The language was thick with archaisms, but their meaning was clear. Like the pointer of a Ouija board, my hand moved of its own accord and flipped through the decaying parchment pages until they settled on a well-worn passage.
Such things owt not be seen by ye eyes of mortal Man or hys verie soul lyeth in jeopardie. Amongst ye Kindred of Ghule that feasteth on human remaynes by dead of nyght, there is a Queene. Her nayme must not be speak’d aloude. It is Syraxya. All ye Ghules do serve her pleasure as bees in a hyve. And where so ever ye may find them, then Queene Syraxya is not far awaye. Yet take ye heede, for she is moste cunnyng and lycentious, and taketh joye in colde crueltie, for Ghules be a colde and cruel race.
Across from the passage was a ghastly woodcut illustration of Syraxya herself, grinning and emaciated, and yet strangely beautiful. She was crouched over a fresh corpse, a look of delight on her face at the delicious rapture of feasting to come. The picture made me feel strangely hungry. Ravenous. Quickly regaining control of myself, I snapped the book shut, and set it down on the coffee table in front of me. Gretchen offered me a cigarette, which I snatched and lit in one fell swoop, gratefully inhaling the calming fumes. My hands were trembling.
“So now you know what we’re up against.”
Harriet walked through the cloud of cigarette smoke engulfing the room. Very dramatic of her. She was really embracing this vampire thing.
“You come and go as you please,” Gretchen remarked.
“Can you cut out this bullshit?” Harriet snapped. “You’re Jack’s girlfriend, all right? I’m just a friend.”
“A friend who likes to suck his blood.”
“Excuse me. Vampire. And if I hadn’t last night, Jack would be a walking undead creature right now.”
“Yeah. Thanks for that. You’re right, I shouldn’t be such a bitch.”
“Happens to the best of us, kid.”
“Who are you calling kid? What are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Actually, I just turned ninety-nine a few days ago.”
“What?” I said. “How can that be?”
“Vampire, remember?”
“Yeah, but...you just turned into a vampire last year.”
“From your point of view. I’ve been travelling in the Dreamlands. Time moves differently there.”
Gretchen and I stared at each other openmouthed. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I got served a weird sandwich with extra weird sauce.
“You can pick your jaws up off the floor now,” Harriet said. “I’ve learned a lot since we last met. I’ve visited the fabled onyx libraries of Gandermoon and read the forbidden texts. I’ve journeyed to benighted Kadath, where no mortal may enter. But I am no mortal. Nyarlathotep himself served me tea made from demon hearts steeped in the tears of angels. And I have sailed on a black ship to the red planet of Nergal, where I sampled drugs that let you see time as a whole. It was then that I knew my weird was the return to the waking world, and serve the Thursbane.”
“The Thursbane?”
“From the Anglo-Saxon thurs,” a warbling old man’s voice answered me. It was Gretchen’s professor, the Reverend Ezekiel Whitlock. I was hosting an unexpected party. “Which means giant, or more precisely, an evil of gigantic proportion. And bane, which means killer, of course.”
“Reverend?” Gretchen said. “What are you doing here?”
“Harriet persuaded me that the circumstances were dire enough to warrant coming out of retirement. I hear you are having a problem with ghouls.”
The Reverend was wearing a long black duster that reached nearly to the floor and a wide-brimmed black preacher’s hat.
I nodded. “They’ve been raiding cemeteries all over town. But it looks like their lair is in Copp’s Hill.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” the Reverend said. “Let’s go kick some bony ghoul arse!”
- III -
The Ghoul Maker
A familiar Volkswagen bus was parked in front of the house on the hill. It was the same bus Harriet had driven me to Fiddle Creak in a year ago. A year ago my time, eighty years ago hers. We piled inside. Harriet took the driver’s seat. I took the passenger seat. The Reverend and Gretchen sat in the back. Harriet started the ignition and the Volkswagen bus sputtered to life.
“I have some fond memories of this bus,” the Reverend said. “Your grandparents and I had such fantastical adventures in her.”
“So I’ve heard,” Harriet replied, as she deftly zigzagged through traffic from Centre Street onto Perkins then onto Jamaica Way. Vampires made the best drivers.
“Why, I rode in this bus the very day I met Jack and Sunshine. It seems like so very long ago now.”
“Well, time is relative isn’t it?”
“Especially when the Dreamlands are involved.”
The Reverend and Harriet laughed at their private joke. Gretchen looked at me, hoping for some commiseration. But I had entered the Dreamlands myself more than once now, although not as deeply as they had.
Gretchen’s sympathy came from the Reverend. “Of course this must sound dreadfully confusing, my dear.”
“I’m trying to catch up,” she said. “I’m not a complete novice. Jack and I went to the land of the dead.”
“By the Goose, I didn’t mean to imply that you were. Your importance is not to be underestimated. You are the spell-caster.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me again.”
Harriet deftly rolled a cigarette with one hand while driving with the other. When she lit it, familiar purple smoke rose. It was weirdwort. She passed me the pouch, and I eagerly rolled my own cigarette from it.
“Jack doesn’t protect the earth from the Old Ones on his own,” Harriet said. “There is a sword-wielder and a spell-caster. You are the spell-caster. Jack usually wields the sword, but he has forsaken it. So I am the sword-wielder in his stead.”
“But if you’re the sword-wielder, then what am I?”
“You are Jack,” the Reverend replied. “Usually Jack is the sword-wielder...but sometimes he’s not. It doesn’t matter. Jack is Jack. You are the key to it all.”
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