Shoggoth

by Byron Craft

  Looking back now, he knew that he was lucky that the dumpster wasn’t struck by lightning. Likewise, he knew that besides a drenching he had also received a genuine lesson in facing his fears. Or, so he thought until his fifteenth birthday. Ever since his standoff with the dumpster and the thunderstorm, he thought he was free of his phobia about dark, closed-in spaces. But, his victory over his phobia became short lived. As he grew closer to manhood, it gradually became a morbid fear, almost a premonition that something horrible would come for him if confined in any one place for any length of time. When Jason was older, he would learn more about phobias. Simply that facing one’s fear may dispel a particular phobia, for a time, but it may not eliminate its roots. The cause or origin of that phobia may exist deep in the subconscious and could manifest itself later.

  So it was by the time Jason turned fifteen, his annoying little fear of cramped, dark places had grown into full blown claustrophobia. The final trigger to that mechanism became activated by high school rivals on the football team. It was an innocent prank, like dousing the coach in Gator Aid, or de-panting a guy in front of the cheerleaders, only in this case something went wrong, and it became ugly. After practice three of the biggest kids from the team decided to lay and wait behind parked cars as Jason crossed the parking lot on his way to the bus stop. Not one of them tipped the scales at less than two-hundred-pounds, and Kaczynski, the biggest, easily weighed two-forty. Kaczynski was the first-string halfback. The other two were linebackers. Jason, on the other hand, was still trying to make second string and barely weighed one-hundred-fifty pounds.

  Kaczynski and his two superstar wanna-be's were out for revenge. During the scrimmage, the halfback and his pals were on the blue team. Jason was on the white team. The upset came when Jason tackled Kaczynski. He was clowning around pretending to dance around his opponents when Jason hit him low and caused him to fumble the ball. The outcome was humiliating for the first-stringer. His screw up gave the white team the ball and the winning edge they needed. Kaczynski had lost to a second stringer, a runt. The coach had called him and the blue team “girls.”

  The big halfback planned his revenge carefully. He had thought of all the usual pranks: stealing Jason’s clothes, snapping the runt with wet towels, or just beating the crap out of him, but none of it felt good until he saw the coach’s car keys lying on his desk. He knew the coach always stayed late until all the equipment was put away. Besides, he’d return the keys to his desk before he would miss them.

  When Jason stepped around a rusty Buick, the three giants leaped on him. He was quickly overpowered. Kaczynski deftly produced the ring of keys with one hand and popped open the trunk. Jason suddenly became difficult to control. He lashed out with his arms and legs in a screaming fit. He landed a hard right into Kaczynski’s jaw and broke one of his front teeth in half. Carl Toth, one of the linemen, nose exploded in a shower of blood when the heel of Jason’s left sneaker slammed into his face. Wounded and bloody the three of them tossed Jason forcibly into the trunk, and Kaczynski swung the lid closed with a metallic bang.

  They hadn’t expected him to turn into a wild animal. Kaczynski held his mouth and cursed while Toth cried like a baby. Jason’s screams of terror and his pleading to be let out would have normally delighted the boys, but their wounds took all the fun out of it for them.

  Jason’s terror, however, was absolute. Despite the grace of God and Coach Harlson’s quick thinking, his time in the trunk wasn’t short enough. No more than ten minutes elapsed between the time Coach Harlson caught Kaczynski returning his keys to his desk than when he unlocked the screaming Jason from his trunk.

  The ten minutes of terror slowed to hours for young Jason. It dragged on with excruciating agony. A second became a minute; a minute turned into an hour. The only thing that moved at a fast pace was his heart. Fueled by anxiety based fear, he clawed and kicked at the trunk lid, but the old Buick was as solid as boiler plate. Jason let up on his pounding, swallowed hard and took several deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating.

