Here's the second of these two chaptrs. After this there's only one more.
Once agaain, I don't own anyone or anything.
Chapter Eighteen - Riding the Wings of the Storm
Kolchak turned on his recorder again:
"Detective Starsky drove faster than he should have, given he wasn't using either lights or siren, but I could understand his impatience. We headed over towards the part of Bay City near the waterfront, to a house where, as he explained, a man named Ezra Beam had once run a fencing operation out of a bogus church of Satan worshipers. A church which now, it seemed, had been taken over by something not too far removed from the real thing, and where something we didn't dare release was lurking down below."
They pulled up across the street from the house. Mary gasped. "It looks just like the house where I live!" she exclaimed. "I guess that's why the only impression I could get of where Detective Hutchinson is was of my own home."
It was true. The building was exactly the same, from the entryway up to the cupola on the top. Kolchak snapped some pictures. The sky was clouding up, which gave them a dramatic backdrop.
He had a thought. "Hey, then maybe you can tell us about the layout inside!"
Starsky turned to her. "Yeah, Mary, anything you could tell us would help."
She shook her head. "Sorry, Detective Starsky, but my house has been all cut up and rearranged inside to make it into apartments. Nothing's original any more." Then she brightened. "Oh, but there's one thing I do know! These old houses, especially the ones down here by the bay, there's legends that some of them have secret tunnels leading from the basements that go down to the water. Smugglers used to use them, and guys that used to shanghai sailors."
"That's something to keep in mind," Kolchak nodded, thinking of Collandra's warning. "Down in the basement you say?"
"That's what I've heard," Mary agreed.
Starsky opened the car door. "All right. Mary, you and Kolchak wait out here, and Barlow and I are going in."
"Oh no, Detective Starsky." Kolchak was emphatic. "If you're going in, then so am I. I'm not missing out on this story."
"He could be useful," Barlow pointed out.
Starsky stared at Kolchak for a moment, then nodded tersely. "All right. But Mary, you stay out here. If we don't come out in half an hour, no, make it 45 minutes, I want you to call the police. Get Captain Dobey, and tell him where we are." He quickly showed her how to use the police radio.
"OK," Mary agreed. "Be careful."
"Oh, we will be," Kolchak promised earnestly, thinking again of Collandra's warning. Not something he wanted to get involved with. Though, fatalistically, he feared that once again it would fall to him to take care of whatever the problem was.
The three men got out of the car and walked over to the big house. From the outside it didn't look particularly dangerous or sinister, just a large white Victorian-type house with a cupola on top. The wind that had risen made the treetops toss. Clouds scudded across the sky.
"Look," Barlow whispered, pointing to the front door. There was a decorative inset of small colored panes of glass all around the main window. "'Pretty colors around the door'," he quoted.
"And there," Kolchak added. He pointed to a sign next to the door that read "Netherworld Temple of Dagon".
"Guess this is the right place," Barlow said. "Who or what the hell is 'Dagon', anyway?"
"A minor figure under Cthulhu," Kolchak explained. "Sometimes the cultists use his name to hide what they're really doing, because Dagon was also the name of a Babylonian god."
"Cut the conversation," Starsky whispered sharply. He reached for the door. It was locked. "They used to have this rigged so it would open automatically," he added reminiscently.
"OK, now what?" Barlow asked. "We can't just ring and ask to come in. But we don't have a warrant."
Starsky gave Barlow and Kolchak a hard look. "I think I hear screaming. Don't you? That means a crime might be in progress."
Barlow wet his lips and nodded. "Yeah. Loud screams. Right Kolchak?"
"Oh, absolutely," Kolchak agreed solemnly. "Loud, loud screams." What the hell. He'd used less legal methods to get into places in his time.
"Right. Barlow, you go high, I'll go low. Kolchak, stay back." Both men drew their guns. Starsky kicked the door, and it flew in.
There was no one inside. The two cops relaxed slightly. Starsky moved warily into the room, then motioned Barlow to follow. Kolchak went third.
The entryway led directly into an area that appeared to have been set up as a chapel. It was decorated in an ocean theme, waves, weed and fish. There was a predominance of tentacled shapes like stylized fish or octopi. Kolchak shuddered as he looked around. He took some pictures.
"They changed the decor," Starsky whispered. "All this fishy stuff is new."
