by Gary Fry
Table of Contents
THE RAGE OF CTHULHU
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EPILOGUE
THANK YOU FOR READING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO FROM HORRIFIC TALES PUBLISHING
The Rage of Cthulhu by Gary Fry
First published in 2017 by
Horrific Tales Publishing
http://www.horrifictales.co.uk
Copyright © 2016 Gary Fry
http://www.horrifictales.co.uk
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The moral right of Gary Fry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE RAGE OF CTHULHU
Gary Fry
In memory of Dr. Trevor Butt
1947-2015
“Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young.
Who knows the end?
What had risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come “
– H. P. Lovecraft: ‘The Call of Cthulhu’
CHAPTER ONE
“Hey, Christine, I think I can see a way in.”
George and his wife had walked from Whitby on the Cleveland Way, a public footpath leading along England’s northeast coastline. After passing the town’s famous abbey and a holiday park located on the lip of a splendid bay, they’d spotted two buildings: a towering lighthouse and, about a hundred yards farther on, a property whose roof bore a giant foghorn at least five yards long.
As the lighthouse appeared to be private, and manned by staff, they’d moved on to the second building, which looked anything but operational. It was one-storey high and bore off-colour walls. Weeds grew in wild profusion around its sealed doorway and all the windows were boarded up…except for one. This was what George had just identified.
“Be careful,” Christine said, the way she’d done lately, as if he was some sort of cripple. “If you fall, we won’t get help out here quickly.”
If she meant an ambulance, why didn’t she say so? George experienced a flare of temper but decided not to be difficult. This, the first leg of their holiday around the world, was supposed to be pleasant. They’d visited the area as youngsters – just after marrying, forty years ago, before they’d had any money – and had always vowed to return. George wished it was in better circumstances but that was how life went; no use being maudlin about it.
After all, there was still fun to be had. Huddling low against the chill – it was a blustery February weekday, dampness heavy in the air, as if rain or worse was due – he moved closer to that one unboarded window, eliciting another comment from his wife.
“Don’t go in there, George,” she said, anxiety from recent events etched into her voice. “It’s private property. The men from the lighthouse might come over.”
And do what? George wanted to know, as if needing to take on the world and all its infuriating rules. In his current situation, what were the consequences of misbehaving?
“I want to look inside, Christine,” he replied, puffing as he shuffled forwards, limbs aching with the effort. For a moment, he went dizzy, but closing his eyes and eliminating the world for several seconds helped to stabilise him. Finally he was ready to enter.
By the time his wife approached, holding the new iPhone with which she’d filmed the remarkable landscape these last few days, he’d swung a leg over the sill and levered himself inside the building. Refusing to offer Christine another opportunity to cause a fuss, he cut through the room ahead. This resembled some sort of sleeping quarters, possibly once occupied by whoever had maintained the foghorn when the place had been in service.
The board-free window failed to let in much afternoon daylight. All the same, George soon chanced upon a door with a big brass handle at hip-height. He turned it, releasing the door with a sticky sound of gunge separating around its frame, and then paced forwards.
A more insistent source of light lay up ahead. He figured out that he stood in a corridor leading to other rooms. The building had appeared to be just yards from the cliff’s edge, a considerable drop to a rocky beach and the unforgiving sea. But as he moved on, the ground here felt solid, even though some of his dizziness had returned.
The light at the end of the passageway appeared to come from a room whose door was missing. The front of the property must have suffered structural damage, with stone broken in inaccessible places. This was probably why the authorities hadn’t sealed off those parts.
He entered the room, marvelling at its contents. Was this where the foghorn had been operated and maintained? A bulky engine was attached to the wall, clearly having not been used for years. Alongside it stood a beguiling arrangement of valves, cocks and pressure dials, each rusted or draped with cobwebs.
George loved places like this. They reminded him of his childhood back in Leeds, of visiting railway stations with his parents, exploring great steam carriages. Perhaps this was why he’d broken into such an out-of-the-way property. He’d heard that during traumatic periods people tended to revisit the past, an attempt to contextualise life from a distant perspective. Hadn’t a famous philosopher once said similar, someone he’d studied as an undergraduate before his career in academia?
Maybe that was true, but it wasn’t important now. This was George’s new attitude. It wasn’t that his medical diagnosis had led him to abandon insights into the human condition, rather that he had fresh experiences to enjoy, away from the ivory tower comfort of textbooks. With only limited time left, he wanted to throw himself into as much of life as possible.
