Fragments Fiction

THEY KNOW NOT WHAT

Phoebe Gomear and her date Philippe Nasreau stepped lightly into the alley behind the back of the Moulin Rouge where a carriage waited. The Gunpowder Society called these new fireworks chrysanthemums. The shells exploded into gigantic flowers of burnished gold, trumpets of unearthly blue, spirals of blood red and silvery-white streamers.

"I've never seen anything so spectacular," Phoebe said. Across the way, leaning against the building, stood a derelict with hoary beard, stringy hair and ragged clothing, wagging a finger.

"Them's the ee-leet's fireworks. You best not look at them too long. They might be jealous and come steal your eyes," the derelict said. Phoebe laughed at the ridiculousness of being castigated by a fool. She tossed her head to one side dismissively.

"Oh pish-tish-pooh, no one can steal your eyes." She turned to Philippe, a smile on her luscious red lips. "Isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard?" He stepped protectively between them his back to the derelict. His eyes caught hers and sparkled.

"Beyond silly, my darling, but your eyes are so lovely, so like the deep ocean in moonlight that angels might be tempted to steal them simply to gain a glimpse of the heaven that lies in your eyes." He reached into his pocket to take the ring he wished to place on her finger. He stopped as the reflection of the derelict rising from the doorway appeared in her eyes. The man transfigured into a green toad or some horrid angel of the sewers of Paris. Mountainous black wings filled the sky behind it, blotting out the stars in the heavens.

"'Tis not the angels that ye must worry about, my dear. 'Tis us demons come to get ye. The sleeping Master awaits." Phoebe stared, unable to scream as the gargouille de la mer, a servant of Dagon the evil one, surrounded them with its black hand, now a spreading ink-stain in the air as it grew large and enveloped the lovers.

At the behest of the cape-like wings, space and time twisted around them like a dark toreador in a suit of black lights. The unearthly angel opened a portal to another world hidden from the eyes of men. They left earth with a noise like a finger snap.

Through the portal, the carriage driver glimpsed the City The Stars Forgot, a most rare vision beyond the ability of most men's mind to comprehend.

The driver wore the Elder Sign for protection. The medallion was a gift of a frog-faced blackamoor to his father years ago when a boiler blew on a steamship in the harbor and his father pulled men from the sinking wreckage. The Blackamoor warned him of the coming of the Old Gods of Chaos who once ruled the universe before the creation. Even so, the mere glimpse of the sunken city cost him his voice. Mute until death, the carriage driver left a single page in his diary with a drawing of the Elder Sign and the words of power. One day, a descendant would see and understand. Strange are the ways of time and the universe.

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME

Jake Dragoman floated above the perpetually cloud-enshrouded planet called by various names: Nemesis, Niburu, Doppelganger - - each name profligate in legend and myth. Doppelganger did indeed exist, hidden from detection by a quirk of quantum mechanics.

"One minute to completion of orbit," the computer on the spaceship Alert said. Five years of radical construction in orbit, six months to complete the journey to the opposite side of the sun and loss of the captaincy left Jake burned out and cynical.

What an ugly gray world that is, thought Jake as he turned from Doppelganger to the cargo containers on the spaceship's outer spar. He found the package Captain Craypo desired, made his way to the airlock, entered, and cycled to air.

Inside, He removed his spacesuit and strode across the gangways to the control room wearing only his thermal undersuit. His lack of decorum would certainly anger Captain Craypo. They were never friends before the flight and indifference turned to creative denigration during the flight to Doppelganger.

"Why waste air on an EVA? Why didn't you just carry it?" Jake set the small package on the console instead of handing the small box to the Captain.

"I can't explain this, not rationally. The authorities would have gone off like bad pudding, green with poisonous hatred, and afflicted with enough stupidity to call off the mission." Craypo opened the box. It held an Egyptian style cartouche decorated with a five-pointed star above an eye hung on square-linked chain.

Jake stared. Atrocity come to life before his eyes.

