The Book of Cthulhu 2

The Nyarlathotep Event

Jonathan Wood

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #1 :: Performance

The Oxford Playhouse. Now.

For the record, it is very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when you went wrong if a woman with a Laura Ashley dress and blood-stained teeth is rhythmically beating your head against the floor. Just so you know.

Ten minutes before

Here’s a treat: a night out at the theater courtesy of work. All expenses paid. The only catch: I might have to gun down the performer halfway through.

See, this is the problem with working for shadowy government agencies. There’s always rough to go with the smooth. Yes, you get to enjoy an evening of ancient Egyptian magic, but it is being performed by an interdimensional avatar called Nyarlathotep who hales from a dimension representing humanity’s collective fears. Silver lining, meet cloud.

Still, just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.

The niggling familiarity of the the name Nyarlathotep clears up as soon as he steps out on stage. Lovecraft. Whether the performer’s the real deal or just some wacko with a penchant for non-Euclidean geometry, they’re using the name of a gibbering literary horror.

Which, I feel, should inform my plan. Except the only plan I seem to remember old Lovecraft providing was running howling into the night, so I’m not sure how helpful that’s going to be.

Nyarlathotep stands seven feet tall, wrapped in blood-red rags. They hang from his shoulders like a cloak. They wreathe his face. Red mist billows about his feet, spills into the theater, spreads out over feet and ankles. People in the front row let out odd barking sounds—the terrifying inbred cousin of laughter. And I’m pretty sure Nyarlathotep’s not told any jokes yet.

Screw evaluating the situation. I reach for my gun.

Nyarlathotep opens his mouth.

There are no words. His mouth moves. Sounds emerge. But it is something beyond speech. Something more profound. Some kinesthetic reflex of bile and horror.

The buzzing of flies. The stench of rotting meat filling my nose, my mouth. Burning my throat. I gag. Heave up bile. A liquid scream. Pins in my arms. Needles, and nails, and shards of glass. The grind of cigarette against skin. My brain is burning, melting, is fecal matter sloshing in my skull.

And still his mouth stretches behind reams of cloth. And on and on pours out the filth. Into me.

My gun. I need—

I grab for the thing with numb fingers. Atrocities flicker at the edges of my vision. A noise like a kettle boiling. Rising. Rising. Up, and up. Like an itch I need to reach into my brain to scratch.

Somehow I get the gun loose. I half see it out of one eye, through filters of horror and peeling flesh. I try to sight Nyarlathotep, but I might as well be trying to shoot the moon.

Screw it. I pull the trigger.

The muzzle’s thunderclap hits me like water to the face. Abruptly I’m just a man in a theater, waving a gun about, while around me everyone goes insane.

Men and women are on all fours. They roll in fights. Some screw. Some scream.

On stage, Nyarlathotep stands, arms wide, welcoming it all. The conductor of this pageant of madness. And, Lovecraft old buddy, running and screaming does seem like a good idea right about now.

On the other hand, that’s not what I get paid to do. So I stand. I steady my gun. I draw a bead on the bastard. I think about how I should probably change careers.

Which is exactly the moment the woman in the Laura Ashley number clotheslines me around my throat and brings me down.

My gun scatters. I scrabble at her, coughing and choking, trying to pry her off me. She seizes my head. Slams it onto the floor. Crash. Crash. The room spins. Crash.

Which brings me to the point where I’m left wondering if I’m going to have the time to enumerate all the mistakes I’ve made before my head gives way.

Just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #2 :: Rescue

8:15 pm, The Oxford Playhouse, Oxford, England

There is romance to the idea of the Man Alone. Abandoned, desperate, he reaches deep inside and finds the will to go on, to do what must be done, to save the day.

But when the Man Alone is being beaten to death by a pack of insane theater-enthusiasts, the idea of back-up has a little more charm.

In those moments there is little better than a co-worker dismissing a homicidal Laura Ashley fan off your chest with a very large sword.

Kayla—co-worker, possessor of almost inhuman speed and agility, sword-wielder, dangerously psychotic person—stands over me, twirling a four-foot long katana.

It’s hard to express my gratitude. I go with, “Guh-th-fuh.”

“Shut up. Get up.” Kayla demonstrates her social skills as a man in a three-piece suit leaps up on a chair in front of us, growls.

Kayla slams the butt of the blade into the man’s forehead. The man pinwheels away over seats, head snapped back.

