Red Baron, Red America (Part 2)

Crack!

The forest seemed to muffle the Mauser; she didn't emit that harsh, fatalistic sound he was used to. The trees were intimidating and ancient, lichen dyeing their trunks verdigris. Dead leaves from the autumns of many past centuries cloaked the ground.

Von Richthofen's weapon was effective.

"You've got him, sire!" Elwin's tone was worshipful.

"A squirrel," said von Richthofen, squinting through the scope. "It fell. Right there. You see that tree next to that outcropping?"

"Do you want this one too?"

"Of course."

"You've killed ... hundreds." Elwin held up a brace of carcasses, counting.

"Not hundreds," said von Richthofen. "Nine. And now ten. Retrieve the squirrel, if you please!" A day of hangdog looks had taught von Richthofen to not ask Elwin to fetch the squirrel.

Elwin saluted comically. "Yes, sire!"

Americans could not naturally be this obedient. Their fabled wanderlust resulted merely from the nervous questing of the spiritless for a soul. Von Richthofen had pondered how best to rule them, should the Kaiser move to quell their disorders. There were no easy answers. Public executions were a drastic solution. Could they be distracted by comedy? And where in Germany might one find a comedian?

Von Richthofen ejected the spent round. Briefly he considered reloading. But the light slanted low from the west. Soon the sun would dip below the peaks of the mountains and shadow would spread across the hills. The waning moon guaranteed a dark night. It was time to head back to the farmhouse. Elwin had promised squirrel stew, and von Richthofen was willing to risk it.

He was tired and eager for sleep. Von Richthofen had taken to throwing his bedroom window wide open. Though the dogs barked and howled like mad over at the Akeley place he dropped into dreams as easily as if he leaped from an airplane.

And the dreams. So vivid, so real. Again he was a disembodied flier, spiraling higher and higher as if riding a plume of air heavenwards. The clouds sank below him. The world turned hazy--green patched with brown and laced with delicate blue stitches. And then--the horizon darkened to indigo, then purple, then cooled into black. The stars shone like serpents' frosty eyes, cold and impersonal in the void. To his left the Sun, resplendent in gold and crimson robes, bedecked with rings and glittering with rubies like some ancient terrible god roaring from a flame-wreathed throne. To his right the Moon, coolly garbed with samite, thronged with secrets, gibbous like a howling mouth, chanting unknown spells of doom.

He wasn't thinking so much of Communists and perils and plots.

"Right through the head, sire, right through the head!" Spitting tobacco, Elwin brandished the squirrels.

'Sire' amused von Richthofen. Common folk were often fierce royalists without realizing it. They yearned for order, for stability, the way children sought advice from a stern yet loving father. "Good, Elwin, good. Now how does one make squirrel stew?"

"Well, sire," Elwin began, "you brown the squirrel with some bacon and some butter. We got some bacon in the larder back home. I got it from the general store. Very hard to find these days. Then you add some tomatoes--I can get them from Akeley, I'd say, unless he's in one of his states--" Elwin rolled his eyes "--some onions out of the garden. Then--"

Out of the corner of von Richthofen's eye: a sudden blur of motion. A bush shivered. Birds scattered into the sky. Then nothing. No birdsong. No wind.

Unnatural.

"Quiet!" Instinct prompted von Richthofen to drop into a crouch.

"Sire--"

Von Richthofen pulled Elwin down next to him. He pointed. "Did you see that?" he whispered.

"Saw nothing, sire," Elwin whispered. His eyes were huge as eggs.

"That bush. Something large. I saw it. It leaped through it ... " Von Richthofen paused. "Are there pink birds here?"

Elwin blinked. "Pink?"

"Pink."

"No, sire. No big pink birds."

"Go back," said von Richthofen. "Take the squirrels. Make the stew. I'll be there shortly."

"Sire, I--"

Von Richthofen silenced him with the steely glance that had watched Lanoe Hawker impact in shell-pocked mud.

Far too noisily Elwin traipsed off, the swinging carcasses like a metronome ticking off the remaining seconds of mortal existence.

Eerie, that brief vision of pink flesh. Was it real? It had been ephemeral, like seeing a racing snake slither between shadows. The bush trembling like a woman revolted by a rapist's grasp. Claws. A prawn-like body. An elliptical head, wreathed in--polyps? Wings, membranous and delicate. A creature from a nightmare world walking in the world of flesh and blood. The afterimage of the thing turned his guts to ice.

Far away he heard the putt-putt of an approaching motor car.

Combat instincts prevailed. Von Richthofen chambered a round in his Mauser and advanced, darting behind trees, closing on the bush. Leaves lay thick on the ground. In clear patches prints churned the soft, loamy soil: fox, deer, bear. The whispering wind sounded like the breathing of the sleeping inmates of some asylum.

