Sebastian nodded. “If you’re just going to destroy the city, then why all of this work to translate his journal?”
“The journal...” I started. “The moment that I knew it existed, I had to ask myself, ‘What was so important that Dr. William Dyer didn’t want to include it in his tell-all warning to avoid the city?’”
“What makes you think that the journal has anything to do with that vile city in the south?” Sebastian’s insight was impressive, and I worried that I was being psychoanalyzed.
“For one,” I answered, “the Germans want it. That’s a rather dead give-away. Also, it’s written using symbols from the Necronomicon.”
Sebastian knew of the book. It was the same book that had helped speed along the transition of his hometown into what it was today. “You’re avoiding the original question. Even if the journal is filled with secrets of the city, shouldn’t you go ahead and destroy it along with the city? Why translate it?”
I ticked of the reasons on my fingers, rather sarcastically. “It can warn us of traps, prepare us for the city’s defenses, warn us of the creatures we might be up against, warn us that destroying the city could destroy the world, or one of a million things that even I, with my vast experience with the world’s horrors, can’t imagine.”
Sebastian gave me a soft smile. “All of those are great reasons, but I hardly think that any of them are your reason.”
I returned the smile, knowing that he was correct. “I just need to know,” I said. “The world is not ever going to be ready for the darkness that rests in the mountains of that Antarctica city, but I am driven to know every dark secret that the world holds.” I sighed heavily.
Sebastian nodded, accepting what I was saying as the actual truth. “Your dark curiosity drives you to know more.” He leaned against the cot that William Dyer rested on. “No one has ever come back from that quest.”
He was right of course. On more than one occasion that curiosity has almost destroyed me. “No, they don’t.” I answered. “I can’t count the number of times that I have come so close to falling over the edge. I think that the only thing that has kept me safe is that my intense curiosity is tempered by an equally intense need to keep the world safe.”
Sebastian barked a laugh and I jumped, startled. “No, Andrew. The fact that you think you’re in any way different from the thousands who have fallen to the monsters of our world is the delusion that unites you with them.” He waved his hand, dismissing the conversation. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to hear you speak the truth of why you’re doing this. I don’t think you’ll actually die, not soon anyway. The only thing more powerful than your suicidal curiosity is your ability to beat the odds.”
I laughed with him, trying to ignore the painful truths in our discussion. It was at that moment that we were interrupted by Nancy entering.
Nancy was holding the journal, but she walked past Sebastian and me, instead walking straight to her father’s side. She gently placed her hand in his, squeezing it.
I moved quietly, hoping to leave her alone with her father, when she stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“I actually came to see you.” She lifted the journal. “I have translated all that I could, but it wasn’t much. My father used symbols and wordings that I couldn’t translate or transliterate.” She sighed, tilting her head to the side. It was an action that reminded me of how young she was. “The small parts that I could translate were just rewrites of the pieces that we already know. Except...”
Nancy’s hesitation drew my attention. “Except what?”
“I was able to translate one other thing.” She replied slowly. “Father scribbled words and symbols all over the margins throughout the journal.”
“What did it say?” I was getting more impatient by the second.
“It read, ‘It will devour the world,’ over and over again. It just repeats it.”
Sebastian took on a morose look. “That does not bode well.”
I barked a laugh. “Well, that’s kind of obvious.” I returned my attention to Nancy. “Was there anything else that you could find?”
She shook her head.
I slammed my fist onto the edge of the cot that held her father. I was quickly learning that having one of the Dyers at my disposal wasn’t the same as having the correct Dyer at my disposal. “Then we have even more need to wake your father sooner rather than later.”
Nancy’s brow furrowed and I was worried that my remark on the urgency of waking her father was about to be chastised. To my surprise, she instead said, “Leo mentioned that father woke up while we were in the Blasted Heath. How did you accomplish that?”
I frowned as I thought back on it. “Yes and no. Your father woke up, but it wasn’t...the correct version of your father.”
Nancy’s furrowed brow turned to confusion and frustration before she broke out in tears. “What does that even mean?” She sobbed. “How am I supposed to keep up with all of this double speak?”
Sebastian was quickly at Nancy’s side with a warm hug and a handkerchief. “It will be better soon,” he mumbled to her.
I chose to attempt placating her with explanation. “This world is a lot crazier than you thought it was only a few days ago, even with you believing in William’s tale. Unfortunately, it is only going to get worse. This world is filled with a lot of things that just don’t make sense, and most of them are trying to harm us. The good news is that whatever your father has stumbled into isn’t one of those harmful things. I think that he’s moved his consciousness into another time.” I paused as her sobbing quieted. She was listening, but she wasn’t asking any questions. I was so far removed from knowing what a normal reaction was that I just accepted it hoping that I was helping. “I think that he did it to escape the damage of the Blasted Heath. Instead of letting those beasts infect his mind, he simply put his mind somewhere else: another time.” Nancy pulled away from Sebastian and used his hanky to wipe her eyes. “When he came back to us he was the wrong William. He was from our future, I think.”