“Feckin’ mad bastards,” Kayla says. “Always the same crap with the baying at the moon and the lust for human flesh.”

I have other concerns. Like putting a bullet in the interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos on the stage whose fault this all is—Nyarlathotep.

Except the stage is empty.

“Target’s moving,” I say. “Out back. Now.”

A mass of drooling, enraged Oxonians stands between me and the stage. As one, they bay their madness.

“Lobby?” Kayla suggests.

I move. A raving student comes at me. I use both fists to club him to the floor.

The lobby is stark in its emptiness. And we’re moving now. The chase is properly on. You’re mine, you interdimensional bastard.

From nowhere, a yellow clay jar arcs through the air. I duck. It explodes against the wall behind me. Gas rushes out, a red mist. I duck, but an arm of vapor circles my head. I breathe—

A wall of flesh rises, engulfing. Jackals chase me across a desert. Water closes over my head, tentacles wrapped about my ankles, pulling, pulling—

—and crash to the lobby floor. I gasp, claw at my eyes.

Three figures in ragged yellow robes are in the doorway. They hold curved knives high. Their robes billow about them—whether it’s the air-conditioning, or just the universe deciding to add cinematic flair, I’m not sure.

To be honest, I just reach for my gun.

My gun. Beaten out of my hand. By the the charming lady with a Laura Ashley dress and a mad-on for the taste of my spleen.

I do have my own sword. A recent acquisition, and one I’m rather proud of. It’s a flaming sword, in fact. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it rocks so hard it makes Metallica look like a group of small girls. But it’s also not the most fashionable accessory for a night out at the theater, and I left it back at the office. So no go on that front either.

The robed men charge. It’s not much ground to cover. The first attacker is yards away. He stinks of decay. I catch a flash of teeth. Jaundiced skin. Black pits of eyes.

“Kayla!” My voice slides up to an octave I try to avoid hitting in public.

Her blade flies out. Yellow robes are stained with red. The leading attacker flies backwards in more parts than he entered the theater. Bits of him collide with his fellows.

I pull myself up, still blinking away the after-effects of the attacker’s gas. “We need to get out of here.”

“The Children of Nyarlathotep will stop you!” One of the yellow-robed men is pulling free of the tangled pile of his fellows. “We will come for you in your dreams. We will unseam your sanity.”

With a speed that laughs at the conventional rules of physics, Kayla crosses the room and delivers her toecap to his forehead. The man’s head slams to the ground, tongue lolling.

“Let’s go.” Kayla pushes through the door and out onto the street. I follow after her. Time to get finally get the bas—

I stop. I stare. The streets. The city.

Where has Oxford gone?

The road, once paved and straight, is a twisting roller coaster of asphalt and cobbles. Limestone storefronts have curled into blackened husks, glass bulging like blisters. Dreaming spires have stretched to the sky, points drawn out like knife blades. The citizenry scream, and caper, and cower.

The madness is spreading. It’s not just in the citizens, it’s in the city’s walls, its streets, its soul.

And seriously, even an interdimensional avatar of madness is a Tim Burton fan?

“You know,” I say to Kayla, “I cannot wait to find this bastard and shoot him.”

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #3 :: Countdown

8:38pm. Oxford, England.

“Derrière. To Christ Church College. Five minutes or less. Otherwise you’re responsible for the end of the world.” Tabitha, my handler and MI37’s resident cheerleader, sets the ticking clock just in case my day wasn’t going badly enough.

It had been a simple plan. Go to the theater. Make sure the performer really is an interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos. Shoot him.

All in a day’s work for Agent Arthur Wallace.

Except now I’m chasing the bastard through Oxford transformed. Nyarlathotep—the aforementioned avatar—has vomited up the citizenry’s collective fears and given the place a good basting. Architecture spirals out of control. Streets twist back in recursive loops. Buildings teeter and leer.

Oh, and everybody’s gone mad. The insane cherry on the lunacy cake.

Ten minutes ago

Kayla—MI37’s superhuman swordswoman and high-functioning psychotic—passes me a plastic earbud. “Tabitha,” she says. I plug it in. Because who doesn’t want a running job evaluation from a committed misanthrope?

“Screwed that up. Big time.”

I close my eyes. “Where’s Nyarlathotep?”

“Christ Church. Potential reality rip.”

I move. Kayla follows.

Seven minutes ago

Get to Christ Church—simple enough. Run in a straight line from the playhouse.

