New Tales of the Old Ones

by Derwin, Theresa

  He stopped shouting and swimming, and began to paddle quietly as he felt the waters moving. As waves formed, like the ocean, the bum frantically swam toward the far side of the pool. The surface of the water parted, foam sprayed up, and the creature Alex now knew to be Shaaa-Sall-Us reared its head into the night air like a cobra, towering over the shrieking man.

  As Shaa-Sall-Us lowered itself to strike and consume the floundering man, there was another explosion of water. Another head ascended up on a long neck, it was another water demon. It was another Shaa-Sall-Us.

  Like the long necked dinosaurs of the distant past, they roared and hissed their challenge at each other, fighting for the right to eat the man. They lunged at each other, biting, burying their mouths into each other’s skins, sucking and tearing. Their tentacles interlocked, biting and tearing each other. One relinquished and sank beneath the waves. The victorious Shaa-Sall-Us roared its triumph, leaned down and ate the screaming bum. It turned and looked at Alex.

  Alex stood by the pool edge with the star stone clutched in his hand and hesitated. The invocation had worked. All he had to do was throw the stone into the pool. He raised it in his hand then stopped.

  He could feel a vibration, like a tremor in the earth, like the approaching sound of a tornado. It was distant but getting closer.

  Suddenly, the Sha-Sall-Us disappeared beneath the waves and everything went silent. Alex remembered the old man’s warning: “Ye can’t kill ‘em. But ye can banish ‘em. They don’t belong here. Beware their mother, begot of Ubbo-Sathla, do not disturb her. Her childr’n are many. She is one.”

  If the star-shaped stone could banish them, Alex thought, then if he waited, maybe he could do more than banish one water demon. Maybe he could banish the mother and really get his revenge.

  There was a sound that shook the earth. The waters of the pool exploded as something bigger than the whole pool shot up into the night sky. It was as large as a building but it kept growing. Ish-Tan-Illa rose from the pool, twisting and curling, like a new born plant pushing its way up through dirt.

  Alex couldn’t take in the whole size of the thing. It was huge, miles tall and growing by the second. It grew until it was taller than the clouds. Its head seemed to touch the heavens. Its body blotted out the sky and moon.

  His first impression was that of a huge segmented serpent, with each segment covered in rows of tentacles. The top of the head was huge, bulbous. Like a rose, it unfolded into a five-pointed shape, like a starfish. In the middle of it was the head of a cobra, with no eyes.

  The thousands of tentacles that covered its body seemed to actually encompass its body. That’s when Alex realized that Ish-Tan-Illa was so big, each of its tentacles was a Shaa-Sall-Us.

  From miles up this thing, miles wide and tall, looked down at Alex. The mouth opened. Inside was a huge staring glowing red eye. It too glared down at Alex.

  Alex stared back up into the eye. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his arm with the green star-shaped stone in his hand.

  Ish-Tan-Illa saw it.

  The effect was immediate. Like a dolphin diving beneath an oceans waves, the multi-mile high goddess/water demon dove head first back into itself, back into the pool with a crash that shattered Alex’s eardrums.

  With a scream of defiance, Alex started to chant again as he threw the star-shaped stone into the churning black waters of the pool. There was an anguished scream and explosion so loud it still pierced whatever was left of Alex’s eardrums and sent him reeling unconscious to the ground.

  X

  When Alex awoke the next morning, the sky was a bright blue. The air was cool. He sat up. The pool was empty. The black water was gone.

  Alex drove a bulldozer down the pool steps, into the pool and didn’t stop until he was sure all the cement was broken and shattered. Working till sunset, he filled the pool in with dirt. After starting a fire in the hotel, Alex drove back to an empty home in Boston.

  The first thing he did was call his wife desperately hoping she would come back to him. The second thing he did was fix himself a strong drink. The third was take a shower. As he tried to let the steady spatter of the water relieve some of his tensions, it seemed to have the opposite effect. It worried him.

  As the water filled the tub, covering his toes, he had a nagging feeling. Something the old man and Ms. Loring said to him, over and over: “The doorway is water; where there is water, so are they.” As he tried to relax, absorbed in thought, the water level continued to rise in the tub. Soon it covered his ankles. Odd, Alex thought idly, he didn’t think he had closed the drain. That’s when he noticed the bottom of the bathtub felt different. It felt a lot softer. He opened his eyes and looked down.