Twenty years before in 2080, several hundred crazed fanatics unleashed bloody death on Paris. Half the city went up in flaming explosions and riots. They called it the Elder Sign and it was their rallying cry, the symbol used to whip their crazed, drug-addled crowds into disemboweling a thousand Parisians alive in an effort to bring about the apocalypse. The doctors said it was not their legend of the City the Stars Forgot but a brain-eating virus that caused the madness. Craypo put the symbol of atrocity on his forehead like a crown. Jake saw only atrocity. To his eyes, Craypo was an ignorant savage, an evil magus in service of an equally foul and pestilential demon.

"You carried the symbol of a death cult on board! I lost family members," Jake bellowed. Craypo laughed madly, his eyes wide, his demeanor crazed.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Craypo chanted, bringing his hands together as he invoked black magic. The temperature dropped. Insect noises whispered from the corners. A brackish-green mist fizzed up from the floor and across the control room.

"I am the summoner, the enlightened prophet, high priest of the Old Ones, the undead Ancient Gods who once ruled the universe in the beginning. My Master waits in the City of the Dead bound by chains and dreams. He is the Lord of Nightmares who waits for the chosen one to draw near. He waits for you, Jake."

"You're crazy," Jake said, grabbing a weapon from a locker. Before he could fire it, Craypo touched a control. The spaceship vibrated with the force of a full-burn on the retro-rockets. At this altitude, the ship would de-orbit like a rock and fall through the atmosphere. What didn't burn in the fires of reentry would crash on the rocky surface.

"Stop," Jake yelled, lunging at the control panel but Craypo grabbed him, wrestled him to the steel decking, and bashed his head against the metal deck. Jake babbled half-conscious, blood dripping from his face. Craypo pulled Jake's head off the deck and licked the blood from it. Jake screamed. Craypo laughed manically and sank his teeth into Jake's face, ripping flesh. As he chewed, he spoke of his mission.

"The stars are aligned in the sky for the Return. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be now and forever. They came from before time and will rule beyond it. I worship the Immortal One, the One Who Dreams. The Great One promised me life eternal if only I would bring him a suitable servant." He slapped Jake to bring him to full awareness.

"You're completely insane." Jake gasped, tasting blood, half paralyzed, his vision filled with bright lights. Craypo half stood over him, arms raised in the gloriousness of his madness.

"Not insane, prescient. You are the innocent with the power to free the Ancient Ones from their bonds in the City the Dead, a city built on the graveyards of first races. This was foretold in the Annals. This was prophesied in the Necronomicon, revealed in the hidden writings of Nostradamus, written two thousand years ago in the Gospel of the Lost World that was burnt at the Council of Nicea. The Alert will be the eastern star, heralding the Day of Resurrection. I am not worthy to set foot on the planet. I happily die, but you will survive and become the servant of the One Who Dreams. You will bring about the End of Days for all on Earth." Craypo raised his head as if to look to the sky. "I summon the Great Cthulhu whose name..."

Jake's knee smashed Craypo's genitals.

"You're friggen' crazy." He grabbed Craypo by the shoulders, spun him around, and smashed his head into the bulkhead. Bones fractures. Craypo invoked his dead god a second time, repeating the hideous chant in the ugly foreign tongue.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Come O great one! The stars are once again propitiously aligned. Your servant bids you manifest. I bring you the sacrificial goat. Grant me my wish, Oh Despised One. Burn my enemies to dust. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

The twin foul odors of death and rot filled the cabin. The horrid skittering of night insects seeking carrion filled Jake's ears. A palpable darkness dimmed the control room lights. Craypo landed two quick jabs to Jake's chin and boot to his knee. Jake curled in self-defense.

Instead of more blows, Jake felt the presence of a creature not alive and yet not dead, a creature foul beyond time, not of this earth, a creature of the places in-between reality and nightmare. Jake looked up and beheld horror incarnate.

A cyclopean, cuttlefish-like, green homunculus, reeking of rot and death, stood on writhing tentacles. A sickening and putrid ejaculate dripped from its obscene penile knob. Craypo licked it like a dog. A second mouth howled the creature's approval while its tentacles raked the controls, speeding the spaceship's descent.

