She waved her hand and somewhere in the darkness a horn began to blow.
No, not a horn; a conch. The noise was ghastly, a deep, bellowing, discordant blast of unnatural power. The lights in the room pulsed eye-searingly bright for the duration of that eldritch note, and then dropped to utter darkness.
The cluster of prisoners, or human sacrifices, or whatever they were, dropped to their knees instantly, prostrating themselves on the sands.
The water began to froth and surge.
“No. No. No. Nononono—” I don’t know which soldier it was that spoke, but I knew that I agreed.
The video footage flickered, becoming static-laced and unclear. Even so, I could make out the writhing mass rising from the waves. The camera was moving backwards, the soldiers scrambling away with little in the way of military discipline. It gave me a view of the creatures slumping their way up the sands that I immediately wished I had been denied.
Man-sized, but hunched over like apes, they seemed to hop their way towards Olmstead, surrounding her. Compelled as I was to watch, I still shied away from the detail of these things, making out little more than their pop-eyed stare and strangely glistening skin. They were chattering in a strange, braying cacophony, the noise making me desperately want to cover my ears. And there were hundreds of them, pouring from the surf.
Tom stepped toward Olmstead, rifle gripped in shaking hands. It was then that the horrible creatures brought forward great, oddly carved chests and dropped them onto the sand. Olmstead opened the lids, one by one. It was impossible to make out what the contents were through the static-obscured footage, but by the reaction of my husband, it was easy to guess.
“Jesus Christ,” Hank’s voice whispered.
“All of this and more can be yours,” Olmstead whispered. “All of this and so much more,”
“W-what else?” Tom was visibly shaking as his eyes flicked back and forth between the treasure and the monsters that had brought it; the gun fell from his hands to the sand, unnoticed.
“Immortality,” Olmstead whispered, “for your children and their children, for all eternity.
“For our children?” Leo this time. He too stepped into frame, hands outstretched, voice cracking.
“The Deep Ones have cities hidden all over the world. Modern times have not been kind to them, and so they seek to bargain with those with some manner of power.” She smiled. “Those like you.”
“Help them. Kill for them. Breed with them.” She ticked each point off on her fingers, one by one. “And you will have wealth and power beyond your understanding.”
The croaking got louder. Something larger seemed to shift in the dark, towering above the mass of Deep Ones crowding the beach. Blood filled my mouth as I bit down hard upon my tongue at that movement, knowing that to see any more of whatever that thing was would be to be driven utterly mad.
“Do these things and you will have children, thousands of progeny, all of them coming of age and living forever beneath the sea, free of the weakness of failing humanity.”
“W-what…” Tom seemed to be struggling, his mind fracturing from the sight before him. Every part of my mind was screaming for him to run away, to pick up his gun and shoot. “W-what would we have to do?”
“As I already said,” Olmstead’s smile glistened, her eyes unblinking. The stone atop her staff pulsed and seemed to suck the light from the footage, causing it to dim to a dirty grey. “Help them. Kill for them. Breed with them. Give to them yourselves and your kin, and they will give to you in kind.”
My husband appeared to close his eyes as he leant down and lifted his rifle from the sand. I closed my eyes and sobbed. I could not bring myself to watch as my husband murdered hundreds of people.
“They sacrificed themselves willingly, Steph,” I felt Tom’s hand on mine.
“You sacrificed them willingly,” I spat, recoiling from his touch.
“You saw what I saw,” his voice cracked as he said it.
My head ached, my brain shying away from what I had seen lurking in the darkness of the footage. I could not imagine what it might have been like to witness that in person.
“And you heard what I heard.”
“Glorious Pha-z’ph, the City of Ebony Coral, has lain almost entirely dormant off this coast for thousands of years,” Olmstead’s hand gestured in the direction of the harbour, “Now, through your husband and his brave men, the city has now received its first sacrifices in millennia.”
“And how is that supposed to make me feel?” My voice rose in pitch, near hysterical.
