16 Original Stories In The H.P. Lovecraft Tradition -- And They Saved The Creepiest, Scariest One For Last

LIFE'S A BITCH – AND THEN YOU DIE

I didn't remember much of the accident... the sudden smashing metal and glass sound of the impact, somewhere behind me, and I'd have thought it was someone else's car except that I was suddenly slammed backwards into my seat with a rattling thump while my old Chevy was shoved forward and outward, towards the shoulder of the road, and I saw the rusty metal guardrail filling the right side of the windshield and the passenger side window and then –

-- a long hallway. Dark, but there was an open door at the end and a bright light shining out of it, and me hurrying up the hall, jogging, running, sprinting, except I wasn't breathing hard and can't remember now the feel of my feet hitting the floor, my arms pumping, sweat on my forehead –

But I reached the doorway and stepped through it, and... here I was...

all stories copyright 2019 D.A. Madigan

A Bentley Book

For John Auber Armstrong

“But the war's still going on, dear

and there's no end I can see

And I can see forever...”

one

damned thing

after another

& OTHER TALES OF LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR

D.A. MADIGAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction – Eldritch Musings 1

The Webbing Between The Worlds 11

Good Cop, Bad Cop 85

Filters 111

The Cubicle Beyond Time And Space 125

The Night They Drove Cro Magnon Down 130

The Darkness Between The Stars 143

The Final Incantation 175

The White House Cylinders 216

Fish Out of Water 239

The Fifth Season 286

One Damned Thing After Another 318

Lovely, Dark and Deep 333

Which Can Eternal Lie 342

Charlie In The Box 354

Pop Up 384

ELDRITCH MUSINGS

I admit it – I came to Lovecraft relatively late in life.

I first read “The Color Out of Space” when I was a 19 year old college student at Syracuse University. At that time, all Lovecraft's work had been reissued in a series of paperbacks with stunning Michael Whelan covers that you couldn't help but come across in any chain bookstore's SF/FANTASY section.

Strangely, given the stuff's prevalence – I mean, some publisher must have thought it would sell, right? -- I didn't know many people who actually read Lovecraft. I mean, all my acquaintances read sci fi and fantasy, we all had extensive personal libraries, but there seemed to be a universal distaste for Lovecraft that, looking back on it now, I still don't understand. I can remember a vague feeling that his work was 'really old' – much the same feeling I still have towards Poe – and perhaps it was this sense of antiquity and obsolescence that fueled the general lack of enthusiasm for his work that pervaded in the geek/nerd circles I ran in back then.

I did know one guy who loved Lovecraft, though... to the extent that I could never get this guy to read any Colin Wilson, because, he said, Wilson had pretty savagely ripped Lovecraft in some review, and this my buddy could never forgive. It was this same buddy, Dick Pero, who loaned me a much older hardcover anthology of Lovecraft's stories, and it was within the pages of that lovingly worn collection that I first discovered “The Color Out of Space”.

I was impressed, on that first reading, by the palpable aura of disquiet and unease that permeated the story... that creeping sense of nervousness that increases by steady increments into dread and then goes straight into full fledged terror, not because there are monsters leaping out of basements and dragging screaming victims off to be tortured and devoured, but because... things just... aren't... right.

Still, at the time, it didn't hook me. When I gave the book back to Dick he was clearly disappointed when I told him, yeah, I'd read “The Color Out of Space” (which he'd told me was a great introduction to Lovecraft) but I hadn't liked it enough to want to read anything else. The antiquated phrasing hadn't done anything for me, and Lovecraft's writing style seemed to me, at that time, to be cumbersome and lumbering, as compared to the simple, point to point prose I was more accustomed to in the writers I liked – Heinlein, King, MacDonald, Laumer. Plus, at that time in my life, I was looking for something more upbeat, something where, yeah, you could drag your hero through hell if the story required it, but goddamit, I wanted a happy ending. And “The Color Out of Space” certainly doesn't have a happy ending, and in point of fact, although I didn't know it then, there are no happy endings in the Lovecraft Mythos. (Well – Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee kind of has a happy ending in “The Shadow Out of Time” – he gets put back in his body after being mind-napped by the Great Race, and later proves to himself that the experience really happened, which sends his reason tottering to the very edge of the abyss of madness. That's about as close to a 'happy ending' as anyone gets in a Lovecraft tale.)

At the time, I was not sophisticated or mature enough to understand that some stories don't provide us with a pleasant escapist experience because the setting is so much cooler than the real world, or the characters are so much more interesting and fun, or the resolution of the story is so upbeat and cheerful – what we would call today a 'feel good ending'. Some stories provide a different service – they take us to an imaginary world and show us people and events that make us appreciate the real world we all live in by comparison.

Lovecraft's universe is very much one of those that makes you shudder in relief when you re-emerge from it into mundane reality.

When I eventually did start reading a lot of horror, I found most authors were anything but subtle. They'd come at me with gore and violence and psychos and monsters shambling in and out of the shadows, shaking severed heads and bloody scythes at me.

When I once more picked up a volume of Lovecraft, on the other hand, in my mid 40s, I found his approach to be entirely different. Lovecraft preferred to tease and torment me with descriptions of things that seemed completely, prosaically mundane, utterly normal, screamingly typical... except that, somewhere, somehow, he always managed to imply that there was something terribly, terribly wrong going on... something awful and horrible and unthinkable and unimaginable, behind the paneling, or at the bottom of the stairs, or down the hallway behind that nearly closed door.

Lovecraft certainly had his limitations as a writer. His characterization is, to be kind, rudimentary and basic (to be cruelly truthful, it is generally just kinda shitty). And his plotting isn't much... in his better stories, there is little plot at all, just a really incredibly atmospheric description of a horrifyingly creepy situation where nothing much happens, but still, you're completely freaking out about it anyway. In his longer stories, where he has to give us some kind of plot, I usually got the impression he really had little idea what he was doing - this is especially true of “At The Mountains of Madness”. Although one of these novellas, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, is, to my mind, probably Lovecraft's masterpiece in spite of all his failings and problems with his craft.

As I've said, I didn't give Lovecraft another serious try until I was in my mid-40s. I'd been out walking in the Highlands section of Louisville and come across a small, local bookstore called Carmichael's. Inside, on the remaindered table, was a huge black volume bound in cheap fake leather that said COMMEMORATIVE EDITION – NECRONOMICON – THE BEST WEIRD TALES OF H.P. LOVECRAFT. It was marked down to $9.95, and, hey, I'd been a sci fi/fantasy reader and writer for thirty years or so at that point so of course I'd heard a lot about Lovecraft – maybe, I figured, it was time to give him another shot.

The first story in that volume is “Dagon”. I started reading it, and I was lost to the world around me.

Lovecraft is a great writer, a brilliant writer, a historical and important and seminal and frankly epic writer... but for all that, all Lovecraft really has going for him, beyond his brilliance as a world builder, is his ability to create mood, to evoke setting, to enact atmosphere. But he's such an utter master at this, he's so incredibly, astoundingly good at it, he is, in fact, so utterly without peer at accomplishing this not insignificant literary task, that it doesn't matter that his characters are two dimensional at best and his plots are often sadly muddled and meandering things. In fact, if he were better at characterization it might get in the way; the very flatness of affect of Lovecraft's hapless heroes often makes it easier for the reader to identify with them.

Lovecraft is generally credited as being the first writer to create a consistent imaginary backdrop in which his poor heroes not only never win, but honestly simply never could. Lovecraft's universe is a cruelly indifferent one, populated with hideously alien and ancient entities of incomprehensible power who care no more for humans than humans care for the dust beneath our feet.

In a Lovecraft story, you 'win' if you manage to die quickly, and in your right mind.

Very few people in a Lovecraft story 'win'.

For all his limitations, what Lovecraft did well, he was unsurpassed at... and still remains so, nearly a century later.

In my previous anthology, The Zombie Ray From Outer Space And Other Pulp Tales, I've discussed at length my love of 'pulp fiction'. Lovecraft was certainly a pulp writer; he wrote of larger than life events and his talent lay in evoking a visceral emotional response in his reader. As I mentioned there, I love reading pulp and I love writing it, and, in fact, several of the stories that I included in TZRFOSAOPT were overtly inspired by Lovecraft, and because they're already in that volume, they do not appear here. If you want to read “The Eldritch Horror From Beyond The Nether Void", "The Captain and the Queen", "In The Service Of The Queen", or "Clowns", you'll have to look them up there. And you'll find a lot of other cool stuff there, too, and I hope you like it.

But there's a great deal of stuff in this anthology that didn't make it into ZOMBIE RAY, stuff that, while it's certainly in the Lovecraftian tradition, isn't written in a particularly pulpy style. (And, on the other hand, there's at least one story – “The Webbing Between The Worlds” – that definitely is. But I hadn't written “Webbing” at the time I put together ZOMBIE RAY.)

I love to try to follow the roads that Lovecraft has surveyed and laid out, if not quite fully paved, for me. There is a special pleasure for me in trying to follow in Lovecraft's literary tradition, because the challenge there is to construct that sense of tangible dismay and unease that, increment by increment, one delicate shade of slowly increasing fear after another, builds into dread, and then alarm, and then, utter helpless horror... and to do it with some subtlety, through a sense of deepening, thickening atmosphere and steadily more ominous and creepy nuance.

I don't do it as well as Lovecraft. I don't even come close. But I enjoy the hell out of trying. And hey, nobody else does it as well as Lovecraft, either, although a lot of us keep on keepin' on.

