Except Kurt Russell would probably charge the guy yelling. The man alone. Guns blazing.
A stupid, stupid plan.
Except I don’t have any better ideas.
There’s a broken chunk of wood on the floor, one end a jagged ruin of splinters. It looks sharp.
I grab it, brace myself, burst from cover. I level my weapon. I charge.
As it turns out, the key to a good battle cry is timing. Too early and, well…
Nyarlathotep turns, swings his arm from Kayla to me. Kayla finally lies still. And then—
Fear breaking over my skin like water, drenching me, drowning me. I can see it all. The inevitability. The end. He’s here. Our harbinger. Our prophet. Our Nyarlathotep. He comes bearing this truth: this world collapsing under its own ragged weight, burying us in flesh and concrete; we will chew on our friends, our families—a desperate, animal need to consume, to feed, to survive. An utterly ridiculous, utterly futile urge.
I’m standing inches from him. Just standing. Weeping. Knowing how foolish this all is, how much madness it is. I stare at the wood in my hands. Better I just end my own life with it. Better I chew off the hands holding the wood. Better I claw out my eyes. Better I gut myself and feast on my own—
“Ooph!”
Breath bursts out of me. Something heavy and hard colliding with my back, sending me stumbling, staggering towards, towards…
The wood strikes Nyarlathotep’s gut. It slashes through the robes. Reams of cloth without end. Still the weight drives me forward, drives the wood in. And it feels I’m crossing some terrible boundary, as if I’m wounding myself. Then: a glimpse of skin—black, yellow, green with pus. I gag, and then the wood carries on, and on, and in, and the figure, the god before me, Nyarlathotep, convulses, heaves, collapses. And the wood goes on, and in, and before my eyes, he dies.
A feeling like a whip crack inside my skull. And Jesus, did I… was I…
There’s a pile of red rags on the floor next to me. I’ve fallen down. Kayla is on top of me. I’m holding a charred stump of blackened wood.
“Get the feck off me.” Kayla stands up dusting herself off, blinking.
“What did you—?” I ask. Questioning Kayla is always tricky. I’m always concerned the answer will involve her gutting me.
“In my head.” Kayla blinks a few more times. “Think I was trying to stop you from killing him.” She squints at me. “Normally better at stopping people.”
I am afraid I cannot sympathize with her injured professional pride. Instead I shake my head, try to clear the shrieking madness Nyarlathotep put in there. And I see the rags on the floor. Empty. Dead. Nyarlathotep… concluded.
I smile. Because that’s an ending I can really enjoy.
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #6 :: Sweet Dreams
Christ Church College, Oxford, England
Some days I really get the vastness of the universe. I’m tiny. It’s big. I don’t matter. I get it.
Then, some days, you save the world—you know, for example you close an interdimensional portal infecting the world with madness, kill an avatar of fear called Nyarlathotep when armed only with a bit of two-by-four—and you think the world should really pay more attention.
But no. Instead, Oxford remains a twisted fun house version of itself and the populace remains howling at the moon.
Kayla—my sword-wielding partner in government-sponsored world saving—and I exchange a look.
I put a finger to my ear. “Tabitha,” I say to our handler back at MI37, “any chance you know what’s going on?”
“Dimensional portal’s definitely closed,” Tabby says. “QED Nyarlathotep’s not as dead as he looks.”
Twenty or so of Nyarlathotep’s cultists are scattered around us waiting for the concussion to kick in. Except one of them starts to laugh.
“You really thought just stabbing him would work?” He laughs harder.
And to be honest I rather had. But I don’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing me admit it.
“Crap,” says Tabitha. “Outside of his home reality. Can’t kill him.”
Wait… Now we realize this?
The cultist is laughing harder now. “And you closed the portal.”
So we can’t even get him. “Oh bugger and balls.”
“Just point the damn phone,” Tabitha tells me. So I dial the office, and I point it, and there are a few half-heard words. And then time and space bend. Like a bubble rising through viscous liquid.
“Ta-dah,” Tabitha says.
The cultist stops laughing.
It should be a satisfying moment, except—
“Wait,” I say. “We seriously have to go into a dimension representing humanity’s collective fears and madness?”
“Well,” Tabitha says. “Something about beaches. The travel brochure said.”
It’s not exactly sporting, but I relieve some of the stress by kicking the cultist in the head and sending him back to the dark sleep of unconsciousness.
“Also,” Tabitha adds, “top him, get back, and close the thing in thirty minutes or less. Otherwise permanent world buggering. OK?”
Perfect. Just bloody perfect.
“Tick tock.”
I brace myself and step through.
Another time. Another place.
As it turns out, humanity is afraid of pretty weird stuff. At least that’s the only reason I can think of that a giant version of Snuggles the teddy bear is trying to kill me with a meat cleaver.
We’re in something that looks like an airport terminal. Stepping through the portal put me six feet above the floor. With a feeling like slipping out of jello, I fell to the floor. And there was Snuggles. Six feet tall, eye buttons dangling on threadbare strings, a cleaver the size of my chest balanced in one hand.
“Passport!” he giggles and takes another swing at my head. I duck. He buries the blade into a cement pillar. He tugs it free with an adorable chuckle. A stitch bursts in his arm at the effort. Stuffing spills loose.
This is typically the point at which I cower and wait for Kayla to carry out violence that makes her seem more like a walking missile launcher than most people you meet. Except, when I look over Kayla is sitting with her hands over her eyes, screaming.
Seriously? This is Kayla’s personal hell? Really?
Snuggles takes another swipe at my head. I duck, roll, come up behind him. Snuggles wrestles the cleaver out the floor. Another stitch pops while he giggles madly.
And I am not particularly good at this whole fighting thing, but at times like this you do what you have to do.
I kick at his loose arm. More stuffing spills. I kick again.
Snuggles looks back at me, his cotton line drawn up in a smile. “Playtime is over,” he says as sweetly as can be. He heaves on the cleaver. I kick one last time.
Another stitch pops. Snuggles heaves. The whole joint gives way. He staggers back uttering things no beloved children’s character should ever say, still laughing between the curses.
At this point, opportunity and the cleaver are same thing so I grab them both. I stagger under the massive weight. Snuggles’ detached arm still clings to the cleaver. I swing madly, spin round and round.
And then the blade buries itself in Snuggles’ gut, and he chuckles one last time and lies still.
I stand up sweating hard. And now would be a great time for me to snap Kayla out of it. Because I can see the Care Bears coming and they have machine guns.
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #7 :: The I in Team
Every time I fight unspeakable horrors from alternate realities, I am reminded of the value of teamwork. Say, for example, that I am forced into a dimension of fear and madness to act as the government-sponsored assassin of its avatar, Nyarlathotep, then back-up is about my favorite thing in the world.
So now, forced into a dimension of fear and madness and acting as the government-sponsored assassin of its avatar, Nyarlathotep, it’s really not an awesome time for my partner to lose her shit.