The priest placed one of its hands on a stone altar, and in one swift motion, sliced off one of its fingers. The other worshippers chanted as the figure stood up and tossed the severed digit into a pool of water ringed by triangular stones that pointed inward like teeth. The chanting rose, and then the voices sped up, and the lights flickered rapidly, and Abel understood that time was passing in his vision, though how much time, he could not have said.

  Time slowed to normal again, and something crawled out of the water.

  Abel sat up in the tub with a gasp. He knew what he had to do. He knew why he needed a knife, and that salt water was good for so much more than strengthening his visions.

  Still naked and dripping, Abel went to his old bedroom, with its sagging abandoned mattress, and picked up the knife from the dresser. He returned to the bathroom, leaving wet footprints on the dusty floor. He had no altar stone, but the edge of the tub would do well enough. He pressed his hand against the tub and, before he could talk himself out of this course of action, pressed down with the knife.

  Cutting off the end of his finger was harder than Abel had expected, and he had to really bear down, grunting as the blade crunched through, just above the knuckle. He whimpered at the hot wave of agony. His head spun, and his hand throbbed. The Ravening Deep would not spare him from pain, it seemed, and he wondered at the stoicism of the priest in his vision. It hadn’t been human, or not entirely so, and perhaps that accounted for the difference.

  Abel picked up the severed end of his finger with his unharmed hand and looked at the bit of flesh for a moment. I have a hangnail, he thought, or I used to. Then he flung the finger into the tub. He hoped the chanting from his vision wasn’t necessary. He did not know the words.

  Abel bandaged his hand and stumbled to his bedroom, where he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep that lasted until the next morning.

  When he woke, he went into the bathroom, and the water had changed – it was no longer clear, but opaque, the gray-green of the sea seen on a stormy day. Abel barked out a laugh, elated and astonished. He hadn’t really doubted his visions; they were too powerful for that, but it was still amazing to see his god’s promised miracle in action. He resisted the urge to reach in and feel around under the surface. Things were growing there, remarkable things, and he must give them time to develop.

  Abel was hungry, and there wasn’t much to eat in the house, just a tin of ancient cornmeal and another of ancient flour, abandoned when he lost the place. He considered going out for groceries. Instead, he walked outside, down to the stony shore. In this little protected curve of the coastline, the waters were calm, and the waves were not breakers but ripples. The day was cool, the air full of salt, and the cries of the gulls forlorn. Leaden clouds pressed down as far as Abel could see in every direction.

  He rolled up the legs of his pants and waded into the water, then dropped to his knees, immersed to his chin. His thoughts were disjointed and feverish, a jumble of associations flooding his mind: births, baptisms, drownings. But as he felt the steady and constant motion of the water around him, an engine that had turned without human intervention for millions of years and would continue to do so long after all the humans were gone, his thoughts settled and became more orderly themselves. Somewhere out there in the water, there was a vast emptiness where his god should be. His god was dead, its kingdom conquered, its works broken. But Abel could bring his god back to life, and in return, Abel would be rewarded. He’d already been rewarded. Rewarded with purpose.

  After a long time in the water, Abel rose, and felt refreshed. His hunger pangs were gone, and his hand no longer throbbed at all. The pain was gone, but the bandage was tighter now, and uncomfortable. As he walked to the shore, he unwound the bandage, and was unsurprised to see his pinky finger had grown back. The digit had a new little kink in its length, though, like it had considered and abandoned the idea of growing a fourth knuckle, and the fingernail was thick and striated like the shell of a clam, but the digit curled when he tried to bend it, and it felt normal enough.

  Abel turned and faced the sea. “Thank you, Asterias.” But that felt wrong. His god was not in the sea. His god had been stolen away, the last fragment of its greatness hidden somewhere inland, forgotten in a crowded room.

  Abel walked back up to the house, determined to find and restore the god.