  Inside, the trunk smelled of mildew. Mildew and death. Something was in the trunk with him. He turned his head and listened. He heard it move. It was something old and rotten, something dead, but it moved. He had to push those thoughts from his head. It won’t be much longer. They’ll have to come and get him out. It whispered his name. Not once but several times over and over. “Jason. . . Jason,” it said slowly in a faint whisper of a voice. It went deep inside his head, it moved closer. Jason kicked and kicked and kicked the underside of the trunk lid until his feet became numb with pain. He collapsed back against what felt like the spare tire and gasped for breath. The smell became foul. He knew now that it wasn’t mildew. It was that odor of rotting flesh again. Then something cold and clammy touched his neck. Jason broke into a fit of uncontrollable screaming and crying.

  The sight of Jason Riggs overcome by total hysteria drove slivers of fear up Coach Harlson’s spine when he opened the trunk.

  Jason recovered quickly that day. A few minutes in the open parking lot and he began to breathe easier. A small crowd of some of his classmates had formed, and his fears soon gave way to embarrassment. He had met his fear face to face again only this time he had caved. He had lost the fight. The embarrassment had been pure hell for a fifteen-year-old. He decided from then on to conceal his phobia at all costs. Kaczynski knew about his claustrophobia. He had let it be known to the big halfback years earlier when they were both in Boy Scouts together. At the time, they were the best of friends sharing deep dark secrets about one another. In the future, Jason resolved, he wouldn’t reveal his weakness to anyone.

  Jason realized, all of a sudden, that he had been staring at a satellite view of California for the past ten minutes. The weather channel predicted clear skies and soaring temperatures over the Mohave Desert. Big deal. He pushed the channel selector again, on the remote, and switched to Fox News. The financial crisis in France was worsening; the Middle East was still beating itself back to the Stone Age, and popping up on the screen, presented as “Breaking News,” was a picture of the President grinning and swinging a golf club. Jason pushed the “Power” button, and the screen went blank. His apartment felt empty along with the dark T.V. screen.

  He knew he had done well down in the tunnel today. It had become a lot more comfortable when Eastwater had fired up the powerful LED lamp. Gilhooley had helped as well. He had to be strong for her. Gwen was like a rock when it came to strength. He liked her, a lot. He wondered what she was doing.

  ***

  Gwen sighted along the barrel of her Glock 30 into the empty closet. Well, almost empty. Besides a dozen pair of dress shoes, a pair of combat boots, work boots, two pairs of Nike’s, six complete sets of NWU’s, her dress whites and her blues, several dresses and an assortment of jeans and tops, the closet was empty. Or, more accurately, it was empty of any living thing. The rubbing sound had ceased as well. She had been holding her breath up until then and exhaled explosively. Slowly rising from a squat, she entered the closet still holding the 45-caliber weapon out in front of her. “No boogie man here, girl,” she said out loud. She couldn’t help from smiling. Whether it was out of relief, or because she felt a bit foolish, she didn’t know. All she knew was it felt good to smile. After inspecting some suspicious looking folds in a couple of her dresses and looking behind a winter coat, she declared the situation all clear.

  Reaching for the pull chain on the ceiling light, Gwen stopped and looked down at her feet. A faint current of air blew up her bare legs. There was a hole in one of the floorboards. “What the?” she puzzled. She didn’t remember seeing this before. Gwen left the closet momentarily, returned with a flashlight that she kept on her bed table and got down on her hands and knees. The floor of the old house was sheathed with tongue and grooved Douglas-fir boards. A knot the size of a quarter had fallen through leaving a small hole. Shining the light down on it she heard a brief scuttling noise beneath the house, then silence. The hole was too smal
l to see anything, and the light was of no help. For a fleeting instant, she thought she detected the faint odor of honeysuckle but the sensation disappeared as quickly as it came.

  Turning off the flashlight, she stood up and dragged a cardboard box filled with old magazines to the middle of the closet floor covering up the hole. The houses in her neighborhood were built on crawl spaces. She imagined that it wouldn’t be difficult for an animal of some kind to get under there. The notion of rats under her house made her skin crawl. She’d make it a point tomorrow morning to call base housing and report it. She closed the closet door and returned to bed

  CHAPTER 12

  THE CYCLIST

  Alan had no sooner stepped out of Ironwood’s front door when a great cloud of dust embedded with tumbleweeds swept across Main Street transforming his shiny black wingtips into chalk.

