New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird by Paula Guran

Author:Paula Guran [Guran, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, cthulhu, Anthologies, Anthologies & Short Stories, Genre Fiction, Fantasy, short stories, anthology, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literature & Fiction, Dark Fantasy
ISBN: 9781607014591
Amazon: B00UVM7VR2
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Looking away from the light that showed the Charles Dexter Ward was no longer entirely dead was as hard as opening a rusted zipper. But Cynthia did it, and didn’t let herself look back. She pulled Hester a little further down the corridor and said, “Now we really need to know how she killed him. And whether it’ll work a second time.”

“It should,” Hester said. “Whatever force is animating him, a big enough shock should disrupt it. We just have to find her machine.”

“I like your use of the word ‘just.’ Something like that—would it be portable or not?” The Charles Dexter Ward’s bioluminescence was continuing to ripple and pulse in an arrhythmic not-quite-pattern that was like nothing Cynthia had ever see a boojum do before. It was already giving her the mother of all headaches, and if it was a reflection of the Charles Dexter Ward’s state of mind, then she couldn’t believe it was a good auspice.

“One that could kill a boojum? Definitely not.”

“So wherever she built it, that’s where it is. But how do we find it? It’s a boojum—how do we even look?”

“Um,” said Hester and tugged Cynthia another few steps away from Fiorenzo’s lab. “The closed stacks have a schematic. Professor Wandrei said not to share it with—”

“Outsiders,” Cynthia finished wearily, and Hester ducked her head like a reproved child. And of course the Arkhamers had a second, inner archive to which Cynthia had not been given access. It was their secrets that kept them alive and independent. “It’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“No, at this point it’s only stupid and self-destructive,” Hester said. “Here.”

Cynthia’s heads-up was filled with a spidery green constellation: the human-scale paths through the Charles Dexter Ward. She had only a moment to appreciate them before her pressure suit ballooned taut and a sudden sharp pressure in her ear canals distracted her. Reflexively, she opened her mouth and closed her eyes—every spacer knew and feared that sensation—but it was just a pressure fluctuation, not a hull breach. She closed her mouth again and blew until her ears popped.

When she opened her eyes, Hester was looking at her, head swaying in relief. “Good idea, staying suited.”

Cynthia took a tentative breath and gagged. The reek of putrescence that had poisoned every breath since she stepped through Charlie’s airlock was thick enough to taste now, and she wasted thirty seconds re-checking her perfectly functioning suit seals. “By Dodgson’s blessed camera,” she swore, then belatedly realized she didn’t know how Hester felt about taking sacred names in vain. “I think that took a year off my life.”

“So long as it’s just one,” Hester said. She ran a gloved hand up one of Charlie’s dead interior bulkheads, tracing the rippling patterns of necroluminescence. Her fingers found an indentation, and Cynthia could see her face screw up with disgust through the bubble of the helmet. When she pushed in, her glove vanished to the knuckles. Charlie’s flesh made a squelching sound.

Hester hooked and ripped; mucilaginous strings of meat stretched and rent.

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