discovered a subhuman race, and, what’s more, a pagan subhuman race that had yet to be converted to Christianity. So, that’s exactly what the abbot set out to do. He evangelized to the Ghul,” she said. “The abbot had the brothers lock the ghoul in a cell, so it was a sort of captive-audience situation. But they fed it, not cadavers or anything, but they fed it all the same, and they made it comfortable, and, in return, it told them stories of the Sunless Lands, of Thok and the Vale of Pnath, of the war with the Djinn.”
Selwyn was now spouting stuff even the nasties take with a grain of salt. But I didn’t interrupt her again. I was hoping we were coming up fast on the next station. I wanted off the train in the worst fucking sort of way. I needed not to be shut up in that claustrophobic metal tube with Professor Indiana Throckmorton’s own beyond creepy Madonna of the Damned.
“Knowing ghouls,” she continued, “the fucker was probably getting his rocks off horrifying them, shocking their monastic sensibilities. You can imagine those pious, ascetic men making the signum crucis and whispering prayers while the ghoul rattled off descriptions of the necropolises and the bone plains, while it introduced them to the likes of Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth. Hell, some of them probably pissed themselves. Every now and then, the ghoul would lapse into its own language, and the monks slowly began to decipher some of it. Anyway, after a few months, they sent their pet off to spread the gospel to its fellows.”
I snorted. “I bet that went well.”
“I suppose it might have gone worse. The Hounds of Cain did listen, but you know how it often goes when the Church starts trying to fob its beliefs on other cultures. The ghouls picked and chose. Classic case of religious syncretism. They took what suited them. Invented new quasi-Christian deities and fused them with their existing pantheon. You know about the Qqi?”
I’d heard the word.
“Their word for god,” I told her. “But that’s all I know. I’m not exactly a goddamn Ghul scholar, Annie Smithfield.”
“Quinn, I wish you’d stop calling me that. I really, truly do.”
Okay, by this time, we definitely should have reached the next station. Seriously. But between Selwyn’s tale and getting a gander at her treasure, I’d been distracted.
“I’m still not sure it isn’t your real name. Also, what with all those fake IDs of yours, I’m not so sure you could ever prove it isn’t.”
She sighed, and she let go of the pole and sat down next to me. She held the bundle in her lap.
“Fine, Quinn. Have it your way.”
“I usually do.”
She tapped the end of her nose and sighed again.
“The Qqi,” she said, “which, in ghoulish, is the number Fifty, is their ancient pantheon. Their prehistoric pantheon, their version of the Elder Gods, Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, Nodens, whatever. When the australopithecines were still busy avoiding lions and leopards and hyenas, oh my, the Ghul had already been worshipping the Qqi for a twenty thousand centuries. The Qqi, the Fifty, the Ten Hands, Fifty Fingers, that menagerie fitting together like a Russian nesting doll.”
“Matryoshkas,” I said, “Russian nesting dolls,” because it was something to say, and I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t really following her little history lesson. I was beginning to worry more about why the train was still zooming merrily along as if the next stop wasn’t until fucking Boston.
“Right. Like a matryoshka. Anyways, the ghouls latched onto this brand-new theology, incorporated it with their own cosmogony, and out popped a host of new gods and goddesses. A freshly reconsolidated pantheon. Not that the Ghul gave up worshipping Claviceps, Amylostereum, or Paecilomyces, mind you.”
Fairy tales for the eaters of the dead. The profane names rolled off her tongue like a rotten, off-key tune.
“But,” she said, “they invented. They invented with a passion.”
“I get the idea,” I told her. “Archetypes, cultural contamination, corn kings.” I was squinting at the doors to the car, squinting because the fluorescent lights were starting to hurt my eyes. I hate goddamn fluorescent lights. Forget what you hear about vamps and the sun. I’ll take a sunny day over fluorescent bulbs every time.
“Have you read The Golden Bough?”
“No.”
“Joseph Campbell?”
“No.”
“Is something wrong?” Selwyn asked.
“Probably not,” I replied. “Go on. Where does that . . . ?” I waved a hand at the thing in her lap. “Where does it fit into all this nonsense?”
“Well, you