The Cthulhu Encryption (13 page)

Having heard Dupin’s account of the Cthulhu legend not long before, I could not help the word
draconian
springing to mind, and if a dragon really is a kind of worm, with legs, wings and the ability to breathe fire, I suppose that might have been as good a term as any for the impression that further being imparted—but in reality, any attempt to encapsulate it with earthly comparisons was bound to fail. It was unnamable. Indeed, it seemed to me to be unspeakable, or even unthinkable: that it was something beyond the reach, not only of description, but also of conceptualization.

It was not the first time that I had looked into dimensions other than our own, at least in the context of a hallucination, but the horrors I had seen before were not nearly as extreme as this one.

I was petrified, unable to move—at least until Saint-Germain reached out and gripped my arm.

I had always been sceptical about the mesmeric fluid, but I felt its flow then, and knew that the fake Comte was exercising every ounce of his real power.

“They’re human insofar as they’re more than mere phantoms!” he hissed. “Flesh and blood! Whatever else you see or feel isn’t material. They’re human—they can be fought, and even killed.”

I turned to look at him, primarily in order to tear my eyes away from
them
.

With a flick of the wrist, he split his cane in two—which is to say, he bared the blade of his sword-stick. My cane was, alas, just a stick, and I had not followed Dupin’s advice to put a revolver in my pocket. As Saint-Germain put himself
en garde
, I could not believe that it would make much difference that he had a blade while I had only a frail cudgel. I had no doubt that he was a practised fencer, and the blades that the two monsters had in their hands were no longer than his own stubby weapon, but whatever he might say about them, I knew that they were not
entirely
human—and the part that was not was completely immune to the mesmeric thrust of his eyes as well as the brutal thrust of his steel.

I put myself
en garde
too, even though my weapon was wooden, hoping that its extra length might count for something—but when the monsters moved to attack, flowing rather than moving on their feet, I was soon convinced that neither of us stood a chance. Our enemies could doubtless be killed, but I did not think that
we
could kill them—and I did not think that I could hurt one badly enough to keep it at bay.

The weapons clashed as the conflict was engaged: steel against wood and steel against steel. There was more than one contact made, so there was a fight of sorts—perhaps there were even parries and ripostes on our part—but it was to no avail. I felt my stick torn from my grasp, and I heard a blade clatter on the ground, which I knew, without looking, to be Saint-German’s sword. We were not stabbed, though, let alone run through—that was not what our adversaries had in mind.

Instead, they closed in on us, backing us up against the cold stone wall of the chapel.

They continued to move forward, blades held wide of their bodies, their arms extended as if to wind around us like tentacles, presumably then to crush us…or perhaps swallow us whole.

Now, I could not help but see the one that was intent on embracing me. Saint-Germain’s brief touch had lost its effect; I had no mental insulation whatsoever against the horror, the terror and the sheer disgust of looking into that multidimensional prospect, at a transdimensional creature that could not be given a true name….even though it surely had to be what Dupin had called a
star-spawn
, or a
shoggoth
.

It had time to kill me, but it did not. It was content to press me every more tightly against the wall—until a human hand that was surely not moved by human volition reached for the inside pocket of my frock-coat.

The situation suddenly seemed quite absurd. Monsters from beyond the world operating as common thieves? As
pickpockets
?

Perhaps, I thought, it really was human volition that was moving the hand—that in possessing two footpads abroad in the dark streets for nefarious purposes, the shoggoths had taken possession of their motives as well as their flesh. I had no doubt, though, that the prize for which the hand was reaching was Levasseur’s medallion, not my purse or my watch.

It was not only the solid hand that was
reaching
, however—the tentacles that Saint-Germain had assured me were merely phantoms were
reaching
too, into my mind. The footpad, it seemed, did not intend to murder me—but what the effect might be of the shoggoth reaching inside me, I dared not contemplate. I did not want to die, but I wanted even less to be possessed by a demon of that sort.

Just as the probing fingers were about to touch the cloth-swathed medallion, however, and just as I was about to be touched in a far more intimate fashion by the hallucinatory tentacles, perhaps to be kissed by that loathsome worm,
someone spoke
.

I did not know what the voice was saying, and I am certain that I could not have pronounced whatever it said myself, but someone spoke—and the hallucination was ripped apart.

I do mean
ripped
. It did not fade, or merely vanish: what happened was savage and abrupt.

Suddenly, our attackers were only human—and they were still holding their blades wide, at arm’s length.

Instinctively, without even a fragment of intention, I smashed my forehead into the face of the man who was crowding me. I felt and heard the cartilage in his nose break under the impact. I have no idea what Saint-Germain did, but his opponent recoiled too, perhaps not yet unconscious but certainly inconvenienced to such an extent as to be unable to resist when Saint-Germain shoved him away. I did the same to my man—but I think, in all honesty, that they would have collapsed anyway. The ripping apart of their ultradimensional component had delivered an incapacitating shock to their human component.

There was another shadow in the doorway now. “You really ought to be more careful with that medallion, Saint-Germain,” said a voice that was not recognizable as the one that had spoken before, although it surely came from the same mouth. “This is not what I would call safe-keeping.”

Saint-German laughed—to relieve the tension, not because he was amused. He must have been far more confident than I had been that he could resist possession by the monster, but he had certainly been scared. “Well,” he said, “it seems that I owe
you
a debt of gratitude now. I can no longer surrender the medallion to you, though—I have just given it to my friend, in order that he might let Dupin see it.”