  Beneath the water, in his bathtub, was one huge eye. His feet were on its pupil! Ish-Tan-Illa stared up at him, the pupil dilating and narrowing.

  Alex had a chance to scream just once before the eye sank down into the depths of a watery abyss and he sank down with it.

  Submerged beneath the water, he opened his eyes. Although they stung, he could see a little. Everything was dark, as if he were underwater in the middle of the ocean, an endless dark blue ocean that extended out in all directions from him. The only thing that seemed to illuminate the scene was a ring of light over his head.

  Alex looked up at the ring and realized it was the shape of his bathtub. To his disbelief, he registered that he could still see his bathroom. If he could just get out of the water...

  He looked down again. Shapes were moving in the darkness toward him. He swam up, and burst through the surface of the water gasping for air.

  But then he was clawing desperately at the white porcelain bathtub walls as he was pulled beneath the waters to join Ish-Tan-Illa forever.

  DEADLY CARGO

  Geoff Gander

  Thomas de Raaf cut his way through the boisterous crowd at Picton’s smoky and dark Sailor’s Rest, and stepped up to the bar. Not for the first time, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers. The Polaris would be his first ship; he needed this job. His tension eased as the men around him swapped stories about lives left behind, joked about old sailors’ tales of lake monsters, and speculated about their captain. Everyone had heard something. Captain Harris was a defrocked clergyman; he had run guns to the Confederates during the Civil War; and he had even sailed in the South Seas in his youth, and made a fortune. Thomas’s uncle had told him that Harris had been sailing Lake Ontario for years, and was a strict, but fair, man.

  “Tom, lad, there you are,” said his uncle. Charles Smythe cut through the crowd and wrapped a burly, tanned arm around Thomas’s shoulders. “I trust your mum’s well?”

  “She is, Uncle,” said Thomas. “And thank you for this opportunity.”

  Smythe shook his head. “It’s the least I could do. It’s not as though you’d get much of a share of the farm, anyway.”

  Thomas nodded. He had three older brothers, two of whom already had young wives of their own. His father had told him in no uncertain terms that he would have to make his own way. That was why he was here, thanks to a letter from his mother to her brother, who happened to be the Polaris’s first mate.

  “There’s just one thing I need to ask you, on behalf of the captain,” said Smythe. “Are you a superstitious lad?”

  “How do you mean?” asked Thomas.

  “Do you put any stock in omens, Indian legends, and the like?” asked Smythe.

  Thomas furrowed his brow for a second. “I believe in what I can see with my own eyes,” he said slowly.

  “Good,” said Smythe. “Captain Harris likes rational men. Stow your belongings, then. We set sail tomorrow.”

  X

  The next day the Polaris sailed for Rochester. She was a two-masted schooner, over 150 feet long and 20 wide, with a dark green hull and her name painted in large white letters along the gunwale. Her deck gleamed in the sunlight, and nothing – not even the shortest length of rope – was out of pla
ce. While Thomas learned his duties as a deckhand, he wondered yet again whether he was doing the right thing.

  His family had been farming in Prince Edward County for generations, and had always been solid, down-to-earth folk. But for as long as Thomas could remember he had preferred imagining himself in the strange lands he had read about in his family’s few books to tending the livestock or the fields. It was all very strange and had happened so fast; but it was an opportunity, and right now it was all Thomas had. He gazed nervously over the grey, rolling waves.

  Thomas’ reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Harris on deck. He was thin, vanishing into his dark blue topcoat with its shining brass buttons. The points of his starched collar gleamed in the sun, and the breeze fluttered the ends of his long grey moustache. He straightened his white cap and surveyed the crew briefly before muttering, “As you were,” and turning to Smythe, who came to meet him. The two men talked for a few minutes before Harris returned below decks.

  Once the Polaris docked in Rochester that evening, Smythe ordered the crew to start loading coal for Toronto. Thomas was picking up his first sack when he noticed two men ride up in a wagon and unload two large crates. Something was stenciled on the side of each crate in large lettering, but from where Thomas stood he was unable to read what it was.

