Slowly, he retreated to the long row of windows at the end of the room. Leaning against a window frame, he breathed deep of the pungent air outside the suddenly stifling confines of the clinic.
At first, he heard nothing more than the sounds of the jungle that he’d become accustomed to over the past few weeks, but then, his senses began to sort them out, with one in particular more insistent than the others. It was a sound he’d heard before since arriving in Panama, a low buzz that grew from a barely perceptible hum to a loud grinding that seemed to threaten destruction of the entire forest.
Then, he realized that he recognized the sound from somewhere else. The electric hum generated from the wings of the insects he’d examined was the same as that one he now heard emanating from the depths of the jungle! Listening now with a greater urgency, he heard the sound reach a crescendo before dying down again. Somewhere out there was a swarm of the creatures, maybe more than one, moving like a cloud over the land looking for victims off of whom to feed. Victims such as the railroad workers toiling blissfully in the scorching equatorial sun!
Suddenly, his responsibility to protect the lives of the workers rested like a great weight upon him as the realization dawned upon him of what he had to do: find out where and how the creatures bred and destroy them.
Luckily, with all the preparation he had to make, the next few days passed too quickly to spend much time pondering about the monstrous nature of the tiny beasts he’d discovered. He’d tried to interest Dr. Jonas in the venture, but as soon as he mentioned insects as the possible source of malaise and yellow fever, the physician nonchalantly dismissed the notion. He even went so far as to approach General Ernst and convince him that the new doctor had confused classroom theory with the reality found in the field. As a result, no help was to be found from official quarters.
But his sense of responsibility as a physician and the honor he felt in the oath he had taken upon graduating from medical school compelled him to take action; even if he were alone in the endeavor. Fortunately, though, he did find some help. Corporal Jones came through for him in finding the things he needed to prepare for the project.
Those preparations included the gathering of twenty yards of good sail from the hold of one of the many ships laying at anchor at the railhead, strips of mosquito netting, and the services of a good sail maker to fashion the material in the form dictated by Lee. Though that form puzzled Jones as well as the sail maker, Lee decided not to confide its purpose in them for fear of word getting around to General Ernst, who would order him to desist in his wild ideas. And order that Lee sometimes felt he’d welcome with relief.
At last, however, everything was ready. He’d created a complete suit that would cover every exposed inch of his body. Made of the tough canvas material of ship’s sail and sewn together tightly, the suit was fashioned like a beekeeper’s outfit complete with a hard sun helmet pulled down tight with folds of mosquito netting. Though the thought of the long, wicked looking “stinger” sported by the insect he intended to hunt still sent shivers down his spine, he felt sure that the suit’s toughness would withstand the creatures’ attempts to pierce the material. Still, there was the nagging fear that under a constant barrage of stings, even the tough fibers of his protective gear might not be enough to protect him, thoughts that he preferred not to dwell upon.
And so, early one morning, Lee made a strange figure covered entirely in his coarse body-suit as he stepped from his assigned bungalow into the conveniently close jungle. He really didn’t have much of an idea about how to exterminate the creatures outside of finding their breeding ground and destroying it somehow. To that end, he carried a heavy fire-ax in case it took the shape of a hive. Perhaps, with their home destroyed, the creatures would be forced to disperse and travel further inland, away from human habitation. If there was no hive and the creatures simply breed in the open such as common mosquitoes, he had a back-up plan. He’d done some experimenting on the insects and discovered that they reacted to smoke much as did ordinary bees; it put them into a sort of coma. To that end, he intended to set local brush afire hoping that would help disperse them as well. If anything went wrong with his suit or his plans to deal with the creatures, he’d prepared a number of small huts reinforced with mud and clay and dotted them about the nearby countryside.
