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Chapter Nineteen

The second shot came within a foot of Samm who had just fallen against the port gunwale. That was when I simultaneously registered the sight of a scaly green hand on her oar and the sound of a splash behind me.

We were under attack!

Not by the beast men from the submarine but from Deep Ones who were preparing to swarm our lifeboat! The rifleman was shooting at them!

Irena shrieked as a webbed hand reached up, caught her hair, and yanked her head back. I grabbed her to keep her from going overboard and lost control of the tiller. There was a brief struggle and the next thing I knew I was holding the neatly severed arm of Irena's attacker. Not ripped off via superhuman strength, mind you—that would have been semiunderstandable. Neatly severed with surgical precision, shearing cleanly through bone as well as flesh? I looked at my bloody hands for a clue, found none, and shuddered. Maybe some fanboy might think these were cool superpowers or something but this was just scary as hell. Especially as I was still holding the severed arm and wondering if it would taste like chicken.

I wasn't just thirsty, now; I was hungry! In a very wrong way!

Four more Deep Ones joined their fallen teammates in Davy Jones' locker room as I found the willpower to toss the arm and sit back down. By the time I got the boat back under control, I found that the submarine had come about and was closing with us. As it pulled alongside, a roped step system was unfurled. After Samm and Irena climbed up, I picked up Suki and slung her around my neck. She purred as I climbed up after them.

Two of the turtle-monkeys remained on deck and assisted us into the hatch and down an interior ladder. Their leader had disappeared for the moment.

We were led down a short corridor to a cabin and given basins of water and towels. An adjoining head contained a corner cabinet of metal. This was demonstrated to be a shower with ornate, antique fixtures. It and a sink had hot and cold running taps. The cabin was paneled in wood, carpeted, and furnished in the Victorian style. There were two wardrobes and two dressers of surprising craftsmanship. Even the two sets of bunk beds were stylish beyond the utilitarian.

As much as we were taking in our new environment, we were studying our "hosts," as well.

About the size of ten-year-old children, they had the heads of beaked monkeys with a fringe of long, dark hair circling their skulls. The crowns of their heads were depressed like concave bowls and filled with a clear liquid like water. Their torsos were shelled like turtles or tortoises but their scaly limbs were longer with webbed hands and feet and they smelled like fish. Their dark, beady eyes shone with a fierce intelligence.

As we were studying the creature who was pointing to the basins, the shower, and the towels in turn, another like it entered bearing a stack of folded clothing with a note pinned to the top. The creature placed the clothing on top of a small table, unpinned the note, and handed it to me.

Please take a little time to freshen up, the note read. The kappas will bring you to the salon when you have made yourselves more presentable. It was signed D. The paper itself was imprinted stationary with the motto: Mobilis in Mobili N at the top in an embellished woodcut script.

I looked at the others and suddenly realized what a bloody and grimy lot we were. "I'll allow ladies first for the shower as long as there's hot water left for me," I said gallantly. And foolishly.

Despite the narrowness of the chamber there was some unseemly debate over the possibility of two people sharing the shower. It was, of course, grossly impractical for any pairing outside of a couple of circus contortionists or a man and a cat. Which was how I got a surprisingly complacent Suki clean.

The shower was appointed with a selection of sponges and scented oils in bottles on recessed shelves. The towels were roughly textured but highly absorbent and the clothing was of a gray material with a unique feel and quality, yet not readily identifiable. The waistbands on both the pants and the tops were elasticized and the cut of the arms and legs allowed total freedom of movement, yet conformed to the body sufficiently as to not render the wearer shapeless. The boots were cut low, from sealskin, and extremely comfortable.

The ladies had dressed while I was in the shower. Once I was decent, I emerged from the head and looked at Samm. "Any ideas before we meet with the captain?"

Her brow furrowed. "Some of this seems familiar but . . . I don't know. Ever since my throw-down with Marie Laveau, my brain is like Swiss cheese!"

"Hah!" I said.

"Hah . . . ?"

"Yeah." I smiled. "For once we're all on the same page." I knocked on our cabin door. "Let's go see if the wizard will give you a brain, me a heart, Irena a way to go home, and Suki—" I looked down at the cat. "Aw hell, the analogy starts off lame and then crashes and burns."

"Could be an omen," Samm agreed as the door was opened by one of the kappas.

"Let's go," I sighed.

