From: "John & Christy Thompson" To: Subject: Chaosium Digest v37.02 Date: Sunday, December 08, 2002 11:14 PM Chaosium Digest Volume 37, Number 02 Date: Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002 Number: 3 of 4 AN EVENING WITH ASMODEUS Part Three Late November 2001 That night Matt Swindell dreamed interesting and bizarre dreams, tied together by strings of recollection. He writhed beneath the covers as if they were coated with contaminating toxic resin, and as if the touch of cloth would burn him through the uncomfortable sweat of his tension. A welter of coterminous images seamlessly interacting with each other scrolled easily and invasively across his mind, like a shark drifting into turbulent waters and scavenging from the deepest and darkest recesses of his memory. A wire of cold and naked terror threaded through his subconscious and his fears coagulated into razor-sharp barbs around it. The pristine porcelain was stained everywhere with blood, and the creature with its mouth safety-pinned open into an inhuman grin cracked the tiles with its fingernails as it clawed its way out of the bath. It stiffened as unnamable things slithered beneath its skin..and then the metallic tentacles wrapped around the trees and monolithic rocks as something hauled its way out of the earth, like a living geometric impossibility.. Swindell turned and ran, knocking over the tables in the laboratory, scattering and shattering beakers of chemicals in his haste to get away..the computers orchestrated the shuddering of the freezing stars as James Aspera collapsed in temporary insanity, trying to claw his way beneath the subterranean plateau..the construction vehicles in the distance were thundering towards them..screaming as they wrapped spider-like legs around themselves to cushion their fall from the ceiling. The landscape unraveled before them and what appeared to be reality scrunched up into a ball unfolded into monstrous proportions and.. proceeded to use its metallic tentacles to smash through the walls into the observatory. Swindell shrieked and ran through the trampled scree behind Whippoorwill House as the building collapsed in on itself, the deafening rumble overlaid with a roar both animalistic and machine like. Dumbstruck, James Aspera stared as his filthy, bedraggled clothes, his hands and face covered in blood and a scruffy, irregular red ring covering his mouth. Fully clothed the author threw himself into the hotel shower and began scrubbing furiously and irrationally.. The sound roused the things hibernating in the incubation cubicles, and vile proto-limbs lashed at the steamed up glass. Swindell pulled the chains away from the machinery as fast as he dared and stared in horror as the struggling body bags lowered into its threshing blades. One of the bags tore horribly.. and the horrific Giger-esque, biomechanical insect horror stirred from its slumber beneath continent sized slabs of machinery. Dr Jensen laughed as the particle accelerator thrummed with life and all the hideous piercing in his face jingled sickeningly. As Asmodeus regarded him coldly in the apartment building Swindell pretended to sleep as best he could, praying that no disturbance would cause him to betray himself. As shards of the sky shattered where it fell around the horrific demon-asylum. Swindell stared at the symbol branded into his chest, and sat up in bed, throwing the covers off. Sick to his stomach he poured himself an enormous whisky and tried to recollect how he had returned home. Only then did he notice the stains in the sink of blood that had been frantically washed off. He regarded the carnage with bewilderment and horror, then fed his remaining cigarettes into the waste disposal and pondered about how he could beat his new affliction. The self-loathing he was feeling was unaccountable until he noticed that his computer flickered with life. The glass threw itself from his fingers and cried whisky tears across the floor. Swindell raised trembling hands to his mouth as he beheld the images teeming on the underside of the screen, images that reflected hideous lusts that he had felt that overruled the horror he had seen in his lifetime because it had been born deformed and evil in his own mind. Ready to empty his stomach, legs quivering with a mixture of revulsion and a desire that heightened his disgust, he moved to switch off the computer. Instead, his arm hovered, shaking, mere millimeters from the button and he slumped in a foul entrancement with his mind shrieking at him to stop. The mouse's lead tugged at his hand and he examined the images while conflicting emotions battled for the prize of his sanity. All the JPEGs teeming on the screen, depicting all those vile scenes of sexual abhorrence, were culled from his own personal collection. Early December 2001 Beneath a street-lamp in one of the most dilapidated slums of Middlesbrough, Swindell stood in the slowly falling snow pretending to be cleansed. For all their effect the flakes might have been dribbling streaks of candle wax burning his face with their indignation. He had been among strangers all day but now the empty street clung to him. He had found it impossible to find mute accusation in people's faces because their petty inadequacies occupied them. Now the darkness had fallen and it contained new horrors for him, which he had populated it with. Guilt chewed up through his lungs hungry for a taste of his torn and fractured mind. It's passing filled his lungs with poison as his addiction forced its false comforts. Tobacco had been a greater stranglehold upon him since his long-suppressed, unnamable desires had began to grasp damply at his withered soul. When he had scrabbled ineffectually through the reams of ancient books in the library he had already felt mankind drifting