Ch.59Ch.5 – The Dead City Dreams and Waits (14)

The Tower of Mist boiled, swelled, and contracted. Then it stretched itself as if trying to leap into space.

The streetlights and traffic signals around the tower were connected by tangled electrical wires, and beneath them hung something long and reddish, dripping liquid, suspended by the neck.

One. Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two.

And one more.

On the ground, James Chiddle lay bleeding. A ghoul holding an obsidian dagger in one hand approached him.

Unlike the other ghouls surrounding them, this one wore a crown decorated with feathers and bones.

Crayfield and I fired our pistols simultaneously. The ghoul’s head and body were pierced instantly.

“KIEEEEEK!”

It trembled violently and fell to its knees. Whether that was a signal, or because the spell that had been restraining and controlling the surroundings had dissipated, chaos erupted everywhere.

Ghouls leaped up and dragged down flayed corpses. They clawed and bit at each other.

After tearing off the priest ghoul’s limbs, they raised the pieces above their heads and drank the blood.

The Tower of Mist swelled. Unlike its previous pulsating and throbbing, it only expanded.

Now it swirled like a massive vortex, wrapping around 13th Avenue like the hem of a skirt.

CRRRACK

Bricks poured onto the road. Buildings overlapped and fought with each other.

Deep-sea anglers, creatures with no eyes, recognizing each other only by devouring one another.

Some ghouls were crushed in the gaps, while others were busy tearing at body parts spat out by the buildings.

Crayfield picked up a sign lying on the street and charged at the ghouls.

Holding it like a long spear, he threw it at a ghoul that was tearing at a corpse from a distance.

When the ghoul screamed in pain, others swarmed toward it like piranhas.

“Now!”

Crayfield grabbed the obsidian dagger. I embraced James Chiddle’s body.

We entered the Tower of Mist.

Fortunately, the ghouls didn’t follow us inside. Within the tower was only a small pyramid.

Eyes. Mouth. Brain. Lips. Tongue. The pyramid was constructed by connecting these parts.

At a glance, I recognized it as the work of that mad scientist, Herbert West.

He was dead, but his wicked knowledge still survived, blessing Mother!

Mother Mother my Mother

My Mother who punishes me with whip and fire and corpses

Mercy mercy

The fruits sang. The fruits cry while still alive.

They wail in fear of the fate awaiting Mother!

Mother Mother my Mother

White and horned Mother who protects the pure virgin

Mercy mercy

The tower sings. With each song, the tower stands tall. Crayfield pulled me down as I instinctively tried to look up at the sky.

“Don’t look with your naked eyes! Hydra. Hydra is up there! Mother Hydra is watching us with flashing eyes! Damn it, get up!”

An enraged Crayfield slapped James Chiddle’s cheek.

“Ah. Aaahhh uaaahhh! The city is eating people! The city is eating people! The city is eating people! It’s insane, everything here is insane! I’ve done enough, enough!”

Tick.

The clock pointed to 5.

Crayfield drove his fist into Chiddle’s solar plexus. Chiddle curled up. As intense pain hit him, his pupils stopped trembling.

“Speak clearly!”

“C-Crayfield! Crayfield! You never told me about this! Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!

The ritual isn’t just happening here. Aah – Iya! Iya! Mother! Mother is looking down on me!

This is simply meant to hold. To hold Mother Hydra! The real ritual is in the East!”

“How did you know!”

The pyramid roared and wailed. A vine plant shaped like a human body grew instantly.

Arms and legs sprouted from a column shaped like male genitalia, and where knots should be, human heads with flicking tongues emerged.

“They, they knew everything. The kidnappers! The whalers! They let me ramble on!

That’s how they lured you here. Crayfield, stop them. Please stop them!

While Hydra is bound here, on the East Coast – Iya! Iya! Cthulhu fhtagn!

They plan to summon Cthulhu! Free Mother. Liberate Mother! I’ve done enough! I’ve done enough-“

James Chiddle’s body vanished.

