Arkham Horror- The Deep Gate

by Chris A. Jackson

  The wreck loomed out of the dark ahead of them, the gaping hole in her side like the maw of some leviathan waiting to swallow him. His calculations had been good: the mine was arcing right toward the gaping hole. In the glare of his light, shapes flicked around inside the ship, dark within dark accented by flecks of silver, luminous eyes reflecting the beam.

  The yearning pulled him, and he answered now. Yes, I’m coming… I’ve got a present for you.

  A clawed hand reached over the jagged metal edge, followed by a face. Bulging fish eyes stared at him, the lipless maw opening to reveal rows of needle teeth. Silas’s stomach lurched, and he swallowed to keep from vomiting into his helmet. He pointed his powerful light straight into those disconcerting eyes, and the face jerked back out of sight.

  They don’t like the light… Maybe he could keep them at bay long enough to get the mine placed. “Almost there! Tie off the wheel and get on the lift, Abigail!”

  After a short delay, her reply crackled, “Okay! I’m on the lift.”

  Lurching closer, he strained to shove the mine over the edge, trying to ignore the movement roiling within the deeper darkness, the unblinking eyes, the impossible shapes above, and the deafening call in his skull. The lift rope met with the upper edge of the hole, and the mine swung in. Thank God the metal’s bent inward…

  “Now! Down!” Silas screamed into the phone, but Abigail’s reactions weren’t so swift this time. Sea change continued to drift, the line lifting the mine up. The iron sphere clanged against the edge of the jagged hole, the trailing wires dangerously close to being snagged and severed. Silas couldn’t reach the wires, but he could reach the mine and braced his one good leg to push it in as Abigail released the clutch.

  As he heaved the mine forward, the light dangled from a lanyard tied to his wrist, sweeping the interior of the wreck. The man-sized creatures shied from the light, but as the mine lowered, the light struck the edge of the jagged hole and shone up overhead. The massive shapes he’d only glimpsed before now became clear: huge ropy arms with clawed tips, pulsing flesh, and plate-sized eyes. As the beam touched one of those huge orbs, the pupil contracted and focused upon him.

  Terror unlike anything he’d ever felt lanced through him. A low wail of woe echoed within his helmet, his own voice. Then another voice reverberated through his head, hammering at his skull.

  Join us, Silas Marsh! Your only future lies with us. The voice washed away his fear, his confusion, and his will.

  Yes… Silas started to crawl over the jagged edge, but a four hundred pound sphere of iron clanged against his helmet, ringing even louder than the yearning call. Sanity…solidity…and the stabbing pain of his leg vied against the compulsion. He slammed his shoulder into the massive iron sphere, driving it into the hole as the lift line paid out. But as the mine screeched against the bent teeth of the ruined hull to settle down in its final grave, clawed hands reached around it to grasp him. One caught the wire and it came dangerously taut.

  “NO!” Silas shone his light in their faces, reaching for the heavy knife at his belt. The fishy figures reeled back, cringing away, but others swam forth, claws reaching for him.

  “What?” Abigail cried. “What’s happening!”

  “They’re all over the damned place! They’re on me!” He slashed at the scrabbling hands, the gnashing teeth. Black blood darkened the water, but there were too many. Claws raked the heavy canvas of his suit, unable to penetrate, but dragging him in while the yearning call hammered at his fragile will. There was only one answer, one refuge where they couldn’t reach him. “Trigger the mine! Do it, Abigail, before it’s too late!”

  “No!” her voice crackled, edged with panic. “Unclip your weights and climb! I won’t kill you!”

  “Blow it, Abigail, or you’ll kill everyone!” A lurid face lunged at his faceplate, jaws gaping, but Silas filled that maw with his knife, driving the tip deep. The teeth came down on his wrist, and pinholes of wetness dampened his forearm. Hands grasped, pulling him over the ragged edge of the hole. His leg struck something and he screamed.

  “Silas! Your weight belt! Don’t make me do this! I can’t!”

  He slashed madly, releasing the light and scrabbling desperately to his feet. The agony of his leg stabbed his every movement, jerking him back to reality, away from the irresistible call. The creatures had released him but swam in a mass just out of reach. The knife had taught them fear, and they hated the light. Thankfully, they seemed to be ignoring the mine. Maybe…maybe I’ve got a chance.