Yes. Something had been here. Something unearthly, monstrous. There were claw prints thick around the bush, huge, almost man-sized. They were symmetrical about the central pad, almost as if the thing had been looking backwards and forwards, Janus-like.

The stench in the air recalled the trenches: the sweet-rotten odor of death, enticing, revolting, ever present, indomitable.

Cautiously he pushed through the bush. Pustules of repellent slime hung from the leaves like feeding maggots.

On the far side the land fell away into a valley. The Green Mountains undulated to the end of vision like a sea disturbed by a submerged Jörmungandr. A hundred meters down a thin road wound between the trees. The stuttering engine of the motor car was louder, but the vehicle was invisible in the shadowy cutting.

Somewhere nearby lurked a nest of bees, because a thick, droning buzz, pulsating and angry, filled the air.

The sky was clear of birds, pink or otherwise.

Something ominous was close, breathing like a dark nightmare shape standing over a half-dreaming paralyzed man. Dread filled him.

Fingers trembling, he thumbed the Mauser's safety off.

The sinister droning of the bees sounded to him like the words of a foreign language. You knew there was meaning--but what was being said?

His eyes roamed the trees at the bottom of the valley. There was the car. The sound of baying hounds reached his ears.

What was that? Sweat sprang out on his flesh, cold and acrid.

What was that?

He peered through the scope, heart hammering.

There it was. The pink bird. Squatting on a branch that didn't bend under its weight. The wings beat like the fins of a trout marking time in a stream. A phantom here in the world of flesh and men.

A shuddering sigh escaped him.

It had a head, but no beak, no eyes. Polyps of flesh, twisting, throbbing, quested as if seeking to touch the racing Ford. As if they were its eyes.

Instinct resumed its supremacy. He lined up the crosshairs on the thing's torso, between the spindly claws. It was childishly easy. The thing was motionless. The polyps stalked the Ford. His finger tightened on the trigger--

A whoosh! Blackness filled the scope. A demon wind swirled around him. Something that felt like chilled mushrooms gripped him. The droning filled his head like fury.

Blindly he squeezed the trigger. The round ricocheted off the road far below.

He tumbled backwards into the bush.

The hounds in the car exploded into frantic barking. The chugging Ford raced. Tires squalled.

phantom claws raking across his face...

a lead slug shattering against his skull...

the world spinning dizzily beneath him...

The droning faded. The sound of the car faded.

The clouds sailed in the serene sky, indifferent to the terrors infecting the world below.

For the first time in his life, the Red Baron fled. Like a schoolboy thrashed by a bully, he fled. Quivering like the man who's seen ferocious red eyes staring at him from the night outside his window, he fled.

#

He'd drank too much last night. Von Richthofen's head throbbed. He staggered to the kitchen, where Elwin, subservient Elwin, had eggs and bacon sizzling. Leftover squirrel stew steamed on the wood-burning stove. The coffee pot chirruped a happy tune.

"You awake there, sire?" Elwin asked.

"After a fashion," said von Richthofen. He sat down at the table and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I had horrible dreams."

"Ah," said Elwin, "that's the mountain air."

"I was in an airplane," said von Richthofen. "At least I think it was. It seemed to be made out of aluminum. The engine droned like a ... And I kept going higher and higher and higher. But all I wanted to do was go back down ..." He stopped. Dreams obsessed him too much these days.

"I don't see how that's a horrible dream. I've always wanted to fly."

"The sky's a terrible place for a man," said von Richthofen, remembering machine gun rounds whistling a deadly hum in his ear, exploding flak, and oddly shaped clouds that seemed to have been vomited from some hellish otherworld. "Give me coffee."

Elwin poured, his mouth a thin line. "Eggs, sire?"

"In a minute," said von Richthofen. He stumbled through the kitchen and went out the back.

The morning was clear and bright. It had rained last night. The lawn smelled fresh, though the breeze flowing down from the mountains carried a faint odor of decay, of rottenness. He stumbled, caught himself. Would he ever escape the war?

He walked a circle round the house, sipping his coffee, trying to drive away the memory of the nightmares. The dew was cool on his bare feet. He swerved to avoid the muddy path leading from the kitchen door down to the barn--

What was that?

The mud was disturbed as if a herd of cattle had charged through it.

He knelt, the hair rising on the nape of his neck.

Footprints. Clawprints.

They'd been here. In the night.

He remembered a nightmare where he'd been in the middle of a pack of snarling dogs. He'd been a dog, as if his brain had been implanted in one of them. The emotion: terror, profound and utter. A cold predator stalked the pack, and its purpose was not simply food, not mere consumption, but something black and evil like the grinning gulf between the stars.

