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Masks of Nyarlathotep - Businessmen
Author:local lesbian commie
⚠️ Content warning: racism
local lesbian commie's author page
March 20th, 1918
The world had answered the tempting call of darkness a few hours ago, bringing a further sense of glumness to the metropolis just when the two businessmen arrived from an exhaustive plane travel. Both wore large overcoats of a faded, uninspired shade of beige, spick and span dress pants, and a black pair of shoes. Their dry mouths and eyes, bitter taste clawing against their throats, and the ravishing vertigo were the perfect company to that style, because they captured even more the morbid, potentially regrettable curiosity that led them to Cape Town; one with such a life of its own it completely overshadowed the primary affairs they would have to solve before facing the ecstasy they were craving for, deep down. That nauseating feeling grew stronger and stronger each time it was denied.
They had never met Nathan Terblanche in person before, as a few exchanges through letters and telephone calls were sufficient to coordinate the next steps to be taken in the exploration of Hawthorne Island. But once it was done, Fritz did his research, and so did Liam too after he was invited to be in the presence of the world's richest man.
Nathan graduated in psychology at the University of Cape Town. His family passed thaumaturgic knowledge and mysterious artifacts from one generation to another. Such circumstances seemed to make Nathan more than a magician; he was a walking outrage ready to free people from Plato's cave, people would say. Men advised one another to see Nathan in their free time and shuddered, and where Nathan went, the rest vanished. To think about his alleged doings — prophecies no other person would ever dare making, the miracle that brought the Savior back to life — felt like having such autonomy over one's body you could order it to release adrenaline whenever needed.
It was sinful; to be blessed by God and be under the Devil's spell at the same time.
"The map, please." Fritz asked while taking a pack of Marlboro out of his pocket and lighting up a creased cigarette. "We're late. Don't wanna mess this up after everything."
Liam nodded, arranging his fedora before opening his suitcase to get the map and give it to the older man, the Administrator of the SCP Foundation. He scratched his neck and quickened his step, fearless to explore the lone wolves that are the alleys and sidewalks past midnight. Both Liam and the lunatic full moon above them decided to follow Fritz's guidance; it was glowing in a beautiful red, a unique vermilion that wouldn't be matched for centuries, as if the skies had painted it with ink, still fresh and quite effervescent.
The venue was the mansion of the Terblanche family. Its ownership was passed to Nathan after his father assumedly entered an irreversible comatose state many years ago, and said the connoisseurs of the 'esoteric arts' that its level of reality itself would meet negative scores, given Nathan's willingness to conceive any wishes with his mere thought. Hidden by trees, buildings, and factories, there it was, waiting to be found by those who left it all behind; it was seemingly the highest point in the city, floors and more floors of pure treasure swirling into and out of each other, with the open windows revealing such an amount of colors, some unknown to the human eye, that it felt as if two suns were dancing through the skies and Hubble's recent discoveries were nothing but a glimpse of the true chaotic nature of the cosmos.
From that noisy imagery, the God-shaped silence came; a silent void in the form of a voice, a playful and inviting voice that turned their heads immediately to its direction. For how long he was there, it didn't matter; what mattered was that he was, simply. The man made of gold.
He was slender, tall — roughly 6'5" — and of a skin so pale it rivaled the aspect of the winter's snow. Bright blue eyes of a snake and silky hairs of amber matched elegantly his pompous style of a red and black trench coat made of the most polished fabric, with an old wooden cane in his hands to support his walk. He was surrounded by several types of cars that the two men could swear were not there before, of the working class and the bourgeoisie, of waste and wealth; naturally antagonistic but united by something way, way above of both — not the top of the pyramid, but the pyramid itself.
Nathan had a slight smile on his face and calmly waved to Liam and Fritz, who crossed the road in a hurry. They looked the man in the eye deeply — his soul had nothing to hide. His smile widened.
"Good night, dear Fritz. And before you say it, please let me assure you the pleasure is all mine."
He nodded, then Nathan turned to Liam with a glimpse of surprise in his eyes.
"And I see you brought a friend indeed. Care to tell me your name, son?"
"Turner, Sir. Liam Turner of the Overseer Council."
Fritz completed, "He's our most recent addition."
Nathan nodded. "It's a courageous move to put a Negro in such a high position at times like this, isn't it?"
Fritz looked at Liam. He was still, arms crossed.
"Now now, this is not a complaint. In fact, dare I say I'm quite ahead of my colleagues when it comes to this matter."
"Good to know, sir," Liam replied with a smile, "but that aside, shall we enter? We're quite late."
A chuckle. "Of course son, but don't be so orthodox. I would never begin an exhibition when everyone hasn't arrived."
"Exhibition?" Fritz interrupted. "I thought we would discuss our partnership first."
And Nathan replied in an instant, "One can do both at the same time."
