The New York Magician by Jacob Zimmerman Read Free Book Online Page B

for what I could tell. The thought was chilling, more so than the billions of calories of heat energy stolen into cold water rushing through the chamber. I climbed up on the middle of the seven visible shapes and examined the top. There were strange runes there, carved into the metal, which I couldn't read. At one end, the shape was higher. I caught a glint of reflection there and moved to that end, balancing carefully atop the shape which part of my mind still saw as a giant pipe. There was a portal there, some form of glass or crystal, set in the smooth surface.
    I really, really didn't want to look. But I had no choice. The Djinn had charged me with a task, and I'd accepted, although I still wasn't sure why. I lifted the Maglite to the window and shined the small beam through it.
    Whatever was within was gray, and green, and filled the sarcophagus, unmoving. Water was rushing past it, bubbles indicating the speed of its passage and that whatever else this was, it was a pipe, still. I twisted the Maglite's end to widen the beam.
    An enormous head, perhaps a meter and a half in diameter, looked up at me above a mass of what could only be tentacles. My chest contracted in purely involuntary response, and I'm quite certain I would have screamed had I not been too terrified to move a muscle. I was only released from my terror when there was a flash of color as the shape beneath me opened bright yellow eyes the size of dinner plates.
    I fainted.
    Irem Zhat al-Imad means 'Irem of the Pillars.' It's an ancient city of myth, lost in the deepest deserts of Araby, inside The Empty Quarter. Some say that 'pillars' in this case don't mean pillars, literally, but are a metaphor for the Old Ones - ancient gods who are singularly unconcerned with the fate of mankind. Being so far above Man in terms of their power, Man is nothing more than a slight pest, or infestation of the world that they are interested in. Some legends say that other gods united to banish them or imprison them so as to make the world a place safe for lesser deities to play in, and, coincidentally, for man as well.
    Only one of those Old Ones has anything resembling tentacles. It has various names, but most seemed to center on the Arab word 'Khadulu' or 'abandoner.' It is the most powerful of the beings left physically on our world - one who could open gateways to the Great Old Ones, and in whose power the fate of our world rested.
    His name has been corrupted many times. Only one thing was constant, in the various descriptions of him among the various tellers of myths and keepers of lore - Cthulhu didn't care much about Men, among whose number was I.
    I awoke at the base of the pipe I'd been kneeling on. My head, right arm and left side ached sharply, indicating that they'd probably taken a hit on my way down. My gun was digging painfully into my ribs. There was a burning feeling on my chest.
    I struggled to my feet and looked around. A pool of dim light indicated the Maglite; I collected it (dented but unbroken) and pocketed it again. This surely didn't look like any form of Empty Quarter, but the Djinn had said that didn't matter. " The Rhub al-Qali is as much a place of the mind as of the world, Michel. It exists, or co-exists, with your own. It cannot be found on its own. It can only be found when it overlaps with yours, much as I can only be addressed when I overlap with Mankind."
    Well.
    The image of those enormous eyes filled my head, and I shuddered. The Djinn hadn't told me what I would find, here. He'd hinted there might be 'gods' but for sure hadn't mentioned anything like that . Time to be elsewhere.
    MICHEL .
    Have you ever heard a thunderbolt voice your name? I hadn't either, until right then. I clapped my hands over my ears reflexively, realizing even as I did so that it would make no difference. "Fuck!"
    MICHEL, FACE ME .
    I looked longingly off towards the staircase. Then I reached a hand inside my jacket, cuffed away the sweat of terror with my other