"Take your reward," the voice of the creature made Jake's ears and nose bleed. He wished his eyes blind so he could not see the arm-like tentacles caressing Craypo's head and snapping it completely backwards. Craypo's bugged-out eyes and distorted face grinned in death. Pungent white puss vomited from the creature and began dissolving Craypo's twitching body.

Jake puked. The creature extended dreadful and loathsome tentacle to caress his shoulder. Jake's mind raged, rejecting life if it meant being touched by this creature. He pulled away and rammed his head into the metal of the spaceship. The tentacle held him fast and a beak sunk into his flesh. It injected malevolent green blood into Jake as more tentacles gripped his body and violated his flesh with vile-green sanguine fluid. His uniform and thermal undersuit dissolved as his skin turned frog-like green and took on the textures of poisonous toads, ravenous alligators and other creatures of the fetid swamps and stinking sewers.

Jake screamed, hoping that his mind would shatter as visions of a vast, sunken temple ruined by lightning bolts and blasted by immense power filled his mind. His enslaving transformation to the unholy Sleeping One as a bloody-thirsty beast continued unabated while the creature that slept in the City the Stars Forgot whispered evil thoughts inside his mind.

Teeming with evil, the City's bricks and mortar thrilled to the echoes of obscene spells and the screams of human sacrifice. Even its air revolted and begged to hear the death rattle of innocents whose minds suffered indescribable torture and bodies excruciating evisceration. Foul winds passing over it carried the sound of weeping women who where chosen for the perpetual birth cycles. Those births creating new demonic creatures to serve the Old Ones.

Jake dreamed himself standing before the huge brass gates of R'lyeh with its garlands of seaweed and barnacles, sealed with the Elder Sign that glowed with the power of a sun and releasing the Ancient Ones from these ruins, their prison. His visions foretold the devastation where demons danced with joy at death and the nightmarish destruction of Paris, the new City the Stars Forgot. Hallucinations of bodies being ripped apart, souls being separated from them and trapped in fiery cages never to leave while their zombiefied bodies committed obscene acts for the merriment of the Ancient Ones.

No human mind could support this Herculean burden. Jake's mind descended into madness, confusion, disorientation, chaos. He transformed, mind and body, into his slavery--bones, lizard skin, muscles, gills, mind, and will suitable for servicing the Ancient Gods of Darkness.

The fires of reentry reached the control room. The air reeked of burning wiring and Captain Craypo's dead body. The spaceship creaked and moaned. Knives of flame cut through it like butchers gutting swine. Control panels flared and blackened, filling the air with acrid smoke. The flaming spaceship arced through the clouds towards the oceans of Doppelganger.

Jake forced his mind to quit raving. He faced the creature assaulting him and reached detente with the creature's cacophonous thoughts. It demanded the acceptance of murder and death, the joys of torture, the pleasure of killing, the near orgasmic delight of disembowelment of minds and bodies. The ammoniated reek of excrement and the stench of rotted flesh became the fragrance of roses.

"My god, my god why have you forsaken me?" thought Jake. The creature assaulted Jake's mind and answered in God's stead.

"You resist becoming a god. There are worlds to plunder, races to be introduced to the pleasures death, to experience the joys of deprivation, and the sacrifice of virgin flesh. Become my immortal handmaiden, my paladin, my herald, announcing my imminent arrival and their ultimate death. Become my gargouille de la mer. The world where you once lived will become the crown jewel of sin and suffering, a jewel blazing bright in the firmament. Going me and you will be able to pass through the dimensions that separate heaven, hell, and earth, the past, present and future, free to pronounce judgment, and bring death to worlds. All that can be yours."

In the choice between life and death, Jake lived and became the Key to the gates of the City the Stars Forgot. He acquiesced to Cosmicism and its beliefs in alien miscegenation and nihilistic morality.

"I request the boon of immortality," Jake said.

"Granted" the Ancient One answered. The die was cast. The deal recorded in the black books, the Annals of the Ancients, the New Necronomicon, and the Book of Fate.