Except every exit from this bloody traffic circle leads back to where it starts.

“What the hell?”

“Reality leakage,” Tabitha answers through the earbud. “Leaking into ours. Nyarlathotep’s home dimension is. Distorting space. When you tear through realities and summon avatars of fear and chaos, sensible to close the door behind you. Not into common sense. People who summoning avatars of fear and chaos.”

Which is all lovely to know, but, “How the hell do I get down this street?”

“Magic,” Tabitha says.

Unfortunately, MI37’s magician recently became a little less than corporeal so that could be a problem. But Tabitha says, “Our end. Already working on it.”

There is muttering. I hear someone say, “Entropic Negotiator,” and then, “No, the Phillip’s version.”

Tabitha comes back on the line. “Phone. Dial office. Then hold it up to the street.”

I comply. Tinny nonsense syllables emerge. And then the world ripples like water, and I get to go down the street I actually want to go down for once.

When did running in a straight line get this hard?

Four minutes ago

If it’s not one thing, it’s bloody cultists.

The yellow-robed man comes out of nowhere. I spin just in time to catch his fist on my chin. I fall down—not very Kurt Russell of me but typical of my brand of heroism. Fortunately Kayla is close to being superwoman. Unfortunately, somewhere around eighteen cultists have surrounded her, which means I have to do something… well, not exactly heroic…

I kick my attacker in the crotch.

That buys me enough time to get up off the floor, and be taken down by a flying tackle from a second cultist.

We roll back and forth while, in my ear, Tabitha intones, “Tick tock. Tick tock.”

It’s more sheer frustration than anything else that lends me the strength to slam my opponent’s face into the brick. Finally he stops worrying about me and just lies there, insensible.

Just enough time to put the boot in on cultist number one, watch Kayla dispatch of her final cultist with a casual backhand, and listen to Tabitha sing a line from The Final Countdown.

Now

Seriously. This is starting to get ridiculous.

The crowd is six rows deep, blocking the College gateway. Students mostly. And not enough sane thoughts among them to rub together and start a fire.

“Five minutes,” Tabitha says.

I look around desperately. Time is not on our side.

And then I smile. Because time might be the answer after all.

“Any chance you can knock that down?” I ask Kayla. I point to the grand clock tower sitting above Christ Church College’s grand entrance. It won’t slow time but it’ll disperse a crowd.

“Pope shit in the woods?” Kayla asks me.

Which stops me for a moment, because I didn’t think he did.

A student at the edge of the crowd stops poking at his midriff with a stick and looks at us. He lets out a scream.

The attention of the crowd shifts.

Above our heads the clock’s second hand ticks, once, twice.

Kayla leaps, impossibly high. She lands on the student’s shoulders, sends him crumpling, but is already away, hits the college wall like a spider.

The crowd lurches towards me.

“Any chance you could do this faster?” I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but there are a lot of crazy people charging me.

Kayla starts climbing. The crowd starts running. Kayla reaches the top. The second hand ticks.

Kayla hammers at stone with her blade. Her arms blur. Stonework cracks and creaks.

The crowd hesitates as one. Looks back. Looks up.

Limestone explodes away from Kayla’s blade. Shards shower the crowd. The clock tower leans wildly. The second hand spins away from the clock.

Kayla breaks from her work, steps back, kicks the wobbling stone monument. She smiles. “Timber.”

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #4 :: Portal

Oxford, England. Not a good day.

Some days, I think, I really need to ask for a transfer. You get told you’re going into a department called MI37, and you think, oh that sounds cloak-and-dagger exciting. They charge you with defending the realm from all things supernatural and tentacle-y, and you think, well that could be exciting.

Then you find you find yourself in the middle of Christ Church College facing a pack of yellow-robed cultists standing around a bubbling rip in reality.

“Not good,” I say to Kayla, my equally up-shit-creek co-worker.

The cultists are chanting, of course. Limited options on the daily duties for a cultist, I imagine. Chant or sacrifice. And for all my bitching about my employer, at least working for MI37 isn’t tedious.

Take the portal, for instance. If I don’t close it in the next three minutes, all of Oxford is going to be permanently infected by another reality constructed of humanity’s collective fears.

Likely a suicidal task, but not a boring one.

Unfortunately Kayla and I lack the appropriate color coordination, so cultists catch on to us pretty fast. Three break from the circle, pulling large knives.