He advanced into the next room, through a doorway at the rear of the foghorn’s control centre. Wondering what sound the foghorn on top of the building had once made, he examined the new area, given over to water tanks and batteries, which had surely once compressed air to provide the noise. It was here that an exterior wall covered in a thick skin of plaster had collapsed, letting in light from outside.
George heard a wind thumping against the property’s exterior, the sea smashing against the cliff-side below. What with the building’s unusual acoustics – the walls were thick stone, the floors bereft of carpet or furniture – these sounds had impact on him, rendering him unsteady as he moved. His vision also felt challenged, especially when he reached a lengthy room at the front of the property, beyond which had once sailed the ships that the whole place had sought to safeguard.
It was now that he observed what he ought to have previously: none of the other rooms had windows. But that wasn’t true of this one, whose longest side bore four square glassless peepholes. Each was three feet tall and wide, and none had been boarded up. That might be because it w
ould be difficult for anyone to move safely along the coastal lip and seal them. Whatever the truth was, George could now see way across a choppy North Sea.
But this wasn’t all that caught his interest.
In addition to how noises here – the restless howl of wind, an unfailing susurration of the sea – continued to unsettle him, he detected a curious scent, which was how he imagined magma expelled from an active volcano might smell, a pungently sulphurous aroma. More distortions in his visual field left his perspective strained, as if the room was a photograph that someone was tugging out of shape in every direction. After several seconds, he began to feel nauseated and was forced to look away.
Was he suffering another attack, like the ones that had first alerted him to his illness? That might be the case, but as he stabilised his vision by focusing beyond the wavering room, his attention went no farther than the windows, which had surely been damaged by some seismic event.
Sections of wall around the openings had buckled inwards, great stones tilted towards the interior, the inch-deep plaster torn from the sinew beneath. It looked as if something had rammed into the building from the outside, but what could be so large and powerful, let alone possess the height such an assault required? The building had to be two-hundred feet from the seabed; such a manoeuvre was impossible even for the most monstrous creature.
More sensory distortions sweeping over him, George turned to look for a way out, returning to his wife and her well-meaning support. Just then he spotted more damage affecting the rear wall, which faced those mangled windows. In four spots, corresponding with each of the glassless openings, more plaster had been smashed away, revealing the property’s flesh beneath.
Had something – no, at least four things – been thrust through the windows and struck this wall?
None of it made sense. George felt troubled and bewildered. He moved off, back along another stretch of corridor, seeking the room through which he’d entered, quite against Christine’s sensible advice. She was simply concerned, as the spouse of anyone diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour would be. For this reason, he’d try not to reveal what was happening in his head right now. Indeed, by the time he exited, he hoped it would have all settled down.
CHAPTER TWO
George and Christine Cox were holidaying in Robin Hood’s Bay, a tiny village seven miles south of the more famous Whitby. While both locations possessed an age-old charm, the smaller remained uncorrupted by tourist-driven attractions. Its steep high street was flanked by rows of quaint shops selling homemade foodstuff and aesthetic curios. There were pubs aplenty, and it was in the lounge bar of one that, after dining (fillet steak for George, locally caught lobster for Christine), they sat drinking a bottle of red.
Christine was reading the Guardian. While addressing dismaying headlines – further wars in the Middle East, friction among newly elected leaders of several North African countries – she shook her head, as if it was only a matter of time before the whole world was compromised.
It may be projection, thought George, drawing upon a concept from his former work as a social psychologist. She’s worrying about the state of the world to avoid feeling frightened by her private affairs. But he could understand that, and once he’d poured her another glass of wine, he leaned toward her. “I’m sorry about what I did today. It was irresponsible. I should have known better.”
Christine folded up the paper and looked at him, sympathy making her eyes glisten. “I don’t want to be an old bore, George,” she said, but what she meant was all too apparent: Neither of us knows how long we have left together, so we should enjoy ourselves while we can…but within reason.
She’d probably kept her response brief because the pub was quiet, just a few older people sitting in corners, nursing pints and wearing reflective expressions. Maybe they all realised how short time was, too.
After sipping more from his glass, George beat a fist against his chest. “There’s nothing wrong with me physically. I feel as fit as I ever have.”
“Yes, but Dr. Kilroy said…”
“Dr. Kill Joy, more like.”
“…Dr. Kilroy said you should never be left alone unless it was absolutely necessary. You might…” Now she lowered her voice even more. “Well, you might experience another episode, mightn’t you?”
