Kthulhu Reich Page 2

  “Oh, so you’re still painting?” I said, and reached out to turn one of the nearby canvases around.

  “Don’t!” Hirata shouted, stopping me cold, then looked suddenly repentant.

  “Oh, sorry. I’m just embarrassed. They’re all self-portraits, but I don’t have any talent. Not for art, and not for architecture.”

  “I see...”

  If the artist didn’t want them seen, there was no point in pushing it. I withdrew my hands and folded them behind my back.

  “So then... what do you have to show me?”

  “I think that depends on what I find when I discover my true self,” Hirata answered and squatted down.

  He swept the carpet aside to reveal a magic word square written there in chalk:

  “That’s from Abramelin!”2 I growled.

  Abramelin refers to the magical knowledge taught to Abraham by a magician of the Nile river in the fifteenth century. Throughout the ages, many magicians have tried to use it, and nearly all ended in failure, driven utterly mad or to suicide.

  “I should have expected as much from a writer of the occult such as yourself. Indeed, this is a magical word square of the Abramelin tradition. This channels the magical technique to reveal the past.”

  “You’ve got to stop. It’s too dangerous... If you mess this up—”

  “I could go mad, even kill myself... I know. I knew the risks before I started. I would prefer death to going on like I was, an impoverished student sleeping on the streets, not knowing who I really am,” Hirata said. He worked while he spoke, placing candles at the four corners of the magical square and lighting them.

  I was powerless to stop him... No, that’s a lie. I could have done something. But I was witnessing an actual invocation of the Abramelin mysteries! My entire writing career had revolved around the occult, and now here it was, unfolding before my eyes. How could I get in the way?

  And so I watched, in a daze, as Hirata began the rites.

  “Shaddai! El Kai!”

  Hirata faced the magic word square and began his incantation, but his words were more of a rumble than mere human voice.

  He made a cross with his arms over his breast.

  “O Divine Guardian, hear my wish,

  Reveal to me my true self,

  Reveal to me my true name,

  In the name of Belial, in the name of Asmodeus,

  In the name of Azzoth3, and in the name of Yoth-Tlaggon!”

  The cramped room went suddenly pitch black.

  Coldness rose from below and with it a white fog which twisted and spiraled like a snake.

  The magical square on the floor began to glow as if drawn with luminous paint instead of mere chalk.

  I kept my eyes open. The sound of traffic and pedestrians that had been coming from the window ceased. It was replaced by the tramp of booted feet marching in step.

  And then, and then... As if from afar I heard the enraged shouts of thousands of men and women, crying out things like “Kill them!” and “Drive them away!”

  The sound of glass breaking. Children crying. The weeping of women and of the old. More glass breaking and the coarse laughter and jeers of brutish men.

  Then... the clatter of tank tracks. Warplanes flying overhead and the long whistle of falling bombs. Explosions.

  I shook my head lightly and stared at Hirata.

  His small body was completely shrouded in darkness. But where his eyes should be I saw two points of scarlet flame gleaming in the blackness.

  “We approach the Age of Reason’s end. The tyranny of the intellect is a disease.”

  A deep voice, both like and unlike Hirata’s, rolled out from somewhere overhead. It was full or arrogance and stark conviction.

  “A new time approaches, one of magical understanding, of understanding through the will, not the intellect!”

  The voice was distorted, as if coming through an ancient microphone, but it was loud enough to nearly shatter the eardrums.

  “OK, Hirata! That’s enough! You’ve got to stop!” I shouted, finally coming to my senses. My back was covered in goosebumps at the cold—and yet my body was drenched in sweat.

  “I shall be humanity’s salvation! The very heavens have proclaimed it!!”

  “Quit it! You have to stop!” When I screamed this last, suddenly everything changed.

  A scarlet brilliance filled the concrete basement room. The light coalesced and pierced Hirata’s floating body like a lightning bolt, revealing his bones from within for an instant.

  “Stop, God dammit!” I leapt at Hirata in a frenzy. I knocked him down, straddled his body, and slapped him to bring him back to his senses.

  I stood up and stamped out the candles at each corner of the magical square, and then smeared the mystical figure into meaninglessness with my feet.

  The deep darkness vanished and soon all I saw was the pitted concrete walls once again.

  “I hope you feel better.”

  I turned at the sound of a cold voice and saw Hirata standing there, arms folded and leaning back against the wall.

  “Oh... I... Sorry about that... I guess I ruined your ritual,...” I answered, suddenly ashamed.

  “No, you’re right. The weak have no place dealing with the occult. I realize that myself, now. And yet I think I may have found the answer I sought.” Hirata spoke firmly now, his voice strong, willful, and full of conviction.

  “What... ?”

  I stared at his face in shock.

  The man standing there was as small as ever, yet somehow seemed to tower like a giant... Something had changed in him.

  His face was no longer rodent-like.

  The strength it showed was more like a wolf’s or an eagle’s.

  “I believe that the next time we meet, I shall have grown even greater. I shall be as a titan...”

  He turned away from me, radiating confidence.

  “Wait, Hirata! Where are you going?!”

  He ignored me and left the room, walking with the sharp step and straight back of a military man.

