Necropolis: Book 5: R'lyeh

by Michel Weatherall

  He was nearing the final stairs to the bridge when he stepped on something soft and wet in the darkness. It made a squelching sound as his foot slipped sideways. Leaman fell. He should have landed hard on his hip, but something warm, wet and pulpy broke his fall.

  His eyes desperately wide in his attempt to see in this darkness, he blindly reached out his hands.

  It was a person. He gingerly felt the wet throat for a pulse... nothing. It was a dead body. On his hands and knees, Leaman carefully found another three bodies... or pieces of them. Then a machine-gun.

  Leaman's world right now was limited to his imagination and memory in this darkness. He knew what did this to the soldiers. He knew the gun was of absolutely no use, feebly pushing it away. As his fingers left its cold steel it disappeared into the darkness and from his reality.

  Nothing's changed, he reassured himself. He still needed to get to the bridge. It didn't matter who else was here... or what.

  Ahead Leaman could see a shaft of light raining down the stairwell from the bridge. As he picked up his pace, something in the darkness behind him groaned and stirred. Leaman ran.

  * * *

  The three Navy SEALs listened to their own ragged breath, listening to their hearts pound in their ears as they attempted to drink in the sight of Krulgh, the Whisperer.

  Its hands and feet were large, strange and alien, yet disturbingly familiar. They appeared boneless and tentacle-like, ending in clusters of anemone-like feelers. But they pulsated and shifted! Flaccid and anemone-like one moment, then pulsating erect, solidifying into fearsome bone-like claws the next.

  Its head was a great hollow sea conch, its opening an empty cowl hood. Glowing red eyes – more than any sane creature ought to have – hovered within the hood's darkness, in no fixed locations.

  Then, suddenly, the entirety of its head erupted, exploded, vomited from its conch-shell head. Suckered tentacles and feelers spewed forth. Its squid-like octopoid head seemed to have no eyes other than a pair of tightly squeezed shut slits – but maybe they were gills.

  And sprouting from what can only be call its “back” - for it had no humanoid sense of normality – were... limbs. Maybe they were once wings. Maybe they were evolved fins or swimming appendages. They would expand and fan themselves out. Then quiver and vibrate, then close. They made a horrible sound of plastic bags caught in the wind, but worse of all, they effectively moved and fanned its offensive stench. Like dead sun-baked crustaceans and shellfish at low tide, it was both primitively organic and ocean-salted carrion at once!

  Then it moved. It didn't move. It was a mockery of our understanding of movement. It shifted. Like some perverse stop-motion animation; like countless strobe-like sequences; a series of fast-forwarded microscopic teleportations.

  It had terrifying perspective elements of both near and far. The human eye couldn't quite capture its depth; couldn't decide whether it was seeing a two dimensional screen or a three dimensional object. It hurt the eyes – no – it hurt the mind to watch!

  It didn't move. It didn't run. It didn't charge at them. It was like they watched a camera lens zooming in on it. It was sudden upon them!

  * * *

  As Leaman raced onto the bridge he immediately tried to shut the entrance's metal hatch. His panic had risen and he was frantic. The hatch's hinges were rusty and the door was seized open. He desperately threw his weight into it. Rusty fragments and orchre dust popped and binged off the hinges. Something moaned and shuffled from the darkness beyond. Leaman backed off a few paces and took a run at the stuck door. The rusted hatch screeched as it half closed. He gave it a few desperate kicks as the door wailed its resistance. It closed slightly with each kick. The groaning became more agitated and louder with Leaman's actions.

  He braced his foot and with one final fear driven attempt, put his shoulder into it. The hatch banged shut, one of its hinges snapping, the door jamming itself shut.

  Leaman's shaking hands ran over the handwheel and locking mechanism. They were rusted solid. As he feebly slid down onto the floor, his back to the door, exhausted from his fear, he began trying to control his breathing. He knew he was near hyperventilating.

  He felt a subtle vibration through the door as something brushed against its other side. His held his breath, listening, waiting...

  Whatever it was that pursued him either left or remained quiet on the other side of the jammed shut door.

  Leaman stood and surveyed the bridge. Gone was the incessant droning sound of the breeze through a broken window. It was replaced with an electrical buzzing. A low static feedback; the dead air of an empty radio signal.

  Some control panels and consoles had power and dull dirty lights on their displays. Many didn't. He needed to access the ship's data banks.

  He sat at a computer terminal and began typing.

  * * *

  As The Whisperer moved, shifted, telescoped towards the Navy SEALs, all three soldiers opened fire. The monster was caught in their crossfire as the machine-guns coughed their short rat-tat-tat songs. All three soldiers traced its quick movements but no matter where they fired, It wasn't there. Like it knew their thoughts; like it knew exactly where their bullets would fly!