The droning, like a swarm of bees trapped in a metal bucket, reverberated through his dream as if he'd still stood atop that slope, looking down at the car, at that thing.

"Herr Elwin! Here! Now!"

Elwin came flying down the path from the kitchen. "Sire? What's wrong, sire?"

"Do you see those?" He pointed.

Elwin knelt. "Ohhh ... " he moaned, then fell silent.

"What are they?"

Elwin looked up. "You don't want to know, sire."

"Tell me!"

Elwin glanced around at the distant hilltops. "Not out here, sire. There's ears that hear. Eggs are about to burn anyway."

Von Richthofen forced himself to retreat calmly to the house. He wouldn't be unmanned again. He wouldn't submit. You could shoot the Red Baron, but you couldn't kill him.

In the kitchen he demanded, "What do you know?"

Elwin shoveled eggs and bacon onto a plate. He took von Richthofen's coffee cup. "More?" he asked.

"Yes," said von Richthofen. "What don't I want to know?"

Elwin sighed. "The old people round here, the crazy people, they call 'em ... 'those ones.'" He handed the cup back, turned, and went to the stove, stirred the stew.

"And what are ... 'those ones?'" Von Richthofen cut a crispy egg.

"Well, if you hold with such tales--and I don't, sire, I don't--there are these, well, animals you might call them. And they live up in the hills, way up in the hills where no one goes, or no one goes anymore, if you know what I'm saying. Do you?"

"Not really. Go on," said von Richthofen softly. A prickly sensation quivered across his skin, like a phantom electric charge. He glanced towards the window. Thick clouds shadowed the hills.

Elwin sat at the table, his plate full. "Well. There's not much to say. My own grandpa, he used to tell me stories about them when he'd been drinking. And that's what I think such things are. Drunk stories."

"I wasn't drunk," von Richthofen repeated. "And there's footprints on the path."

"Yes," said Elwin slowly. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "There's that." He chewed some more.

"What did your grandpa--" barbarous word "--tell you?"

"Well, he said ... he told me this one time he was out hunting. Dark Mountain, it was, if I remember it right." Elwin stared into the distance, as if his memories disobediently skulked there.

You could see the summit of Dark Mountain from the front porch. That madman Akeley dwelt on its skirts.

"We're country folk, you see. We don't hold with the city people, you see? There's things out there the university types don't, and can't, believe in. But just because you don't believe in something don't mean it's not there. I mean, you can believe you can fly, but what happens when you jump off the roof?"

"I know how to fly," von Richthofen said.

"Anyway, he told me this story once--it was Halloween, so I don't half believe it--well, it was cold and cloudy. He was huntin', like you do, sire. There weren't no moon neither. Black as Satan's gullet, grandpa used to say. He heard this noise. Couldn't describe it, so he made it for me. A buzzing noise. Like bees, or some newfangled buzz saw. Steam powered, or something outlandish." Elwin poured himself coffee.

"Buzzing." Von Richthofen steepled his fingers.

"Yeah. Bzzz!" Elwin's imitation wasn't as ominous as the reality. "He said he'd heard tales himself, from the knee of his grandpa--and his grandpa, I think, hunted Redcoats after Saratoga, so that was a long time ago. Grandpa said he'd heard tales, but he didn't half believe 'em. I don't recall how long he said he walked. But he came out on the edge of this gully. And down in the bottom of this gully was a stream. I don't reckon that stream's got a name. Been there myself plenty of times. Found it myself a few days later. Went out looking for it, eh?"

"What did he see?" said von Richthofen softly.

"Well--" Elwin shrugged helplessly "it was this rite, one of them pagan things you hear of now and again--you hear about that bust down in New Orleans, long time ago, by that fellow Legrasse?"

"No," said von Richthofen. "A rite?"

"Yeah. There were men there, you know, Boston types, learned and snobby. And they were talking with ... with 'those ones.' Your pink birds, sire. That's what grandpa said. Told me the smell was like being downwind of a slaughterhouse."

"Talking."

"Not words. Not like you and I'd know them. Not English. Not your German. Grandpa said he couldn't make 'em out. They were like grunts. 'Knots of consonants,' thats what he called 'em. Words so foul it was like cussing in church--"

Suddenly violent pounding began at the front door.

Von Richthofen leaped, spilling coffee over the checked tablecloth.

Elwin grinned slyly. "Got you too, sire, like it did me? Thought it ain't Halloween."

The pounding continued. Someone--something?--was knocking at the door.

"Damn," von Richthofen breathed. He stormed through the house, submerged in fear as if a giant wave had crashed over him, slamming him over and over against the sea bottom.