The insides of the house were of more impelling fascination and allurement than the looks of the outside. Endless stairs led to choking rooms above, and their size seemed to let out a shrunken creak as it was studied, each of which seemed to echo in a different direction. Regardless of where they were looking, Liam and Fritz's eyes would only meet instruments of glass and metal, and then instruments of both combined in a yet stranger nature.
A smell one's mind could only recognize as a light scent of vivid tumors hovered in the air, and as Nathan's cane stepped on the floor, its clicking sound resembling the one of a clockwork, varied forms appeared amidst the pillars of creation sustaining the main room. And as their faces were revealed, the men could only remember the antagonism they thought of earlier: people of both the bourgeoisie and the working class united to celebrate Nathan, but in a quite sinister view — one only the likings of capitalism could offer as the vampire that feeds off its intestine in an all-embracing hunger.
The looks of those people seemed not exaggerated but rather monsterified to the greatest extent; those one may consider 'poor' barely had teeth in their mouths or clothes to wear, and their skins — dear God, their skins were whirling, churning, and then struggling against air itself, as if it could burn them, trying to banish them from a world they could never belong to. And those one may consider 'rich' were worse! Liam and Fritz had to cover their mouths to avoid vomiting as their superiority could be tasted, and it tasted like piss and blood mixed with caviar and rotten cigarattes. The bourgeoisie was taller too, and their columns were bulging through the skin and curving, bending to their own self-rightness to the point the heads were meeting the floor made of gold. And both rich and poor people were separated in several pairs of a rich and a poor person each, always firmly holding hands and dancing a dance they would not acknowledge to themselves that they had seen.
"Who— what are these people?"
"Dear Fritz, do not raise your voice like that." He put his hand over the man's shoulder. "And remember, it is rude to talk about someone who's listening."
"But Sir," Liam intervened in a hurry, "it's even ruder to ignore what's going on—"
He turned to Liam calmly. "What is wrong, son?"
"What isn't?" Said Fritz.
And one of the figures replied and cursed the room to silence, "Those who have seen Nathan before look on sights which others saw not."
The two men swallowed, and nothing else could they do besides watching in horror as Nathan gave an unsanctified smile and became the soul and center of that blasphemous chamber beyond time, overflowing with so many contradictions that the room soon felt embraced by the quasars that feed the greatest galaxies. And as the world began to revolve and sunder and displace science, thousands of muffled screams coming from unspoken things were heard and accompanied by maddening and sentient prayers that would inaugurate the thunderous crunching of drums, played by the gigantic nightmares from the edge of the universe to devour even the slightest part of reality one would wrongly call normalcy.
That was the beginning of the 'special exhibition' — at some point the men wouldn't dare to guess when, the lights went out and the moon opened its eyes and glittered beyond those windows made of cooling sun while howling, transmuting the blueness of Nathan's eyes into a purplish dream that evoked faceless symbols in the air and hurried to thrust their skin as a syringe's needle injecting the sacred waters of Heaven in their blood — and all fear suddenly disappeared, crushed by the lasting satisfaction of a monotonous humming from the burning angels they couldn't see, as the place became completely enamored not by darkness, but by the broken lamp itself, until all they saw was themselves; first two replicas of them, and in a second two of thousands, each one with their own individual but shared senses that together got to see the big picture of Nathan — and only Nathan — being blessed by thunder and stars crawling from the sky like snakes and an eternal rain falling as if tears, in a world Lucifer regretted his choices and was forgiven.
Then it all stopped again, and their minds became glass shards inside of a renovated skin, led by a speechless heart to a bland and simple office of one desk and two chairs, where Liam and Fritz were sitting before Nathan, who just finished preparing a cup of hot coffee for himself. Fritz's countenance was pale, and his skinless hands trembled whilst Liam stared right into the soul of Nathan Terblanche — and I assure it would be more precise to tell you what he didn't see rather than what he did, as ten thousand unspoken names and ten thousand unborn faces can correlate the contents of reality and mind just enough.
"Your friend doesn't seem well," Nathan said, "so let's get this over with for you to go back home."
And just when Liam was about to answer, Fritz intervened; he slowly lowered his head to look at the several papers in front of them.
"The SCP Foundation and Terblanche Enterprises shall cooperate with each other for the following one-hundred years."
Fritz nodded — he thought he was asleep and decided to simply keep going. It would have to end at some point.
Nathan proceeded to calmly open one of the desk's drawers and picked a simple sheaf of papers, stapled together in the top left corner, and handed it to Fritz. He held it and began to go through the pages as he saw the covering sheet reading simply, “Confidential Report on Special Items—Classified.”
"It's a special one, and it will surely help you." Nathan smiled. "It was my father's favorite."
Fritz's teary eyes grew wide, and in a moment of both sudden shock and realization, he began to laugh. He couldn't stop laughing and laughed with Nathan for what seemed like hours. He laughed as he left the mansion with Liam and laughed as they entered the plane in the morning. He laughed when he arrived at his house, and he laughed even more as Nathan opened the front door for him to get inside.