We were escorted back through a central corridor where we had first descended into the submarine and then led through an elegantly appointed dining room. A table, covered with a white linen tablecloth, was set with expensive crystal and china and ornate, golden tableware.

We passed through into a library filled with books. The shelves circled the room, taking advantage of the maximum amount of space allowable. It was furnished in black violet ebony inlaid with brass. Curved, brown leather divans of immense size were positioned at the opposite end and the beast-headed rifleman reclined upon one, reading a book and smoking a long-stemmed pipe. He closed his book and stood as we wove our way toward him, moving around a large table that dominated the center of the room.

Gesturing with the curved stem of his pipe, he indicated the adjacent divan and said in a low, rumbling voice: "Monsieur Cséjthe, Mesdames Pantera and D'Arbonne, welcome aboard my boat. Please be seated." He sat back down and patted the cushions next to him. "Come sit beside me, my silent deserter. All is forgiven for it seems we still share common purpose." Suki hopped off our couch, trotted across the floor, and jumped up to sit beside him. Now I felt the weight of two pairs of cat's eyes on me.

A full minute passed in silence as we studied each other from a distance of perhaps two meters.

Our host wore a red velvet smoking jacket over blue silk pajamas. His feet were encased in sharkskin slippers and his hands were like a man's with long tapered fingers, though the nails were trimmed to be unaccountably long and pointed. His head, however, was that of a Bengal tiger, with orange and white fur striped in a pattern of black stripes and bands. He gazed at us with calm golden eyes and then said: "Forgive me; I speak very rarely these days. My troops tend to be an uncommunicative lot and I have fallen out of the habit of human speech. I am Prince Dakkar. Your host and, I hope, your ally."

I stared hard at him: Tyger, tyger, burning bright . . . I knew that name from somewhere.

"Mr. Cséjthe, are you a fox?" the tiger-headed creature continued before I could pin it down, "or a hedgehog?"

I shook my head. "I'm not a shape-changer. I'm—a man." Still lacking a definitive answer on that front.

The tiger-man shook his head and chuckled. "I apologize. The question was meant metaphorically." He held up the book. "I was reading Lance Morrow's Evil: An Investigation. The author uses Isaiah Berlin's essay on Tolstoy to ask the question about the true nature of evil . . ."

I nodded, catching up now. " 'Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.' The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

"You know your Latin, Mr. Cséjthe."

"Better than I know my Greek. The Latin is from Erasmus Rotterdamsus' Adagia back around 1500. The original comes from a fragment attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus, sixth century b.c."

"Ah," our host said, "then perhaps you can answer the question as Mr. Morrow has framed it. Do you believe in evil, Mr. Cséjthe? And do you perceive it as one, big thing? Or do you see the wrongs of the world as a series of smaller, unconnected incidents? Are you a hedgehog? Or a fox?"

Maybe a week ago it would have been surreal. Certainly inconceivable two years previously to imagine myself discussing the unification theory of wickedness with a monster beneath the Gulf of Mexico. But in light of recent events it all made for a certain perverse sense. The problem was I was way past patience for dabbling in theoreticals any longer.

"I'm more of a badger, I guess," I finally answered. "Had my run-ins with what people would call evil; a lot of it small, petty, and seemingly unconnected. Had a few brushes with something a lot bigger, too. Just touched its hem, felt its shadow, heard it breathing in the night. Thing is, your parents teach you not to play in traffic at an early age. As a young man your drill instructor teaches you not to pick up unexploded ordnance or stand up in your foxhole or bunch up on patrol. The government comes along and hits you with infomercials: buckle up, don't drink and drive, this is your brain on drugs, smoking kills, only you can prevent forest fires! You figure certain things out for yourself: don't stand next to guys throwing rocks at men with machine guns. . . . 

"So, like a badger, I go my own way, stay out of trouble, lay low. Don't mess with evil and hope that evil won't mess with you."

I took a deep breath. "But some things don't know any better than to leave a badger alone. And a cornered badger has the baddest reputation in the animal world of anything you'd want to face. So, you want to know my take on Evil—upper case or lower? I'm an equal opportunity kind of guy. It messes with my friends or family, all I care about is the practical, not the theoretical. It's in my face? Then there's no guesswork involved: one of us is going down!"