Pushing his way into the clinging undergrowth of the forest, he lumbered heavily out of the fragile world of men and into the stronghold of the wild. Immediately he was struck with waves of intense heat as his enclosed body began to bake in the thick sail-cloth suit. He’d not reckoned with the heat his body would generate as he marched through the jungle, but he gritted his teeth and plunged on in the direction of the Chagres River, the area from which his hasty studies of the buzzing sounds indicated the major activity of the insects came from. The buzz itself was almost always present, only building and dying occasionally as he thought the swarm moved to and from its nesting area. Just now, the intensity of the sound emanated distantly from the south-east and it in that direction he aimed his footsteps.
As he continued to move in the direction of the sounds, Lee realized that he was headed directly towards the area where the mouth of the Chagres emptied into the Caribbean. There, he knew, the river dissolved into a tangle of rivulets and tidal pools comprising a swamp thick with rotting and dying vegetation, the perfect place for the breeding of mosquito-like insects. It was in that area as well that the obscure tribe of fisher-folk identified by Dr. Jonas was supposed to be located.
But any further thoughts along the lines of the whereabouts of local Indian tribes became irrelevant when he noticed that his feet began to sink into the soft soil of the jungle. It seemed to Lee that he was still too far from the swamps for such a thing to be happening, but he could plainly see his footprints filling slowly with water. The ground all around him was like a big sponge, completely saturated with water and as he continued to walk, the area between the forest began to thin until he found himself amid a vast mud flat that extended as far as he could see. Then it occurred to him; the rainy season had only recently ended. The Chagres was swollen and had flooded the entire delta and only now were the waters receding, leaving behind muddy silts of the charging river.
Laboriously, Lee heaved himself onto the exposed roots of a huge tree and peered off into the distance. Far ahead, he could just make out the glistening surface of alluvial pools of water, left behind by the retreating river; everywhere the stink of rotting vegetation permeated the atmosphere. Lee had almost gotten used to it when his senses were suddenly overwhelmed by a stink whose smell was so repulsive, his body could only react to it by gagging. Quickly removing his hat, he’d just managed to get it off when he threw up. Weakened by the sudden attack, he replaced his hat and readjusted carefully the netting about his neck. When he’d recovered somewhat, he found that the stink was still there. Never in all his years as a surgeon had he been exposed to such a fetor! Worse than the stink of any rotting corpse or burned flesh, he could tell that it emanated from only a short distance ahead. He’d just determined to head in that direction when a great buzz of insects once again filled the air. The sound was so loud, Lee half expected to see the distant line of trees cut down as by a buzz saw.
Not without some trepidation, Lee forced himself to continue, feeling that the thing he was looking for was close by.
It took him a good hour to wade through the soft mud that rose about his ankles before finally finding what he was looking for. He could tell that he’d found it by the dark cloud of insects that boiled noisomely up ahead. Rising out of the sea of mud like some great beaver’s mound, lay a black bulk that occluded the horizon, blocking out the view of the sea beyond. Blacker than the mud surrounding it, it lay wetly in the thin skin of water that sheened the mud flat, its outline punctuated by a few old tree trunks that poked out from its sides.
Spying an island of dry land that had been too high above the surface of the flood waters to become submerged, Lee moved cautiously
in its direction. At last, he managed to position himself amid the tangled shrubbery that clung to the crown of the little island. From there, his view of the mound was much improved and he discovered with a little shock that far from being some kind of lodge, the thing had once actually been a living creature! At least he hoped it was no longer living, as it showed no sign of life. There was no steady rhythm to suggest breathing, no futile efforts to right itself. Looking at the thing, Lee was almost certain that it was a sea creature of some kind, thrown up from the depths by the violent storms of the past few weeks and beached on an inhospitable shore. But if it had been a living creature, he prayed mightily that the thing was the last of its species. For there was a certain indefinable something about it that set Lee’s teeth on edge, that tickled at some long suppressed superstitious fear that lurked just below his conscious mind. The sort of fear a civilized man was long since supposed to have relegated to the memories of infancy. But the fact couldn’t be denied: he was in the presence of some lost primeval beast… Wait! The scrap of skin found on the fisherman by Dr. Jonas…hadn’t it said something about “Deep Ones”?