I really wish I hadn’t dropped my gun earlier. But things tend to get distracting when an entire city goes insane. Still, this is where Kayla comes in. No need for a gun when the woman next to you can make a champion sushi chef look like a sloppy amateur with a blade.

“All yours,” I say.

Which is when the smoking grenade of crazy gas comes at her. It’s a futile throw, of course. Kayla bats it out of the air without blinking. But the problem with a gas grenade designed to shatter is that it shatters as soon as you hit it.

Kayla disappears in a cloud of red mist. There is a scream from its depths.

“No!”

I step towards it. Then leap back as Kayla emerges. She’s clawing at her face with one hand. She sweeps viciously, blindly back and forth with her sword in the other. I duck a blow, another.

“Kayla!” I yell at her. “Kayla!” But she’s gone, far gone. I don’t think she even hears me.

And at that point, some cultists deign to leave the comfort of their fraternity and come to hand my arse to me.

The first cultist swings at me. I duck, grab a piece of shattered clocktower, use it to shatter most of his jaw.

That gives the other two a good time to sneak round behind me. One slices at me. I roll with it. My jacket takes the hit. The second cultist gets a good kick in. There’s a better range of movement allowed by ragged yellow robes that you’d think. I double over, wheezing.

They come at me from opposite directions, knives held high. I do the best I can and collapse.

Knives whistle over my head. I use the rubble to crush one cultist’s foot. He drops away howling. Meanwhile the other knife comes down and opens up my shoulder so I have some howling of my own to do.

I go at the guy angry then. Fighting is not exactly my forte. I resemble an off-balance ballerina pinwheeling across the Christ Church quad. Fortunately the cultist’s hectic chanting schedule hasn’t left him much time for self-defense classes. He swings the knife low. I stagger-step out of the way. My tie become noticeably shorter, the end fluttering away. The cultist becomes noticeably less conscious, my chunk of rubble colliding with his left ear.

And all that would be great if there were only three cultists. But three more separate from around the circle, which draws tighter.

I close fast. My shoulder connects with one before he gets his dagger free. I step into him, whirling wide with the rubble. A second cultist comes in low and hard, head slamming into my stomach, knife nicking my thigh. I bring my knee up into his nose. He drops away. The other grabs me from behind. The knife comes up. I slam my head backwards. His nose crunches. He drops me. I spin, the rubble held tight in my fist. More of his face crunches.

The guy on the floor is thinking about getting up. Me and my rubble encourage him not to.

Behind me, Kayla is on her knees, sobbing.

Three more cultists, but the circle is tight now and I’m close.

I break into a run, slam past one, spinning round but still moving. One goes to trip me, I hurdle desperately, mis-step, sprawl, roll.

I connect with the legs of a cultist in the circle. He trips, crashes forwards. Forward into the portal.

An ugly ripping sound. Then the cultists are down one member. The chanting falters. The cultists stare in a tiny moment of shocked silence.

Except… Not quite silence.

With a sound like a wet fart, the portal collapses in on itself.

Strike one for the good guys.

Now if only I hadn’t just given twenty angry cultists nothing to do but use me like a pināta…

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #5 :: Nyarlathotep

Christ Church College, Oxford, England

One thing I’ve always liked about Kurt Russell movies is that they end.

That sounds wrong…

I like that they conclude. Evil is defeated. The good guy wins. A sunset is ridden into.

In real life you face down a horde of angry cultists, close an interdimensional portal, get attacked, find out your incapacitated sword-wielding partner is now… capacitated?… watch her get rid of the rest of your problems, and then you find out there’s a seven-foot tall avatar of fear and chaos who’s all pissed about it and manifested behind you when you weren’t looking.

In real life this shit never ends.

Having never faced an interdimensional avatar of fear and chaos before, I go with the nearest weapon to hand and throw a rock at him.

Apparently this avatar—Nyarlathotep is his name—is made of sterner stuff than that.

So: plan B.

It may not be overly heroic to run and hide while getting your friend to do the fighting, but Kayla virtually has superpowers and I don’t, so this may not be as bad as it initially looks.

Kayla smiles. She points her sword at Nyarlathotep. They stand opposite each other, a frozen tableau for just one second, two… Kayla darts forward almost faster than the eye can see.

And then Kayla flies eight feet through the air and lands in a crumpled heap. Sort of the opposite result to the one we were going for there.

God, I wish I’d thought of a plan C.

