He Who Walks in Shadow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  He Who Walks

  in

  Shadow

  By

  Brett J. Talley

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2015 by Brett J. Talley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-942712-26-8 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-942712-27-5 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-942712-28-2 (ebook)

  JournalStone rev. date: May 22, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015936226

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Art & Design: Becca Klein

  Edited by: Michael R. Collings

  For Annie

  He Who Walks in Shadow

  Prologue

  Incendium Maleficarum, First Gate, First Key

  In the beginning was the darkness, and the Earth was without form, and void.

  In the abyss shone black suns of ancient days, Stygian orbs that ruled over ebon seas of endless infinity. The Great Old Ones were born of that emptiness, they who yet walk in foul and lonely places, who still call forth from the wilds of the world. From the maddened heights of the greatest mountains, to the roiling caverns of the deepest seas. In shadow-bound tombs, and empty passageways of lost antiquity. But they did not always haunt only the darkest watches of the night.

  In the long ago they came to this world, spawn of shadow, when the stars wheeled round right. They seized it as their own, the realm on which they would build their glory. Upon its planes did rise great cities of titanic stone, cyclopean capitals of mind-breaking vastness. Carven by no hand of man, for humanity was but a whisper on cold winds that float back and forth upon the line of time. In unchallenged glory they ruled, for he who was lord upon them all needed but stretch forth his hand and whate’er he wished would be laid to waste.

  The wisdom of the world—as it perceives itself now, at least—would call it mad, what they were and how they exercised dominion. But in an insane world, all shall dwell in madness.

  So it might have been for all time. Forever might that shadow have fallen, a shade that covered the land and sea for all the sunless nights of black eternity.

  But as with all nights, there came the dawn.

  The darkness cannot comprehend the light, no more than it can abide it. It was but a single spark, a tiny, flickering flame. Yet it burst forth like the thunder that rides upon lightning. Then the Great Old Ones knew fear, as they had always known hatred, but it was upon a new enemy that their burning scorn was cast.

  For there was one race whom the light favored. A slave race, a breed of mindless creatures which the darkness carved from the mud and gave form for its own amusement. As meaningless to it as an insect. As unimportant as the lowest beast.

  And unto this forgotten creation—unto man—the light bestowed but a single gift. Knowledge of itself, and the spirit that comes with it.

  Thus mankind came to know the light, though with that knowledge arose the memory of the darkness. And of that shadowed remembrance, mankind feared.

  For as surely as the sun rises, it must also fall. As surely as one age ends, another must begin—an ever turning back to that which came before. To that which should not be. For in all truth is this—that is not dead which can eternal lie.

  And the darkness does not forget.

  Chapter 1

  Journal of Carter Weston

  February 19, 1932

  There is a legend from the long ago, passed down through the ages on whispered words and shuddered sayings, written of in arcane and forbidden tomes, locked away in the dusty halls of abandoned libraries. It is history to some, myth to others, though the latter are never fulsome in their conviction. It speaks of the coming of a man from the east, if man he was, from behind the lake of Hali and the jeweled cities of Carcosa.

  The wind rushed before his footsteps, while the sound of discordant piping floated in his wake. The vermin teemed around him, and the pestilence gathered at his feet. He wore the yellow robe of a king, but no king of this earth was he. For his raiment was tattered and stained with blood and mud and the tears of the damned. But his face was princely—the visage of command, the countenance of one to be followed, as a mystic might imagine the pharaohs of old. And with him always the book, the great crimson tome that bore the name of Incendium Maleficarum.

  From the east he appeared, and like John of old, he preached the coming of another epoch of this earth. But no salvation was to be had through him. At least, not for mankind. He was a harbinger of the end of one age—and the beginning of another. The departure of mankind and the return of something more ancient. For on the wings of those he heralded rode death, and hell followed.

  Onward he traveled, as the black tentacles of plague wrapped around his feet and spread from every town and city that his gaze fell upon, from every place in which he preached his sermon of the end times. The men and women and children died by the millions from that Black Death. They fell and they cursed the coming of the traveler, for to look upon him was to see the face of darkness, to taste madness and insanity.

  Yet not all marked his coming with the evil eye. The most ancient cults, the nameless faiths whose adherents had howled the oldest rites into the wild winds on darkened mountain tops and in forgotten, ruined temples, they had long sought his coming. Their voices echoed across desolate plains and through unnamed valleys with one word, a name—Nyarlathotep!

