Together they revolved the loosened stone. Then Stipe got a rope around it, and they pulled it out. It hit the floor of the tunnel with a boom that must have set off seismographs in Mongolia, assuming either Mongolia or seismographs existed any longer.
They paused to listen again. No wings, no sound beyond the distant roar of wind. Nobody — more to the point, nothing — was crawling down the tunnel after them; and now there was a hole in the wall big enough to climb through.
“This better work,” said Detwiler.
“John. If Cthulhu catches you inside the vault, what’ll he do to you?”
“Pull me apart like your little brother torturing an insect?”
“And if you go back to living in the rubble of our dying world?”
“The same, I suppose. Just, you know, later on.”
“So?”
“Yeah, great.” Detwiler flicked on his halogen flashlight and pulled himself halfway into the hole.
Inside lay a vault exactly as Stipe had described, as huge as a cathedral, with twisted columns of stone supports. It was almost how he’d imagined Ali Baba’s cave to look back when he was a kid. Ali Baba had been something of a role model. Thieves who rode in, got what they wanted, and rode out again to their secret lair. Detwiler figured a lot of his disappointments as a thief were because nobody rode in on horseback anymore. And that was before Cthulhu had shown up and pretty much flattened civilization. Try to find a horse now.
This time, however, things were looking up. The vault abounded with riches, and everywhere golden and silvery objects glinted in the light of his torch. Two enormous soapstone tubs presented heaps of cracked emeralds and what he dared to hope were uncut diamonds, a few as big as his fist. The tubs were covered with carvings, inhuman figures in relief. He wondered who had done the work. Some poor slob enslaved by the hideous Cthulhu, probably destroyed the moment he finished. “There are jewels in here, Stipe!” he called back. “We have to take some jewels. We can’t break in here and not take some jewels.”
“Okay, we’ll get some jewels, but what about the stuff?”
Detwiler waved the flashlight around. Across the chamber, set on clawfooted displays stood five circular seals the size of garbage can lids. “Oh, yeah,” he said.
“Let me see!” Stipe pulled him out of the hole. Detwiler handed him the torch, and Stipe leaped into the hole almost froglike. Then, “Oh,” he said, as if a woman had just unexpectedly made a pass at him — which for Stipe would have been a life-changing event. He drew himself out. “The seals.”
“They’re worth a lot, right?” Detwiler asked doubtfully.
“Detwiler. They’re so valuable nobody even believes they exist.”
He considered that. “Good,” he replied. “Then nobody will believe when they aren’t there anymore.”
Stipe bent down and picked up one of three duffels they’d brought, pushed it into the hole, and climbed in after it. Detwiler sighed. Grabbed the remaining two bags. So typical of Stipe that he had taken only his own duffel. Stipe the solipsist, a curse and a blessing; it meant that he was always looking for a score, but also that once he had his own, he lost all interest in everybody else’s circumstance. This had resulted in Detwiler’s one stretch in juvie two decades ago, and five months in Otisville more recently.
Now that Cthulhu had come along and shredded the fabric of society, not to mention time and space, everybody he’d known in the joint was free. A lot of them, he thought, probably shouldn’t have been. And because of Stipe, Detwiler felt he bore some responsibility for Cthulhu in the first place, an opinion that was not going to make him popular with the remaining clusters of humanity.
Not unless his plan worked.
The cult of Glynn Beckman had caught Stipe’s attention for a couple of reasons. First, most of its members were wealthy inbred loons too scabrous even for the Ayn Rand followers to tolerate, but like Rand’s thugs, smug in their superiority, so much so that they tended to leave a lot of things unlocked — like for instance the walk- in safe in Beckman’s study where the cult’s finances and papers were kept — and available, like the valuable art-works decorating Beckman’s walls. That appealed to Stipe so much he joined the cult before they’d finished buttering him up. Actually, they didn’t know him as Stipe, but as Kellogg, the current and insanely wealthy scion of the cereal empire of the same name.
The cult was far more cautious and guarded about a book that Beckman claimed to have translated. He claimed that his was the only accurate translation anywhere. “All other followers of the mad Alhazred made mistakes. That’s why everyone from Whately to Akeley — who refused to act, the fool! — ultimately failed to open the gate. Yog-Sothoth is indeed the gate, but it’s only the first of six!”
It all had something to do with seals.
“Like at the circus?” Detwiler had asked.
Stipe had replied, “No, I don’t think so.”
All he expected Detwiler to do was pretend to be a rich refrigerator magnate and a total believer in Beckman’s lunacy. “A couple nights in the house, we wait till everybody’s asleep, load up all we can carry, and get out of there. By the time they notice we haven’t shown up for mimosas, we’re like in New Hampshire.”
It sounded ridiculously simple, which was probably why Detwiler thought it couldn’t possibly work. But once he was inside the house and, dressed in a rented tuxedo, was given a tour of the place, he had to admit it looked as simple as it sounded. The artwork wasn’t wired. The safe was left ajar. And when he mentioned this to Beckman, the answer astounded him. “After we open the gate, my friend, there’ll be no need for alarms, security, protection.” As Beckman explained, he puffed on a cigar the size of the Hindenberg. “We shall rule the world!”
Yep, Detwiler agreed, nuts. There was no time to waste. The group was preparing for a big ritual the following night. Detwiler worked out the scenario: the two of them would pretend to get drunk while celebrating and pass out downstairs, allowing all others to go to bed. Then they would clean the place out. He determined the fastest route through the house while carrying priceless Miros and Picassos. He’d already gotten the code number that opened the front gate of the estate — the one security element Beckman did rely upon (and which Stipe had missed). All they had to do was join in the group’s little event.
Of course things hadn’t exactly followed the script. The ceremony with the weird stone seal, which Beckman split in two, had ripped open reality, a horrible, lightning-charged rending that Detwiler still couldn’t believe he’d witnessed. From some other foul and pestilent dimension, Cthulhu slithered into this one. Unfortunately, he proved to be about the size of Godzilla, far larger than Beckman’s house. The whole place came down, beams and ceilings caving in, circuits bursting into flame. Cultists were crushed left and right, including Beckman himself.
Detwiler hightailed it into the study as the building collapsed around him. He threw open the door of the walk-in safe, at which point something clocked him. Stipe later claimed it was a plumbing fixture from the second floor, just as he claimed that Detwiler had survived only because Stipe had dragged him into the walk-in safe. That had shielded them both. But Detwiler had awakened alone. True to form, Stipe had snatched half the cash from the safe and taken off.