Can I believe that what I saw that night was real and not just fantasy?
Just what I saw in my old dreams
Were they reflections of my warped mind staring back at me?
'Cause in my dreams it's always there
The evil face that twists my mind and brings me to despair...
- Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast
I'd love to say that, but I'd be wrong, because things are never that simple, are they?
We hid in the foliage that was on the edge of the jungle, watching warily. Down came my binoculars as Chief spoke up, voice as low as the breeze brushing the tops of our heads.
"There are too many of them," she said. "We cannot make direct assault... but we may only have one chance at this."
"There's a few hours left before the eclipse even begins," I replied, swallowing hard. "We need to break up their ranks. Like back in Australia, with the dynamite."
"But we have only a few sticks," Dr. Hildebrand asserted, but Clayton hushed him.
"Hell if that's ever stopped me before... us before," was his response. "Like he said, only one shot, and if we get caught, we're dead..."
It was then that Sarah spoke up, pointing our attention to the milling cultists. "Wait a second," she murmured. "Look at them. They're all in cult attire, that means we just need to disguise ourselves similarly... I bet if we do that, we'd be able to sneak in easily..."
"I may be able to assist with that," offered Badru, already stepping back into the jungle to put on his own cult regalia. "Did you by chance take some of those medallions, from back at the temple?"
As luck would have it, we had - Clayton, clever treasure hunter he is, grabbed several of them, and we still had tarps and other materials we could use. Drawing upon our resources and knowledge, and with Badru's help in the matter, we pretty quickly created some passable cultist garments. Most of us were attired as Brotherhood cultists from London or Cairo, while Enala thought to disguise herself as a Sand Bat cultist and Badru helped Chief create an acceptable Bloody Tongue cultist headpiece. I have to admit, they were remarkably realistic. The real cultists would never even think twice, so long as we were careful... And so, dressed to the nines for the party before us, we wandered quite confidently and easily into the mass of lunatics around the base of the Mountain.
When I say there were thousands of cultists, I mean it - every single cult represented, every walk of life and every ethnicity. It was like Muslims gathering at Mecca, but far more bizarre in attire. It was a genuine shock, knowing what we knew about these guys, to see them all in their own camps speaking to each other so nonchalantly, unafraid of retribution. We heard groups singing and chatting in a variety of languages and even sharing breakfast together, as if this were any other camping trip or safari group. There was one exception - the Brotherhood and Bloody Tongue camps seemed to stay far away from each other, only tersely conversing. One got the impression it was an uneasy ceasefire between the two groups, like that Christmas my buddy told me about on the front lines where the Germans and our guys had stopped fighting for one day. Except this wasn't Christmas, and they only agreed because they shared the same god.
It was about at this point Badru and Muuzaji took Enala with them to the Bloody Tongue camp, while the rest of us split off into the Brotherhood camp. And it was there, deep in the center of the Black Pharaoh's worshipers, we saw a familiar face - smug, cold, and condescendingly chatting with a few disparate Bloated Woman worshipers, the face of Sir Aubrey Penhew himself. Similarly, he saw us, but seemed to not recognize us in the slightest. Perhaps he'd never gotten a good glimpse of us back on Grey Dragon Island. Despite this, he beckoned us over, and a few of the cult members made way for us to settle in.
"Welcome, brothers and sisters!" he cried jovially, clearly in his element. "It's truly a joy to see so many of us here, though I must say... you lot look familiar... Have I met you before somewhere?"
"Certainly not," Sarah responded, smiling mysteriously, "But then, Our Lord works in mysterious ways. Who can tell if we have met before or not? Perhaps it is serendipity on His part...."
"Indeed he does," agreed Penhew, and he turned to address the Chinese cultists. Sarah picked up on their conversation and joined in, being fluent in Chinese herself. The cultists seemed genuinely surprised, but not shocked, and eagerly welcomed her into the discussion. Meanwhile, Clayton had engaged a man from Cairo in conversation, leaving both Dr. Hildebrand and I a bit left out, unable to understand a word. Well, at least until the Doc found a fellow German-speaker to chat with amongst the London Brotherhood members. To this day, I have no damn idea what any of them were talking about, but it sure as hell has inspired me to take up a second language.