“Forget that part,” Tom interrupted before Olmstead could reply, a brittle smile on his face. “Think what this means for us; for our family.”
I stared at him blankly.
“That bracelet I gave you,” he pointed to the ugly lump of gold perched on my wrist. “Where do you think that came from? We have thousands of them. Thousands.”
“Money?” I almost laughed. “You think money matters to me compared to what you have done?”
“Not just money, Steph.” The smile disappeared. “Power. Real power.”
“I don’t care about power, Tom.”
“Doctor Olmstead says that they know things, ways to heal even the worst illness or injury. We could have more children, Steph, just like we always wanted, children who could live forever. Hell, we could live forever, and Jon and Danielle as well, and their kids, and their kids after them.”
“The Deep Ones have ways, Stephanie,” Olmstead spoke reverently, leaning forward to rest her hand on my wrist. “Imagine living forever, surrounded by countless generations of family, never wanting for anything.”
I don’t know what it was, but there was something there; something that appealed in a way no promises of power or wealth could have.
“Tom,” I whispered, the ghost of a smile on my face.
“Steph,” he smiled back as I leant toward him, my arms encircling his waist. “I love you,” he held me close, squeezing me tight.
“I love you, too.” My hands shifted against his back as I looked up at him. His eyes were still slightly glazed, but he looked almost deliriously happy.
“I am glad you have come to the correct conclusions, Stephanie.” Olmstead watched on, eyes boring into me. “I had my concerns about your ability to accept your husband’s path.”
I ignored her as I held Tom’s gaze. After a long moment the smile slid from his face. Even in his current broken state, he knew me well enough to see.
“Steph…”
I finished sliding the bullet I had snatched from the floor of the corridor into the cylinder and snapped it back into place. I drew the revolver from my husband’s belt and brought it up, pushing away from him as I did so.
“I love you, Tom, but this isn’t you.” He was frozen, staring at me with his mouth hanging open. Olmstead had thrown herself out of her chair the moment the gun had appeared in my hand, running for the corridor.
“Steph, don’t, please,”
“You need to wake up, Tom.” I smiled, sadly. “You need to wake up, and as hard as I tried, I wasn’t able to wake you.”
He reached a hand toward me, pleading.
“Wake up from this nightmare, Tom. If not for you, then for our kids.” I placed the barrel of the revolver against my temple, my hands shaking as visions of the Deep Ones inserted themselves into my thoughts once more. “Before it is too late.”
I pulled the trigger.
Depth Lurker
Geoff Brown
Madness is the seed of knowledge; of that I am certain. I am obviously insane, but at the same time I know the truth. I know that we are but specks, less than motes in the eye of those great forces that move and slither through the many realities, immaterial in the plans of the cosmos. We swagger through life, unaware of how little consequence we hold. This is both a blessing and a curse.
I know too much, have seen too much.
I know the truth, yet it is so fantastic that if I were to tell a
nyone, I would be declared as insane as I truly must be. I would end up in an asylum, shaven-headed and classified for life. The truth, as it exists, denies all plausibility, all the natural laws as we believe them to be. It screams of madness and the existence of the impossible. It is utterly without reason, and I am aware of it in its entirety.
Victoria Hill, Sandhurst Town. The place it all began. The year was 1889, the area was full of gold, and the Bandersnatch Mine had just reached the depth of nearly four thousand feet. It was well on its way to becoming the deepest gold mine in the world. It lay near the Little 180 Mine, famously owned and operated by George Lansell’s family.
My name is George Carlyon, and I was the foreman at the Victoria Hill Mine site. Now, after a lifetime of knowing nothing else, I have no desire to ever work in the mines again. Now, even a ditch is too deep for me.