  For two years, that name was feared across Europe, and many died with the whisper of it on their last breath. Then, nothing. The ancient rites ceased. The vermin fled. The plague receded like a waning tide. As mysterious as his arrival, so too was the reason for his departure—so close to the end times, so close to opening the g
ate to worlds unseen and unimagined.

  In legend and myth, much is false. But truth can be discerned, if the careful reader knows where to look. Within the tattered pages of a book that has no name, I discovered a story—to my knowledge singular in its telling—that holds a kernel of truth. It told of a simple farmer—of ancient stock of Greek or Roman or even Egyptian lineage—who came down from the mountains of shadowed Wallachia to face the child of Azathoth, the harbinger of that whence Cthulhu first came. But the farmer did not contend with Nyarlathotep alone. He brought with him a jewel, an object of unknown composition and origin, a crystalline tetrahedron, whose triangular facets seemed to shimmer with unnatural light. The writer of this tale held that it was the Oculus of legend, the Oracle of Truth, the Eye of God. The records are strangely silent as to what transpired on that blasted heath, all those centuries ago. All that can be said is that Nyarlathotep receded and the Incendium Maleficarum vanished once again beneath the shroud of history, while the fate of the farmer—and the Oculus—remains to this day a mystery.

  An interesting side-show of history the story might have remained, were it not for the dark murmurings that swept across Europe on the eve of the Great War, the whispers of a preacher of the end times, wrapped in yellow garb, who spoke of the coming of a great darkness. That darkness fell upon us all with that conflict and the plague of influenza that erupted from it.

  But I fear that this tribulation was but a prologue, the gloaming of a blacker night than we have seen since the Lord called forth for light in the first days. I will face this roiling chaos, as I have faced it before, but I fear that this challenge is greater than any I have yet seen.

  And I do not know if I can defeat it alone.

  Chapter 2

  A forward for the interested reader, [Manuscript name TK]

  A friend of mine—the oldest and finest of the men to whom I choose to give that title—once told me that when great or grave things happen, it is incumbent upon those of us who bore witness to their passing to record them for posterity so that other, future generations might learn from our mistakes and revel in our triumphs. Carter Weston was wise, but I do wonder if he knew that it would be his name that graced the pages of such recordings and that it would be his story that would inspire others to contend with the evil of this world—and the evil that lies beyond.

  I remember well the moment I met Carter. It was a seemingly innocuous occasion, one of a hundred such introductions during our first few days at Miskatonic University, a place that would come to dominate both our lives as students and our adult undertakings. But I marked that incident, for some sense, something beyond the five commonly understood, told me that our meeting was auspicious. How right I was.

  Life seldom continues along the path we intend, and one curve in the road leads invariably to another. So it was with Carter. He, the rare skeptic to grace the hallowed halls of Miskatonic, left, as they all do, a true believer. But his baptism into the faith of the cosmic and unutterable secrets of our world was truly by fire. For it was Carter who was chosen in the winter of our penultimate year of study to seek out a rare and powerful tome, a grimoire of horrible antiquity—Incendium Maleficarum, The Witches’ Fire. It was Carter who was given this task by Dr. Atley Thayerson, a devotee of certain nameless cults, who masqueraded as a defender of the light.

  Were it not for a chance encounter on a storm-wracked shore with four men who had faced the darkest of evils in their past, Thayerson might have accomplished his goal and opened the gate to the crawling chaos that waits in the vast emptiness of the cosmos. He might have seen it through even then, were brave men not ready to do all that was necessary as the future balanced on a knife’s edge. For it was sacrifice that was required to send the dead city of R'lyeh back to the depths from whence it came. And it was only sacrifice that could silence what was awoken in the great citadel of that place, on that day when the stars came right and words were spoken that could have brought an end to all things.

  Carter and I stood against the darkness that day. He recorded the history of our struggle many years later, on the very eve of his disappearance. The authorities called the words he wrote evidence of his madness. Perhaps there is no man alive but I who knows the bitter truth of those pages. The manuscript was to have been destroyed, but Carter was too wise to allow that to happen. I found it, just as he intended. And while much of the story was known to me, in its final pages I found a clue to the disappearance of Carter Weston.