"Goes along with the new object of worship," Kolchak muttered darkly. "But I'll bet this is only for show anyway. The real temple is probably hidden away. 'Down below'," he added. "Where whatever 'it' is, is."
"And that's where we have to go," Barlow said. "That's where they'll have Hutch, waiting for the sacrifice."
Starsky nodded. "Yeah. I agree. Down." Quietly they moved down the corridor that led from the chapel area and started exploring the house.
They found the stairs with very little effort. Prosaically, they led from the back of what appeared to be a perfectly normal, if somewhat empty, kitchen. Carefully they descended the narrow wooden steps.
The basement was dark and musty, with a bare plank floor, lit dimly by a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There were dozens of wooden barrels lining the cement walls. In the center of the room, under what little light there was, was set a long table, with several chairs around it. One of the barrels was pulled up to it, with the top open. It was filled with white powder.
The three men spread out warily, inspecting everything. Kolchak peered at the table. It was covered with little paper envelopes. The white powder from the barrel had been scooped into the envelopes, and the envelopes sealed. There was a neat pile of filled envelopes at the end of the table. Jackpot! He snapped pictures of everything.
"I guess we found our drug dealers all right," Barlow whispered.
Starsky found a screwdriver on the floor and pried the top off one of the other barrels. It too was filled with white powder. He and Barlow stared at it, then at the rest of the barrels.
"This much?" Barlow marveled. "Where the hell is it all coming from? And what's the barrel covered with?" He ran his fingers over the wooden surface. Kolchak touched one too; it felt like there was some sort of sticky coating.
Starsky shrugged wordlessly.
"I told you," Kolchak said testily. "The Deep Ones are supplying it. Maybe it comes from their own skins." He shuddered at the thought of it. The coating was probably some sort of waterproofing.
"Where's Hutch?" Starsky growled. "I thought he'd be down here." He glared at Kolchak.
"Hey, don't blame me!" Kolchak protested. "I thought he'd be down here too." Then something else occurred to him. "And I thought there'd be an entrance to those tunnels Mary mentioned." He started pushing barrels aside.
Barlow glanced at Starsky, who nodded, and both of them joined Kolchak's efforts.
It didn't take long before they'd found the trap-door in the floor, hidden in the corner behind more barrels. Kolchak smiled grimly. "This is it," he said. He could feel it.
Barlow pulled on the ring. The trap lifted easily, obviously oiled and well used. Under it, another flight of steps, stone this time, but with a wooden railing, led down into darkness.
Starsky motioned to Barlow and Kolchak to go behind him, and, gun in hand, started down. Barlow followed, and Kolchak brought up the rear. "I knew I should have brought a flashlight," he grumbled.
The stairs opened onto another room, a sub-basement. It was huge and dark, cut out of rock, and much bigger than the basement above. There were even more of the barrels of the drug lined up by the stairs. The air was damp and smelled of the ocean. The only light came from small flames lit in little braziers standing around the room.
That was all Kolchak had time to see, before Starsky gasped and cried out, "Hutch!" and ran across the room.
Detective Hutchinson was chained by his wrists to ring-bolts hammered into the wall. He was bloodied, and seemed only semi-conscious, but alive. "Hutch, you OK?" Starsky murmured, worry in his voice. Hutch didn't reply. Starsky gently lifted one of his eyelids, and peered at his eye, though what he hoped to see in the dim light, Kolchak didn't know. "I think he's been drugged," he said. "We gotta' get you down from there, Babe." He pulled experimentally on the chains, but it was obvious to everyone that the bolts were firm. He looked at the lock that held them. "OK. The key has to be here somewhere."
Kolchak looked around the chamber. It didn't look promising. There was what appeared to be a stone altar at one end. It looked as though the room had been expanded, and the stones that had been excavated in the process had been used to build it. The original ceiling, under the upper level of the basement, was wood, but the rest was solid rock.
Near to the altar was an opening into a tunnel. There was a cool breeze blowing from it, and the rank fishy smell was stronger. "Must be the way to the water," Kolchak muttered. He went on searching.
He inspected the altar closely. It was a stone slab covered with various strange markings, painted or carved into the surface. Disturbingly, there was a channel cut down it that looked as though it was designed to allow blood to flow away. He pulled out his camera, and took some pictures.