One Londoner seemed to take pity on me, and confided that he had no idea what any of these people were saying either. We talked a bit about current events and how he came to discover Nyarlathotep over some sort of portable meat pies he'd brought, in all respects making the whole thing feel like it was some sort of strange conversation at a coffee bar. I must say, I wasn't expecting the dawn of earth's potential final day to be so... nonchalant, or to have breakfast with one of the very madmen we were all trying to stop, but there it was. If anything's taught me about this past year, it's never to expect anything to be exactly as it seems.
The openness and connection couldn't last forever. Penhew soon left, and that left us alone to ourselves with a few cultists listening in. It was around 10 AM that Badru and Chief returned to us, the two of them followed by a set of burly-looking Bloody Tongue cultists wielding pranga.
"They request us upon the Mountain at once," Chief said tersely, and pressed a piece of what looked like paper into my hand. It was in fact bark, and scrawled there in the simple Morse code cipher we so often used to send messages to each other was a message, one I instantly translated.
B HAS PLAN FOLLOW US, it read, and I nodded at the others who seemed to comprehend and followed. As we continued walking, it soon became apparent that they were leading us up towards the Mountain, then towards a certain ledge set into it, near invisible from the ground. It sloped upwards through the twisted greenery until we came to a brush-obscured pathway. Here, the two muscle-bound men turned to Badru, said something in Swahili, and then left us to our own devices as we trudged further along. It was halfway down this pathway that Chief finally turned to me and explained her earlier secrecy and odd actions.
"Badru was able to convince those two guards that M'weru requested us," she said, smiling wryly. "He told them she called for us from the village, that the odd mixture of people was the will of their god and should not be denied. There is a way through to the inside of the temple from here, and he can bring is right to it. From there, destroying whatever is inside should be simple."
"Chief, Badru, you clever bastards!" I smiled, and the others followed suit. It was the best news I'd heard since what happened back in that damned village. "They actually bought that lie?"
"At the least that has not changed," Dr. Hildebrand added. "They are still as stupid as ever, I see."
At this remark, Badru gave the doctor a cold look, and the German shut up. Yeah, that probably wasn't smart to say in front of the actual reformed cultist, Ludwig...
As we trundled further up the mountain, suddenly Who the chameleon, still a part of Sarah's pack, began to hiss loudly and turn black in discomfort. The reptile curled up and refused to even react, listless and frightened. What the hell had scared her so badly? There was nothing we could see as we reached the top, simply an obscured pathway winding around the mountain until hitting a clear dead end some several hundred feet away. There wasn't even a path or cave leading into the temple, which Badru told us was inside the mountain. This made no sense, how the hell could we get inside the temple if there wasn't a door leading into it? Then, I suddenly recalled something, the strange object hanging from my pack that I had set amongst my objects as part of my costume. The long black fly whisk.
I don't know what came over me, but I had a hunch, recalling the words of Old Bundari when he said it would "unveil the hidden". Grabbing the whisk, I made my way forward along the path, and soon felt it began to vibrate in my hands, intensifying as I grew closer to one specific point. Then, as easily as I felt it, it stopped and I suddenly realized something about the wall in front of me... it was false! As the others approached, I pointed out the foliage-hidden seam to them easily, and they too realized what I had. This had to be the entrance into the temple atop the mountain... and that could mean only one thing. We'd finally reached our target. Before we could enter, however, Badru stopped us.
"I wish to say one thing, friends, before we enter," he murmured, gazing back down at the people he had considered family, then looking to us. "If it should be the will of My God that I die, so be it. I have done as He has asked, but I sense there is more He desires I do yet, though I cannot say what. Whatever should befall us inside these walls, however... Know that it was meant to be such, and that I will still remain with you until the end. I am in debt to you for that much... and I swore upon Blood Oath that it would be so."
