A New Year
1939 had been dominated by Germany’s ruthless and callous expansion policy and Britain’s desperate efforts to maintain the peace. France on the other hand seemed, in retrospect, eager to lure Germany into war with Poland and the United Kingdom. The French had attacked without any formal declaration of war and had pushed deep into Germany while much of the German army had been fighting in Poland. Germany finally defeated Poland in the beginning of December and partitioned the hapless nation together with the Soviet Union according to a secret addendum to the von Hassel – Molotov pact. However, Germany appeared mortally wounded by the French in the west as it started to transfer the bulk of its Army and air force to face the “back stabbing French”; would the desperate measures like raising the Volkssturm militia be enough to halt the French advance? Only time could tell…
“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.”
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Haunter Of The Dark, 1936
Eisenach, French-occupied Germany
6th January 1940
It was finally dawn! The interior of his small simple room at “Günthers Gasthaus” was clearly visible as the January sun struggled to rise over the icy horizon. But it was still dark in that terrible corner of the room…from where…Oliver Haddo groaned and drew the blanket over his head; the small bed creaked under his considerable weight. He was cold but sweaty and closed his eyes hard as if in agony, mumbling to himself. No matter how hard he tried to blank out his mind, the memories came back and repeated themselves over and over again.
He was back in the gutted church again…outside Weimar…the dark sky lit up by the endless artillery duels in the east, the air full of sounds of the not too distant fighting. Oliver could feel the emotions of the fighting and dying men in the air, a powerful mix of fear, determination and hatred; perfect for the nights purpose. They had parked at the nearest French Army checkpoint and Oliver had used his considerable powers to convince the soldiers that he and his party was high ranking French Officers with the right credentials and they had been allowed to approach the front. They were all wearing black robes with hoods and some of them were carrying items essential to the ceremony; Oliver himself held the Shining Trapezohedron in a firm grip. The badly damaged gothic church towered before them as they approached; it was too dark here off the road and Oliver ordered them to light their torches. They entered the church and walked carefully among the debris to the altar. The others started the mundane work, setting up braziers and loading them with coal while Oliver placed the Shining Trapezohedron on the altar. The Englishman then closed his eyes and concentrated, his astral body flew out of the church and proceeded east, towards the front. He reached the town and like a predator he started the search for his pray, the outer gods liked their sacrifices as innocent as possible. Oliver read the minds of hundreds of French soldiers and worked his way from the front line backwards, he found a suitable victim in one of the transport units in the rear. Twenty one year old Private Narcisse Pierpont had never killed anyone, was a nice and helpful fellow who rarely felt hatred towards his fellow humans. He was guarding one of the trucks when he felt a slight headache coming on and then his consciousness was swept away into darkness as Oliver assumed control. Pierpont’s stolen body left its post and walked away, it reached the church half an hour later. Everything was ready for the ceremony as the victim walked up beside the altar and two of the robed figures tied Pierpont’s arms and feet with a strong rope and put rag in his mouth.
Oliver Haddo astral form returned to his body and he opened his eyes and looked at Pierpont who had just regained control of himself and looked around, the terror apparent on his face as he took in the scene around him. Two hooded figures held Pierpont as Oliver Haddo picked up a plain very sharp bronze dagger lying beside the Shining Trapezohedron on the altar. They ripped open the terrified soldier’s uniform jacket and Oliver then spent five minutes cutting an intricate pattern into the struggling Pierpont’s chest. The Englishman then retreated and positioned himself in front of the altar and raised his arms and spoke, “Disciples! Seekers of the Ultimate truth! Tonight we will finally meet our dark god, and as it feasts on our sacrificial gift, it will share its boundless knowledge with us and tell us what we must do to serve its ultimate purpose. Let the ceremony begin!”