away, repelled by the abhorrent nature that his character portrayed. The librarian had betrayed no life as the book he had sought and found changed hands. The last scant array of humanity that drifted aimlessly around the streets at this hour seemed distant and somehow fogged by something acting behind his eyes. The snowdrops glistening on their foreheads made their faces melt and run, exposing inner dearth of identity and the callousness of souls punctured many times by degradation. Amongst the derelict buildings that cowered beneath the threatening night he spied two such figures hurrying, both female, one harried and frantic by some unnamed dread but the other small, still enthralled by the innocence of childhood and unaware of the dark underworld that slithered unseen around her feet. Swindell felt his stomach rupturing with seething shame and self-hatred as he quickened his pace, his cigarette unfinished and rampant lust overcoming his soul. The mother was dealt with quickly, but the other provided enormous entertainment for Swindell. Lomas, squatting in near-darkness in his disgusting, ant infested slum dwelling, grinned a scarecrow grin to himself and reached for the sticky array of needles upon the tray beside his stained mattress. His mind elsewhere, he sat back appreciatively. Snow blew in through the broken shards of glass in his window, and as they begin to add a veneer of clean white to the dirt and dust. In a shrill voice interspersed with an occasional hacking cough, he began to giggle. It took several days for the snow to melt, and much of what was left was washed away by the onset of rain, which obliterated the sky for days at a time, and kept watchful eyes indoors. Even with that in mind, however, no amount of water could really clean up the town. In many cities, industrial tenements and smoke-threatened terraces have a certain attraction, echoing a rather misguided affection for the harsh, dirty environs of Victorian factory towns. In Middlesbrough, however, these looked merely shabby and ill conceived; decayed and ravaged rather than given a faded gentility by the passing years. Chemical smog hung malevolently in the air. Cheap neon signs, reflecting inner seediness, illuminated the drudgery of the dark, clandestine streets. There seemed fundamental slow rot suffusing the town with stagnation. Of course, such places attract an altogether different kind of character. The hulk of the town hall and courthouses rose out of the surrounding buildings looking distinctly out of place, as Richard Lee shambled past, splashing in gathering puddles which were oil-slicked with smears of the overhanging neon signatures. It was not hard to discern at least one reason why so much of the thriving industrial life, that the city clung to like a dismissive life-support machine, flowered well away from the city centre. Richard's brother, Adrian, had recently won a high-power executive position in Nihil Industries, ever the enterprising family member, and seemed rather eager to get away from the cramped, dreary office that he had been trapped in during his previous job. On this particular night the rain, sure enough, was spattering the unattractive streets of the city, creating steady brown aqueducts, which flowed sluggishly along quiet, deserted alleys. Avenues of decrepit buildings began to look like dark, bizarre icebergs looming above a thick sea of mud, rainwater and ruptured asphalt, on which litter scuttled aimlessly. Little alleviated the clinging darkness of a foggy Middlesbrough night, apart from uglifying, sulphurous street lamps stifled when mist enwrapped them, strangling their unhealthy glow. The continually belched chemical-tinctured smoke that overhung the town merged with fog into a choking grey menace. Richard Lee was used to it, but no one is obligated to like it. Just as the rain was reaching a crescendo of percussive beats on the slate roofs a few minutes later, a window slid quickly open on a litter-strewn alley. A figure wrapped in a heavy waterproof climbed surprisingly soundlessly from a sodden, temporarily closed drinking establishment. As the thief dropped lightly into slippery, rotting leaves, paper money in his pockets rustled, which the rain only partially drowned out. Richard Lee pulled his hood over his head after allowing the rain to wash some sweat from his hair. Wishing to escape the downpour he decided he would enjoy the hospitality of his friend Matt Swindell first, in his flat so choked with the idly pirouetting smoke of cigarettes that a swirling carpet was constantly inverted across the ceiling. The route he took cut through several half derelict buildings and streets, known as a warren for petty thieves keen to map and explore escape routes and ideal places to stash stolen property. He was particularly familiar with the twists and turns of the stinking, filthy maze of dilapidated squats and hives, and he knew which was the easiest and quietest way that would keep him away from the centres of the criminal underworld community. It was because of this that he stumbled upon the bodies, and saw what had been inflicted upon them and what had been scrawled on the walls and floor of the scene. He knew the implications of a few of the bizarre symbols, and backed away nervously. He had seen a lot of things behind the firmly closed and bolted cellar doors of the criminal community, as everyone with skill did sooner or later to their benefit or detriment. Quickly and carefully, and to the best of his efforts, he tried to erase any evidence that he had been in the area, meticulously backtracking along his route. As his mind raced he remembered the mutilated policeman, Chandler, whose body had been discovered dumped in these same warrens not too long past. Of course he wouldn't get the police involved