Shoggoth

by Byron Craft

  Ironwood wondered what the benefit was for Alan.

  “I’m going to try and establish a factual basis to substantiate their theories,” Alan concluded.

  “And what theories might those be?”

  “The idea has evolved among the heads in the Mythos Department that this may have been an outpost for a small colony . . . possibly a stop-over point for an ancient civilization.”

  There, he said it, thought Ironwood. He mentioned the Mythos Department. “What civilization?” he pressed on.

  “That’s the mystery,” responded Alan. “It’s still pretty vague. All we know for sure is that they were pre-Inca. Until I’m allowed to examine certain areas surrounding Little Petroglyph Canyon before your friends bulldoze it under, I won’t have a clue.”

  “And that’s what you were trying to explain to Eastwater and the rest of them yesterday?”

  “Precisely,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed. “. . . only I’m afraid I did a bad job of it.”

  “I wouldn’t brood over it. Eastwater has pushed for a fast track on this project, and he doesn’t want anything to get in his way.”

  “I am sorry Ironwood, but I can’t stand your colleague.

  “Colleague?”

  “Eastwater. He’s the type of man that I loathe on sight.”

  “No need to apologize, he’s hardly a friend or a colleague, and there is no love lost between us. Unfortunately, he came with the project like the mold that came with the penicillin.”

  “What is this project you are involved with?”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s classified top secret.”

  “You were researching chemical lasers before you left the university. Is it connected with that?”

  “If something’s classified, I can’t talk about it,” Ironwood said definitely.

  “Sorry,” Alan said, fidgeting in his seat once again.

  Professor Ironwood altered course and brought the conversation back to the beginning. “How much time do you need to examine the area?”

  “Two weeks, three at the most.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Ironwood said scratching his chin. “I wonder why they wouldn’t accommodate your request. They work closely with the local museum here on their digs. Why wouldn’t they do the same for you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alan sheepishly. “All I ever got were doors slammed in my face.”

  “What reason did Vice Admiral Hawkins give you for their refusal?”

  “None. I met him for the first time yesterday. All my requests before then were passed through Eastwater.”

  Eastwater’s role in this was almost conspiratorial; Ironwood reflected becoming absorbed in the puzzle. Or was he, Thomas thought, as paranoid as a conspiracy theorist? Most of Eastwater’s actions could be explained away as someone who was over zealous at their job. Couple that with his obvious dislike for civilians on the base and voila, you have a logical explanation. Except, his surreptitious behavior around Congressman Stream did look suspicious, this was developing into a docudrama. Eastwater and the congressman were not the only suspicious characters in the play, however. Ironwood stared at Alan. The fortyish English professor, somehow turned archaeologist, unconsciously fussed and fidgeted his hands together making a cat’s cradle out of his fingers.

  “Alan,” he said in a raised voice. “You have been talking in circles. We are old friends. My father knew your father. Level with me.”

  Alan’s eyes became moist, and he stopped squirming in his chair. “A lot happened after you left.”

  “Enough to turn an English professor into an expert on lost civilizations? It’s been over ten years since the university booted me out, but your reputation has continued to grow within the Mythos Department.”

  “How did you know? I mean, you’ve been away.”

  “I have friends at Miskatonic U. I keep in touch. They tell me that you went through some startling personality changes several years ago.”

  “I was ill for a while.”

  “I know.” Ironwood knew what most of their old associates knew about Alan Parker Ward. He had collapsed during one of his morning lectures to his English Lit class. He remained unconscious, in a coma for two days, at the Arkham Memorial Hospital. When he awoke, he had almost total memory loss. “You had amnesia,” he said gently prodding.

  “Retrograde amnesia is what it is called. Mine was a severe case. It made the textbooks,” he added forcing a smile. “Of course I don’t have any recollection of the time, but my doctors told me that I displayed all the signs of a stroke, but the symptoms vanished after I regained consciousness.”

  “But you still had amnesia?”

  “Yes,” Alan answered back staring blankly at the wall of books behind Ironwood. “I was told that in cases of severe memory loss specific areas of the brain show pathological changes. In my case, there were none. I was perfectly healthy when I came to, except my speech was awkward, like a foreigner unfamiliar with the language. Even though my strength returned at once, I still required a tremendous amount of physical therapy. There hadn’t been any muscle atrophy, fortunately. Rather, it seemed that I needed re-education in the use of my hands and legs.

  “The resident psychiatrist at the hospital, years later, told me that I had first tried to conceal my memory loss, but when that failed, I became eager for information. My chief efforts were in history, science, and very obscure folklore.”

  “Your pre-civilization theory?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your studies eventually brought you to the Mythos Department at the university?”

  “Yes,” he replied again, paused, and then reluctantly added, “I wasn’t very cooperative back then. An old friend of mine told me that during those days I was reclusive in my research and very unwilling to share any of my findings. Something in my aspect and speech seemed to incite vague fears and suspicions amongst my colleagues. They felt that I was becoming removed more and more from normalcy as time went on. One ugly story circulated about my supposed association with occultist groups.”