  As the men unloaded the second crate, one of them lost his grip. He leaped back with a shout just before the crate could crush his foot. Smythe bounded over, his face red. “Be careful with that, you fool,” he shouted. “That’s expensive cargo for an important customer, and if anything’s broken it’ll cost you your job!” Thomas perked up. He had never seen his uncle so angry before. What could be so important about that cargo? The man spluttered a hasty apology, but Smythe shoved some papers into his chest. “It’s signed for – just go.”

  Every time Thomas returned to pick up a sack he tried to get a better view of the writing on the crates, but his uncle stood guard over them and he had no desire to have that rage directed at him. Eventually he had his chance, and saw that they were addressed to a “Dr. A. Winchester, University of Toronto”. He dropped his load in surprise. Smythe glared at Thomas and he hastily snatched up the sack and scurried to the ship. Dr. Winchester had written a book about the legends surrounding Atlantis and Mu. Thomas’ teacher had given him a copy one year because he had been the most attentive student in class, and he had read it so often that it had fallen apart. In his most vivid imaginary journeys, Thomas had visited the sunken continent and explored its weed-choked cities. He studied the crates with renewed interest.

  That night, Thomas tossed and turned in his berth. The thought that artifacts destined for Dr. Winchester’s study could be sitting less than 100 feet away was too much to bear. His mind raced with thoughts of barnacle-covered coins, rusted swords, and algae-encrusted statues. He had to see what was in those crates, but he didn’t dare get up, as his uncle was guarding them even now. Suddenly quick footsteps came from the hold, and seconds later Smythe bustled past towards the captain’s cabin muttering, “Noises.”

  This was his chance. Thomas crept to the hold, careful not to make a sound, and once there he grabbed an iron rod leaning against the bulkhead and studied the crates. Prying them open would make a lot of noise. There had to be another way. He looked more closely. The slats of one of the crates had split near the bottom corner. This must be the one they dropped, he thought.

  He gently tugged one of the slats and it broke off, creating a hole just large enough for his hand. His breath caught and he reached in. His shaking fingers brushed nothing but rough straw, and his heart sank. He pushed further – there! He felt something hard, smooth and cold. Metal. He pulled it out, and by the yellow light of the single lantern looked at a golden wristband, almost as long as his forearm, inset with a mosaic of colorful stones.

  Thomas paused to listen. All was quiet, aside from the pounding of his heart. He studied the wristband’s images of fish, octopi, and what looked like giant worms or snakes, and a warm numbness crept up his limbs. The edges of his vision blurred, and the sea creatures seemed to begin twitching. He looked even more closely, and the creatures swam in a golden sea. A low humming seemed to come from the other side of the bulkhead, accompanied by a faint scratching sound.

  The deck bucked under his feet with a loud crunch and Thomas fell to the ground. He lay there, dazed, while shouting could be heard on deck. After his head stopped spinning, he struggled to his feet and scrambled for the ladder. The scene on deck was utter chaos. Captain Harris stood in the middle barking orders, while Smythe was getting people to their feet. Only a couple of men seemed to be alert; the rest either staggered around or were lying about in a daze.

  “Thomas,” shouted Smythe, “Grab a lantern to check the port side. We’ve run aground. Check for damage.”

  Thomas picked up a nearby lantern and scrambled to the gunwale. As he lowered it over the side with a rope, the captain shouted to Smythe. “Did you not check the charts when you plotted our course, Mr. Smythe? Did you not take soundings?”

  “Aye, sir,” said Smythe. “The lakebed is many fathoms down. There should be nothing but open water.”

  “Sirs,” said Thomas, “We’re stuck in a sandbar at the bow, perhaps 15 feet or so. I see great scratches in the hull, and,” he caught his breath, “I swear there are footprints in the mud surrounding the ship.” He turned to the other two men, his eyes wide.

  The captain went pale in the moonlight, and then seemed to get a hold of himself. He turned to Smythe. “Draw pistols from my cabin for the both of us, and the rifles,” he said in a low voice, but loud enough for Thomas to hear. “We’ll not end up like poor Sidley and the Picton.”