  From that clue I came to the strong conviction that Carter was alive. Weakened perhaps. In grave and deadly danger, certainly. But alive. For it was that accursed tome, Incendium Maleficarum, that his enemies sought, and no man knows better its workings than Carter. Now the book is seeking again, seeking a way to bring forth the Old Ones from their exile and their slumber. I would pursue it in any event, but I know that where I find the book, I will find Carter also.

  I will keep a record of my efforts, as Carter would undoubtedly want. And when my journey is completed, no matter what the outcome, I will share that story with the world. But as a story is seldom told well when presented from only one perspective, I shall include whatever documents I deem relevant—edited, of course, to eliminate the redundant or the mundane—including my own commentary and the journal of Carter Weston himself, for his words were always strangely prescient and his foreknowledge uncanny. I hope that my readers will forgive an old man the clumsiness of his pen.

  For now, perhaps it is best to begin at the beginning, on that horrible day when my greatest friend simply vanished.

  --Henry Armitage

  Chapter 3

  Journal of Henry Armitage

  December 15, 1932

  For the first time in my life, words fail me. It has been a terrible day, one that will remain etched in my memory for as long as breath fills my lungs. Yet it is important to write it all down, lest time forget events that history witnessed. In any event, whatever is begun today, it will not end soon, and I fear it will not end well.

  I visited Professor Carter Weston’s office early this morning. Last week, we had planned to meet and discuss a class we are to teach together during the Spring term—a critical examination of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World. I thought it strange that I had not seen Carter in the intervening time. It was rare that we went even a day without speaking to each other in some capacity. But I brushed it off, prepared to explain it away as work getting the better of him. I know more than most how terribly busy he has been.

  It was rather early when I arrived at Dexter-Ward Hall, the sun having only just peeked over the trees that bordered Miskatonic Yard. It was a bitterly cold day; a week of unseasonably warm weather had given way to a howling blizzard the day and night before, and great mounds of snow made walking treacherous. But my preoccupation with my own difficulties was rather short-lived. They vanished when I realized Dexter-Ward sat quite empty.

  The front doors were locked, and I opened them with my key, astonished that Carter had not preceded me. He had always been an early-riser, and I fully expected to find him waiting for me inside. And yet, as I entered, the only sound I heard in the darkened corridors of DW was the slamming of the door behind me.

  I felt it then, as many who have stumbled upon a crime scene often claim. An energy in the air, a foreboding. A sense that something was off, that something was terribly wrong. I did not run to Carter’s office. There seemed no reason to hurry, and I needed every ounce of resolve just to put one foot in front of the other.

  Carter’s office was at the end of the second-floor corridor. In the state I was in, it seemed like the longest hallway I had ever seen. Carter’s door danced in front of me, swaying from side to side in my vision, but never really getting any closer. Yet long before I was ready, I found myself standing there, hand on the doorknob. All I had to do was turn. I did so. The lock was not engaged.

  The door opened.

  The office was empty.

  I actually laughed out lo
ud, standing there on the threshold, feeling foolish for my irrational concerns. Of course, Carter was just late. Nothing more than that. Nothing more sinister, nothing more unusual. And were it not for the envelope sitting on Carter’s desk, the one that bore my name written in the angular pen of my good friend, perhaps I would have continued in my ignorance for hours more.

  I picked it up, studied it, wondered why it would be waiting for me, here of all places. Everything in my being rebelled against opening it, even though I knew I had no choice. Inside was a letter, written in the same hand as my name on the envelope. I have recorded the contents below.

  14 December 1932

  My dearest Henry,

  If you are reading this—and quite honestly, I have no reason to imagine you are not—then you have discovered that I am missing. My time is short. A week ago, I received a visitation from one who would have the book. The Incendium Maleficarum seeks its owner, Henry. It seeks the one through which it can do the most harm, the one through which the gates can be opened and the Old Ones restored.

  And its true owner hears its song.

  I have heard that song for the last forty years. I never knew the reason, and I tried not to question why the book chose me. But when that man, when Erich Zann entered my office, the song of the book ceased. I must believe it sang for another. I must believe he heard it in his own ears.

  That was seven days ago. Over the last week I have committed our story—and the story of the finding of the book—to the written page. You will find two copies in my wall safe, the combination which you know. Leave one. It is my hope that my executors will see fit to publish the truth to the world. If they should fail, I hope that you will do what they will not.