“So,” Nancy started, “we need to do what exactly? Search time for my father?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. When your father left his body, he had to leave a piece of himself behind as an anchor, so that he could always come back without getting lost. It is very likely that we have two options available to us for finding your father.”
Sebastian asked the next question, genuinely curious. “And those are?”
I frowned. “The easiest method, and the one that I’m against, is to wait. Wherever your father went, I am willing to bet that he’s in his own body, in our future. If that’s the case, we only need to wait for him to return to us.”
“How long will that take?” Nancy asked.
“We have no way of knowing.” Sebastian answered. “What’s the second method?”
I looked directly into Nancy’s eyes when I answered. She needed to hear it more than Sebastian did. “When I woke your father the first time, I shouted at him that his daughter would die without his help.”
“Then shout at him again!” Nancy was getting frustrated.
“It would do no good for me to shout at him.” I replied. “He came for you and I think he will do it again.”
Nancy was getting frustrated again. Her tears were picking up again. She came across the small enclosure and slapped me across the face.
“Give me back my father!”
I understood what was really going on in her head at that moment. I felt so stupid for taking so long to get it. She had lost her father, either in the divorce, the estrangement, or to this madness that now plagued him, and I kept trying to explain to her why her father was gone. I was the only thing providing an explanation for his whereabouts and, instead of calming her down, it was giving her someone to hate. Someone who told her why her father was gone, but hadn’t brought him back.
She slapped me twice more before I gathered up her hands and wrapped my arms around her.
&n
bsp; “No,” I responded. “You’re going to do that.” I hushed her gently. “Your job from this moment on is to sit beside your father and call out to him. Fill him in on the moments of your life that he missed and let him know that he is safe now and can come home. Home to you.” She was still sobbing but she began nodding in the middle of the sobs.
I let her go as she stepped past me and to her father. Nancy slid over a crate with Sebastian’s help. Once she was situated comfortably next to her father, Nancy grasped his hand in hers and looked up at me with her still red eyes.
“What should I do? Should I call to him?”
“Just talk to him. Like I said, he missed a big portion of your life. Fill him in on that.”
I turned and stepped out of the room, Sebastian followed right behind me.
“Andrew,” he called after me. “Where are you going?”
“Dawn will be here soon, and with it the ship. I’m going to go wake Leo so that we can begin moving our supplies to the dock. Right now, at this moment, we are a step ahead of the Germans. I don’t want to lose it.”
Chapter 7: The Voyage
Once Leo was awake, we set about the task of filling crates and moving them to the dock. The task sounded difficult, but was made all the easier by the twenty men and women that Sebastian sent to help us.
Unlike William’s famous Pabodie Expedition, we didn’t need nearly as much in the way of supplies as he had. We weren’t going to be taking any core samples from the ice or samples of the geology. We also didn’t need as many planes. William and the rest of his original crew had needed five planes to take all of the scientists further inland. We didn’t have anywhere near as many people that needed to go to that terrible city. With only the few of us, it was agreed that one disassembled plane and two dog sleds would be enough.
Of course, I could only acquire one disassembled plane for the Innsmouth warehouse anyway, so it was an easy decision to make.
With all of that decided, we also were not going to be the only people making the trip. Ten of Sebastian’s people had decided to accompany us as well, for which I was grateful. The ship was going to need a crew, which would free us up to plan and work on waking up William. Besides, it would leave us with a getaway vehicle if the Nazis decided to give chase.
By the time that the ship had finally pulled into the dock, we had most of the items prepared for loading. I had to force myself not to laugh at Leo’s look of disbelief as the ship ramp was lowered.
“Did you dig her up from the bottom of the ocean?” Leo asked.
I managed to replace my urge to laugh with a strong sense of damaged pride. “No, I salvaged her.” I led the way up the ship as I explained. “It isn’t exactly easy to steal an entire ship from the University, even if it is a University that’s more preoccupied with stopping doomsday curses than running a shipyard.” As we stepped onto the ship the wood creaked under our feet. “Miskatonic had two former whaling ships that went on the original Pabodie Expedition; The Arkham and the Miskatonic. Those ships were to be sent to scrap a few months ago. I had them rerouted here.”
Leo was bouncing lightly behind me on the deck, testing the strength of the wood. “This is only one ship, Andrew, and I’m not sure that it is even that much.”
I smiled. “No, this is two ships.” I pointed up at the sails and then down at the boards of the deck. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t ever see the slight difference in the color of the boards. “Separately, the Arkham and the Miskatonic weren’t seaworthy, so I asked the Sebastian and his fellow Innsmouth people to salvage both ships into one new ship.”
“Has it been tested?” Leo asked nervously.
I rolled my eyes. “Sebastian takes it out regularly. The Arkatonic has been sea-worthy and tested for the last two months.”
“The Arkatonic?” Leo was inspecting the masts with a very concerned eye.
“Yes, the Arkatonic.” I paused. “Fine, the name isn’t that great, but Sebastian seemed to like it.”
Leo stopped investigating the ship and walked over to me, poking me in the chest. “I trust you, but if this ship begins to sink, I’m tying you to the mast.” I heard him curse in French as he walked past me and down the ramp. I followed him off of the boat and we joined the rest of the Innsmouth people in loading the supplies onto the ship.