“He escaped.”

Crayfield laughed dejectedly.

The Tower of Mist collapsed rapidly from top to bottom. I looked up at the sky.

In that distant place, at the end of the womb connecting earth to space, I felt the gaze of Mother Hydra closing her eyes as if tired.

Perhaps it was just a star in the calm sky amid the storm. But one thing was certain.

Hydra had departed.

“I made a mistake. We all did. The kidnappings were for Cthulhu’s summoning, but the ritual site wasn’t here but on the East Coast.

13th Avenue was the place to summon Mother Hydra, and James Chiddle’s usefulness ended there.

Why did I miss this? There’s no rule that rituals must happen in just one place.

I never imagined the Black Market would sacrifice an entire city district.”

Crayfield plunged the obsidian dagger into the pyramid.

The Tower of Mist collapsed weakly. The human-shaped vines that had shot up like tendrils stopped growing.

But the situation worsened. Those vines had been restraining the buildings and ghouls, and when growth stopped, they bit through the yokes constricting their bodies.

The ghouls leaped in all directions like angry cats. The buildings sluggishly swallowed everything they caught, like snails eating the tenderest leaves.

Whether ghouls, metal trash cans, or scattered body parts, they didn’t care.

The mist was making them this way.

We needed to go to the East Coast to stop the ritual. Only by blocking the dream ritual could everything end.

But.

“We need to get out.”

Crayfield reloaded his revolver. He shared some bullets with me.

The ghouls stopped eating each other and surrounded us. As the mist barrier thinned, the ghouls became more aggressive.

Crayfield and I stood back to back.

“Well. This might not be the most appropriate time, but, Assistant. I feel like I won’t get another chance to say this.

About the steamship. From Cthulhu’s perspective, nothing could be more pathetic.

Being pierced by a mere broken steamship, not even a warship but a small vessel.

It must have been humiliating, right?”

There was nowhere to retreat or hide. We were in the middle of an intersection.

Buildings crawling chaotically blocked our escape routes.

Drooling ghouls surrounded us.

Like cats playing with cornered mice, the ghouls toyed with us.

“But my perspective is different. Let’s focus not on Cthulhu, but on Johansen, the Norwegian who rammed his ship into Cthulhu.

Of course, he went mad later. Everyone around him went mad and died laughing.

In the midst of a wicked, enormous thing howling, he didn’t run away.

He turned the ship’s helm and charged at the creature. That’s courage.

Lovecraft clearly wrote it: Johansen didn’t give up.”

The ghouls were now within 10 meters. One leap and our bodies would be torn apart.

“Courage. The stubbornness to not die easily. The courage to do something in resistance, even if you’ll eventually fall.

People have that inside them. So what if we fall in the end? Everyone dies.

But death doesn’t negate what they’ve done. Don’t you agree?

What do I care about Cthulhu with his body burst by a steamship?

To me, the magnificent courage of that insignificant human who thought to ram his ship is far more valuable.”

With a “Kyat!” one of them leaped. Reflexively, I shot it.

Luckily, I pierced its heart with one shot. It writhed, making “kik, kik” sounds, but the other ghouls didn’t eat it.

They all crouched on their hind legs.

“So, ahem, Assistant. You were truly the best. I wish I could have known you longer.”

The ghouls leaped.

Crayfield and I fired our guns. The closest ones fell, but countless more jumped behind them.

Something bright flew over the ghouls’ heads.

It was red, elongated, cylindrical, and gleaming.

Crayfield grabbed me and ducked.

With a BANG, it exploded.

The leaping ghouls were torn apart. Disgusting flesh and blood from them splattered on our hunched backs.

VROOOM!

Beyond the thinning mist, headlights shone brilliantly. The engine roared like a warhorse receiving the signal to charge.

It leaped into the air, trampling the backs of the growling buildings.

