'We must summon up the Jibbenainosay.'
Dr Ottokar Proctor was content with his life. He had food, shelter and an interest. He needed nothing more. His knife flicked away at the hardwood, etching in the eyes of Michigan J. Frog, one-time-only star of Chuck Jones' classic One Froggy Evening (1955). First, he found the character inside the wood, then he cut away to create a rough approximation, and finally he did the fine work with the knifepoint. In the last few months, he had whittled away at the remnants of furniture which still cluttered up the monastery, creating a horde of Bugs Bunnies, Daffy Ducks, Road Runners, Coyotes, Sylvesters, Tweety-Pies, Elmer Fudds, Foghorn Leghorns, Pepe le Pews, Speedy Gonzalezes, Yosemite Sams and Porky Pigs. He kept returning to these archetypes, rendering them in each and every one of their multifarious moods. He had a Daffy with pointed teeth bared in his bill, building up to an explosive rage, and a Coyote with eyeballs twice the size of the rest of him, appalled at the approaching doom unleashed by an inexpressive, beep-beeping bird. Now, he had run through the roster of Warner Brothers' major characters, he was applying himself to the lesser-known greats: forgotten stars from the '30s like Bosko the Talkink Kid and his girlfriend Honey, Foxy, Piggy and Fluffy, Goopy Geer, Buddy and Cookie, and that proto-Elmer Fudd, Egghead; and memorable but unprolific creations like Marvin the Martian, Witch Hazel, Hippety Hopper, Private Snafu, Spike and Chester, Claude Cat, Henery Hawk, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog from Ready, Woolen and Able (1960), the pathetic Merlin the Magic Mouse, Second Banana and Cool Cat. If there was anyone missing from the line-up, he couldn't think of him…
Inside his mind, there was a non-stop chase, as his carvings pursued each other through doors in the ceiling, dodged falling battleships, pulled off and replaced their heads, dressed up as busty cheerleaders with lipsticky, heart-shaped mouths and spit curls, swallowed exploding firecrackers, were reduced to charcoal briquettes and reassembled, switched on and off the lightbulbs over their heads, shot each other with ever larger guns, and reduced rivals to their essential atoms. Elmer Fudd shushed the audience with 'be vewwy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits!' Marvin the Martian disappeared in the beam of a disintegrator ray as Space Cadet Porky Pig sneered 'take that, you thing from another world you!' Daffy Duck dropped 126 storeys inside an icebox while Bugs snickered 'ain't I the stinker?' The Road Runner beep-beeped, and the Coyote ordered earthquake pills, boulder suits ('impress your friends—be a rock!') and economy-size holes from the Acme Mail Order company. It was Rabbit Season, it was Duck Season. There was non-stop music, and bright colour, and no one was ever hurt. His creations were destroyed and remade in the time it takes to cut from one shot to another.
Dr Ottokar Proctor smiled to himself. He had finally found the world of his dreams.
But on the wharf, waiting for Bugs and Daffy, was a parcel, freighted all the way from Tasmania, with breathing holes cut into it. Inside the parcel, bright eyes shone with hunger, with greed, with irrational and unstoppable violence…
Soon, Bugs and Daffy would open the crate, and the Devil would be free again.
Nguyen Seth was much relaxed by his spell in the isolation tank. His spirit had been drawn to the edge of the Outer Darkness and been in communion with the Dark Ones. Ba'alberith, the Mythwrhn, Nyarlathotep and the Jibbenainosay were gathered on the lip of the funnel that led down to the Earth, vast and formless, their energies gathering as they merged into one mass of power, then recreated themselves as distinct entities. Too much time spent in the world of men had robbed Seth of his appreciation for those whom he served. It was too easy to be distracted by the petty concerns of the Elders of Joseph, by the ridiculous politicking of the countries and corps of the world, by the confused tangle of personal relationships. His mindlink with Jessamyn Bonney had dragged him too deep into the mire of humanity, tainted his purpose with hatred, love, desire. When the girl became one with the Ancient Adversary, his entire being had screamed in an inexpressible agony. He had nearly been dislodged from his earthly form, and only been able to survive by slipping into his trance, allowing his spirit to wander, unfettered by the concerns of his flesh…
The Dark Ones had been angered by the ascendancy of their enemy, and Seth had a mind- stretching vision of the eternal wars, feuds, rivalries and alliances of the Outer Darkness. The business to which his everlasting life was devoted was but one of a series of skirmishes fought on planes beyond even his understanding, between forces he could only vaguely comprehend. As Ba'alberith and the Mythwrhn combined their essences like gases creating a liquid, Seth realized just how alien these beings were, not only to his human perceptions—it took a spell in the Outer Darkness to remind him how close to humankind he really was, just one step beyond their tininess—but to the entire matter of the physical universe through which the Earth spun like a forgotten ball of mud and water. The Dark Ones had their histories, their cultures, their tragedies, their humours, but they were beyond anything he could even imagine. Time had no meaning in the Darkness, but the entire span of terrestrial history was but a brief armistice in the war between the Three Shades of Dark and the forces of Nullification. A myriad parallel universes were bunched together in a knot tied by Azathoth, the Crawling Chaos, and the Dark Ones were penetrating his own reality just as the Nullifiers were infiltrating other timelines. He had a vision of other Nguyen Seths, living through other eternities, under other names, and he was able to pick out the billion specks that were the multiple souls his lives had touched.
As a lesson to him, Ba'alberith had allowed him to dip into an alternate in which he was a fearsome sorcerer, rotting behind a mask in a seven-turreted castle at the edge of a great empire, doing battle with swordsmen, magicians and a leech lady. Seth was whipped through this life in an instant, from a violent clash on a primordial plane to another, fifteen thousand blood-soaked years later, in the heart of his castle. It was over within the blinking of an eye. From this experience, Seth learned the futility of a pure devotion to self. In that life, he had been simply obsessed with his continuing existence, with the gratification of his every whim and impulse. Upon his death, he had left nothing behind him in that universe except dust and bad memories. When he returned to his Earth, to the course of his history, he would be humbled.
He would live purely to do the bidding of the Dark Ones, happy in the knowledge that in his servitude his life would mean something. He was the man born to end the world, and he would leave behind him the void through which the Dark Ones could have access to his physical universe, the predestined site of their Great Tourneys, the killing games from which would emerge the Three Champions of the Night who would join battle with the Nullifiers for the fate of the eternally expanding Empire of the Actual and its infinite number of Shadow Selves.
All this was far in the future, far beyond any physical life he could expect, but he knew he would be present in some altered form at the end of the conflict. From the lip of the funnel, he saw the timelines spiralling away into the Darkness. The culmination of his struggles was within his grasp, and beyond that was the restful blackness of the Nothing that would be the lot of the peoples of the Earth. He would bring them a merciful oblivion, freeing them from the need to endure through another cycle of pain and suffering as the whole story was played out again.
This was the future, he knew; but it was also the past. The Outer Darkness was set sideways against the progress of time…
He stepped back into his body at various points through his long career, reinforcing his original decisions, initiating sequences of action whose consequences would only become apparent as the 20th Century drew to its fiery close. He relived his finest moments, his memories becoming the realer as he sped through them, cannonballing through his own life towards the Nguyen Seth who waited in his tank in Salt Lake City.
Back in the world, he was possessed by the needs of his flesh, and took the time to satiate himself
