Of course, then there were the people who wanted to know what the gubmint going to do foh them? Where’s we gonna stay? You gotta put us up a hotel! An’ buy us a hot meal!
Despite the diction, these were not entirely or even primarily one race. Just as every politician and city worker in New Orleans had a hand out, every resident had one pointed straight at the government. Or so it generally seemed. Nobody seemed to want to take action for themselves. Mow a lawn? Somebody else’s problem. Hoodoo crap on your driveway? What the gubmint gonna do ’bout that? I ain’t cleanin’ it up!
Hoodoo? Ain’t my problem!
I’d met decent, hard-working, law-abiding people in New Orleans. I’d met people who were willing to stand up and fight the good fight. I knew they existed. But Diogenes would have his work cut out for him in this place. I was fairly certain one of these days God would get so fed up with the hellhole He’d go all Old Testament and bring down full-on Biblical Wrath.
Back to killing things.
We’d waited to pack and rig the pig until we had it in the building. Why? Two hundred pounds dressed weight and another hundred pounds of thermite—that’s why.
And since we were all “boots and suspenders” types when it came to explosions and arson, we didn’t stop with just thermite and a fuse igniter. In the pig, along with all the thermite, were three detonation sequences, one electrical, two mechanical.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I want to bring the worm up! I’m on a flight to England tonight! These things are super rare! This might be the only chance I’ll get!”
“Fine, fine.” Milo handed over the sprayer. “You can tickle its funny bone or whatever.”
“More like whatever.” I put on my respirator. “Fire in the hole!”
This time I was going to watch what happened through a window. Milo waited outside with me.
Up came the blasphemous kifo minyoo. It was still hard to look at but I hung in there. It raged a bit until an edge of its loathsome body touched the pig. Then in an instant the porker was gone. It was hard to even see what happened but it seemed to have just slid over it and engulfed the massive hog. The thing lumped around for a bit, looking for more snacks, then slid down into the hole apparently satisfied with its offering. I could see one of the wires tighten then slack, indicating it had pulled the appropriate pin. The wire with the electrical detonation sequence was spooling out like we’d caught a world-class marlin.
Then the ground started to shake and smoke began gushing out of the hole.
“Oh, yeah!” I pumped my fist up and down. “Crispy kifo!”
And then the worm, mortally wounded, came gushing back out of the hole.
I thought it was ugly before. Now it was ugly and on fire. And very very pissed.
“Time to leave,” I said, skipping away. “Tell me we have fire trucks standing by!”
* * *
“Look, it’s dead,” I said to Agent Robinson, standing by the smoldering and thoroughly destroyed house. “That’s our job. Cleanup is yours.”
I was getting really tired of handcuffs…
CHAPTER 5
“Dr. Rigby.” I shook his hand when I arrived at the Institute.
I knew I wasn’t safe there from pursuit by the MCB. But there was a certain weight taken off my shoulders.
“Chad.” Rigby waved me to one of the wing-backed chairs in his office.
The primary Institute offices were in a large Georgian mansion in Midsomer. Convenient to Oxford and a bit less convenient to London, the estate was a useful place to train incoming Monster Hunters as well as kick back and relax when things got a bit on the tough side. The grounds were pleasant and heavily warded, the local pub was good and many of the locals had been read in on supernatural at one time or another.
Rigby’s office had large windows letting in pleasant English spring sunshine. I definitely was starting to feel my shoulders unwind.
“Have you found anything more about the entity?” Tea had been laid out. English High Tea was another thing I’d missed. Only the English could do scones.
“Nothing beyond the Ashanti reference,” Rigby said, taking a bite of scone. “We’ve scoured our archives and have a team looking at Oxford.”
“The PUFF adjuster said that they were only known in West Africa, northwestern Mongolia and interior Indonesia. The only area that’s been extensively studied by English ethnologists, of those three, is Africa.”
“A point we’re discovering,” Rigby said. “But there has been very little formal research into Mongolia or Indonesia. At least the interior. The Dutch did some work on coastal areas. You should look into pre-Enlightenment archives from those areas. I believe Oxford has many from the Chinese as well as extensive records from the Indians. Alas, mostly untranslated from a variety of different languages and dialects, many of which are lost.”
“Fortunately, I’m good with languages.” I shrugged. “I’m going to just do research for a while and hope that I can come up with something. The PUFF adjuster definitely knew more than he was telling.”
“They always do,” Rigby said with a sigh. “I’ve only dealt with the American adjusters three times in my entire career. They are the independent oversight over the PUFF program, I’ve been told. It is a very small, secretive, and select group which requires a certain kind of expertise.”
“I didn’t really get the feeling he was a saint.” I shook my head. “But he certainly was odd.”
“Which one was it?”
“Coslow.”
“Ah, yes.” Rigby winced. “Dealt with him when I was a junior operative. Taught me to mind my P’s and Q’s I’ll say that. Do not waste his time. He becomes rather surly. However, enough about our mysterious worm for now. Since we are together and not speaking over a potentially wiretapped line, it is time to dwell on the MCB believing you are in league with a death cult.”
“I’m not.”