  When he entered the living room, he saw the wet footprints on the floor immediately. Unnerved, he picked up a poker from beside the cold fireplace, wishing he’d kept his beautiful knife closer to hand. He hadn’t expected to need a weapon; the house was remote, and he hardly had enemies. The tracks came from the hallway, from the direction of the bathroom, and continued toward the kitchen. Though Abel had cut off his finger hoping for a miracle, he hadn’t truly expected one. How much power could a dead god possess, after all, and who knew what truth could be found in visions?

  When Abel went into the kitchen, fire poker held high, he found a man, naked and dripping wet, standing at the counter with his back turned.

  “Who are you?” Abel demanded, hoping but not quite daring to hope.

  The man turned, and Abel looked into a face he’d seen so often in the mirror. This stranger had Abel’s same dark eyes, same long face, same unruly hair, same slightly crooked nose. The man had been stuffing dry handfuls of cornmeal into his mouth, and when he spoke, little yellow grains spilled down his chin. “Brother,” the creature croaked. “I am your brother.”

  Abel lowered the poker. “You… came from me.” Like Eve from Adam’s rib, he thought, and then flinched at the blasphemy. No. Not blasphemy. Because that God was not his god.

  The impossible creature turned and fumbled at the sink until a weak flow ran from the tap, then drank from cupped hands, washing the dry cornmeal down. It – he? – turned back to Abel and spoke again, this time in a more even voice. He didn’t sound quite the way Abel sounded to himself, but close. “I am a comet.”

  Abel frowned. “A… comet?” Did he mean he came from space? Had Asterias come from space, a refugee from some shattered world, sailing through the cold void until crashing untold millennia ago into the ocean, adapting to a new world, making a new kingdom on earth?

  “Starfish,” the creature said, and beckoned. Abel joined him, unnerved at standing beside a naked replica of himself who stank of brine. The creature drew a seven-pointed star in a spill of cornmeal on the counter, beside the overturned canister. He drew a wavy line down the center.

  “Some… some starfish reproduce like this, by dividing themselves in two. Each half becomes a new creature.” Then he drew a line at the base of one of the seven arms. “But there are others, in the Pacific, who shed their arms instead. The severed arm grows into a new starfish. You see? The process is called autotomy. From the Greek. It means… self-severing.” The creature grinned at Abel, and its teeth were straighter and whiter than his own. “Self-amputation. Like you.” He mimed a chopping motion. “That amputated arm of the starfish is called a comet.” The creature thumped himself on the chest with a fist. “I am your comet.”

  “How do you know all this?” Abel said.

  The comet cocked its head. “I know only what you know, brother. Uncle Jericho came back from Hawaii and told us about the starfish. Mother went to the library and found a book about it. She read to you from it on the afternoon of March 13, the year you turned nine. It was raining. Your mother was in her favorite housedress–”

  “You remember all that?” Abel was agog. He’d known the ritual would create another person, to expand his congregation, but he hadn’t expected this, a version of himself, but with an improved mind? It was eerie, it was alarming, and it was exhilarating. Together, they would restore their god to glory.

  “Of course I remember,” the comet said. “I am all that you were, and more.” He held out a hand and clasped Abel’s. “We’re closer than brothers, but brothers will do for a name. You can call me… Seth.”

  •••

  “Seth, like Abel’s brother, from the Bible?”

  “One of his brothers,” Abel said grimly.

  “This Seth… this double… had all your memories?” Diana shuddered. Abel didn’t blame her.

  “More than that,” Abel said. “He had all my memories, and could recall them at will. Every instant from the moment I was born. He had perfect recall for every event, every conversation, everything that happened around me, even if I wasn’t even paying attention at the time. He could recount conversations held by strangers across the room when I was a child. The full potential of the human mind, unlocked by an inhuman mind.”

  Abel took a sip of his coffee, now gone cold. He’d never told this story to anyone before. His only close confidants in the past six months had been his own comets, and they knew everything he knew, by definition. Abel was aware how unlikely his tale sounded, and expected her to throw him out now that he’d told it. “You must think I’m a madman.”