again, as their interference had seeded a lot of discord in the criminal network before. He would go and tell Swindell, though, preferably with the help of some strong alcohol. Trying his hardest not to be observed, Richard Lee took an excessively long but quiet route to approach Swindell's home. Occupied by trying to organize his version of events in his head, he knew nothing of the silent watcher who peered at him knowingly without eyes from a cold room where a circular metal plate gleamed in the dark. Only the idea of shedding more blood stopped Swindell from attempting to chew off his fingers in his disgust at what they had done seemingly independent of his mind. He felt as if his mind was much less than in full control of his body, or at least what he thought of as his rational command. To him, it was like being bound and gagged in the boot of a car, not knowing where he headed and terrified that it was for a car-crushing plant. Muttering distractedly to himself, he drew deeply from another cigarette, and went to stagger through to the kitchen for another double. His legs developed other ideas without putting them before the committee of his brain and he found himself sat in the swivel chair in front of his computer, one hand wriggling away of its own accord to fumble in a drawer for one of his precious CDRs, containing enough evidence to give him an extended stay in any of the country's penal establishments. How had he unlocked the drawer without realizing, he wondered through a fog of sudden drowsiness. In front of him, the screen shimmered like a mirror reflecting his soul, as if it had surfaced from the filth where it had lain bound until he flicked the switch. The CD drawer slithered out mockingly like a malformed tongue extended for inspection. In a stupor, Swindell fed it and watched as it took the CDR into its mouth and waited for it to show him what foulness tasted like in visual form. He forgot to wear headphones so the neighbours couldn't hear. It was the early hours when an alarming siren blared through his befuddlement. He stirred, wondering how long he had been slumped, hypnotized by the flickering, low quality MPEGs on the computer screen. His mouth screwed up in sickness as he realized what sounds were filtering through the speakers. He tore them from their socket and stamped on them with his heavy boots until their cases cracked. He ground on the circuits inside until they broke. Again the siren blared, and he recognized it as his doorbell. In a panic he scrabbled for the off switch on the computer. Feeling a draft and looking down he realized with horrified nausea that his belt and trousers were undone. Addressing to this, he staggered to the door and opened it, catching a glimpse of a sweaty, unhealthy looking man in the hall mirror as he passed. Opening the door tentatively, almost gently, Swindell saw Richard Lee looking as frightened as he felt, and his stomach roiled with guilt and apprehension. "Richard, come in," Swindell said with unconvincing brightness. Richard gave him an odd look and took off his sodden jacket, hanging it on a hook behind the door and running a hand through his wet, straggly hair. Swindell ushered Richard into the kitchen, wincing but not complaining when he made a beeline for the whisky and drained a large draft from the bottle. Swindell motioned him to sit, and hurriedly went to shut his bedroom door. When he came back to the kitchen, Richard was leaning on the sideboard, shaking, one hand across his eyes and the other strangling the neck of the whisky bottle as if worrying that it would make a bid for freedom. When Swindell coughed, Richard looked up and fear played in his eyes. "I've got something horrible to tell you, Matt. I..think you're the best person to tell, but you're not going to like it." Swindell assembled an innocently concerned expression that hid a sudden terrified suspicion, and motioned for Richard to continue. As the other man stammered his way through his story, the room, the symbols, the bodies, the acts, Swindell found himself collapsing onto a chair and gulping repeatedly from a bottle of gin. His hands shook as much as Richard's had, and he looked about to burst into tears. As Richard stuttered into silence, Swindell stared at nothing unspeaking for half a minute. Then he made a decision, and his mouth tightened in resolve. The snow was gone. Swindell walked purposefully through an avenue of trees, the library book in a carrier bag that he swung in one hand. He had studied it all day while Richard Lee lay on his sofa, sipping coffee, nursing a frightful hangover. One hand drifted over the slight bulge where he kept his gun, finding it more reassuring than ever. If the book didn't work, then this would, but nevertheless he felt he needed to be punished more severely. The sunlight was receding like gold melting into its surroundings, and a chill wind began to drag threatening clouds in overhead and whip the autumn leaves up to meet them in disorganized flurries. The trees ceased their lazy catatonic sway, the wind whipping them until they frantically swung their shadows and stretched them away from the light as if to seek purchase from the clear angular shadows that were slowly diffusing themselves across the paths. Seemingly frightened by the excitable breeze Swindell's hair clung desperately across my his until he was forced to claw through in order to see his way, and it satisfied itself by attempting to catch the dead leaves in its curls as they blew past in dizzy arcs. The chilliness of the wind threw coldness upon every surface and as if to compound the insult it began spitting sudden, stinging rain at the ground like an artist randomly flicking globules of paint at an unwilling canvas. Soon irritated beyond measure, Swindell hastened towards