Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear Read Online Free

kind of thing that could get her hired on at a Carnegie I institution. She said as casually as she could, using the slightly unethical trick of imitating the lilt of the Papuan tongue: “ Tulu? ”
    There was no mistaking that the younger man had done something he shouldn’t have in saying this word in front of an outsider, because every man narrowed his eyes at him before they all turned to Kristen with expressions that were patently opaque. The chief said in Tok Pisin with a dismissive gesture, “ Tulu is a very inappropriate word to use among … guests. You are our guest for a few more days, so we do not want to send you off with that. Apologize, Kip.”
    “It was very rude of me,” Kip said in the pidgin with doleful eyes as he looked at Kristen. “I do apologize most contritely.”
    “I thank you,” Kristen said to the young man, as not to accept an apology because “none was needed” was extraordinarily rude. “But since I’ve heard this word now, what does it mean?”
    The chief paused, then spoke an outright lie: “It is just a word. An, ehhh … what is the English for it? Yes! An interjection , like your hey or fuck. ”
    She nodded, keeping her professional demeanor even though the excitement within her made her want to press the elders for more, more, and more. This word Tulu was plainly something powerful, so powerful that they somehow forgot that Kristen knew their native language and knew its interjections. This may very well have been an “inappropriate word” to use with an “outsider” (surely the Tok Pisin word that the tribe elder thought to use but decided against before he used “guest”) but it seemed like it meant something more to this “weird tribe” of Papua New Guinea, something they would not share with those outside their cultural circle of fish people.
    Stop that , she admonished herself.
    So Tulu wasn’t a curse word, wasn’t an interjection, and, judging by the furtive reactions of the elders to Kip’s utterance, wasn’t exactly a blasphemy or insult. A blasphemy would earn disapprobation, but not panicked expressions and narrowed, warning eyes at the one who had misspoken.
    She didn’t know if this was a term from their native animism—or maybe fish worship, which she had never come across in her research—but it held all the signs of being a religious name spoken out of turn. Again, not a blasphemy, as the elders didn’t just wag their fingers at Kip. Tulu was an important, secret word in some hidden religion of these natives.
    Kristen bet Tulu was a god or perhaps demon. Letting her enthusiasm get the best of her, she asked, “Do you worship this Tulu? Or fear it, maybe?”
    The elders’ eyes opened wide, as did Kip’s, who had an added fear as he quickly inventoried the openly horrified expressions of his father and the rest of the elders. Each of the older men rose, turned, and went back to their huts, Kip following them but looking back at Kristen and shaking his head, whether at her or at himself, she couldn’t tell.
    Not one member of the tribe spoke a word to her the rest of her visit.
    But Kristen didn’t care. She was onto something. Tulu clearly meant something that they didn’t want anyone outside to know about. She got picked up right on time by the Jeep, flew fourteen hours back to New Orleans, and blew forty dollars on a taxi to her apartment near LSU. The first thing she did, even before unpacking, was hit the Internet and get every bit of information on Tulu that existed.
    Which was nothing.
    The word was mentioned in certain databases as existing in various old science fiction and pulp magazines and novels, but there wasn’t a single mention of the word (a name?) in any academic journals, popular science sources, or even field notes of any anthropologist anywhere, at any time.
    It took Kristen two weeks before she gave up. There was nothing to be learned about this word—this devil or god or sacred ancestor or whatever it could