A dense gray fog rolled in, obscuring buildings and sky and leaving only vague outlines of the city’s structures. As the sun danced across particulates in the air, Burton swore he saw a massive shape hovering in the distance, like some strange airship. It was held aloft by a huge ovoid mass, like a giant balloon, and had a long gondola suspended underneath. Burton squinted into the fog, eager to make out additional details, but it was gone.
Someone bumped into him, and he realized he had stopped in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. He stared at who had hit him and saw a short fellow with enormous black wings growing from his back. Burton blinked and the wings were gone.
Burton’s heart beat rapidly in his chest as the sensation he’d experienced that morning came on stronger than before. He moved through the crowd of people and sought refuge against the dirty brick facade of a building that stood on the corner of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane. Burton gripped the brickwork and stared up the street at a mind-numbing array of people and conveyances transposed over the familiar street traffic he knew. An elephant lumbered up the street, a gilded litter sitting atop its back containing a swarthy, officious-looking man with a thick mustache and decked out in flowing blue silk. An impossibly large turban sat atop his head. A man moved passed Burton wearing a long leather coat with flames embossed upon it. He was tall and thin, with a gray mustache and long beard. A tall stovepipe perched on his head with brass-rimmed goggles wrapped tightly around the brim. In a moment these apparitions faded, leaving behind the usual London scenery.
“Bismillah,” Burton murmured. Pull yourself together!
The weird tableau was gone, but it once again left Burton with the feeling that each reality he had witnessed existed at once, one on top of the other, like colored plates of glass stacked upon each other. The street vendor selling apples across the street was also a tall, muscled warrior, clad only in sandals and a loincloth, a bronze sword hanging from a leather scabbard upon his broad back. The young woman stepping down from the carriage near where Burton stood was also an Atlantean priestess in a flowing robe of white silk, uttering some mysterious rite in an ancient and long-forgotten tongue. The thought that there were other places, other Londons, somehow co-existing with this one, was pervasive and all-encompassing. It made him sick with terror.
Burton squeezed his eyes shut and gagged, thankful that he hadn’t yet eaten. He began muttering a Sufi meditation technique, which helped calm his jangled nerves. When he thought he had a handle on things he reopened his eyes, pleased to find that everything had once again returned to normal.
But for how long?
Burton hailed a carriage and had the driver take him to the meeting place of the Theosophic Society. If he was lucky, he could still catch Swinburne and Goforth as they left the meeting.
7. A Gun for Shoggoths
Burton loitered about the entrance to the Theosophic Society, which met in a white-columned building near Piccadilly Circus. He received wary glances from the doorman and departed, moving to an outdoor cafe across the street. The policeman Abberline had put on Goforth was nowhere to be seen. After half an hour the doors opened, and a group of men and women spewed forth from the open portal. Taking up the rear were Swinburne and Goforth, who looked even more chummy than they had when they had entered. Burton had no idea what sort of discussion they had, but it appeared as if it agreed with them. They laughed and smiled, nodding at some of the others as the throng broke up and everyone went their separate ways, walking or hailing carriages and hansoms, which seemed to suddenly appear at the curb as soon as the doors opened. Swinburne and Goforth eschewed transportation and instead walked east toward Coventry Street, nearing Burton’s position. He pretended to be interested in the newspaper someone had left behind on the table as they passed, both talking in a strange language Burton, for all his linguistic skill, couldn’t identify.
Burton set the paper down and waited a beat for them to pass by, then got up and followed them through a maze of streets. So intent were they on conversing in that queer tongue of theirs and gawking at the city’s architecture that they failed to register Burton’s presence.
As Burton listened to them, he picked up on something even more strange. They weren’t fully utilizing the peculiar language they spoke to one another, but instead peppered it with English. Burton picked up random words like ‘maker’, ‘building’ and ‘watch.’ It was almost as if Swinburne and this Goforth had developed a bizarre pidgin dialect, and Burton feared he knew why.
The two men turned right and down a narrow lane lined with shops—a candle maker’s, a haberdasher’s, and, down at the far end, a watchmaker’s. Swinburne and Goforth strode purposefully toward this establishment, and Burton stopped to stare into the window of the candle shop, where a tradesman practiced his art with consummate skill, smiling at Burton while hovering over a vat of boiling wax.
Burton waited until the two men had entered the watch shop before turning his attention toward them, moving cautiously to the window of the watchmaker’s and peering carefully inside. That was when he heard a noise he had hoped he would never hear again.
It was the unmistakable oily sliding sound of a shoggoth. Burton turned and glanced to his right, down a narrow alley between two shops. The blasphemous blob was gurgling toward him, sliding along the cobbles, its repugnant iridescence catching the light and highlighting the skeletal remains of vermin trapped within its undulating matrix. Gripped by surprise and fear, Burton failed to act before the loathsome entity had excreted from the narrow alley and interposed itself between Burton and the way he had come.
“Bismillah!” Burton swore, and broke into a run, diving into another narrow alley across from the watch shop. Burton huffed, in a panic. He had never seen a shoggoth out in broad daylight. The implications were dire. But he could only worry about that if he lived to tell the tale. Burton ran for his life, emerging at the far end of the narrow passage into a quiet and dingy side street, not a single solitary soul in evidence. He glanced behind him and caught a flash of pulsing ooze as the shoggoth slid easily up the alley, its bulk conforming to every ledge, every cornice, every bit of debris that would slow down a biped held upright by an internal skeleton.
Burton dashed to the right, looking around frantically for anyone who might be able to offer any assistance. He knew there was nowhere he could run that the shoggoth could not catch him. The amorphous blob could slide easily into any crevice or keyhole. But in his panicked mind, he thought his only hope was to find solace in some other, some group. Perhaps if he attracted attention to it, the shoggoth would slink away.
Burton pounded on doors and shouted up at second story windows. But no movement was evident behind the dark glass, and no one opened up to allow him entry. He moved to a brown brick building at the end of the lane, pounding on the solid wooden door there. At his surprise it opened inward, causing Burton to fall into the dim portal beyond. He fell against a large barrel chest and looked up to see a bristly black beard and two wide staring eyes. Familiar eyes.
“Challenger!”