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against tricks and illusions."
Almost deafened by the shrieking wind, we reached the tenth floor. Singing
Rock produced the piece of paper on which he had written the numbers from
Unitrak, and peered at them closely through the gloom. Then he gave me the
thumbs-up, and gently pushed open the door that led into the corridors where
Misquamacus lurked, and where now the Great Old One, the terrible malevolent
manitou of centuries past, was hideously coming to life.
The stench was sickening. Even though the corridors were empty, there was a
scuttling, rat-like noise everywhere -- a noise that even the moaning of the
wind could not drown. It was as if the whole place was alive with invisible
rodents, swarming and clustering around the decaying smell of the Great Old
One. Singing Rock turned around to reassure himself that I was still behind
him, and then led the way toward Karen Tandy's room -- the room where
Misquamacus had first made his obscene appearance.
The drone of the Star Beast's astral wind made me feel exhausted and
irritable. As we came nearer to Karen Tandy's room, the noise grew louder and
louder, until it sawed through all my senses with the coarse pain of a rusty
blade. All around us, as we walked, there was the scuttling of ghostly rat
creatures, as if we had a loathsome escort of parasites wherever we went.
Once, I felt as if one of them had jumped on my back, and I found myself
tugging at my shirt in disgust and fear.
Singing Rock had begun his incantations. He was calling on the spirits of the
Sioux nation to protect us from the devouring evil of the Great Old One; on
the manitous of the air, the rocks and the soil; on the demons of sickness and
plague to strike Misquamacus down. I could hardly hear what he was saying
above the shrieking of that unearthly wind, but I could feel that our rat
escort was treating us with a certain amount of impatient respect.
We turned a corner -- and suddenly, the corridor was laced with brilliant
flashes of light, which crackled and spat all around us. Singing Rock raised
his hands, palm outward, and the light poured against them and spent itself on
the concrete floor. It was the lightning-that-sees -- the first indication
that Misquamacus knew we were here.
We reached the stretch of corridor in which Karen Tandy's room actually was.
The lightning-that-sees seemed to have dispersed most of the phantom rat
creatures, but the groaning wind continued, and now it was a real wind, that
blew against our faces like grit. Singing Rock beckoned me onwards, and we
fought our way nearer and nearer to our inevitable confrontation with
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Misquamacus and the Great Old One. The shrieking and howling of the wind made
it impossible for us to speak, and out of the door of Karen's room we saw
sizzling flashes of astral light -- the cold blue energy that had created the
gateway for the greatest and most terrible of all legendary beings.
Then -- against a tearing hurricane -- we reached the door itself. Singing
Rock looked in first, and abruptly turned his head away in sheer terror,
jerking his hand over his face like a man in the spasms of electrocution. I
looked too, and I was stunned into such dread and fear that I felt as if I
could never move from that doorway again.
The room was thick with evil -- smelling smoke, pouring ceaselessly from two
fires which Misquamacus had lit in metal bowls, and placed on either side of
his astral gateway. On the floor was marked out the most sinister and bizarre
circle of figures that I had ever seen, all elaborately drawn and colored in
what must have been the gore of Lieutenant Marino's police officers. There
were strange goats and hideous creatures like enormous slugs, and naked women
with loathsome beasts emerging from their wombs. Presiding over this circle,
hunched and deformed, his dark body blurry through the smoke, was Misquamacus.
But it was not Misquamacus himself that struck the greatest terror in us -- it
was what we could dimly perceive through the densest clouds of smoke -- a
boiling turmoil of sinister shadow that seemed to grow and grow through the
gloom like a squid or some raw and massive confusion of snakes and beasts and
monsters.
What was so terrifying was that I recognized the Great Old One -- I recognized
how close he had always been to me. He was the fright of strange shapes in
wallpaper and drapes; the terror of faces that appear in the grain of wooden
wardrobes; the fear of darkened stairs or curious and half-seen reflections in
mirrors and windows. Here, in the writhing shape of the Great Old One, I
discovered where all my long-buried fears and anxieties had come from. Every
time you hear disembodied breathing in your bedroom at night; every time the
clothes you have carelessly left on your chair seem to take the form of a
sinister and monkish figure; every time you think you hear footsteps behind
you as you climb the stairs -- it is the evil presence of the Great Old One,
straining malevolently at the locks and seals which keep him on the other
side! Misquamacus raised his arms, and howled a chilling howl of
triumph. His eyes seemed to be lighted from within, goat-like and satanic, and
his body, on its stunted legs, was glistening with sweat. He had gloves of
blood where he had torn bloodied bones out of Lieutenant Marino's men and used
them to draw on the floor. Behind him, almost invisible in the smoke, the
hideously frightening shape of the Great Old One twisted and squirmed.
"It's now, Harry!" screamed Singing Rock. "Help me now -- it's now! It's now!"
He buried his face in his hands, and began to recite numbers and words,
endless invocations to his own manitous and spirits, and the great spirit of
white technology. I clung on to him, holding him tight, concentrating my
terrified mind on Unitrak -- Unitrak -- Unitrak. The shrieking wind made it
impossible for me to hear what Singing Rock was saying, but I pressed my mind
into supporting him -- into loving him -- into keeping him safe while he tried
to overwhelm Misquamacus and the murky presence of He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit.
There was a moment when I thought Singing Rock would make it. He was talking
breathlessly fast, reciting and chanting and nodding, faster and faster as if
building up to the great summoning of Unitrak's technological manitou. All
this time, though, Misquamacus was chanting too, and sweeping his arm in our
direction as if to encourage the Great Old One to consume us. I saw things
move through the smoke that were frightening beyond belief -- shapes more
ghastly and dreadful than the worst nightmares I had ever had -- and
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octopus-like coils of mist that began to unfold from the gloomy cloud of the
Great Old One. I knew we only had seconds in which to survive. I was tensed up
so tightly that my muscles were locked and I had bitten into my tongue.
Abruptly, Singing Rock slumped. He sagged, and then fell to his knees. I knelt
down beside him, brushing my hurricane-blown hair from my eyes, and yelled at
him to carry on.
He looked up at me, and there was nothing but fear on his face. "I can't!" he
shouted. "I can't summon Unitrak! I can't do it! It's a white man's manitou!
It won't come! It won't obey me!"
I couldn't believe it. I looked over my shoulder and saw Misquamacus pointing
toward us with both hands, and the dark snakes of the Great Old One unrolling
over his head, and I knew that this was the end of it. I snatched the crumpled
fragment of paper from Singing Rock's hand, and held it up to the flickering
astral light of the weird and horrifying gateway.
"Unitrak, save me!" I shouted. "Unitrak, save me!" And I screamed out the
numbers, again and again and again. "UNITRAAAKKK! FOR GOD'S SAKE --
UNIIITRAAKKKK!!"
Singing Rock, still clutched in my arms, moaned in fear. Misquamacus, his face [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]