  It was upon the first soldier in the blink of an eye, its movements far too fast to stop. He raised his arm in fear, anticipating the bulking beast's collision, but in a terrifying and ear-piercing scream of sound, its rudimentary wing-like appendages splayed out, stopping its forward motion dead. Its gelatinous squid-like head whip-lashing violently, a taloned claw snapping the man's head off.

  The two Navy SEALs switched their guns to full-auto and emptied their clips, the rusted metal helipad deck a shower of sparks and ricocheting bullets. It wasn't that Krulgh was too fast to hit. It wasn't that the alien Star-Spawn monster was dodging their bullets. They always aimed and shot where it wasn't!

  One soldier dived to the stairwell for cover, reloading his machine-gun as the other drew his sidearm and fired.

  The Whisperer both stood perfectly still yet somehow moved. It displaced itself with fractional teleportations as the pistol's bullets whizzed past it. But that moment's distraction was enough. The other's machine-gun, now loaded, roared its fire, its bullets exploding the creatures jelly-like flesh!

  Krulgh bolted at its assailant with its Strobe-like movement. The second soldier took the opportunity to reload his machine-gun. But as he slapped the clip into the gun he heard the blood-curdling scream of his partner. With a brutal scissor-like motion The Whisperer tore the soldier to pieces.

  The Navy SEAL began back-stepping as he lay down short controlled bursts. He managed to pull the trigger only once before Krulgh was on top of him. He screamed as the last thing he heard was his skull splinter.

  * * *

  Leaman was busy attempting to navigate through the Yamayuki's data-base menus and sub-menus as something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. A brief blink of light from the ship's bow. He stood and looked out the bridge's observation window.

  A young petite Japanese girl just appeared out of nowhere. As she scanned the surrounding derelict warship, a hole appeared beside her. Leaman blinked several times, not sure what he was seeing. An oblong black hole or window opened beside the girl, but a hole in the very air. It was a hole on nothing. And as the young girl moved and walked, it followed her, hovering.

  She was too far away from the bridge to hear, but Leaman could make out her mouth moving. Was she talking to herself, or the hole?

  * * *

  Krulgh was feasting on the dead Navy SEAL, fleecing the bone of all flesh and muscle, popping its joint apart like a chicken drumstick, when its octopoid-like head snapped to attention. Blood and grizzle dripped from its tentacles.

  It sensed her arrival, the very psychic ether changing. And without a second's hesitation, the alien monstrosity was in motion. It couldn't run. It shifted in its strange and outré telescoping motion across the ship.

  * * *

  The R
emnant-Marie gazed up from the darkness that enveloped her, her eyes wide with concern. “Tamara...?”

  “Mommy?” Tamara sensed it too. She was scared. She had encountered its psychic footprint before, but this time it was different. Stronger. Closer!

  “Tamara,” the ghost-like echo of her mother's voice grew louder through that inter-dimensional portal. “Tamara!! RUN!” she screamed the final word, the Ghost-Marie launched herself at the dimensional window.

  By the time Tamara saw it round the ship's rusty superstructure's corner it was already too late! There was no time to flee. Tamara's metaphysical mind dropped a gravity-well at the thing's feet. The side of the building and deck curling, buckling, crushing like a tin can.

  The metal screeched in the crushing gravity-well, but somehow behind Krulgh! Tamara had missed; miscalculated the distance. “But that's impossible!”

  As the Star-Spawn rapidly closed the limited distance, she created another gravity-well. The ship's railing and flooring warped and bent, its oxidized metal whining as the crushing field collapsed everything in its influence... but it was too far to the right!

  Krulgh was fast! It shimmered and telescoped its movement until it was right on top of her! Its stench was overpowering! Tamara gagged in such close proximity to the monster. Its anemone-like fingers clasped her head, its feelers sucking tight to her flesh. She felt that soft alien skin change consistency! From flaccid skin to cartilage to bone!

  In her panic Tamara dropped a third gravity-well at her own feet!

  The excessive gravity ripped her from Krulgh's grasp, its suckered fingers tearing her cheek. She was pinned to the deck, the air immediately forced from her lungs. The behemoth atop her collapsed, itself caught in the crushing gravity! As Tamara felt her joints begin to dislocate she teleported.

  She had intended to teleport to the other side of the ship, out of harm's way, but appeared ten feet above the deck instead, just outside of the gravity-well's reach. Tamara fell and tumbled hard across the rusty deck, bouncing from the impact, her palms and knees scuffed and bloody.

  Whether her abilities were affected by the gravity-well or Krulgh's proximity she could not be sure. Time was not a luxury. The wind had been knocked out of her. Tamara could do nothing but sit on her hand and knees, gagging for breath.

  Her mother was incoherent; a thrashing horror on the other side of the impenetrable barrier.

  Tamara struggled to draw breath, her hands holding her belly. She could do nothing but watch Krulgh.

