Morbid jokes aside, all was fairly quiet in the camp as we ate, and we were about to turn in when Francis, still paranoid from his brush with the screaming flesh monstrosity, heard something out in the trees. "There's something over that way," he murmured conspiratorially, "It sounds like a truck... Please tell me you hear that..."
"It is probably a leopard, McCloud," Muuzaji said as she returned to her meal.
"No, no... He's right." Sarah leaned towards the noise, listening. "I hear it too. Like an engine idling... but it just stopped. It's off that way I think."
Spurred on, we left the camp behind to ensure all was well, and what we found only a short 15 minutes away was evidence of a jeep convoy. The muddy tracks were still fresh, leading onward through dense jungle, until it stopped at a spot too thick to drive through. There were three of them altogether, two jeeps and a smaller caddy, and in the backs we found supplies - rifles of Turkish make, boxes of enough dried goods and canisters of water to feed a small army, whole cases of boxes of bullets, and several sets of clothes. What really caught our eye, however, was the single crate that was half levered open, filled with glimmering objects. I reached a hand inside to grasp one of the objects, and knew what I held before I even pulled it out, half hoping I was wrong. I was not - in my palm was a golden inverse ankh medallion, a single red ruby in the center, just as I'd seen in Cairo and London before.
"Brotherhood cultists," I snarled, putting the medallion back in disgust. "At least twelve to fifteen of them if I had to guess. But why are they here?"
"They are likely journeying to the Sacred Mountain," Badru replied. "It is to be the site of the final ritual, when the sun is blotted from the sky - and there will be many more followers of the Red God, by any other name."
"And you're leading us into it?" I hissed. "Why the hell didn't you say anything about it earlier so we could prepare?!"
"Because you did not ask," he responded, smiling mischievously as he continued poking around the back of the truck. I had to admit, he got me there - after all, I hid my little mist-spawning trick from the others for a year; didn't want them to think I was a freak or something. "Birdman, I am not familiar with these boots I have found. Can you identify them, perhaps?"
"Wait, what sort of boots?" I asked, but that question was answered soon enough when he pulled out a set of well-worn old cowboy boots, covered expertly from the rain but scuffed all to hell. My ears burned with old anger and I clenched my fists. Oh, I knew those boots alright. I'd know them anywhere...
"Walter fucking Kimble..." The words were a snarl in my throat. That no good snake, how dare he show his face again, especially after what the others said he did in Shanghai? I felt Sarah's hand on my shoulder as she tried to calm me down, but the rage came unbidden until she spoke.
"Clayton, Muuzaji just pointed out to me there's a path through the foliage ahead where it looks like someone chopped their way through," was her reassuring statement, and she pointed to the trail. "They probably went through there, but according to her, there's maybe fifteen people plus Kimble. It's suicide to go after him now, we have to find another way around..."
She was right, of course, and I dropped it. Besides, I knew what nuisance he'd been to the others as well as me, and felt validated knowing they understood my rage. It wasn't long before we came across the alternate route we sought anyway. It became obvious exactly what the cult and Kimble were seeking here when we entered the small clearing - in the center, within a grove of baobabs, was a ruined temple complex of greyish-brown stone, unspeakably ancient and overgrown with flora as the jungle had reclaimed its own. It was dark and strangely inviting as we approached, the stone walkway and cleverly carved archways magnificent to behold.
There was only one problem, and unfortunately it was a large one - all the baobabs in the clearing seemed dead, had strangely familiar blackish, rubbery bark, and had knots in their trunks that looked suspiciously like closed eyes... The dread pooled in us, thick as molasses, as we crept slowly towards the complex to investigate. Francis was the most nervous, murmuring under his breath and making soft baa-ing noises like a demented sheep.
"What on earth are you doing?" Badru asked, perplexed.
"Speaking to the trees," replied the pilot, which only confused the cultist more. There was a beat, a look of concern, and then he spoke.
"You are crazy, Mr. McCloud," he said, shaking his head and continuing onward, "And trust me, I have seen crazy."
"Clayton, take a look at this," Francis pointed out, shaking me from my thoughts. He was motioning to a little bent and gnarled tree, with a rope leading downward into a pit. "This has to be how they got down..."
"Considering the rope ladder down appears rotten, yes," said Muuzaji as I drew closer. "Should we climb down, McCloud?"
"Must we climb down, Chief?" His eyes were filled with the kind of paranoid worry of a man expecting a nest of angry cobras to be around the corner.