Lovecraft has, of late, become tediously controversial to some who choose to dwell on the things that made him an ordinary man of his ordinarily unpleasant time (although, really, all times are unpleasant when examined by outsiders; it's the human condition). Yes, it's hard for a person of modern and enlightened sensibilities to read “Herbert West, Re-Animator” and not feel repelled and sickened by the obvious, awful racism redolent in some of its passages. That Lovecraft was reflexively, unthinkingly a believer in the reprehensible things his reprehensible culture took for granted – awful things like the supremacy of whites over non-whites, and males over female - can't really be debated. But we don't revere our geniuses for the things that made them like everyone else. We respect them for the things that set them apart from their peers, and that still set them apart from us. Lovecraft the man was much like his writing – for all his flaws, he towered above his contemporaries, and he still casts a long shadow over the horror fantasy realm he helped to invent.

I've enjoyed reading every Lovecraft story I've encountered, and I've enjoyed writing every story in this collection, and I'm sharing them with you in the hope that you will enjoy them as well.

In the end, that's really all the justification any writer needs, isn't it?

D.A. Madigan, December, 2019

INTRODUCTION – THE WEBBING BETWEEN THE WORLDS

My opening story in this antho is a pretty straightforward Lovecraft pastiche. It does take some liberties with some established Mythos canon – or, as I like to think, it fleshes the “Starry Wisdom” out just a little bit more.

But in writing this I did my best to ape Lovecraft's own writing style as closely as possible – so much that between the archaic textual technique and the length of the tale I find it doubtful I'll ever be able to place this story anywhere but here.

Still, I enjoyed writing it and as always, I hope you, whoever you may be, will enjoy reading it.

I do think I addressed one failing the Lovecraft Mythos has always had – a pronounced dearth of one of my favorite kinds of monster. You'll see what I mean as you read.

THE WEBBING

BETWEEN

THE WORLDS

I.

Before Attercop House stood on it, the land was still thought to be accursed. Before the Attercop clan, with all their peculiarities and oddities and strangenesses bought the acreage, it already possessed a dark reputation as a place of peril, wherein one ventured only at hazard to one's life and limb.

The origins of this particular parcel of land's ominous aura are nebulous at best. Yet even before a half acre of dense woodland in that eerie, tree entangled vale was cleared for the construction of the House, the site was already primordially dim and gloomy, drenched in shadow and darkness even at high noon on the clearest day, heavily overgrown with ancient, malevolent seeming timber that huddled almost sullenly, fiercely guarding its root-embedded earth from the invasive rays of the sun. The heavy drifts of elderly mulch, mold, and murky moss that shrouded the ground beneath the shielding trees hid brambles, deadfalls, and quickbogs beyond number. There was no telling how many hunters, berry gatherers, explorers, or merely curious hikers had gone down to their screaming or silent dooms in those tenebrous tangles.

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Marvel Super-Villain Team up

MARVEL SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM UP

It was, perhaps, early evening in the desert... the recent sunset's golds and reds yet lingered in a thin, tattered banner along the western horizon, allowing the pyramids to be silhouetted sharp and dark against its fading glory. The scentomizers were tuned perfectly; the smells of arid, faintly spicy sand, fecund poppy fields, silty Nile water gurgling through canals, the sweat of the nearby camels, the dry, powdery aroma of the silk pavilion canopies... all of these mingled with the delicious aroma wafting off the haunch of goat crackling over a camel fewmet fire.

The fire crackled convincingly; a dry desert breeze moved through the oasis like an invisible river, rustling the pavilion silks authentically.

In the oasis' central pool, thirty feet from the crackling fire, two men soaked. Fresh from the rejuvenation baths, neither looked more than perhaps forty Earth years of age, one of them, in fact, could have been half that.

Both had the deeply bronzed skins of long time desert dwellers, although it was for each an affectation; neither had felt actual sunlight on their skins for longer than he could easily calculate. Both were hawk nosed, clear eyed, dark haired, heavy browed; to an ignorant observer, they would convey the appearance of father and son, for one seemed to be at least two decades older than the other. Appearances deceived, as they so often do... the two men were not father and son. They were much, much closer... and each was much, much more ancient than he seemed.

"So, then, Pharaoh," the older man boomed, slapping the cool oasis water with his palm just to hear the pleasant plashing noise it made. "Is it not as I have said? Are not the diversions of Limbo infinite and inexhaustible?"

The one addressed as Pharaoh did not answer... at first. He was a thoughtful man. Quick-witted when necessary, but now, no emergency urged instant response. He pondered his elder's words, and when his reply was fully formulated, only then did he voice it:

"Indeed," he agreed. "And yet... and yet..."

There was a wistful sadness to his tone that was not lost on the older man. "You dwell on the past too much," the Pharaoh's elder observed. "Here in Limbo, there is no past, no future... just an eternal now. And now is enough... is it not?"

"You have been the best of mentors, o Immortus," the Pharaoh Rama Tut replied, choosing each syllable with care. "And Limbo... Limbo does, indeed, offer an eternity of delights. Yet... as I discovered in my own court, in the 40th Century... a life without strife is a life without meaning."

"Feh," Immortus snapped. "I need no telepathy to discern your thoughts, my friend... and although there is no time here, the circadian rhythms of your own flesh tell you that now is the time of year when your beloved Ravonna was first cut down by that cur Baltag. Do you think I do not feel it myself? Do you think I have forgotten?" His hand tightened into a fist. "I will never forget, my friend. Never."

Then he spread his fingers again, and waved airily. "But life goes on, Rama... for us. Ravonna remains in her eternal sleep, Baltag remains dead, Lords of Time rip his spirit to shreds forever... yet for us, life goes on."

Immortus turned and gestured imperiously. His strange servant -- 'my only subject, here in Limbo', as he often labeled the creature -- appeared a few feet away from him, seeming to condense out of the very darkling air, standing on the damp sand, rubbing his spider-fingered hands together. "Yessss, my master?" the creature hissed.

"Bring the entertainment now," the older man commanded.

The strange servitor nodded once, his oddly furrowed countenance blank beneath his overlarge eyes and wild, tangled brows. To the Pharaoh, those eyes had always suggested boiled owl's eggs.

The servitor vanished, as quickly as he had come. "Does that creature have a name?" the Pharaoh asked, making no attempt to mask the irritation in his tone.

Immortus chuckled. "He is the only subject of Limbo," the immortal time traveler said. "Why would he need a name?" He paused. "Although as to that, he is really no more a 'he' than the silicone in that sand... I built him to be the ultimate shapeshifter, you know. A perfect agent."

"So you have said," Rama Tut responded, distaste still evident in his tone. "But there is something..."

There was a jangling... silvery, musical. And then, from one of the pavilions, the six greatest beauties of mythical Earth's storied history came across the sand, clad in silks and bells and perfumes. The Pharaoh's protest died in his throat. Ravonna had been beautiful, in her own provincial way. But these women...!

"Do you like them?" Immortus chuckled. "There is Cleopatra, of your own land, but a few thousand years past your time. Her beauty... and her skills in the pillow arts... are still legendary millenia after her death." A dusky skinned, broad nosed beauty, full of hip and bust, nodded in response to Immortus' words.

"And here is Princess Ranadys of the land of Esteros, which sank beneath the vast world ocean aeons before Atlantis ever arose. She was the last dragon queen..." Here a silver haired girl, slender as a willow, with purple eyes that flashed an inner fire, smiled coquettishly at him.

Doubtless Immortus introduced all six of the women, and all of them were, indeed, legendary beauties. But the Pharaoh only had eyes for one... just one... a strong looking female, whose figure was somehow voluptuous yet athletic at the same time, with clean, clear, beautiful features and hair the color of spun gold. Eyes as blue as weapon-steel stared back at his unblushingly, showing a will as strong and as inexorable as gravity... even if that will was now bent and somewhat blunted beneath the hypnotic influence of Immortus' mind control beams.

"And this is Carol Danvers, of the late 20th Century," Immortus said. "She has been recently exposed to a Kree device known as a Psyche Magnitron which has had an interesting effect on her, both psychically and physically. Her DNA is now an intriguing mingling of Terran and Kree, and she has just embarked on a career with the Avengers..."

Immortus noted the clear signs of infatuation on the face of the Pharaoh... the dilated pupils, the flared nostrils, the deepening breath tones. It was aggravating. He had hoped to provide his guest and student with a distraction from futile, choleric thoughts regarding Ravonna... but once he had seen the six women chosen by his servitor, he had also thought to keep this one to his exclusive use. Something about her aura... so ferocious. Of course, he knew she had a significant destiny, one that stood out even among the larger than life fates and dooms of the Earthling superhuman class he had made an obsessive study of his whole life... yet, still. There was something magnetic about the woman, here, in person...

"We will share her," Immortus snapped. "Come, Pharaoh."

The two men waded up out of the pool side by side, and as one, put a hand out to clasp either arm of the woman named Carol Danvers --

* * * * *

The man awoke, some time later, head aching. "Where..."

He was lying in a cool pool of water, beneath a spreading... what was that thing?... a date palm tree, that was it.

Around him was a... watering hole? No. The word was oasis. There were silk canopies, rippling in a low, cool breeze. The braying of a just wakened donkey, or... camel? And...

There, lying face down on the sand... a woman. A woman with golden blonde hair... and smoke, rising from her forearms. Almost as if her arms were energy weapons, and had fired some kind of discharge...

The man splashed to her side without further thought. He did not know who she was, but a great passion for her stirred within him... so great that it had not yet occurred to him that he also did not know who he, himself, was...