A Duesenberg Model J. A red body like a blood-soaked killer whale.

It rammed into the ghouls mercilessly as it approached us, then—

SCREECH!

It drifted, grinding the approaching ghouls. They howled under the car’s body, but the coupe trampled them relentlessly. When the noise subsided, the driver’s window rolled down.

“Hey. Assistant.”

Wild, dark eyes with a reddish tinge. Long hair with an S-curl flowing down the right side. A glove on only the left hand.

“You’ve got 4 hours and 30 minutes left.”

“Aurora Savio?”

Crayfield looked at her incredulously. Instead of answering, she thrust out the barrel of a long rifle. It was a Winchester model.

BANG!

The bullet passed over Crayfield’s shoulder and pierced a ghoul’s head.

“And the date, yeah, I admit. I was a bit nervous too, but leaving someone behind is a bit much, don’t you think?”

BANG!

“So get in!”

We scrambled into the coupe.

Crayfield tried to get into the passenger seat, but Aurora pointed a gun at him, so he got in the back, and I sat in the front.

“Are you going to war? What’s all this?”

The back seat was full of various guns, dynamite, and ammunition.

“Stop talking nonsense and hold tight. If that stuff explodes, we’re all dead.”

With a VROOM! Aurora stepped on the pedal. Ghouls howled as they ran alongside us.

“Don’t just watch, shoot them!”

Crayfield handed me a Thompson. Then he fired freely out the window.

Since the ghouls formed a kind of wall that was hard to break through, Aurora kept circling in the same spot.

“Don’t reload, just grab another gun and shoot! Haven’t you been to New York?”

Aurora drove the coupe in all directions like a mad horse, but the momentum didn’t easily diminish.

The ghouls kept pouring in endlessly, and now the buildings were approaching us too.

“Ha.”

Aurora, brushing back her hair, suddenly stepped on the pedal. And she began crushing the ghouls gathered in front.

The car shook as mangled ghouls were run over.

But Aurora, as if doing it deliberately, sought out ghouls to crush. An unpleasant tearing sound came from the front of the car.

Aurora pressed the pedal hard. The jolting car bounced up as if trying to take off.

And it landed on the back of a tilting building.

Crayfield uttered words of denial, but the Duesenberg coupe managed to climb over the building.

SCREECH!

The car’s undercarriage was scraped, but she didn’t care at all.

She just kept stepping on the pedal, again and again. Until the mist thinned considerably and people in disarray became visible.

A sign indicating 15th Avenue, adjacent to 13th Avenue, appeared.

White Hand subordinates could be seen blocking the streets. They were blocking the road with vehicles and sporadically firing bullets onto the street.

The mafia was doing what the police and city hall should have been doing. Crayfield was disgusted.

“You’re completely insane.”

“Sure, idiot. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid like you. Seeing this mess, you still thought of going in with just a revolver? You dying is one thing, but what about the Assistant?”

Aurora shouted something to her subordinates outside. They all rushed over, opened the back door, and replaced our weapons.

“I don’t give a damn what kind of shit goes down on 13th Avenue, not even as much as your dickhead, Crayfield.

But coming over to 15th Avenue? That I can’t tolerate. This is White Hand territory.

And this is nothing compared to what I’ve been through.

So, tell me how to stop this madness.

Since that idiot Crayfield makes me sick every time he opens his mouth,

Assistant, you tell me. What do you need? How can I help?”

I added that this mist was caused by sorcery and that the ritual was taking place somewhere on the East Coast.

Before I could add the qualifier that it might be hard to believe, Aurora had already started the car.

Fortunately, police and Federal Security Bureau agents were controlling the roads, and among them was a familiar face from the warehouse.

“The old whaling warehouse. Agent Scully and Professor Armitage went that way.”

A dignified-looking agent informed us. Loud explosions could be heard from the East Coast.

As if there was nothing more to hear, the Duesenberg coupe raced through the night city.