“If you won’t use it, HP, give it to Glory.”
Lovecraft handed the .38 to Glory and then fumbled in his satchel until he produced a small flint dagger, no larger than a letter opener. Howard rolled his eyes.
Above them, the sounds of the wind grew muffled, then loud again.
A trickle of sand fell from one of the levels above them.
“What do we do now?” said Howard.
“I suggest we attempt something with the Artifact. It has led us this far. It only stands to reason that it would not merely strand us in some Godforsaken stone chamber.”
Glory stuck the .38 in her waistband and leaned back against the stone wall, feeling its pleasant coldness through her blouse. She pulled out a cigarette and her pack of matches, but the moment she struck the match, a gust of air extinguished it. Frustrated, she turned toward the wall to block the last match she had from being blown out. She lit the cigarette and was about to toss the still-burning match away when she noticed a very faint pictograph of a stone circle on the wall. Above the pictograph was a spiked outcropping of rock that cast a dim shadow from the illuminated Artifact, indicating a small depression in the pattern. “Look!” Glory called. “There’s something important here.”
Lovecraft arrived first and pointed the beam of his flashlight at the petroglyph. It was badly eroded by time—far older than many of the other carvings on the walls. He thought at first that it was the image of the sun with long curlicue rays extending outward, but then he recognized the stylized splay of curls. They were the limbs of Cthulhu. At that instant Lovecraft felt an intense pain in his side. He doubled over, clutching at his watch pocket. He dropped his flashlight, and yet the light seemed to get brighter.
“HP?”
Lovecraft tried to answer. Suddenly he was blinded by beams of light shooting out of his side-it was the Artifact, glowing so brightly it seemed about to explode. The pulses of light seemed almost sentient; they illuminated the depression at the center of the graven Cthulhu image, and now with their faces partially averted they could all see the shape of that depression. It was the outline of the Artifact, exactly to scale.
“It’s the key,” said Howard.
Glory helped Lovecraft back to his feet. He seemed unusually light for such a large man, she thought. There was something ephemeral about him, as if half of him did not really exist, as if he were half-gone in the ether.
With unsteady fingers, Lovecraft cautiously removed the blinding Artifact from his watch pocket and placed it against the indentation in the stone. The grit of erosion impeded it, so he leaned forward and blew forcefully, clearing the dust. After a fit of sneezing, he tried again, turning it slightly, and it snapped right in, drawn by a magnetic force. Instantly, the sounds of the howling wind above them halted, and their eardrums popped painfully as if they were suddenly transported, for the most fleeting of instants, into the vacuum of deep space. An absolute, deafening silence enveloped them-the true sound of the grave, Lovecraft thought grimly to himself.
Though Lovecraft held the only source of light perfectly still in his hands the pointed shadow from the outcropping of rock began to tremble. They watched in amazement as it began to stir and then slowly bend, snaking its way across the ceiling over their heads, writhing like a living thing until it finally halted its path near a wall of jagged stone. They had just examined the area minutes before and found nothing, but now, where the shadow rested on the wall, there appeared the mouth of a narrow passageway as if the shadow itself were a hole in the stone.
They did not wait. They stepped into the tight crevasse and squeezed their way between the walls of stone until they emerged on the other side.
It was a stone chamber the likes of which they had never seen. Rising above them was a giant vaulted dome covered in swatches of multicolored stone that looked uncannily like Spanish moss. They were standing at the entrance of what could have been the most magnificent cathedral, but this one was underground and everything in it, each and every thing, was stone. In the light of the Artifact, they could see most of the chamber and the odd formations of stalagmites that stood like clusters of giant red and white mushrooms roughly textured like the side of a sperm whale’s head. They were struck silent in their awe, and they began slowly to navigate a path through the stalagmites, following the Artifact’s bright pulse.
“How will we get back?” Howard whispered when they got to the far side of the chamber. He pointed in the direction they had come to show that there was no sign of how they had entered.
“The only trick I know is what Theseus used in the Labyrinth,” said Glory.
Lovecraft opened his satchel and produced a ball of twine and Howard stifled a laugh. “That won’t do us much good, HP. Anyhow, those two odd fellas behind us ain’t likely to leave any string on the ground for our convenience. It’ll just lead them to us.”
“Only a bit of humor,” said Lovecraft. “The mention of Theseus bodes well for us, though what we face is hardly the Minotaur. I always wondered how large a ball of string he had.”
“You have another idea?”
“We will not need to resort to physical measures,” said Lovecraft, putting the twine back. “I will remember the path out, no matter how far in we are likely to go.”
“Since when were you a caveman, HP?”
“I cannot explain it now, but I am able to see the cave and our path through it as if I were looking at a map.”
“Imanito’s sand painting,” said Howard.
“Yes. I see it clearly in my mind.”
“Well, then let’s not wait around,” said Glory. “I don’t want to meet our friends down here.”
Lovecraft moved toward a jagged aperture in the wall of the chamber, and Glory followed.
“Not so fast,” said Howard.
“What’s the matter?” Glory asked.
“I ain’t meanin’ no disrespect here, but what if HP don’t make it back with us?”
Glory stopped dead in her tracks and gave Howard a cold look. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Well, it’s the truth, Glory.”
“Don’t you trust your best friend? Or is it different for men?” Howard said nothing, and the tension grew until Lovecraft intervened. “It is the truth,” he said with a sense of resignation. “I have obviously not devoted my energies to thinking through the various outcomes of our scenarios. What do you suggest, Bob?”
“I’m gonna mark our trail, if ya don’t mind.”
“And wouldn’t that give the odd men something by which to follow us, as you have rightly pointed out yourself?”
“I just thought about it again, and I don’t hardly think it makes a difference to them. I’d worry more that they’d erase the markers. We’re in their neck of the woods now. Anyhow, the markers wouldn’t take them right to us ‘cause they’d mark the way back, not forward. ”
“All right then,” said Lovecraft.
Howard found a piece of crystal and scratched a directional arrow onto the wall. “Let’s go.”
From the vaulted chamber, the narrow passage led steeply downward, its walls coated with what looked precisely like the slime that covered the walls of sewers. It looked smooth, as if it would come off in one’s hands, but the slime was petrified, and it was the wrong color. As they descended, the passage became narrower until they had to squeeze through an opening and then climb downward in a giant tube spiked with stalactites the size of broadsword blades.
Lovecraft had once seen the mouth parts of a snail-the circle of teeth not so much chewing as piercing by constriction, and now the image brought on a wash of claustrophobia. He imagined himself crawling down the gullet of a giant, petrified sea snail, and his limbs would no longer obey his brain. He stood there, trembling, in a cold sweat, until Glory put her arms around him and calmed him with soothing words as Howard waited. When Lovecraft’s fit passed, they continued; the tunnel leveled out and wound left and right in irregular zigzags until it opened into another chamber.