  “I have never seen anything quite like… what you’ve described,” Diana said. “But I’ve seen some other things that–”

  She was interrupted by a shrill ringing of the telephone from downstairs. Diana rose from her spot on the other side of the counter and frowned. “I’m sorry, I should run down and answer that. I don’t usually get calls on Sundays when the shop is closed.”

  Abel nodded and watched her depart. He looked around her kitchen, so much cheerier and cleaner and more homey than his own. Though “his kitchen” wasn’t his own anymore. It belonged to the comets, like everything else he’d once owned. Specifically, it belonged to his other “brother”, the comet who came after Seth, the one who’d replaced Abel as high priest, and who’d assumed Abel’s identity. That was the comet that called himself “Cain”. A little joke. Adam and Eve’s first son, and the biblical slayer of his brother Abel. The fact that the monster had a sense of humor, however rudimentary, just made everything more disturbing.

  Even worse, Abel knew Cain was nearby, just across the river, the certainty of his presence throbbing in Abel’s skull like a rotten tooth. Abel no longer had visions, not since he lost the amulet, but he still felt connected to his comets, the copies he’d spawned directly as well as the ones they had spawned in turn – his grand-comets, as it were. There were at least half a dozen duplicates of him in Arkham now, moving in inscrutable circles, going about treacherous business. Drinking made it harder for him to sense them, too, which was another reason he’d turned to the bottle.

  But now that he’d met Diana, with her connection to the Lodge, and her clear suspicion of the Order… maybe he could do something besides getting drunk and waiting for Cain to kill him. Maybe he could stop his comets from fulfilling their goals. In order to restore the Ravening Deep, Cain had to gain access to forbidden parts of the Silver Twilight Lodge, and Abel had no doubt his comet was working to solve that problem even now. If Abel could get there first, though…

  He heard Diana’s footsteps coming back up the stairs, returning to him, just as hope had.

  Chapter Five

  Rituals

  “Shall we send a car?” said the woman on the phone.

  “I can walk over later this morning, unless it’s urgent.” Diana didn’t want to get into any car that Sanford sent. Once she was in a car, she could be taken anywhere. She didn’t think she’d let any of her recent misgivings show, or given anyone reason to doubt her loyalty, but who knew what Carl Sanford could see? Some believed the Master of the Silver Twilight Lodge could read minds, or see into your secret heart, or catch glimpses of the future – the latter theory whispered by those who envied Sanford’s luck in the financial markets.

  “Oh, no hurry,” the Initiate working as Sanford’s assistant said breezily. Diana didn’t know her name; Sanford’s assistants tended to come and go, as they either excelled and were promoted or disappointed and were expelled. “He’s going to be working in his office until lunchtime at least – that is, if he even remembers to eat. You know how absorbed he can get.”

  Such pretensions toward familiarity with Sanford were common among the Initiates, who wanted to believe they were close to the inside of things. They should be happy they remained in the outer reaches of Sanford’s orbit and beneath his notice. Diana wasn’t anywhere near the true center of Sanford’s world, but she was already far closer than she wanted to be.

  “Let him know I’ll be along as soon as I can.” What could the leader of the Order want? To send her on another incomprehensible errand? To make her participate in another ritual? She wasn’t sure she could do that, but pretending to go along and further gaining Sanford’s trust was her best hope to someday bring him down, so she might have to grit her teeth and bear it.

  Diana hung the candlestick phone on its little hook. Her phone was one of the new models, with a rotary dial on the front so you could place calls directly, without having to speak to an operator. Her customers, the wealthy women of Arkham, could be counted on to notice such details. If you wanted to move among the upper echelons, it was vital to look like you belonged there, and Diana took great pains to do so. That attention to every little detail would be beneficial if she embarked on the double life she was contemplating.

  She went back upstairs, where Abel sat staring into his cold mug of coffee, absorbed in thought. He was a striking man, underneath all the grime and stubble and liquor, with dark and soulful eyes and a strong jaw, though his face was a bit long, putting her in mind of certain portraits of Puritans hanging in the town’s municipal buildings. He was a true son of New England. She was inclined to believe his tale, outrageous as it was, because she knew there were strange powers abroad in the universe, and it was easy to believe the great sea contained unknown horrors. Besides, who would make up a tale so outlandish?