"That means a lot, Badru, thank you," Sarah replied on our behalf. It would be a shame to lose him, he had been such a helpful ally, and perhaps even he didn't understand what Nyarlathotep had commanded him to do, if he was even commanded at all. At the end of the day, he was no more than a pawn, just like us... and we all hoped he would survive to tell the tale, though none of us expected for any of us to live. These final words said, one by one we slipped into the dark, russet-stone corridors of the Mountain of the Black Wind... and that, I think, is when everything began to go downhill. When everything suddenly changed, and we realized how very much in the belly of the beast we all were.
The dark tunnels opened onto a cavern that was part secret lair, part horror show. Our first glimpse was of homey things, sure - a wooden armoire with a tribal African design and carved of fine teakwood, a nightstand, a separate curtained off sleeping room with a rather plush bed - but that changed when we noticed the bones. Oh God, the bones. There were piles and piles of human remains in the center of the room, left over like debris from a terrible storm. Worse than that was the sound of pained moaning and rambling, some fifty people or more, which we discovered came from a large metal cage locked with an intricate design. Over all this, dominating the room and drawing our immediate eye, was a massive onyx throne - and straddling this was a great figure carved of the same sable stone.
I struggle to find words to describe that idol, for that is indeed what it was. It was some thirty feet tall and carved into the form of some sort of three-legged monstrosity, its arms clawed and chitinous, yet muscular. Its neck terminated in a ring of sharp and jagged teeth, all pointing inward towards a long tendril which served for the head, and which seemed to wrap itself about the figure's body like a thrashing, dying, headless snake. The whole thing was polished to an exquisite mirror smoothness, reflecting nearby stone walls with such detail that it gave a terrible wrinkled texture to the whole malicious and ugly thing, a thing which Clayton and Sarah immediately recognized.
"It's an idol of the Bloody Tongue God," Sarah muttered, and Clayton shivered slightly in response. I didn't bother to ask, I knew Clayton had more experience than I with this stuff, and I knew he also at one point had some sort of figurine of similar design. He showed me once, before losing it somewhere along the trip.
"This is definitely M'weru's living space," I said, eyes darting about nervously. "We gotta get out of here, and someplace hidden, if she catches us off-guard..."
"If she catches us off-guard," Badru interrupted, "She will kill us. But first... she will need to know we are here."
I was going to reply when sudden footsteps came from outside. Knowing we stood very little chance of being believed since half of us were dressed as rival cultists, we hid wherever we could. I just remember Sarah pushing me down into the pile of bones to hide, and to wait.
Meanwhile, Chief and Badru took to trying to hide as well, but failed to find an adequate spot in time before M'weru - and two rather dangerous-looking, scarified guards - entered and caught them, barking orders in rapid Swahili. I don't know what their conversation was about, but I remember being surprised at how small M'weru was for her ethnic background. The two guards, even Badru and Chief, were much taller, but the sense of command and power around the woman was unmistakable. I could tell instantly she likely had some sort of ace in the hole, some dark ability we did not have - and it frightened me. Sarah recognized it, instinctively due to her own experiences, and whispered to me in a hush.
"Magic," she hissed, shifting Who's cage ever so slightly. "The woman has magic. I can feel it on her..."
"How can you tell?" I asked, glancing back at her. Her eyes hardened, and she gripped her summoning dagger tightly, prepared to attack if caught.
"I just... know these things, from experience," she said. "It's an aura. You can feel it once you know what it's like. And she has a strong one."
There was no need for her precautions, fortunately. It seemed Badru and Chief had done well to convince her they were fellow cultists, because M'weru was fooled. She left with her guards back out the way we had come in, and that was when we finally - finally - were safe to leave hiding.
"We have fooled her," said Badru, "Into believing that we were sent to guard this chamber. She is so proud and unable to see a lie that she believed it."
"She is easily flattered and convinced, for her ego is large," Chief added. "Do not look now, McCloud, but I think Enala has discovered something..."
I turned to look, finding that the Aborigine held in her hands a mechanical gauge - a specialized timepiece for counting time zones, I realized as I looked at it. "I have found a mystical device," she said, unsure of what it was. "Could this be what sent us forward in time? It appears connected..."