Tiger guy tossed the book aside. "How pleasantly simple-minded and anodyne for you," he rumbled. "From the way my lieutenant here behaved these past five months I thought, perhaps, that you might be the key." He rose and towered over us. "In deference to her I shall set you ashore near one of the refugee camps close to the Pontchartrain Sea before continuing my war against these abominations from the depths. I bid you—"

"You're a fox person, then," Samm said.

"What?" He turned and peered down at her as if considering a bit of leftover antelope meat.

"You're making war on the many little things instead of the one big thing," she said, looking back up at him without flinching.

The beast-man folded his hands behind his back but not, I noticed, before clenching them. "Madam, ever since I awakened to this new age, I have been consumed with finding the answers to what troubles my beloved oceans. That men continue to conquer and enslave and oppress one another comes as no surprise. But the oceans have always been a peaceful refuge from the ways of the surface world and I have been called out of my eternal rest to find them invaded and corrupted by alien armies! Armies whose general I cannot yet perceive! You will tell me where I may find their leader that I may take the fight to him and bring this war to conclusion once and for all!"

Samm, not the least bit intimidated, smiled and said: "The first part's easy: his name is Cthulhu and he can be found in the dread city of R'lyeh. The second part is going to be a little tougher"—she pointed at me—"because only he can stop him."

The impact of her pronouncement was lost on me because I had finally shaken off the thin patina of shock and done the math.

"Holy shit!" I said. "Prince Dakkar! I know who you are!" I looked at the others. "We found Nemo!"

 

"I called myself a freedom fighter in those days," Dakkar mused before the great lensed window of the grand salon later that night. "And so I was in many ways and many places. I lent finances and aid to oppressed people and countries all over the world. But I was also a terrorist, wreaking vengeance for the deaths of my family at the hands of the British during the Sepoy Rebellion. I tried to disguise my vengeance from myself, labeling it as a noble war against all wars." He shook his head. "All I did was widen the scope of my vengeance from one nation to many."

I nodded. "I know something about that: monsters and monstrous things. If they don't out and out kill you, they infect you and eventually you become them."

We were looking out through the thick glass as the Nautilus made for the first set of coordinates. The room's lights were off yet a pale blue illumination filtered back in from the external beams lighting up the waters outside our window.

"It was Verne who brought me to my senses," Dakkar continued. "Our conversations and, of course, the manuscript."

"Which one?"

"The first. The second, you understand, was a fabrication. Well, they are both fabrications to a degree. There was no Professor Aronnax—that was Verne putting himself into the narrative. Other details . . ." He made a dismissive wave with his hand. "It's the second book that is the larger work of fiction."

"Timeline discrepancies for one," I remarked.

"Yes, well, even though I had retired from overt acts of aggression and piracy before the publication of the first novelization, the public's imagination was piqued. Certain agencies and individuals began to get a sense that what most took for fiction might actually have a basis in reality. The hounds were loosed, so to speak. Over time I found my trail growing warmer and my precautions less than sufficient. I prevailed upon Verne to compose a sequel and 'kill me off' so as to cool the ardor of my overly enthusiastic fans."

"Interesting," I said. "So, there was no Lincoln Island. No erupting volcano and scuttling of the Nautilus, sending the two of you to a watery grave . . ."

"Oh, that last part was true," Dakkar rumbled. "The latitude and longitude for the fictional Lincoln Island? Hogwash! Sleight of hand, misdirection to send the searchers in the wrong direction. But the second set of coordinates you found on that damnable altar, that was where I was sheltered at the end. The volcanic underpinnings were more prominent back then and provided more cover but there is still a significant sea cave entrance if one knows where to look. I was an old man and dying—though many years after Verne's fictional laying-me-to-rest. I suppose fiction inspired fact. When I knew that my life was to be measured in hours rather than days, I settled my ship—"

"Boat."

"What?"

"A submarine is a boat, not a ship."

He stared at me.

"In proper naval parlance, that is."

The stare became a glare. "Do not presume to tell the captain of the vessel he has built as well as commands what sort of thing to call it!"

"Um, okay."

"As I was saying, I had settled the Nautilus beneath the volcanic shell of the island that would be named Palmyra, and set the pumps to evacuate the . . . Nautilus . . . three days later. Later that night I fell into a deep slumber and dreamed I was in the Palace of Vishnu."

He fell silent and for a number of leagues we stood and gazed out at the blue nirvana of the ocean depths together.

"I dreamed many things," he said finally. "Things that I may tell no heathen. I do not know why I even tell you of this save that we are likely doomed in our task and doomed men should never lie to one another. So, I will tell you why I am here and why I will do what I must do.