He ripped the door open. "What do you--"

Alexandra smiled brightly up at him. "Hello," she breathed. The dawn wreathed her in a golden halo. "Can I come in?"

Oddly von Richthofen was glad to see her. She reminded him of the sane world of Communist conspiracies.

"I wasn't sure if you would be here," she said, coffee held in both hands. She shivered, but it wasn't cold. "Or if you would take me in." Her eyes reproved him. "You left in such a hurry."

Elwin stood at the stove, frying more eggs. He'd been shooting admiring looks at Alexandra since her arrival. Alexandra, hair disheveled beneath a cloche hat, tired, her eyes bleary with fatigue, retained an effective glamor. She wore a summer sport suit, crimson and yellow, that reminded von Richthofen of a boy's rugby uniform.

"A revolution." Von Richthofen mused over the news she'd given him. "The Communists?"

"Yes! There were men--Negroes!--" she shuddered theatrically "--carrying red banners. Gunfire. It was mad! I saw bodies ... so many bodies!" Tears glimmered like stars above a misty swamp. "No soldiers! No soldiers at all. Damn Harding! Senile old fool. He should have MacArthur down there with machine guns! Machetes! Knives! Anything!"

"Calm down," ordered von Richthofen.

Wiping tears, she smiled. "I knew you were strong. The Kaiser, he still adores you, does he not?"

"Honors," said von Richthofen. He thought of the notes stuffed in drawers in the study. Out of date.

"Would he give me asylum?" She laid a hand possessively on his arm.

"I suppose so," said von Richthofen. He stifled an instinct to withdraw. Her hand was cold and clammy.

"Will you take me with you?" Her luminous eyes needed him.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You're not!" She was shocked. "Don't you understand? This is the end!"

"This is Vermont," he said. "Nothing much happens here. The revolution is in New York. Until I hear more, here I will stay."

"You're brave. So brave." She patted his wrist. "I'll stay. If you'll let me."

Elwin sat a plate in front of her, his eyes shifting rapidly back and forth between the too.

"Eat," said von Richthofen.

"So," she said, egg quivering on a fork. "How has your stay been?"

Elwin interjected, "Some bad things have happened."

Sharply, von Richthofen said, "My Mauser needs to be cleaned, Elwin."

Elwin bobbed his head. "Yes, sire."

Solicitous, Alexandra asked, "So what's happened?"

He told her. Her presence elicited a need to confess. Not his fear. She must she him as a cold blooded killer. The myth must be maintained. The Red Baron, Wilhelm II's loyal servant, could not be diminished in in her eyes--in anyone's eyes--without diminishing Germany herself. Though he felt he clung to that myth with weakening fingertips.

He told her everything else.

Alexandra didn't laugh at him. She lit a cigarette, nodding slightly as she listened.

"You should hunt them, Manfred" she said when he finished.

Her intimate use of his name discomfited him slightly. But they had made love. He noted her flesh seemed tight and young again. It was reassuring. And arousing. He smiled at her, took her hand. "Perhaps I shall."

"You should," she said again. "Think of your fame. Conqueror of air ... conqueror of outer space."

"Outer space? What make you say that?"

She laughed nervously. "Surely these beasts come from the stars. They can't be natural to our Earth. That leaves only other worlds."

"I wonder why they're here."

"What does it matter? Hunt them. You know you want too. It's in your blood. You hate them. Don't look at me that way. I hear your words, far more clearly than you do yourself. Take revenge. Hunt them." She inclined her head towards the front room. "They're up there on the summits, I'd say. Waiting."

"Hunt them," he mused.

"Yes," Alexandra said. "Pretend they're English pilots." She smiled. "Or Communists."

"It would be--" he groped for words "--a worthy challenge, wouldn't it?" He smiled delightedly. "Let me show you this house." He led her by the hand. It was cold. He didn't mind it so much right now.

#

She was curled delightfully against him, and they were warm beneath the blanket, when von Richthofen heard the claws on the roof.

At first he wasn't sure what he heard. Rain splattered against the window. The wind blew, and it might've been a tree branch clattering on the shingles.

He looked past Alexandra's shoulder towards the window. The night, moonless, was like a sea of crude oil.

Von Richthofen lay silently, his breathing quickening.

Was it there? Was it really there? Was is a dream? Was he still in the world of the Red Menace? Was he in some other world where the geometry of time was alien, even abhorrent?

The sound resumed.

A soft step. A scratch. Another step. Another scratch, like a cat stepping on linoleum.

Lightning flashed, arctic blue. A moment later thunder rumbled across the wilderness.

The dogs over at the Akeley place began howling and snarling. It sounded like the final cry of an infantry squad sent to assault a redoubt.