  “What about Jennifer and your son? Where were they during all of this?”

  “My wife left me, got a divorce. She has re-married since then. I haven’t heard from my son in several years.”

  Alan had painfully blurted out the last two sentences. Ironwood sensed a heavy sadness to his old friend’s life. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “You see, I was another person back then,” he answered, his eyes welling up with tears. “By the time I regained my memory, my life, as I had known it, had been irreparably torn apart.”

  “How long did you suffer from this memory loss?”

  “Five years,” he almost moaned.

  “Good God, Alan. I had no idea. In all this time did you ever have any recollection of these events?”

  “None,” he replied in a low voice.

  “But you seem normal now. What happened?”

  “I woke up one morning, only I was five years older than I remembered last. You can’t imagine how painful and difficult the process was re-entering into normal life. The loss of five years creates more complications than can be imagined. I was astonished and so disturbed when I learned of my actions during the lapse that I had to go under extensive therapy and counseling.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ironwood knowing it sounded stupid to say it again. Alan had turned his face away from him towards the opposite wall. After a moment Ironwood cleared his throat. “So, it was the studies and actions of your ‘other self’ that lead you back to the Mythos Department to develop this theory of yours?”

  Alan turned and looked at Ironwood with anger in his face, anger not directed at him, rather a rage against a cruel and alien destiny. “I don’t have any theory,” he said baring his teeth. “I am not a scientist; you know that. There are things that I remember. Things that may have a connection with those rock drawings out in the desert.”

  “But you said you didn’t remember anythin
g.”

  “I don’t,” he snapped back. “I don’t remember any of my actions during that five-year period.

  “Then I don’t understand. What is it that you do recall?”

  Alan turned his gaze towards the ceiling and squeezed his eyes shut. Tears streamed down the side of his face. “The only memory I have is in my dreams.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as if a tremendous weight had just been removed from his shoulders. He spoke calmly, “They are vague dreams, but they are reoccurring. When I dream, my ability to distinguish between reality and the dream is, distorted. I sometimes form fanciful notions about living in one era and casting my mind over another. In all cases, I always end up in an alien looking city, unlike anything I have ever read in books or seen on film. At one point in my dream I am always standing at the opening to an underground passageway, and next to it, there is this symbol carved into the dark masonry. It has always stood out plain in my memory. I believe I see it every night in my sleep. I was shocked when I found it last year reproduced on a page in the Necronomicon.”

  The Necronomicon was an old book. The mention of it stung Ironwood sharply in the soft tissues of his brain. It was possibly, the oldest book in the world. It was certainly the vilest. The library at Miskatonic kept one of the few remaining copies of it under lock and key. It was a complicated diatribe, more complicated than the book of Revelations and harder to translate than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book alluded to other worlds, alien beings, and Armageddon. It was also the focal point for most of the studies in the Mythos Department at Miskatonic University.

  Alan ran his hand over the leather brief. “Since. . . my return, I have made it my life’s work.”

  Ironwood became momentarily startled and looked down at the thick bundle wrapped in leather. “Alan, you didn’t steal it from the university did you?”

  “No,” he smiled. With the deftness of a practiced hand, he quickly unbuckled the strap and let the leather brief flop open. “I Xeroxed it.”

  Ironwood had to laugh as he rose to his feet and bent over the book. Alan flipped hurriedly through several pristine white copies of the ancient text. The chemical smell of newly copied paper filled his nostrils. Ironwood had expected the odor of an aged document. The many pages became anachronistic the new white paper reflecting the image of an ancient parchment containing long-forgotten writings, thousands of years old.

  “Remember me mentioning Isaac Morley when I interrupted your staff meeting yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “He came here in 1873 on a similar quest. Originally from England, he traveled to Arkham and then to the Mojave. He came to this area in search of the same symbol and built his house overlooking its ancient message. Ah! Here it is,” he announced jabbing an open page with his index finger.

  Ironwood walked around the other side of the big gray desk for a better view.

  “This is the symbol that has haunted my dreams and sent Isaac Morley over 3,000 miles to find.”

  CHAPTER 13

  THE MOORLEY HOUSE

  Ironwood stared at the five-sided design etched into the dark basalt rock. It was identical to the drawing that had been photocopied from the old book he saw earlier in the day. To his right, a winding canyon of fractured volcanic rock meandered endlessly toward the south. It was a deep and jagged cut into the landscape as if carved by an impatient god with a dull knife. Centuries of wind, rain, heat, and bacteria had conspired to darken the surface of the once pale rocks to hues of brown, blue, and black creating canvases of stone. The rock art was what the Coso’s ancient humans had chipped through the darkened surfaces and beneath exposed the lighter rock. Thousands upon thousands of designs covered the rocks like prehistoric graffiti. Some designs were indecipherable. Others were as familiar today as they were thousands of years ago; bighorn sheep, a dog, a mountain lion, quail, deer, lizards, and man as the hunter.

  The surrounding area was once a land of volcanoes, of hot springs, with forests, lakes, rivers, and the ancient ones. Now it had been laid barren by deficient moisture and intense winters and summers. The climate had made this desolate country almost uninhabitable with only the smallest and heartiest of God’s creatures surviving. The desert mountain range, that looked upland, was known by the Shoshone as the “Mountains of Fire.”

