Chasing the Moon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Vom was back in the closet. He didn’t remember going back to it, but he never did.

He moved some coats aside and cleared away some shoes for a place to sit. He couldn’t see anything while the door was shut, but he didn’t need to. Vom knew the closet well. Knew every pair of shoes, every hanger in it, so he was surprised when something squishy and unexpected got in his way.

“Ow,” said the unexpected thing.

“Zap, is that you?” asked Vom.

“Who else would it be? Where are we?”

“The closet.”

Smorgaz spoke up in the dark. “Your closet?”

Vom pondered. This was new.

Something poked him in the back.

“Watch it!”

“Sorry,” said Smorgaz.

“How did we get in here?” asked Zap.

“I don’t know, but it was crowded enough without the two of you.” Vom shoved Smorgaz, who shoved back. In the struggle, Vom accidentally kicked Zap.

“Hey, watch it!”

“You watch it!” grumbled Vom. “This is my closet.”

“Well, if we’re going to be stuck sharing the damn thing, we’ll have to make the best of it.” Despite Zap’s supernatural vision, he couldn’t see anything in the darkness. For a being capable of glimpsing the hydrogen atoms dancing at the heart of stars, it was disconcerting. He probed the floor with his tentacles. They ran across the cheap carpeting, the old shoes. “Wow. This really is a closet.”

“What did you think it was?” asked Vom.

“I just assumed it was different when you were trapped in it. I didn’t think it would be so… closety.”

“Nope. That’s all it is. Actually, I think it’s a little bit bigger now that you two are here. Maybe some space was added to accommodate all of us.”

“Not enough,” said Smorgaz as someone jabbed him in the eye. “So what do we do now?”

“We wait,” said Vom, “for the next person to get the apartment.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“Could be in five minutes,” said Vom. “Could be a thousand years.”

“Does this mean Diana is dead?” asked Smorgaz.

“Probably.” Vom sighed. “Too bad. I liked her.”

“I don’t think she is,” said Zap.

“I know it stinks,” said Vom, “but if she were alive I wouldn’t be in here. It’s only if the link between us disappears that I get shoved back in this place.”

“But what about us?” asked Zap. “Why are Smorgaz and I here?”

“Because… I don’t know, but there has to be some perfectly good reason for it.”

“Yes, and that reason is that Diana isn’t dead yet. I can sense her, feel her presence. Can’t you?”

Smorgaz shifted, stepping on Vom’s foot. “Sorry.” He moved again, knocking hangers off the rod. “Oops.”

“Stand still while we figure this out,” said Zap.

“Just let me move this fur coat out of the way first.”

“Hey, watch the hands,” said Vom.

Smorgaz chuckled. “My mistake.”

Zap shouted, “Will you two shut up and listen to me? Feel it. Can’t you sense Diana’s influence?”

“I am feeling a bit confused and overwhelmed,” said Vom. “And kind of pissed off at the same time.”

“Yeah,” agreed Smorgaz. “Me too.”

They quieted, each tuning his personal metaphysical radio to Diana’s frequency. The signal was static-filled, muffled, but it was there. That they could think clearly at all proved it.

“Something has gone wrong,” said Zap. “They must have done something to her.”

“Figure that out with your all-seeing eye, did you?” asked Vom.

“Shut up.”

“So what difference does it make?” asked Smorgaz. “Whether she’s alive or dead, we’re still trapped in here until someone lets us out, right?”

“If she’s not dead, then maybe we don’t have to wait for that. Maybe we can get out on our own.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Vom. “There’s no way out of this box. I’ve tried.”

“You’ve tried when you were mere cosmic flotsam in a cold storage room,” said Zap. “But now, I think this is just a reaction to Diana’s situation. Maybe if we put some effort into it we can open the closet together.”

“Can’t hurt to try,” said Vom.

They pushed, grunting and groaning and straining. They were inexhaustible, but after half an hour they did get bored.

Vom frowned in the dark. “This is a waste of time.”

“We can’t give up,” said Zap.

“Why not?”

“Because Diana wouldn’t give up.”

“Oh, hell.” Vom threw his shoulder into the door. “Let’s do this.”

To his surprise, the door opened. He fell out and onto the floor. Pogo squealed, lapping at Vom’s face with his jagged tongue while West stood in the room, his hand on the closet door’s handle.

“What were you doing back in there?” asked West.

“It’s a bit complicated.” Zap floated out. “Thanks for letting us out.”

West rubbed his face. “Don’t thank me. Thank the dog. Came and got me.”

“Why didn’t Pogo go into the closet?”

“The dog doesn’t belong to this apartment. He belongs to Apartment Two.”

Zap disintegrated the coffee table.

“All right. Back in business. Now let’s go rescue Diana!”

Yipping and hissing, Pogo hopped arounid get bt>

They ran from the apartment and down the hall, pausing at the threshold to the outside universe. From inside the building the flux of the universe was visible as a strange stew of bubbles floating in the air itself. Other worlds could be glimpsed in the glittering spheres. The universe was fraying around the edges. The pressure from all the outside realities might cause the whole thing to collapse, crushing it into nothingness.

“I wouldn’t recommend going out there,” said West. “Without Diana to anchor you and with everything falling apart, there’s no telling what reaction it could cause.”

Fenris roared, and the world shuddered.

“Safest place in the world is right here,” said West. “Whatever happens out there, it’s best to let it run its course.”

“But what about Diana?” asked Vom.

“She might survive it.” West shrugged. “Might not.”

The monsters said nothing.

“So what should we do?” asked Smorgaz.

“Leave it be,” said West. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“But what about Diana?” asked Zap this time.

“She wouldn’t leave us behind,” said Smorgaz. “She’d try to help us.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” said West. “She’d get rid of you the first chance she could.”

