Cthulhu-themed works were fairly popular in Japan too; the most famous was Saya no Uta.
Amamiya Rin strongly suspected that this Haunter of the Dark also came out of some macabre horror piece.
Maybe even a romance one, given how its appearance had been drastically reworked into a little loli.
Only, Amamiya Rin simply couldn't recall which work exactly it was.
Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!? Clearly not. Nyaruko was Nyaruko, the Haunter of the Dark was the Haunter of the Dark; at most the two were different avatars of Nyarlathotep.
As for the others… Cthulhu Mythos material was mostly serious work, and adapting the Haunter of the Dark into a cute girl was obviously an anime piece. Of that kind he only knew of Nyaruko and Saya, and Nyaruko didn't match this world's art style. Saya, though… perhaps she had already turned up in some hospital somewhere in this world.
There was nothing to be done about it.
That he could even recall the Haunter of the Dark and Nyarlathotep was no small feat. More than a century had passed, and many memories had blurred over his long life in the Dream World; the only things he'd deliberately noted down in his notebook were the plots of Junji Ito's manga series.
If that giant spider hadn't just recited the string of the Haunter of the Dark's titles, if he hadn't seen the Haunter's gaze, sensed the inexplicable chaos in its voice, and noticed that the Haunter never appeared in brightly lit places—
Without so many clues, he still wouldn't have been able to guess the Haunter of the Dark's identity.
But… here was the problem.
The Cthulhu Mythos—this world seemed to have Cthulhu Mythos works too, didn't it?
Rubbing his brow lightly with his index and middle fingers, Amamiya Rin felt his confusion only mounting.
A world where Cthulhu Mythos works and their authors existed, and yet the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos had appeared in it?
He couldn't make sense of it, truly couldn't. Every time he roughly grasped the truth of this world, more riddles surfaced.
Still, now was not the time to probe this child's true identity.
Now was not even the time for fear.
Because he had sensed something else!
An unnameable tremor swept through the entire room. A dreadful wrath descended without warning, and the dimensional barrier between reality and illusion warped sickeningly under that mighty power. Everything in the room bled of its color, reduced to a deathly gray-white, the edges of objects blurring and dissolving as though devoured by an unseen chaos.
The air was bitterly cold, thick with the muddy stench of dank subterranean rot and the dust of the void—a presence no mortal mind could possibly bear. A formless rift split open in the emptiness, revealing a vast web woven from countless gray, withered, brittle strands of spider silk.
Deep within the great web was a bloated, misshapen body covered in coarse bristles, its eight legs splayed out like dead wood, its face bearing a bizarre, near-human, horrifying visage. Its murky eye sockets fixed upon Amamiya Rin and the Haunter of the Dark—an inhuman gaze, a cosmic horror that corroded the soul directly, enough to plunge any mortal into madness in an instant.
"Big brother, a bad person has come—quick, take my hand, we have to run!"
The child in the shadows called out to Amamiya Rin urgently.
The childish voice bored straight into Amamiya Rin's consciousness like the whispering of countless insects, laden with anxious pressing.
Amamiya Rin's limbs began to go numb, his vision twisting and overlapping, countless spider threads and distorted illusions flickering before his eyes. Yet his expression did not stir at the chaotic scene or the Haunter of the Dark's urging.
"Why should I run? I performed the summoning ritual for His sake. Just as that spider said a moment ago, once I become His believer I'll be able to travel freely between the Dream World and reality through the web He weaves."
Amamiya Rin turned his head toward the girl in the shadows and asked calmly.
He had more or less recalled the identity of this so-called Dream God. In the Cthulhu Mythos there was a spider god who ceaselessly wove a great web spanning the rift between reality and the Illusory Dream Realm; legend held that when the web was complete it would bring about the end of the world. Yet He was also one of the few Great Old Ones who could communicate with humans.
In the real world, the Native Americans had a kind of charm called a Dreamcatcher, which they used to capture beautiful dreams and let nightmares vanish with the morning sun. They believed the night air was full of all sorts of dreams, and only the Dreamcatcher could filter them, carrying them into a beautiful slumber.
The one who created the Dreamcatcher was named Spider Woman, originally the prototype of this spider god; but in the worldview of the Cthulhu Mythos, that Spider Woman became the name the Native Americans gave to the spider god.
Though he wasn't certain of the exact situation with this world's spider god, both of its prototypes had records of communicating normally with humans.
