Red Right Hand Read online

  “Excuse me.”

  The man’s fingers moved. He still stared at the screen he held.

  Anger burned. “Let us through.”

  He turned his head.

  His eyes were dilated, the pupils painting over the irises. His lips parted; the gums inside were stained dark as if he’d just drunk squid ink, teeth gray in their notches. It wasn’t a smile, it was a snarl.

  Behind me, Daniel said, “Holy shit.”

  My hand drifted to the knife under my jacket.

  The man stepped aside. His head fell as his eyes swept down to the device in his hand, fingers on the move once more.

  “C’mon,” I said to Daniel. I twisted through the narrow opening, not wanting to touch the man with the black gums. I knew deep down that if I did, this would go bad quickly.

  And it would be bad soon enough.

  43

  THE LINE STRETCHED down the entire block.

  The sidewalk we were on was wide: ten feet or more separated us from a street teeming with cars that flew helter-skelter past, the roar of engines cut only by horns that honked in a discordant symphony. I could see the Man in Black ahead of us, taller than everyone else on the sidewalk. People moved out of his way, crushing against each other as he passed.

  One lady darted out of his way and into the street, her fingers pulling hair from her scalp as she ran. Her voice was a loud warble of meaningless babble. A taxi slammed on its brakes, the car’s rear rising on its shocks as black smoke boiled from its tires. She didn’t notice, just continued to wail as she ran down the lane past us. The cabbie followed behind her, head and arm out the window, screaming curses that were a mix of three languages.

  The Man in Black turned the corner, disappearing from my sight.

  I reached out, grabbed Daniel’s hand, and began to hurry.

  We were in a city. A big one. All the buildings stretched high in the night sky. Lights shone everywhere: streetlights, signs, traffic lights, headlights, even just the ambient light of thousands of windows along buildings lit from the inside. Everything seemed to glow in a thousand colors that blended into a dull, blanched white. Light pollution bounced off everything.

  All I could see were the shadows.

  They clawed up the sides of buildings and lay in pools underneath everything. I could feel things inside them watching me. Maybe even the shadows themselves had taken on some malevolent sentience, some hostility to human life that made them watch and hate and lie in wait for someone to slip into their trap, to fall prey to their patience.

  It would have sounded stupid yesterday.

  Tonight I knew it could be true.

  Nerves jittering, I moved faster, my steps hurrying into a run. Daniel ran beside me, his hand in mine, unquestioning, following my lead. We pelted toward the corner, pushing through people on the sidewalk.

  Rounding the corner, we nearly ran headlong into the Man in Black.

  He turned. “Rushing into the maw of the lion, Acolyte? How unlike you.”

  “I’m here to finish this.”

  “So you are.” The gemstone around his neck pulsed in the shadowed depth of his coat. People stepped around us as we stood in a pool of neon light. The Man in Black’s coat fluttered out, tattered tendrils licking the ankles and feet of passersby.

  Daniel made a noise in his throat. His hand tugged mine, and I looked over at him. He stared with wide eyes over the Man in Black’s head.

  I followed his gaze.

  We stood in front of a temple dragged from some ancient time and wrapped in bars of neon lights. The stones that formed its bulk were green like jade and cut in odd shapes that shouldn’t have fit together but did, held in alien geometry by some arcane masonry. The lines of the building hurt my eyes, dragging my sight in too many directions to follow without discomfort. The roof curved deeply like a Shinto temple of Asia, made of sodium-yellow tiles laid like scales on a lizard’s back: overlapping, interlocking, and conjoined. They formed lines that pointed to the heavens, where the peak of the temple disappeared into a murky shadow. Garish tubes of neon light traced every corner, every crease, and every edge, blaring out into the street where we stood. The words R’yleh Wok ’N’ Roll pulsed across the front in bloodred neon flashes like the ponderous heartbeat of some great beast lying in wait. The line of people we’d run by shuffled and shambled up wide concrete steps that led to a pair of doors yawning open beneath the flashing words.

  Lambs to the slaughter.