George recalled the first one, back in his university office, which had forced him to take early retirement. The world had appeared to turn sideways but then he’d realised he had, falling to the ground as distorted perceptions had invaded his skull. His vision had swum in and out of focus, sound had boomed with subaquatic resonance, touch and taste had tingled with peppery sensations, and there’d been an earthy scent in the air. It had been truly disturbing, and George, never one to burden the health system unduly, had gone to hospital at once.
The tumour, diagnosed days later, lay perilously close to his brain’s core, the reptilian limbic system involved in a wide range of functions, including control of mood and bodily temperature. It was growing to one side, headed for his right occipital lobe, but as it had just been discovered, it was impossible to determine how aggressive it might prove to be. This was why the specialist in charge of his case – Dr. Kilroy, alarmingly young for someone with such responsibilities – had asked George and Christine to monitor behaviours, recording evidence of unusual developments. He’d also suggested that if they were still set on their world tour – which they’d delayed till their career duties were fulfilled and the children were adults – they’d be sensible to take it sooner rather than later.
George leaned back and smiled. “Do you know what the biggest impact upon me is, Christine?”
The wine settling her, his wife smiled back. The pub’s low light eliminated strain that had appeared recently on her face, making her look no older than when they’d met as undergraduates and enjoyed glorious summers of love. “What’s that, George?”
He hesitated before speaking but knew he must be truthful. Why lie when his days were so numbered?
“I feel as if nothing I do has any consequences anymore. Do you understand what I mean? In the past, when I thought I had years ahead of me, all my acts had implications. You know, I shouldn’t upset this or that person, because I’ll see them again over Christmas. Or I shouldn’t drive over the speed limit, because with too many endorsements on my licence, the authorities will ban me. But I now feel as if I can do anything – well, within reason, of course. I don’t mean I’m going to go out and commit murder or similar.”
He hoped his last comment was comedic but Christine looked anything but amused. She simply gazed at him. “You’re forgetting one thing, George.”
“What’s that, my love?”
She leaned forwards and her voice wasn’t low anymore. “I do have years left. And so do our children. None of us wants you to do anything that might be hard to come to terms with once you’re…well, once you’re gone.”
The glisten of moisture in her eyes had thickened to become tears, which soon rolled down her cheeks in silver trails.
“Hey, hey,” he said, reaching forwards to squeeze her right arm. “What am I likely to do to make any of you feel that way?”
Christine wiped her face with the back of one sleeve. If other people in the pub were listening – George had the impression that a bald man to one side was staring across – then to hell with them. This was all that was important right now: him and his wife and their tragically truncated future.
“Christine? Are you okay?”
She looked up, eyelashes starred with moisture. To George’s strained mind, these briefly resembled aquatic creatures, hideous squid or something more otherworldly. But when she spoke again, he listened carefully.
“I’m sorry, George. I’m being unreasonable, I know that. I realise that you’re not capable of…well, of anything untoward.”
“…But, Christine?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I detected a hesitation in your comment. That usually m
eans there’s a but lurking somewhere. How about sharing it with me?”
She looked at him. Then, her volume low again, she snapped, “There’s no need to be clever, George. You’re not lecturing students now.”
Christine, who’d once thrived in the legal profession, was nobody’s fool. All the same, George experienced a need to press her on this matter. “I guess I just want to know why you think I’m currently such a loose cannon.”
His wife looked sheepish for a moment, but no longer than that. George perceived a difference in her expression, as if issues concerning his condition had just moved to another level of concern – from wary to critical. Finally she spoke.
“I haven’t mentioned it before. I suppose I didn’t want to complicate already difficult matters.”
George felt his heart rate speed up, pushing blood into his skull. His hands clenched into claws. He just wished she’d tell him what he needed to know.
Then she did.
“I’m not sure you’re even aware of this, but when you suffer your episodes – when you say that the world spins around and things don’t seem right – you can get quite aggressive, George. I mean, scarily so at times. It’s unlike you.”
He’d suffered several attacks lately, while restricted to home in his wife’s company. He’d always been passionate about many matters – especially social issues, as befitted his former academic discipline – but didn’t think he’d ever become aggressive. What did Christine mean by this?
So he asked her…and didn’t care for the evidence she presented. She plucked out her iPhone, the one with the in-built camera, and when she activated a recording made at their Leeds home, George felt his world crumble anew. Glancing up after the minute-long clip had finished, he felt emotional. In their familiar lounge, the recording’s subject had raged and mouthed obscenities.