"What the hell is that?" Barlow asked, behind him. Kolchak turned to look. Barlow was staring at a shelf set in the wall to one side of the altar. On it was a stone weight, carved in strange patterns, incised with metal.
"That must be the summoning stone," Kolchak decided after some thought. "When this Papa Theodore wanted to call the Deep Ones here, to set up the community, he would have thrown that in the water," he explained. "When they made their bargain with him, they gave it back." Something else he should have a picture of.
On the altar itself was an object with a cloth over it. Kolchak really didn't think he wanted to see what was under it, but with a sense of fatalism, he pulled off the cover.
As he suspected it would be, it was a greenish stone idol, and it was just like the descriptions of Cthulhu that he had read; a head with tentacles like a squid or octopus, the legs with their horrid claws drawn up onto the block he sat on, the long clawed fingers of the grasping hands, and the hideous bat-like wings. It was loathsome. The descriptions had somehow missed the disturbing quality of it, the sickening impression of wrongness that it had. And this, bad as it was, was only a copy of the real thing, the statue that was more than just a statue that squatted obscenely somewhere in the depths, in the sunken city of R'lyeh. Kolchak shuddered.
"Ick." Barlow made a disgusted noise. "That's pretty nasty looking. What the hell is it?"
"That's Cthulhu," Kolchak explained. He snapped a picture. Barlow grimaced and moved on to searching along the farther wall.
Hutch moaned slightly from his chained position.
"Have you found the key yet?" Starsky called frantically from across the room, where he was tearing through some boxes filled with what seemed to be robes of some kind. "Hold on, babe, we're working on it," he added to Hutch, throwing the garments aside, and going on to the next box.
"No," Barlow answered. "Doesn't look too likely to be over here, either. I think we're going to have to break him loose. There was that screwdriver up in the other room..."
Just then Kolchak heard something, footsteps, maybe, in the distance. "I don't think we have time," he said urgently. "Listen!"
Everyone froze. There was a burst of eerie laughter, and then an unfamiliar voice said, "Detective Starsky. We meet again. I knew we would; I called you and you came. You still belong to me."
All three of them whirled to face the opening where the voice came from. A tall black man in a long red robe was standing there, leaning nonchalantly against the wall.
"Not now, not ever," Starsky snarled. "Where's the key to those chains, you bastard?"
Papa Theodore, or so Kolchak assumed him to be, sauntered into the chamber. He laughed again. "All in good time, Detective, all in good time." He moved over to the altar. "And you other two gentlemen. How nice of you to come and see me, Detective Barlow, Mr. Kolchak. Oh yes," he added to their startled reactions, "I know who you are, very well." He chuckled deeply. "Detective Barlow I know because I know everyone associated with my friends Starsky and Hutchinson. And you, Mr. Kolchak... you have a reputation all your own in certain circles, you know. Yes, indeed."
Starsky pulled his gun and aimed at Papa Theodore. "The key. Now."
Nervously Kolchak started edging away from the altar. Papa Theodore did not appear to notice.
"Oh no, Detective Starsky. Detective Hutchinson is set to be a most important guest at our service in two days. Certain of my new friends are, shall I say, hungry to make his acquaintance." He laughed at his own joke.
"Why are you doing this?" Kolchak asked. He surreptitiously turned on his tape recorder.
Papa Theodore turned his attention towards him, causing him to back up even more. "Revenge," he intoned. "Revenge, of course. These two destroyed everything I held dear, so now I will destroy them."
"But if you call back the Old Ones they'll destroy the whole world along with them. Isn't that a little extreme?"
Papa Theodore started his creepy laughter again. "What do I care? When the Old Ones reign supreme, They will take me as their emissary and set me above all the people of the world!"
"They're more likely to eat you for an after dinner snack," Kolchak muttered. More loudly he asked, "So calling back the Old Ones, that's the whole point of this? The drugs, the cult?"
"Yes, of course. And when the final rite is held in two days, the power of the faithful will be focused through the minds and dreams of all the fools who have used the drug the Deep Ones brought me. And then, even though the stars are not right, it won't matter! Great Cthulhu will awake, and the city of R'lyeh shall rise from the depths. The Old Ones will return again!"
"You're a freak," Starsky broke in. "Now give me that key."