* * * * * *

The man awoke, some time later, head aching. Face down, in something soft and scratchy, that rustled in the breeze...

He knew that smell, that texture. Kentucky blue grass...! He sat up, abruptly.

He was in a field... or so it seemed. Several large, powerful looking, oddly beautiful creatures stood on four legs each, cropping the thick grass, ten or twelve arms lengths away from him.

But it wasn't true. Somehow he knew, this field full of... hoses? No, horses... was an illusion. There was something about it... the feel of the air wasn't quite right. The scentomizers were slightly off, and not masking the metallic air conditioning smell fully....

The scene shimmered, and vanished. The man was sitting on the floor in a small, gloomy, roughly rectangular chamber, made of what seemed to be a dull grey metal. The smell of the air conditioning was more pronounced, now.

From the empty air, a cool, pleasant voice spoke to him: "This res-quart is designated as uninhabited. Who are you and how did you come to access it?"

The man thought for a moment. "I... I do not know," he confessed, finally.

"Working," the pleasant voice responded. "Analysis of microscopic cellular particles taken from your respiration indicate..." There was a pause. "You have DNA strands aligned to several prominent sociopolitical lines," it continued, eventually. "But identification cannot be made conclusively. You are... unknown."

The last two syllables were spoken evenly, without inflection... but the man would have sworn the voice was, nonetheless, appalled to have to confess to such a thing.

"Identity is necessary," the voice continued. "I shall assign you a random nomenclature and begin building identity files for you. Basic remedial training in civil necessities will be made available to you. This cubicle will be assigned to your needs."

The man got to his feet. "You are a computer," he said.

"I am a pseudosentience," the voice corrected him, somewhat primly. "My specific role is social optimization. Do not worry. A place will be found for you."

It paused once more, and then continued. "Your DNA has some strands taken from the prominent Richards family. I shall, therefore, assign you the name Nathaniel Richards..."

* * * * *

The woman did not remember her name, any more than he did his. But when she had first looked up at him with those laser bright blue eyes and asked him who he was, a fragment of conversation had come back to him. He had been speaking with an older man, who looked somewhat like him... his father?... that seemed wrong, somehow, but still, in his photographic recall of this fragmentary, isolated scene, the resemblance was unmistakable.

The man had been laughing, and saying "...no heir... none that lived, anyway. But should I ever have a worthy son, I will name him Marcus..."

"Marcus," he had told her. "My name is Marcus." It felt right, on some level, and wrong, on another... but he also had a deep conviction that he had lived a long, rich life, and over the course of it, he had had many names. Marcus was as good as any...

"You are Carol," he told her, knowing as he said it that it was correct.

"Carol," she said, tasting the name. "And... we are alone here, Marcus...?"

Marcus looked around. "Yes," he said. "I... " He looked back at her, boldly. "From how I feel when I look at you, Carol, I think... I think we are honeymooning."

She met his gaze with hers... and then, when he bent his head forward, she met his mouth with hers, as well...

* * * * * *

The newly minted Nathaniel Richards did well at his studies, and showed an aptitude with the subatomic particle circuitry that 30th Century technology was entirely built around. But he was restive. The place and time he had come to was very civilized... almost decadent. Any citizen could have anything he or she wanted, merely by asking a socio-mech to simulate the sensation. Somewhere in his mind, Nathaniel was reminded of a bit of ancient folk wisdom... "Instant gratification takes too long..."

There was no challenge here, nothing to strive for!

Yet Nathaniel had a goal, one that burned within him. A set of blazing blue eyes, looking into his.. his? Or some other man's? He could not quite remember. Skin as soft as velvet under his touch, stretched taut over muscles like corded titanium... and a psychic aura that blazed like a supernova. He could not recall her face, her form, any other details of her appearance... but he would move mountains to find her. She was his, and he was hers... even though he had a feeling that he had at least one rival for her affection. It would not matter. He knew, in his heart, that he was a conqueror, and he would always be supreme...

He knew where to look for her. A half remembered snatch of conversation... "the late 20th Century... just embarked on a career with the Avengers..."

He'd done global searches using those phrases. Something had happened in that era... something important. The Celestial Madonna, so called, had given birth to... someone... a child that had risen to unite the entire galaxy, at least, for a time, under one benevolent banner. A Golden Age, a time of unparalleled prosperity, which had lasted a thousand years... which was still going on, even today, here in the exasperatingly peaceful year of 3012.

Was the woman he sought this Madonna? Somehow, he was sure she must be. She must be. His true love... somehow he knew, she would not be sitting around waiting for him to claim her. He would have to fight others for her... he would have to conquer! But in the end, she would be his.

Time travel was known to be possible... supposedly, the technology had originated in that very era. He could go there, and find her.

He would. He would conquer the entire universe, all of time itself, if that was what it took to win her to his side...!

* * * * * *

"She could not have had the child here in Limbo," the servitor said, his tones (as always) an unsettling mixture of sneer and sycophancy. "There is no duration here. It would not have prospered..."

"I know that," the man who no longer called himself Marcus snapped. "But it might have done well on Earth, in Carol's native time frame, if I had not seized on its form as a vehicle for my own escape from this hellish place..."

"Well," the servitor responded, "you could have just opened a portal. You know how to use the machines."

"Opening a portal into the late 20th Century is always difficult," the man snapped. "Temporal turbulence makes such a transit hazardous at best. I thought the other gambit might work better. If those idiot heroes hadn't destroyed my machine, I could have corrected that body's asynchronous genetic coordinates, and..."

"Coulda, shoulda, woulda," the servitor said. "I do feel deep admiration for the novel way in which you dumped her, though, after she followed you back here. That illusion of you aging to decrepitude and dying within a few moments... that was masterfully done. She'll be some time getting over the psychological scars of that little break up ploy... it may well drive her to drink."

"She's strong," the man said. "She'll be fine." He shrugged. "I truly thought I loved the wench."

"Ah, infatuation," the servitor thought, waggling his disturbingly unkempt eyebrows provocatively. "You know that Immortus was infatuated with her as well, do you not? And wherever he may have ended up, he will seek her out, as well?"

"I am Immortus now," the man said, regarding the regalia laid out upon the sleeping platform in his chamber. "Although," he added, dubiously, "I'm not sure I want to dress like him..."

"Ah, yes, master," the servitor fawn-sneered. "Because that blue face mask was oh so stylish."

The new Lord of Limbo scowled at the servitor. "Am I going to have problems with you, creature? My predecessor may have tolerated your insolence, but I am not he." The former Pharaoh stopped at that, thoughtfully. "I mean... well..."

The servitor bobbed and capered obsequiously. "I will give you no problems, Master," it declared. "I have ever served the Lord of Limbo, and ever shall. In that service, I shall tell you that my artificially attuned chronal senses advise me that the temporal turbulence you already know of in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries on Earth has increased by nearly an order of magnitude since your paramour's return to her native time-point. I cannot be sure, but I believe your predecessor in those robes is somehow causing this disruption."

"He's going after her," the former Pharaoh said, through gritted teeth. "He's still besotted... he must not have her!"

The servant raised his fantastical eyebrows in exaggerated puzzlement. "But... master... if you do not want her..."

"He will not have her," the new Immortus growled. "He will not lay a hand on her. Hmmm... I must come up with a scheme..." He turned, and pointed at the servitor. "You will travel to her timeframe. You will shadow her. You will protect her. You will be my perfect agent in this. You will keep my other self from ever so much as setting his damned dirty paws on her."

The servant shrugged. "Your wish, my command, of course, my master," he replied. "May I suggest... perhaps I could replace that obnoxious Anthony Stark in the Avengers roster? Then I could keep a close watch on her. The two of them become quite companionable, I believe..."

"YOU are not to lay a hand on her," the Master of Time snarled.

"Oh no, master, of course not, I am not worthy," the servitor whined. "I will simply look out for her... and ward her. Perhaps... if your predecessor's attention could be turned to another... perhaps some sort of scenario could be woven, to convince him to ignore Ms. Danvers, and fixate on someone else..."

"Yes," the Lord of Limbo agreed, musing. "That whole Celestial Madonna thing will be going on right around that time period, and I remember how obsessed I was with the Madonna... I can't recall why, now... I mean, what was I going to do with Mantis, even if I'd managed to obtain her? A skilled courtesan, I have no doubt, but... Gleaming Galaxies! The woman married an undead corpus reanimated by a sentient tree!" Immortus... the newest of his name... shuddered. "By the Lords of Time, I really dodged a particle beam there."

"I will depart immediately, Master," the servitor responded. "May I suggest that I enter the timestream some light years away from Earth, to avoid the local turbulence? I can easily travel there at faster than light speeds once I am within the timeframe. I will establish my presence early on, at the very founding of the team, or shortly thereafter. It will give me an excellent vantage point to watch over Ms. Danvers, as the Heroic Age unfolds."

"Capital," Immortus responded. "Do it. At once."

"Yes, Master," the servitor said, rubbing his inhumanly long fingers together in satisfaction...

* * * * *

As the servitor sped through the vacuum of space towards Earth, it considered what it had already done, and what yet remained for it to do. It went through each aspect of its plan meticulously, testing each step in its own mind, re-examining each link.

The female had been key -- this 'Carol Danvers'. When Immortus-A had commanded it to go and seek out 'the six most beautiful human women of all time', to distract Immortus-B from his melancholy over yet another human female, the servitor had taken the opportunity to initiate its own schemes. The scheme would spread from that point, a veritable labyrinth worming its incomprehensibly complex threads and branches through every level of space-time... but it was with that command, given outside time by the man always had been and always would be the greatest living master of time itself... that command was the very first stone that had been dropped into the pond, causing the very first ripple.

