Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Are they from the village?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the Texan replied. “Where else?”

  “What do they look like?” I persisted.

  “They look like Mexes,” Dunnings said. “All of them look the same.” He paused. “Still, it’s strange, like seeing ghosts the way they come and go.” He paused again. “Hell.”

  Blake abruptly pushed through the tent flaps. “Supply truck just came in,” she said brusquely. “Beer tonight.”

  I lay alone in the tent, aware of every breath of wind, of every stealthy noise. My tent mates stumbled back somewhat later, full of warm Mexican beer. They fell into their cots and instantly drowsed. Their drunken grunts and beer-laden breaths eventually forced me out into the open.

  The moon had risen and hung silvery and bloated over the jungle, seeming almost close enough to touch. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by a powerful desire to see the ruins of the Olmec city by moonlight.

  I trod the trail carefully, for little of the moon’s light penetrated the jungle. The scare I had received earlier seemed distant and unreal, as if it had all been my imagination. When I finally saw the nameless city blue-lit by lunar light, all thoughts of danger melted. There was some witchery in that faint light, for under it the Olmec city did not seem as much a ruin as it seemed sleeping.

  “What are you doing here, Owens?” a voice demanded.

  I whirled about. “You scared the hell out of me, Blake!”

  “You should be back at camp,” she snapped. “Get back with the others or you’ll be out in the morning. That what you want?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll go back. I don’t want any trouble with you, Blake. I have to be here.”

  “Then keep your nose clean,” she admonished. “We don’t have any room here for people who can’t follow rules.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her hard-set mouth softened a bit. “Go have a beer.”

  I turned and started back. Halfway there, I stopped and looked back the way I had come. If no one was supposed to be in the dig after dark for safety’s sake, what was Blake doing out there? And where did she come off ordering me back to that tent full of reprobates? I started back to the ruins—I wasn’t looking to have any trouble with Blake, but I wasn’t going let anyone, certainly not a graduate martinet, shatter my dreams.

  Blake was where I had left her, but now she was not alone. With her were four other team leaders, all close associates of Professor Latham. They carried lanterns.

  Keeping hidden, I followed them to the cenote. Their lanterns did little to illuminate the black surface of the pool. Someone waited for them at the edge of the cenote, a tall figure garbed in glittering quetzal feathers and wearing a jade mask carved with the Olmec were-jaguar motif. In his hand was a wicked obsidian dagger that glinted in the harsh light of the lanterns.

  Then I saw the victim.

  It was one of the student workers from the camp, but there was no way of telling who at that distance. He was strung up by the arms between two upright poles.

  The masked and robed figure began to chant. I could not follow the words, but I recognized names that had not been spoken with sincerity since the demise of the Olmecs and all the pre-Columbian civilizations that had come after.

  Was I still in the latter part of the Twentieth Century or had I somehow slipped back into a dark age of gods and magic? I could not say, not with any certainty, for I too was caught up in the unfolding ritual. And I could not bring myself to interfere with the rite as the jaguar-priest hefted the obsidian dagger above the captive, the edge of the weapon honed to an edge only a molecule in thickness.

  Crouching in the undergrowth, I suddenly became aware of a strange and shadowy presence around me. Shadows became people, the people became animals—ominous were-jaguars stalking those who had disturbed the ancient gods.

  The dagger flashed in. The severed head fell to the ground and tumbled over the lip of the cenote. The body jerked and thrashed against the bonds. Something dark and formless rose from the cold depths of the cenote, obscuring moon and stars like a black fog.

  The silence of the moment was ripped away by growls and screams. Patches of darkness fell upon the archaeologists, shredding them. There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do.

  The children of the Olmecs devoured the interlopers with flashing claws and fangs.

  The ebony mist that had risen from the cenote spread and slowly took a form. A large jaguar crouched in the darkness. A dark paw of congealed shadow swept down out of the sky, smashing the priest. The mask flew, jade shattering against the ground, and I saw the twisted features of Professor Latham.

