3727 Pickwick Lane

Newton, MA

12:03am

 

Roger Saxon had just reached the end of a very long day.

 

Eighteen hours without a break. A dozen interviews with media outlets from all over the world, sandwiched between meetings and conference calls, followed by a press conference concerning the merger that would divest him of any interest in the multi-billion-dollar tech corporation he’d founded a decade ago.

 

All of it was aimed at one goal. Now, he was closer than ever. Tomorrow he’d formally accept the nomination that the entire Washington establishment expected him to receive: to fill the recently vacated post of Vice President of the United States.

 

He drank in the stillness of the winter night. Grass crunched underfoot as he crossed from the driveway toward his front door. The air was cold. Frost coated the bushes and the lawn, sparkling in cloud-scattered moonlight.

 

As he got to his front steps, Saxon stopped. Not from exhaustion and not to retrieve his house keys. He sensed a change in the air. The wind lifted, rattling the trees. A whistling sounded, followed by a stir of chimes somewhere in the distance. The gust carried a whiff of sulfur.

 

He tensed his arms and his fists, summoning every ounce of courage in his bones. But when he turned, his knees went weak. The man standing across his lawn—who he was certain had not been there a moment earlier—was a living horror.

 

“Luther Vayne. I almost thought we would never actually meet,” he said. 

 

The ghastly figure wore nothing but a pair of loose, ragged trousers. His hair and beard were a tangle of age-bleached streaks that fell past his naked shoulders. Gaunt as a death camp inmate, inky black tattoos covered his skin with eldritch symbols. The lines of ancient text left hardly a space untouched across his flesh, save for two: the bare hollows where his eyes should have been. A jarring, soulless gaze stared out from those twin sockets, the skin around them warped with scars.

Saxon’s mouth turned dry. “A long way from … where was it?”

 

“I go where I must. As I always have.”

 

Vayne spoke in whispered tones, hissing like a snake.

 

Saxon squared himself, struggling to tame his trembling limbs. Beads of sweat formed along his brow. He puffed his chest with feigned bravado. “I’ve heard so many stories. The killer of women and babies. In my book that makes you nothing but a coward. The Elders warned us about you.”

 

Vayne smiled, exposing yellow, fang-like teeth. His mouth was black with rot. “It is because of them that I am here. You should remember that in the moments to come.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

“You will be tempted, I am quite certain, to blame me for the pain you are about to experience. It is because of their arrogance and foolishness that I must visit this suffering upon you.”

 

“We’re ready for you now. All of us,” Saxon said.

 

“You are not. You will never be.”

 

The old man crept closer, though Saxon could detect no hint of footsteps. The way Vayne moved was unreal, like a vintage film strip run in reverse. “This need not take long. Your instinct will be to resist, of course. But the end can come as quickly as you choose.”

 

Saxon gritted his teeth, trying to show no hint of weakness. “I won’t break.”

 

Brimstone fumes swelled. Night-shadows began to move of their own accord, writhing like tentacles around the strange man. Vayne closed the space between them. He clamped his cold, bony hand around Roger Saxon’s throat. “I am here for one reason only. To destroy the demon seed, once and for all.”

 

Saxon gasped for breath. “You’re wrong, I’m not the thirteenth-born.”

 

 The ghoul continued to stare at him—without eyes. “If that’s true, then you must tell me. What do you know of the bride of Yog-Sothoth?”