Papa Theodore turned to him. "You puny little man," he said with a chuckle. "You're blind in the face of the power and the might of the Great Old Ones. But you and your like will not stop me!" His voice rose to an unearthly shriek, and he chanted, "Ia! Ia! Ng'wthrgn ag rglagn Shogguth! Lgn'rn Shogguth! Ia! Ia! Shogguth!"
"What the hell?" Barlow whispered, uncertainly.
"My God, I think he's summoning a shogguth!" Kolchak gasped. He remembered in horror what the books had said about the shogguths, created as mindless polymorphic servitors by the Elder Race, but which over millennia came to awareness and power, filled with evil, and malicious beyond understanding.
"Yes, that's right, Mr. Kolchak," Papa Theodore gloated. "A shogguth. And it will come and flay you skin from bone and suck your marrow dry! And then it will guard this place from any who might come to interrupt until the final rite that calls down the wrath of the Elder Gods!" He took up his chanting again. "Ia Shogguth! Lgn'rn Shogguth! Ia! Ia!"
Kolchak moved even farther towards the back of the room. Anything to get away from the chanting. He stopped when he felt something up against his back.
Papa Theodore rose to a crescendo of shrieking. "Shogguth! Shogguth! Fgn'rgl n'mgthlp Shogguth! Shogguth! Ia! Ia!" He reached inside his robe and pulled something metallic out.
"Gun!" screamed Barlow.
Faster than Kolchak could follow, Starsky had aimed and fired. The shots echoed in the chamber. Kolchak jumped backwards, knocking over the object that had been pushing into his back. It was one of the braziers, and it went clattering to the ground.
The thing in Papa Theodore's hand fell to the alter. Not a gun, a knife. He gasped. Blood sprayed onto the altar before him. He fell to his knees. Horribly, he started laughing again.
A trickle of blood dripped from his lips as he chortled. "You think by killing me you'll stop what happens?" he gasped. "All the summoning needed was blood. It will still come, and I will still have my revenge." He collapsed onto the floor.
Behind Kolchak, the flames from the toppled brazier spread to the pile of robes Starsky had left on the floor, and kindled. The fire flared up and caught one of the barrels. Smoke billowed.
Starsky coughed. "The key!" he cried out. "He must have it on him. We have to get the hell out of here."
Barlow jumped over to Papa Theodore's body and searched. "Here it is!" he called. He tossed a key chain over to Starsky.
Starsky unlocked the manacles. Hutch slumped into his arms. Starsky held him tightly. "Let's get going," he shouted.
"We can't," Kolchak said grimly. "Don't you feel it? It's coming."
The others paused and looked at each other. "Yeah," Barlow said uneasily.
It was not quite a sound, more of a feeling of pressure, not physical, just barely on the edge of perception, but there, unmistakable. Something was coming. Something… wrong. Coming closer.
"We have to stop it," Kolchak went on. "Remember what Collandra said? This is it. If we don't, then it guards this place until the Deep Ones hold the ceremony, and then the world ends. We have to stop it, now." Damn, he hated this sort of thing. But someone had to save the world.
Starsky cradled the semi-conscious Hutch against him. Briefly he closed his eyes, then a look of determination came over his face. "Barlow! Get Hutch outside. I'll stay here with Kolchak."
"But this smoke… your lungs…"
"No buts, Barlow," Starsky ordered. "Take him. Here." He draped Hutch's arm around Barlow's shoulders.
Barlow sighed. "OK, Hutch. Come on, let's go."
Hutch mumbled something Kolchak couldn't understand.
"It's OK, Hutch. I'll see you outside soon," Starsky said reassuringly. "Now go with Barlow."
Barlow pushed the unresisting Hutch up the stairs. The fire had spread to the wooden banisters now, but Barlow got him safely past and up.
Starsky watched them go, then turned to Kolchak. "OK. Now what?"
Kolchak shrugged. "I have no idea." He hoped something would come up. It always had before.
"Well, you'd better think of something. It's getting closer. What is a shogguth, anyway?"
"Trust me. You don't want to know."
The sensation of imminent presence, of a malign will approaching, was stronger, like the oppressive sense of pressure before a storm. It was a sort of roar off in the distance, not quite physically heard, but felt somewhere inside. Hunger and anger and hatred were there, malice and power and spite. It was death, and more than death.
Starsky had reloaded. He aimed his gun down the corridor.
"I don't think that's going to do any good," Kolchak said.