  It was a little after 7:00 a.m., and he was looking for Ironwood. He had knocked on his friend’s bedroom door shortly after showering and shaving, only to discover that Thomas had already risen. He found coffee brewing in the kitchen, poured himself a cup, and then searched all the other rooms of the house with no success. Even Ironwood’s house trailer/study was unoccupied. That was when he headed for the front door.

  Alan looked down at the cup of coffee in his hand. A thin layer of dust and sand floated on its surface. Frowning, he turned the cup upside down and watched the spilled coffee pool up like mercury on the dusty limestone road.

  Further up Main Street, where it intersected with Fulton, there was still some asphalt left on the road. Darwin looked as lifeless by day as it did at night. There was virtually no activity. Except for a young man he spied riding a bicycle along the north end of Fulton, the town appeared deserted. Ironwood had told him that the population of Darwin was about forty-five people. Right now it seemed to be less than that.

  They didn’t talk much last night. Both were exhausted, and Alan had been hungrier than he had imagined. Downing several helpings of dinner had occupied most of their conversation time. Before leaving for the evening, Mrs. Murchison had served up broiled chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, wild rice, and a spinach salad. Alan ate without pause until he felt like he would burst. He was normally a light eater. Eating, to him, was something you did out of necessity, and last night left his body a starved engine that needed fueling. He guessed it was the result of all the excitement that day plus being faced with a home cooked meal. Alan normally existed on fast food. Ironwood was a good host; he smiled gratefully.

  The old mining community that stretched out before him looked more like a junk yard than it did a town. Straight ahead, about five-hundred feet away, stood four house trailers with their paint sandblasted off. To his right, and on the other side of Main Street, was a red Quonset hut with two pickup trucks and a 1955 Studebaker out front. All three of the vehicles were badly rusted. A very old Austin Healey sat out in the middle of the scrub wood with its tires and engine missing. To the northwest stood several rows of ten by twelve one-room shacks, all abandoned and crumbling by the weight of the harsh Mojave seasons. Decades ago, they had once been simple dwellings of the transient miners that came with hopes of striking it rich. Many of the larger homes, if still livable, were wood frame with green asphalt shingles on the roofs and tar paper on their sides. Surprisingly enough, dotted here and there, were a few new homes constructed of rough sawn plywood siding, dark brown and tan shingles, all with satellite dishes on their roofs. Still, the only sign of life was the young man on the bike. He must be peddling hard, Alan observed because he created a small dust storm in his wake.

  Alan scanned the horizon, his gaze fixed on one of the many mine shafts that dotted the surrounding hills. He wasn’t looking at it; rather he became focused in thought on the tunnel they had found beneath the NWC. Intuition told him that the tunnel held the key that would not only unlock the secret of his dreams but would restore a missing chunk of his past. There was something hauntingly familiar about that tunnel. It did not remind him of the narrow corridor in his dreams, the one that led to the file room. That would be too easy. Or was it? Maybe it was the five-sided shape? He couldn’t remember the exact shape of the dream corridor, only that it was narrower and constructed of cobblestones or tiles. He had been pressing his memory ever since he went down there.

  The young man applied vigorous force to the peddles of the mountain bike and increased his speed. He shot up Fulton and turned right on Main Street in the direction of Alan. With the sun to the cycler’s back, he appeared as a blackened silhouette. He let go of the handlebar with his right hand and waved. Alan returned the polite gesture.

  He had to get down in that tunnel again, he brooded. Now that he was thrown off the base, Alan needed Ironwood’s help more than ever. Ironwood had been a gentleman last night only keeping to lighthearted conversation, never pressing him once with questions that Alan knew must have been on his mind. He wondered how much he should confide in his old friend.

