Cthulhu's Reign

We’re allowed our sanctuary, here in this dusty shadowy minor labyrinth of stairways and galleries where the warped oval sun only reaches through a grimy round skylight or so at the top. A place resembling a library, except that instead of books on shelves there are almost identical caskets containing the dead, blessed to have died when they did.

Maybe the creature cannot easily mount or descend the stairs, though I doubt it. So far at least, Cthulhu hasn’t done so. There comes a click in our minds, and the drawn-out whisper inside us, of thoooo- loooo, thoooo-loooo: that might be its name, or maybe a call of power akin to an abracadabra.

Yet the stairs don’t stop Cthulhu from taking us one by one to play with. And then to discard, vilely and agonisingly used. Maybe beyond any agonies caused by human torturers, since I believe its tendrils can reach into our brains to push the buttons of pain. For we must eat. And Cthulhu feeds its pets.

After half a week of hunger for us, our water-bearers of the day sighted a small heap of dead fish and fruits on a path they used. Was that bait? Iain McKinnon darted ahead bravely to scoop the food into his empty vase, and survived. He returned for the rest of the rations, and survived.

On the following day, a pile of raw meat and vegetables was further away. Subsequently, some cheeses and salamis were outside the house-size version of the Pantheon of Rome. Presently we needed to hunt through statued galleries of the cemetery to find wherever our food might be. On all expeditions, near or far, we carried forks — the gardening, not the dining, kind — to defend ourselves and each other, however feebly.

A week passed before, half way along a gallery, Iain Mackinnon trod on a patch of the strongest of glues of the same colour as the flagstones. He couldn’t wrench his sneakers free. As he stopped to untie the trainers, so that Katie Drummond and Paul Goldman and Jack Ballantyne could then try to jump him out of that stickiness, k-thoooo-loooo, thoooo-loooo, towering Cthulhu came. The tines and blades of the gardening tools jerked down to clang against the flagstones as if a powerful magnetic field dragged them. It was, said Paul afterwards, like some bizarre salute to a potentate, the lowering — then the necessary letting go — of swords. Katie could only scream and wave her arms at the advancing entity. Neither she nor Paul nor Jack were going to throw themselves bodily at that monster. One of its feet seemed to suck the glue back into itself as its arm-tentacles immobilized and lifted the Scots student who bellowed, then tried vainly to bite at face-tentacles. as he was rushed away. The forks and spade were no longer fastened to the flagstones. Snatching them up, for what use those might be, the trio did give chase led by Katie, but when they rounded a corner the next gallery was empty except for mournful statues. Thus they related when they returned to our labyrinth — carrying the day’s food, yes; Katie having to be commanded and cajoled by Paul Goldman, for what else could they do, what else?

That night we all heard the thin, piercing screams, for what seemed hours, dying away, starting again. Henkel had to restrain Katie. Of course no one slept. The next day the hideous mess that had been Iain Mackinnon lay on the space outside the Pantheon. He almost seemed to have been turned inside-out by an insane vivisection.

It was. slippery to bury him in a copse as close nearby as we could. Pastor Jimmy Garrett managed to say words and quote parts of the Bible that weren’t excessively evangelistic; and I noticed that his hair, now lank and stringy where it had been lovingly tended and conditioned before, was falling out after these weeks. So hair doesn’t always just go dramatically white overnight with shock.

Katie begged our field marshal to strangle her; she promised not to struggle. Then she begged the taciturn German translator, Hans-Ulrich. Of course nobody would strangle her. In due course, might suicide by assistance become easier to contemplate?

No one went to fetch food for four days. Eventually hunger pangs prevailed. The instinct for survival is so strong. Katie didn’t try to smash her head against the hard stone that was all around us, even though we had no sedatives, only some painkillers and stomach settlers in a couple of the women’s shoulder bags, and a few tampons, soon used. Most bags including mine had been left aboard the bus for our brief stroll into Staglieno.