"Do you have a better idea?" Starsky snapped.
"No... wait. Maybe, yes!" Suddenly Kolchak remembered the little object Marie Edmonds had given him the day before, something to be given to "the one who had the favor of the Opener of the Ways." He fumbled in his pocket for it. Where was it? Certainly he couldn't have forgotten it... no, here it was.
"Here!" he said, shoving it into Starsky's hand. "This is for you."
"What the hell is it?" Starsky asked, staring at it.
"I think it's the Elder Sign," Kolchak said. "It wards off these things. Marie Edmonds said it was for the one who had the favor of Papa Legba. That's..."
"That's Michael," Starsky cut him off. "What do I do with it?"
"I don't know."
"You're helpful," Starsky said sarcastically. He was wheezing a little from the smoke.
Kolchak shrugged. "But whatever you do, it had better be fast. I don't think we have much time."
Starsky studied the Elder Sign. "He said that he was with anyone who called on him, if they knew the right name or not," he said thoughtfully, like he was remembering something. "Maybe it doesn't matter what I do, as long as I ask."
His lips moved for a moment. Kolchak thought he was mumbling something in a foreign language, maybe Hebrew. Then, taking aim, he threw the thing down the corridor, with a pitch that would have made Tom Seaver proud.
There was a tiny "click" as the little stone hit the floor of the corridor. And suddenly, all hell broke loose.
Something shrieked, an unearthly, hellish crescendo of sound, ear-piercing, filled with frustrated rage and impotent fury. The walls shuddered with the force of it, and kept on shaking. Rocks fell from the ceiling, and the whole room shook. The noise went on and on, growing louder, now with an actual note of pain. Then, just when they thought they could stand it no longer, it started retreating into the distance, dying off into a gibbering, gurgling wail.
"That's done it!" Kolchak shouted over the din. "Now we get out of here!"
"Yeah, I think you're right," Starsky said. "Come on!"
Together they stumbled up the stairs, through thick blinding smoke. Kolchak could hardly breathe as they staggered across the floor of the basement. It was already blazing in spots, and as they ran through the room one of the drug barrels caught and exploded, spreading more flames behind them.
The wooden basement steps were untouched so far, but the flames followed them closely behind. Just as they cleared the kitchen, there was a roar from beneath them, and part of the floor caved in.
Kolchak trembled on the brink of the gaping hole for a moment but Starsky grabbed him and pulled him back, and together they circled around.
They made it down the corridor. Starsky was struggling to breathe in the choking smoke. He started coughing, unable to catch his breath, stumbled, and fell to his knees. "You go on," he gasped out. "Tell Hutch..."
"Come on, get up," Kolchak snarled, pulling at him, but the bigger man was too much for him to lift. "Come on!" he cried again. Flames were around them now, and Kolchak too started coughing from the smoke.
Suddenly Barlow was there. "Starsky, lets go!" he yelled. Together he and Kolchak managed to pull him to his feet again. They dragged him through the blazing chapel area, to the front door and out into the safety of the open air.
The sky was greenish-gray, and the wind whipped the billowing clouds of smoke to a towering column. The three men limped across the street, to where Mary Polanski was cradling Hutch on the grass. Barlow gently lowered Starsky down next to him, and he and Kolchak sank to the ground themselves. Starsky put his arms around Hutch and pulled the two of them together, breathing hoarsely, gulping air. Hutch rested his head on Starsky's shoulder.
"Thanks, Barlow," Starsky gasped.
"Hush, don't try to talk. There should be an ambulance here pretty soon," Mary said.
Off in the distance fire engines could be heard, sirens blaring. Crowds had gathered to watch the fire.
Suddenly, from the clouds that loomed overhead, a bolt of lightning smashed down to the top of the burning building. More flames burst from where the bolt hit. Lightning struck the roof again, and then several times more as the onlookers gaped, awe-struck. The first fire truck arrived just as the building started to collapse.
Kolchak spoke into his recorder again:
"By the time the Bay City fire department arrived, the building was hopeless, and all they could do was to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring houses. We were able to tell them that no one alive was trapped inside. We didn't tell them that down in the remains of the basement, something that should never walk the daylight world of sanity had been summoned, but then repelled by the power that called the lightening, the Power that some name the Thunderbird."
Kolchak put the recorder away again.