In its absence, I stick to cowering. Nyarlathotep steps toward Kayla. He stretches out a robed arm. The impression of a hand and its end—a claw, black leather skin, yellow nails—and then gone, or denied. On the floor, Kayla screams.

What would Kurt Russell do? Possibly not the smartest question, but it’s stood me better than you’d imagine in times of need.

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.

But Kayla MacDoyle, MI37 field agent, misanthrope, dangerous psychopath, and virtual superhero is lying on the ground whimpering, while I’m stuck with defending us from a reality gone awry.

Untethered nightmares come at me. Balls of blades, steely and sharp; beings of arms and bone, scratching, clawing; creeping insectile horrors; nuns with switchblades; rats the size of terriers; tentacular masses, sticky, viscous, and clutching. I scavenge weapons, improvise barriers. I duck blades, catch punches, wrestle limbs. I am beaten, blackened, bruised. I come up with something in my teeth. I am an animal. I am pissing terrified.

Space ripples and changes about us. Maybe we are traveling, some dream logic carrying us along like a current through rooms of living flesh, of bone, of chitin, rooms threatening to drown us, rooms I cannot bring myself to describe.

I can feel it slipping in behind my eyes. After-images of travesties that clamber into my brain and breed. I lose track of what is real in a place where everything is unreal. And I need to pull back. I need to get him good and grounded. But there is no ground. There is just Kayla, just me. Circling. Falling. Falling again.

I land. A plain. Some tundra. A dust cloud on the horizon. I pick myself up. And Kayla is still there, right next to me. And I know something big is coming. I just need to get to him, to get us both away. I start to run, but dream rules apply. My limbs do not obey me. Each step is a tottering nightmare of minimal increments.

And the cloud. The cloud is fast, is impossible in its speed. Closing. Closing. And in the dust I get an impression of hooves, of horns, of teeth.

“Kayla,” I yell. “Kayla!” I’m begging her. She has to help. I was never built to be the man alone.

Finally I am at her side. I steel my courage, slap her, shake her. Her head lolls. Her eyes roll. “Come back,” I whisper. The cloud comes closer.

She is not going to snap out of it. She is gone. I am alone.

I gather her up in my arms. I stagger. Another step of glacial slowness. The cloud’s thunder shakes this world.

And it would be so easy to slip away, to give in, to let the madness take me, to be consumed by this reality.

But there is a home, a place to get back to, friends and family. And Kurt Russell movie marathons. And bacon.

And screw this. Kayla and I are getting out of here with Nyarlathotep’s head on a bloody platter.

I turn. I face the cloud. It’s almost on me now. Massive. Thundering.

Just a cloud, I tell myself. Just dust and wind. I don’t know the rules of this place, but I know the rules of dreams. Of nightmares. And I pray that they apply.

The cloud breaks over me. Just dust. Just wind. It scours my cheeks. Hoofbeats crash around me. Just echoes. Just the boom of the wind.

And then peace. Then a breeze. I open my eyes. The cloud has blown away. I still hold Kayla.

Reality slips. I stand in a corridor full of doors. I can hear scampering about and above me. And I know I can hear the rats in the walls.

I am still afraid. I would still favor flight over fight. But fight I will. Because I can face my fear. Because now, Nyarlathotep, you get bloody yours.

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #8 :: Interrogation

I never thought I’d say it, but once you get used to a dimension of fear and chaos, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it’s driven my co-worker, Kayla, insane, and yes, it does keep trying to kill me with more and more depraved horrors, but, well it could be worse.

Take the field of flying knives I have to traverse. Blades whirl, shearing life from plants, small rodents, the odd offensive-looking rock. But a little concentration on my part, and I manifest a titanium steel umbrella and, with Kayla balanced on my shoulder, I cross the place in relatively safety.

Nightmare logic.

And when I reach a river of blood leeches—each creature a foot long, each with a spine-filled maw reaching for me—I just think hard and then I have wings. Kayla and I sail over them easy as blinking.

Seriously, I’m like the Green bloody Lantern in this reality. It’s awesome.

Really the only serious fly in the ointment is that if I don’t find its ruler, Nyarlathotep, in the next fifteen minutes or so, all of regular reality is going to be permanently buggered. And I have no idea where I’m going.

Fortunately I’ve always been more of a beta male, so stopping to ask for directions isn’t a serious dilemma. If only I could stop people trying to kill me long enough to ask.