The monsters didn’t even argue the point.

“I still like her,” said Vom.

They all agreed on this. They knew she was just another human, and there were billions more out there. Or, if the humans all disappeared tomorrow, something else would be there to fill her warden position.

But they liked her.

“Oh, heck,” said Zap. “What are we even risking? There’s nothing out there that can hurt us. Right?”

They looked to West, who stared back at them inscrutably.

Pogo bound past the threshold. Nothing happened to the hellhound. He turned and shrieked at the others to follow him. Reasonably assured that they were beyond the primordial madness taking place, they followed. They made it only a few steps before succumbing to the strange forces and collapsing to the ground. They burst from their skins, transforming into shapes closer to their true forms.

Vom grew a dozen extra limbs and started shoveling concrete, automobiles, and lampposts into a hundred gullets in a blind devouring hunger. Smorgaz became a great misshapen blob of purple. Dozens of pods burst open as countless clones spawned. Zap crackled with power. His gaze swept across the world, blasting holes in the street.

Pogo remained unchanged because that was his true form.

The mindless horrors turned on each other. Vom bit off one of Zap’s tentacles. Zap responded by burning Vom’s face off. The great immobile lump that was Smorgaz screeched, and his spawn tackled Vom and Zap, clamoring over them. It was only their focus on each other that kept the block from being reduced to ruins and ash.

Pogo raised his head and shrieked. The other beasts stopped their struggle as the minuscule creature yipped in their direction. Vom, Zap, and Smorgaz turned their attention skyward. They launched themselves into the air and toward the moon god above.

“Well, I’ll be,” said West. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Pogo squealed, then ran off down the street.

Sharon had wanted to speak to Calvin one last time, but things were so hectic she didn’t get a chance to exchange more than a few words with him. The hell of it was that the robes, chants, and ceremony all amounted to so much busywork. Nothing the Chosen did had any influence over Fenris. The cult was a parasite clinging to the moon god’s belly.

Calvin sat on his throne. For once he didn’t look bored. The Chosen swayed and sang his praises in nonsense syllables that Greg had given them. She stood beside the throne, phoning it in, fully aware that the creature above didn’t care in the slightest about her degree of enthusiasm.

Some of the more fervent cultists stripped naked and screamed gibberish. Morons, she thought.

Greg stood on the other side of the throne. He was silent, relaxed. No need for the show now.

The earth rumbled as the tentacle god-beast drew closer and closer to the moon it had spent countless millennia pursuing. The hapless ordinary people who pursued their lives, blissfully ignorant of the strangeness of a much vaster universe, remained so. The coming joining was invisible, and would be until it was too late.

Fenris brushed the moon with the tip of his tentacle.

Calvin’s hand tingled. He peeled away the skin like a candy wrapper. It even made that crinkling noise.

The Chosen’s chant changed, transforming from nonsense into a string of syllables not made for human mouths. They swayed in unison, whispered in a language Calvin had forgotten long ago.

He remembered now.

He glanced at Sharon. He’d regret leaving her behind. The rest of the human race and the small sliver of reality they called home he’d be glad to cast off. He’d miss some things. Movies. Books. Apple pie. Doritos. The feel of a sandy beach between his toes. Toes.

Mostly, he’d miss Sharon.

His flesh fell off. He stood naked, an ebony god of pure intellect. Not his true form. He had no physical form. Even this was just a contrivance forced on him by a universe unable to accept what was happening.

Two crackling bolts lanced from his chest into the sky, connecting with the moon and Fenris. The mind, the body, and the power. Three aspects of a single entity that had been too long divided.

The estate broke free of its boundaries and spread like a green shadow across the face of the city. From there it would devour the world like an invading organism bent on rewriting itself on the fabric of the universe. Humanity would have screamed in collective terror if not for the fact that everyone within a thousand miles was transformed into piles of moss.

The cultists cast off their cloaks. The hairy, four-armed wolves howled and danced in reckless abandon as their god began his ascent. Except for the beast that had been Sharon. She stood before Calvin, lowered her head, and whimpered.

He felt the final spasm of the universe as Fenris wrapped his tentacles around the moon. And in a moment it would all be over.

“Goodbye, Sharon.”

The moment didn’t come.

Vom plowed into the moon god, knocking him away from his goal. Fenris shrieked as Calvin fell to Earth. False skin wrapped around him. Stifling, rotten, smothering flesh.

He vomited yellow slime onto the stone floor. Being crammed back into mortal flesh, even if only the illusion of such, was uncomfortable. It was like tight shoes he’d gotten used to wearing, and now that they were off he didn’t want them back on.

The cult reverted to halfway-human forms. Calvin used the shredded remains of a discarded robe to cover Sharon’s naked body.

Greg said, “What the hell?”

In the night sky Fenris clashed with only slightly less horrific entities for the future of the moon and the universe by proxy.

Pogo jumped from the bushes and landed before Calvin’s throne. The dog blackened and smoked as the alien magic of the estate sizzled against his flesh. Calvin recognized a fellow greater eldritch when he saw one.

The dog gasped painfully, turning on the cult and growling. Then he ran into the house, smashing his way through the front door, bounding up the stairs, and finding Diana on the bed.

Pogo lowered his head and cried out mournfully. The roof exploded. The unnatural fog that played havoc with Diana faded. She sat up, shook the cobwebs away. She ached and had a hell of a headache, but she could think again. She could move. As long as Pogo was close enough, casting his own strange aura over her, she was functional.

She forced herself to stand, trudged with heavy steps downstairs and to the alcove where the cult stood. They stood, shocked, at this unbeliever in their midst while their lord above clashed with the monstrous usurpers.

Diana cleared her dry throat.

“We need to talk.”