But before he could pursue the thought any further, his attention was drawn by increased agitation in the black cloud of insects that hovered overhead. Watching, he saw how the insects began to swarm by bringing into play the electric buzzing of their wings. In seconds, the swarm had begun to glow in the dim blue light generated by the collected power of the insects’ wings. Then, reaching a crescendo of sound, the swarm lifted higher into the air, and flew off in the direction of the railroad.
It took a few minutes after the buzzing sounds had tapered off for Lee to stir himself enough to focus his attention on the bulky form that lay out on the mudflat. Cautiously, he lifted himself from his place of concealment and inched out onto the hardening mud. He was relieved to find that the solid ground beneath the island apparently extended for some ways beyond the portion visible above the mud.
Having long since emptied his stomach of its contents and become accustomed to the smell, he was able to draw himself to within a few feet of the thing. Closer examination yielded no more information. The thing still appeared to him as a formless heap of gelid viscosity. Perhaps the thing could not hold its shape without the supportive pressure of the deep? In any case, Lee was sure the carcass had some connection with the insects he was determined to destroy, and so, he began to collect scattered driftwood and to snap off the dry stumps of branches that still dotted the tree trunks protruding from the thing.
Some time later, he’d managed to cover the thing with enough wood to incinerate any portion of it that lay exposed above the surface of the mud. He was just stepping back from his handiwork when he was startled by a sudden spasm along the surface of the creature’s anatomy. Startled, he stumbled backward, dropping a last arm-load of sticks and prepared to run if he had to.
Watching the thing carefully, he realized that the movement he’d seen, was not the creature itself, but something wholly separate. The dull, waxy surface of the beast was as lifeless as ever, but it quivered in places that seemed wholly apart from any nerve related cause. Gradually, the movements spread over the whole of its surface and Lee, sensing danger, drew back in inexplicable dread. But even as the short hairs at the back of his neck prickled in warning, he couldn’t suppress his scientific curiosity. A curiosity that allowed him to witness the final horror; a curiosity that he would have reason to curse for the remainder of his life…whenever he again had occasion to smell the salty aroma of the sea.
Leaning in close, Lee observed the appearance of certain lesions across the surface of the creature that rapidly grew into knob-like pustules. In minutes, its entire exposed surface was alive with the throbbing sores. Finally, one burst, then another, and another in wetly popping unison surprising Lee into stumbling back onto the dry mud. It was from that position that he discovered the reason for the sudden activity. Half stumbling, half crawling away, Lee’s weakened frame was again wracked by futile heaves that brought only bitter trickles of bile to his lips. On his mind, the squirming, writhing maggots that hungrily ate their way up from the pulpy effluvia that was the interior of the beached Deep One and their almost instantaneous transformation into replicas of the insects that had only recently swarmed off toward the railroad.
Even as he backed away, hand over his mouth, Lee could see the newly hatched young testing their wings as they rose hesitantly from their noxious birthplace into the warm air of the surrounding swamp. Gradually, instinctively, they began to swarm and Lee, cognizant of his danger yet aware also of his duty, forced himself to gather a few of the sticks he had dropped into a small pile. Slowly removing the cumbersome gloves from his hands, he reached inside his suit and removed a tin of matches. Eying the slowly growing cloud of insects who had yet to recognize him as a source of nourishment, Lee lit one of the matches and held it to the small piled of twigs. It took a few tries, but he finally managed to get them to burn. By that time, the new-born insects had gathered into a swarm. Taking hold of one of the burning sticks, he tossed it desperately towards those that he’d used to cover the Deep One.
As soon as the faggot he’d tossed touched the thing, the whole creature burst into flame as if its surface had been covered in oil. Some unknown excreta covering or composing the thing’s body had proven to be naturally combustible, a fact Lee wasn’t going to question. Holding an arm up to protect himself from the mounting flames, he could see with relief that the flames quickly sought out the low flying young that had not yet escaped the vicinity of the carcass.
Hardly waiting to see if his handiwork was completely successful, he turned and began to run as quickly as he could along the surface of the dried mud. Within a few dozen paces however, his feet began to sink again.
