Last Rites

"Last Rites" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American author Gael Baudino, writing under the pen name of K. M. Tonso. It was published in the S. T. Joshi-edited anthology The Madness of Cthulhu: Volume 1 by Titan Books in October 2014.
==Synopsis==
Two Miskatonic University faculty members independently come to the conclusion that the events related by disgraced Pabodie Expedition leader William Dyer were in fact true, and had been suppressed by both the university board and those who mounted disastrous follow-up expeditions to the site.
Seizing a university-funded opportunity to travel beneath the ocean to a site which seemingly hosts more of the bas reliefs depicted by Dyer, they encounter a cavern filled with dying Elder Things who are desperately trying to hold closed a portal leading to the ruins of their former city- one which is being assaulted by Shoggoths desperate to find their way into the outside world. As the last of the guardians dies, the men are able to seal the chasm, but one is forced to pay the ultimate price.
==Characters== 
*Dr. Paul Dyer, the son of William Dyer and chairman of the Miskatonic University geology board. Dyer is possessed of a lifelong ambition to prove to himself that his father was not the crazed lunatic portrayed by the authorities in the aftermath of the Pabodie Expedition.
*Dr. Alf Marsh, a professor of geology at Miskatonic, and the younger Dyer's protégé. 
Category:Gael Baudino works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works