The other voice laughed too. Then the shadow came toward us—but before the candlelight could fall on the face and show me the stranger’s features, he knelt down and put his fingers out to touch the striven footpads.

“They’ll live,” he said, after a moment or two. “The shoggoths have gone—but what on earth were they doing here? If they wanted the medallion, they could have stolen it a hundred years ago, as soon as Levasseur took it…but they are surely not capable of
wanting
anything at all. The emergence of the encryption in Ysolde’s flesh must have attracted their attention, perhaps as a matador’s cape draws a bull.”

“They intended to possess us,” I blurted out.

“Did they?” the mysterious stranger replied. “Well, perhaps they did. In that case, I really did just save your lives, for I doubt that sensitive men like you could have come though that experience unscathed, even if these two can wake up with nothing worse than a headache—and a broken nose, in one instance.”

“I fear that you’ll have to give him the medallion, my friend,” Saint-Germain told me. “I have no strength left with which to fight him, and you’ve just seen that he’s a magician of unusual power. He’s been after it for a long time.”

“I can be patient a little longer,” the shadow murmured, still keeping his features out of the pool of candlelight, although he had risen to his feet again. “It’s probably best that Ysolde regains possession of it as soon as possible, if she’s in need of protection. Saint-Germain was right to hand it over, albeit that he did so for the wrong reasons…and he might even be correct in thinking that Dupin can decipher the cryptogram. It’s a stern test, but I’ll be very glad indeed if he can pass it.”

“Who are you?” was all I could think of to say, having found the rest of his speech incomprehensible.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Saint-Germain was quick to say. “You two have never met, have you? This is the famous Breton bibliotaph, Monsieur Oberon Breisz. Not his given name, of course.”

“Neither of us is wearing his given name tonight, Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said the newcomer, silkily, “but we are who we are, are we not?”

“
Oberon
Breisz,” I repeated, dazedly.

“Indeed,” said the newcomer—and now he did move forward a little further, so that I could see his features. They seemed rather ordinary, save for their leatheriness. Had he been sun-tanned, I might have taken him for a sailor, but he was very pale…almost pale enough for me to believe that he was a denizen of some uncanny underworld, rather than a mere book-collector.

Except that he could not be a
mere
book-collector, since he knew a spell that could send shoggoths back where they came from, and clearly knew more about Ysolde than a mere reader should have done.

What on Earth is going on?
I wondered. It was probably a silly question. Whatever was going on, it was not going on
entirely
on Earth. We might all be lost in a hallucination of some sort, but, one way or another, this business extended into the dream-dimensions, perhaps deeply.

“Thank you for your intervention, Monsieur Breisz,” I said. “Although I cannot be certain, now, what would have happened had you not arrived, I was terrified. But how did you come to be here?”

“I followed you from your house,” he said. “I hoped that you might give Monsieur Dupin a message for me. I would rather have delivered it myself, but when I saw the witch answer your door…I’ve encountered her before, when I tried to call on Monsieur Dupin at home. I could have forced my way past her, but I did not think Monsieur Dupin would approve of that, so I told myself to be patient. I am a very patient man, by custom and habit…perhaps a little too patient, if events have now begun to move quickly.”

“What message?” I asked, a trifle foolishly.

“Will you tell him that if Ysolde wants to come home, she is more than welcome,” Oberon Breisz said, earnestly. “Will you tell him that he is more than welcome in my Underworld too, and that the time has come for him to remember who he really is, and resume his study of the
Necronomicon
.”

“Do you expect him to understand what that means?” I asked.

“Perhaps he will,” the bibliotaph said. “If not, he will see it as a puzzle to be solved—and that will intrigue him all the more, will it not?”

And with that, he turned on his heel and marched swiftly away, disappearing into the shadows almost as if by magic. After what had just happened, I could not have been excessively surprised if he really had disappeared by magical means.

Saint-Germain was less impressed. “What a clown!” he exclaimed. “He’s a good magician, no doubt about it—but surely not as great as he thinks he is, if I’m any judge. Independent scholars always go mad. That’s the strength of the Society, you see—it keeps its members in balance. Dupin should join us soon, lest he go the same way. Mind you, if Breisz really does have a copy of the
Necronomicon
, it would be worth Dupin’s while to accept his invitation. If that’s where he found the spell he used to get rid of the shoggoths…but we ought to get out of here. If we’re found with them, there’ll be questions asked—and that bump on your head will make it obvious that you broke this fellow’s nose. No one will blame you, as I’ll give evidence that he was trying to rob you, but still…you know what
sergents de ville
are like.”

I looked down at the unconscious footpads, who seemed very commonplace villains now that they had been disenchanted. Then I felt my forehead, were there was indeed a fluid bump that was bound to give way to a visible bruise.

“Come on,” Saint-Germain urged, as he picked up the two parts of his swordstick and reunited them. “Recover your cane and let’s be off—you need to get home. I’ll walk you to the corner of your street, just in case. You have a message to deliver now, as well as the amulet. The plot’s thickening, and no mistake—I’m deeply intrigued myself. Don’t forget to impress upon Dupin that he’s in my debt now, and that the merest glance at the medallion will incur an obligation.”

I was completely out of my depth, and not only because my head had begun to ache as a result of my intemperate assault on the pickpocket. I was glad that Saint-Germain walked me home, for I would have been frightened without his presence. I was even glad to see Madame Lacuzon open the door; I felt that I had a better sense now of the true value of her protective presence.