Oliver Haddo stood silent with his hands resting on the lid of The Shining Trapezohedron while his followers chanted. He felt dark energies from the fighting and dying men at the front empowering the ritual as the chanting intensified; he picked up the dagger again and used its blade to scoop up blood from Peirpont’s wounds and then opened the yellowish metal box and looked at the Shining Trapezohedron, the huge stone was dark and foreboding. The chanting reached its peak and Haddo let drops of blood trickle down from the blade down onto the artifact while he raised his left hand and uttered a guttural incantation; everything went black and even some French artillery positions nearby couldn’t see the muzzle flame of their guns when firing, only the stars and moon could be faintly seen against the black winter sky. This surprised none of the cultist and they patiently awaited the arrival of their lord in the darkness. The robed figures didn’t have to wait for long; just as Haddo thought he saw a faint crimson glow deep within the Shining Trapezohedron, they all heard the beating of wings and a rancid, dreadful smell assaulted their senses. They instinctively looked up through the opening in the church’s ceiling and witnessed a spreading blur of denser titan-blue darkness against the inky sky, formless cloudy black wings beating an abyssal wind and a blasphemous three-lobed burning eye gazing hungrily at them. The presence entered the church and hovered over the altar and they all held their breaths while feeling how the creature looked into their very souls. Then it struck, the sound of an electrical discharge and a muffled scream, the smell of burnt flesh mingled with the creature’s awful odor. Something was wrong here, Haddo knew he had heard the scream somewhere behind him and that meant…his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a more drawn out electrical discharge and screams from several of his comrades. The remaining half of the cultist panicked and cursed his name as they ran for the exit of the building, he knew it would be to no avail and prepared himself for death; Haddo could hear how the soldier fell and tried to crawl his way from the grisly scene. More lightless bursts of electricity struck down the remaining fleeing cultist, who fell screaming on top of each other. Haddo could still hear Private Pierpont crawling clumsily and slowly towards the exit while he felt how the Haunter scrutinized him. “Death or boundless knowledge?” He said with a trembling voice and felt how more of the few remains of his sanity crumbled and fell down into the dread chasm that was his soul. But neither came and suddenly the creature left him, rising up towards the sky, beating its mighty wings and disappeared in the darkness.
The lights returned as the veil of darkness was lifted and Haddo stood shaking like a leaf for a minute before he looked around and took in the mayhem. The charred flesh and bones of his fellow cultist lay scattered in the church and he noticed a strange yellow residue on all of the remains as he walked around examining them in a daze. The sounds of the slow but desperate escape of Private Pierpont broke the spell and Haddo hurried over to the altar and closed the lid of the Shining Trapezohedron’s protective box and picked it up and realized that in his right hand, he was still holding the sacrificial dagger in a painfully hard grip; he relaxed his fingers around the hilt a bit and turned and walked over to the crawling soldier. Haddo’s first impulse was to cut the man’s throat, he had seen too much, but the Haunter had spared his life; it could be the will of the outer god that the man should live. Yet a part of him wanted to strike out at Pierpont, cutting him to pieces, in a revenge of sorts for the pointless death of his fellow cultists. Not that he cared for them, but they had been very useful to him and now he had the arduous task of finding adequate replacements before him. He cursed loudly and cut the man’s ropes; Peirpont’s mumbling thanks were cut short when Oliver smashed his face with the hilt of the dagger, knocking the man unconscious and walked out into the night. He could hear that the closest French artillery positions had recovered from the experience of the strange darkness as they opened up on German positions again.
Günthers Gasthaus on Mittermayer Strasse 15 in Eisenach
Oliver had traveled west and reached Eisenach three days ago; he got a room in the first inn he saw, the “Günthers Gasthaus”. There he spent the first two days going through the ritual, trying to find any errors, but he couldn’t think of anything. He ate all meals in his room and slept very little. Oliver spent the previous day arranging his journey back to Paris and went to bed early as his train left at six thirty the next morning. He was just about to fall asleep when he felt a presence in the room; someone was watching him from the dark corner farthest from his bed.
“Oliver…” The voice spoke in accented English, perhaps Arabic of origin; apart from that it sounded perfectly normal but the presence he could only vaguely see in the weak moonlight terrified him immensely. “What is it you desire Oliver?” The voice continued.
Haddo struggled to steady his voice and was only partially successful, “I want to serve you…be your disciple and earn access to the court of Azathoth…”
The presence in the dark laughed mockingly. “Most ambitious of you…stronger men than you have tried and failed.”
“That might be so, but I still want to try.”
“Yes I see, any chance, no matter how tiny, to escape your fellow hairless monkeys and their pointless existence is enough.” The voice gave the impression of concern.
“Do we have a deal then?” Oliver asked.
“Yes my eager apprentice…we have a deal.” The presence took a step out of the corner into the moonlight and Oliver saw a middle aged baldheaded Arabic man with a black beard. Haddo was relieved at first but then his gaze fell upon the dark eyes of the man, they were deep and hypnotic and suddenly it was like looking into the Shining Trapezohedron, he saw visions of strange landscapes and alien creatures mingled with scenes from the past and the future of earth. “As a first lesson let me show you a vision of the prize you seek, the court of the Daemon-Sultan!”
Oliver had screamed like a wounded bear while horrible and bizarre images assaulted his mind. He had no idea how long it continued but it felt like a hundred years passed before it finally ended; but there was to be no rest that night, the Arab sat down on the floor and whispered terrible secrets to him until dawn.
“...that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.”
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, 1927