I finally strike gold in a castle that drips gore and is chock-full of tiny gremlin-like creatures armed with stilettos. An old-school suit of armor makes maneuvering difficult but renders their attempted stabbings utterly ineffective. After a few attempts I finally seize one around the midriff and heft it to eye height. It kicks and spits with its full eight-inch frame. Really, if it wasn’t so full of bile it’d be quite adorable.

“I’m looking for Nyarlathotep,” I inform it.

It lunges for my eyes, hurling its blades at the grills in my armored mask. I flinch back and fling it away. Possibly a little too hard. It hits a wall and becomes an ugly stain.

I keep the next one further from my face.

“Which way to Nyarlathotep?”

It suggests some awful things I should do to my mother.

“I’m not a violent man,” I tell it, “but I can apparently crush you like an insect.”

More profanities follow. Small he may be. Easily intimidated he is not.

“Please?” I venture.

Further obscenities. And then my jaw starts to tremble, because all of this abuse is delivered by a voice so high it’s barely in human hearing range. And then I laugh. It doesn’t feel at all appropriate as chunks of viscera rain down the castle walls, but I’m starting to become immune to the shock horror aspects of this place.

As soon as the sound is out of me, the gremlin shrieks and does its best to claw its way out of my hand. I’m so shocked I stop laughing and stare at it. It recovers slowly. I chuckle. It slams its body backwards, wrestling an arm free to cover its ears.

“Nyarlathotep now, or I bust a gut all over you,” I tell it. Not the most threatening thing I’ve ever said, but it has the desired effect. The thing grimaces and screeches, and jabbers, and around me the walls of reality flex and then—

I stand (and Kayla whimpers) on a cliff overlooking a barren, dusty plain. Rising from the center, like red wax dripping toward the sky, is a many-spired citadel.

“Nyarlathotep,” the gremlin gibbers at me. “Nyarlathotep!”

Looks like the sort of place an extradimensional avatar of fear and chaos would call home. I nod my thanks to the gremlin and then throw it over the edge of the cliff.

Seriously, the murderous bastard could have brought us a little closer.

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #9 :: Citadel

As citadels that are the embodiment of sheer terror go, Nyarlathotep’s is pretty imposing.

I mean, to be fair, he benefits from having built it in a nightmare reality based on humanity’s collective fears where things like gravity and physics are apparently spongier than I’m used to, but still, he deserves points for effort. Blood-colored spires, statues that actually scream, non-Euclidean angles—he went the whole nine yards.

Still going to kill the bastard, of course.

I lower Kayla, co-worker, super-woman, and currently dribblingly insane person off my shoulders. I check my watch. If time obeys the same rules here as back home I’ve got about twelve minutes to get this done. Time to take some shortcuts.

Fortunately, the best thing about a nightmare reality is that nightmare rules apply. I concentrate, my dream armor disappears, I sprout wings, and I take to the air.

Hell yeah, I do.

I sweep down over spires, twist between towers, work my way deeper and deeper into the heart of the complex. A vast central tower looms before me. I aim for a window near its peak, tuck in my wings, clutch Kayla tight to my chest—

—and tentacles explode out of one wall and smash me into the tower.

And, yes, that would probably be the worst thing about a nightmare reality: nightmare rules apply.

I fall, scrabbling against the tower’s sheer surface. I try to clear my mind, to focus. My fingers elongate, develop suckers. I latch on. One arm spirals away, elastic and strong, wrapping around Kayla.

I climb the wall. It ripples beneath me.

I jump as the first spike erupts from the wall’s surface. I fall, but re-summon my wings. I seize Kayla. I climb. The spikes eject from the wall at speed. Jagged rain.

My body is steel before they strike me. I shelter Kayla and they clatter away.

And screw wings. I’m from the twenty-first century, dammit.

A moment is all it takes to get a jet engine strapped to my back. Going up.

The tentacles lash out as I jet upwards, but I angle away, roasting them with afterburners. They blacken, curling and falling away. Take that, you bastards.

A window looms. I blast towards it, faster, faster. And I’m outstripping the citadel’s imagination. I’m outstripping its speed to respond. I’m bloody winning.

Except the window’s frame twists even as I slam towards the glass, the edges stretching, stretching, until it resembles something worryingly close to a smile.

Glass shatters. A wall looms. I collide. Blackness descends.

Later

How long was I out? How long do I have left? Is it too late for reality? I look for my watch, but everything is black.

“Kayla?” I say. No reply.

“Always late,” a voice says.

I recognize that voice.