New wings, black and cloud-like, formed on his back. The wings swirled around his transformed body. Space and time folded on command and a portal opened, transporting him to the gates of R'lyeh. Only the human-born could remove the Elder Sign. It blazed as bright as the falling star of his spaceship. The newly transformed gargouille de la mer knelt before the gates, no longer afraid of death but a new god, an immortal, undying and timeless.

A Silver Key formed in his hands. Yog-Soggoth, the Lurker at the Threshold, the One Who Waits, the Gatekeeper of the City the Stars Forgot, the guardian of the way to R'lyeh, took the Silver Key and unlocked the brass gates. The gates of the hidden city, the forgotten city, of R'lyeh opened.

R'lyeh Triumphant! Cthulhu in his glory summoned his ancient lackeys from their exile. They thirsted for the blood of humanity. The greatest achievements of mankind would be their footstools and the men who built civilization their toilet slaves. The universe trembled as a dark eon dawnedEvery evil creature no matter how reviled and wicked passed out from the prison city like a bowel movement from Hades.

Day of Judgment, Day of Wrath, the Day prophesied in the banned teachings of the De Vermis Mysteriis, the Book of Eibon, and the unspeakable Unaussprechlichen Kulten... had come to pass.

Jake noticed a person standing behind Yog-Soggoth, a person hidden beneath a shimmering veil of glowing orbs. None of the monsters saw the Hidden One, Not Yog-Soggoth, Not Cthulhu, nor any other minion. But Jake recognized the Hidden One.

Jake opened his black wings and formed a portal that would take him away from this savagery. Five billion years would pass before he would return to the gates of R'lyeh. His return would be paradox and conundrum, the impossible and unachievable. His return would be apocalypse.

BEHOLD THY MOTHER

Phoebe waited in the same clothing she wore on the night the gargouille de la mer snatched her and Philippe from Montmartre. Her fine silks and ruffles hung in tatters but the cloth anchored her in the hope that one day she would return to Paris and leave this this dark and barren Mongolian hideaway. The world had become nothing more than a nightmare memory. From the mountain, she could see the sands of the Gobi where the minions of Cthulhu the Sleeping One feasted in all their malignant glory, in all their corpulent majesty. She could sense his dark and brooding eyes scouring the planet for victims. She hid behind an Elder Sign, and returned to her task: handmaiden to Philippe, her lover.

Philippe suffered wickedly and absurdly. He was what in a woman would have been called "with child." He lay naked on a flat rock shaped like bed, moaning and writhing in humiliating, horrid labor. Philippe's abused body began dropping eggs. This was an upside-down world, rank with evil and abomination. Phoebe kept him strong with her love and devotion.

Above her, the portal opened and the gargouille de la mer materialized out of it. Phoebe caught a glimpse of a stone table lit by phosphorescence from crystalline veins in surrounding walls. It might be the gargouille del la mer's hiding place. She could not fathom why.

It watched in silence as she buried the latest batch of eggs. These birthings no longer revolted Phoebe. Finished, she rolled Philippe over on his side and massaged his wretched body. His inflamed manhood, now equine-like and inhuman from the passage of eggs, responded to her touch.

"Tell it to go away. It's too soon," Philippe said.

"How many?" the gargouille de la mer asked.

"This birth..." she hesitated at the word, "marks the tenth cycle of thousands."

The gargouille de la mer smiled. Never before had it revealed emotion. For reasons she couldn't explain, she saw hope where none existed. Hope grows eternal from the human heart.

"Do not celebrate. This place has evil eyes that watch and surreptitious ears that listen. Pretend as if I have laid seed in Philippe once again and act as you would before. The number must be sufficient to blot out the sun. Only then, will your duty be complete. When I return, you shall see the Earth restored again."

A portal opened.

"Why are you doing this?" she dared to ask. The gargouille de la mer ignored her, turned away, and then changed its mind.

"Behold thy mother," it said as it opened its wings and left.

