Detective Rick Rhodes seems like the Thin Man, Dirty Harry and John McClane all rolled into one. I’m sure glad he’s on our side as he continues to hunt the cult that threatens to bring unholy terror to our planet. Here’s a recent dispatch from him on the case in Nigeria (republished from The Propagandist).
I was stoked to make it out of Baghad alive, but I could practically feel the cult’s oppressive influence as soon as I landed in Nigeria in the middle of the night. You could see it in people’s dead eyes that avoided looking you straight in the eye, in the frightened whispers, and in the desolate abandoned streets where even the locals feared to tread.
The Professor had an old colleague at the University of Maiduguri who had information we could use. As usual, the contact couldn’t speak freely over the phone for fear that the bad guys were listening in; but if the Professor thought it was worth a look, I wasn’t going to argue with him. Besides, Iraq had been a wash and we had to get back on the trail before it went cold. (more…)
Investigator Rick Rhodes’ report from Baghdad in The Propagandist is a harrowing tale. We’ve obtained permission to republish it here for the education of the public — and can only hope that the cult doesn’t find some clue herein with which to track down our intrepid detective.
Destruction. Terror. Blood running in the streets. I came to Baghdad to track down the cult. All I’ve managed to do is be another witness to their murderous rampage and nearly get myself killed to boot.
The papers say there are 55 dead across a wide swathe of Iraq. More than 255 wounded. I was in an alley meeting with my inside man, a former cultist (or was he still in the crew and hoping to stab me in the back? I’ll never know now), when the bomb went off in the restaurant across the street.
The blast was so powerful it knocked me flat on my ass. When I got back up, Mahmoud was bleeding out from some big chunks of shrapnel in the back of his head. Nothing I could do for him. I got out of there right quick; even if the cultists had already fled the scene, the locals get suspicious of blue-eyed travelers like myself.
I guess I was lucky today. I never saw the bomber, but I actually heard him shout his calling-card unholy prayer before he blew himself and a whole bunch of folks to smithereens: “Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!”
Theocratic fascist scum.
Why do I keep doing this? Is my investigation ever going to lead to anywhere but me plugged full of bullets, my body dumped in the river? I’m getting tired. And sloppy. I could have died back there. Hell, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve found myself staring death in the face, eyeball to eye-socket.
But I’ve got to keep going. For the professor. For the girl. For every poor innocent bastard this cult has put in the ground. If the cult gets what it wants, we’re all finished. Every last one of us.
It’s too hot in Baghdad. I can feel the tentacles of the cult closing in. I’ve got to keep moving.
Thought this tentacular tale was pulse-poundingly awesome? Me too! Check out my Cthulhu-inspired novel of pulpy horror
Why wouldn’t a true Cthulhu-fiction fan write his own addition to the mythos? I suppose avoiding an untimely death at the hands of a “nautical-looking” stranger could be one reason. But I also had a literary ambition to do it better than old H.P.L.
I explained in Cthulhu Reboot. The New and Improved Horror from Outer Space.
Look, I’ll give the old man his due. He was a great “ideas” man. Every blockbuster Hollywood horror film involving tentacles, slimy squid-faced aliens and extra-dimensional demons owes him big time. He’s up there with Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany and… and, um… here we have the problem. His stuff hasn’t aged well. Modern horror writers like Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King and Clive Barker are to H.P. Lovecraft what homo sapiens are to primates: not merely modern writers, but evolved ones.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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Detectives vs. the Slime Monster from Outer Space 