For, what was beauty? How could the servitor know? It was not human. It had no permanent gender. It could take on any seeming, certainly... but to it, all living beings were potential partners in its eternal dance between the chronons. All living beings were beautiful, in their own way. But one, and only one, would be useful in fulfilling the servitor's desires.

So it had taken her, Carol Danvers, from a point in the late 20th Century, and brought her to Limbo, supposedly for the pleasure of its master(s). But actually, the servitor was the only living being in the universe who knew how carefully Carol Danvers had been sculpted over the course of her life... shaped and molded, to be the servitor's perfect tool.

How it had slaved over her! Replacing both her father and mother at different times, to ensure she was even conceived, at just the right moment. Replacing various of those odious, oh so pompous Kree -- Mar Vell far from least in those measurements! -- to ensure that the young human female would not only be exposed to the nearly immeasurable powers of the Psyche Magnitron, but that when she was, the wish it would fulfill, hidden deep within the subconscious recesses of her mind, would be that she would become a woman worthy of Mar-vell himself... a woman warrior who was at least his equal, if not his superior. And so she had. And so she was.

A woman worthy, perhaps, to one day give birth to... The One!

From there, the guidance had gone on. Replacing that awful plant smoking human with the strangely flat head long enough to offer Danvers the job that would move her to New York City... a necessary step, to place her within the ranks of the Avengers, at just the correct moment, so that she would take sanctuary at Avengers Mansion when she returned from Limbo, all amnesiac and unknowing as to where the strange pregnancy within her had originated.

For had she not taken shelter with the Avengers, Immortus might well have escaped Limbo into a permanent human form on Earth... a human form immune to the servitor's powers.

And that must never be.

For that was the one immutable, unalterable command Immortus had woven through every fiber of the servitor's artificial being during creation... that the servitor could never, under any circumstances, use his powers on Immortus. Or any temporal iteration of Immortus. And that the servitor must always obey Immortus... any iteration of Immortus, although the others would not know that... even at the expense of the servitor's own desires.

Had Immortus, in the form of Marcus, managed to free himself and take corporeal form on 20th Century Earth... already with strong alliances forged to the Avengers... he would have been in position to shake the very stars in their heavens. And the servitor could not have displaced him, either. He might well have become... The One!... fathering himself on himself, proving Carol Danvers to be the Celestial Madonna indeed.

And the servitor could not allow that. Because at the end of this scheme, somehow, someway, the One would be born. And as long as the One was not an iteration of Immortus, then it would be a valid target for the servitor's powers.

The One would assume its destiny, dominating the entire Galaxy, bringing all of humanity under its loving, beneficent tyranny, creating an interstellar utopia unprecedented in history.

And then, the servitor would displace the One, and rule in its place...!

But much remained to be done before then.

The first steps were already taken. The servitor had subtly bent Immortus' mind control beams not just upon the captured women, but upon both iterations of Immortus, as well. The men had been naked, relaxed, secure in their timeless sanctuary, certain that they could not in any way be attacked... and indeed, all the servitor had done was ensure that they would both become sexually fixated upon, even obsessed with, Carol Danvers. Because, when their temporally charged flesh touched Danvers' own substance, empowered so recently by the Psyche Magnitron, there would be an energy discharge, and the servitor could use that energy discharge to its own ends.

An undetectable portal would be opened, to tumble the more entropically advanced Immortus through, after a short range, high powered hypnobeam had permanently addled his long range memories. He would arrive millenia earlier in his own lifeline, and begin his eternal cycle once again... his obsession with a mythical 'Celestial Madonna', from somewhere in the 20th Century, already well rooted in his mind.

...while his younger counterpart, similarly stunned, would remain behind, to become Immortus, thus continuing the eternal cycle... most importantly, eventually, to create the servitor itself.

So it was started... but there were decades of work ahead of it yet. Centuries, perhaps. But what did that matter, to a being such as itself?

It would self program itself to believe it was a 'Space Phantom'... a vanguard for a nonexistent race planning to invade Earth, come to test the planet's mightiest heroes in battle. Should it somehow fail in combat and be captured, that bit of self hypnosis would keep the Earthly heroes from learning anything of the truth... and, more important, keep its creator's various avatars from learning anything of it, as well.

In time, the programmed false knowledge would fade away, letting the servitor recall its true mission... and its true intentions.

The Avengers would defeat it, of course... the memory was clear in the servitor's semiorganic data processors; non-linear, six dimensional recall was an attribute nearly unique to it. That damned pseudosentience inside the Norse Eternal's primitive bashing weapon... how dare it pass judgment on the servitor's worthiness to gain the Norse Eternal's powers! It still galled the servitor to recall it. But once it engaged its self programming, it would know nothing of it at the level of surface consciousness. The non linear recollections would be buried beneath its autohypnotic programming.

But after the initial defeat, when the servitor was returned to Limbo, it would make use of the master's technology to transport itself back to Earth along with many of the master's machines. It would establish itself in an unused subterranean warren it was aware of. Then it would act as if it were 'seeking vengeance' on the odious Avengers for its earlier defeat... a most illogical and nearly inexplicable course of action, given the givens, but the servitor knew enough of the behavior of a typical human 'super villain' to know that no Earthling of that time and place would think twice about such a motivation.

It would, briefly, establish dominance over a small sub faction of the laughable Hydra. It would carefully calibrate all of the technology at its disposal by running field tests against at least one of these so called superheroes – perhaps the one called Captain America, he seemed the most resourceful of the available test subjects. It would establish a doomed alliance with the farcical Grim Reaper, to further calibrate its machinery against a larger squadron of heroes... and all the time that it did this, it would be establishing its primary identity as 'The Space Phantom', an earthly supervillain of not insignificant power and repute.

It would, once more, allow the Avengers to believe they had defeated it through a trick any just spawned ameoboid would see through.

And then... then it would return to Earth once again, and begin its real work. Protect Carol Danvers from his master's other avatars? Certainly. It could replace any being it chose to, and in their place, it could work its own will without fear of detection. Replacing that oh so earnest and solemn Watcher just long enough to place the artificial star in the sky above the domicile of the Avengers... yes. That would focus Immortus' younger, more savage avatar on the three women within the edifice at that time.

In the meantime, it would be well positioned. It would have established an identity that would allow it to interact with the superhuman community at will, and, of course, it could assume any other identity it needed to.

There would be setbacks, it was aware. At some point, some other agent – it was, itself, unaware of just who – would either impersonate the mutated human known as Rogue, or mind control her, into making a devastating attack on the Danvers female. And then there was Nightmare's agent Aarkus, slumbering within the body of the android Avenger, forever striving to sire competing candidates to be 'The One'.

None of it would matter. It was adaptible. It was flexible. No other being in the universe could do what it could. If its ongoing campaign seemed to go off course, the servitor could replace any other being it needed to and affect a course correction.

In the end, it would rule over all.  

CAROLYN DIXON, GIRL DETECTIVE in "THE SECRET OF THE UNKNOWN ANCESTRY"

Carolyn Dixon, Girl Detective, fidgeted on the three legged stool in the Mayor's private study.

Outside the nearby window, Carolyn could see yet another beautiful summer day magically unfolding itself over the sleepy little city of Hudson Corners. She yearned to be out in it, face upturned to the sun, reddish blonde curls blown back by the wind, expertly driving the streets in her little blue roadster, seeking out fraud and conspiracy wherever it might try to hide itself. Because Carolyn had learned that a Girl Detective's work was never done, and even in a quiet, shady, sleepy little town like Hudson Corners, secret evil seemed to lurk everywhere.

In front of her, the Mayor of Hudson City sat behind a broad and polished walnut desk, a brass plaque with his name and title set forthrightly at the edge closest to the intrepid Girl Detective. He steepled his fingers together on the desk in front of him and beamed at the bright, pretty youngster sitting in his office, his every feature the very semblance of patriarchal pride.

"Now, Carolyn, my dear," he said, "you've kept me and Police Chief Billings rather busy this summer, cleaning up after your escapades, young lady.  Could you possibly let a couple of old men have a few weeks rest, before school starts up again?"  His eyes twinkled merrily as he said it.

Carolyn's eyes, however,  flashed with determination. She had indeed had a summer full of adventures... in June, she'd uncovered that ring of counterfeiters who had foolishly set up shop in the abandoned windmill on Tricorn River. In July, she'd solved the mystery of the Haunted Cove, revealing that in fact, it wasn't haunted at all... a gang of smugglers had been operating out of a big, concealed cavern at the cove, dressing up as ghosts to frighten people away so they wouldn't be discovered. And only last week, her intrepid amateur sleuthing had revealed that dashing bachelor Stan Winthrop, the talk of the Gazette's society column,  was actually the renowned international jewel thief known only as... the Owl!

"Daddy, I'd love to rest and relax, but evil never does," the plucky young Girl Detective chirped, leaning forward urgently. "And that's what I've come to talk to you about today.  These strange symbols that someone has drawn in Old Man Hopkin's upper pasture... the bizarre rituals my friend Sheila and I saw from the woods while camping out nearby last night... Daddy, I think there are Satan worshippers in Hudson Corners!"