  Horror finally galvanized my legs into action. I ran back to the camp, but the avengers had been there first, and little remained of my former co-workers besides lacerated flesh and cracked marrow-sucked bones. Not everyone had been involved with profaning the ancient ways, but everyone had paid the price required by the newly awakened and hungry gods.

  Behind me, back at the cenote, the power that had been released towered against the star-filled night, gathering strength that had built up over centuries of silence.

  I fled the camp, heading north. The great doom hung above me. At any time it could have reached down, I thought, and killed me as it had killed Latham, as a man would a soft insect.

  I had just topped a bald rise when a thin strand of darkness reached down and touched me. The coldness of deep space wormed its way into my brain, eating and warping my thoughts. I saw temples and pyramids rise from the jungle, saw the jungle roll back. The city was no longer dead, and there were other cities beyond, rising from clotted shadows.

  I ran until I thought my heart would burst, until I hoped I would die. I came to a thin ribbon of paved road and stumbled along it, cold and bleeding. A trucker picked me up in the dead hours before dawn. I sat and brooded, wrapped in darkness, as we deserted the lowland jungle for the high country. The trucker dropped me in a small town, glad to be free of me and my dark murmurings, and headed east, toward the coast. Too tired to continue, I checked into the town’s only motel, and waited.

  I sit in the darkness, on the rickety bed, gazing between parted curtains into the shrouded street. The Olmecs once called this land theirs and soon they will again. The dream is again clothed in dark flesh.

  I feel the façade of the world falling away. Was any of it ever real, the white faces and gentle gods?

  I yearn to see the splattering flowers, to listen to the prophesies of the deformed babies, to make love to the great mother who brings pain and death. I am clad in leather armor, resplendent in the plumage of the sacred birds—I am a warrior.

  I stand at the window and gaze at the wave of darkness flowing up from the south.

  Lights flicker in the temples.

  Atop the rising pyramids, hearts are ripped from willing victims.

  The mean village of humble men is gone.

  My brothers come for me. I have always sought them, even when I did not know their faces or their secret names. Darkness has returned to the world—I am part of it.

  Jaguars roam the streets of resurrected basalt cities and warrior-kings sit upon lithic thrones. The gods have returned.

  I am consumed by Olmec dreams….

  Lovecraft, who was once a large frog in a puddle-sized pond, is now a leviathan frog in a pond that encompasses nearly all the world, his influence expanding far beyond the sliver of literature called “weird fiction.” His fingerprints are now found on nearly all genres (not excluding, sadly, even romances) and also on film, music and art. If you’re a writer in one field, and also a fan of Lovecraft’s work and/or philosophy, then it’s only a matter of time before you start wondering about the possibilities.

  His Dark Clockwork Heart

  A Tale of Steampunk Cthulhu

  Professor Hezekiah Miles watched the dropping and lifting of aetherships to and from the Croydon Aetherport with the concentrated interest of a man possessed of nothing else to do w
ith his life. And the truth was, course, he did not, not since the accident that left him more brass than bone, more clockworks and bellows than heart and lung, more stitched leather and hammered aluminium than flesh. Against all odds the doctors, surgeons and artificers had saved his life, and not a day passed that he did not curse them for it.

  In earlier years he would have died the death that came to all men, but in the Year of Our Lord 1883, so many damned miracles were possible. Cleverly crafted ships plied the aether between the planets, submersibles plumbed the deepest depths and prowled the ruins of Atlantis, and airship commerce between the civilisation at the Earth’s core and the nations that warred for its surface was possible via the openings in the polar regions. And, Professor Miles thought darkly, it was possible to keep a man from the Kingdom of God by making him a subject of the Empire of Steam and Iron.

  Damn them, he thought bitterly. Damn them all!

  Professor Miles was in such a brooding frame of mind, when a shadow fell over him it took him a moment to realise it was a real shadow, not just a manifestation of his mood. Meshing gears turned his head, and through his crystalline eyes he saw a tall sunburnt man kitted in worn spacer leathers.