  I stood there alone for a while, but soon I moved again. I went to one of the “corporal’s” reversed self-portraits and turned it around.

  The face painted on the canvas was not Hirata’s.

  It was the face of a man born in Austria, who in his youth had wanted to become an architect and so had tried to join an art school in Vienna, but had been rejected time and again. He had served in the First World War and demonstrated great skill at arms, capturing scores of French soldiers on his own. Later he had been initiated into the occult mysteries, and then had thrown himself into the cause of nationalism... becoming German chancellor on January 30th, 1933.

  The corporal who had risen to lead the Third German Reich.

  It was Adolf Hitler.

  Hirata’s true self. His past life...

  V

  I’ve not met Hirata again. He’s not tried to contact me, either.

  Of course, it’s not that hard to see his face these days. All you have to do is go outside to see it plastered on telephone poles and walls, or turn on the TV to see it in heated debate with political commentators.

  The ever-controversial Hirata, leader of the majority coalition member True Japan Party.

  Whenever I see his name on those posters, I am overcome with a terrifying premonition...

  In five or maybe ten years. I am called into the offices of the Leader of the Great Japanese Empire, where a small, seedy looking man awaits, his right hand stretched out to shake mine:

  “It certainly has been a long time! I do want to thank you for being there for me. Yes, that’s right. It’s me, Hirata!”

  The Mask of Yoth Tlaggon

  I Walpurgisnacht

  It was April 30th, 1937, and the royally appointed Between the Li
ons ballroom at the Hotel Weinstein on Unter Den Linden, styled after a Viennese palace, was packed tight with revelers. It was a mixed group, with guests from a variety of nations and professions, but the majority were still members of the German military.

  This was only natural, of course, since the party was a celebration of a grand military victory. On April 26th, the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion had bombed the Spanish town of Guernica, leaving it a smoking ruin.

  There were, however, few officers of the feted Luftwaffe itself present. Indeed, the most numerous of the uniforms bore the SS insignia, all officers of the elite corps led by Heinrich Himmler.4

  The rest of the lighthearted party-goers milling around the SS commandos was made up of a scattering of Ministry of Propaganda workers, steel company executives, Junkers company managers, and various ambassadors.

  By the time the party was set to officially begin, the crowd had fragmented into little conversation circles.

  In one of these, a blonde woman pointed to a young man passing between the groups like a migratory bird, and spoke to an older man standing next to her.

  “Who is the Asian?”

  The older man set a monocle in his right eye and followed the pointing finger toward its target. He found himself staring at a relatively tall young man in his mid-twenties who had been waylaid by the commander of the SS.

  “Oh, the boy talking to Himmler. He’s Japanese. I believe he’s a second secretary recently sent over by the Empire. Goto, I think his name is.”

  “Mmm. . . . He’s rather handsome, for an Asian.”

  The woman breathed deeply through her nose, and licked her lips like a predator stalking its prey. The man let out a laugh.

  “You should try to control your appetites! If Goebbels found out his angel Zarah Leander5 had tasted a Japanese man, he’d denounce you as a Jew himself!”

  Goebbels6 himself was currently surrounded by a bevy of women every bit as beautiful as the famed Leander, and was telling a joke with a self-satisfied grin.

  “The other night, I got a call from the Propaganda Ministry official in charge of America. He said he’d got his hands on a Hollywood film featuring me as the villain, so I ordered him to bring it right over. The next day, we screened it in the Ministry’s theater. What was that? What kind of film was it? Oh, just a mediocre action film. They had some Jew actor dressed up as me. . . . I suppose the resemblance was passing. But his office! There was a picture of the Führer on the desk and a portrait of him on the wall. His personal lighter and cigarette case were both decorated with swastikas. . . . So, after the film, the official asked me what I thought. I said, ‘It wasn’t a bad movie, but I certainly have better taste in real life!’”

  Goebbels broke into peals of laughter at his own joke. His voice was harsh, sounding like the cawing of a crow. Himmler clearly thought so as well. He glanced over his shoulder at Goebbels and muttered in disgust.

  “Verdammter nihilist.”

  He turned back to the young Japanese man he’d called over and straightened his rimless glasses as his swollen face split in a false smile.

  “Do forgive me. His laugh gets on my nerves so. Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel.”

  The grand title seemed ill-served by the soft, effeminate hand he proffered.

  “And I am the new second secretary of the Embassy of the Empire of Japan in Berlin, Tatewaki Goto. It’s an honor to meet you, your Excellency,” Goto answered in a clear, strong voice and shook Himmler’s hand.

  He was 178 cm tall, a little short of the ideal Nazi-held Aryan height of 180 cm, but his broad shoulders and barrel chest were the match of any SS officer’s.

  “There’s no need for such formality. Himmler will do,” Himmler said, smirking and rubbing his weak chin.

  Just then, a waiter walked past and Himmler called out to him.

  “Champagne for the gentleman and I.”

  “Yes, Herr Reichsführer.”

  When Himmler took the proffered class, he asked the waiter, “Where is Clara Hafner?”

  “She is speaking with Frau Leni Riefenstahl.”

