The Mall of Cthulhu Read online

  He continued to eye the mall and realized that it was going to be impossible to weed out the cultists from the normal people. The fact that the cultists in the power truck had all been white guys in their thirties didn't mean he could rule out the Black, Asian, and Latino shoppers in the mall. And he couldn't assume that everybody white was in on it. Because, for one thing, that would implicate Cayenne, but also it would just make his job impossible. So, okay. He created a profile in his mind—a thirty-something white guy with a quick temper. That fit both Half-caf and Mr. Average, and he'd just have to assume that's what they were all like until he got new information.

  The teens had dispersed from Cayenne's cart, and Ted tried to remember what they'd been talking about. But then one of the teens was actually at his cart. "No way! I've been looking all over for this! I got my mom's ghetto hand-me-down phone, and—well, look"—the kid—a white boy dressed in Celtics warmup gear that looked like it was sized for an actual member of the Celtics and not the five-and-a-half-foot kid in front of him—reached into the folds of his pants and pulled out a phone bearing a pink and blue skin. "Now how I'm supposed to make a call with this? You know? I'm gettin' digits from girls, I can't put it in my phone! How's that gonna look? 'Hang on, baby, let me just get out my pink and blue phone'—how much, yo?"

  Ted had thought it so unlikely that any of his merchandise would sell that he hadn't even begun to think of a price. "Uh, five bucks. Three for ten."

  "All right! Here you go, my man!" The kid hit Ted's hand with a twenty and walked away with six manly phone skins. "I know mad kids with this phone! You're gonna be popular!" the kid said, and he practically skipped away.

  Cayenne was smiling at him. "Well, I had no idea you had such a brilliant business plan."

  "Yeah," Ted said as he stuffed the twenty into his pocket, "neither did I."

  "Hey—I'm gonna go get a sandwich. You want one?"

  "Sure," Ted said, and reached in his pocket for his newly-acquired cash.

  "It's on me," she said. "Just watch the cart and make sure nobody steals my inventory, willya?"

  "Absolutely."

  Cayenne returned with a chicken Caesar wrap and a Greek salad wrap. They ate in silence, mostly because Ted was still ravenous. He worked very hard not to shove food indiscriminately into his mouth.

  The afternoon got busy for Cayenne, so their conversation never really got back on track. Ted saw the guys he hoped were FBI strolling not-quite-nonchalantly along the perimeter of the mall in a regular pattern: clockwise on one, counterclockwise on two, clockwise again on three. The senior citizens disappeared. Ted counted five angry-looking white guys in his field of vision, then ruled out the three who were obviously with wives and/or children because, despite how he'd taunted Mr. Average, he doubted either of the cultists he'd already met were marriage material, and he couldn't imagine anybody being stupid enough to bring their kids along on their attempt to rend the very fabric of reality.

  He sold six more cell phone skins to two other absurdly grateful teens. He had forty dollars in his pocket! One angry-looking white guy—big, muscular, with short, dark brown hair—made an apparently pointless circuit of the mall. He wasn't holding any shopping bags, and he wasn't even pretending to glance into storefronts. He was just walking around. Ted hoped the FBI guys were noticing this, but the angry white guy was going clockwise on three while they were going clockwise on one, so he was pretty much directly on top of them, ensuring that he wouldn't be noticed. Ted felt his heart start to hammer as the guy walked toward him. He certainly looked like he was walking purposefully now, and whatever his purpose was in approaching Ted, it really couldn't be good. Ted looked around frantically for escape routes. He was still between the guy and the nearest exit, so he could probably run for it, but that would pretty much eliminate the possibility of his remaining an invisible vendor and might even get him shot if there were other FBI agents watching the mall who were getting bored and jumpy.

