“Like the god?” Quinn asked. Ms. West nodded.
“We know the god came here from a far corner of the known universe, perhaps even from outside our universe. We know he requires souls to survive, but perhaps it was he who brought the soul here in the first place. For he was present on earth long before Thomas Parris, before the human race was birthed, perhaps even before the first spark of life ignited. Perhaps he was the spark. He has been lying in wait, dead but dreaming, ever since. We do not know why he came, but he has revealed his intention – to colonize our galaxy and to build on earth a factory of souls to fuel his expanding race.”
“He’s never said that to me,” I said.
“You do not ask the right questions. He revealed this to Vincent Bloomberg during their first meeting, when Vincent took over the role of President of the Eldritch Club from his father.”
Trey snorted. “Trust my father to see a malevolent cosmic deity as a kindred spirit.”
“Vincent is nothing if not brilliant.” Ms. West’s voice took on this wistful tone I’d never heard before. She turned to me, but her eyes were far away. “You may not know, but your boyfriend’s father is the director of one of the biggest aerospace technology companies in the world. The combination of his astrophysics background and his judicious imagination meant he was the first member of the Eldritch Club to discern the god’s true purpose. That’s why Vincent contracted me to study the god. He knew I was uniquely suited to help both the god and him achieve their aims.”
“What aims were those?” Trey demanded.
Ms. West waved her hand. She was clearly going to tell this story in her own time. “Before I knew your father or had contact with the god, my early experiments looked at how to separate the soul from the body – the subjective from the objective. I figured out that trauma severs the soul/body connection. And, of course, the greatest trauma a human can endure is their own death. The soul as energy is then reabsorbed and reused as part of the world, in a similar way that all life on earth is made from the dust of stars. What this reabsorption involves is unclear – are souls reincarnated, or does that energy become something else? These are the questions I wanted to answer but have not yet fathomed. What I do know is that the most traumatic deaths can damage a soul so it cannot be absorbed, giving us ghosts and spirits who linger on our plane.”
Easy pickings for a god who devours souls – like the ghosts of the witches that haunted Parris. I shuddered at the memory of the names scratched on the walls of the weight room. I still didn’t know how they tied into all this, or why the rats scratched them for us to read. And I didn’t want to ask Ms. West. I had a feeling she hadn’t noticed the scratches, and I didn’t want to give away the rats’ secret.
“After many months of unsuccessful attempts, I was able to intercept the soul on the very point of transition,” Ms. West explained. “The soul is just energy, and any standard conductor of energy can then be used to direct that soul wherever I wish.”
“You did experiments on cadavers at Arkham General,” I said.
“Of course. To test my theory, I needed subjects on the brink of death. I needed to be able to capture the soul at the very point of its observable transition. And it proved successful – I was able to isolate and trap the human soul within an occult sigil.”
I wondered about the sigils I found on the Miskatonic Prep graves. Had the sigils somehow trapped their souls? But there wasn’t time to consider it – I had to focus on Ms. West’s words, for each sounded more insane than the last.
She continued. “Now that I had captured a human soul, what could I do with it? I wanted to know what happened if I placed the soul in another body. What if I could move a dying soul into a new body and therefore eliminate death entirely?
“But before I could explore further, the hospital discovered my experiments. There was an inquiry. I explained the importance of my work, but they could not see beyond the potential litigation into the wider benefits for humanity. Luckily, Vincent sat on the hospital board and immediately recognized my brilliance. He stepped in at the last minute with an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“He introduced me to the god. When he opened those trapdoors, what rushed at me was the sensation of a soul leaving, only amplified a hundredfold. I knew then that Vincent was right in his theory – what for centuries has been called a god or a demon is really an alien entity that required no food to exist, but a kind of living energy that originated from its home across the stars. It had been starving for millennia, for it was trapped beneath the earth, starved of souls, the very thing which I could supply.
“Vincent explained that he could kill a person and throw their corpse into the prison, and the entity – the god, if you prefer – would give off a small burst of power that Vincent could use. He wanted a way to make that power grow and last. I knew immediately what was happening – in the same way we eat food to give our bodies energy, the god devoured the soul and took the nutrients of life itself to give off an energy that has never before been discovered in our world. And that energy was absorbed by Vincent and other members of the Eldritch Club – all descendants of powerful witches and occult leaders. The answer to Vincent’s question was therefore simple – if he wants a great release of this energy, his god requires a great feast of souls.”
I sucked in a breath, willing down the heat that flared in my palms. Beside me, Trey gripped the edge of his chair so hard his knuckles glowed white.
“I also knew that if I told him this, Vincent would cast me aside. I’d lose access to the god forever. I was the only scientist to make these breakthroughs in the study of souls, and the only one who would have access to this new energy. I alone had the opportunity to reveal the deepest hidden secrets of the universe. I couldn’t allow the Eldritch Club to close off my access to the god. This discovery was bigger than them and their petty squabbles for dominance.
“And so, I did what no one else had done since they discovered the god – I asked him what he wanted. The answer was also obvious, although not to Vincent Bloomberg. If the god had come to colonize our universe, he must have had a mate with him. But his mate died on the journey. The god was unable to complete his mission, so he slumbered beneath the earth until he was awoken by Parris. More than anything else, our god wished for progeny to carry on his dynasty of star-eaters.”
“What does that even mean?” Trey demanded.
“It means, boy, that I saved your pointless lives and gave the god what he wanted. Instead of killing you like Vincent would have demanded, I blessed you with the god’s gifts. You were to be his firstborn – the first generation in an evolutionary chain that would lead eventually to a race of new star gods. Your teachers volunteered to leave their lives and accept immortality – without the associated gifts of his energy – to act as your nursemaids and tutors, to ensure you continue the god’s race to the next generation, and the next. Your father – your new father – is patient. He can afford to wait a millennium or two for the last of your frail human genes to be flushed from the system.”
Trey stalked across the room, his eyes ablaze. He grabbed her shoulders, yanking her forward on her toes until her face was an inch from his. “Stop trying to make poetry from your butchering. What have you done to us?”