  The ancient ones, of Native-American mythology, have vanished now. The designs, immune to time, have remained clear and distinct upon the rocks, while the meaning of the images, like the people who had conceived them, had completely faded.

  The rock drawings of the Coso Range had on many occasions become the topic of conversation during off hours and on breaks on the base and in the Michelson lab. None of Ironwood’s friends or colleagues were archaeologists, but it wasn’t uncommon to see a physicist or an A-10 pilot on their days off together sharing a common interest when it came to the mystery of the petroglyphs. The question of why these images carved in stone had become an enigma. The age of the designs is also a mystery. All attempts to date them have proved futile. Each one had weathered the passage of time differently. Each one’s physical appearance reflected its past through a short story or medicine signs. Most of these abbreviated tales were told by roughly drawn pictures of ancient man hunting. Most, except the one that Thomas Ironwood was examining. The five-sided image was a good four feet across and stood alone on a solitary projection of black rock. Most of the rock drawings spread along the canyon walls. This lone piece, the results of some volcanic upheaval centuries ago, endured outside the canyon near its mouth. The drawing in itself was not surprising because its broad and almost perfectly smooth surface would have presented an irresistible offering to any prehistoric artist. Rather, it was the precision in which the design had been rendered. The other petroglyphs in the canyon were pecked through the dark varnish that had formed on the basalt rocks exposing its natural light beige color. They had been accomplished using stone chisels and hammers, and it showed. Even though the petroglyphs were fascinating, by virtue of their existence and their sheer numbers, they were at best crude stick figures.

  They were probably a form of symbolic, sympathetic magic used to ensure a plentiful hunting season. The lone hunter, waiting in a stone blind for a bighorn sheep or a deer to come to the river edge for a drink, passes away the time by chiseling the image of his imagined prey into a nearby rock. The river has long since dried up, only centuries of these crude rock drawings remain.

  Ironwood ran his hand down the geometric design. All five sides of the drawing were surprisingly straight and regular. The engraved lines didn’t look like they had been pecked or chiseled into the surface. They had the appearance of being machine grooved.

  “The designs are all that remains of them,” said Alan coming up from behind.”

  Ironwood jumped forgetting that his friend was nearby. The pointed end of the engraved symbol reminded him of a directional arrow. “It . . . almost seems to be pointing to something.”

  “Isaac Morley felt the same way. The last word we have of him is in a letter he sent an associate in Arkham, shortly after discovering this drawing. He shared the same sentiments with him.”

  “Where is Morley’s house?” Ironwood asked.

  “Straight ahead.” Alan swung an outstretched arm resembling a sharpshooter aiming.

  Ironwood’s eyes followed the direction indicated to a sandy knoll just on the horizon. The outline of a large wood frame house looked black against the white-hot sky.

  ***

  Alan and Thomas drove along an old mining trail in the direction of the Morley house. “More bumpy lime rock roads,” shouted Alan over the roar of the car’s motor. His tailbone was sore from all the bouncing, and the thin upholstery on the seats of the old Willys convertible didn’t offer much padding for comfort. It amazed him how such a flat, dry, treeless country could be so bumpy to travel over. “Haven’t they heard of blacktop yet in the old West?” he exclaimed forcing himself to be cheerful.

  Ironwood smiled and navigated
the car around a large rock in the road.

  Alan was amazed when they first went to use Ironwood’s car. The 1950 Willys Overland Jeepster convertible had been parked on the roof of Ironwood’s house when they first went to fetch it. The roof was supported by the same massive wood beams that extended beyond the rear of the house and over the patio. Unlike the open patio area, it had been sheathed with two-inch-thick tongue and grooved roof boards and then coated with heavy layers of tar, tar paper, and gravel. With three-quarters of the house being below grade, it had been a simple architectural feat to cantilever a portion of the roof at an angle to meet the grade of the road. It was, to say the least, eccentric. Nevertheless, he had to admit that the effect was impressive as well as practical. The street that ran in front of Ironwood’s house was narrow; it didn’t afford much room for a car to park and still allow another to pass. Thus, the roof made an excellent parking lot.

  The old Willys had been a surprise as well. At first glance, the sixty-year-old ancestor of the American Jeep looked completely restored. While driving, Thomas explained to Alan that the yellow and tan sports vehicle had its original four-cylinder engine and three-speed standard transmission upgraded to the 4.0-liter six-cylinder engine and five-speed transmission found in today’s Wranglers and Cherokees. These refinements, combined with a reinforced suspension to handle the package, allowed the little Jeepster to fly across the desert faster than the Road Runner pursued by Wile E. Coyote.

  Mid-morning temperatures had risen sharply, and Alan thought he was going to melt. Mounted beneath the dashboard was an after-market air conditioner. There was no roll up windows in the little convertible, but plastic side and rear curtains were laying on the back seat. “I put those on,” said Ironwood pointing to the back seat, “and use the AC when it really gets hot.”