  The guy got closer and closer. Ted looked around—he had nothing he could even hope to use as a weapon, and his hand-to-hand fighting skills were poor, especially when matched up with a guy as big as this one. In the midst of his panicked fight-or-flight response, Ted had a moment of sick clarity. "This is how my story ends," he thought, and followed this quickly with, "At least I got rid of the vampires." He was glad he wouldn't be around to see the Old Ones take over, but he wished he'd told Laura he loved her.

  Finally the guy got right up in Ted's face. He smiled, but it looked far more like a threat display than an expression of happiness.

  "My phone," he said, through gritted teeth. "It's obsolete. How much for a skin?"

  Ted's mouth was so dry that it took a minute for him to creak out, "Five bucks. Three for ten."

  The guy seemed to take that in for a second. Ted could see the muscles on the side of the guy's face pulsing as he clenched his jaw. "Seems like a high price for something obsolete. I saw them at Ocean State Odd Lots for two."

  "Well, high overhead here at the mall, what can I tell you. I don't actually set the prices, I just . . . " before Ted could finish, the guy shoved five bucks in his hand and grabbed a new cell phone skin.

  He turned to walk away, then turned back to Ted. "Where's your cash register?" he asked.

  Ted felt himself sweating, but tried to brazen it out. "Oh shit! I am so fired!" he said, smiling. The guy turned and walked to the temple side of the mall and exited. Ted took four deep breaths. He just knew that guy was one of them. The question is whether the guy knew who he was. Ted hadn't actually seen his cell phone, so he had no idea if the guy was really just buying a skin or if he was just checking Ted out. Or maybe he was one of the other guys who'd been digging up College Street in Ocean State Power uniforms

  Should he follow him? No. Leave that to the professionals. He knew Laura said not to call, but maybe she'd take a text message. "I saw one. Headed 4 Temple," he sent. His phone told him the message had been sent successfully, but three minutes passed, and he didn't get a reply. He felt sick and woozy, and he realized he'd only had a muffin and a Greek salad wrap to eat in the last thirty hours.

  Cayenne was finishing up with a twenty-something guy whose bare, chiseled arms were covered in tattoos. She was smiling and laughing at something the guy said, and Ted felt jealous. He looked at his own skinny, un-chiseled arms and wondered if he should maybe join a gym. As soon as the guy walked away, he walked over. "Hey, I'm gonna close up for the day. It turns out that I have some money now. Can I take you to dinner at one of the Providence Towne Centre's fine family dining establishments?"

  Cayenne looked at him for a moment, then broke into a smile. "I'd like that," she said.

  Ten

  Laura sat in the back of a panel truck bearing a sign for Demarco Catering. Sadly, the inside of the van had never seen wedding food, though the vinegary smell stinging Laura's nostrils made her believe that someone had left a half-eaten piece of fruit in here somewhere. The smell of rotting fruit mixed with the smells of mold and machine oil to make sitting here a real olfactory treat, and had made it very difficult for her to choke down her own turkey sandwich. Her legs were cramped up, and her head hurt from having headphones on. She'd been listening to pigeons flap and rats scurry about inside the temple for nearly eight hours, and her initial excitement at being in on something exciting had given way to boredom, which had given way to despair that anything interesting was happening here at all. Maybe she'd been right, and Ted had just seen an angry, kinky guy who wanted to fuck his girlfriend in a filthy place going into the temple. With bayberry spice candles, though? That hardly fit the kink profile.

  Two feet away from her, Killilea, a fit, fortyish man with black hair graying at the temples, listened to the temple on headphones and watched the monitors of the infrared equipment and the feeds from the mall security cameras. His hands were busy with what looked like a pretty elaborate knitting project. "Keeps me from going insane from boredom," he'd said when Laura looked surprise
d at the appearance of the yarn and needles in his lap. He'd been extraordinarily kind to Laura when orienting her to the equipment and procedures, showing none of that impatience with her ignorance that so many veterans would have shown in his place. He reminded Laura of her ninth grade English teacher, a kind, patient guy who'd broken his nose attempting to breakdance at the Spring Fling dance.