In any case, at least it was more trustworthy than that trickster god Nyarlathotep.
"It won't work, big brother, you've been deceived. That fellow is a workaholic, you know. If an ordinary sorcerer wanted to become His believer, He'd allow that sorcerer to move about freely during their brief life; but once the sorcerer had passed through a lifespan far too short in the eyes of a god, they'd have to help Him weave that great web spanning the rift between reality and the Illusory Dream Realm—and until the weaving was finished, they'd never be permitted to rest."
The girl standing in the shadows seemed to shake her head, her tone earnest yet carrying a teasing edge.
"But you're different. Your talent as an envoy of dreams is too high. In your case, from the moment you became a Spider-Human you'd be thrown into endless, unceasing labor. Even a corporate wage-slave gets time to rest, but working for that fellow, you wouldn't get so much as a moment's break."
Was what she said true or false?
Amamiya Rin instinctively glanced at the human-faced spider god.
Though Nyarlathotep was the embodiment of lies and deception, Amamiya Rin judged that she probably wasn't lying this time—after all, the spider god she was mocking was right there within sight, and still looked positively seething with rage.
If she lied, she'd be called out on it at once, wouldn't she?
But… something felt off.
The spider god was clearly furious, and yet it had not drawn any closer.
In Amamiya Rin's eyes the distance between them never changed, yet he could sense the spider god advancing… So that was it—a distortion of time and space?
Precisely so. Space had long since twisted into an absurd shape, and time too had quietly stagnated and slipped out of place. The spider god's arrival was being infinitely delayed—a more chaotic, higher being had silently rewritten it all.
Something stirred in Amamiya Rin, but his face didn't change as he said to the loli Haunter of the Dark, "No matter. His envoy is a reasonable being, one you can communicate with normally. I think that, as an employee, I could negotiate a few benefits."
"It's no use, big brother. Just as a wage-slave has no standing to bargain terms with the boss, His first priority is finishing His work. Any request that would delay that work, He simply won't accept…"
As she tried to persuade Amamiya Rin, the loli Haunter of the Dark lowered her head.
She seemed to be thinking, or perhaps making some momentous decision. After a moment she lifted her head, and though her face remained veiled in shadow, her voice had turned serious.
"Here's what we'll do, big brother. What you want is a power specialized in Dream Manifestation, isn't it? Turning dreams into a reality the individual is willing to believe in—a power like that isn't so rare. That fellow isn't the only one who can grant it. I can too. Take my hand, run away with me, and I'll give you the power specialized in Dream Manifestation."
"And your reason? Why help me?"
Amamiya Rin asked flatly.
He was in no hurry at all now. This Haunter of the Dark had far too pointed an agenda, and clearly had no intention of simply handing him over to the spider god. The ones most anxious right now ought to be the Haunter and that spider god… what was its name again? He'd look it up later.
"Hmm? That sort of thing is too complicated. If I have to put it into words—I like you a lot, big brother. A living big brother is very important to me. A big brother who's dead, or turned into something else, would have no meaning."
The loli Haunter of the Dark tilted her head. That childish, innocent voice made it all too easy to warm to her, to believe every word she spoke.
But Amamiya Rin's mind stayed perfectly clear. The loli Haunter's words fell upon him like a fine, hazy drizzle onto the surface of a lake, stirring not a single ripple.
Could Nyarlathotep's words be trusted?
Of course not!
And yet, whatever purpose Nyarlathotep concealed, her words would always let slip some fragment of the truth.
A version of himself turned into something else was meaningless to Nyarlathotep. She wanted him as he was now, to leave with her.
Amamiya Rin thought it over coolly, carefully dredging up his memories of the Cthulhu Mythos and Nyarlathotep.
Too vague… what on earth did Nyarlathotep want?
Even recalling those memories would be useless, wouldn't it? The Nyarlathotep before him wasn't necessarily identical to the one in the Cthulhu Mythos—just as Hellstar Remina differed in image and behavioral logic from its prototype, the Star of Judgment. After all, this was a world where Cthulhu Mythos works and their authors existed.
"Come quickly, there's no time left, that villain is about to get here."
At this, the space of reality warped madly like melting wax, and the spider god existing in another dimension seemed to close the distance. The loli Haunter of the Dark standing by the wall grew urgent as well, pressing Amamiya Rin on in a voice full of care and worry.
If he didn't yield, she was going to flip the table.
