with sirens at intervals. They serve as buoys. I think they’re gathering people at the east coast. There’s a dock there.”

Creyfield sighed with relief.

“That’s good. At least…”

“But how did the corridor disappear?”

“That’s Hastur’s power.”

Creyfield took another sip of vodka.

“He mixes reality and dreams, creates doorless doors, and fashions roomless rooms. But the most terrible thing is something else.”

“What is it?”

“Hastur shakes existence itself. You doubt, deny, become skeptical, and eventually understand everything as indifferent gray. He makes the awake dream and rouses the dreaming.”

A chill ran down my spine. I remembered the questions the silver-masked being had asked me. Our conversation. The question he had posed to me.

What is the difference between theater and reality?

Why did he ask that?

“[Perhaps because he himself is lost.]”

“What?”

Abashina looked at me with surprised eyes.

“No. I’m sorry. I was just talking to myself.”

“…Talking, you say? No. That beast… that wasn’t speech. Oh. My goodness.”

Abashina pulled me into her arms and stroked my head.

“You’re in shock. You’ll be fine after some rest…”

Click.

<Awakening 6/12 / Destruction 6/12>

The floor vibrated. The building shook. “Get outside, quickly!” Aurora shouted. We ran outside without looking back. The fog in the street was still hazy, but not so thick that we couldn’t see ahead.

And we could no longer worry about the fog.

“The sky…”

Abashina covered her mouth. A white moon and an eerie moon were colliding with each other. A red fireball born between the two moons was plunging straight down.

“There, toward the residential district!”

Someone shouted. The residential district direction, isn’t that to the right of the theater? Something was leaping up above the sea of fog. Like a pod of dolphins jumping above water in turns, but this was land, not sea, and what jumped up wasn’t a living creature.

Arms.

Arms as tall as 10-story buildings emerged, tearing through the ground. Like hands sticking out from under cardboard boxes, they pierced the earth with frightening ease. They flailed their palms around, pounding the ground with booms and bangs.

And here. The ground we stood on. It splits with a crack. We run backward. Like steam gushing from a kettle, fog spews from the cracks beneath the theater.

Giant fingers. Giant pillars. Hands. Two hands holding water. Two hands flowing with human bones and blood and muscles and flesh, flowing with blood and sweat and tears, with beating hearts, lift up the theater.

Blood vessels grow from the 2nd and 3rd floors of the theater. Like persistent vines strangling the tree they parasitize, tendons and blood vessels crush and squeeze the building.

Crunch! Crunch! Soon it transforms into something like a temple, like a temple with collapsed pillars, like an ancient temple abandoned and defiled, with its roof blown away.

Blood vessels climb the building, follow the roads, wrap around each gas lamp. They have mouths and eyes and hands and fingers and noses attached to them. Laughing, crying, getting angry, being irritable, jealous, annoyed, they flow. Things like vacuum tubes, speakers, and radios are embedded like lotus seeds at intervals.

Whispers perch on my ears like crows.

[Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn]

[Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn]

Dead Cthulhu waits dreaming in his house in R’lyeh. A familiar tune. My eyelids keep closing.

But the crow that seems to be perched on my ear flaps its wings.

That’s not it, it says.

The lyrics have changed, it says.

“Assistant?”

Creyfield calls me, but I can’t pay attention. I stand still and listen to the lyrics.

[Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl F-Fhtagn! Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl fl-fhtagn!]

No. That’s not the pronunciation. *You* know it.

The singer’s terrible pronunciation is ruining the stage. The word the singer really wants to pronounce is not Fhtagn but nafl-fhtagn. For “fh,” you need to press your lower lip slightly against your upper teeth to get the correct pronunciation.

Nafl-fhtagn is the negative form of fhtagn.

So the correct lyrics are:

[Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl nafl-fhtagn! Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl nafl-fhtagn!]

Dead Cthulhu does not wait dreaming in his house in R’lyeh.

The violin melody that chokes the throat, the flute’s sobbing that tears at the lips!

[Cthulhu nafl-fhtagn! Ai Ai! Hastur-Hastur cf’ayak’vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm!]

Hastur descends. Cthulhu rises. Children fight over the legacy of a dull-witted father.

“Look over there!”

No need to look. I know without seeing.

The sun and moon and another moon and celestial bodies are wrapped in a yellow curtain.

From above the curtain, the silver-masked king looks down upon the earth.

Arms surge up trying to tear the king’s robe.

The island trembles.