  But as Silas reached for the clip holding his weight belt, another light filled the wreck’s hold. A sickly yellow illumination shone from the depths of the maelstrom of darkness swirling above him. At its core, a space yawned open, widening like a mouth that would swallow the world. Within, beyond that pit of blackness, a city, a world, and a monstrosity that defied sanity swelled into view. The city from his nightmares, impossible structures, improbable angles, and hundreds…no thousands of hellish shapes skittering about like maggots and beetles and flies swarming a rotting corpse. And above it loomed an unimaginable shape, writhing tentacles amid a bulbous head, wings that spanned the sky like the coming of night, clawed hands that could crush ships.

  The deep gate… The prophecy of Abigail’s tome, the end of the world of man, reached forth.

  Silas’s numb fingers found the clip to his weight belt and pulled. His feet left the twisted tangle of steel and he rose up, but his nightmares would not let him go so easily. The fishy shapes swarmed in on him, scrabbling and biting, dragging and clawing. One caught the lantern and pulled so hard the lanyard snapped. The light spun away. He screamed and slashed, fumbling through the mass of shapes to find the lift line, knowing he couldn’t, knowing he would fail. Abigail wouldn’t trigger the mine, and that impossibility of madness would claw through the hole in creation to consume the Earth.

  “Do it, Abigail!” Amid the writhing and gnashing scaled flesh, Silas’s free hand found a taut rope. He clenched it and pulled, catching a glimpse of open water outside the ship.

  “No! Climb, Silas! You can do it! The moon’s not red yet! You have time!”

  “They’re on me! I can’t fight and climb.” His light flickered among the writhing shapes.

  “Silas! Cut the…” Her words ended in static.

  “What?” He slashed and stabbed blindly, trying to climb one-handed. He couldn’t drop the knife with so many of them on him. They’d drag him back inside.

  “I said…the air…bubbles will…and climb!”

  Bubbles? Of course. Silas stabbed over his shoulder with the heavy knife and felt for the air hose. One slash opened it, blasting compressed air into the wrecked ship and enveloping him in a cloud of bubbles. The valve that kept the sea from rushing in through the severed hose clacked closed, and the grasping hands and gnashing teeth fell away.

  Free…I’m free. With the voices of a thousand monsters yammering in his mind, Silas Marsh renounced his life, his family, and the siren call. Survive! I can survive this! He dropped his knife and climbed madly for the surface.

  “I’m free, Abigail! I’m climbing!”

  But he received no answer, nothing but static.

  Probably cut the phone line with the air hose. He dragged himself up hand over hand, going by feel in the faint light of the waning moon gleaming down through the water.

  Abigail would be frantically changing the phone wires to the detonation circuit, her hand hovering over the crank that would send a jolt of electricity down the cables to blast the wreck, the monsters, and that vile hole in reality straight to hell.

  Do it! Do it now, before it’s too late! No mine, no explosive or bomb made by mankind could harm that monstrosity beyond the portal. If it gained purchase in this world, it would end mankind as a man might end a colony of ants.

  Silas…come back…come home…

  His ears popped as pressure eased, then pain lanced through his leg and his grip slid back on the rope. Silas twisted and looked
down through the side port of his helmet and wished he hadn’t. Through the cloud of bubbles, the light from inside the wreck illuminated a mass of fishy shapes boiling from the jagged hole. They swam up to grasp him, to drag him down. One had hold of his broken leg, its grip sending lightning bolts of pain through him. Teeth clamped on his thigh, moisture seeping in through the holes in the heavy canvas. Water trickled down his leg, filling his boot and weighing him down. He clubbed the thing with a fist, gouging at its bulbous eyes. It released him, and he got a few more precious handholds before the next one reached him.

  Claws scratched at the canvas of his suit, scrabbling up his back, trying to pull him off the rope. A lurid face peered at him through the side port of his helmet, webbed fingers scrabbling at the wing nuts that held the glass in place. Bronze squeaked as one of the nuts began to turn.