"Never know unless you find out," I replied, already testing the rope's sturdiness. It held, so one after another, we crept down, myself first and Enala last. Once we all got back on solid ground, we got our bearings and looked around in this new hallway with more rooms to explore.
What we found down there was a much larger temple complex than we could have ever anticipated. Heavy stone walls covered in creeping roots dug downwards into the earth, and even here there was life - mostly leafless, but still life. To one side, we perceived a great room with many table-like objects, and to the other further down we saw what seemed to be the door to a darkened and smaller room; details could not be discerned. The hallway continued forward, and we could see the door to one other room before it bent sharply right. And all around us was bleak darkness, barely cut into by our flashlights and lanterns. In other words, I was right in my element. Taking immediate charge, we split into two - Enala and Muuzaji exploring the closest room, and Francis and I looking into the second-closest.
What was in the second-closest room was incredibly strange. It was some sort of prayer room, with rugs and small altars to kneel before, but what really bothered me was the statue of the temple's goddess. It was something like a Baphomet goat, something like a tree, and something like a mixture between male and female. It had far too many sheep-like eyes, and several cloven-hoofed feet. It had a massively pregnant belly, it squatted in a lewd and shameless manner, and despite its more feminine characteristics had a massive phallus as well as female genitalia. Worst yet, these were not the only... humanoid sexual organs, for the sake of not being crude, that it had - there were smaller versions of them just about everywhere on the figure's body.
The fact it was some sort of perverse fertility deity was obvious to me, but it still turned my stomach to look at for some reason. I shudder to even describe it now, but even my response is better than McCloud's was - he took one look at the thing and curled up, pale and sobbing, in the corner. I think his abused and battered mind just couldn't take looking at the awful thing, and I don't blame him - I think he might be shell-shocked, but I'm no shrink or anything. Either way, I kept my composure and left to get the others, and was nearly startled by three more figures coming down the hall.
"Sorry!" Sarah whispered apologetically. Ludwig and Badru looked on from behind her, the former similarly apologetic while the latter kept his serious look.
"Don't do that!" I hissed. "What did you find?
"Well, there is a massive gate in the back of the temple, near the thicker area of the jungle," said Ludwig, "But we are not sure where it leads, and in all honesty I do not want to know. Where are the others?"
"The ladies are in the other room over there, and Francis is wibbling in a corner," I replied. "I found an altar room; that's where he is, but you probably shouldn't go in there... it's a bit disturbing."
Immediately, the doctor pushed past me and into the altar room before I could stop him. He cried in alarm as he saw the idol, then silence. I entered to find both him and Francis commiserating in the corner, and ended up dragging the both of them out myself. Idiot. At this point, Enala and Muuzaji returned, looking shaken. When I asked what was wrong, Muuzaji told me they had discovered the room with the many table-like objects was a massive area for women in labor - and judging by the bloodstains they found, most of them did not survive. Great, more baby horrors, just what everyone needed. Enala had, while Muuzaji investigated the birthing room, snuck further down and found that the third room was some sort of burial shrine. The corpses, she said, were still there, and the vines and roots had even grown through their bones. It was almost eerie, yet strangely peaceful. I instantly recognized it from the description as a sort of catacomb for the priests of the temple... but the priests of what, I dared not ask. We continued further, and I described the idol I had seen.
"I recognize this place now," Badru said in response. "M'weru comes here to pray on occasion... but it is not the Red God she prays to here. She only brings with her a handful of females of our people, but I know not why and do not recognize the goddess you mentioned. Perhaps... is M'weru betraying our people for a false god? Is this why He is displeased?"
I motioned for everyone to be quiet as we rounded the corner. There was a door before us, slightly cracked open, and inside was some sort of treasure room. None had even remotely been touched save for a small metal box with some sort of lock, which had been bent in an effort to get it open. Why wouldn't they have taken the treasure more readily available? What in that box was so important? None of the others had any real skill picking locks, so I took the wheel and Enala followed as backup. Sadly, the box had been too tampered with and the lock too broken to simply pick, so both Enala and I took the brute force method and slammed it with nearby rocks and rubble. It easily popped open then, revealing the strangest wooden mask I'd ever seen from this region. It was like no spiritual ritual mask I had ever seen from Kenya, and had eye holes bathed in deep permanent shadow. An area where a scraggly grass beard had likely rotted off was towards the bottom, and the whole thing was carved of a wood darker than any ebony I'd ever seen. Badru's eyes went wide as he saw it, struck with awe.