  “You are Professor Hezekiah Miles?” the man said.

  “Yes,” he said after a long moment, regarding the perfect form of the man. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “My name is Robert Harkness, and…”

  “You’re Harkness, who led the ’81 expedition to Mars’ south pole.”

  “That’s right,” Harkness replied.

  “Nearly got a lot of people killed.”

  “The expedition was a success,” Harkness defended. “Everyone returned, a little worse for wear, it is true, but you must expect…”

  “Never mind me, Harkness, I’m a little sensitive on the subject of people who risk the lives of others.”

  “I understand.”

  “I doubt it,” Miles snapped. “What do you want with me?”

  “I was referred to you by Professor Barton Early at the British Museum,” Harkness explained. “He said you were the foremost authority on Martian culture, mythology and history.”

  “I used to be,” Miles admitted.

  “I’m leading an expedition to Mars, leaving in a fortnight, and I want you to accompany us as an advisor.”

  “Out of the question!” Miles snapped. “I don’t know why Early referred you to me. Damned idiot should know better!”

  “If it is a manner of compensation, Professor, I assure you…”

  “Are ye blind, man?” Miles snarled, anger causing his provincial accent to come to the fore. “Can ye not see what is in front of your eyes?”

  “I see a man who experienced an unfortunate accident, but who survived it,” Harkness replied. “I see a man whose books about Mars, its flora and fauna, are classics in the field. I see a man in whom Professor Early assured me I could place my trust, a man whose mind is still clear and keen despite what misfortune has done to his body.”

  Professor Miles started to frame a reply, but paused. “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Hmm, well, after that and what that charlatan Early said about me, I suppose I owe it to you to hear you out, but not here.” He gestured toward the aetherships with his titanium chin. “I like to watch the ships come and go. Remind me of better times, they do.”

  He started to move from his seat upon the knoll, but when Harkness moved to assist him he waved the man off. Gears clicked and whirred, pistons pumped. Tiny jets of steam and compressed gas shot out as artificial sinews pulled. Rods levered and frictionless ball-joints swivelled.

  “If nothing else, Harkness, the steamwork body with which I have been cursed is very efficient, if not aesthetically pleasing.”

  Miles and Harkness took a steam-hansom from Croydon to the Aeronef Club in Pall Mall, where Miles was a member, though he had not frequented it of late. They took sherry in the library.

  “How much do you know about the ancient cult which worships a monster-god called Cthulhu?” Harkness asked when they were comfortably situated.

  “I’ve read anthropological studies,” Miles replied, his voice oddly tense. “In primal times, Cthulhu and the other members of his monstrous pantheon held suzerainty over the Earth and its peoples, much as the Dark Gods are said to have ruled ancient Mars. They were worshipped as supernatural creatures, but modern ethnologists who believe them real postulate they were extraterrestrial creatures of flesh and ichor, perhaps from outside the Solar System entirely. Somehow, they were banished from Earth into another dimension, where they await the opportunity to return.”

  He paused and eyed Harkness closely.

  “And I also know, from certain newspaper and police reports,” he continued, “that worship of these loathsome creatures is not restricted to our past.”

  Harkness nodded. “Good, you’ve save me a great deal of time and effort, Professor. And I’m pleased you made the connection to the Dark Gods of Mars, for that is what brings me to seek your assistance.”

  Professor Miles leaned forward in anticipation. Despite what he had promised himself, he was becoming interested in Harkness and his expedition. What was more, somewhere within his reconstructed gut he felt the first stirrings of long-dormant excitement.

  “Last year, during an archaeological examination of a newly revealed ruin on Ponape, in a basalt temple decorated with bas-reliefs of Cthulhu and his minions, I discovered this tablet.” He reached into a bag and withdrew a thin slab of carved green stone. “Please examine it.’

  Miles carefully took it in his brass fingers, and the only sound was the whirring of his eyes as the lenses shifted. “You found this on Ponape?”

