We didn’t even pull the covers back as we collapsed onto the bed. She scooted back until she was stretched out underneath me, a goddess carved in ivory, her blonde hair a fan around her head like a corona.
“Please,” she whispered, head tilting back, her body arching up against me as I moved between her legs. “Please.”
Our mutual cry as I slid into her burst from us both. We moved hard against each other. All the panic and fear of the last three days coming out in my hips against hers, my cock driving all of the tension out of me and up through her mouth as she moaned. Our pace grew faster, harder, until the bed creaked alarmingly, the cheap headboard banging against the wall.
We both came, wordless screams of pleasure and release pouring from us, mine chasing Tabitha’s. I collapsed sideways, half on her, half off, and sleep fell immediately across us like a shroud.
I can still feel her body, how soft she was against my side, the clean scent of her hair, the musk of our sweat and sex.
I can still feel her breath stirring the hairs on my chest.
That’s what I want to remember.
After waking we rested together, idly touching. I knew that our pursuers wouldn’t stop until they got whatever key they were looking for but Mrs. Barnes, Tabitha she corrected me as we lay entangled, said she didn’t know what they were talking about. The only place we hadn’t checked was his office at Miskatonic University. Perhaps the key was there.
The Miskatonic observatory was built on a tall hill behind the main campus. Her husband’s office was located there. We drove to the empty parking lot near the domed building. The wind had picked up on our way and it snatched at my rumpled suit jacket as we stepped out of the car; I had to hold my hat on my head. Having lost my gun, I took the tire iron from the trunk of the car; it was awkward but its weight would make a functional club. The lock on the exterior door was a simple affair; MU was more concerned with keeping out mischievous students than determined P.I.s. I turned on my portable torch and led the way.
Our footsteps echoed down the long, tiled hallways. The search took us up three flights of stairs and down a hall to his office. It was pristine — as if her husband had just straightened it for the night. Outside the office window the trees writhed under the wind’s onslaught, the long bare fingers of branches scratching against the glass. I went to his desk, setting the tire iron on top of it. The blotter was clear of papers and the first drawer was filled with blank stationery, pens, and bottles of ink. The second drawer contained his journal.
The first twenty or so pages described his work in general but an entry from a week ago caught my attention; it described an incredible discovery:
While normally outside the bounds of the Miskatonic’s instruments, Pluto had been visible, as had one of its moons. Strange lines dominated the surface of the moon, too regular to be natural and it struck James Barnes that it might be writing. The pages were dominated with copies of what he saw and his efforts to translate it.
The journal went on, drawing closer to when I knew the final entry would be. James wrote about hearing strange noises at night and of odd shadows that moved and shifted of their own accord, cast without any source. The journal ended with an entry from the night James disappeared. He’d managed to break the code, writing out the instructions on how to translate the strange writing he saw on the moon of Pluto, but he hadn’t yet gone back to start the job.
The journal didn’t mention his wife once.
“I think I found it!” I said, looking up.
Tabitha stood looking out the window. Her face was lit by a flickering light from the outside. I crossed the office to the window, leaving the journal open on the desk.
Our two pursuers were standing next to my car, which was on fire, the flames a wretched, sickly green. Both of them were looking up at us, the light of the flames illuminating the hateful expressions on their faces. My eyes met those of the reedy man for a moment before the two of them raced toward the building.
“Come on!” I shouted, collecting the journal and the tire iron. I grabbed Tabitha by the hand and pulled her into the hallway behind me.
We went up and climbed past another floor of offices to a broad stairwell leading up to a pair of double doors. We could hear the footfalls of the two men thundering toward us, echoing upwards menacingly. The double doors to the observatory were unlocked and we ran inside. The night sky was laid bare above us, the wind howling in through the retracted portions of the dome. Dim red lights around the circumference of the room provided barely enough light to see our way as we ran. There was no place to hide.
The doors slammed open behind us and the two men stepped into the observatory. The wind whipped off their hats. The tall man was bald, his face a mess of burns from the boiling water. The thin man’s face was a death mask, flaccid and expressionless, his lank hair immediately pushed and pulled by the wind.
“I have the key!” I shouted, holding up the book. “I have it! Tabitha, run!”
“No,” Tabitha said, taking a step to the side. I shot her a confused look at the same time as the thin man tried to jump me. Without time to think, my arm shot out on its own and the tire iron struck the side of his head with the sound like a melon hitting the floor, taking with it chunks of skin and hair. He staggered to the side and I had just a moment before the gorilla’s fist filled my vision; it hit me like a thunderbolt. I crashed to the floor, the tire iron and journal falling from my fingers, my hat flying off of my head. I lay on my back, nearly senseless but managed to crawl weakly backwards away from him but the large man wasn’t following. Both he and Tabitha were staring at the thin man who’d climbed unsteadily back to his feet. He turned to look at me and I nearly screamed.
Part of his head was missing.
What peeked out from the gap in human skin was spongy and utterly inhuman. The dull drone of insects issued forth as his mouth fell open and he raised his hands to his face. Chunks of skin fell beneath his nails, the flesh giving way like sodden newsprint, coming off in damp, bloody chunks. His fingers pulled his face apart and his eyes fell out to land like two soft-boiled eggs on the floor.
More and more of the horror was revealed — a bulbous, misshapen head lined in antennae but otherwise featureless on a thick, ringed neck. It was from this ill-conceived head, glowing an angry red as it tore itself free of its human suit, that the buzzing noises came. Two small bat-like wings, disproportionately sized to the body, snapped out from its back as it shucked the remainder of its disguise, fanning a sick, fetid smell over me. Four thick arms ending in pincers tore free from its legs and it clambered forward, claws clicking against the floor. Its color was difficult to make out in the glow of the red lights but its skin looked dull and smooth, like the flesh of a mushroom. It loomed over me and I shrank from it.
“Tabitha?” I asked weakly, struggling to my side, looking up at her, my mind refusing to make sense of the creature before me.
Her face had gone as still and lifeless as the other two men. She was reading the journal and when she looked up at me her eyes were dead. Whatever had been there was gone now.