  Daniel spoke. “So that’s where we’re going?”

  The Man in Black nodded, once down then up.

  Daniel grunted. “Looks like a sushi joint designed by a nut job.”

  The Man in Black turned, looking up at the building. “It is a juncture, a temple folded from lost history.” Dark eyes glittered. “They once served as feasting boards for my kind.”

  Daniel’s eyebrow rose in an arch. “So we should steer clear of the California roll then?”

  44

  WE PASSED THROUGH the entrance by the people lined up to get inside. The doors were tall, made of dark mahogany, and carved in intricate patterns. I looked carefully as we passed, my eye picking out details in the artwork. Human faces melted into one another, forming a cascade of agonized expressions from top to bottom. They’d been carved by the hands of a master, each one as unique as a snowflake, their expressions locked in a moment of despair and anguish.

  It made me shiver. I kept walking.

  Inside the doors, the lobby ceiling soared away and out of sight. I’d seen the outside of the building, which stood only a story tall. The ceilings should not have disappeared like that.

  But they did.

  Daniel leaned in. “It’s bigger on the inside.”

  “Someone should have painted it blue,” I said.

  He nodded.

  The Man in Black walked until a maître d’ in a white jacket stepped in front of him.

  Holding a menu in his hand as a stop sign, he looked ridiculous compared to the elder god who stood before him. He was shorter than me and soft in the middle. His pudgy hand clutched the laminated pages of the menu. Lank but glossy black hair hung across his forehead, shadowing almond-shaped eyes. His voice came out lightly accented: a spice, not the meal.

  His lips formed words. “Aa’sahh shaema my’ialalake-um.”

  As the words left, his lips rippled, exposing ink-stained teeth, wide and opalescent gray like the man in line by the alley.

  Visions of the nurse guardian at the hospital flashed in my head.

  I let go of Daniel’s hand, reaching for the knife at my hip.

  The Man in Black lifted his red right hand, reaching for the face of the maître d’. The hand pulsed with dark crimson energy, casting magenta highlights on the smooth planes of the man’s face. The maître d’s jaw slung down, mouth hanging lax and loose as he stared at the skinless appendage.

  The Man in Black spat a word, his raw, red fingers twisting into an arcane symbol. As they rubbed together, a fat pink spark of energy popped off, arcing into the man’s open mouth.

  The maître d’ stopped moving as though he’d been flash frozen. He didn’t breathe or blink, and no tremor disturbed his skin.

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  “His kind do not die easily as long as they retain their heads.”

  I looked around. The people in line continued to shuffle forward until they were met by another maître d’ who could have been a clone of the one standing before us. He handed out menus, then turned and walked away. The people followed him into the dining area that stretched before us. The back of the room disappeared in the shadows of dull light provided by a combination of muted neon and guttering candles. The line shuffled forward, and within seconds another clone appeared to take a small group away.

  I watched diners at tables in twos and threes and fours, all of them smiling and laughing and talking. Forks and chopsticks dipped and lifted morsels of sushi during breaks in conversation. It looked like any busy metropol
itan restaurant full of hip diners enjoying an evening meal with friends and family.

  So why did the skin creep across the back of my neck?

  Realization fell on me like a ton of bricks.

  It was absolutely silent.

  The number of people I looked upon should have produced a dull roar of white noise: voices mingling and meshing, laughter boiling over the top of it, the underscore provided by the clink of fork on plate, the muffled thud of cup on tablecloth, the creak and breath of chairs, even the rustle of cloth as people moved and reached and lived.

  There was none of that.

  The only sounds in the pin-drop silence were the shuffle of feet to my left, the whisper of Nyarlathotep’s coat rustling around his feet, and Daniel’s rhythmic breathing beside me.

  And the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.

  Daniel leaned in, his voice close to my ear. “It’s like a silent movie.”

  The Man in Black turned. “We have very little time before our entrance is noted. Use your Mark. Find our prey.”