Alexandra whispered deliriously in the darkness. She had liberally dosed herself with laudanum before sex. Her breathing was deep and regular.

Silently he reached over, opened the nightstand's drawer, and withdrew his Luger. The metal was cold against his chest.

He waited. Let them make their move.

There it was again. A step. A scratch. A creak. He glanced up at the ceiling. It was approaching the eaves above the window.

He rolled to face the window, thumbed off the safety. Alexandra purred in her sleep.

Lightning flared again. The rain came in torrents. Darkness. A drumroll of thunder.

He was still. There was no sound, except for the distant snarling of Akeley's dogs.

Something clattered outside.

He extended the pistol at the window, sighting carefully.

Lightning exploded--

The silhouette stood out, sharply limned by the flash.

Inhuman. Alien. A nightmare.

Von Richthofen fired. The window pane shattered. Thunder filled the room.

Shrieking like a ghost Alexandra bolted up. "What--"

He shoved her back. "Stay there!"

Down the hall he heard Elwin's feet.

Von Richthofen rushed to the window. Rain splattered on the sash, ran down the jagged glass like blood.

There was nothing outside. Nothing. But the grass was depressed, as if something had stood there--

A clawing noise made him look up.

Peering down at him was something deliquescent, something obscene. A melon-sized head, wreathed in pseudopods and antennas, loomed over the eave. Claws gripped the edge of the roof. It pulsed and buzzed at him.

Cold as ice, he raised the pistol and fired again.

The entity merely nodded, a Zen master to a stupid student. Pseudopods waved like sea-fronds, pulsed colors.

The bullet had done nothing. Furiously he unloaded half the magazine at it. Nothing.

"Who are you shooting at?" Alexandra screamed at him.

Von Richthofen squeezed off another shot.

The bedroom door flew open. Elwin gaped at him. "Sire! What are you doing!"

"Stay back! Stay back!" Von Richthofen slithered through the window. Toothlike remnants of the glass gouged his flesh.

He fell to the muddy, cold grass. He met the creature's diabolical gaze, moment for moment. The polyps of its face glowed like naval signaling lamps.

No, no more fright! This wouldn't be like the crash landing at Morlancourt Ridge, where he'd watched the blood pour from his body and known that death smelled like rotten meat. Like himself.

He stood. Rain beat on him. The black belly of the sky writhed. He was aware of Alexandra in the window, a few feet below the creature, yelling at him.

One brief moment when the adversaries stared at each other.

Yes, it was pink. Not like a flower, but like flesh from which the skin has been ripped. It spoke too. Blasphemous sounds, choked with consonants. The meaning was coldly predatory.

The moment passed.

The thing scuttled across the roof, vanishing over the crown.

Von Richthofen raced around the house, stumbling and sliding on the wet grass. He was hunting again, and his heart throbbed with rage.

"Where are you going?" Alexandra called. "Where are you going?"

Spinning around a corner he raised the pistol, expecting to see the beast on the porch roof. But--nothing. He whirled, fearing it was behind him.

Nothing but water cascading down the lawn.

Lightning. He glanced up. There! High above a lobster-like shape struggled in the wind. Ludicrous wings beat. The thing flew as if alien to the air.

If I had a plane--

The howling and the barking over at the Akeley place reached a terrifying crescendo. Enraged baying withered into whimpering.

He hadn't killed it. But he'd redeemed himself. Like he had after his '17 wound, like he had after his '18 wound, like he had after the time he'd ditched in the Channel, just before the Armistice. He was master of himself.

Thunder beat on him like a hammer.

Clearly he was not in control of this world.

Later, wrapped in a blanket in the kitchen, bandaged, drinking hot chocolate, Alexandra stared at him with wide, liquid eyes. Her brow was furrowed. The flesh of her jawline sagged. "Was it--?" She scratched at her arm.

Shivering, von Richthofen nodded. "Yes." The mug steamed. It felt like it did at the aerodrome, after battle in the sky. His blood pulsing with heat. Merbromin staining his wounds. A pretty nurse tending him. The trenches breathing rotten meat on him.

A hammer banged. A bleary-eyed Elwin worked in the bedroom to nail the shutters shut. He hadn't said "sire" all night.

"I wish I'd seen it."

"Don't you believe me?"

She laid a hand on his wrist. "Of course I do, darling. Now, at least." She smiled faintly. "I was skeptical, you understand." She was cold, cold as a reptile.

"Skeptical?"

She took a deep breath. "So ... when will you start?"

"Start?"

"Your hunt."

Grimly he thought for a moment. "Tomorrow."

"Good." She pushed her cheeks up, massaged them.