Carolyn's father, Walter Dixon, who had been Mayor of Hudson Corners for as long as anyone alive could remember, sighed and shook his head.  And then, he chuckled, in a paroxysm of fatherly indulgence.   "Carolyn,  oh, Carolyn," he said, indulgently. "You're such a little spitfire!  Please, my dear... proceed with caution."

Once again, the young girl's eyes glinted.  "Oh, I will, Daddy.  But I'm not going to let anyone get away with anything unsavory!  Not in our town!"

Mayor Dixon rose, shrugging off his pinstriped suit jacket, turning his back to the young girl to hang the garment on a nearby coat rack. "Well, my dear," the fellow said, back still turned to the plucky young sleuth, hands loosening his necktie now, "Every town has its secrets... every family too, for that matter.  I happen to know one that concerns you directly.  Would you like to know what it is?"

Now Carolyn's eyes blazed. There was nothing she loved better than solving a mystery. But what possible secrets could her painfully straightforward middle aged  father be concealing? He was an incorruptible public servant and an all American family man. His life had been spent in public service, his personal history was an open book, his character was unquestionable... "Of course, daddy," the chipper and determined young Girl Detective beamed. "Tell me!"

Still, Mayor Dixon kept his back turned.  Beneath the fabric of his starched and immaculately creased white shirt, strange bulges seemed to come into being. The expensive linen stretched, tented... and then, tore itself to tatters, as two great black leathery wings unfolded from Mayor Dixon's shoulder blades.

The Mayor turned back to the young girl, his neck tie hanging from one reddish, hairy, taloned hand, the shreds of his human visage hanging from the other. Blazing red eyes, slit like those of a cat with glittering golden pupils, fixed avidly on the intrepid young sleuth, whose face had gone the color of cottage cheese as she sat there now, sparkling blue eyes nearly bugging out of their pretty little sockets in terror and horror.

"Well, Carolyn, the truth is," the slavering demon being said, out of a maw lined with rows upon rows of razor sharp fangs, "you're adopted."

With an inhumanly long, oddly jointed arm, the Mayor of Hudson Corners reached across his desk to sink his claws into the delightful young girl-morsel's neck.

Carolyn screamed... briefly.

The Pyramid of Skulls

As Kordek Axehand came around the last curve of the River to the north of Bearfang Bay, he could see that the main gate leading through the city wall was jammed with a sherdak caravan. 

The huge free range sherdak, big as hill-forts, were docile enough after what must have been twenty days on the trail down out of the eastern mountains, but the city's gates had not been built with such enormous creatures in mind.  They could only move through one at a time... but as each of the stinking hairy cottage sized beasts represented a fortune in ivory and savory stew meat (even discounting the value of the trade goods that the caravaneers had thriftily loaded onto the sherdaks' backs), the officer in charge of the gate was going to give the caravan priority for as long as it took to get it all inside... since the toll charged would be proportional to the caravan's value, and his wages came directly out of those tolls.

Axehand muttered an obscenity, but not out loud; as a mixed race mongrel who generally cursed by his northern father's northern gods, uttering such an oath audibly would only attract even more undesirable attention than he normally got for  his dusky skin tones and dark, subdued hair and eye colors.  It was hard enough finding work in the frigid Icelands as it was without people questioning his faith in the locally revered Winter Gods... although, sure as Giants should be skinned and Frodds needed whipping, the Winter Gods had never shown much concern for him.  Or any at all, really.

"Balls of the Killing Frost," Gafeq the Sunfingered said from to his left and downward.  "We'll still be waiting outside that snow-cursed gate when Uthar Twelve Heads returns from his tomb to reclaim the Ice Blade."

Axehand merely grunted a response.  Gafeq was the smallest trueblood Sothark that Axehand had ever heard of, standing barely five spans in height, but he spent every waking moment trying to make up for his diminutive physical stature with bluster and volume.  Axehand paid scant attention to what the little man said, though, because usually, Gafeq's words were at best pointless and at worst meant to distract from what his hands were doing... which was, quite often, quickdrawing a hand axe or two and throwing them, with a skill and dexterity nearly the equal of a Frodd's. 

Gafeq was equally adept with a lock pick or a handful of chacal dice; he could reliably get numbers off a scattering of honestly carved 4, 6, 8 and 10 sided ivories that other, less gifted players would have trouble obtaining from a loaded set. 

Plus, his very lack of stature let him gain access to narrow shafts and tiny chambers that larger thieves could never squirm into.  Gafeq was, in fact, the most effective thieving partner Axehand had ever taken... but anytime not on an active sneak, the man simply never shut up.  He even cursed, threatened, and snarled insults in his sleep... or so Axehand assumed, from the belligerent tone.  Axehand spoke six languages fluently... about par for the course for a Riverish mercenary... but Gafeq's sleep-speech was incomprehensible to him.   Which might have made a more curious man wonder... but the Axehand had learned the wages of curiosity in his youth, and was happy he hadn't paid in full on that occasion. Now he kept his nose firmly in his own cup's dregs and left other's business to them.

"We can circle around to the East Gate," Axehand offered, after their shaggy southern ponies had each taken a dozen more clomping steps.  Axehand was a formidable warrior, either with the axeblade he had strapped to the stump just below his left elbow, which he wielded in lethal combination with a standard mercenary's round shield on his right arm, or with the witch-stave he currently had strapped, along with a bundle of shorter, oddly fletched sticks, on his back... but outside of combat, he tended to chew his thoughts over very thoroughly before he spoke them.  It was his Sothark mother's blood coming out, no doubt.  The Sothark were a comely race, and strong as the ice on the River in winter, as the saying went... but they had never been described as quick witted.  Not even by their own skalds.

"Fugger that," Gafeq said, shortly, "it's still a good shadow-arm to the fox-gnawed city walls and circling like that will add another one before we're even inside, much less can find a place to warm our balls." Gafeq looked every knuckle length a Sothark... for all that there just weren't many knuckle lengths of him to look at... with his stiff mane of metallically shining golden hair, baby smooth cheeks, moonlight pale skin and facial features so cleanly etched as to be very nearly pretty... but native Sotharks didn't mind even the worst cold very much, while Gafeq seemed almost as sensitive to it as a northerner. That, plus his odd, grey blue eyes, and, well, his stature, sometimes made Axehand wonder if Gafeq were a mixed blood, like himself... but, again, he tried not to be curious about what wasn't his business.

"Can't be helped," Axehand said, shrugging.  "We wait at the North Gate, it will be the middle of the night before the last of those beasts gets through..."

Gafeq's chiseled facial features suddenly lit, and Axehand tensed; he knew that look... Gafeq had, once more, been possessed by that inner devil that seemed to rise up in him at random intervals, more and more often since the two of them had decided to wend southward after their brief, disastrous stint in Captain Gargull's mercenary company had ended so ignominiously in that underground murder maze.  

"Fugg there isn't," Gafeq grinned, savagely.  "We'll head down to the Riverside and flag down a boat.  We've got gold, and there's some of that good Northark blood rum still in my pack.  That'll buy us passage the last hundred masts or so to the port, and the waterfront will have taverns willing to put us up."

'Head down to the Riverside'... the road along the River here, like nearly everywhere, was raised a good hundred or so spans above the usual water level, to forestall the sudden floods which were not at all uncommon along that particularly treacherous waterway.  The slope leading down to the strip of mud running alongside the mostly thawed high summer River was deceptively gentle looking, and coated in thick, shaggy grey and silver wintergrass, which looked as if it would give their ponies good footing... but Axehand wasn't fooled.  He had grown up in the South for 12 long years, before running away from the slaughterhouse his grandmother had sold him to and joining a northbound mercenary company as an apprentice... and he knew that the tops of the wintergrass concealed deep, ancient layers of slick, icy hoarfrost that even the summer sun never touched.  An expert horseman on a demonically well trained mount might get down that slope without both man and horse collecting broken necks on the way; Axehand had been an indifferent rider even when he'd still had all ten fingers to put on the reins.

But by the time Axehand cleared all that through his admittedly slower than average brain, the Sunhanded had already dug his heels into the sides of his pony and headed the dumb beast down the slope.  With a whoop, yet, as he careened to his almost certain doom...

"Samaqel take you for a pissheaded monkey man," Axehand swore, unconsciously echoing one of his hated grandmother's favorite curses, one she had generally reserved for the few darker skinned folk that Sotharks ever saw this far south, like Axehand's father, or Axehand himself. 

He could continue on up here, by himself, safe as a man could be, riding alone along the River towards a city where the only people he knew were the half kin who had sold him into slavery more than a Great Cycle before... for all he knew, the Samaqel sniffers had put out a reward for him, that's how spiteful they were.

"Yaaaahhhhh!" Axehand shouted, putting his own heels into his mount's ribs, and starting after Gafeq.  He might not die... and anyway, if the little grack-nuzzler did fall and break his neck, there were three butter yellow gold coins in his pouch and a beautifully forged throwing knife  hidden in a sheathe up his sleeve that Axehand wanted to take off his corpse...

Gafeq heard the big booby thundering along down the slope behind him, and allowed himself a tight smile. They were safe enough, this wasn't where the either of them died.  In fact, he felt so secure in that remembered knowledge that he closed his eyes as the horse juddered beneath him down the treacherous slope...

* * * * *
...and opened them again to hear the boy calling his name... his name here, at any event.  "Sheqra!" the little cretin was screaming, as if he wasn't a bare four spans away.  "Sheqra, the path ends just there -- !"

"I see it," Sheqra... who in other times, and other places, had other names, one of which was, or had been, at one time, Gafeq the Sunfingered... growled.  "I'm not blind." 