The final item to be loaded onto the Arkatonic was William Dyer and his cot. We strapped him to it in order to save him from falling to the deck when the ship rocked. Nancy put a stool next to her father and sat beside him the rest of the morning.
I might have owned the ship, but I knew nothing about it or sailing. Once the boat was loaded, I set about the very unofficial task of making Sebastian the Captain of the Arkatonic. It was simply a matter of telling him he was, and I was fairly certain that he already expected it. I gave him the route that we were going to take and all of the navigational equipment.
The route wasn’t something that I had needed to work on too extensively. The original route used by the Pabodie Expedition was still the best viable course for returning to the original camp sites and then the devilish city in the Antarctic. Normally, the current war effort and ramped up U-boat activity by the Germans would also be an added precaution, but the Pabodie route would stay close enough to the continents not occupied by Axis troops to allow us a strong margin of safe passage.
The original Pabodie route would follow south along the eastern North American coast and through the Panama Canal. From there, our next stop will be in Samoa, near Fiji, before we trek to Hobart, Tasmania. Hobart will be our last stop within the civilized world before we trek the last three thousand miles to our first campsite. The entire trip will be between fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand miles and would take us a little over two months to traverse.
The negatives of this method of travel were numerous. For many reasons, we couldn’t really tell anyone where we were going. Unlike the original expedition, if we were to go missing, no one would know. Also, our ability to avoid the majority of the war with the U-boats didn’t mean that we would be completely in the clear. We had plenty of potential to run afoul of U-boats or Nazi ships. Even though it was unlikely, it could still happen.
Then there was the speed. With an ex-whaler, we could only move as fast as the wind could carry us. Between Sebastian and myself, we could use our magics to keep the wind on our side, but we still would only be a fast moving sailboat. No sailboat could outrun a German ship or submarine crossing the ocean in a race toward alien weaponry. Those ships ran on more powerful things than wind. Our only hope was that we still held the head-start.
Sebastian’s ten men boarded and we were ready to leave by noon. The folks that had volunteered had been the most deformed, also known as most human, of the Innsmouth people. All of the ostracized Innsmouth folk were actually very decent people, very unlike their cousins. They all would have volunteered, but the more like their cousins they were, even slightly, the more sensitive they were to the sun. More and more creatures of the void, and the spawn birthed of them, were created with an allergy to the radiation provided by modern sunlight. A long time ago, the radiation was something that they could all live with. It was argued that the monsters on the other side of the veil had even craved to live in the light of our stars, but as stars and suns age, their radiations change. Many of the creatures have varying degrees of resistance to the sun based on how long they had managed to live in our world, but still many don’t like it.
Innsmouth folk prefer the dark.
That left us with the brave volunteers who still retained the majority of their humanity. The deformed children of Dagon. I went among each of them and thanked them for the sacrifice they were possibly giving. Hopefully, I could bring them all home safely.
The journey began with clear skies. We brought books and games and every form of portable entertainment that we could think of to pass the time, but the best time-waster for me was attempting, yet again, to solve the riddle of William’s diary.
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I spent hours of each day scribbling into a notebook of my own. I tried taking each of the letters and symbols and assigning them numerical values based on the values I knew them to hold in either the alphabet or the Necronomicon. If I didn’t recognize a symbol, I simply assigned it the value of x. I wasted an entire week trying to solve for an equation that didn’t exist.
My next effort involved taking the first symbol or letter of what I believed to be the words and reorganizing them all into words and ideas that I recognized. I then tried to form them into a coherent sentence structure, but nothing spoke to me.
That was another week and a half of effort.
I tried every trick and effort to translate, transliterate, or decipher the journal.
Leo spent the time another way. He brushed up on his English. He worked teaching those that were interested on how to fight and allowed them to teach him how to run the ship.
Whenever the words on Dyer’s journal started to blur into one horrible mess of ink, I would take a break and it wouldn’t be anything special to see Leo helping to turn the sails or tie off some rope that went to some thing. I don’t know boats.
Nancy was another story entirely. Her dedication to her father was impressive beyond anything that I would have expected. She fed him and cared for him and she constantly talked to him with absolutely no break except for sleep, which she didn’t get much of.
The Panama Canal didn’t take as long to traverse as I had assumed, and soon we were back underway and facing the southern waters of the Pacific.
We were five weeks into the voyage when there was finally a breakthrough.
Exasperated, I threw the useless journal against the furthest wall of the small cabin that I shared with Sebastian and Leo. I had just spent three days translating the book backward. I had taken each recognizable configuration of letters, reversed them and attempted a translation. It had been painstaking and mind-numbing. It had also been fruitless.
I stomped off, hoping to find another of Leo’s hidden bottles of brandy. Since the voyage had started and Sebastian had shown us our oversight in only stocking on crate of brandy, Leo had quickly moved to hide away as many bottles as he could. It was that or let the poor booze-hound jump overboard and attempt to swim back to Innsmouth.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 34