"No, it's just a tool, Enala," was my reply, but I took it from her and tinkered anyway. "It's set to Greenwich Mean Time... By this clock, it's midday here, but a little earlier in GMT. What time was the eclipse supposed to start?"
"I've got a sketch of something," offered Clayton, retrieving a small pad from his backpack - this very journal, in fact. On one page, there was a drawing of a world map, and a depiction of the eclipse's arc of totality. "A... friend drew it while we were in Cairo, please don't ask where we got it or about her. By this map, and that time zone... in Kenya it would be nearly time for the eclipse by now... the moon's probably very close, if its umbra hasn't started crossing over the sun by now."
"But then that means the eclipse is about to start, and if that's the case..."
Everyone's eyes grew wide, and we suddenly shared a sudden and chill dread. We had no time to waste - we had to find where the temple proper was, and wherever it was, it had to be where M'weru had come from with her guards. Already we could hear the chanting and crying of voices outside as she spoke to the crowds, preparing them, speaking a long oratory in perfect but muffled English about the solar and lunar conjunctions... Frantic, we took to scanning the perimeter of the room, but it wasn't until we found our way behind the grotesque idol that we noticed something. In the idol's glassy mirror finish, not far from the wall behind it, we could see ourselves and the wall reflected. However, it wasn't a wall in the reflection, it was a tunnel, a long tunnel with upward leading stairs - but when we looked at the real wall, we saw only stone.
"It is an illusion," Enala murmured. "It is like the Sand Bat. It shows illusions..."
Suddenly, Sarah screamed and faltered back, gripping her shoulder in abject terror and shouting about the Black Pharaoh being behind her, and it wasn't long before we saw why. There was something else in the mirror, something behind us - it was Badru, his weapon at our throats, gazing angrily... We turned to see Badru of course not behind us, but looking as perplexed as us before shaking his head. Apparently, he'd seen something as well, but would not say what. Not desiring to remain any longer, we turned to the wall and, ignoring the clever illusion, stepped through the rock that was not rock. It yielded instantly as we stepped through, and the illusion was destroyed as we looked back.
Far, far up that dark tunnel we went, the sound of mindless chanting sudden and intensifying if muffled. It was hard to tell what was said, only a roar from the crowd outside in a frantic rhythm. There were so many stairs we soon found ourselves exhausted, and had no choice but to rest. This was when I made the mistake of setting a hand against one of the walls... and directly onto something slimy and squishy. Alarmed, I pulled back, and frantically grappled my flashlight, only to find a red, sticky liquid on my hand... and then as I cast the beam to the wall, the source of the blood was illuminated.
Tongues. Hundreds and hundreds of severed, still bloody human tongues, nailed into the walls, but that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that somehow, by some vile means or another, were still animated and writhed like rotting fleshy tendrils, tendrils that began to somehow speak in terrified whispers and moans, human voices in a hundred languages: Help me... Save me... God, no, not the blades, not Him! Anything but Him! Spare us, spare us, spare us!
We didn't stick around long enough to continue listening, but sprinted the rest of the way up the rocky staircase. If there's anything else I've learned from this long, hellish year, then it's that fear is an excellent energizer and motivator.
I remember every detail of the chamber, too, a permanent scar etched into my memory. The six colossal onyx pillars, carved like tentacles reaching to the sky, a terrified victim each strapped to them and two guards each to keep them there. The sickly violet-tinged altar that glowed and squirmed like a living thing, and held shackles for victims to be placed upon it, carved from what must have been some forsaken meteorite that fell to earth long ago. The masses of bones and dead bodies heaped around these, never cleaned up from whatever last mass sacrifice was done, showing what fate awaited those poor caged souls. The three pits beyond that, in which things chittered and rustled and hissed and squeaked in mad hunger, we didn't dare contemplate what was in there. And, crowning this dreadful sight, another great dias of stone, upon which rested a curious-looking, sallow, almost fleshy mass which was semi-translucent and pulsated horribly. From within it, a strange yellowish glow emanated, moving about as if searching and occasionally vanishing altogether. Something moved within this strange thing, something disturbing indeed... but none of us had the foggiest of what.