When the Bandersnatch collapsed, amidst clouds of dust and a roar unlike anything I had ever heard, we thought it was the end of the world. For myself, it was the end of the world as I knew it. I cringe in the dark at the thought of where the event would lead me; the knowledge, the awareness of true reality; the awareness of true evil
I remember the day the Bandersnatch fell. The roar was like the end of the world. I’m sure it was heard all the way to Melbourne. I felt the earth shake as though The Trump and The Shout had finally arrived. For me, it may have well been the apocalypse, as it was the beginning of the end of my sanity.
Cold, windy, and dismal, it was more wintery than any winter’s day I had seen, even in Sandhurst. It was barely half six in the morn, yet the surface miners, those who sought alluvial gold, had already left their shanties and moved to their own special areas on the creeks, panning madly to gain that elusive fortune.
Before I left the Goldmines Hotel, where the company kept me a room, I had partaken of a drop of whisky to stave off the chill. I felt slightly light-headed as I walked casually up the hill toward the mine entrance. I was within sight of the new diggings when an earth-shattering boom threw me to the ground. I thought I was having a conniption until I noticed other men around me trying to clamber back to their feet.
What the blazes was that? I thought.
The massive cloud of dust alerted me to the disaster that had just taken place at the top of Victoria Hill. People scrambled toward the source of the dust cloud, so I gathered myself from the ground and followed. Screams filled the air. The alert bell started to ring, heading toward ten to signal an accident. I knew deep inside that it would go past ten and hit fifteen, signalling a serious disaster. I knew because even though the dust cloud was thick, I should still have been able to see the poppet head, the wood-frame tower that stands above the shaft.
“It’s gone down, it’s gone down,” someone screamed. “Bandersnatch has gone down.”
The head of the morning shift staggered down the hill toward me, covered in dust and blood. I ran toward him.
“William. William! What happened?” I yelled. “What’s happened to the mine?”
“Cave in,” he managed to gasp as I drew near him. “The night shift didn’t make it out.”
“Get someone to contact the company,” I said. “We need to start digging now, see if anyone is left alive.”
“No-one survived that blast,” William said. “Mark my words, no one will get out of that one alive.”
“We still have to try, Will,” I said. “We have to try.”
“I know we do, sir,” he replied sadly, his head hung low. He tried to rub his face clear of dust, but only managed to smear it further.
I grabbed Will by the arm and marched us both to the mine office. By now, the managers had started to gather, and the emergency crew had formed up outside, equipment ready.
“Let’s get the poor buggers out,” I yelled to the gathered men. “We need to do this quick, before they run out of air.”
Harry Somers, the leader of the rescue crew, stepped forward. “We’ll drill a hole down, until we strike open space, and put a hose through. With luck, it gets them enough air. After that blast, though, I don’t expect much chance of them making it out.”
I called the men to gather their equipment. “Follow me,” I said. “Let’s make this quick. I don’t want no one dyin’ on my watch if I can help it.”
The rescue party grabbed shovels and such. If the covering dirt was more than ten feet, we’d have to dig fast. If it was more than fifty, we had no hope at all. The mob made its way up the hill to the Bandersnatch, through the dust cloud that was billowing forth. People stood around in a daze, staring at the remains of the now-collapsed poppet-head.
“Move aside, move aside,” yelled Harry. “Get out of the damn way, you scurries.”
As they neared the remains of the mine, I could see that the above-ground structure leant heavily to one side. The thick wooden posts that made up the framework of the poppet-head had sagged and fractured as the ground underneath sank. It would all have to come down before they could even attempt to dig down to the trapped men. Unless…
“William,” I said, “can we dig across to the shaft from the side?”
William turned to me, speculation heavy in his eyes. “Yes, I think it can be done. ‘Twould save time, too.” He turned to the rest of the miners who would do the excavation work. “You lot, over the side of the gully. Now. It’s only ten yards in to get to the shaft, and it should be low enough to pass most of the collapsed area.”