  I hesitated, not wanting to use my magick, not with the cost of it coming from Daniel. My eyes quickly slid over to Daniel. His hand found mine again. It felt warm. Solid.

  He leaned toward me. “It’s okay. I didn’t feel it when you did it before. It’s the teleporting that takes it out of me.”

  The magick inside me buzzed to life at his touch, murmuring along the skin of my hand. I closed my eyes and let it go.

  My mind slipped sideways, disjointing itself as my mind’s eye opened. Prickles of pain rushed in from the edges, but I ignored it, concentrating on finding what I needed. The metal circlet around my neck crackled, its temperature plummeting until it grew so cold it frost-seared the skin underneath. The room blossomed in my mind like an unfolding flower, each person’s desire a petal.

  They all pointed toward a thing I could barely discern. It was close but indistinct except for its hunger to assimilate, to mate and marry and meld with each person who fell under its influence.

  My stomach growled, low and angry.

  My eyelids fluttered open, and the magick sloughed away, falling to a low simmer. I could still feel the pull of the thing, but now it had distance. It was fuzzy, less immediate. But I knew where it was.

  “It’s in the back of the restaurant.”

  The Man in Black gave a slight bow and a flourish of his red right hand. “Lead the way, Charlotte Tristan Moore.”

  I pulled the Knife of Abraham from my belt, holding it point down along my forearm like I’d been trained to do.

  I had a bad feeling, but I stepped into the dining room anyway.

  45

  WE CROSSED THE room, moving quickly. Daniel was pressed close behind me, the Man in Black sweeping along behind him, both of them following me as I followed the tug of magick in my stomach. None of the diners looked up at us. They continued their silent meals and their wordless conversations, and we passed them by like wind through the grass.

  My eyes kept sliding to the left and the right, staring as I passed. One lady lifted a pair of chopsticks, holding a piece of squid nigiri at its end. She drew it to her mouth, lips painted nearly neon pink parting as the morsel drew near, teeth opening to accept the bite.

  It squirmed.

  Tiny tentacles zipped out, stretching into her mouth, minuscule suckers latching on the soft flesh inside her lips and cheeks. The miniature kraken heaved and pulled, lurching off the chopsticks and into her open mouth. Her lips closed around one tiny suckered appendage that slithered in after the rest of the creature with a slurp. Her eyelids fluttered as she chewed. Black ink trickled from the corners of her lips, running down her chin to hang in a fat droplet off her jaw. Her date lifted a finger and caught it.

  I kept walking as he drew the finger to his own lips.

  Daniel’s voice came low behind me, but it broke the unnatural silence like a gunshot. “I didn’t think we would ever find a place creepier than the last one. I underestimated us.”

  At the sound of his voice the room stopped moving.

  Every one of the diners froze like a movie on pause: utensils in midair, mouths open to speak.

  As one they all turned in our direction.

  ACOLYTE, WE NEED TO GET PAST THIS ROOM.

  The Man in Black’s voice rolled through my mind. I picked up my pace, stepping quicker. In front of me were two swinging doors that looked as if they would lead to the kitchen if this were a restaurant instead of a nightmare temple. The magick inside me pulled toward them, the urgency to get out of this room riding hard on my back.

  The diners were rising from their seats as I hit the doors, shoving them apart in front of me. Daniel and I fell in. The Man in Black stepped through and turned, grabbing one door in each hand. I could see under the arm of his coat, through the doorway. The diners were all up, stalking toward us with hands full of knives, forks, and sharpened chopsticks. Eyes rolled back in their sockets, they peered out through fish-belly-white skeins, blind as glaucoma patients. Runny black liquid drooled from open mouths, smearing lips and chins. Nestled in some of their throats were tiny kraken, spindly suckered appendages waving over their hosts’ blackened tongues. At their feet squirmed a carpet of the tiny tentacled creatures, dinners that had crawled from their plates and now lurched toward us on roiling, rubbery limbs.

  The chaos god jerked the doors closed and held them shut with his red right hand. His head dropped, and his voice rose in a guttural mutter that burned across my eardrums.

