and would have sat there in the rusted grass swaying like old women except for what they became aware was happening around them. All three of them saw it at once. Ralf quivered like a gong and Pantucci let out a pitiful moan. Autway began to laugh, then to howl.
Henley's black and distorted body was writhing on the ground in the most inhuman way, the head bending backward to the feet, the waist twisting full around. There was a vast greasy hole in its torso where the bullet had struck, and that gap was widening and ripping. The body was peeling away, cracking open like a pod, droozing a quivering cheesy bladder - the delirious, gelatinous body of Nyarlathotep.
It was massive. By some abominable infusion, it swelled to twice the size of the body it hatched from.
Its surface was covered with something sticky, a black sap, bubbling, running off at the sides, carrying with it a bed of pearls, shiny curdled clods of milk, thick clusters of eggs. Something like pinworms needled over the gummy black silk, glimmering with a rabid bacterial fire. The body it pulled from was reduced to a cake of filaments that crumbled and lapsed with blue volts to dusty embers cooking in a soft camarine light. Then the thick singed-grease odours wafted across the field to them, and Pantucci began to retch.
Ralf couldn't take his eyes off the thing. It was hovering a few meters off the ground, its jelly sac bloated with webs of blue-pulsing veins. Tendrils, lionred, fiayed open around mouthlike gaping seams that writhed below the bulbed body. The tentacles were pushing it off, into the air, and it was lifting, its hideous rippled hulk was rising up over the puddling mess of its cocoon.
Ralf heaved himself to his feet. He wanted to flee, to bolt like wind, but another horror had fixed him.
The pond was churning. Dense forms were rising to their shadows and breaking the surface.
Webbed appendages lashed among the foaming waters - fiat faces, lizard-eyed shark maws splashed towards the shore. Autway was standing before them, his arms outspread, his wild hair whipped by his ecstatic movements.
The forms that were bobbling towards the bank were soaked black with the leakage and seepings of a putrid hell. Autway was savagely dancing, and Ralf heard him - he knew it was impossible, his ears were gluey with blood - but nonetheless he heard his cracked voice vomiting its laughter in his skull: 'Nightroarer! Domn mine enemies. And corry me. Corry me afar de dream. Vever dos miroir!
O Nyarla! Sonde miroir! Nyarlathotep!' And then he was gone. A humped, bubbling gob lurched out of the pool and sprawled over him. For an instant, Ralf thought he could see his shocked, screaming face in the milky translucence, then there was only a red cloud in the midst of a throbbing amoebic thing.
Pantucci bellowed and clutched the attache. With a whipped run, he scampered along the rim of the pool towards the forest. A beaked, squid-headed mauler slobbered to shore and with gangling limbs pursued him. He was crying as he ran and, desperately, he heaved the attach~ away. But it was no good.
The creature was on him, all the seams and pleats of its throat fibrillating insanely as it hoisted him up with one pincered, blotched arm. Even after the greenscaled beak crushed him, he was kicking spastically, swivelling his arms.
Ralf almost choked on his fear. A gun in each hand, he backed off into the forest, blasting several rounds into a gaping eyeless sucker-mouth. He burst through the hedge and broke into a frantic clipped run. Howling and sobbing, he hopped among root-tangles, lashed through hanging vines, and slammed into a thick thorn bush, shredding his jellaba, tearing his flesh to be free, and kicking off into the gravedark forest. He could hear nothing. He was still deaf and too terrified to glance back. But there were vibrations. Dull, thudding, deadfall sensations that reached him through the ground.
Ralf lunged over the rotted shell of a tree, felt his leg catch
Henley's black and distorted body was writhing on the ground in the most inhuman way, the head bending backward to the feet, the waist twisting full around. There was a vast greasy hole in its torso where the bullet had struck, and that gap was widening and ripping. The body was peeling away, cracking open like a pod, droozing a quivering cheesy bladder - the delirious, gelatinous body of Nyarlathotep.
It was massive. By some abominable infusion, it swelled to twice the size of the body it hatched from.
Its surface was covered with something sticky, a black sap, bubbling, running off at the sides, carrying with it a bed of pearls, shiny curdled clods of milk, thick clusters of eggs. Something like pinworms needled over the gummy black silk, glimmering with a rabid bacterial fire. The body it pulled from was reduced to a cake of filaments that crumbled and lapsed with blue volts to dusty embers cooking in a soft camarine light. Then the thick singed-grease odours wafted across the field to them, and Pantucci began to retch.
Ralf couldn't take his eyes off the thing. It was hovering a few meters off the ground, its jelly sac bloated with webs of blue-pulsing veins. Tendrils, lionred, fiayed open around mouthlike gaping seams that writhed below the bulbed body. The tentacles were pushing it off, into the air, and it was lifting, its hideous rippled hulk was rising up over the puddling mess of its cocoon.
Ralf heaved himself to his feet. He wanted to flee, to bolt like wind, but another horror had fixed him.
The pond was churning. Dense forms were rising to their shadows and breaking the surface.
Webbed appendages lashed among the foaming waters - fiat faces, lizard-eyed shark maws splashed towards the shore. Autway was standing before them, his arms outspread, his wild hair whipped by his ecstatic movements.
The forms that were bobbling towards the bank were soaked black with the leakage and seepings of a putrid hell. Autway was savagely dancing, and Ralf heard him - he knew it was impossible, his ears were gluey with blood - but nonetheless he heard his cracked voice vomiting its laughter in his skull: 'Nightroarer! Domn mine enemies. And corry me. Corry me afar de dream. Vever dos miroir!
O Nyarla! Sonde miroir! Nyarlathotep!' And then he was gone. A humped, bubbling gob lurched out of the pool and sprawled over him. For an instant, Ralf thought he could see his shocked, screaming face in the milky translucence, then there was only a red cloud in the midst of a throbbing amoebic thing.
Pantucci bellowed and clutched the attache. With a whipped run, he scampered along the rim of the pool towards the forest. A beaked, squid-headed mauler slobbered to shore and with gangling limbs pursued him. He was crying as he ran and, desperately, he heaved the attach~ away. But it was no good.
The creature was on him, all the seams and pleats of its throat fibrillating insanely as it hoisted him up with one pincered, blotched arm. Even after the greenscaled beak crushed him, he was kicking spastically, swivelling his arms.
Ralf almost choked on his fear. A gun in each hand, he backed off into the forest, blasting several rounds into a gaping eyeless sucker-mouth. He burst through the hedge and broke into a frantic clipped run. Howling and sobbing, he hopped among root-tangles, lashed through hanging vines, and slammed into a thick thorn bush, shredding his jellaba, tearing his flesh to be free, and kicking off into the gravedark forest. He could hear nothing. He was still deaf and too terrified to glance back. But there were vibrations. Dull, thudding, deadfall sensations that reached him through the ground.
Ralf lunged over the rotted shell of a tree, felt his leg catch
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