we’re out of the woods…Jesus, we’ve got some rough sledding ahead of us. But we know there was faulty workmanship in the construction, we know the damned contractors who sank the pylons shorted us on the quality of the fill…we know we’re going to have some losses…but
Dis stirred.
Frank Stierman, naked save for loincloth, found his back against a rock wall, found a bronze blade in his right hand, found himself staring across what had been the conference room of his office at a creature of scales and fish-gills that writhed on eight legs with a head of vapor and eyes in the vapor that burned into his own.
He screamed and threw the sword at the thing….
Seven men were staring at Frank Stierman. He had no idea what had happened, but he knew he had lost all ground. In the middle of an impassioned plea for reason and patience, he had suddenly fallen back against a wall, screamed like a madman, and lost all tonus in his face. Whatever Frank Stierman had been a moment before, now he was unreliable…perhaps insane. Seven men stared back at him, their resolve now solidified not by anger and suspicion but by the realization that they were dealing with a lunatic.
The connecting door to Stierman’s private office opened, and a woman entered.
“Frank, can I see you for a moment?”
Stierman was trembling. The creature. That head, made of…of some kind of
“I agree, Frank.
“Monica, I—”
“Frank, don’t make me talk here, in front of these men!”
“You’d better go on, Frank. We want to talk about all this in private for a moment, anyhow. “
“Yes. Go ahead, Stierman.”
“It’s all right. Go ahead and talk to her.”
When the door was closed behind him, Stierman turned to his wife and said, “Why are you doing this to me? You know what’s at stake in there.”
“I’m getting out, Frank.”
“Don’t be a bitch!”
“I’m getting
“Don’t worry about a thing. I had structural engin—”
“Don’t lie to me, Frank. I know you too well.”
“I’m
“I’m going to help them, Frank. They said I wouldn’t be held responsible. They know you got me to sign my name on the contracts as a dodge. I can’t go through any more of this with you, Frank. After that southern thing, I thought—”
“My God, Monica, don’t do this to me! Look, I’m begging you.”
“Stop it, Frank.”
“You’re pregnant, you’re going to have my child, how can you do this to me?”
“That’s the reason, Frank. Because I
She turned to go. He reached across the desk and lifted the obsidian bookend and took three steps behind her. She turned just as he raised the weight. Her eyes were cool, waiting.
He slammed the bookend across her forehead.
She stumbled back, head jerking as though struck from three different directions. Her head opened and the white ash of bone was suddenly coated with blood. She flailed back, eyes glazing, and crashed into the dark window. Then the glass bowed, gave, and she was gone, silently, into the night.
Stierman dropped the bookend. His arms came up and his hands groped out before him, shaking violently. He twitched with cold, a sudden cold that came from a place he could not name. Gone, she was gone, he was alone.
The words burned on the teakwood wall.
He wanted to scream, but the trembling was on him, the insane twitching that he could not stop. His body was helpless in the spastic grip of the seizure. Gone, she was gone, they were in the next room, the building going down down into the earth, those words, what were those words…
“Ah-wegh thogha!” His throat had never been shaped to form those words, but it did.
Dis woke.
He hungered for his body.
Time is a plaything for the gods. It only has substance for those who use it. Men fear time and bow to it. Gods cup it and mold it and use it.
Time ceased its movement.
Dis called for his body.
From seven far lands they came with the stones. From deep within the earth two of them were brought, by creatures that did not walk. From Mecca the worshippers defiled their own temple with theft, and brought it. From across the lost snow lands of Tibet they came with yet another. Seven great religions were gutted. Seven sources of power were lost. All in the moment without time.
Came, and brought with them the seven stones of power, the body of Dis.
To the skyscraper in Manhattan.
And Dis took back what had always been his.
Within the cornerstone the black soul mote glowed and pulsed with the undying fire that lived within. The mote grew, and absorbed the cornerstone. It flowed black and strong, mighty and changing, absorbing the skyscraper as it had absorbed the bulk of Stonehenge.
The building shifted, shaped itself, and inside its growing body Frank Stierman knew a moment of madness before he was absorbed into the rock-flesh of Dis. His face, frozen in that moment of undying death, an eternity of broiling insanity through which he would gibber forever. The face of Mag, burned into the stone.
Dis came alive, and replaced his soul.
And rose, and darkness washed up again from the concrete-covered Earth that was his essence.
Above the city the bulk of Dis rose, spraddle-legged, enormous.
All this was rock. All this was flesh of his flesh. All this belonged to Dis, to be absorbed, to permit him to grow as he had never grown before.
To feed Dis.
Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54’ N, Longitude 77° 00’ 13” W
When Moby Dick awoke one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed of kelp into a monstrous Ahab.