As time wore on, Zsuzsa was taken similarly, and Selma Strandberg and Nellie van Oven and Wim Ruyslinck and Hans-Ulrich. The monster only rarely resorted to glue, preferring the direct approach. Nevertheless, not each far sortie resulted in a victim. Cthulhu preferred to fool us that by luck or at random we might return safely. Hence the rabbits would scurry to snatch their suppers.

No one spotted another lens in the prevailing mist, supposing that the original lens was designed for us to see. Of course we didn’t venture outdoors more than was essential — oh, the crushing endless fearful misery, even though for distraction we took turns telling our life stories. I think there was only one lens, and that it showed a memory of our world just before the Cthulhu creatures arrived, not an image of normality continuing in some parallel reality that might even be reachable. Nor did anyone stumble upon a mini- monster to stab and slash and crush.

Monster? More like a baneful sadistic god, if it could multiply itself on different scales all across the world! If it weren’t simply this cemetery of Staglieno that had been abstracted from ordinary reality by a potent entity from another universe that could conjure up illusions.

Nor did every abducted victim scream through the night. Maybe a tongue was removed first of all.

“Each person lost,” said Garrett one day, “is a sacrifice to it. A human sacrifice. As in pagan antiquity. But worse. I think it’s. rationing out its sacrifices. Or maybe it’s like a serial killer who gets satisfied for a while until the head of steam builds up again.”

Garrett frequently goes outside to keep watch, from the top of the steps to the Pantheon. Thomas Henkel doesn’t object to what might seem to be a desire for martyrdom on the evangelist’s part — at least, until martyrdom actually commences. Any additional information is valuable in our field marshal’s blue eyes, sometimes cool, sometimes almost twinkly. I think we’re all losing our sanity somewhat, or else we no longer remember what sanity is or was.

And I accompany Garrett, despite a dark look of mistrust from ex-beauty queen Mary-Sue.

“I quite often see him walking in the garden,” Garrett tells me. “That’s to say, it walking in this cemetery. I’m still a witness of the Lord’s, whatever has happened.”

I feel more sympathetic to the evangelist now than at any previous time. He’s trying to cope without ranting nonsense.

“Look, Sally.”

And there is the Cthulhu thing in the distance, pacing slowly, rollingly, as I imagine a sailor newly on land after a very long voyage. On our land, of which Cthulhu has taken possession. The Cthulhu thing turns, aware of our scrutiny, and once more I experience the sensation, thoooo-looo thoooo-loooo, that it’s staring directly into my eyes, into my mind which may seem very simple to it, like a seashell with a soft little body inside.

Rudolfo gone. Paul gone. Dionijs Ruyslinck gone. Anders Strandberg gone, to join his wife, as it were. And Angela Henkel gone — our field marshal needed to send her out voluntarily more than once to bring food back, otherwise he might have seemed to be protecting her, thus impairing his authority. The available pool of foodbringers is diminishing all the time. What an unbalanced game of chess, wherein pawn after pawn is removed from one side only when we make a wrong move, as is inevitable. Despite Thomas Henkel’s laudable pretensions, our side only consists of sacrificial pawns, no king or knight or queen.

All the cut flowers in vases died long ago, but rain falls frequently and suddenly to lubricate the cemetery, whereupon Cthulhu walks in those heavy showers to lubricate itself, wafting its face tentacles. What does the creature muse about? Maybe it had a million years previously to muse, and now it amuses itself. Creator and creature are quite similar words.

I total the days scratched by me, as Henkel’s adjutant, on the wall in five-bar gates. Does a week of five days, rather than seven, make the time pass more quickly, even though that system produces more weeks? Look: we survivors have lived for twenty-three weeks by now. August should be the current month, although the temperature stays much the same as that mild April day of our imprisonment; the brightish oval wavery yellow shape which we sometimes see above the mist, and which moves across the sky, should be much hotter by now if it’s the same sun we knew.

The piles of food put out, or materialized, in unpredictable places for us pets to find grow smaller in proportion to our diminishing numbers; Cthulhu is keeping tally. It plays like the wicked boy inflating a frog with a straw through its anus until the poor creature explodes. Or pulling the legs off a spider one by one to test its balance. Only much more so.