"What... the hell?" Clayton exclaimed as we edged around the perimeter of the place in awe and horror. "Now I've seen everything... This is like back under Giza almost, but much worse..."
"I think it may very well be Hell, Herr Byrd..." Doctor Hildebrand observed the fleshy object with great medical curiosity and more than a little unease. "It is like a tumor, but detached from any body..."
"What is it, doctor?" asked Sarah, wary of the answer as she crept closer, trying to remain as hidden in the various folds of the rocky wall as the rest of us.
"I do not know, Sarah, but I am quite anxious to find out... in every possible meaning of that word."
I then got an idea, and thought upon my past flashes of strange knowledge of what had hunted us before, flashes of insight that terrified and yet educated me. Perhaps... I could use that to help? It was a stupid idea, I know that now... and I regret every damn second of that decision, but at the time, all I remember is focusing and reaching, reaching out with my thoughts, echoing and trying to touch something greater, calling the visions down to me... My mind strained and strained with creeping fingers towards it, like a child's hand on the glass at an aquarium, and I almost reached it. Almost. Then, it all changed, horribly so. Just as I was about to touch what I was looking for, something else brushed against my mind, altering my focus, pulling me in and sucking me into an infinite void, a void where my vision blurred and I felt a sudden stabbing bright light blind me, but only for a moment. God, how I wish it would have remained more than a mere moment...
When I finally could see again, I felt heat. Sand, hot sand. But this sand was not normal, I could tell as much from where I laid on my back, it was black as ash and night, grains of ebony. The light was all wrong, and I looked up towards the sky, finding that it was a bloody shade of bright red. The stars shimmered in alien patterns, the heat of the desert I was in overwhelmed me as I saw the seven bloated suns circle above, red and mocking. In the distance, a tiny blue-green dot, so far, so far away... home...
The sands shifted, and a shadow fell over me, massive and oppressive. Then something, an enormous paw or tendril like a squid, grasped me in its claws, brought me towards the shadow's owner... and I saw. Endless, vast, writhing, shifting, countless amounts of times, ropy black tentacles stretching forever into the stars, chains of horrible might shackling infinite universes, all tormenting them save one. Save one. It was red, ridged, tongue-like, and yet covered in small ridges that I soon perceived as eyes... no, feelers... tendrils? It could not be grasped, the figure, the monster, the vast Crawling Chaos that spread out before me and held me mute and powerless in its grasp like a child's plaything, but I felt it... I felt it observe, I felt it stare, and I heard it mock in a voice I recalled, a voice that had echoed through my nightmares and haunted my waking moments, the silken, smooth, awfully human voice like shades of night and oozing malicious charm...
"Now now, Francis... no fair cheating..."
I snapped back suddenly and horribly to reality, unable to comprehend, shaken. I don't recall much, I just recall curling up, shaking, feeling so very small and insignificant, feeling so worthless... All was horror, all was Him, in all things like a cancer, like a spreading disease, in my very mind and heart and soul...
"Jesus, he's bleeding from his eyes and ears! Help him!"
"He's shell-shocked, he must have seen too much while looking for answers..."
"You fucking idiot!"
"That is not helping! McCloud, snap out of it!"
I don't know who asked. But I turned to them, eyes wet with tears and something that tinged my vision crimson, and murmured to them, clinging like a lost child. "I sss... I s-saw..." It was Chief I clung to. I felt rationality resolve just enough, but not enough to control the terror, I was sure I was about to lose my mind utterly and forever...
"What did you see?" She murmured, cradling me, and I focused my shattered nerves on her. It was the one thing I had to anchor me, to keep me sane. And I turned to her, and whimpered one word, one single word, trembling in dread as even that horrified me to no end.
"Him..."
That was enough, and she pulled away. I don't remember many details, I just recall shaking as one of them pulled something burlap and heavy over my face... I can't continue this. I can't keep writing, the fear, the fear is in me even now, He'll see me if I continue! I can't... I can't! I ca-
I recall as he fell to his knees and we brought him into the crevice, a plan forming. We saw the pillars, and remembered the dynamite. It was clear to us the altar was the key, we could feel the energy coming from it in waves, it had to be the focus of the power. We had but one chance at this, and it was suicide - could we rig the explosive charge in time, and end the ceremony before whatever hell was unleashed?