THEY THIRST

In the years since the Divine Cthulhu returned to earth and took the Arc de Triomphe as his throne, no one was safe from the depraved fondling of his tentacled offspring or the reviled passions of his companion Ancients. They created a new Montmartre of blood and pain, and the appalling new Moulin Rouge with its propellers of human body parts and salons devoted to death.

In the air, nothing lived; even the birds clung to the ground thanks to Hastur. The unspeakable one who may not be named governed the skies with his black-winged disciples and their razor-sharp talons. They nested on the roofs of Paris made sport of humans.

The watery Dagon, fertile demon of the sea and his cephalopodan followers, sucked the living from the shores of rivers and oceans. Dagon's fertility rites created hybrid fish-men with gills and egg sacks that filled the rivers and inland seas with toad-like metamorphic nightmares.

The Fthaggua Fire Vampires stood ready to suck the minds out of humans who dared attempt an escape from the divine presence at the portals of the fire dome that enclosed the land from LeHavre in the West to the Alps in the East.

Viler, stranger, and more depraved immortals allied with Cthulhu ruled Rome, London, New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, and the other cities of the world.

Civilized men survived by avoiding death, subjugation and forced malefaction. Two brave men, brothers Andre and Sebastien Martel, discovered a pebbly strand that provided unadulterated fish every few days, the rarity of fresh protein. One cold summer day shortly after the green flash of sunset died in the dark phosphorescence of the Atlantic, the brothers looked up to see a stranger wearing what appeared to be a full-body neoprene wetsuit with a hood. His face looked human.

"It's dangerous to swim the ocean," Sebastien said, hiding his fishing gear.

"The creatures of the deep fear me. I do not fear them." The stranger spoke with a voice much like the sea itself; low, rumbling, comforting as the night and yet like the night, hiding strange phantasms and visions that in years to come would haunt the mind and ravage the soul.

"I am in need of quantum physicists with construction skills."

"There are none here," Andre coughed into his fist and pulled his brother away. The stranger blocked their way.

"Who are you?" Sebastien asked.

"My name," the stranger paused, fell deep in thought as if names and personas could be forgotten, might no longer hold meaning and then answered. "It's been a long time unused..." another pause, "...Jake Dragoman." Screams from the sky drew their attention. The two men hid as the flapping black-winged creatures, Hastur's slaves, crossed the vulgar red moon with squirming bodies in their clutches. They flew to the Eiffel Tower. The souls of the captives flickered blue as Hastur consumed them whole and shat their bodies out as zombies for his militia.

"We must flee if we want to survive the night," Andre said.

"Simply surviving is acquiescence. If you just survive as slaves then humanity is doomed beyond salvation by any power in the universe. I need two men of courage who can bend time and space. Join me and do the impossible for only the impossible will save mankind."

"Join and die," Sebastien said. Cthulhu forbade the science of space and time on pain of death.

"Not death but salvation," the stranger said, extending his hand out to the sea. Sebastien resisted. Andre gave him an elbow and cast his line into the sea.

A school of unadulterated and undefiled fish bit the hooks as fast as they could return the lines to the water. Between them they caught a dozen fish. Their families and friends could feed for a week on these fish. Sebastien, cautious as ever, stopped his brother from casting for more. They strung the fish on two lines and hung them off a walking stick. Andre turned to the land and signaled. From the dark a girlchild appeared, not yet a woman but soon to be. Next year she would be taken by beasts that would despoil her flesh and claim her firstborn as their own.

"Take these to Mother. Tell her we'll return." The girlchild obeyed. If they succeeded in building what this man asked, this might cease to exist. If they failed, the stranger would die with them.

"Promise that she will not grow up in this world of pain," Sebastien demanded.

"Time is both short and endless," Jake said, holding out his hand.

{To touch the hand that touched the Divine, that touched the Ancient One, that became immortal.} Jake's thoughts touched their minds and like a lightning bolt they moved.

They looked upon him with new insight. Jake, the gargouille de la mer stood before them, wings spread wide in black glory in a cave with a stone table lit by phosphorescence from crystalline veins in the walls. The blueprints, circuit diagrams, and quantum equations detailing the infernal machine lay waiting.