"I wonder ... " he began, and trailed off.

"You're the curious type."

"Why were they here?"

She gave a small shrug. "Who knows?" Nervously she looked around. "Is there any whiskey?"

"No. There's 'shine," said von Richthofen. "You don't want it."

"I want my laudanum. I can't sleep without it." She rose. In a few seconds he heard her talking to Elwin.

Akeley's dogs were quiet. The storm had rolled past. Trees bowed in the wind.

He brooded, thinking of the granite-crowned hilltops, alone and so near to outer space itself. He wished he were in the dining salon of the Heinrich Mathy, flying east towards Europe and sanity, an eloquent plea for action against the American Communists in his valise. This land was mad. Evil.

He thought of the queer Englishman. The bruises on his arms. Needles. Alexandra's laudanum. Suddenly he felt as if phantom machine gun slugs passed close by in an invisible yet fatal stream.

He stalked into the bedroom. Alexandra held a glass poised at her lips. Elwin shot a look at him, put down the hammer, left.

"How did you get here?" He was sharp.

She lowered the glass. "Beg pardon, darling?" All smiles.

"How did you get here?" Von Richthofen enunciated deliberately.

"I got a train--the last one--out of New York." She was flustered. "I remembered you told me you were coming here. Townshend."

"The train doesn't run this far. How did you get here?"

"I met a man in Brattleboro. He drove me here."

"What was his name?"

"You should know it. It was Noyes. He's your agent."

"My agent, yes." Had he told her his name? He couldn't remember. Von Papen was right. There was a sinister aspect to this ex-nation. It seethed with plots, with secrets, with ancient sorceries. He felt like a fish flopping in a net, struggling to escape something too big to comprehend.

He saw how she looked at him. He must be cautious. "Yes, my darling," von Richthofen continued. "My agent. You were lucky."

"Are you glad I'm here?" She leaped into his arms, frisky as a cat.

"Oh yes," said von Richthofen. He managed to make his tone warm. He almost lay his cheek against hers. But there was a peculiar scar delineating her hairline, almost encircling her face. A pinkish fissure, wrinkled and dry, as if she were a cracked porcelain doll. He pushed her away. "I'm tired. I'll tell Elwin to knock off. We'll sleep in another room."

She pouted. "Okay. My. You're mercurial."

#

Von Richthofen left the house just after noon, his Luger in a belt holster, his Mauser in his hand.

They're up there on the summits. Alexandra's words. How did she know? Indian sorcerers sacrificed virgins to a race of dark and malign gods. Noyes. How did he know?

There was a connection.

Do not trust these Americans.

Not far into the trees, he heard Alexandra voice, plaintive and lonely: "Are you all right?"

He shuddered. Kept walking.

As the forest canopy's shadow fell on him, he heard her voice for the last time: "Where are you going?"

She knew the answer.

As he ascended the memory of his duel with Lanoe Hawker returned with great strength. Clatter of his machine gun. Bitter smell of gunpowder. Distant twitter of Hawker's, spitting fate. The trenches spiraling beneath. Jigging his Albatross D.II fighter back and forth. The cold sweat trickling from his armpits. The warm glow of triumph suffusing him. The mud curling over von Richthofen's boots. The slack look in Hawker's eyes. The cold flesh. The absent soul.

The green hills rose around him. Malign. Yes. That was what this country was. Communists and monsters. He pictured Hindenburg's armies landing on the shores of Long Island, legions of red banner Communists withering under 38 centimeter shellfire from the High Seas Fleet. He would sit on Hindenburg's staff, advising: Burn Townshend. Burn Brattleboro. Burn all of Vermont. Slaughter New York. Obliterate New Jersey. Evil haunts this place.

The forest was silent. His skin prickled as if countless phantom eyes spied on him. The tree branches intertwined overhead like a nest of anacondas writhing in ecstatic frenzy.

Halfway up Dark Mountain he paused and drank from his canteen, wiping sweat from his brow. The sea of trees submerged his little farmhouse. Clouds sailed past. The sky was a clean blue.

He felt untouchable. Beyond such things as supremacy, or submission, even humanity. His finger curled round the Mauser's trigger. Only the roar of a Mercedes D.III engine was needed to take him back to those glorious days, when he was a rough knight for his Kaiser.

He went on.

He came across a trail of claw prints heading upslope. The spoor led him upwards. A rotten miasma fouled the air.

The hunter's spirit throbbed in his mind. But there was still a part, in the back, half-submerged by blood, murmuring: Why are you doing this? She lied. He lied. They've all lied. Something is going on that you don't understand. But he was skilled at ignoring that voice. It was the bane of the courageous.