The chanting continued, and we then saw a familiar face as we hid - the snide sneering leer of Sir Aubrey Penhew, striding from some tunnel as M'weru continued her chanting below. He spoke with a few of the cult guards, and took his place before the altar, adding his own voice to the chant... and soon, we saw the extent of the terrible rites at the Mountain. Victim after victim sacrificed, thrown into the pits to die, cut to ribbons with pranga, bloodied and staining red the rock below, yet even the deaths of so many men, women, and children was not enough. The victim upon the altar was the recipient of the worst of fates, for I watched as Penhew took a thin dagger and, chanting, plunged it into the unfortunate's chest. One hand reached into the panicking man's wound, and plucked free the wretch's heart, which Penhew held up in triumph. The organ blackened and died, and as this occurred and he murmured painful words to the ear, so too did the victim begin to die, drained terribly of life, energy suctioned into the altar itself and its awful violet glow...
We could bear this awfulness no longer, and retreated into further hiding. We had to at all costs protect McCloud and our own unraveling minds from further disaster while we planned. It was then we saw what the fleshy mound truly was. It was attached to something, a small lump... no, a head. A woman's head, a woman I had seen in photos before, of the Carlyle Expedition. The bloated thing on the dias... was human, and alive, and her name was Hypatia Masters. Her words still tumbled madly from her lips, terrible confessions of how the Red God had seduced her to this awful state, how she would birth the messiah, and all fell into place. Suddenly, and horribly... I felt the bile raise in my stomach, and saw Sarah begin to cry and tremble, something like mad joy on her face, some realization... I am not proud to admit that the horror overtook my senses and I felt disgust at myself, at my own body for being woman and thus able to grow life, and it took every strength of my inner self I had to keep myself from wanting to rip out my own womb and destroy every part of me that made me such.
"Muuzaji, Sarah, focus..." Enala's voice, shaken yet calm, broke through the veil of horror smothering me, and I clung to her offered hand. I required her strength. I was not finished yet, but Sarah, I feared the worst for her. She seemed too excited about something, too prepared, too rapturous. I do not know what went through her mind, but at the time I prayed she had not broken entirely. Anger rose in me for my weak will and lack of self-trust, and I directed that inner flame towards the end of destroying the cult and ending the terror it had put myself and my people to, once and for all.
But before we could do anything, it happened.
It all occurred in a flash of a second of awfulness. In the midst of the darkness looming above, and as the eclipse neared, the chanting of the horde below reached a fever pitch. Black clouds swirled in the sky, ominous and circling like a death wheel of insects, until finally the sun was blotted from the sky and only the spiraling storm remained. It ended in a vast clap of thunder and flash of lightning striking the area of the altar, illuminating everything in a blinding haze. The cult grew silent, as did we all... and there was a terrible foreboding and smell like after the rains in the air, as before us hovered something mere inches above the altar. It was like a great black stone or meteor in the shape of some spiraling and curled figure, hovering patiently and spinning ever so slightly. The air was thick with tension, and all was oddly silent for a few moments. And then... the stone began to crack.
The cracks rang out through the silence, like a monstrous egg hatching. The spiral began to shatter from three points, and from one of these, a leg jutted out, massive and insect-like. Then another. Then a third, all raising the stone up and out of the temple to bestride the Mountain. The top of the stone soon crackled and fanned into a multitude of awful teeth, sharp like a lion's... and from this strange maw, from this black mass extruded and unfurled... a tongue. Blood red, as if having supped on a thousand corpses, blood red as if diseased, blood red like the stones the thing perched above... and I knew. We all knew what stood before us, even before the tongue lashed free and stretched towards the eclipsed sun.
The Bloody Tongue God unfurled its mighty limbs as if triumphant in its freedom, and howled an ear-splitting, soul-rending howl. And above, the eclipse had come to completion, an eerie ring of light casting the world into sudden night... and our minds into sudden and inescapable dread...
-- Francis and Muuzaji (12:00 PM, January 16th, 1929)