  Smythe went below and the captain turned to a dark-haired, stocky man. “Johnson, take some men, equip them with shovels and set to digging us out of the muck. You will be covered while you work.”

  Thomas stood on the port side a short while later with Smythe, rifle in hand, looking over Johnson and some other men, who were digging furiously and cursing loudly. “Uncle,” he asked in a low voice after a long, tense silence, “What’s this business about the Picton, and why are we armed?”

  Smythe looked over his shoulder. The captain was standing guard on the starboard side with a red-haired man, and a gangly fellow kept watch at the bow. He leaned close to Thomas. “A few years back, in 1880 or so, there was a schooner – the Picton – captained by Jack Sidley. He was a great skipper; no one could run a ship as fast as him. One clear morning he was hauling coal from the States, and was eager to get underway. There were two other ships – the Acadia and the Annie Minnes – following the same course, but they couldn’t get out as fast as Sidley. They were a couple miles behind, but only an hour after casting off the other two ships saw the Picton’s topsails coming off. They thought Sidley might be dropping sails for some reason, but then his ship just sank out of sight, in the blink of an eye. The others raced to get there, but there was nothing to be found. Nothing.

  “Captain Harris knew Sidley, and had sailed with him under Marsh. But that event changed him, and he refused to sail that route again. He sold the Acadia and tried to forget it all, but his backers came back and convinced him to command the Polaris.”

  Thomas swallowed. “And the guns?”

  “Let’s just say the captain never believed that Sidley was done in by weather or bad luck,” said Smythe.

  “Does this have anything to do with those crates?”

  Smythe studied his nephew thoughtfully. “I’ve been with the captain for 15 years. Every so often there’s a load of special cargo waiting for him. I don’t know what that the stuff is, but Dr. Winchester pays the captain well to deliver it. I asked about it only once, and all the captain said was that the cargo was going to be taken to a place where it couldn’t be used. And that he’d dismiss me if I ever mentioned it again.” Smythe looked down to check on Johnson and the other men. “The only other thing I know is that Sidley sometimes picked up cargo li
ke that,” he added.

  Thomas shivered, but his thoughts were interrupted by a shout from a bald man. “There’s something out on the water!”

  Smythe leaned forward to stare at the waves. “Can’t see nothing,” he muttered. “You, Thomas?”

  Thomas squinted. Nothing seemed to disturb the surface of the lake. He turned at the sound of a splash to his right, and saw a man-shaped figure wading out of the water to the sandbar. Thomas raised his rifle. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, and the figure was revealed in the silvery light. Thomas gasped and dropped his weapon. The creature was the size of a man, with a flabby torso and spindly arms and legs. It was covered with dark green, glistening scales and its large head had a ridged crest that projected backwards.

  The creature stopped and looked up with bulbous yellow eyes. It opened its mouth, revealing a row of needle-like teeth, and hissed. Thomas’ heart was pounding, and a voice in his head screamed at him to pick up the rifle and shoot. His hands twitched, but he was frozen in place and unable to look away. The bald man turned at the sound and screamed. A deafening crack sounded in Thomas’ ears as Smythe fired his pistol at the creature. The shot went wide.

  There was a muffled shout from the captain, followed by another shot. Thomas ears rang and Smythe fired again. The coppery smell of gunpowder stung his nostrils, and smoke obscured his vision. Everything blurred and he grew dizzy. Suddenly he convulsed and blinked several times, and everything came into focus again. He bent over shakily to retrieve his gun.

  “Another one to the left,” shouted Smythe, and he turned to fire in that direction. Thomas’ arms trembled as he raised his rifle and fired at the first beast, which was now out of the water and shambling towards a blond-haired man. He missed. The bald man, wild-eyed and shouting, jumped onto the rope ladder.

  Gunfire was steady on the starboard side, punctuated by faint screams. Thomas reloaded and took aim with steadier hands. His next shot hit the beast in the head and the back of its skull exploded, raining bone shards and scraps of flesh and brain over the muddy ground. It hadn’t finished flopping to the ground before more splashing alerted him to the arrival of more creatures.