Dusk fell as he approached the summit. A granite wall riven with features comprised the peak. Stars glimmered in the east. An ominous cloud, low and featureless, stained the sky above Dark Mountain. Ghostly fog filled the lowland troughs.

When he recognized the man standing at the foot of the granite cliff he knew what it was like to be a deer, to be trapped, to look over one's shoulder and see the sun gleaming off the hunter's rifle, to know the moment of doom.

"Are you all right?" The voice oozed unction.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Iff?"

The rotund man grinned. "Call me Aleister, Manfred. Or Crowley. I think we should call each other by our Christian names, since we have been so ... intimate." That word gave him great pleasure. "You have been hunting for beasts. You have found one." He wore a black robe adorned with outrageous symbols. He resembled an egg in a velvet skirt.

"What are you doing here, beast?" Von Richthofen sighted the Mauser, right between the Englishman's lanquid, unfocused eyes.

Iff--Aleister--clasped his hands joyously on his breast. "You recognize me!" He extended a hand. "Come on up."

"What are you doing here?" Fury seeped like lava from his heart.

"Are you looking for kill ninety four?"

"What is ninety four the number of?"

"It is the atomic number of an element a certain Herr Heisenberg will discover in Berlin a few years hence."

His finger tightened on the trigger. "Explain."

"I have many esoteric skills, Freiherr. My spirit roams the dimensions of space and time. I know the future--and its alternatives. Now come on up!"

Now! He squeezed--

Aleister described a strange curlicue with his fingertips, chanted a consonant-choked syllable.

A phantom force kicked the barrel aside.

The bullet blazed past the wizard's ear, ricocheted off the stone.

"Bastard!" von Richthofen cursed.

Aleister sighed. "Elwin said you were a king through and through." His hands moved again. The Mauser spun from von Richthofen's hands into a thicket of mountain laurel.

"Elwin? You were at my house"

"Of course!"

"Where is Alexandra?"

Aleister, a sardonic leer on his face, dug inside his robe, hurled a shapeless bundle at von Richthofen's feet. "Here!"

It was her face and hair. Wadded up like a leather glove, looking old, worn out, used, but still her. Tiny, vicious looking hooks glittered on the edge. The loathsome thing could be worn as a mask.

"As I've said before, I am in religion," said Aleister. "What you call blasphemous I worship, Freiherr. Because it is powerful. Now come on up."

"Who wore this?" von Richthofen said hollowly.

"You are a virile man," Aleister purred.

"You'll have to come here and take me!"

"No need," said Aleister.

A crack sounded from behind. Another. Then another.

Slowly von Richthofen turned.

A legion of the creatures advanced from the eaves of the forest. Their dread voices whined like a fighter's racing engine. Blunt polyps weaved, blinked colors at him. They didn't seemed to be armed. But they didn't need to be.

He looked up at Aleister's triumphant face. His gut hollow and cold, he went up.

Aleister took von Richthofen's bicep and guided him into a deep fissure.

"Explain," whispered von Richthofen. Shadow fell on his shoulders as the fissure turned into a cave.

Aleister's smug gaze searched von Richthofen's eyes. "You've attracted powerful enemies. You see, my dear Freiherr, you are the German Reich. You are its face, far more even than your beloved Wilhelm. Young boys thrill to the stories of your combat. Even cynical old men like Elwin are swayed by the likes of you. And of course the young women! They swoon at the mention of your name--scream at the sight of your photograph on posters! You, Manfred, and you alone--I was there--are the sole reason the French did not turn red, as we sought. You charmed even them." He sighed. "I remember the talk at the Opéra de Paris. You didn't see me, Manfred, but I was in the back. Your words were like honey. The tales you told! Knights and derring-do high above the Earth! They were spellbound. Here you were, the old world come striding out of the pages of Chrétien de Troyes. They forgave you your nationality and your nation's triumph. You were an escape. You took them out of their miserable world of rationing, of riots, of remembering their dead sons, their dead brothers, and lifted them into a ethereal realm where it was all so simple: two men, single combat, right versus wrong. Everyone in this modern age burns to escape this miserable world we've made. They saw in you Coeur de Lion." He laughed. "A mal mot? Excusez-moi! Perhaps Charlemagne would be more appropriate!"

The cave was moist. Droplets of water slithered down the stone like amoebas parading towards a loathsome meal. Huge tumors of fungi, faintly luminous, towered. The muddy floor was a sea of claw prints. The stench was dizzying. A soft chitinous noise echoed off the stone. Drones and buzzes sounded behind them.

"You explain nothing," said von Richthofen. He hated the quiver in his voice.

"You, my dear Manfred, are the opiate of the people. And Comrade Inkpin wants his people free of all influences."

