The Acolyte
It seemed at once that all eight men who made up the circle caught their breath at once as they felt the palsied tremor in the earth before them and the great stone unmistakably began to move.
Henry Oster was new to this. His robe fitted poorly; it made his skin itch and gathered in loose pools of material at his feet. The cowl hung low, narrowing his vision to the small rectangle of ground that lay just ahead of him. He had initially regarded this as a virtue but as the sounds around him had grown in strangeness and magnitude and consumed the night with the howls and wails of unseen demons and phantoms that either haunted the desolate switch of trees at his back or crept and stirred, dragging their sluggish carcasses through the clinging ground fog towards him, he wished he were not there. He wished also that he had never been reintroduced to Lord Freddie Reynolds at an Old Etonians’ alumni dinner. That he had dreamt his meeting with the cadaverous Dr. Leth and that most of all he had never ventured out upon this blasted heath with its ancient stones and druidical carvings to stand in another man’s robes before the yawning pit that was now opening at his feet.
“It will be such fun,” Lord Freddie had exclaimed in that high braying whinny he used for a laugh. “You simply must join us. Dr. Leth is going to summon forth a creature for the new millennium.”
And Henry had laughed as the gin and vermouth gripped his mind and garbled whatever Lord Freddie was saying until it seemed that whatever was being suggested was going to be the greatest fun he had ever experienced and who on earth could believe that the shrunken homuncular Dr. Leth could summon more than his own breath.
The ancient stone slid away. The dank fog poured into the opening and it seemed as if the gaping chasm sank forever. Dark storms stirred in the stygian depths. Lights flashed and pulsed as immense tentacles and gigantic scaly reptilian limbs flickered and swept into view before disappearing again in the boiling darkness.
Dr. Leth spoke in a voice clear as a church bell striking the hour. “I call upon the Great Ancient Ones. I ask you now to bring forth the unnamed one.” He drew a deep breath for the name he intended was long and complex and no error could be afforded.
The cavernous pit belched fire and flame in anticipation, and in a moment that Henry would come to recognize as his one contribution to his kind he gave voice to his terror.
“Christ on a bike,” he exclaimed.
A bolt of lightning erupted from the depths and as sudden fear flashed on Henry’s face, from deep within the bowels of the earth the tinkling of a small bell announced the Second Coming.