The Mall of Cthulhu Read online

  "I guess I hate to admit this, but probably not. Unless that's like some line from one of your tentacle stories that everybody quotes or something."

  "You think most power company employees quote Lovecraft when somebody says they're tapping their wife?"

  "Tapping? What the hell is that?"

  "You know, gettin' busy. Gettin' some. Hittin' it. Tappin' as in tappin' that ass!"

  "Tapping? I guarantee that's a frat-boy coinage. Woman as keg. Jesus. Every time I think you guys can't stoop any lower, you surprise me."

  "Yeah, okay men are pigs. I know I only did one year of college, but I had that down by my first semester. You're ducking my question."

  "Alright. I admit it seems unlikely that a power company employee would defend his wife's honor with quotes from old horror fiction."

  "Exactly! So they must be looking for the Necronomicon there."

  "What street did you say they were on?

  "College. In front of some concrete monstrosity of a building. Something art center."

  Ted heard the clacking of keys in the background. "Okay. Is it the List Art Center?"

  "Yeah."

  "That is the original location of the Samuel B. Mumford House, which was Lovecraft's final home. They moved the Samuel B. Mumford House around the corner in 1959."

  "I was right! Because if Lovecraft buried the Necronomicon under his house, that means it's under the List Art Center now! So they really are Cthulhu cultists!"

  "Well, this does make it a little more likely that the people you saw digging up the street are actually looking for the Necronomicon. Up in the air is the question of whether this book which, by the way, everybody insists Lovecraft made up, actually exists."

  "Still! I did some top-notch investigating!"

  "Yeah, well, Sherlock, let me ask you a question. Was it the Samuel B. Mumford House where you performed your botched break-in?"

  "Yes!"

  "Well, according to the site I'm looking at now, there's a plaque on the front that says 'Moved To This Location in 1959.' Did you see the plaque, Ted?"

  "Well, there was something under the name of the house, but I didn't actually read it."

  There was a percussive sound on the line. "That, Ted, was the sound of me slapping my own forehead."

  "Yeah, yeah, read the signs next time, I got it. So what's our next move?"

  "Let me think about that and get back to you. Oh. I gotta go. Talk to you later!"

  Ted had a list of temples to check at home, but he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be looking for there. A temple that was adjacent to a Place of Power. What the hell was a Place of Power, and would he know one if he saw it? Probably not. Back in Washington, he'd briefly had a girlfriend who was into all kinds of new age crap, and now Ted was wishing he hadn't been so good at tuning her out whenever she started talking about stuff like that, because "Place of Power" sounded like it was right out of the crystal-using, psychic-healing, spirit-channeling world that Ted had always found annoying.

  Feeling dispirited, Ted decided to get some lunch. He wandered into a sandwich shop that seemed frozen in 1972. Not only were all the wooden chairs and tables at least thirty years old, but the names and prices of the sandwiches were scrawled on a chalkboard behind the counter in barely legible Deadhead script. Baffled by both the names and the penmanship, Ted stood in front of the counter with his mouth hanging open. From behind the counter, a young man bellowed, "You here to read or eat?"

  "Do they pay you extra to be a dick, or is that a service you offer for free?" Ted said.

  The sandwich guy looked momentarily nonplussed, and Ted decided to press his advantage. "What's the matter? You can dish it out but you can't take it? Is this like the thing here? You abuse the customers and they meekly take it because it's part of the charm? Is that the gimmick? Do you know how to make a Reuben, or do I have to call it "Friend of the Devil" or "Jerry's Folly" or something?"

  Still reeling, sandwich guy called down the counter, "One Robert!" and said to Ted, "Seven-fifty."

  Smirking, Ted paid too much for his sandwich and went over to the pickle barrel and removed a big dill pickle with a pair of tongs. Two minutes later, he was eating an exquisite Reuben and pondering his next move.