"We're going to die in this place," Andre said, shivering in the cold. The gargouille de la mer reached out and touched them a second time, transforming their bodies into buggy-eyed, toad-like anthropomorphic beings.

"You will not die today. These bodies will protect you as you build this," the gargouille de la mer ordered. They studied the plans.

"This device won't work. To move a planet out of orbit beyond the grip of the black hole that binds Milky Way would require the power of a supernova," Sebastien said. The gargouille de la mer stood tall, towering over them, wings spread, uncontrolled power radiating from them. Both men stared. This creature had the power. It might be enough, if and only if. . ."

"We can do it in ten days," Andre said.

"No, seven. The people of the Earth thirst for freedom, thirst for life, thirst for relief," the gargouille del la mer said. Thus, a contract was struck.

THIS DAY WE WILL MEET IN PARADISE

Earth dwelt under a red moon, flickering with the reflected light of a dying sun. Each day the sun expanded and grew hotter, consuming all before it in fire as it depleted hydrogen and burned helium. The wind gibbered to him with the cries of the dying, begging mercy as it blew across the blasted and burnt sacrificial rocks. The ghosts of the dead mocked the gargouille de la mer, calling him traitor, the human who freed the Ancient Ones and gave the universe the knowledge of fear and the pleasures of the depraved.

This was the paradise of Cthulhu once, the dream gardens of the Ancient Ones, the parklands of disease and rot, the meadows of bones crushed to dust before they left to conquer millions of planets in the name of depravity, a hegemonic gift from Mankind. Civilizations that screamed for non-existent mercy with dying breathe. Their sufferings and agonies only fed the savage gods' appetites for fear, torture, and death.

Immortality being a gift and a curse, he learned the secrets of power, the secrets of love and salvation, the secrets of life and death and the dreadful, quiet secrets of the Ancient Ones. And with that knowledge, plotted revenge.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

In a cave nearby, the infernal machine activated. Its builders dead so long that even their bones had crumbled to dust. It held the power of paradox and conundrum. It stole the power of the red giant Sun soon to supernova, power so great that it would bring the downfall of the Ancient Ones and all their works, and all their pomps, all their seductions, and all their empty promises. Power sufficient to remake time and rewrite history.

The gargouille de la mer spread his wings and traveled back four billion years to the same cave. It set out the blueprints and the supplies required to build the Infernal Machine.

"Truly this day we will meet again in paradise," the gargouille de la mer called out to bones not yet formed, dust not yet fallen, and the star still young and vibrant. The ghosts of many centuries gazed silent.

IT IS FINISHED

A ghastly black hole opened in the blue skies above Paris as the Ancient One, the Lord of the Chaos, the god Cthulhu ripped time and space with his passage from Niburu, the Doppelganger. With him came not the scents of lavender and myrrh but the scents of rot, ammonia, and blood-soaked and frightful death.

The winds howled around Cthulhu and lightning blasted the bricks of the Champs Elysee as the he strode on his decade of tentacles; tentacles that stretched from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc De Triomphe; Tentacles that crushed Parisians, absorbed their souls and left the boulevard slick with gore. The first dead, those who stopped to stare in disbelief, were blinded by the horrific visage and had their souls sucked from their bodies. The next dead perished when the lesser minions burst from the sky and devoured any human they could see, smell, or hear. The once graceful boulevard ran red with blood and body fluids.

A third wave of death came to those who saw and could not comprehend the divine presence. They ran demented and babbling through the streets. The Fthaggua Fire Vampires fell on them like vulturous comets, creating fiery pits to bedrock and blasting flaming debris upward. A perimeter of death rose, as fire, bones, and blood stretched from the City of Lights to beyond the coastline at LeHavre. Those who tried to breach the dome suffered, burning perpetually without consumption as every nerve of their bodies first blackened, then healed, then blackened and re-healed in a hellish cycle of torment and pain.

A flood of green mucus and phlegm flowed from Cthulhu into the sewers. It transformed the city rats into demonic beasts the size of feral pigs with an appetite for human flesh. To control the number of rats, the Lord of Chaos created carnivorous roaches that laid eggs in the living and consumed their hosts on hatching.