"The Mask of Hayama," he murmured, taking it from my hands and looking it over. "This... this artifact, any of my people would kill to have it. It connects us to our god, more deeply than any prayer... With it, we can see what only our leaders can witness..."
"Well, no wonder the Brotherhood wants it," I responded, taking the object and placing it in my bag. "And if the Brotherhood wants it, we can't let them have it, can we?" To cover my tracks, I put some rubble and gold in the box, then rigged the lock to make it look untampered with. I was about to return to my fellows when I - and they - heard footsteps, and men conversing with each other. We hastily hid wherever we could find, and listened in. I recognized one of the voices as the southern drawl of Walter Kimble, albeit more paranoid and cowed than I had ever heard...
"H-he told me it was here. I know it is! It's gotta be, th-these dreams..."
"Of course He did. He promised, yes? What else did He promise you, Mr. Kimble?"
"Th-that He'd end the torture. He said, 'Walter, ya find it, ya give it to Mudar, I'll leave ya be.' He promised..."
"Of course He promised... after all, it is only a favor. He is your friend... and we of course do favors for our friends, yes?"
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Kimble and several cultists were here, working together, and Kimble wasn't the one in charge? Last I heard, he'd gone nuts and unleashed some sort of demon on a businessman after Nyarlathotep's schemes drove the rogue over the edge. Now, he was apparently this other guy's pawn, the sneaky bastard. After they entered the treasure room, we crept from hiding and discussed, quietly, what we heard while staying in the burial room, out of sight, and what I learned from the others astonished me.
"That was Mudar, from the plane!" Dr. Hildebrand hissed, storm-grey eyes hardened. "We should never have let him go!"
"Of course the bastard betrayed us," Francis added, taking his pistol out. "I say we take care of it right now, while we have the advantage."
In that instant, as he stepped forward, Muuzaji's hand flew to the pilot's, and Sarah moved to prevent the paranoid man's actions. "McCloud, have you gone crazy?" The smuggler's eyes widened in concern as she spoke. "You will draw the entire camp above if you shoot, and then we will all be as good as dead!" This was apparently enough to convince Francis not to run in with guns blazing, but at that moment we all heard something from the treasure room that chilled us...
"The box has been tampered with! There is someone else here, Mr. Kimble... search the perimeter, I will deal with this myself..."
Oh shit. Oh shit. Now they were on to us. We wasted no time in scrambling to the exit and climbing up our rope we'd left, but unfortunately the noise drew them to us. I can't begin to tell you how far up my throat my heart was the whole time, knowing two rivals - one with magic to boot - were on our tails, but up the rope we went and fast. By the time they reached us, I had started to pull the rope up. God, the angry look on Mudar's face, if a stare could kill I'd be dead. Kimble just kind of looked at me astonished, his reaction turning to horror as he tried to scramble up the decayed rope ladder on the side and it failed under his grip.
"Byrd, for the love of God, lemmie outta here! W-we're buddies, right? N-no hard feelings?"
In response, I merely cut the rope, threw it down, and then also tossed down some nearby debris and a box of tacks from my pack. "You want out of there?" I murmured, relishing the irony, "Build it yourself."
With that, we moved to leave, but then we heard footsteps from outside the temple, heading towards us. At least fifteen sets of them. Damn everything, their yelling had attracted the rest of their cronies now too! This was when Francis had the brilliant idea to use some dynamite to rig a rope trap for them, crushing the cultists under stone. Long story short, the trap was placed, and we stood well out of the way as the first wave rushed in towards us. The explosion rocked the room, but unfortunately... they were too smart for it. It blasted a few of them, killing them, but not the majority, and that meant there were still twelve or so angry cultists running towards us with scimitars and maces. As if that wasn't enough, we then heard branches rustling outside. A lot of branches, followed by clopping, hoofed footsteps...
Seeing no other place to hide, I made the empirical if somewhat cowardly choice, and ran for it into the massive black hole in the wall. Surely its tunnel led into the jungle, and that would prove excellent cover. The others didn't question, because at this point when they see me running, they know better than to not follow. Deep into that inky blackness we ran, until the light was absent and we had to use flashlights and lanterns once more. When we did, we were astonished at what we found - a vast, dark forest of thick black trees, so tall we couldn't see the canopies above us and so thick together there was no moonlight shining through their branches. The trunks were like redwoods increased to gigantic proportions; the bark glistened with a strange and obscene slickness and the ground beneath held absolutely no foliage to speak of. Thin and ropy black vines hung down from above, occasionally stirred by a breeze we couldn't feel, as if something clung to them just out of sight. There was no sound, not even wildlife... and we all shuddered as we concluded this was most certainly not any jungle we had ever seen.