"In the dream beyond this dream which we esteem as real, I was told that I had lost my path. I had made war upon my own karma in making war upon my fellow man. To achieve moksha or samadhi, one usually follows a yoga, a path, to achieve spiritual perfection. There are four possible ways. When I was young, I practiced the raja-yoga, the path of meditation. As a husband and young father, I practiced the bhakti-yoga, the path of love and devotion. In the House of Vishnu I dreamed that I was taught the jnana-yoga, the path of wisdom. Then I was told I must atone for the wrong acts I had committed. I must return and walk the path of right action, the karma-yoga.

"In this last matter I believed I might awaken to a new life, reincarnated as a beggar or a dalit or even an animal or insect, doomed to live out a life of crushing humility, subjected to the pain and loss I had inflicted on so many others.

"Instead, I was shown a great and terrible face, the face of the giant squid that had nearly doomed my vessel and crew many years before. This, I was told, this was the face of the Destroyer of Worlds and that Shiva had decreed that it must not stand. I was given three secrets and told I must return and walk upon the other side of the same path to balance the karma-yoga."

He turned to me. "When I awoke, I was lying upon my bed in my chambers, just as when I had fallen asleep. The air was stale but my ship was watertight. I did not know how much time had passed so I hurried about to make sure that the timers did not activate the pumps.

"I shall not bore you with all of the mordant details. I discovered that the timers had long since failed and that I had awakened in a different century. A different millennium, actually." He reached up and touched his face. "How I discovered that I was no longer human but rakshasa."

"Rakshasa?"

"A demon or unclean spirit in my religion, Mr. Cséjthe. Such are magicians and shape-changers. Handy abilities, actually, for the mission which I have been assigned. This freakish appearance is little impediment for this, my third life. I have long been a creature of solitude. Since the death of my wife and children my only solace has been the sea. Only in its cool blue depths have I found the peace and quiet that gives my savage heart ease. Perhaps I shall take again the name, Nemo. Prince Dakkar lost his title when his family was murdered and his ancestral lands seized. He lost his name when his body grew old and infirm and finally died at the bottom of an undersea grotto in a collapsed volcano under an accursed island. It is only fitting that I reclaim the name that is no name."

"Nemo." I said. "Latin for 'no one.' "

We both looked up, suddenly conscious of the spill of light from the adjoining library. Irena Pantera stood in the doorway at the end of the grand salon. "I couldn't sleep," she said, stretching, her shirt riding up to show off her taut brown belly. "Mind if I come in to watch the fish?" She began walking toward us without waiting for an answer. Tousled hair and puffy lips, she was a sleepy-eyed vision of pillow sexuality and the hip action in her walk was telegraphing all sorts of messages.

The last thing I needed tonight was to have her pheromone-driven lust put on display in front of our unpredictable host, so my best bet was to redirect her back to the cabin with Suki and Samm.

Subtly.

So I stretched in turn. "You know," I said, "actually I'm pretty bushed. I think I'll go lie down for a while and we can continue our conversation in the morning."

I said a hurried goodnight so that Irena could turn right around and follow me back out. It was smoothly executed: she didn't even get the opportunity to lay an inappropriate hand on me as I rounded the other side of the fountain and crossed to the door. I opened the door and held it for her like a gentleman—no fanny grabs for me, thank you—but she wasn't there behind me. She was over at the view port, talking with Captain Nemo.

I closed the door quietly on my way out.

 

Samm was already asleep when I returned to the cabin and I crept carefully into an upper bunk so as not to wake her. I was exhausted and should have slept like a rock but for the nightmare.

I dreamt of the pyramids. Only these were nightmare pyramids. Gigantic, misshapen, cancerous buildings of basalt, obsidian, and dark metal. Far below, tiny legions of slaves dragged a gigantic block across the desert floor under a distant blue star. Slowly the hundreds behind the giant black slab pushed while a thousand before strained against hundreds of harnesses to pull their stony cargo forward. Foot by foot, yard by yard, mile by mile, they dragged their immense burden on its epic journey.

In the wrong direction.

I dreamt of a funeral. A great dark coffin being borne through the streets of New Orleans. The band played its customary dirge, Big Easy style. But the musicians were dead, their faces bloated and fish-belly white; the music distant and far away. Underwater. A siren call to lure others to their deaths.