A fourth wave of death rent the minds of all humanity as the Psychic Leeches of Yoh-Vombis rode through the barriers of space and time. They gained dominion of the cities of the earth to spread nightmares so loathsome that earth's billions cowered as the Leeches grew obese feasting on their fears.

Cthulhu and his Ancient Ones declared dominion of the earth and the lives of men. Their combined voices shattered minds and burst skulls. A tenth of the world's population died, their brains dead or damaged.

Thus it was that the Empire of Mankind ended. The race of mankind looked at the darkening skies and declared in one voice, "It is finished."

INTO YOUR HANDS

The gargouille de la mer appeared in the cave seconds after Sebastien and Andre activated the infernal machine. A single LED on its console glowed with the tiny power it transmitted but that was sufficient to indicate it worked. Its wings swirled and opened a conduit to the red sun, the cyclopean eye of destruction. Sebastien and Andre held each other fearing the power would consume them. The gargouille del la mer raised his hand and opened the roof of the cave. Above them, Phoebe and Philippe peered over the rim. Phoebe dared to speak.

"Into your hands..." She never finished her words. The gargouille de la mer's great and powerful black wings twisted a second time, creating portals that returned the humans to their proper time.

The gargouille de la mer stood, hands extended, palms up, magnetic fields channeling power from the red sun's core five billion years in the future. The Golden Hoard, his living weapon, burst forth from their hiding holes like fireflies of death. They filled the sky above him. He destroyed the seed the infernal beast used to create his abominable body.

Jake, human again, no longer a gargouille de le mere, freed from service to the Ancient One, the Great and Forgotten God, the dread Cthulhu, floated with his Golden Hoard to the new City the Stars Forgot, the ruins of Paris.

Powering him from four billion years in the future, the dying sun's core spent its energy in one giant burst and transformed into iron. Instead of exploding to supernova, the Infernal Machine, drained its power, and placed it in Jake's hands. The planet Doppelganger-Nuburu trembled and moved out of orbit. The stars moved out of alignment, no longer propitious, no longer salvatious, no longer properly positioned.

Doppelganger-Nuburu's dealignment occurred just as the young gargouille de la mer handed the Key to the Sunken City to Yog-Soggoth the gatekeeper. The evil spell of Captain Craypo that once ensorcelled earth, the humans, Doppelganger-Nuburu and the Ancient Gods became meaningless. The Elder Key failed. The gates of R'lyeh did not open. The thousand dead eyes of Cthulhu glowed hate at Jake and his golden army. The many mouths of Cthulhu and his minions roared in protest.

"You dare to defy me at the moment of my greatest triumph? I made you what you are, what you have become." The planet shook with the many Cthulonic voices. Mortal men died as the hoard of diseased and malformed minions attempted to stop Jake. But Jake was not mortal man. Jake channeled the powers of a supernova like a new god, a human god, a restoring god.

Jake raised his hands and the Golden Hoard circled the planet, blacking out the stars.

"I have built you a new prison, endowed it with golden chains. It will last beyond time and be manifest when all creation crumbles into nothing," Jake said. Cthulhu the Ghastly stamped his huge, foot-like tentacles, beat tentacular fists against its chest, and rent its garments. Only Doppelganger-Nuburu trembled. The universe did not.

"Half-witted and vacuous human, abandon your goal or spend eternity in pain."

But without the stars for power, the Ancient One was a mediocre and artless magician. A lone, thin tentacle of the Great Cthulhu touched Jake and caught a glimpse of past and future before it withered into helplessness.

"I have read the Necronomicon and the Book of Eibon. I have learned the spells of power. I studied the Unaussprechlichen Kulten hidden in the underground vaults. I learned from your own De Vermis Mysteriis. I damn you to wander through the stars, unable to release yourselves until the stars align once again. I bind you in your name of XXX." Jake dared to curse the Mighty One in his own name; a sin unheard of in the dark corners of the world, unthought, not contemplated, blasphemy beyond blasphemy.