  The problem was, she hadn’t heard enough of his outlandish tale. She hadn’t heard the part that mattered most to her.

  “Is everything all right?” Abel’s voice had grown more firm the longer he talked, and now there was no trace of weakness or quaver.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “That was one of the Initiates at the Silver Twilight Lodge. Carl Sanford would like to see me right away.”

  “The magus,” Abel murmured.

  “I’ve never heard anyone call him that. Some call him the master.”

  “The magus is what my one of my… comets calls Sanford.”

  She resumed her place across the counter from him. “Why are your comets interested in the Lodge?” That was the part she was interested in.

  “I was getting to that,” Abel said. “It’s a long and bloody story, but since you’ve been summoned, I’ll skip to the end. I was ousted, and our group was taken over by another comet, a monstrous creature named Cain. He looks like me… he looks human… most of the time. But he’s not. We have reason to believe the last remnant of Asterias is being held prisoner by Carl Sanford, and Cain intends to get it back.”

  Asterias! Abel said that so matter-of-factly, when talking about an impossible thing. Her understanding of the impossible had shifted recently, but even so… “You really think Sanford has captured a god?”

  Perhaps it wasn’t so unlikely. She’d seen Sanford traffic with inhuman creatures; that was the very thing that had changed her from curious Seeker to terrified apostate, after all.

  The moment of her horrific awakening came during a ritual held in the subterranean depths beneath the Lodge, in a dank stone chamber lined with wrought-iron braziers that sputtered sickly flames and miasmic smoke. Her memories were hazed with that smoke, and mingled with the countless nightmares she’d had since. The nightmares sometimes happened when she was awake, superimposing themselves on the real world when she caught a whiff of burning leaves or an unidentified chemical stink. The details were slippery, but the impression was clear.

  The chamber was crowded with figures veiled in robes, sumptuous black and arterial red, denoting their ranks; she was in coarse black, but with gold thread at the sleeves. She’d sipped from a cup earlier, something to “heighten her senses”, but it just gave her a sense of unreality. The figures all swayed and chanted, and she spoke with them, the alien words filling her mouth, though she couldn’t recall memorizing them.

  When she raised her eyes to the center of the room, she saw the raised dais of black stone, with two figures upon it. Tears sprang to her eyes: one resembled a mummy, a dried-out husk of a person, her withered hand wrapped around a large silver key. The other was a young man, curled up, arms and wrists bound, face hidden under a hood. He whimpered, and shifted, and she saw his face: was that Walter Evans? He was an Initiate, wasn’t he? His mother, Grace, had come to her shop once or twice…

  Sanford was there, overseeing the grim business on the slab, resplendent in ornate robes. Strange glyphs cut into the stone began to glow, emitting a flat, straw-colored light. The chanting of the cultists was joined by another voice, a series of gibbering moans and clicks, teasing a meaning that she couldn’t quite comprehend. Her mind struggled with the sounds, and then understanding pierced her brain like a splinter under a fingernail: the dried husk had been a young woman, and her death was an offering to open the way, mere grease for the machinery of a summoning.

  The boy, Walter… he would be the first meal.

  She stumbled to her knees, and she wasn’t the only one, but her fall was weakness, while for the others, it was more like reverence. A wave of force broke across the dais, and the air itself seemed to split, revealing a gash in reality that spilled out darkness like ink. Things reached out of the opening, twisting writhing grasping things, and seized Walter, who screamed… but not for long. A chemical reek struck her, some malevolent intelligence groped across her mind, and then horrible slurping, crunching, moaning noises filled her ears. She wanted desperately to flee, but she couldn’t. She gazed down instead, at her lap, and – there was a blade in her hand. An ornate and bloody dagger. Why? Had she… did she… why couldn’t she remember? Why didn’t she want to?