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

collapsible canoe and finally hip waders to access the last place the ( cult ) worship group was believed to have gathered.
    It was Monday morning by the time she reached the geocached coordinates noted in her iPhone ( a signal even out here! ), but she found nothing but the usual blackened tree stumps, aggressive insects, and slimy, muddy water.
    You’d have to be degenerate to live here , she thought with an ironic smile that was wiped off her face the instant she heard the ululations of some excited revelers coming from just around a cluster of mossy, spider-infested upgrowths. There must have been some kind of dry ground there, and she ran—if it could be called running, trying to move in her hip waders through the muck and mire—to catch a glimpse of what was going on.
    As she swished her legs through the green water, she saw something familiar indeed, here in the last place she would have expected it: a circle of loinclothed old men around an altar of some kind ( made of out what? There’s no stone around here ), and around that circle a wider circle of women, old and young, holding hands, and around them still another, bigger circle with children of all ages, also with hands interlocked.
    It is a cult! she thought, completely without evidence, and mentally slapped herself back to her senses. An anthropologist does not use that word . They were a worship group, certainly, but they could be Christian for all she knew at that moment. Pentecostal crazies over from northern Florida. Maybe Santeria practitioners from—
    “ Tulu! ” one of the elders cried from the innermost circle.
    Kristen stopped dead in her watery tracks. She could not have just heard that word.
    “ Tulu! ” the second circle called in response.
    Then the children sang out the strange word: “ Tulu! ”
    Tears almost came to Kristen Frommer’s eyes. This was it. This was it! Her gratitude for a saved career and emotion at hearing that word again, that word that had shut her down, was so great that she abandoned all ethics and cried to them as well, in a voice heartier even than those of the children.
    “ TULU! ”
    Every face gathered around that altar—now she could see that it was something that must have been carried here from a church washed out by Katrina—turned as one to face her.
    Icy fear grabbed her by the throat. She was a dead woman. They were obviously going to rush her and kill her for seeing their secret rites—
    “Welcome!” a man in the inner circle shouted with happiness.
    Every face that turned to her was bearing a smile. They were odd, fishy-looking faces with severe deformities in some cases, but all with some kind of abnormality from advanced skin disease to bowlegs to webbed fingers. Except for the one who had spoken, who now was coming through the circles to greet her. He seemed to be the one nonafflicted person there, one with European features, although his face was darkly tanned.
    “Welcome!” the man said again with a huge smile.
    “Welcome!” the congregation echoed, with the same ebullient expression.
    “Y-You speak English?” she stammered.
    “Yes, of course we do. Well, I do,” the apparent leader said in his Noo Yawk honk, and the gathering giggled, not unkindly. They at least understood some English. “I am Howard, the tribe elder. But who are you?”
    Tell the truth. Ethical anthropologists tell the truth . “I’m, um, I’m Kristen. I teach ( freshmen and athletes ) at Louisiana State University. I’ve come here to learn about your … worship group.” She decided to go for broke and added with much more confidence than she felt, “The Tribe of Tulu .”
    Now the faces turned from surprised happiness to open astonishment.
    Goodbye, cruel world , she said inside her head. Nice knowin’ ya.
    But then they laughed. It started in that inner circle of old men, a new giggle that turned into a hearty laugh, and then into a veritable roar of hilarity. It took almost no time for the rest of the (