I awoke in sweat-soaked sheets with Samm's face hovering close to mine.

"Where's Irena?" she asked.

I looked over the edge of the bed. Her bunk had not been slept in. "She couldn't sleep last night," I answered, yawning. "I think she tried some tiger balm."

 

Nobody made any direct mention of last night's sleeping arrangements at the captain's mess that morning.

The talk started off on the business of the remaining coordinates from Marie Laveau's altar: the two presumed sets for the lost city of R'lyeh scribbled in the margins of the Al Azif. We were still ten days out from the Lovecraft set and would then travel to the Derleth coordinates if we came up empty there.

Nemo—or Dakkar, since that was what Irena was calling him this morning and he was making no attempt to correct her—was telling us stories of how he had recruited an army to fight the Deep Ones. It was one of the three secrets that Vishnu had bestowed upon him before returning him to his third life and this mission to save the world for gods and men.

His little turtle-monkeys, the kappas, were suijen or water kami, typically dwelling in lakes, rivers, and streams in Japan. Even Dakkar could not explain the siren call that had bade them swim to the sea and seek out his submarine hidden under an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were there, however, when he awakened to this third life and obedient foot soldiers to the cause.

The second secret that Vishnu had imparted was a mixture of magic and science in rehabbing the Nautilus.

A more efficient way of converting seawater into energy was revealed and an engine to harness that power more effectively. Modifications to other technologies like the wireless were less radical. Two, largely external torpedo tubes were retrofitted to the undercarriage as Dakkar had foresworn the ramming of other vessels ever again. But the strangest modification was the craft that replaced the simple dingy that once nestled in the recessed berth atop the submarine.

The Cuttlefish was a self-contained vessel that performed all of the functions of the antiquated dingy as well as a mini-submersible. He hinted that there might be other properties that Lord Vishnu had granted but we were interrupted at that moment by the appearance of another human.

Actually "human" was a premature judgment on my part. The man standing in the doorway had died a long time ago. He had become an undead. And looking into his dead, lifeless eyes, I could see that, as an undead, he had died again.

Dakkar excused himself from the table and went to the lifeless corpse standing in the doorway. Speaking a few, hushed words, he turned the apparition around and told us that he would return in a moment. He ushered the zombie out and down the corridor.

I looked down at Suki who had paused at her repast of bloody fresh fish in a bowl on the floor. "Friend of yours?" I asked.

She merrowed absently as she continued to stare at the closed door.

Dakkar returned after a few uncomfortable bites and apologized. "When you put together an army, you have to make do with the materials at hand."

I laid down my fork. "What exactly does that mean?"

"Where was I? I was speaking of the modifications to the Nautilus. You must understand that even the concussive effects of underwater charges delivered by torpedoes have a limited effectiveness against an army of individual combatants. The kappas are strong, powerful—but they are not infinite in numbers and they can be killed. It was necessary to recruit additional troops to fight an enemy that was breeding and gathering in increasing numbers.

"We engaged these Deep Ones wherever we found them—primarily along the coasts of North America. And while we were in the Pacific Northwest we discovered evidence of the first of several vampire enclaves located near the ocean."

Dakkar told an increasingly horrific story of how a chance encounter between a kappa and an unsuspecting undead led to the discovery that a drowned vampire made the perfect foot soldier for his underwater army. They couldn't swim but they couldn't die, either. And, best of all, when they drained a Deep One of its blood and forced their own upon it, it became an undead version of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra.

And this was the best part, according to Dakkar: the third secret that Vishnu had bestowed upon his reincarnated champion was the power to control the undead that have gone under the seas.

Since that time he had sent the kappas along the coasts—East, West, the Gulf—and up rivers and tributaries, as press-gangs to drag more undead down into the watery ranks of his army. Militarily, strategically—it was genius.

I congratulated Nemo on this incredible weapon in the arsenal against the forces of Evil that were stirring all about us. Then I excused myself and walked back to the cabin. There I quickly knelt in the head and vomited up all of my breakfast.

Thank goodness for solid food for a change.

 

My first visitor was Suki.

She scratched at the cabin door until I got up and let her in.

I laid back down on my bunk and she jumped up beside me. Nestling against me, she laid her chin on my chest.

"What was it like," I asked her, "to drown and not die? To have your lungs and your belly, your nose and your mouth, everything fill up with water and it never end? To be under someone else's control? All for a good cause of course, but it's not you, anymore? You're being sacrificed but it's not you making the sacrifice?" I reached out and stroked her velvet head. The mange seemed to be disappearing. "Did you want to die?" She closed her eyes. "Do you still want to die?" She began to purr.