  No, no, no! Not now! Not when I’ve got a chance…

  Silas freed one hand and grasped the fishy throat. With the grip of a sailor fortified by panic, Silas squeezed. The toothy mouth gaped, clawed hands grasping at his wrist as fragile bones crunched under his fingers. A hoarse scream reached his ears as the grip on his wrist weakened. The scream, he realized, was his.

  Releasing his grasp, he climbed frantically. The fading light of the moon overhead shifted from silvery to the hue of dried blood. It was time. A subsonic thrum of energy began to sing along his bones. The deep gate was opening, and Silas envisioned the great clawed hand reaching through from beyond. The surface loomed just overhead, but even as he broke through the undulating mirror, another clawed hand closed on his broken leg.

  Silas…come back to us…

  Agony shot through him in torrents as the ends of fractured bone grated through tortured muscle. His grip on the rope slipped, but he fought upward, reaching through to the world of air, the world of man. He caught a glimpse of Abigail at the rail of Sea Change grasping the phone box in one arm, her hand on the crank, eyes impossibly wide, and her face pale with panic. A sanguineous moon shone down from the sky, Father Sun, Mother Moon, and the Earth joined in blood.

  A webbed hand reached over Silas’s shoulder, claws grating against his faceplate. Gold glinted on one of the digits, a ring grown over by the membranous webbing, three familiar braided strands of tarnished gold.

  Silas, my boy…come home… The call beat on his mind like a hammer on fragile glass.

  Oh, God, no…not that…please no… Silas reached up and grasped the rope higher, pulling with his last ounce of strength.

  “Do it!” he screamed, praying to God that Abigail would hear him.

  Between the clawed fingers obscuring his view, past the glint of the ring, Silas saw Abigail crank the handle. He wrapped an arm around the suddenly slack lift line in one last desperate grasp for survival.

  A pressure wave slammed into Silas like a runaway train, wrenching muscles and cracking joints. His head slammed against the back of his helmet, shooting stars through his brain. The creature’s grip on him loosed as he was thrown. Then something slapped him in the chest, and his forehead clanged against the faceplate.

  Silas wondered, as darkness closed over him, why the moon tasted like blood.

  Epilogue

  At Sea

  Silas woke to the familiar thrum of Sea Change’s engine vibrating through his head and the taste of blood in his mouth. There was pain, too, and plenty of it, but he was breathing, and therefore alive. Death wouldn’t hurt like this.

  He blinked his one good eye open and wondered if he was blind for a moment, but then moonlight, silvery and clear, swept into view. The roll of the deck and the pitch of the engine told him Sea Change was underway, and at sea. He was lying on his back on deck, still in his dive gear except for the helmet.

  He worked his tongue around in his mouth and found a split lip, a newly chipped tooth, and a good bit of blood. He reached up to touch his pounding forehead and felt a lump there the size of a goose egg. He had a similar one on the back of his head, and his neck ached. Rattled around inside the dive helmet like a bean in a cup… He closed his eye and saw again the three braided strands of gold, his mother’s wedding ring on the webbed hand of that monster.

  He closed his eye and prayed. They’re dead. Please, God, let them be dead. He dragged in a breath, the faint siren call still ringing in his mind. His prayer, it seemed, would not be answered.

  Silas tried to sit up and failed, but he managed to roll over. His leg stabbed him, but it seemed still attached, which was more than he’d expected. He forced himself up to hands and knees and felt every muscle protest.

  “You’re alive!”

  “Sort of.” Silas glanced up through the cabin to the pilothouse to see Abigail at the wheel.

  She grinned at him. “You may want to come up here and steer if you can manage it. I have no idea where we are!”

  He glanced around and caught a glimpse of Innsmouth light about a mile behind them. Still on all fours, he leaned over the gunnel and peered forward. They topped a swell, and he caught a glimpse of the Plum Island Sound sea buoy.

  “Steer ten more degrees to port. We should be clear of the shoals already.”

  “Okay.” She turned the wheel and Sea Change answered. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been chewed up and spat out, then stomped on for good measure!” Yelling hurt his head. He looked around the deck and spotted the dive helmet. The lift line was looped under his arms and tied in an incomprehensible knot. “How did you get me aboard?”