He was still busily slogging his way along when his ears were filled with the sound of buzzing. Allowing a gasp of fear to escape from his lips, he looked back to the smoldering heap for the approach of the creature’s insect offspring, but there was no activity from that direction. Then, sweat streaming from his body, he turned back toward the distant forest and realized that the sound was coming from there.
Quickly, he turned direction and recrossed his island hiding place and sloshed again in the soft muck of the mud beyond. The buzz of the returning insects was growing louder by the second as his frenzied mind insisted on picturing for him the details of the creatures’ physiognomy: the electric blue wings, the ugly cilia, the long prehensile stinger with its accompanying sack bloated red with blood…and those tiny, inexplicable but all-too-humanlike hands. It was that final image, of those ghastly, incongruous hands, that drove him crazily over the last few yards of open mud onto dry ground. But any relief he might have derived from the possible safety of dry land was subsumed in the tearing, ripping, slashing sound of the swarm close on his heels. He dared not even glance back to see how close they actually were. He didn’t need to.
His surroundings were a blur of rushing images: trees, pools, bushes, leaves, vines, more trees. He noticed none of them until he burst into a clearing that held a deserted village. His passage through it was so hasty that he barely had time register any of its features. Indeed, it was with some amazement that later in life he remembered any of it at all. Only a handful of empty huts of grass and wood stood in a rough circle around the black pit of the community fire. Here and there the typical belongings of a poor native village. A stand of poles draped with grass fishing nets and crude wooden buoys characterized that the village as that of a tribe of fisher-folk. All was quiet and empty. The village was deserted and later, Lee needed to spend little time wondering about it.
Leaving the village behind, he plunged hip-deep into a narrow stream outside the ring of huts and crashed through the few dugout canoes still moored there. Thrashing about in a desperate attempt to disentangle himself from the surface clutter, he fell upon the opposite shore and scrabbled unknowingly upward toward a pile of shattered stones. He sensed more than felt the p
resence of the ferocious horde at his back as he scrabbled up the short ridge of rock that poked up like a finger from the midst of the surrounding forest. His protective suit, torn and shredded, felt heavy on his arms and legs but he was thankful for what protection it still afforded when he felt the first few pricks made by the lead elements of the swarm. Tiring, unable to go much further, Lee braced himself for the final attack as he crested the ridge and fell face forward onto the smooth expanse of rock at the top. Struggling to rise, he found himself too exhausted to continue and finally fell back unconscious.
When Lee awoke at last it was night and the moon had risen and drowned out the dimmer stars in its bright light. Slowly, he stripped off the last shreds of his now-useless protective suit. Standing, he wondered at last why he was still alive. Moving to the edge of the broad shelf of rock upon which he’d fallen, he looked back down the way he’d come. Littered along the steep slope were the decomposed bodies of about thirty or so people. They lay there in the positions they had fallen in the act of trying to escape the angry swarm that had at last caught up with them before they could reach safety. The inhabitants of the village he’d passed through, he realized. And all around them, inches deep like some black carpet draped over the small knoll, were the lifeless bodies of insects. Already, they were being feasted upon by birds and other insects; by morning, almost nothing would be left of their presence. On the horizon, a dull smudge on the eastern sky marked where the last fumes of the burned carcass rose thinly from the mud flat.
Lee turned slowly back to face the sailing moon, wondering why he’d been spared and the tormenting creatures slain. The bright light reflected from off the face of the smooth stone on the edge of which he stood, attracting his eyes. He looked down and saw the shape of the rock. Too regular for nature, it had certainly been carved by human hands. He looked back at those dead villagers then back at the stone. They’d sought safety upon the rock. He alone had reached it and survived. Stepping back for a better view, he again looked at the stone he was standing on and recognized it as the same as the one that had been etched on the piece of cured skin found in the possession of the native that had died at the hospital. In addition to the Deep Ones and something called Clulu, it also included the design of a strange, five pointed star.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 27