He had not traveled this path for nearly sixty years... but that was the point, that was why he was traveling it now.  One had duties, however unpleasant they might be... duties to oneself, and duties to one's god.  Or demon.  Whatever...

"Stay back, now," he told the boy.  "That clearing is my goal; my business there is private.  I'll be back in a shadow-finger, maybe less, and you can guide me back out of this hellhole."

Sheqra really didn't need a guide to help him find the clearing; he knew these woods as well as most men's tongues knew the inside of their mouths... but there was more to contend with here than simple geography.  This kid, hired back in Jennaru for a shaving or two of gold off one of his few remaining coins, had Jikki blood, and the Jikki were the dominant Northark tribe in this patch of jungle.  With a distinctly recognizable Jikki guide, he need only contend with the wildlife (dangerous enough, certainly) and take care not to drink rot-water or try to burn wood infested with corpse-moss... beginner's mistakes he hadn't made in centuries.  But without a Jikki guide, he might as well have just decapitated himself and tossed his head into the jungle to save the local tribal hunters the trouble.

As it was, though, they'd been unmolested... although Sheqra was mortally sure they'd been silently tracked and intently scrutinized for several shadow-arms at least twice during the journey out here.  He'd felt the distant, calculating eyes on him.  It was a knack you picked up, after you'd lived your first hundred lives or so...

No one would be watching them now, though... this particular clearing, at the bottom of a deep, circular, gradually sloping crater, along with the terrain for half a day's march in every direction, was taboo.  Not that there was anything inherently more dangerous in this section of the jungle than any other, but the deep crater was uncanny seeming, and hunter/gatherer/cannibal tribes lived too close to the edge of survival to willingly enter any area that raised their hackles.

It was why he had hired his guide in the city, from someone of Jikki blood, rather than an actual jungle dwelling tribesman.  An actual jungle dwelling tribesman wouldn't have come anywhere near this place. Plus, the bushmen were unpleasantly xenophobic, anyway.

He strode out of the deep shade cast by the interlaced leaves of the jungle canopy a hundred feet overhead, into the viciously hot, bright Northern sunlight.  He could remember when this had all been an arid wasteland, and when the frigid icelands of the Second Kingdom, and the latter half of the First, had been luxuriant jungle, like this.   Everything changed, over the centuries and millenia and even aeons...

...except, he reflected ruefully as he regarded his shadow, stretching away from his feet a not particularly impressive distance... that he was always so gods damned short.

Never mind.  Finish this business for this generation and get the fugg back out of this hell-cursed jungle.  Find a good inn back in Jennaru... Token's, for preference... and take a long hot soak and dive into a soft bed with softer company... now that was something to look forward to. 

He might have another forty years before this particular body gave out... and once he'd paid this installment on his debt, he could even make a few friends, too. 

But first he had to knock this nonsense out.

Twenty masts away, at roughly the center of the clearing, he could see it... a whitish grey pile, roughly pyramidal in shape, about a mast square at the base, and half a mast high.  It looked no different than it had last time he'd set foot in this accursed clearing... no, that wasn't correct.  A whitish grey lump sat on the tan, barren ground about three spans from the main structure.

One of the skulls had been displaced and rolled a distance away before it had stopped.

Weather could have done it... the torrential downpours that caused River College scholars to call this noisome hellhole a 'rain forest' could have easily flattened the entire pile over the course of one summer.  But it hadn't; rain, for whatever reason, did not fall on this clearing.  Which was probably why nothing grew there.

Also, he'd never known anything to disturb the skulls, once he laid them to rest.  Nothing natural, anyway. 

No, this would be something else. 

Sheqra's keen eyes... the same ice chip blue grey as always, lifetime after lifetime... peered and prodded at the grisly bone pile from the edge of the clearing, just outside the jungle's shade.

And, just as he was about to stop looking and start, slowly, forward... he saw it.

Now... that was a significant problem...

* * * * *



The inn had no name, at least, not as far as Axehand and the Sunfingered were concerned... there was some kind of faded blur on the worn, wormy wooden sign hanging outside the door, but it might well have been painted shortly after the founding of Bearfang Bay, several thousand years before.

The natives (mostly Sotharks, of course) who lived in the neighborhood doubtless called the inn something... but to Axehand and the Sunfingered, it was just 'the inn that was marginally warmer than it was outside'. Or possibly 'the inn where the fleas in the blankets were only outnumbered by the holes in the blankets'.

Not that that last mattered; they were veteran mercenaries and their sleeping furs were first rate... water tight, capable of being compactly rolled, remarkably warm for their lack of bulk... you could even smother a campfire or two with them, if you had to, before they became completely useless.

Axehand could still feel every jounce, bounce, bump, and bang of that mad dash down the Riverbank to the muddy strip of shore, and could not believe that neither he, his horse, nor Gafeq nor Gafeq's horse had ended up in the muck with broken necks.

But Gafeq had been correct; a ship had hove into sight perhaps ten shadow-fingers after they had started plodding along the sodden dirt strip running next to the River, and in response to Gafeq's frantically waved arms, had dropped anchor and sent a long boat over for them.

It had not occurred to Axehand until that moment that they would, perforce, have to abandon the ponies, but the stupid gits would not get into the boat and even if they had, there was no way to get them up to the ship's deck. So the two of them had stripped everything worth anything off the horses, loaded it all onto the boat, and then, after paying over a whole gold coin to the Chief of Deck in command of the longboat, sat and rowed the boat their cursed selves back out to the ship, while the Chief of Deck and the two junior deckers he'd brought with him lounged idly against the bulkheads, spitting over the sides and loudly criticizing their oar handling.

But they'd been in Bearfang Bay twenty shadow-fingers later, and here in this nameless fleapit ten shadow-fingers after that, without passing through any gates at all.

Axehand had forgotten how flat his purse was; when he'd reached into his beltpouch to get some dust to pay for the room, he'd come up with not even a sparkle. He'd just been wearily resigning himself to spending a cold night in an alleyway wrapped in his furs when Gafeq had cut two pie wedge bits out of an already rather badly clipped gold coin and handed them to the toothless slattern behind the wooden plank bar.

When he'd tried to thank the Sunfingered, though, the obnoxious fellow had just waved one badly blistered hand. “Not that you intended to, you great lumping luggoon,” he'd brayed, “but you did save my life in that Sottle murder maze. So this will square us.”

Axehand had wanted to retort that he had so intended to save Gafeq's life; what, did the Sunfingered think he had just sort of accidentally tied his rope off around a beam and dropped the end to him in that pit of stakes? But, then, the Sunfingered had saved him, too, by triggering the trap door in the first place. Gafeq was small enough to fall between the stakes; Axehand would have been impaled six different ways.

And then he'd wanted to ask, if they were square now for the price of a scaly, Samaqel cursed inn room, did that mean the Sunfingered only valued his life at a bit?

But it took him too long to come up with the retort. By that point, the Sunfingered had dropped his pack and furs in one corner of their cold and tiny room, crowed something about 'stripping the varnish off those lubbers playing in the corner', and gone back downstairs again.

Not Axehand, though. An axeblade strapped to your wrist-stump was good for many things, but not dealing chacal cards or throwing dice. Anyway, he was tired... and a quiet room to sleep in was a rarity when you kept company with the Sunfingered. Gratefully, the enormous half breed warrior rolled himself up in his furs and fell into a deep, snoring slumber.

Outside the chamber, Gafeq the Sunfingered had paused. Now he heard the rockfall rumble of the Axehand's snores start up... and smiled. He had had little fear that the Axehand would seach his pack if he left it behind... the fellow was without a doubt the most trusting and least curious person Gafeq had ever met... but it was good to have his speculations confirmed. Had the Axehand gone into the pack, Gafeq would have had no choice but to kill him... it would have been impossible to explain the four polished skulls he was carrying, each well wrapped in a thick cloth to keep them from coming to harm or clattering noisily together as he traveled.

And had Gafeq been forced to kill the Axehand, then he would have been faced with the prospect of spending seasons, perhaps even cycles, befriending someone else. Establishing trust with a Riverscum to the point where they would willingly follow you into a dangerous situation... it took time.

Once again, Gafeq cursed the luck that had sent him hurtling to the bottom of that staked pit. After the Axehand had fished him out with that spearhead through his calf, he'd needed the big ninny to carry him back out of that Sottle wizard's murder maze.

The Sottle had been happy enough to turn over the skulls of the other four when Gafeq had limped back to his maim den the next day while the Axehand was sleeping; Gafeq had paid him enough for the use of the subterranean murder maze, and he had specified at the time that he would require the heads of the men who died. The rotund little zerf sniffer had been curious... you could see it in the surprisingly green eyes nearly buried in the folds of butter-yellow fat on either side of his rounded yellow nose.

All Sottles were wizards of varying strengths, depending on how much power they'd been born with; doubtless this one thought Gafeq must be working for some necromancer, and wondered exactly what sort of incantation the skulls would be used in.

Had the obese little boylover known the truth, he might well have died from terror. Thinking that, Gafeq had nearly told him... a stinking Sottle, writhing at his feet with fatal heart-shock, would have provided the only enjoyable moment in the whole bomba-witted escapade. But, then,  some of the ittle butterballs were surprisingly resilient. And the last thing Gafeq needed was rumors of his blessing, and its conditions, getting around... especially around a city full of sorcerers such as Sottli Ban.