  She was just about to remove the headphones and ask Killilea if she could walk around the mall for five minutes when he tapped her on the shoulder. She looked over and saw him looking intently at the screen, the forgotten knitting project lying on the floor of the van. "We got one," he said. "Camera three."

  Laura looked at the grainy, black-and-white image on the screen and saw a guy look in both directions before reaching behind a sheet of plywood that covered a window and swinging it out. It appeared to be on hinges, which at least suggested that somebody came here regularly.

  Laura's heart began to pound as she heard the guy's footsteps echoing through the empty temple. She wished they had cameras in there instead of just on top of the mall so she could see what was happening. She tried to imagine as she heard footfalls and the occasional curse.

  "Camera two!" Killilea called out, and Laura could hear the excitement in his voice as somebody else climbed into another hinged plywood window. "Hot shit, something's actually happening here! Make doubly sure that you're recording—" he reached over to Laura's station "—press this button to make a redundant copy on the hard drive. Did I tell you that already?"

  "Yeah, but I forgot," Laura said.

  "Camera three again! Camera two!"

  The audio landscape became a confused blur as more and more pairs of feet echoed through the ruined temple. Laura heard something give a sick, splintering crack and wondered if it was a bone. She felt a shiver travel up the back of her spine at the thought.

  Finally all the footsteps stopped. She pictured them, standing in a circle amid a pile of skulls and bones, ready to do their demonic work. "Okay, turning on the infrared—there's our little sewing circle!" Laura looked over to the screen displaying images from the heat-sensing camera mounted in the cake on the roof of the van and saw a bunch of seated red figures in a green background. One guy stood up, and the heat from his body had turned the chair he'd been sitting on orange on the screen. It looked like a standard folding chair and not a throne made of skulls or anything. Laura chided herself for getting carried away and tried to remember that there was probably nothing more paranormal than a secret circle jerk going on here.

  She heard the crack and hiss of matches being lit and watched on the screen as little red lights appeared among the figures.

  "Brothers," the standing man (at least Laura assumed it was the standing man) said. "Our time is at hand. The book has been recovered. The transliteration is going slowly, as only two of us have volunteered to pollute their brains by learning the mongrel tongue the book is written in, but we believe the ultimate incantation will be ready within a few days. And then, at last, we, the rightful heirs of America and the world, will rule, first among humans at the feet of the old gods, kings of all the mongrel races!"

  "Oh fuck," Killilea said. "Not the angry white people again. I hate the angry white people."

  "Why? I mean, aside from the whole terrorism thing?"

  "Because the angry white people make a mess for us. We have to shut them down, but DC doesn't want to hear that the angry white people are a terrorist threat, because too many of the angry white people voted for the current administration. So it's hard to get resources, and nobody ever gets commendations, stuff like that. If these guys were Arabs, we'd have the entire US Army at our disposal. With the angry white people, we'll be lucky if we get to keep the van."

  Laura had missed something while Killilea was talking, but she didn't want to back up the recording, because now the entire group was standing in a circle. "Yog-Sothoth, flshrauv, Yog-Sothoth, sil'iah, menduru, Yog-Sothoth, r'lauggggggg," the men chanted, and suddenly, in the center of the circle, there was a spot of deep blue.

  "Whoa, what the hell is that?" Killilea said. "Did they just open a box of dry ice or something? That's fucking cold!"

  "I didn't hear anything that sounded like a box opening," Laura said, "just the chanting."

  "Weird. Wonder if the equipment is malfunctioning."

  "Behold!" said the voice in Laura's ear. "The gateway begins to open! With just a few adjustments to the incantation, and the additional reality-rending force of the place of power, our mission will be complete! Behold! Gaze on the realm of Great Cthulhu! Bring forth Brother Leonard!"

  Two of the guys in the circle walked away and came back bearing a coffin-sized box. It was blue.

