The Ghoul Realm
Earth’s Dreamland
Night between October 21st and 22nd, 1939
‘So that’s our Ghoul, eh?’ Otto Skorzeny whispered to Günther Duhrn. The two SS-officers crouched behind a large headstone with Cyrillic writing on it, obviously stolen from some East European graveyard during a Ghoul food foray into the waking world. A ways off in the broken, barren and generally dismal Realm of the Ghouls, barely visible in the eternal subterranean twilight, a markedly human-looking Ghoul was having his meal which was mercifully hidden from view by the interlaying terrain.
During the last two weeks Duhrn and Skorzeny had asked and talked their way across the Ghoul realm, ever narrowing down their search for the Lubyanka graves. Many Ghouls had been helpful, having no compunctions about giving directions in exchange for a little chit chat – but Otto never got used to the way their eyes seamed to measure his girth, or how their tongues flicked ever so slightly over their repulsive lips whenever they looked at him.
The Ghouls had some knowledge about the graveyards they haunted, and most didn’t stray far from the cemeteries of their home – because shockingly, as Skorzeny had learnt, Ghouls were men once which had degenerated to their present condition due to their necrophagous habits.
It had been relatively easy to find the region of the Realm which was in contact with the graveyards of Moscow, since it had attracted many immigrant Ghouls with its abundant supply in the last decades. Finding Lubyanka had been much harder though, until they had heard of a young Ghoul who kept apart from his brethren and fed in secret from some rich personal cache. This had greatly annoyed elder Muscovite Ghouls, who retained enough of their former human ideals to consider such hoarding unethical and lacking in solidarity, and they had wished Duhrn and Skorzeny luck in locating this hidden treasure trove. Thanks to directions from the Elder Ghouls of Moscow, they soon were able to locate the young Ghoul – young in the sense of him still retaining mostly human traits. Somehow that only made the thing more hideous, Skorzeny thought.
‘Yes, I believe so, and he looks familiar, somehow…’ Duhrn whispered back. ‘Anyway, this is how we’ll do: I will talk to him and distract his attention, while you circle behind and grab him. Then we’ll interrogate him and force him to take us into Lubyanka, if that’s where he’s been feeding.’
Otto nodded and sneaked away, staying close to the ground and making sure the feasting creature didn’t see him. After a while, he heard Duhrn begin a conversation in the guttural and barking language of the Ghouls, but he soon switched to stuttering Russian. He had to give the bastard credit for knowing so many languages, Otto thought as he crept forward. Suddenly he realized the conversation had become very agitated. Apparently the Ghoul had turned aggressive, spitting and hissing out Russian words that sounded derogatory, to put it mildly. Peering over the crest of a dusty heap of rock, Skorzeny saw Duhrn keeping the menacing creature at bay with a drawn dagger.
Not sure what that was about, he rose and sneaked up behind the hissing and screaming thing, noting with disgust that it still wore the remains of some kind of uniform, rotting away now and smeared with refuse of its feeding. In the last instant the Ghoul turned, but even its unnatural speed and strength were no match for the Disciple of Chiun, who jumped forward and kicked out the Ghoul’s feet under him with a sweeping low kick. Before the creature could even begin to rise, Skorzeny pushed the razor-sharp point of the Rune Sword to its throat.
‘No! Mercy!’ hissed the half-ghoul, it’s horribly degenerated features only too human in their expression of fear and desperation.
‘Skorzeny… I think it’s Yezhov!’ Duhrn exclaimed, looking dumbstruck.
‘What? Stalin’s butcher? But he’s supposed to be dead?’ the Austrian answered, frowning.
‘He was purged, yes… but I recognize him still. It’s Yezhov alright…’
The Ghoul whined piteously. ‘Yeeezhooov… Nicolaiii Ivaaanovich Yeeezhov… Yeees, that waaas my naaame… Befooore…’
‘What happened to you? Answer me!’ Duhrn shouted, underlining his words with vicious kicks of his booted feet.
Yezhov furled up into a protective ball, whining like a kicked dog. ‘No! No! Bad
Nemtsi, evil
Nemtsi don’t hurt poor Nicolaiii!’
‘How gratifying, he knows we’re Germans.’ Duhrn said dryly, his face a mask of pitiless contempt for the wretched thing he was torturing. ‘Yes, we’re Germans, you worm, we’re the fucking Master Race and we’ll do whatever we damn well please with you until you DO - AS - YOU’RE - TOLD!’ He interspersed his speech with cruelly placed kicks which made the Ghoul that had been the head of the NKVD howl with pain.
‘Hey, take it easy there!’ Otto protested. ‘He can’t speak much while you’re kicking the living shit out of him, can he?’
Durhn paused. ‘I suppose you’re right. Well, what happened to you, Yezhov? Weren’t you supposed to be executed?’
Weeping and coughing, Yezhov tried to answer. ‘Stalin! Ordered me shot… Beeeria, damned Beria, all his fault… and the bitch… sheee did it to meee!’
‘Go on, or you’ll get another taste of my boot!’ Duhrn roared.
‘Poor Nicolaiii, they took into the basement, made kneeel in a ceeell… knew they were going to shooot in the neck! Always the same, shooot in the neck… so when the shot come, Nicolaiii moves his head… bullet just makes a big wound, not kill… But Nicolai smart, play dead good! Then they throw Nicolaiii in dark, stinking place, many bodies… many, many! Throw some white stuff that burns the skin on Nicolaiii too, then they leave. Soon, mad with pain, thirst, hunger! Had to eat! Had to! Many days go by, I eat and eat. And then… Nicolaiii changes.’ Yezhov looked up at his captors, suddenly lucid again. ‘
Bozhemoi… Did I die?’
The Germans looked with horror on the Ghoul that had been Yezhov. ‘It’s a matter of definitions, I suppose,’ Duhrn answered after a while. ‘But the important thing is, can you lead us back to that dark place, the place you feed from? We need to go there, but we promise we won’t touch your… food.’
‘You can say that again!’ said Skorzeny in wholehearted agreement.
Suddenly looking hopeful, Yezhov sat up. ‘And not tell other Ghouls? Promise?’
‘Promise. Now, walk you filth!’
The transition from Dreamland to waking world was as sudden as it was seamless. A cave mouth in the side of a black cliffside turned out to lead into a small brick room with a dirt floor. There was such a noxious smell of rotting flesh in that infernal chamber that Duhrn and Skorzeny couldn’t help gagging. Yezhov didn’t seem the least affected though. There was no electric lighting in the room, but in the light of their flaming torches, the SS-men saw that most of the dirt floor had been dug up and filled with bodies, which had then been covered with a thin layer of dirt, removed in places to reveal the full horror of what lied beneath. A steel-framed door in one wall offered an obvious way out of the room.
‘Locked the door is, until new body they bring…’ the Ghoul-man whispered, slavering unconsciously.
‘Right. Now, get out of here!’ Durhn ordered.
Skorzeny frowned. ‘I guess we could simply knock at the door. Odds are they’ll go and check if it is a victim needing another bullet – but we don’t have any guns. Guns will work here in the waking world, won’t they?’
‘Oh yes,’ answered Duhrn. ‘You’ll have to use the sword at first, to capture us some guns so we can go about this mission properly armed. So, shall we?’
Holding the Rune Sword ready for a decapitating blow, Skorzeny knocked on the door leading into the bowels of the Lubyanka building, headquarters of the NKVD.