If only Axehand had fallen into that pit... if only Gafeq had currently had the skulls of five people who had trusted him, and followed him willingly to their deaths, that he had not killed himself, in his pack... he could have already been thirty days north of Sottli Ban, on his way back to a certain hilltop above the overgrowth west of Jennaru. But luck had not been with him; the other four members of Captain Gargull's crew he'd convinced to break in to the Sottle's basement looking for loot had all fallen, but Axehand had not. And Gafeq couldn't just kill the lunk himself, that was forbidden by the terms of the bargain.

Well, he'd have another opportunity to get the idiot killed soon enough, no doubt.


* * * * * *


Yes, Sheqra noted to himself, mind back in the present again... yes, there was definitely something there... something had nested in the pyramid of skulls.

Something very nasty. As he watched, what appeared to be the tail of an ink black boa constrictor... slipped, just for a second, out from between two of the several hundred skulls on the pile. Waved lazily in the sweaty, feverish jungle air for just a second... almost as if it were a tongue, tasting... and then, just as quickly, withdrew back into the crude pyramid.

Tentacles.  He HATED the tentacles. 

You never got tentacles in the cold.  He should have built the Samaqel sucking cairn in Sotharka... but when he'd placed the first five skulls, however long ago it had been, on the ground here, the place had been pleasantly cool.  Nothing but rock and dirt and a few scraggly, deep rooted bushes that almost never bloomed.  He had actually climbed up a long, steady slope over the rock and gritty sand to get here; this place had been elevated nearly five masts above the level of the River... although he hadn't thought of distance in terms of 'masts' back then, any more than he had measured time in terms of how long it took for a shadow of a certain length to be produced by the movement of the sun across the sky.  Back then he had still been in his very first lifetime.  The arid steppes he and his tribe had wandered had been called, by them, Agorim.  The newly flayed skulls he had carried in his arms, in obedience to the instructions he had received from the Rider in his dreams, were those of his two young wives and the babes they had had by him, which they had carried in their arms trustingly enough, as he had led them to the crack in the rock where the pit vipers nested.  He had carried his and J'larra's two year old son himself, so she would have a hand free to aid in the climb...

But that had been two cataclysms and... twenty thousand cycles ago?... Something like that.  The Samaqel had buried the River deep when It had brought down wrath and ruin on the Second Kingdom, much deeper than the relics of the First Kingdom had been buried by its own catastrophic deluge.  The cities It had constructed afterward to house Its feral herd members (those few who had survived) were separated from their Second Kingdom counterparts by four hundred feet of iron hard dirt - most of which was full of labyrinthine sewer pipes, draining the effluvia of millions away into the lowermost currents of the River itself. 

There were other things... things both terrible and wondrous... lying in the stinking darkness of those levels upon levels of intricate piping underlying each Riverish city, and while no living mortal could claim to know each sewer warren well, Sheqra knew them better than anyone else.  But Sheqra knew everything better than anyone else. Others might reincarnate (precious few; most Riverscum went to hell when they died and stayed there for all eternity, but some, like the Jeopards, the Giants, and the Ulvane, had made special bargains with various gods... or demons... and gotten a special dispensation) but Sheqra was the only one he knew of who remembered all his many, many, MANY past lives in detail... and who could, with a mere effort of will, send his soul flowing backwards and forwards along the great river of time itself, to reinhabit any of his bodies that he might choose, at any given moment. 

It was like every moment of history was simply one long 'today' for Sheqra.  He had priceless, long lost historical knowledge locked up in his brain... more specifically, in his soul... that the scholars of the River College, or the Temple of Knowledge, would pay vast sums for.  (They had in the past, and, he knew, they would in the future... which was how he planned to raise a stake to pay for his stay at Token's, when he reached Jennaru again.)

Still, no time to philosophize at the moment.  Now, he had THIS thing to deal with.

Turning back into the forest, Sheqra began to issue instructions to the Jikki kid who had guided him out here.

After another twenty shadow-fingers, they had enough limbs gathered. Each was a small dead bough that had fallen at some point in the last ten Great Cycles or so onto the forest floor... long enough to collect a good coating of corpse-moss, but not long enough to be fully buried under other deadfalls.

“Ehhhh, good scum,” the Jikki lad started ('scum' is not an insult on the modern River, and has not been since the fall of the Second Kingdom... contemporary Riverish are proud of their lack of civility, and 'scum' is the closest they have to a common honorific, much the same as 'sir' or 'ma'am' might be used in other human societies) “you know if you put corpse-moss in a fire...”

“I know,” Sheqra said, with the patience of a soul whose first physical incarnation in the World had been born in a land so long lost to history that even scholars at the River College had never heard of it. “That's what I want it for.”

Dropped in a campfire, corpse-moss would smolder a bit and give off an odd stink... which was the only warning you got. If you had no clue what that weird, faint, sort of flatulence-like odor was, and left the corpse-moss impregnated bough to burn, within ten or twenty shadow-fingers at the most, your campfire would abruptly explode... usually with force enough to kill anyone sitting within a few feet of it.

Sheqra didn't mind blowing the pyramid of skulls into scattered bits, mostly because he knew he couldn't. The Samaqel had flooded the River valley halfway up the sides of its neighboring mountain ranges once, then blasted it down to its bare bedrock a few thousand years later and built it all up again afterward, taking ten thousand years to do it... and this particular clearing, with its steadily growing pyramid of skulls, had gone unscathed by all of that. The very ground level of the River itself and the valley surrounding it had risen nearly four hundred feet... so now, what had once been an arid hilltop was at the bottom of a deep, sloping crater, at the center of which was this same pyramid of skulls.

If the worst of the Samaqel's wrath had been unable to touch this place, there was nothing Sheqra could do to disturb it. Except add to the pile, of course. That was his duty.

So, keeping to a safe distance in the bright sunlight – tentacle-things hated sunlight, Sheqra knew – he tossed corpse-moss laden tree limbs onto the skull pyramid for the next thirty or so shadow-fingers. He lit the final one with a Frodd lighter – handy things, those, one of the few things invented in his current lifetime that wasn't simply a recreation of some better, long forgotten artifact from the First or Second Kingdoms – and tossed it to land across three others.

Then he ran like hell was on his heels for the edge of the forest.


* * * * * *

There had been a guard with one of those new fangled Frodd missile thrower things at the top of the wall, but Axehand had replaced his axe with a cleverly articulated hook and strung his witch-stave (which in the north they simply called a 'bow', but which was despised as a coward's weapon in the south and so generally had to be disguised) before they had set out two shadow-arms before sunrise, so that had not been a problem.

He'd even been able to recover his stave-bolt, although Gafeq had grunted with disappointment at discovering the idiot guard had fallen off the wall on top of the missile-throwing machine and broken it.

But Gafeq still had his hand axes, so that was all right.

Now they were through the outer gate, across the first courtyard, past the unguarded inner door (it had been locked, but locks meant little to the Sunfingered) and well down the first hallway. The Axehand was the Axehand once again, having taken a shadow-finger to unstrap the hook, restore it to his beltpouch, and restrap the axeblade to his stump. Bows were all well and good, but for inside work, an axe and shield was best.

In the fashion they had worked out long ago, Gafeq led off down the hallway, with Axehand gliding along silent as a patch of burly darkness at his back. Gafeq held his very expensive adjustable lantern, its front shutter open to allow a bare flicker of light to escape, out in front of him.  At the end of the passage, there was a set of elaborately carved and inlaid double doors; beautifully rendered images of men riding giant cats with huge tusks hurling spears at very recognizable sherdak decorated it.

Axehand snorted. “The woodcarver had quite an imagination,” he barely whispered.

“No,” Gafeq said, sounding odd... almost bemused, a fey state Axehand rarely saw him in. “No, that was carved from real life... but not for a very very long time, I grant you.”

Axehand wanted to snort and demand to know how Gafeq, hardly a scholar of anything but chacal cards, could possibly claim to know such a thing... but Gafeq was already oiling the hinges on the left door, then the knob, then easing it quietly open and eeling inside. The room beyond was utterly dark, except for the slight flicker of his hooded lamp...

Then he was whispering “All right, Kordek, it's all clear.”

And before the Axehand could really process the thought He never calls me Kordek, he had stepped silently through... and the halberd blade had slammed into his chest from the right side, slicing through his short ribs like they were thin spring icicles, and cleaving his heart in two.

A shadow-arm later, Gafeq had been at the docks, booking passage for the north with three of the five gold he'd gotten as a reward for luring the outlawed halfbreed and escaped slave Kordek to his death.

He also had his fifth skull, nestled safely into his backpack with the others.



* * * * *



From twenty spans into the jungle, lying flat behind the huge, rotting bole of a long fallen zuzu tree, Sheqra and the Jikki kid had heard a satisfyingly loud BOOM, followed by a pattering and rattling as what must have been a thousand or more skulls had fallen back to earth again, all over the clearing.

By the time Sheqra got back there, though, the skulls had reassembled themselves... with the only visible difference to the clearing itself being, chunks of some sort of black, thick ropelike material, along with splatters and pools of blackich ichor, were splattered everywhere.

Sheqra shook his head. He couldn't remember when it had started, but he thought it had been shortly after he'd killed that lunkhead Axehand, back in the Second Kingdom. Once every liftime he'd begun to be attacked by some sort of horrible monster. The first time, a giant ungula had wrapped its tentacles around the ship he'd been sailing northward on from Bearfang Bay and crushed it underneath him. Fortunately, he'd been aware that ungula react poorly to epsu, a spice made from crushed tufa bark that is a primary ingredient in Northark blood rum... so he'd made sure that his half full jug of Northark blood rum had preceded him into the ungula's maw, and then, while it had been writhing in systemic shock, he'd swum for the surface and then for the shore.

