Cold: Chapter Eight
In which your decision to trust the ghouls might get you past the giants, but the next step in your journey may be trickier than you'd like.
Chapter 8
My new ghoul friend had saved me from the giant spider – an insane sentence if I thought about it too hard – so I decided to trust him. Better to face what lay within the caverns and warrens than to try to wrangle with more giants. The fact that that insane perspective trick had worked against one giant was mad enough – there was no way I could be sure it would work a second time or against multiple foes.
Still, it gave me ideas about how I might get out of this situation. How I might find my way back home.
How I might be able to wake the hell up.
I ducked my head into the crack in the cliff face and squeezed sideways inside, trying my best not to gag as an almost physical blade stabbed into my sinuses, covered in rot and stale excrement.
Ahead of me I saw nothing but pure black, but I heard sounds, the language of whatever the hell these creatures were.
“Hello?” I called, feeling immediately stupid.
The ghoul sounds stopped for a second, and then I heard scrabbling coming toward me.
“You are the one sent by Henshaw?” The words came to me in a low growl, close, but not close enough to see the source.
“Didn’t catch the gentleman’s name, but I believe so,” I said.
“You are the dreamer, seeking a way home,” the growl said.
“Yes.”
“This way.”
“I can’t see.”
“Ah.”
I felt claws reaching for me, grabbing my arm. Instinct made me pull away.
“Do not fear,” the growl said.
The claw reached for me again. I took a deep breath and let it grab me and pull me forward.
“Must stay in darkness here, to avoid alerting the giants,” my guide said.
“I see.”
I allowed my guide to lead me onward into a darkness so pure and perfect I felt swallowed by it. I couldn’t help but put my other hand up in front of me, searching for obstacles.
“No need for that,” my guide said. “We’re almost there.”
We walked a short distance further, and then I heard a match strike. A brilliant white light blinded me as it flared. I blinked and squinted as my guide lit a lantern on a wall.
“Now you can see.”
As my vision cleared, I looked around me. We stood in a narrow stone corridor, and steps led down in a spiral in front of me. Oil lanterns dotted the walls as the stairs descended, for which I was grateful. I got the sense these ghouls didn’t need light to see.
My guide looked a lot like the ghoul whose name I now knew to be Henshaw. Sunken eyes sat on a pale face that jutted outward to a massive jaw full of sharp teeth. The torn flesh on his face exposed bones underneath, especially at the jaw line, giving the impression of a smiling, deformed skeleton. Thick green moss wrapped around his body and hung like a shroud from exposed bones and ragged flesh.
“I hope my appearance does not frighten.”
“No, not at all,” I said, trying my best to make that true.
“I am Jubin,” my guide said. “I will help you past the giants.”
We began to descend the narrow stone staircase, and Jubin lit the lanterns as we went.
“Do you get many like me around here?”
“No,” Jubin said. “But you are not the first we have helped. The Cold One’s rise has increased the number of lost dreamers stuck in this land, seeking a way home.”
“Why is that?”
“We suspect that when the Cold One senses a threat, or a challenge, It does what It can to remove that threat.”
“And trapping people here is a way to do that.”
“Less conspicuous than murder, although of course It is not above that.”
I remembered what I’d seen at the Cold One cult’s ceremony, the sacrifice, the liquid helium…I shuddered.
“But obviously there’s a way out, and you’re part of it.”
“Yes,” Jubin said. “We will help you on your way to the gates of Inquanok. The priests there have been fighting the Cold One for some time now. They will want to know what you know about It, and they will assist you in getting home.”
“Who do the priests of Inquanok worship?”
“Nodens. A powerful god who opposes not only the Cold One, but the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep.”
“And this Nodens will help me?”
I decided to put any questions I had about the “crawling chaos, Nya…” aside to deal with later, when I had the energy to go insane again.
“He has helped other dreamers in the past. There is no reason to think he wouldn’t help you. Especially if you pledge to hunt the Cold One’s minions in the waking world.”
“Does the Cold One have an actual name? I’ve only heard that nickname.”
“Yes,” Jubin said. “But I will not speak it.”
“Dangerous to do so?”
“You have seen what Its minions do to those It wishes to sacrifice.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then you know why I cannot say its name.”
I nodded and furrowed my brow. We reached the bottom of the long spiral staircase and entered a large chamber with a high stone ceiling, lit by torches on all sides and stuffed with cabinets, bookcases, long tables covered in documents. Ghouls bustled around the space, carrying documents, sitting at the desks studying thick tomes, talking in their strange gibbering language in hushed tones.
“This is our research library,” Jubin said. “We have taken much knowledge from the outside world, and we study it, learn from it.”
Several ghouls looked up and took notice of Jubin, and especially took notice of me, but after a moment, they returned to their work.
“At the moment, we are researching ways to defeat The Cold One.”
“What have you learned?”
Jubin shook his head. “Not enough. Only that we need the assistance of powerful beings like Nodens to even have a chance.”
“And Nodens is a good guy?”
Jubin laughed, or so I thought. It was hyena-like, feral, sharp, and choppy.
“I know not what constitutes a ‘good guy’ as you put it, but Nodens is…shall we say, a complicated and dangerous being – but for the moment, our interests are aligned.”
Jubin led me through an opening at the other side of the chamber. I began to see daylight creeping into the darkness. A moment later, we reached a cave entrance.
“Wait here,” Jubin said. He peered outside for a moment, and then came back.
“Is it safe?”
“The next part of this journey will be…unsettling. If you trust me now, you should continue to do so.”
“What does that mean?”
As I said that, however, I saw something…several somethings, flying toward me on leathery wings. I stumbled backward into the safety of the cave.
“The fuck are those?” I barked.
The creatures swooping toward me had vaguely humanoid features, but they looked like oil, black and shimmering, featureless, faceless, with horns that curved inward and powerful glinting claws on both their hands and feet. A long, leathery tail whipped out behind them.
“Night-gaunts,” Jubin said. “These are servants of Nodens, and they will take you to Inquanok to meet with the priests there.”
“And…they’re just going to…what, swoop me up in their claws?”
Acrophobia began to make my hands sweat in anticipation of being carried like prey in the claws of a great leathery beast through the skies of this place.
“That is the idea,” Jubin said.
“You sure you can trust these things?”
“As sure as I am about anything.”
“And how sure is that?”
“Sure enough.”
A sound like thunder whipped through the ground, and I felt the earth shake underneath me. I struggled to keep my footing as I saw a huge crack form in the distance, cascading snow down into it, and approaching at a speed that gave this whole endeavor a new urgency.
The night-gaunts pulled up suddenly and hovered, and Jubin stumbled behind me.
“Quick, run, jump toward the night-gaunt!” he shouted. I turned to him and watched in horror as he lost his footing and fell, the crack in the ground approaching him rapidly. Ahead of me, a night-gaunt swooped down, just out of reach. If I jumped to it, I’d have to leave Jubin behind and let him fall into whatever abyss waited in the growing crack in the earth.
“Leave me and go!” Jubin called, scrambling to right himself before the crack swallowed him up.
I had to choose quickly: Try and save Jubin, and possibly be swallowed up myself, or jump up and try to reach the night-gaunt, leaving Jubin behind?
Note: Some of the ideas for this portion of the story are inspired by a Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition scenario called “The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man,” which I just had the pleasure of playing through. It’s a fascinating and vivid exploration of the Dreamlands, and if you ever get a chance to play that scenario, do not hesitate. It’s amazing. I’d suggest just buying the book and reading through it.