The men ran over to a ridge of quartz that poked out of the ground, the edge of the reef Bandersnatch cut down into. The drop-off on the other side was a tiny valley thirty feet deep. Low enough, I thought, to cut past the main collapse and possibly intersect with the mineshaft below the collapse to stage a rescue.
It took nearly five hours to cut through the compacted earth and tap into the shaft of the mine. Five hours of darkness and fear for the men still down below. It was just past noon when we finally broke through into empty space. The men doing the digging turned away, choking and complaining about the smell. I was at the back, helping to scoop out the earth loosened by picks. At the news that the shaft had been reached, I dropped my shovel and struggled through the still-settling dust from the excavations. I noticed the smell myself as I drew closer to the breach.
“Careful there,” said one of the other workers. “The edge is a bit unstable yet.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said as I edged closer, the smell now almost overpowering. It reeked of earth and rotten flesh, and, surprisingly, a smell I knew well from my childhood. When I was younger, I used to love going down to the local dam to catch frogs and toads in a jar. I knew their stale, slimy odour well, and now I smelt it once again. In such a context it was mildly disconcerting.
The breach into the main shaft was big enough to move through, but the men had to take great care, as the ropes leading down to the ore buckets may not have remained in place after the cave-in. I moved back out of the newly cut tunnel and emerged to find the rescue team gathered around a pile of the oxygen tanks used deep underground when gasses could be a problem. Leather smocks, designed to be worn over clothing, lay in piles nearby. I found William standing nearby, directing the rescue effort.
“Five men,” I said to him.
William turned to me. “Five?” he asked.
“Just five,” I replied. “I don’t want to risk too many more people until we know for sure what we’ll find. There may be no survivors. Prepare a second team, though, perhaps thirty or so, and come down to Level Eleven. Wait there.”
“I hope you’re wrong, George.” William turned back to the men sorting out the equipment.
“One thing, William,” I said. “I’m going down as well.”
“Are you sure, George?”
“I am,” I replied. “Those men are my responsibility. Get Somers to arrange the main rescue party.”
“You’re the boss,” said William.
Ten minutes later we were ready to enter the mine. We all wore leather smocks, and each had a small, squar
e cage tied to our belts, about the size of a leather-bound Bible. In each cage was a canary, to ensure we were aware if the air grew too low in oxygen. On our backs were the air tanks, two woven hoses hung over our shoulders and down our front to join the facemasks. We made a professional-looking group, ready to save the lives of any surviving miners. There were over forty men down there, some possibly still breathing. Most: likely not. Still, we owed it to the families of the lost miners to at least try to rescue any survivors.
Thanks be to God, the pulley cables still descended from the head of the mine, stretching down into the depths. We would need to climb down more than a hundred yards before we reached a safer place from which to descend further. At last report, the majority of the trapped miners had been working at the full depth of the mine—four thousand feet under the earth. I tried to avoid thinking about that.
We tied off some safety ropes and started down a cable, one after the other. The lead man, Jones, had his lamp lit, and the rest of us followed the yellow flare into the dark shaft. We belayed down two levels, suffering long minutes of cold-sweat terror. Down to the second level cross tunnel, where there was access to a hand-driven elevator. One by one, we swung over to the ledge leading into the second level. Outside the light from Jones’ lamp, darkness encased us. The rest of us lit our lamps, each casting more shadow than light. A small, bright flame hung above the tip of each spout, burning acetylene from the reaction of water and carbide within the bodies of the lamps.
The five of us stood there for a second; Jones, Spooner, Hartnett, Barries, and myself. The small, rough tunnel surrounded us; behind us the shaft we had followed thus far, ahead of us the constricted and rock-filled way forward. Wooden supports held up the ceiling, and the floor held uncertain footing and loads of scree between the rails designed for mine-carts. In the light, veins of quartz flared white over the walls, like scribble from a mad child-god, placed at the dawn of time. At least we could walk upright, a benefit of being in the main tunnel. Once we moved deeper, that benefit would soon disappear.
Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 2 Page 18