  The coat began to jerk and twitch around him.

  A sizzle cut the sound of his voice, an electric buzz of nova flame on metal. Smoke curled around his red right hand where it pressed against the metal swinging doors, glowing a dull orange red like the coals of a long banked fire. He pulled it away as something thumped hard against the other side.

  The door held.

  Where his hand lifted away, it left behind a black scorched outline and a smooth patch of newly welded metal.

  He turned in a flair of ebony coat and smiled a sharp-toothed smile. “That should be entertaining to pass through when I leave.”

  “Will they go back to normal when we stop this…” I didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. A god? A monster? Both? So I went with, “… thing?”

  He shook his head. “Their minds will never be the same. Madness will take them, and they will end their lives as gibbering idiots.”

  “So, serving you guys has a really shitty retirement package.” Daniel shook his head. “Glad I got out of that rat race.” His hand found mine.

  “The night is still young, Daniel Alexander Langford.”

  The Knife of Abraham spun in my fingers, blade swinging around so that I held the handle in my fist, back and low, ready to rip up, to strike, to gut a chaos god. “Is that a threat?”

  Nyarlathotep looked down at me, red right hand hidden in the folds of his coat. “I have no need to threaten him, Acolyte.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing?”

  “Telling the truth.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I always speak the truth.”

  The edge of sarcasm cut into my voice. “And you wouldn’t lie about that.”

  “I am the Crawling Chaos. I have no need to lie.” One sleek eyebrow arched up. “Have you not found truth to be the most chaotic force in your world?”

  I stopped cold.

  He was right. Truth could injure. Truth could maim. Truth could destroy. My mind flashed backward, moving through time. Their lawyers had told the truth. I did have a drink that night. I had worn a skirt. I never said no.

  They didn’t care that my drink had been one mouthful of beer tried and spit out as disgusting, that my skirt hem had hit my ankles, or that I had screamed stop and don’t.

  The Crawling Chaos was right.

  Truth was absolutely destructive.

  46

  THE DOORS RATTLED with a hard THUD! that brought me out of my head. A series of wet sl
aps and metallic scratches followed the loud noise as the people on the other side tried to get through.

  Daniel eyed the doors suspiciously. “Are those going to hold?”

  The Man in Black shrugged. “We should continue on our way.”

  The magick inside me tugged, drawing me forward to follow it. We were in a dim room with enough light to see, but not enough to see well. It was narrow and bare, almost a hallway. The walls were tiled in pale greenish limestone, the cracks between them filled with some kind of dark grout that showed black in the low light. Shapes and sigils twisted across the surface, finger-painted by lunatics. They worked around clumps of luminescent fungi spilling out of damp cracks in bulbous loam and fanned ridges like dully pulsating lamps spaced along our path. The floor was uneven under my feet, rolling slightly up and down. Thick moisture gathered in crevices and shallow pools, giving the air a musty, salty, fishy smell.

  I walked carefully, knife out, ready to cut anything that might leap from the shadows.

  The hallway twisted and turned, narrowing into a true tunnel. Openings appeared randomly, pitch-black gaps in the wall that blew cold, damp air across the path as we passed as if we were inside the lung of a sleeping creature. Each step increased the tension along my spine in a slowly tightening ratchet. The magick inside me pulsed harder and harder, faster and faster, like a second heartbeat that crashed and lurched inside my stomach as we moved down the hallway. A slow ache crawled across my temples.

  It was maddening.

  I looked over my shoulder, checking to make sure Daniel and the Man in Black were still behind me. They were, Daniel watching me closely, brows drawn together. He smiled as our gazes met, making his dimple appear. It made me feel better.

  Then my eyes slid past him.

  The Man in Black loomed behind him, filling the space, his Semitic features pulled into a tight sneer. Black eyes glittered in the caves of their sockets as he scowled at me. The coat fluttered around him, soaking into the gloom of the tunnel, barely a flicker to differentiate it from the shadows. The look on his face had turned predatory. Feral. It was the look a restless lion gives to a rabbit.