Dream Thing

The unrobed supplicants gathered around their leader, and even Landsburg had to admit they were a sorry-looking lot. They were all drenched in sweat and many in blood. “We have survived landfall on the island home of Krac’thlen where most others have perished. This is one of the few survivors.” He waved to Lagrasse, who felt like the man of the hour.

“Thank you, thank you. He’s right. You guys made the best landing of any boat yet. You did just the right thing, steering in the current and gunning it. Brilliant. I’d like to shake your pilot’s hand.”

“He was killed in the crash,” Sandy said. “How’d you manage to survive?”

“Used my head.” Lagrasse beamed and nodded his head forward to display the mass of clotted blood and hair.

“What happened?” Sandy asked.

“Pressure buildup. I started passing out and stuff. So I relieved the pressure with a piece of metal. His name is Sharpy.” Lagrasse showed them the sliver of aluminum scrap that he now carried everywhere he went. “You guys must really like H. P. Lucre.”

“Whether we like him or not is irrelevant,” Landsburg explained. “The fact is, he based his stories on a true but hidden mythology that we, the Supplicants of Anarchy, rediscovered in the Necronomibok.”

“I saw that movie a couple of years ago, Darkness over Sipplewich,” Lagrasse said. “It wasn’t nearly as good as the H. P. Lucre story, far as I remember. I haven’t read any of that stuff since eighth grade.”

“The movie is not relevant,” Landsburg insisted.

“You know the story when all those frog people come out of the ocean and mate with the people of Sipplewich. And Johnny Depp was reading from the Necronomibok to dispel the sea frogs. Didn’t work though. Johnny Depp ended up gettin’ frog mated himself.”

“I never heard of that one,” Sandy said.

“It was a while back. Johnny Depp looked like he just got out of high school. And man, that flick was a stinker. Must have gone straight to video.”

“It is irrelevant!” Landsburg insisted. “What is relevant is not the fiction, but the fact! The Necronomibok is fact.”

Out of his wallet pocket came the well-worn paperback. The cover said, “The book that H. P. Lucre wanted you to believe was a figment of his imagination is horrifyingly real!”

“This?” Lagrasse asked delightedly. “This is the basis for your whole cult?”

“That’s it,” said Sandy.

Landsburg was stricken by her tone. “Sandy, you have lost faith?”

Sandy sighed. “The truth is, I never believed a word of it. I just thought it was kind of exciting and all, Rob. So I went along with it. I thought it was all, you know, dramatic. Then, when we crashed, I realized you were taking this mumbo jumbo way too far. People got killed, Rob.”

“But it is not mumbo jumbo. This is truth.” He held out the Necronomibok.

“Rob, it was made up by some college kid in Dayton, Ohio, in 1974. It’s just a bunch of old alchemy books and manuals on leeching and stuff that he put together with Lucre gods inserted here and there.”

Rob Landsburg said firmly, “I have read his stories. They are there for a reason—to make people think the Necronomibok is false. It was repressed for centuries!”

“I went along with the worship ceremonies and the weird orgies and the bad costumes. I even helped them steal this boat,” Sandy explained to Lagrasse, who was an enthusiastic audience. “Then, right in the middle of the crash my common sense kicks in again. Guess I look pretty stupid.”

“Not as stupid as them,” Lagrasse said.

Landsburg could feel the silent worshipers as they weighed these words. God, what if Sandy was right? What if the book wasn’t genuine? What if all the others had died in vain?

But wait—

“These arguments are moot. The evidence lies beneath our feet. I and the Necronomibok have led you to the island of the great Krac’thlen, and it is just as the Necronomibok said it would be. This is the final evidence of the righteousness of our faith!”

The worshipers seemed to stand up straighter and Landsburg rejoiced. His power over them was restored. He was their leader again. They were eager to get going, into the city. Landsburg, too, felt the compulsion to penetrate the ruined city.

Only Sandy wasn’t responding. She was biting her lip and staring at the row of dead former friends. Well, she did not have to share in the glory that would be bestowed upon him by Krac’thlen. There would be women a-plenty for the chief priests of Krac’thlen. It was so written in the Necronomibok. He was pretty sure of that.

“You want me to show you the way?” asked the man with the hideous head wound.

“I shall lead the way,” Landsburg declared. “You may accompany us if you so desire.”