  "Brother Leonard! His commitment to the cause was total, and in Great Cthulhu's realm, his burns shall be healed and his suffering shall end!"

  Laura heard a muffled scream coupled with the muffled sound of someone beating something. She glanced over to the screen and saw the cold blue box suddenly develop a green stripe as it seemed to expand. "Oh Jesus," Laura said. "They've got somebody in the box." And Laura had a very good idea who that somebody might be—a Cthulhu cultist covered in burns whose appearance anywhere—especially in a burn unit that might treat what must be mind-destroying pain—would lead to questions. He was a liability, and even though she knew what he did, and believed he deserved whatever he was about to get, Laura felt herself getting sick at the knowledge that she was about to watch him get murdered.

  But she didn't watch him get murdered. At least, not in any way she could understand. Two green figures bore the screaming box toward the center of the circle and heaved it into the deep blue spot, and it disappeared.

  "What the fuck was that?" Killilea shouted. He started frantically twiddling knobs on the monitor. "Did you see that? The box just disappeared! Boxes don't just disappear! Do they? What the hell?"

  "I . . . uh . . . ." And now Laura felt sick anyway. Because Ted had been right all along, and because she'd just seen a man die, or his soul consigned to eternal torment, or something, and because nobody was ever going to believe this was a threat. A bunch of guys standing around chanting and doing magic tricks just wouldn't pack the same credibility as somebody with a van full of fertilizer.

  Killilea continued to adjust the monitor and began to back up the recording. Laura took out a USB cable and downloaded the audio into her laptop as a backup. On the monitor, they saw the party breaking up as one guest at a time headed for the exits. Killilea continued to fiddle with knobs. He called into the radio to the two agents stationed inside the mall. "This is control. We're hot out here, and we've got ants fleeing the anthill. Watch for white guys coming in alone. Okay—east entrance, white guy, maybe six feet, white shirt. Northeast entrance, white guy, gray hoodie, maybe five eight. Stick on those two." Half of the cultists fanned out into the streets surrounding the temple, while the other half headed into various mall entrances.

  Killilea kept messing with the equipment and turned to Laura just after she'd disconnected the USB cable from the deck. "Okay, ready for some real secret agent stuff? Watch for an opening on camera three," he said, "then get out there and follow one of these guys and see if you can get a plate number, a description, anything. Boston's going to bust our asses about this anyway, but I'd love to be able to hand them something more concrete than this fucking magic trick . . . Okay, guy in a baseball cap just walked into the mall. Go follow him."

  Laura's cramped legs complained mightily as she asked them to move quickly, and she stumbled as she clambered out of the back of the van. She could just barely hear Killilea's voice as she closed the door: "Boston, I have a secure transmission. Here it comes . . . "

  Laura's heart was pounding as she strode toward the mall entrance. She called Ted to try and enlist his help on this mission. She cursed him colorfully as the call went to voice mail. What the hell was his problem?

  As she got into the mall, Laura fought that part of her mind that was announcing that s
he really had to pee, and there was a bathroom right over there. If she wanted physical comfort, she could still be poring over videos of white guys who weren't Whitey.

  She walked down the corridor and into the main atrium and couldn't pick up her target among the crowds of shoppers, diners, and ferris wheel riders. She estimated that there were twelve white men with baseball caps in the crowd. Which one was her target? She looked around at pushcarts, but she didn't even know which one might be Ted's. Most of them were closed metal shutters rolled up over their merchandise, though one or two people who were definitely not Ted were closing up their carts. She waded into the crowd. As she continued to look, she noticed that one of the baseball-cap wearers was alone and moving more purposefully than your average mall shopper. He was not distracted by any of the merchandise on display and did not even glance at the window display as he passed Victoria's Secret. It wasn't anything close to a positive ID, but it was the best she had to go on right now. She was Laura Summa Cum Laude Harker, goddammit, and she'd never taken an incomplete, and she wasn't about to start that now.