Cthulhu's Reign

“It’s too late now. Even twenty would be excellent. You mustn’t waste a minute — my wife and I are fleeing to the Womb at once. You and your husband should join us.”

“My husband and I?” she countered, unable to stop herself. “But why?”

“The more people we have, the better, for saving the human species. The ideal would have been to build a huge Womb, a colony holding ten thousand people, but no longer. You are healthy and intelligent, and from what you have told me your husband is as well. You will bequeath excellent genes to the next generation of humanity. Make ready at once, and come with your husband to pick us up. Within three hours. And keep the Womb secret. not a word to your families!”

Then he cut the phone, leaving us no chance to refuse.

“He’s out of his gourd,” said my wife, putting the phone down with a frown. “I’ve been playing along with him until now, because he’s an important client and a sponsor for my research. but this! This is just insane! I’m not going to work for someone who’s plain nuts!”

“Of course you can’t! Even painters wouldn’t work for anyone that far ’round the bend! And especially. ”

The world shook around me, and nausea and dizziness cut off my words. I thought for a second I must be having a stroke, but then the books began falling off the shelves and the paintings on the walls began banging. It’s an earthquake! And even as I framed the thought, the shaking intensified. It was like no earthquake I’d ever felt before, more like standing on top of a record player and spinning around and around and around. and counterclockwise, at that! The feeling of rotation jumped yet again, and suddenly I felt as if I were standing on the deck of a wave-tossed ship at the mercy of the storm.

And my brain was shattered by a piercing impact. Pain seared through my head, as if a thick nail had been driven into my brain through my retina, bringing a host of visions. The waves of the nighttime sea, rolling back as the seabed surged to the surface. Soft mud, seaweed, flopping deep-sea fish unable to escape in time. Like flash shots in a movie, the pictures appeared and vanished again, a bursting flood of imagery. Giant structures rising out of the ocean depths, covered in millennia-old mud. They looked as if they were of ancient stones, but the structures themselves writhed and quivered constantly like something alive. And from the shadows of the columns something crawled out, something shining. something that could only be called the natural enemy of humanity itself.

Sayoko shrieked before I had a chance to. When I saw her white face and hollow eyes, I knew she had seen what I had, in that brain-shattering instant.

No, not only Sayoko.

In that instant all of humanity saw the same visions, the same horror — the instant when the Damned Gods returned.

2

Sayoko always wore glasses, suffering from both near-and far-sightedness. Even so, her face was attractive, the type you’d describe as an intellectual beauty.

Maybe Manabe brought Sayoko and me with him to the Womb was because he had some plans for her.

Whatever disgusting plans he might have had, though, they were shattered before she ever entered the Womb.

What am I saying? Every time I think of it I lose it again. cool, gotta stay cool. calm, rational.

Reeling from illusionary visions, attacking my senses like some cerebral stroke, I turned on the cable TV and clicked to the all- news channel. The newscaster who popped up on the screen looked almost like he was smiling.

“The Tokyo city government office building is collapsing.”

Simultaneously the screen switched to a video feed, showing City Hall shining metallic blue under dozens of searchlights in the early morning dimness. Covered in metal frames and huge sheets of glass, City Hall’s surface was covered in angular shapes, a huge crystal reflecting the searchlights. When it was built people had laughed, saying the mayor had built a modern pyramid to cover his own underground mausoleum, or Godzilla had come out of the ocean and turned into a robot. That had been back in the ’90s. a gigantic building fusing postmodernism with New Gothic architecture in the height of the economic boom years.

And now from protruding angles covering its surface, hundreds and hundreds of yellowish ropey things stretched out, quivering up into the pre-dawn sky. Semitransparent tentacles like some huge jellyfish writhed and slimed from angular alcoves and setbacks inside the building. A newspaper copter drifted in a bit closer, trying to capture the metamorphosis of City Hall more clearly, and suddenly a piss-yellow rope snapped up, whipping around the copter and yanking it from the sky. The blades snapped off, still whirling as they flew toward City Hall, smashing into the side of the building in a glittering waterfall of glass shards. The waterfall poured down on the heads of the emergency personnel clustered below — police, JSDF, fire and ambulance — slicing through heads and hands and legs with bloody abandon. The tentacle obliterated their screams in an explosion of greasy flame as it smashed the crumpled helicopter down on top of them, smoke and fire shooting up the walls.

“. a monster movie. ”

I turned the TV off.

“It’s just special effects, computer graphics. Things like that just don’t happen!”

Behind me, I heard Sayoko hang up the phone.

“That was President Manabe. He said to come to his house at once. He said he was watching City Hall on the TV. He said they attack from other dimensions, through the angles. ”

“They?”

Her face began to crumble, tears and fright shining through.

“He said something. something about Tindalos. and, I think, Atzous. Who cares? It’s THEM! Those things! Those tentacles, reaching in through the angles and killing and killing and killing! He said we have to escape to the Womb, with him and his wife, before the invasion really begins. He said right now!”

The shock of a distant explosion rocked the building, and I instinctively looked toward the sound. South. I could see brilliant orange light there, through the curtains. I ripped them open, and heard Sayoko gasp at my side. Huge pillars of flame rose from the bustling city center of Ikebukuro.

3

As I drove toward Manabe’s mansion, my wife switched the Garmin over to TV and sat eyes glued to the screen. As a scientist, I guess she couldn’t wrap her mind around what was happening. She was whispering to herself, and when I glanced at her, her profile was beaded with sweat, feverish. I noticed she had starting smoking. She said she’d quit, but I guess she still had some hidden away somewhere. I didn’t say a word. If I smoked I’d damn well have wanted one myself right then.

It was stop-and-go all the way to Manabe’s mansion west of Tokyo. I wondered what was happening. No more details showed up on the TV, the radio, even the Internet sites, after that first flash. I did see a column of JSDF tanks racing along the expressway, and here and there police were out setting up roadblocks and inspection chokepoints. I didn’t stop to look, just kept on driving, silent.

When we got to Manabe’s home we switched to his shiny van. He said it could carry a lot more stuff that little Prius we drove. I guess his housekeepers and employees had all fled, because he was loading the van himself.

The boxes he was loading so lovingly, though, weren’t crammed full of cash or securities or food or clothing or medical supplies, but moldy old books. a pile of occult rubbish, magic, sacred texts from bizarre cults, collections of forgotten myths and the like.

That was when I met Manabe and his wife for the first time. He was in his mid-fifties, a striking, tall man with graying hair and a pale face. Had I met him under normal circumstances, his piercing gaze probably would have made me think of a successful entrepreneur, a fine judge of people. These weren’t normal times, and what I knew of him showed me nothing more than an eccentric millionaire.

“We can exchange greetings later,” he snapped. “We have to get out of Tokyo at once!”

And, taking his wife Kanako by the hand, he slid into the back seat.

As I slipped into the driver’s seat, I asked “Wouldn’t it make more sense to use a company helicopter than have me drive all that way?”

I wasn’t trying to be smart, I was serious. I thought Manabe could flee Tokyo faster that way.