“I’m very disappointed, Arthur.”

It’s my mother’s voice.

A spotlight flicks on, a white circle of light on the floor before me. I hear footsteps. My mother comes into the circle. She’s bleeding. A great gash across her neck. She collapses, reaches for me.

“Jesus!” I dash forward, grab her hand. She’s trying to say something I can’t hear. I read her lips. “Arthur…” There’s something she’s desperate to convey, but she can’t …

And then it hits me. Nightmare rules apply.

And this is a cheap bloody ploy.

Lights. I summon them. Banish the darkness. My mother’s body wilts in their brightness. Becomes mannequin parts falling apart beneath cheap clothes. An illusion dismissed.

The brightness illuminates a throne room, rich wall hangings, a velvet carpet, a magnificent golden chair. No Kayla. I can’t see her. But there, standing before the chair, waiting for me—my target, my goal. Nyarlathotep is home.

And seeing him there, all traces of confidence drain away. No, they are violently expunged from my body. Seeing him there, finally, I am truly afraid.

The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #10 :: Rematch

Fear. It’s easy enough to be ruled by it. There are a lot of things to be afraid of these days. Terrorists. Bioweapons. New Lady Gaga songs.

My personal issue with fear is a little more immediate, though. It is seven foot tall, wears red robes, and goes by the name of Nyarlathotep.

And I’m in his citadel, in his dimension, and in this moment, I realize I probably should have brought my gun. My super-powered co-worker, Kayla, is a government-paid swordswoman, but she appears to have disappeared into madness.

Crap.

Up until now it hasn’t been too much of a problem. Until now, I’ve been able to take advantage of this being a reality other than ours, and just summoned things by concentrating hard. Apparently now I’m in Nyarlathotep’s actual house, that’s not an option. Not that I don’t try it. I imagine swords, guns, knives, bombs, even Donkey Kong on the off chance I can catch him off guard.

No go.

Nyarlathotep steps towards me. He’s got no gun either, but that’s not really an issue for him.

Visions overwhelm me. Rush up at me from the floor, swallow me.

—drowning here, swallowed by surfaces suddenly turned liquid. I can feel them pressing in. Insects scuttering forward, enveloping me. In my mouth, my ears, my eyes. Peeling back my flesh. And beneath I am something other than expected. There is no flesh here, no blood and bone. Hollow glass veins. Crystalline tendons. A hammer descending, to shatter me, obliterate me. Fear building, building. My heart beating faster in my chest until I fear even that. Until it is enough to shatter my fragile body. Overwhelming me. Drowning me—

It could go on and on. Forever. There is so much to fear. To run from. Through the vision I can see Nyarlathotep, hand outstretched, pacing slowly towards me. And I know then that all thoughts of killing him are madness. Because fear can never be killed. It will live forever, beat in my heart forever.

But there, then, I know too, that all of that doesn’t mean fear can’t be overcome too.

I squeeze shut my eyes as the visions press in, but I push back. I gather my breath. I open my eyes.

Nyarlathotep is a step away. His fingers an inch from my throat. I have one hope. One trick this place has taught me. I brace myself. And I laugh.

In his face, I laugh. As loud and hearty as I can make. Trying to avoid the hysteria overcoming me. I laugh, and I laugh, and I laugh.

His hand strikes me and shatters like glass. Nyarlathotep stares at it, disbelieving. He comes on, his arm grinding against me, splintering, fracturing, spilling to the floor in glistening red shards. And then his whole being smashes against me. And he is only so much dust at my feet.

And then his whole citadel trembles. Cracks run through it. The whole of this reality shatters and shakes. And then I am falling, tumbling through a tear in the world, into blackness.

Christ Church College, Oxford

I land with a crack on my back in the center of Christ Church quad.

I lie there panting. I look about me. And I realize, this is it. This is Oxford as I remember it. Regular, normal, boring Oxford. Normal, boring students staring at me, wondering where I’m from. The madness from Nyarlathotep’s reality has been banished.

Kayla, my co-worker, lost to madness in that other reality, sits up next to me, paws at her eyes.

“Worst feckin’ dream I’ve ever…” She shakes her head.

In my ear, static as my earbud reconnects with the MI37 home office. I hear Tabitha’s voice. “Five, four, three… oh wait. You’re back.” She pauses. “Cut that bloody close. Idiots.”

Yeah. Everything back to normal.

And I smile. Because, really, there’s no place like home.

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