Then, Enala's eyes went wide as she looked to the ground with her lantern, noticing something awry, and she would not speak, only point. We followed her finger to the base of the tree, watching as its bark split into something resembling no less than a massive, cloven hoof. In fact, all of the trees had the same appearance. Alarmed, I directed my flashlight beam up one of the "trunks", and what I saw... It wasn't a tree, that's for damned sure, but something like a nebulous foggy fleshy mass of tendrils like an octopus, and teats like a cow, and genitals both male and female, and bizarre black bark-like skin. The thing was massive and clearly pregnant with... something, and I immediately connected it to the horrific statue in the temple. Francis began to stammer something in panicked recognition, something that sounded like "Shrub-Nigeria", and we were all dead silent as the thing did not, and would not, move.
"Great Gods above, the Goat-Mother," Badru murmured before lapsing into a string of what I assumed were prayers in rapid Swahili.
"I... I think we should leave now," Sarah squeaked fearfully, and we all began to back away down the tunnel again, unsure of how any of us had kept our wits in the face of such immensity. We heard the cultists coming for us, but so shocked were we that we didn't run. Instead, we took to the alcoves and let them rush by us, into that endless forest that was no forest. Thank every fucking god we did, because not long after we heard all twelve of the unfortunate bastards scream, the sound of gunfire, and then sickening squelching and stomping noises followed by long, aggressive, and heavy-sounding bleats like from some hellish goat. Poor bastards had woken that damned mother-thing up, and if there's one thing I've learned in all my years alive, it's never to bother a sleeping, pregnant woman - monstrous creature or otherwise.
Of course it was too good to fucking last. Anyone who's read their fair share of adventure novels or comics, or been to enough silent picture shows, would know that. The easy times never last for the good guys, if we even are still the good guys, especially where gods and monsters are involved. So it was with us, too, because as we went to leave that forsaken temple and its terrible secrets, we heard a strange, squelching noise, like someone putting their hands in a jello mold and squeezing.
"Uh, did you guys hear that?" I stopped moving and began to search for the sound.
"Hear what?" Enala looked at me in confusion, and the others followed suit as I turned to face them.
Sarah gave a sudden cry of fear and pointed behind me, and I whipped around just in time to see something glistening and slimy fleshy pink crawling from out of the pit, slowly but surely. It was like nightmarish marmalade to see creeping towards us, snapping more and more strands of itself outward to grab branches and vines, but the true horror didn't hit us until we saw what it was hauling out of the pit. It was Mudar, but he was coated in stringy, fungal strands of the stuff, like the mycelia of a particularly perverse mushroom. It clung to him like spider webbing, streaming in filaments from his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears - and when he stood, and saw our response to the monstrous ability he'd somehow acquired, he turned to us, smiling wickedly.
"Why the discouraged look, my friends?" He sneered, the grotesque substance pulsing horribly as he chuckled. "Nyarlathotep gives many gifts to His faithful, and I assure you, this one is very much painless... Would you like to see for yourselves?"
We did not, in fact, want to see for ourselves what being attached to a slime mold felt like, and hit the fucker with everything we could muster. Even Badru was having none of it, I could see fear in his otherwise hard and cold eyes for the first time even as he slashed the filaments to bits. It was Sarah, God fucking bless her, who managed to finally put a bullet in that monster's brain, ending Mudar and leaving him nothing more than a heap of flesh for the strange fungus to consume.
"I-Is he dead?" Enala whimpered, cowed for the first time I have ever seen. Her eyes looked the immobile mass over.
"Yes," Badru asserted, wiping the sweat from his brow. "Skin-Weed. The heathen Brotherhood One had Skin-Weed... it is a terrible bargain made with the Red God to obtain such a thing, but those desperate faithful often make it..."
I had a lot of questions for him at that point, but was suddenly interrupted by a rustling in the bushes. Of course, we turned, guns at the ready, only to discover a very bedraggled-looking Walter Kimble stumbling from the brush. How the hell he got out of the pit, I had no idea, but he took one look at our guns, and fell to his knees, begging for his life.
"P-please, no... d-don't shoot me, I swear, I was jes' after the mask!"