  Should he go home and get the list of temples? He didn't feel a whole lot of enthusiasm for that. He was starting to get depressed again. The one thing he'd done right was figuring out that the Ocean State Power guy was a Cthulhu cultist. Or was connected to the people who removed Half-caf's body from the bloody Queequeg's. Maybe. Anyway, he talked like those people. And although Ted's confrontation with the Ocean State Power guy had allowed him to figure things out, it also pretty much guaranteed that he wouldn't be able to wander over there and observe them inconspicuously. So in finding his only lead, he'd destroyed his ability to follow up on it. Moron.

  Suddenly, Ted slapped himself on the forehead. "Just remember you're a vegetarian?" his adversary behind the counter called out.

  "Forgot to use a condom with your mom last night," Ted said. What had actually happened was that Ted remembered the long, skinny windows on one side of the Rockefeller Library faced directly onto the work site. It would actually be easy for him to watch these guys dig for the Necronomicon without being observed. That is, provided he could get into the library with no ID again.

  He uncorked an oily, vinegary corned beef and pickle belch and set off for the library. Fortunately, a new student drone was on duty checking IDs. Ted gave the same sob story about forgetting his ID, and signed in as Howard Phelps. He managed to find an unoccupied carrel next to a window on the third floor. He grabbed a book—Patterns of Animal Disease—from a nearby shelf and opened it to a random page. He opened a notebook and grabbed a pen and pretended to be taking notes on the book while staring out the window. He hoped that anybody glancing casually at him would think he was just a procrastinating student taking a break from his research to stare out the window.

  The crew was still at work, and Ted quickly found that watching a power company crew at work was not really that much more interesting than page 246 of Patterns of Animal Disease. After three hours of watching guys scurry around in a hole in the ground, he'd actually begun to turn pages in the book, because apparently some viral infection in emus in New South Wales in 1952 was pretty significant, and he wanted to find out why.

  Ted kept half an eye on the goings-on in the street. After another hour, darkness began to descend, and Ted had to pee and felt hungry. He wasn't sure, but he guessed Laura's surveillance manual would advise against peeing in a cup in a college library. Not that he had a cup handy anyway.

  He was just about ready to give in to the demands of his bladder when something happened down in the street. All at once, the entire crew stopped moving. All except one guy who came scurrying from the direction of the List Art Center with something large under his arm. He began to pull out the object to show everyone, when the guy Ted had threatened to cuckold earlier, Mr. Average, made a gesture that clearly meant "get that thing into the truck, you idiot!"

  The guy holding the buried treasure climbed into the van, and the entire crew began to pack up. Mr. Average rooted around in the back of the truck, pulled out a length of pipe, and turned his gaze right on the window where Ted was sitting. He held up the pipe and smiled.

  Ted suddenly felt very cold, and his urge to pee got even worse. Could Mr. Average possibly have noticed his surveillance? Was he alluding to his virtual assault on Ted by holding up the pipe? Or had Ted just imagined the whole thing? His instinct was to cower under his carrel, but the hell with that. Slamming his book closed and forever abandoning the mystery of the Great Emu Plague, Ted ran from the library and into the street. As he turned the corner, the van was starting up and pulling away. Mr. Average did not appear to be waiting to brain Ted with a length of pipe. Ted wrote down the license number and the number on the side of the van as well as the number on the "How's My Driving?" sticker. The van pulled away down the st
reet, and without a car or even a bike, Ted knew he couldn't possibly follow. And with Mr. Average in a pipe-swingin' mood, he wasn't sure he wanted to. Still, he could harass them.

  He called the "How's My Driving" number and said, "Yeah, I was just crossing College Street legally in a crosswalk and was nearly struck by van 4C24. Yes. My name? Charles Dexter Ward. Right." He'd used another name out of Lovecraft, hoping that if this call ever bore fruit, the guys in the van would at least know someone was on to them.

  His next call was to Ocean State Power customer service. "This is August Derleth at the List Art Center?"

  "Can you spell your last name for me, sir?" an unmistakably Indian voice asked.

  Ted spelled it, gave the street address, and said, "Your crew that was digging here seems to have done some damage to the south wall of our basement."

  "I'm sorry, sir, I have no record of any of our crews working in that area today."

  "Well, we have a record of it—a crack in the wall and plaster dust all over the place. It was van 4C24."