“If I thought for the briefest moment you were, we would not be having this meeting. The MCB’s findings are rubbish. I spoke to some of my contacts at MI4 based on your information. They’re not willing to get involved. Not worth their time. But they did confirm that the information came from a reading and that it indicated you were the alpha and omega of this sacrifice-selling ring.”
“I certainly didn’t start it but I’d be more than willing to end it. Did they vouchsafe the nature of the casting?”
“They did not.” Rigby shrugged. “The one contact who was most open said he was unaware of the details. But he also said you and your brother were entwined in the matter supernaturally. ‘Fated as Cain and Abel’ was the exact quote he’d been given. I pointed out that could have myriad interpretations. I think MI4 is humoring them, but since you were still allowed in the country, at this point I don’t think anyone on this side of the pond thinks you’re a culprit.”
“I’ve got people asking around, trying to find my brother, but he’s gone off the grid. Once he’s found, we’re going to have a little talk.”
“Having a family member fall in with dark forces is a terrible thing. Are you prepared for the repercussions?”
I snorted.
Rigby nodded thoughtfully. “Very well then. Personal history aside, please refrain from jumping to conclusions. That would make you no different than the MCB. The meaning of this reading could be something a bit more complex.”
“I hate the complicated hoodoo.” I frowned. “I like the big stuff you can shoot.”
“Don’t we all, lad, don’t we all. So, you are off to research your menacing kifo?”
“Definitely,” I said. “I always feel like a salmon returning to its stream there.”
“They go to those streams to mate and die, Chad.”
“Ever seen the girls at Oxford, Doctor?” I asked, smiling. “I’ll just have to avoid the die part!”
* * *
The main Oxford library was well known to visitors. They even had tours. Not at this point the largest library in the world, it was non
etheless extensive, and its rare books collection was one of the finest in the world. There were Marlowe manuscripts from the time of Shakespeare, original Dickens first drafts, and rare scrolls from the time of the library of Alexandria.
What was less well known to all but the most stringent researchers were the many supplementary libraries scattered around the town. Most of those were designated to specific areas, one was devoted solely to anthropology, another to linguistics, still others to math and sciences. Those held an enormous amount of information garnered over the centuries.
What a select few people knew about was tucked away in Summertown, mostly under an unpretentious and not particularly large manse, was the Library for the Study of the Supernatural and Occult, aka the Unseen Library.
On the surface it was, again, a very small place. The building was three stories and about ten thousand feet. In the various rooms were many general works of the occult. Books about the supernatural you could find, with some looking, in any standard library.
But take the side door into the basement. Show your ID to the nice librarian with the subgun behind the desk and you entered the real library.
It was an unknown number of stories deep. The deeper the level, the higher the clearance needed from the BSS to enter, and the guards here were polite, professional, and ready to kill anybody. As a visiting “scholar” I was only allowed access to the first two floors.
Supposedly there was a copy here of every book, manuscript, scroll, and tattooed flesh chunk with supernatural information on it, ever discovered by the British Empire. It was rumored that the lower levels had vaults containing the most powerful of grimoires, original copies of the Necronomicon, Das Rad Der Zeit, the Cluiche na gcathaoireacha and other works so deep and evil I wasn’t even sure of their names.
They kept the books in Oxford. They kept the artifacts in London. However, since there had been an incident involving a mummy and a rogue MI4 operative, that collection had been closed to scholars. Or at least that’s what the VHI people told me over drinks.
I started in the Oriental sector and dove in. I was up on Hindi and sort of familiar with Cantonese. I quickly discovered that wasn’t going to be enough. Most of the texts held there were not only in other languages, they were in obscure dialects thereof.
It was in a scroll written by a Gujarat yogi and traveler that I found the first reference to the mava paṇauvaā. The traveler, one Sundar Drupada, had studied the magic of the Hulontalangio. He described a similar sacrifice to the Ashanti as well as great power over the dead. However, the Hulontalangio wizards were more knowledgeable of the beast he called the mava paṇauvaā which translated in Gujarat as “Mother Worm.” They knew what they were sacrificing to was simply an extension of the Great Worm which lay below. But exactly where below was unclear. The text spoke in increasingly shrill tones of subterranean horrors that lingered beneath the earth, he listed dozens including the well-known shoggoth, grinders and something I’d never heard of called the Āntarika-pavitra karatāṁ tuṁ-ghr̥ṇājanaka-ri’ēkśana-dharmāndha, which he appeared to find the most horrible of all. The book eventually drifted off into mad ravings.
Even figuring out who the Hulontalangio were took a few days as there were no other references to them. I went back to the main library, then the ethnology library, and finally found a reference to a Dutch punitive expedition which had been sent into a department of the Indonesian territories to deal with a tribe that were slave traders, cannibals, and workers of black magic. They had “destroyed their unclean altars and their black deity” and returned to Jakarta with heavy losses. But nowhere in the libraries was there an original report from the expedition. Just a report of “heavy losses fighting the unclean forces of the dark god.” And no description of how to destroy the dark god, presumably the mava paṇauvaā. Or it was possible they just destroyed the kifo pseudopods. In which case, the damned mava was still there.