  The monster was caught in the crushing gravity-well. Its gelatinous flesh peeling from its body as it squealed and struggled. Then, as abruptly as someone pressing a mute button, its cries fell silent. It shimmered, shifted, its bizarre movement telescoping as it suddenly stood outside the gravity-well, tendrils of its residue flesh dripping back into itself.

  Krulgh lunged forward clasping Tamara's head in its anemone-like hand again!

  * * *

  Moshe teleported directly into the corpse-city of R'lyeh. The hazel-eyed half-breed Nubian knew better than to traverse the alien city's bizarre avenues with its dangerous angles, levitating off its surfaces.

  Before him loomed the abandoned and beached metal warship. Heavily rusted, its hull bled into the organic slime of R'lyeh, twisting into fractal-like swirls, its foreign text painted white on its bow.

  When the ancient Hebrew reached out his metaphysical mind, all Moshe could read was a miasma of interference, a toxic mental haze.

  He knew all too well what that meant. The Star-Spawn atrocity was upon the girl and attacking! Moshe knew Krulgh and Tamara were on the ship. He just couldn't pin-point where. He had to act fast and in an overwhelming way. He knew how powerful the Star-Spawn was. Never would he have dreamed of confronting it if it wasn't for the innocent it stalked.

  He raised his staff in his hands as his eyes burst with blazing light. The strange slime that coated the city withdrew from his presence. Moshe was all too familiar with the psychic nature of R'lyeh. He knew he could draw nearly infinite power. He also knew in this state the uncoiled and raised R'lyeh, the very fabric of reality was dangerously thin; fragile even; easily prone to rupture.

  The energy in the air condensed and coalesced into bright rays of power, streaming into the strange man from another time, his body luminescent. Then Moshe let it loose!

  His telekinetic attack hammered into the side of the Yamayuki, its invisible fingers lancing through the hull. The beached warship rocking with its impact.

  As the rusted metal violently peeled off the bulkheads, the oxidized metal screams were ear-shattering; welded seams tore like cardboard and rivets sheared off. The Yamayuki's metal hull buckled and folded like a shower curtain.

  * * *

  The Remnant-Marie thrashed and pounded on the inter-dimensional window, panic, fear and rage driving her into numerous nightmare forms. Her daughter was in Krulgh's crushing grip!

  The derelict warship rocked violently, quickly followed by an ear-shattering wail!

  This course of action had caught it by surprise. It had not foreseen this event and stumbled unprepared, relaxing its grip upon Tamara, dropping her to the deck. Krulgh stumbled, momentarily distracted from its murderous intent.

  It was more than enough time for Tamara.

  She took one slow deep breath.

  She imagined the loose tea-leaves settling from their chaos. Placid. Still. Calm.

  When she opened her eyes she saw them. The air, the very ether was filled with microscopic fractals. Infinitely curled Time-Space abnormalities. The entire Event of the corpse-city was an immense psychic battery! She opened her mind, it yawning far beyond what she had ever dared before, drinking in its abundant energy!

  Streams of light focused into her palms seconds before they exploded into a shaft of pure unrefined power!

  The energy beam cleaved through the very air, creating a vacuum in its wake, its excess power arcing wildly. It missed Krulgh! The port side of the rusted derelict warship was obliterated, the alien monster briefly lost from view in the blinding explosive light.

  Tamara had given up trying to hit the Star-Spawn. She had resigned to the fact that she couldn't. This attack was a distraction, meant to buy her a few seconds.

  Her eyes blazed with energy as she levitated high above the warship. Quickly she scanned the warped horizon. A mile out sat the USS John S. McCain and two miles further, faded in its distance, the USS Curtis Wilbur.

  “Perfect!” she whispered. Her time was up. Krulgh opened its rudimentary wing-like appendages and in its outré way, half flew, shifting towards her.

  She mimicked the motion of pitching a baseball as she dropped yet another gravity-well beneath Krulgh and with her other hand extended, let loose a hell-fire of blinding white energy.

  This time Krulgh was hard pressed. Although it avoided the grasping reach of the gravity-well beneath it, clearly it affected its strange movement. Krulgh banked hard, desperately attempting to dodge the blistering energy bolt and failing. It caught the monster's lower body, but as quickly as its jelly-like flesh exploded, the airborne slimy debris reformed, reabsorbing into the creature.

  Krulgh reached its mind out to the Amber-symbiot but could no longer make contact. It withdrew its mental influence over the entire Shoggoth swarm, abandoning them to their fate at the hands of the USS Antietam. Its mental tentacles weaved and wove their ways through the wreckage of the Yamayuki, searching for the remains of the slain Navy SEALS. The undead could deal with Moshe!

  It needed to focus on the young human Symbiocyst. She was surprisingly more -

  - She was gone! She had fled. Krulgh saw her flying away. The monster pursued!