  He heard keys clacking. "I'm sorry, sir. My information shows that van 4C24 is currently undergoing maintenance."

  "I see. Well, this is clearly a matter for Providence Police, then. Thank you for your assistance."

  "Wait, sir—" the guy in Bangalore said as Ted hung up. Well, that ought to rattle their cage. He thought about calling the police but decided to go pee and then call Laura instead.

  Laura sounded hassled when she answered. "Listen, I told you I was going to call you back, but—"

  "They've got it, Laura."

  "Who's got what?"

  "The cultists. I was surveilling them from the library where they couldn't see me, well, at least I thought they couldn't see me, but anyway, I saw them pull something out of the ground and pack up and drive off."

  "So maybe they found that rat that chewed through the cables."

  "When I called Ocean State Power, they told me that van was out of service. This has to be it. What do we do?"

  "The first thing we do is calm down. Now this thing is written in, what, ancient Sumerian or something?"

  "I guess probably Arabic, since the author was—"

  "The mad Arab. I remember. Okay. So it's unlikely that they're going to be able to put the information they have to use right away. So the best thing we can do is to keep going about this systematically. You have to check out the temples. When I come down, I'll poke around at Ocean State Power."

  "I called in a complaint that they'd almost run me down with the van, and also that they'd damaged the basement of the List Art Center."

  "Hey, that's great work, Ted!" Against his will, Ted felt a surge of pride. "That will give me the cover I need to nose around and ask questions. You've done a great job today. Now go home and rest up for some temple surveillance tomorrow."

  "Yes, Boss."

  There was nothing to do back at the apartment but sleep, so Ted treated himself to a large portion of Pad Thai and followed it up with an ice cream he ate while watching girls. Alarmed by his own stink, he bought himself some soap and a Miskatonic U. t-shirt. At nine o'clock, he returned to the apartment, collapsed onto the futon and slept until seven the next morning.

  When he awoke, Ted took his bar of soap into the shower, washed off the dirt of a day's surveillance and realized he didn't have a towel. He pulled on his new Miskatonic U. t-shirt, sniffed his boxers and decided that he'd be going commando today, and pulled on his pants.

  He got coffee and spent a few minutes looking over the temple map. Temple Beth-El was the closest, so he figured he'd start there. Once he made his way to Temple Beth-El, he looked for what was adjacent to it. Across the street was a park, which gave him a nice place to do surveillance and which could, he supposed, be a place of power.

  Ted watched the temple for hours from a park bench with no shade. The skin on his face began to feel hot and tight, and he realized he'd been out in the sun all morning with no sunblock. He also realized that, being bald for the first time in his life, he might get to know the joy of the sunburned scalp.

  He was hot, sunburned, and hungry, and not only was nothing out of the ordinary happening at Temple Beth-El, it actually appeared that nothing at all was happening there. Not a single person had come in or gone out in the three hours Ted had been watching.

  "Screw this," he said. His Miskatonic U. shirt now had big sweat stains in the armpits, and his only other shirt was a sweat-soaked ball on the floor of his apartment. Well, he could rule out Beth-El and its adjacent parks as being the places mentioned on Randolph Carter's desk. Maybe that was enough work for one day.

  He decided he was done for the day—it was time to go to the mall and get some clothes. He walked down to the mall, and his feet began to complain pretty seriously. He decided the shoe store should be his first stop. He knew this was the right decision the second he walked into the mall. Entering from the street, it wasn't clear to him exactly how huge the mall was, but once he walked in, he realized that, even with the tasteful beige and maroon industrial carpeting cushioning every floor, he'd definitely need new shoes just to get around the damn thing. It was gargantuan—like the big brother of every mall he'd ever been in. The mall was laid out like an "L", and here, in the long part of the L, three levels of stores ringed a cavernous atrium where, in front of the ferris wheel and next to the fountain, a band was tuning up. The short part of the L was, according to the map he stood in front of, home to the food court. Next to the map, there was a brass-and-glass information kiosk announcing various sales and special events. Taped to the kiosk was a neon green poster that said: "If you like Evanescence and Avril, you NEED to see Cherrified!" He didn't know if he should feel worse for the band playing a mall gig on a Wednesday afternoon, or the shoppers who were soon to have something that sounded like Evanescence and Avril Lavigne inflicted on them.