I checked Oxford’s references and if there was an extant original report, they couldn’t find it. Not even through the Dutch. Stuff got lost over the years.
I did find one other item which was an early news report, in Dutch, that spoke of the walking dead attacking the expedition. Okay, so the local houdoun used shamblers. Good to know.
West Africa there was only the Ashanti report. That was it for Indonesia. That only left Mongolia.
I searched for a week—during which there was no sign of my brother but Milo torched a few more kifos—before finding a reference in a decayed scroll seized from the Imperial Library in China during the Boxer Rebellion. According to the documents, the scroll and numerous others were taken as loot by a Hunter who was at the time a major in the British Infantry. He had recognized the scrolls as containing supernatural information and, rather than have them be destroyed or end up in some other officer’s library, had traded two Ming vases for them.
The very decayed scroll was in the dialect of the Eastern Jin Dynasty dating it to between 317 A.D. and 420 A.D. It spoke of a punitive expedition against a mystical force which went deep into Hun territory north of the Great Wall. The expedition was ordered by the Light of Heaven for infractions against the Order of the Heavens. This generally meant really black magic. The Huns were not the culprits. They were much more fearful of magic than the Chinese. The culprit was a foreign, did not say what nation, alchemist. He had raised a great dark god in the Ulun Buir region. This dark god was in turn bringing all manner of dead things back to life such that the alchemist had a vast army of the undead with which he planned to unseat the Son of Heaven from his throne and bring all of China into a long night of dark magics.
At least that was what I could get from the fragments of the scroll.
What happened was unclear. The scroll was very degraded. It looked as if, with the allowance and even support of the Huns, a General Kong Li Rong led a large expedition deep into the arid wastes of the Hulun Buir. Only a fragment of the force returned bearing the beheaded body of their general. The great evil had been defeated and destroyed utterly by the alchemists of the emperor but none of them had survived either. The general had ordered that all the fallen were to be beheaded and in most case their bodies burned.
It was in pieces and I had to guess as to the meaning of some of the pictograms. Pictograms are always more of a by-guess-and-by-gosh thing but in this case it was worse. They were barely legible, most of them were half eaten away and a single pictogram of the period could have a dozen meanings. As an example, the pictogram for “water” could, depending on variables, mean water in general, rain, a spring, being transparent, being opaque, a lake, an ocean, a river, et cetera.
But the sole useful reference was to “mining/digging/boring/tunneling to the darkness/deeps/cavern/hole in the ground” and “bringing to the darkness/etcetera the powder/ash/sand/dust of the sun/fire/volcano.”
The reason for the slash is that any of the above meanings would hold for what I was pretty sure were the pictograms. Ancient languages frankly suck.
What that probably meant was what made sense. Find the worm body, dig down to it and burn it with alchemical fire. The Chinese of that period knew not only the making of gunpowder but various other fast burning chemicals. I checked and they even knew how to make an early version of thermite.
However, the alchemical fire was of no use so they called upon a mystic to fight the beast. The pictogram for that could mean alchemist, wizard, sorcerer or certain categories of priests including Tibetan or Ainu shamans. They then attacked it with materials which were known only to them. That damaged the beast, possibly killed it.
Alas, the bit about what happened after that was the most degraded. The main noticeable bit was that the writing changed. The writing up to that point had been in one hand then changed to a less capable hand. The scroll was marked with the chop of the scribe to General Kong Li Rong at the beginning. The latter chop was of a lesser scribe and it was in part his less capable writing as well as preparation of the inks that made the rest of the scrol
l pretty much useless. There was a list of casualties that appeared to be long to the extent it could be read. And the writing to that point was more or less a log by the general. After that it was by a Captain Tai Bo Li. But how the general had died and why a lesser captain was now in charge of the remnant force was missing or illegible.
The main battle seemed to have taken place after they got down to the mava paṇauvaā.
That was worthwhile to know.
As it turned out, it was pretty much the most important thing to know.
There also wasn’t a single reference on how to find the damned thing.
I went searching for anything I could find about General Kong Li Rong or Captain Tai but there wasn’t much. The problem was that every dynasty in the long history of China had at one point or another tried to erase prior history so as to make themselves look more important. Mao’s destruction of religious texts and historical documents during his reign was simply a continuation of a very long process. Most Chinese history depended upon secondary sourcing and remembered details and was thus extremely suspect.
General Kong had had an illustrious career to that point and his death was noted in remnant Imperial archives. He was laid in state with great honors and guaranteed a position in heaven. Captain Tai was promoted to general for his exploits, unspecified in other documents, and also went on to great things. But there was no further information about the Lost Expedition. There were no references to which alchemists they had brought with them to fight the mava paṇauvaā nor what mystic “stuff” they used.
I talked to a professor who was a specialist in the period and he really had nothing to add. He’d never read that particular scroll and did find it fascinating. Since he wasn’t read in on supernatural, he saw it as just another punitive expedition of an evil empire oppressing the poor herders and farmers of the region who, based upon the “great mother” being, were probably matriarchal and…