  “Ask her to join me. Tell her I’d like to introduce her to a Japanese colleague of hers. . . .”

  “Right away.” The waiter bowed, handed Goto his glass, then left.

  “So, this woman and I share a profession?” Goto said with interest, rolling his brawny shoulders.

  “Indeed,” Himmler answered curtly, then raised his glass to his lips. At some point his smile had faded, and with it all expression from the eyes beyond those frameless glasses. Coldness radiated from him now.

  “Germany under the Nazis is far more progressive than we expected, if a woman can become second secretary to an ambassador,” Goto said, his tone impressed. He then raised his own glass to his mouth to hide the tension in his lips.

  “Hmph.” Himmler snorted, then drained his champagne. He thumped the empty glass on a nearby table, almost as if he wished to break it.

  People nearby turned their eyes toward him.

  Himmler looked slowly around at the crowd. He smiled when no one in the crowd seemed willing to meet his eyes, each averting their gaze when he turned to them.

  “Clara is no more a second secretary than you are, Herr Goto,” Himmler said, without apparent emotion, staring directly into Goto’s deep brown eyes. Himmler’s own eyes were empty voids, like those of a mask. They reminded Goto briefly of dead fish at the market.

  “What do you mean by that?” Goto feigned amused confusion. But his smile froze as he felt something hard jab into his back.

  That’s the muzzle of a gun. . . . Goto recognized the sensation immediately.

  A woman’s husky voice filled his ear.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Herr Goto.”

  “And here is Clara!” Himmler proudly introduced the woman currently poking a gun into Goto’s back.

  “Do second secretaries in Nazi Germany always carry guns with them? Is this a common way of greeting new acquaintances?” Goto said, continuing to dissemble.

  “You can drop the act. We are the SS, the greatest intelligence agency in the world. We knew who you really are even before you left Japan.”

  “And who am I, really?”

  “Oh, Herr Goto,...” said Himmler. “You’re first lieutenant Tatewaki Goto of the Imperial Army’s intelligence corps. You were sent here under the guise of a second secretary with the embassy to investigate the chances of our entering the war against the Soviets.”

  The smile faded from Goto’s hard-planed face.

  Then Clara whispered sweetly into his ear.

  “I do, of course, share your career. I am a covert agent of the Reich Main Security Office. Please, call me Hafner.”

  Goto frowned at this, then drained his own champagne. He set down the glass, and spoke to Himmler.

  “I suppose that means there’s no further need for this charade. What do you intend to do with me? Am I to be interrogated at Gestapo headquarters? Or simply executed on the spot?”

  Himmler’s face split in an alligator smile again.

  That smile gives me chills. Goto thought. It’s full of mockery, threat, scorn, hate. . . . A grotesque expression of what he thinks of me.

  A metallic click sounded behind him. It was the sound of a hammer being cocked.

  Goto closed his eyes in surrender.

  However, no bullet tore through the hard muscle of his back. He slowly opened his eyes, fearing what came next.

  He saw a woman with a platinum blonde pageboy haircut standing shoulder to shoulder with Himmler.

  She held a gun whose barrel sprouted a steady flame, which she used to light the cigarette in her mouth.

  A thread of smoke now rising from the cigarette, she released the trigger and the flame went out. A mere cigare
tte lighter, perfectly modeled on a revolver.

  The woman laughed in genuine pleasure.

  “Oh, my dear Herr Goto!” Himmler said.

  “We will be taking you somewhere this evening, but not to Gestapo headquarters, nor to an early grave. No, we are going somewhere much more suited to this particular evening.”

  Goto did not answer.

  “This is Walpurgisnacht, the night when demons and monsters from the world over gather on Mt. Brocken,” Clara explained, laughing.

  When he heard this, Goto snorted, as Himmler had done earlier.

  “Hmph. So what, you’re planning on taking me to a spook house?”

  “In a sense, perhaps. . . yes. A spook house indeed,” Clara said, then gave Himmler a meaningful glance.

  “Herr Goto, tonight we are taking you to visit our practical academics group, the Deutsches Ahnenerbe.7 They research our cultural heritage. We would like you to meet a magus there.”

  “A magus? You mean. . . a magician?”

  And when he repeated this word, Tatewaki Goto felt himself unwittingly thrust out of the modern world of international intrigue and into some ancient age of magic and mysteries.

  II Magus of Death

  The Deutsches Ahnenerbe.

  Practical academics. . . what could that mean? The Mercedes rocked as Clara Hafner drove on while Goto sat in reverie. He’d heard the name before, though.

  Oh, that’s right, some kind of think tank answering directly to Himmler, founded two years ago, wasn’t it?

  And yet, despite being a professional information gatherer, he had no idea what exactly it was that it researched.

  There was an impenetrable curtain of secrecy about everything under the swastika flag. The Nazis possessed world-leading military force, scientific strength, and tactical ability, but the Japanese government had uncovered only the general scope and a few sparse details of it all. Even so, plans were moving forward to establish a tripartite pact with them to oppose the communists later in the winter. Prime Minister Senjuro Hayashi had insisted it be signed as quickly as possible, but it was being held back by Minister of War Nakamura and those on the northern defense line.