"The mask?" I parroted, smiling a bit as I reached into my pack, pulling it free. "You mean this?"
His childish grabby motions indicated his need, and his words only solidified it. "Byrd... c'mon, now... gi-give me it, stop playin' games... I need it..." Kimble snatched for it, and I pulled it away. "If I don't have it, He won't leave me be, He said I had ta give it to Mudar... or... or put it on. Please, let me have it, He won't let me sleep fer the dreams... He whispers to me in my sleep... He puts me through hell every night..."
"Let's just take a moment here, Kimble, to appreciate the irony of the situation." I stepped forth, smirking. "How many times did I ask you for help, and you betrayed me? How many times did you sneak around and beat me to the punch before I could do anything about it, then laugh in my face? Look where you are now, Kimble. How the mighty have fallen... but you want the mask so damn bad? Go on, try it..."
I threw him the object, and he fumbled for it as it clattered to the ground. It took five seconds for him to put it on, ecstatic, and I'll admit that I was curious myself as to what would happen. But then something bizarre occurred - he began to panic and tried to pull the mask off, but couldn't. His panicked eyes glanced around as their pupils expanded to fit the infinite shadows in the eye sockets, and then finally, he stopped and slumped over. His terrified little murmurs will haunt me to my dying day: "No... the spheres... the spheres of time... please, I don't wanna... no! Not that! Not the Gate, please! Not Him!"
He screamed, unable to do anything to save his shattered mind from whatever dreadful thing he was seeing, and his hair turned shock white from root to tip. Then, quite suddenly, the mask finally unlatched from the shrieking man's face and fell inert to the floor. Walter Kimble then stood up, murmuring to himself, unable to coherently talk at all, and wandered off madly into the brush before anyone could stop him.
"Mein Gott, he has gone completely insane," Dr. Hildebrand said, observing the shell of a human leave. "What on earth did he see?"
"That is what it does," Badru replied, picking the object up and handing it back to me. "It allows us to see our God more fully... and, to see other Gods like Him more fully. Not everyone can handle it."
"I can see that," Enala murmured, her gaze glancing about. "Bird-man, have you noticed something... odd about the plant life recently? I do not know much about these plants, but they seem to have... shed their leaves and are proceeding as if the season has changed..."
"What do you mean?" Sarah asked. "We've only been out here a few weeks, it can't be changing already..."
"African weather is fickle, and can alter quickly." Muuzaji stepped forward and observed one of the leaves. "These plants do not flower until January, Enala is correct. Something is not right. And have you noticed the stars? They are strange for this time of year, and the moon has gone..."
Curious, I checked on my pocketwatch, and noticed something curious. The time was the same, but the date dials were all wrong. They read as January when I knew it was September. Did something get broken back in that temple, or had something else even more bizarre happened to us?
"Francis, is... is your watch broken too?" I asked, looking over at him as he looked down at his in alarm, then looked back up.
"I-If yours says it's January 16th... then no," he whimpered quietly. "No... it's not."
There was no way. No way it could be that late... unless...? I turned on my heels and walked back to the cultists' camp. What I found was surprising and alarming - the tents and firepits hadn't been used in months! The jeeps had rusted out from the moisture, and the food was moldered. The fabric was faded, torn, and mossy... Two months, I estimated, and then it all clicked. How Kimble had escaped the pit so quickly. How Mudar was able to have altered himself somehow. How we had found nothing really changed about the temple itself, and how the position of the stars and the moon had changed... We had somehow gone forward in time, somehow accelerated ourselves by three months - all from being in that void with that horrible goat-like god for only a few minutes. There was no other conclusion that made sense, and I went back to the others, speechless and confounded.
"That's impossible," Sarah muttered, dumbfounded. "Impossible... but, if we really did get brought forward by three months, and it really is January 16th, that means..."
"The eclipse," I croaked, throat dry, and the dread on everyone's faces was obvious. The horizon gleamed with the rising sun, rising like a great orange eye over the now so very close Mountain of the Black Wind. Only a few more hours and we would be there... Only a few more hours left to prevent something more hideous than death from coming to earth. To win Nyarlathotep's twisted game.
We don't have any more time left. We have to hurry. I barely had time to write this entry, and that's while we've been on constant move. The Mountain is before us, we've got no other choice. We have what we have. I just hope to God it's all enough.
I hope to God it's enough.
-- Clayton Byrd, The End is Nigh (07:00 AM, January 16th, 1929)