The door opened again and Samm came into the cabin. "So now we know," she said.

"You mean you didn't know?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I didn't know all of it before and I remember less of it now. Damn! I cannot believe how much that bitch took out of me. It will take me years, decades, to get back the kind of—" She looked over her shoulder. "I have no ass! Can you believe that? That bitch made me use up all of my ass!"

I didn't feel like smiling but I couldn't help a small one. "Stop it," I said quietly.

"Oh, that's easy for you to say!" she sassed me. "For a white boy you got a little too much ass. First spell I learn when this is all over is a grab-ass spell. Transfer some of that juice in your caboose to the junk in my trunk!"

"Now you're just making it sound dirty."

"I wasn't talkin' dirty! Maybe you were thinkin' dirty! Why else are you back in bed in the middle of the morning, hmmm?"

The door opened again and Irena came in. "What's going on?" she wanted to know.

"Cséjthe's lying in bed thinking dirty thoughts about me," Samm said.

Irena blinked and looked at me. "Really?"

"No," I growled. "She's just trying to distract me."

Irena blinked again and looked at her. "Really?"

"Sure I am," the former juju woman replied. "Why don't you give me some pointers? Tell me how you kept Mister Frosted Flakes distracted last night?"

Irena looked a little flustered. "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" Samm turned and leaned into her. "What do I mean? You are gone all night, your bed is not slept in, and you expect us to believe that you spent the entire time in front of that viewing window, looking at the little fishies?"

The Pantera girl was not easily intimidated. "What's your complaint? The way you were acting I figured you'd be happy to have me out of the cabin for the rest of the night if you know what I mean and I think you do? Besides, I'm studying to be a marine biologist, if you'll kindly remember, and this was the opportunity of a lifetime! I saw things last night I'll bet no human being has ever seen in all of history—may never see in my lifetime!"

"Like what?" Samm challenged, seemingly not inclined to give ground without a fight.

That caught Irena off guard: she hadn't realized there would be sworn testimony to be given. "We saw some cephalopods—unusual varieties. And there were these goblin sharks—"

"Goblin sharks? You're making this up!"

"No, really! They're gray, long-nosed sharks and they're really rare! They're called living fossils!"

I sighed and closed my eyes as Irena went on about how Dakkar had taken the Nautilus down along the ocean floor and they'd discovered these mysterious patterns in the dirt and silt. Ten more days, I thought, maybe twelve. Then we kill this Cthulhu or it kills us and it will all be over. And then what? What happens to all those drowned undead things?

" . . . looked like something big and heavy had been dragged across the ocean floor," she was saying. "The thousands of tiny pits actually looked a little like footprints . . ."

If Dakkar survived, he'd have an underwater army at his command. Would he just disband it and send it home? Assuming he had the option. What would the Deep Ones do? Assuming they'd been around for awhile maybe they were only a problem when the Great Old S.O.B.s stirred them up. . . . 

Something . . . 

Wait . . . 

I sat straight up and banged my head on the ceiling.

Rolling off the bunk, I hit the floor holding my head and cursing a blue streak. Even the nanos need a little time to work and I couldn't see the door for the tears in my eyes. "Open the door," I said, clutching my head, "open the damn door!"

Someone was a little slow. Then they were still in the way and we had to do that little dance until I could get around the other side and out into the corridor. By that time my vision was clearing and I started running the length the ship—boat, dammit, boat—yelling for Nemo. I found him in his quarters from which he emerged after a moment's pounding on the furthermost door of the grand salon.

"We've got to turn this boat around," I told him. "We're going the wrong direction!"

"What do you mean, Mr. Cséjthe? The coordinates—"

I shook my head like a man possessed. "Cthulhu isn't in R'lyeh anymore! He's on his way to New Orleans!"

"What do you mean?"

"There's more than a thousand Deep Ones on the march from R'lyeh! They've been traveling for months! It's a combination army and funeral procession: they're bringing the stone sarcophagus of their sleeping god with them!"

The black terror of my nightmares seemed ten times worse now that they were dragged forth into the waking world, joined together and given their true meaning.

"And when he is brought to his new throne, he will awaken, the Herald of the Great Old Ones! And then the world will end in terror and madness!

 

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