Giant ungula that devour ships and everything on them are an unfortunate fact of life on the River, so he'd given it little further thought after cursing the encounter thoroughly. But every generation since then, something had attacked him at some point after he'd assembled his five skulls, while en route to the pyramid to place them. A hideously overgrown dire wolf on one occasion, an infuriated black elephant on another... on a third occasion, a gigantic grawken, a carnivorous monster bird even larger than the ship he'd been riding on at the time, had swooped out of the sky and tried to pluck him from the deck.

But, to date, he'd survived each attack. And now, he'd survived the latest. Gods alone knew what he'd face on his next journey back here... but he needn't worry about that at the moment, and he wasn't going to.

Retrieving his pack, Sheqra took it and walked around the cairn a few times, selecting the best spot for new additions. Hmmpphh... that one, right there, that was the skull belonging to that great booby Kordek Axehand. He knew, because he'd notched an X in it before he'd set it up there, wanting to be able to tell it again in the future. Of all the skulls he'd set here, he took the most satisfaction in Axehand's... because Axehand had been so foolishly trusting, Sheqra had genuinely felt he'd been doing the man a service, luring him to his doom.

Or perhaps it was that of all those Sheqra had befriended and betrayed since he had first sacrificed his two young wives and the two babes they carried in their arms and the two year old son he had carried there himself, those long millenia ago, on a high hilltop that had long since become a deep crater... of all of them, Axehand had come the closest to making him feel... well... bad about it.

The man had not had to throw that rope down to him, when he'd fallen into that spiked pit. He could have simply turned around and retraced his steps back out of that long dead Sottle's maim den murder maze. He couldn't have known that Sheqra... Gafeq, then... would have faced a fate far worse than any other Riverscum, dying in that pit. For, having died before he could pay his tribute that generation, he would have been consigned forever to hell... and he had little doubt that the denizens of hell had been dreaming up special tortures for him as they waited, all these thousands of years.

The Axehand had had no idea of any of that. No, he had simply seen a comrade in need of help, and at risk of his own life, he'd tied off that rope and thrown it down, and then carried Gafeq back out like a child in arms...

Sheqra spit on the skull.  And then, contemptuously, he put it back where he'd taken it from.

Then, slowly, he started arranging the five skulls he'd brought this time at the top of steadily growing pyramid. This one was Jennus, the young Northark mercenary he'd met as an apprentice aboard the Red Raptor. He'd seduced the boy first, then befriended him; they'd traveled together nearly ten years...

This was Lorali, the girl slinger... a female fighter, or “crimson”, as they'd started to call such women over the course of his last few lives, after that bitch of a mercenary Captain who had conquered Ona-Tengu and made herself the first Queen on the River since the fall of the First Kingdom. He would have liked Lorali a great deal, if he ever let himself really feel anything for the five he chose for sacrifice each lifetime. She'd had a merry laugh, and been a talented blasphemer when the chacal dice went against her...

This next skull had belonged to Footrust, a Sothark who had been fortunate enough to be born without the usual Sothark susceptibility to heat, but who had been forever cursed with toe rot whenever he had come much north of Sottli Ban. Footrust had never really liked Sheqra much, but he'd trusted him enough to go into that supposed treasure cavern with the rest of them, which had been stupid. But Sotharks were stupid; in the lifetimes he'd spent as a Sothark, he'd been somewhat dimwitted himself. Perhaps that was why he'd let himself become so sentimental about the Axehand.

These last two had been Romaine, brothers named Fjerka and Fjonso the Lightfingered. They'd taken the name because they were skilled thieves, or so they said. The name reminded him of how he'd been called 'the Sunfingered' by the Axehand, long ago, after he'd burned himself fending off that pot of boiling oil. Romaine rarely reposed much trust in outsiders, but they'd bonded with him and the other three over Ulvane bitter-root ale and a few thousand idle chacal hands. They'd followed him into that cave trustingly enough, too.

It was odd, though, the way the monsters had started attacking him after he'd betrayed Axehand to his death. Perhaps Axehand had laid a death curse on him... Sheqra had heard such things were possible, although in a few hundred lifetimes, he'd never seen any real evidence of such. Perhaps the evidence had been biting him on the ass... or trying to, anyway... for his last hundred incarnations...

This incident was the worst it had been so far... some hideous creature actually nesting on his chosen sacrifice site, waiting for him. 

Frankly, this shit was getting old.

A death curse that would continue for several thousand years (not counting the Interregnum, when Sheqra... or, rather, Bakwet, the short Durshi he had been at that time... had lain in cold, frozen slumber for ten thousand years, like every other living creature on the River not either daemonic or Chaotic, just prior to the Samaqel razing it to the bedrock to clear it of those infestations once and for all), was a powerful curse indeed. Certainly the Axehand had had no sorcerous abilities... but... he would have at least met the Rider, in Hell, after his death... wouldn't he? Perhaps he'd struck a bargain, much like Sheqra had done, back in the beginning. A bargain that let him return to earth for brief periods, in monstrous form,  while Sheqra was en route with skulls to the sacrifice spot, to attempt to take revenge on his betrayer.

But why would the Rider make such a bargain? Sheqra had kept his side of the bargain faithfully... five skulls per incarnation, representing five people he had gained the trust of and lured to their deaths. He'd been an excellent provider for the King of Hell... why would he set some such scheme in motion against him...?
But Sheqra could not kid himself. He had met the Rider, and bargained with him... and he'd had a few hundred generations of experience with human behavior. The Rider was not human, no... but he acted like one. And this was exactly the sort of cruel contest he would enjoy.

Well, so be it. Let the Axehand return as any sort of monster he wanted, unto the end of time. Sheqra was more than the equal of any beast, no matter how vicious or vast, as long as the brains behind the fangs, tusks, hooves, claws, or tentacles was as dimwitted as he remembered the Axehand being.

Sheqra had just reached this conclusion, and was feeling very satisfied with himself, when something heavy, sharp, and made of rusty iron slammed into his skull from behind. His last living emotion was surprise; after thousands of years of life, his instincts and awareness of his surroundings were both preternaturally sharp. Nothing living could sneak up on him... and spirited Undead could not venture out into daylight without burning to dust.

The tall figure stood in the bright daylight, polishing the blood off the rusty axe blade strapped to the stump just below its left elbow. The shadowcloak that protected it from direct sunlight had been difficult to obtain; it had raided two full hands of tombs in the Howling Moors before finding it.

But it had all been worth it.

The figure kicked the short body at its feet.

Again.

Then, finally... it walked over to the mound, and picked up a skull with an X notched on it... and placed it, carefully, on the stump of its neck, where the blade of his grandmother's chief guard had removed it, thousands of years before, after a trusted friend had betrayed him to his doom.

The promised transformation took only a moment. Then the headless revenant was gone... replaced by the once again living, mostly whole body of Kordek Axehand.

Kordek set to work.  Over the course of the next hour, he reduced each of the skulls that his betrayer had so diligently placed there to a fine dust, then carefully, almost ritually, he scattered handfuls of the dust around the clearing, chanting a fifteen thousand year old funeral rite from his father's people as he did it.  It was the best he could do for the poor wretches.  He hoped it would give them some small measure of peace, wherever they might be.

Then he resettled the shadow cloak -- which he could probably sell for quite a lot of gold when he got to Jennaru -- on his shoulders and prepared for his trip back through the jungle.  He wasn't overly worried about the Jikki; they were not his father's people, but he understood them... and for the last few hundred years, their occasional glimpses of him stalking this section of the jungle, waiting for Gafeq to show up, had instilled in them a very genuine terror of him.  Which was just as well.

Kordek had no desire to kill anyone else, now that he had settled up with Gafeq... but that didn't mean he wouldn't. 

He was never going to be an easy mark again.


* * * *

In Hell, the soul of the entity that had once been called, among many, many other things, Gafeq the Sunfingered, stared in disbelief at the images conjured by the Pale Rider standing beside him.

It was, he presumed, part of his eternal torture to know exactly who had bested him.

“But,” Gafeq/Sheqra/Bakwet/ad infinitum protested, “I killed the tentacle thing under the cairn! I'd never been attacked by two monsters in one incarnation before... you must have changed the conditions of the contest! To allow him to reincarnate so quickly in that headless form... and sneak up on me...!”

The grave-pale face beneath the chain mail coif regarded him with contempt. When the Rider spoke, it was in a voice like a cold wind from an abandoned tomb, breathy and sibilant and chill as death itself... which, of course, It was.

“He was always the headless wight,” the Dread God said, scornfully. “The monsters were simply his familiars. Each time you would finish gathering your heads, I would give him another one to use against you.”

“But... but... I beat the tentacle thing... and he HIT ME WITH HIS AXE!” Sheqra's soul protested. “It isn't fair...!”

“I imagine he felt he would only get one chance to strike against you in his true form,” the Rider said. “After that, you would have been warned... and protections against the Undead are, unfortunately, not difficult to obtain.”

Hell's newest resident would have protested further... but the mob of doomed souls gathered around the two of them was growing more and more impatient.  Especially the five who were closest to the Rider and the new arrival, who resembled, in some odd, ethereal way, two extremely angry young women and three equally angry, very young children... with very, very long claws.

Without another word, the King of Hell mounted his pale white horse, turned its skeletal head, and rode off through the crowd.

There was always another newly arrived soul to tend to.

Behind him, the avid growls and vicious laughter began to be intermittently drowned out by screams...