  “Yes, the situation exactly as I described.”

  “No, that is not possible!”

  “I assure you, Professor…”

  “These characters are in Old Martian!”

  “Can you translate?”

  Miles tried to scowl, but his artificial flesh refused to cooperate in an old habit that refused to die. After a long moment he said: “Roughly, it tells of the Master of Blood, a being called Kuth-lu, which tormented the People of the Red Star until it was tricked into drinking a sleeping draught, after which it was entombed in an inescapable vault within the Plateau of Leng.”

  “Remarkable,” Harkness murmured. “It took our expedition linguist three months just to decide it was Martian and to translate the proper pronouns.”

  “I hope this was not simply a test of my skills.”

  “Not at all, Professor.”

  “You think this Kuth-lu is Cthulhu?”

  “I do.”

  “But according to the ancient legends – and to the modern imbeciles attracted to the cult – Cthulhu sleeps in Rhyleh, which is supposed to be in the depths of the Pacific, dreaming of his return when the stars are right,” Miles pointed out. “Mars is a long way from the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Yes, but myth and legend have a way of transcending time and space,” Harkness explained. “The myths of one culture are embraced by another; foreign tales are retold with local landmarks, and alien beings are garbed in familiar trappings.”

  “All right, so a legend makes its way, somehow, from Mars to Earth,” Miles conceded, “where Kuth-lu becomes Cthulhu, where a prison-vault in this Plateau of Leng becomes a sleeping-chamber in the sunken city of Rhyleh?”

  “That is what I believe, Professor.”

  “But what about the Plateau of Leng?” Miles asked. “There is no such place on Mars.”

  “Not on modern Mars…” Harkness agreed.

  “But on primal Mars…” Miles mused softly. “Yes, names change. Names are forgotten and old places are named by migrating tribes, who stand in awe, or are totally ignorant, of that which has passed away. Excuse me a moment please.”

  Miles stood, with much whirring, clacking and hissing, and strode to a corner of the library, running a metal finger along the spines until he came to a thick
leather volume, which he pulled from the shelf and opened. He read silently for a few moments, nodding as if refreshing his memory.

  After a moment, he read: “And it came to pass that Jerrack-Dor, leader of the Copper Clan, fled with his people from the low wetlands of the canals, before the War Fires of the Thorn Clan, seeking refuge in the high places which were cursed of old, where other clans dared not travel; there in the forbidden wastes, safe from the knife-hands of the black, yellow and red races, the Copper Clan came upon an haunted plateau, realm of the dreaming god, and made it their own by dint of their flashing copper weapons, slaying the Purple Spiders in their chambers, and the diamond-eyed Mhi-Gho servitors. There, the Copper Clan made their home, setting their copper lock upon it; afterwards, that which had been forbidden, called Aleng-zhan in the Primal Tongue, was known as the Skylands of the Copper Clan.”

  “What book is that?” Harkness, whispered.

  “It’s called Myths and Legends of the Martian Races and is, unfortunately, not as well known as it should be.” Miles smiled, which was a ghastly expression to behold. “The club has a copy of my book because I donated it.”

  “This Plateau of Aleng-zhan could easily be corrupted linguistically by humans into the Plateau of Leng.”

  “Quite easily,” Miles agreed.

  “But I don’t know of any region called Skylands,” Harkness said, “or any tribe called the Copper Clan.”

  “The Copper Clan died off centuries ago; as for Skylands, it’s been conquered time and again – not as safe and secure as old Jerrack-Dor thought it was – and is now called Redmarch on our maps, in the remote and mostly unexplored Northern Highlands.”

  “This is wonderful, Professor Miles!” Harkness exclaimed. “Professor Early was right about your expertise – in the space of a few hours you eclipsed months of research and speculation. I had hoped to obtain a general idea…but…my word, Professor! You must accompany us – I will not take no for an answer. Have you ever been to Redmarch yourself?”