  Alan’s jaw dropped dramatically when the cyclist came to a skidding stop in front of him. Ironwood sat straight up in the seat, his body dripping sweat. His old friend did not look his years. His sinewy body looked like it belonged to a twenty-year-old. Clad in only a pair of Nike’s and blue spandex shorts, Alan guessed that he had to be less than ten percent body fat.

  “Good morning,” said Ironwood, barely winded. “I see you’ve already had your coffee” pointing to the empty cup in Alan’s hand. “Then we have both got our start in the morning. Give me a few minutes to shower, and I’ll meet you in the study.”

  The rear tire of the bike made a brief grating noise on the gravel as he headed around the back of the house. Alan stood dumbfounded for a few seconds more and then headed indoors to wash out his cup.

  ***

  “So Alan, what in the hell are you doing way out here?” Ironwood decided on the direct approach. It had the effect he had hoped for, Alan fidgeted in his chair, leaned forward, and appeared to be carefully choosing his words.

  Ironwood didn’t derive pleasure from making his old friend uncomfortable, but he was certain that there was more to his presence here than the mere study of Indian artifacts. Massachusetts was a good distance off. Ironwood quietly stared at Alan Ward. At this stage of the game, after an important question was asked, the first one that talks, is the loser.

  Alan cleared his throat. “For several years now I have been studying an ancient belief that before the dawn of man our planet had been inhabited by another race of beings. A sort of pre-civilization theory.”

  Thomas Ironwood was familiar with similar theories. Consequently, Alan’s statement did not arouse his inner skeptic. He had worked at Miskatonic University at one time, in the physics department, along with Alan Ward, who was in the English department. One department at Miskatonic known throughout Arkham and parts of Massachusetts as a research center on the paranormal, more informed than even Duke University. The “Mythos Department,” as it came to be known, was comprised of members from the different science departments. Ironwood was certain of this because he had been a member himself years ago. Alan, on the other hand, was from the English Department and, to Ironwood’s recollection, was never part of that unusual academic group.

  Alan swallowed hard. He was perspiring heavily. Ironwood glanced at the thermostat. It was seventy-two degrees inside. An old GE air conditioner blew frosty air at them. Around 8:00 a.m., it had started to get warm outside, and Ironwood had closed the place up and turned on the window unit. Without holding off the approaching heat of the day, the Airstream trailer would have been an oven inside by late morning. Alan bent over and picked up a thick leather brief he had brought with him and set it on Ironwood’s battleship gray desk. “What is that Alan?” Ironwood asked.

  “A book and some papers from the university.” Alan slid the brief to the middle of the desk. The leather was old and cracked, and the zipper was broken because it was secured around the middle with a black vinyl strap held tightly in place by a brass buckl
e. The Professor noticed that the strap was a belt that had been trimmed down to fit with new holes crudely punched in it. The papers it contained must have numbered over a thousand pages because the thing was as thick as the Los Angeles telephone directory. Fingering the vinyl strap, Alan added, “This is the main reason Miskatonic sent me here.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You are familiar with the rock drawings that are found here in the Petroglyph Canyon?”

  “Some,” Thomas replied. “Crude drawings carved in stone of men hunting sheep. What of it?”

  “Well,” Alan continued cautiously. “Occasionally other images have been found pecked into the flat rocks. Except these images arn’t so recognizable. They’re primarily geometric and don’t bear any resemblance to man or animals. They would have been easily written off as mere artistic designs, except that the same images were discovered in Nevada, Arizona, and in Peru.”

  “Yes. Dry, barren places that have been left untouched for centuries. I’ve heard that some of these rock drawings are believed to be over ten thousand years old, but that is more guess-work than it is the results of any evidence gathering.”

  “Exactly,” Alan replied enthusiastically. “Rock drawings are almost impossible to date. The Shoshone Indians won’t lay claim to them. They believe that they were created by a race of people that lived here before their time. A new theory has developed though, among some of my colleagues, linking this region and several points around the globe. I picked up the ball and worked out a deal with the Science Department. They helped me acquire a small grant from the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation to finance my trip here. It was both to their benefit and mine.”