Amamiya Rin realized what the loli Haunter of the Dark had decided.
Without a shred of further hesitation, he strode out from the reach of the candlelight and walked toward the loli Haunter of the Dark by the wall.
He came right up close—face to face now, less than a meter apart. And still he couldn't see her clearly.
Even at arm's reach, the loli Haunter of the Dark remained shrouded in darkness. Amamiya Rin could make out only her silhouette and her clothing, not her features—even the small hand she extended toward him was nothing but pitch-black.
In this one respect she matched the Haunter of the Dark's true image—a vast black entity… though now there was no vastness, only the blackness.
Amamiya Rin reached out and grasped the Haunter of the Dark's hand, and the instant they touched, a violent burning sensation exploded from his palm.
The texture was nothing like a child's hand at all, but something sticky, cold, ceaselessly squirming. It was like living quicksilver, or a fluid made of countless fine particles, and from the moment he gripped it, it began to eat away at his skin.
Amamiya Rin could feel the tissue on the surface of his palm dissolving, as though slowly doused in strong acid or roasted inch by inch by an invisible flame, the skin melting away layer by layer to expose the flesh beneath.
Yet Amamiya Rin's expression never changed. He tightened his grip on the Haunter of the Dark's hand, his body not trembling in the slightest.
"Hehehehe—big brother, get ready now, it's time for us to go."
The loli Haunter of the Dark laughed.
The laughter was soft, like the late-night wind passing through a narrow alley, carrying a certain satisfied delight.
Then the invisible chasm lying between reality and the Illusory Dream Realm, at the touch of that dark figure, raised of its own accord a twisted bridge across itself.
A dark-violet sky wreathed in chaotic dream-visions seeped into every inch of the stagnant air, quietly fusing Amamiya Rin and that unnameable being into one.
Every light in the room went out; only Atlach-Nacha's web glowed with a deathly gray-white halo, shedding cold-hued dust that belonged to no mortal world.
The contours of reality dissolved like a faded ancient scroll; the boundaries of walls, floor, doors, and windows warped into grotesque deformities. A madness-inducing stillness surged up from the depths of the void, and countless shards of dreams no human had ever glimpsed drifted soundlessly all around, like phantoms rising and sinking in the deep sea.
The child the Haunter of the Dark had become took Amamiya Rin's hand in her darkness-shrouded one, and in the next moment a gentle yet terrible sensation of sinking swept over his whole body.
It was like plunging into a bottomless abyss of slumber—his flesh abandoned in the dimension of the real world, while his soul and spirit were gently borne up by a silent infinity.
They trod across the gray-white web that stretched over the warp and weft of the cosmos, passed through layer upon layer of dream-curtains woven from wild fancies, skimmed past orbs of chaotic light drifting between waking and sleeping, past the phantoms sniggering soundlessly at the frontiers of the Illusory Dream Realm.
After an instant no mortal calendar could record, the shackles of reality shattered completely.
Amamiya Rin had at last stepped into that world humans could enter only in sleep—without having fallen asleep at all.
Amamiya Rin's feet came down steadily, planting onto familiar asphalt pavement.
He looked around. Everything before him matched the real Tokyo down to the last hair—buildings standing silent in the night, the warm light of a Convenience store spilling across its display window, an empty crosswalk, the silhouettes of roadside trees, a vending machine glowing coldly at the street corner. Even the curve of the night breeze slipping through the lanes and the mottled marks on the walls coincided perfectly with the city of his daily life.
No, that wasn't right. What it coincided with wasn't the city of his daily life… it was the city shaped over his past century of life in the Dream World, by the shared consciousness of himself and countless Tomies.
The Dream World he had entered under the loli Haunter of the Dark's guidance seemed no different from the usual Dream World.
"That's just how it looks."
As if she knew Amamiya Rin's thoughts, the loli Haunter of the Dark holding his hand gestured for him to look up.
Amamiya Rin raised his eyes, and the instant he did, he saw the difference.
The sky was strewn with stars more numerous and brighter than those of the mortal world, the constellations arranged unlike any in the mortal world. The Milky Way stretched as a resplendent band of silver light, and now and then a strange nebula drifted past, giving off a soft, colored glow. A dream-moon, ringed in a wondrous milky-white halo, hung in the night sky, its rim wreathed in pale-cyan mist.
The ground and its surroundings were no different from his past dreams—but that sky, that sky belonged to a realm beyond his dreams.
____
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