In a flash it was clear. "MI6?"

Aleister laughed uproariously. "More MI666! I of course am not formally attached to MI6. They frown on certain peculiarities of mine ... certain forms of comradeship are disallowed under the reign of the all-knowing Comrade Inkpin! But they do not frown on my arts! No, no, in socialist worker's England, exoteric and egalitarian, it is the esoteric and aristocratic which is held in highest regard! An irony, don't you think?"

"I don't see them entrusting you with many secrets," said von Richthofen. "You talk far too much."

Aleister laughed. "I know secrets no one can imagine. And I keep them secret!"

"It doesn't disturb you to serve under Marxists?"

"The Beast serves any man who furthers his studies." He called in a loud voice strange syllables: Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Krglqnm aklt nwaklbruq!

Von Richthofen shuddered. The words slithered over his ears like the fetid slime that pooled in the bottom of a coffin.

Aleister turned. "It is difficult to be prey, I know." His tone was soothing, as if he comforted a child who's lost his mother. "You want to flee, do you not?"

"I'm afraid of no one!"

"You're terrified," Aleister said quietly. "That is good. Comrade Inkpin will be pleased when I tell him the tale."

With all his heart, with all his soul, von Richthofen wanted to turn, wanted to flee. His mind screamed at his muscles, demanding action. But some alien presence lurked at the base his brain and devoured the messages. He didn't even feel like a puppet; he felt like he acquiesced.

Aleister nodded as if reading von Richthofen. "Yes, it is the esoteric arts which will prevail in this new world."

"You did this?"

"I did this!"

The droning sound grew louder, magnified and distorted, the unholy ululation of those crustaceous beasts as they prepared some dark act.

"Yes," said Aleister. "They want to talk with you. You fascinate them as well. They are not a warlike race."

"Why?" Von Richthofen almost shrieked. "Why me?"

"We will show your body to the world," said Aleister coldly. "We will show them that the German Empire is not invincible. That it can be resisted!"

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Nothing," said Aleister. "I am done with you."

"This--this all was a scheme, a conspiracy!" The scrape of claws on stone chilled him. He stood rooted, motionless, passive, afraid.

"Yes," said Aleister slowly. "You have been betrayed. We've worked very hard at it. Fate has intervened, until now, in your favor. You remember Paris, yes? We were going to try and take you on your holiday at Interlaken. Unfortunately, our Red colleagues drew you away."

"Lies! I've been lied to!"

"This is the new world, Manfred. The world you helped make. You have played at being a chivalrous knight long enough. Here is a fact. You're a killer. A murderer. Just like the rest of us."

He was almost in tears. "Betrayed!"

"Yes," said Aleister. "Betrayed."

"When I was a child, I thought that people naturally told the truth! When I grew up, I learned that lying was natural--people tell the truth only when it's forced out of them!"

"Here," leered Aleister, "are many unnatural truths. Turn around."

Some of them stood on two claws, some crawled. Their wings undulated. Polyps quivered. A loathsome jelly oozed from their flesh.

They held scalpels. The curve was alien, but the keen blade was unmistakable.

"You must tell me about the afterlife," said Aleister, and clapped his hand on von Richthofen's back.

There was blackness. But no lack of consciousness. He felt their loathsome touch on his body. They felt like mushrooms just plucked from the cave, cool and rough. Stone on his back. The sensation of wind. The sky above.

The scalpels bit into the nape of his neck like hot wires.

He was aware of his screams, and he knew they went on and on and on and on. Elwin? Where are you? Elwin? Help me! Help your king!

After that the cave was no more.

He saw a man talking to some hooded shape slumped in a chair. They were in a study, or a library, of a small farmhouse. Darkened and silent. Whispering. Whispering of nervous, blasphemous secrets:

There are mighty cities on Yuggoth ... The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the beings need no light ...

The words were sibilant and ominous. He saw the speaker--the hooded shape--heard the rasping, buzzing voice. But it was like peering through a fogged telescope, distant and untouchable, belonging to a different world. He screamed words of warning, but no sound emerged.

He was cold. Three thousand meters above the Somme in the middle of winter, and he'd never been this cold.

Some time later he saw the world spinning away beneath him like a top that'd gone wild. Diaphanous wings strove against the ether. Claws clutched von Richthofen's sense of self. Beside him he saw a pinkish beast holding a metallic cylinder. There were lenses on the cylinder, giving it the look of a face.

Chillingly, there was the sense of a soul peering back at von Richthofen. The sense of reflection. As if von Richthofen himself were enclosed in a cylinder--

That was the path to madness. He wouldn't take it.

The sky was black. The sun blazed like an eye full of hate. Dark Yuggoth lay ahead.