  After about two bars of Cherrified's first song, Ted sided with the shoppers. Including himself. He quickly followed the comparatively appealing sound of dance pop into Old Navy, then hit the Gap and, finally, Banana Republic. ("In case I get a date," Ted said to himself as he strolled in to the most expensive of the Gap family of stores.) Finally, Laura's money was all spent, Ted was loaded down with a total of seven outfits, one for each day of the week, and Cherrified had, thankfully, stopped playing.

  He checked his pockets and found two ones and a dollar seventy-two in change. It was only then that he realized he had no food and no means to pay for any. He'd have to call Laura for an infusion, but it would probably be sometime tomorrow before she could get him any cash. In the meantime, he decided that a big dose of caffeine would be the best bet for keeping his hunger pangs away for a few hours. Though it made him sweaty and panicky, he walked what he gauged was a quarter-mile to the Queequeg's on level three and purchased a medium latte. Unable to bear the idea of actually sitting in the Queequeg's, he found a bench next to the railing and in front of one of the free-standing vendor "pushcarts" that dotted the walkways of the mall. He collapsed on the bench and sipped his hot, sweet drink and thought about nothing and was content.

  Until Cherrified came on for their second set. They had not saved their best material for the second set, and Ted groaned aloud. The pushcart vendor, a short, young woman with jet-black hair with one magenta stripe and piercings in her ears, eyebrows, nose, and tongue (and where else, Ted wondered), said something, but Ted's brain was so busy exploring the piercings he couldn't see and theorizing about the effect they might have that he didn't process what she said.

  "I'm sorry?" he said.

  "I said, I hear you. This band sucks so bad I can't believe it. This is their third afternoon here, and they're not getting any better."

  "Wow. You ought to be able to get hazard pay or something. Can you get time and a half for this?"

  "I wish," she said. "The worst part, I mean the part that really makes me nuts is that these awful songs are now stuck in my brain. I walked out of here last night singing one of them un
der my breath. I was pissed."

  "I hate it when that happens."

  "Yeah. So, you got any interest in some new body jewelry?" Ted was puzzled, and then realized that the pushcart bore a sign that said "Rings and Things." He also realized he was being flirted with, and he liked that. Of course, this girl thought he was the anorexic Mr. Clean instead of Ted, but then again, maybe he wasn't Ted anymore. Teddy died in a sorority fire, and miserable, broken Ted took his place, and maybe miserable broken Ted died in Queequeg's, and somebody new—who?—had taken his place. So maybe if it wasn't the real Ted this pierced girl liked, that was okay, because maybe he wasn't really the real him anymore. Maybe there was no real him—just a bunch of synapses that responded to whatever bizarre stimuli came his way.

  "You know, I would love something, but I—well, it's a long and not very interesting story"—and Ted felt something funny in his guts and realized it was that he didn't like lying to this girl, even a lie as benign as that one—"but I kind of found myself without any clothes, and so I had to spend every single cent on clothes, and now I can't even afford dinner, let alone a new earring. This latte is my appetite suppressant."

  The pierced one said, "Well, I'll buy you dinner if you let me wear one of your new shirts."

  Did she mean what he thought she meant? Like when exactly did she want to put the shirt on? After?

  Before he could answer, something weird caught the corner of Ted's eye. Mr. Average, no longer in his Ocean State Power uniform, now wearing a navy blue polo shirt and khakis, was strolling along the mall corridor. Ted had to hand it to the guy—if he were any more nondescript he'd be completely invisible. Mr. Average was carrying two obviously heavy bags from Ye Olde New England Candlery. That certainly didn't seem to fit the profile of a guy who tortured people until they begged for the sweet mercy of death. Then again, it was kind of cute that he was getting in touch with his softer side.

  Ted was torn. If he stayed here, his night might get a lot better, but if he didn't follow this guy, his whole mission down here might go to hell. And, for that matter, if he followed this guy and got caught, he really might end up begging for the sweet mercy of death. And who the hell wanted to do that?