The deed was done and could not be undone. Once again Doppelganger-Nuburu became a prison for the dead. It moved away from earth, from suns, from galaxies, from constellations. Nothing lay in its path unless a new god invoked a new creation.

AND THE DEAD WILL RISE

Phoebe Gomear and her date, Philippe Nasreau, stepped into the alley behind the back of the Moulin Rouge where a carriage waited. The Gunpowder Society called the fireworks chrysanthemums. The shells exploded into gigantic flowers of burnished gold, trumpets of cerulean blue, spirals of rose red and lily-white streamers.

"I've never seen anything so spectacular," she said. The carriage driver looked up from his newspaper.

"It's the Olympics, Ma'am. De Coubertin's athletes on parade," the driver said. Phoebe nodded his way. Philippe took advantage of the distraction to kneel and hold a ring up to her astonished eyes.

"My darling Phoebe, these fireworks pale in comparison to your beauty. Marry me in your heart now and forever. Tomorrow we will go to Notre Dame and speak to the priests but let tonight be ours," Philippe said. Phoebe kissed him, passionately.

"Of course, my dear. If the sky should fall into the sea, there is no other I could love but you." They kissed once again and went back into the Moulin Rouge to tell their friends and plan their wedding.

***

"One minute to landing," the computer of the spaceship Alert said as Jake passed over Olympus Mons and aimed Mars Flyer, a hybrid glider at the landing strip.

"Bring those supplies. We've been gnawing beef jerky and gagging down powdered potatoes," Jean-Jacques said.

"Aw you poor Martians. I'll bet as a kid you walked to school up-hill both ways in the snow and rain, even in the summer."

"And slid down the craters in the winter." They shared a hearty laugh.

"I'm only three days late," Jake said.

"Did Space Command ever say what happened to Captain Craypo?" Jean-Jacques asked.

"Not a word. It's like he vanished from the face of the earth. The big shots screamed bloody murder for a day but they relented and launched The Alert to Mars anyway."

"I never did like Craypo. He was one of those 'doppelganger believers.' We've seen the backside of the sun. There's no hidden earth. Nothing but fantasy, superstition, nonsense," Jean-Jacques said. The wheels of the glider touched down.

***

"I got one," Andre Junior said. Jacqueline, his sister, put both hands on her hips and puffed out her face.

"Everybody always gets one. This is Daddy's special fishing place." She stamped her foot, sat down on the dock, and cast her line into the water. Their father smiled at his wife.

"You know kids, Uncle Sebastien is driving in from Paris with his new baby and Aunt Cecelia. I think we should surprise them with lots of fish," he said and winked. Jacqueline rolled her eyes and clucked.

"We always catch fish here. It's no surprise," she said. At ten years old, even her father couldn't escape her sharp wit.

"You can teach Junior how to gut the fish," Andre said.

"Not again. Besides, Mommy said she'd do it this time." Andre hugged his daughter. Children were a gift, the wages of love. He thanked the gods for his children every day.

***

A rogue planet passes between galaxies in the emptiness of space. On it, the Ancient Ones, the Gods of Chaos, the Lords of Darkness wait.

Their rule thwarted in fantastical and twisted convolutions of paradox and conundrum. The Ancient Ones and their Master Cthulhu yet knew that although the probabilities were infinitesimally small, the stars above them would one day align and they would be free once again. For in the infinite universe that has no beginning or end, nothing is impossible, even the highly improbable occurs. In the infinite span of time, all is possible. Thus, of their past and future, only the final desperate touch that read Jake's memories gave hope enough to satisfy the Ancient Ones.

That which is not dead can eternal lie and with strange eons even the dead can rise and rule the universe. One future day, the Ancient Ones will find believers - - stooges, toadies and yes-men, slaves and victims - - all willing to serve for the nearness to power, all willing to give their gods the ultimate gift of other men's sufferings and deaths. Chaos will reign again. Until then, in the City of the Dead, in the ruins of R'lyeh, the dread god Cthulhu lies sleeping and dreaming.