  “You were just floating there, so I hooked the lift line with that pole thingamabob, and tied a knot. Easy as pie!” She seemed positively ebullient. “I didn’t want to just sit there over the wreck, but I couldn’t hoist the anchor, so I cut it loose. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Silas didn’t want to be anywhere near Devil Reef either.

  Gritting bloody teeth, he managed to push himself up on one good leg, discovering dozens of new aches and pains. He sat on the dormant air compressor, and worked at the suit’s seals, finally freeing himself of its clammy embrace. The air felt good against his skin again. He hobbled into the cabin and retrieved the bottle from the cupboard. There were perhaps two good swallows left. He limped forward and stepped into the pilothouse.

  “Breakfast?” He held out the bottle to Abigail.

  “On an empty stomach?” She grimaced. “No thanks. I’d be sick.”

  “Coffee then?” He pulled the cork and upended the last of the bottle, swallowing twice. The alcohol stung his cut lip, but the taste of blood vanished in the burning glory of Canadian whiskey.

  “I’d love a cup, and maybe something to eat if there is anything.”

  “Coffee and crackers is the best I can do.” He turned back to the cabin.

  “Sorry I nearly killed you, by the way,” she called over her shoulder.

  “What?” Silas blinked back at her in shock. “You’re the only reason I’m still breathing, Abigail. You should have blown it earlier. Those things could have pulled the wires from the mine at any moment.”

  “Yes, well, I couldn’t, and they didn’t.” She sounded a little hurt, and he realized how ungrateful he was being.

  “But thank you for risking the entire world to save my life.”

  “You’re welcome.” She flashed him a smile and turned back to the wheel.

  As he started making coffee, the siren song hummed in the back of his mind. The power of that call seemed lesser now, although it was still there. He didn’t have to ask Abigail what had happened to the creature that had been trying to drag him down at that last moment. The persistent, familiar call to come home told him she had survived. He hobbled forward again, grabbing a box of crackers on the way, and tossed them on the console.

  “I’d say it feels good to be alive, but I hurt all over.” He leaned back with a wince.

  “We are alive!” Abigail took a cracker and nibbled it. “We beat them, Silas! We outfoxed those hideous people in Innsmouth, we stopped this…thing from happening, and w
e even saved ourselves in the process!”

  “Well, we sure as hell won a battle, but…” Silas looked over his shoulder. Devil Reef was far behind them now, out of sight, but the yearning remained.

  “But what?” She looked at him sidelong. “You don’t seem very happy.”

  “Oh, I’m happy to be alive, but…” He looked over his shoulder again. I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, I suppose. “I…saw things down there, Abigail. Things that shouldn’t be, but are. Things that…can’t exist, but do.”

  “But we blew them up! That blast…” She shook her head. “Well, you should have seen it. I wonder how you survived, really. Nothing down there could have survived that!”

  Silas wondered if she was right, prayed so, but honestly didn’t know if things like what he’d seen through that portal could be killed. And if they couldn’t, they would try again, another time, another place; when and where, there was no way to know. “Maybe… I don’t know whether you can win against things like that.”

  “Take the wheel. I want to show you something.”

  “All right.” Silas edged past her, embarrassed for the first time about his condition, bloody, pants soaked, one boot, shirt torn. “Grab a clean shirt from the fo’c’sle, too, please.”

  “Sure.”

  Abigail went below for a bit, and Silas adjusted course minutely out of habit. They’d be in Annisquam before sunup, so he throttled back some. Better to take the channel in daylight on a rising tide.

  “Here.” Abigail held out a flannel shirt as she stepped back up into the pilothouse. Under her arm, she held the old tome that had set them on this crazy adventure to begin with.

  “Thanks.” Silas struggled into the clean shirt, the muscles of his back and shoulders protesting with every move.

  “So, look here, Mister Can’t Win.” She flipped to the familiar page with the coordinates of Devil Reef, and pointed to the passage. “Look.”

  Silas peered down in the wavering lamplight and gaped. The celestial fixes, and the date and time of the event were gone. There was a gap in the text. The rest of the page remained, the lurid illustrations in the margins, but the details were blank.