the nearest random structure, his old college, for shelter. Even so, the idea of sheltering there made Swindell seem strange and uncomfortable, as if entering it would disturb the flocks of memories that haunted it while it was silent and empty of life as it was on this particular Sunday. Within the cavernous interiors of the oldest building in particular, the converted mansion where he had studied Sociology, the silence seemed especially heavy and weighted down with an oppressive, echoing sense of presence. Thunder began to grumble from behind the distant, foggy moors. Swindell was ambivalent to find the main doors of Acklam Campus ajar, and troubled to enter despite the relief from the increasingly barbarous rain. The source of his discomfiture was that the immediate interior of the college was clearly in a state of dereliction. Broken glass decorated the floor and hid under stray leaves. The walls were stained and cankered, and the ceiling had allowed a lazy bulge to grow within it. A congregation of broken furniture attended the vast and echoing hall, to his left. Books seemed to be clambering over each other in a disorganized exodus away from the grime of the floor. The dark, cramped space under the stage was still crowded with a grotesque family of props and costumes that always retained a questioning silence to trespassers and seemed smug in their desertion. Swindell's fevered imagination revived the scuttling things that he had peopled that gloom with. Graffiti clung to the walls, undignified scraps of phrase and clumsy, awkward signatures. Swindell was understandably mystified that a seat of his education and life had degenerated into such a neglected state since his departure, and that he had heard nothing of its decline within the intervening time. If he had been thinking coherently enough he would have realized that this was impossible, for just a few days before his post-box had been jammed by a thick Middlesbrough College prospectus that belied the dilapidated sight before him. Fittingly, however, it occurred to him that this place was almost ideal for his purposes. The shadows hanging overhead changing as the sunlight broke across them, seemed to nod with eager approval. Imagining the strangely chilling racks of bizarre clothes, ancient props and dark corners that awaited him Swindell hurried across the derelict hall and lowered himself quickly and easily into the space under the stage, nervously eyeing the cobwebs that decorated the iron girders which slithered across the underside of the stage-floor. He had cracked his head on them once or twice during his original tenure, and as little difference as it made now, he had no wish to make a repeat performance. The shadows were just as he remembered them, and he shuddered anew at the sight of the bloated, eyeless baby-dolls that were frozen mid-crawl on a folding table against the back wall. The dust was thick enough on the floor for him to leave footprints. Throwing his leather-coat across a slightly deformed rocking horse with disconcertingly glittering eyes, and ignoring the creak as it rocked ponderously, Swindell knelt carefully in the dust in the centre of the shadowy pit. Fingering the carrier bag, he pulled the book, seeming to stir within that sagging mouth, out into dim light that made the cover appear to ripple. Richard Lee browsed among the books in Swindell's living room. Richard suspected that the private investigator had read few of them, some of the slimmer volumes were heavily damaged and thumbed with use. Richard browsed among these, noting the prevalence of certain names amongst the authors and amount of books that featured dark images of ancient houses with one attic light lit, and titles like 'Murder She Groped' or 'The Wig That Ate People'. Richard grimaced affectionately at finding the latter. Then, suddenly frowning, he began to pull books aside and stacking them on the coffee table. He had found a hole in the wall. Reaching in, he discovered and pulled out a large brown envelope thumbed with use. It felt stuffed with lots of photographs. Feeling guilty, Richard hastily went to push the envelope back into its gap. In his haste, several photographs fell out and spun towards the floor in a clumsy pattern several feet wide. Blushing and wary of Swindell's imminent return, he went to gather the photographs then stopped. His eyes widened. Then his back was to the wall and he was drawing quick, fevered breaths and clutching at the books behind him as he stared at what the photographs portrayed. Then feeling nauseous and hardly believing his own actions, he fumbled in the recess again and ripped the envelope open, scattering the rest of the photo collection all over the floor. They were all Polaroid's, and were even worse in their content than those he had already seen. He shivered, and then gasped aloud when one caught his eye. He recognized the scene. If he had been agitated before, Richard Lee doubled in anxiety and horror. Stumbling on suddenly weakened legs he backed desperately backwards towards the door as if he could diminish the horrific perversity of Swindell's illicit photo collection by drawing away from it. Then, as if a switch had been flicked in his brain, he spun around without seeming to move. He ran into the hall and tore his coat off the hook it hung on. He ran. He didn't even bother to close the front door. Later on when news broke, he couldn't decide whether to be saddened or relieved. (Continued) -- To unsubscribe from the chaos-digest ML, send an "unsubscribe" command to chaos-digest-request@chaosium.com. Chaosium Inc., Call of Cthulhu, and Nephilim are Registered Trademarks of Chaosium Inc. Elric! and Pendragon are Trademarks of Chaosium Inc. All articles remain copyright their original authors unless otherwise noted.