by Pete Rawlik
I put my arm around the young man who seemed not so young anymore. “I think so my friend.” I told him as we walked. “I think here in this place, at the very end of the world, if we cannot find redemption, then perhaps we were never villains in the first place.”
The rest of the journey was made in silence, which suited me, for I did not wish to explain why I had not noticed that he had been replaced, though I did feel a pang of guilt for that particular failure. I did wish that Elwood would find it within himself to try and move into the in-between. This was something he was loathe to do, not so much because of his experience with the Hounds of Tindalos, but rather because within the walls of this alien city, with its weird geometries and energies, and the extra-dimensional Vugg-Shoggog pulsating in the sky, moving through that realm was uncomfortable to say the least. He had difficulty putting it into words, the best he could do was suggest that the weird geometries made his brain ache and his stomach hurt. I didn’t press the issue, though if he had been able to do it our journey might have been shortened significantly.
By the time we made it to the damaged Dreaming Chamber my nerves had become unsettled. The weird, sourceless light that seemed omnipresent within the complex had grown dimmer as we had descended, and was now little more than a pale, featureless glow that only let us see for a dozen feet or so. With this came the inevitable auditory hallucinations, of things shuffling and sliding about in the dark. There was that eerie feeling that we were being watched, perhaps even stalked, and I remembered those weird symbols on the map that faded in and out suggesting that something was alive in that dread space.
As we had expected the seal on the chamber door was broken and the great five-fold gate was ajar, not much but enough that both Elwood and I could slip through the gap. As soon as we had it was apparent that we were not the first to penetrate the interior, for the sleepers within had all been assaulted. I counted twenty-five of the pentaradial aliens known as the Q’Hrell, and all of them had been decapitated. The heads had been piled up in a corner of the room, but the bodies had been mostly left to sit inside a kind of cradling cage of wire mesh and lights which once must have been an elegant construct, but now seemed decrepit with damage and age.
“I thought you said that shoggoths didn’t devour the Q’Hrell,” commented Elwood. He had noticed, as I had, that something had molested not only the severed heads of the Q’Hrell, breaking open the outer integument and tearing out the inner membranes, organs and musculature, but had done the same to a number of the bodies of well.
I approached one of the closer bodies and examined the lacerations. There were on the bodies puncture wounds, heavily concentrated in the soft areas where the tentacles and wings joined the body. Some of these were so numerous that they had eventually merged and become large enough for me to insert my entire hand within the body cavity. It was through these holes that the internal organs and flesh had been removed. The scene reminded me of bodies I had seen on the fields of war, ones in which dogs and carrion birds had torn into to get at the tender bits within. I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened here. “We should get what we need and get out of here.”
With Elwood’s help I found several bodies that had not yet been eviscerated and using a makeshift knife and some metallic tubing I began the process of exsanguination on the first of the corpses. Q’Hrell blood is not like that of humans or other earthly life, and even after death tends to persist in a liquid form. Consequently even on these dead individuals the process of gathering their vital fluids was not unlike that of a butcher draining a slaughtered pig or chicken, a practice I had helped my father and grandfather with many times. We transferred the green fluid from the collection basin to large metallic carafes, which could be sealed. For these containers we had rigged up a primitive set of tubes, nozzles and bladders that allowed us to spray the stuff in either a powerful jet, or a gentle mist.
We worked as best we could in the dark, quietly too, whispering directions to each other as if our lives depended on it. These actions were taken because of the ever-growing sensation that we were not alone. The auditory hallucinations were growing more frequent, Elwood could hear something dragging along the floor, and I kept hearing a swift, almost secretive kind of chirp, not unlike that of a cricket, though swifter and harder to locate the source. Our paranoia kept growing and as we filled container after container our pace quickened and we began warning each other about the inevitable.
Then it happened. I handed a metal carafe to Elwood, one for which he was not yet prepared. He juggled it, one handed, mostly suspending it in the air in a kind of controlled chaos that vanished when his other hand came into play, as did one of mine. The shiny tubular container flipped end over end as it travelled through the air toward the floor. Elwood dove after it, his fingers catching one of the edges, but all that accomplished was to change the spin and tumble it further out of our reach.
It hit the ground with a kind of clang or ring, and then the other end hit, and then it bounced hitting the floor again and again and again. The echoes were horrific and Elwood and I sat there wincing as the sounds careened down the halls and came back to us in ever-diminishing but clear alarms. Our presence here was made public and we cringed, staring at the door. We waited with baited breath for something to come through, for some alien horror to shamble into the chamber in response to our inadvertent alarm.
We waited, and waited, and then waited some more.
Nothing came, and after waiting for so long both Elwood and I let loose a deep sigh of relief, followed by a giggle that acknowledged the ridiculous nature of the situation.
That giggle was responded to by a sudden shaking of something in the room that reminded me of a sheaf of papers or the rustling of leaves. There was another similar sound, this one closer, and seemingly larger. These were followed by a third such noise, and then something different. It was a deep throaty sound, not unlike that of pigeons, as if a sound had gotten caught in one’s throat. Elwood and I were still looking at the door but the sounds that we heard now were clearly coming from within the chamber itself. We scanned it in all directions, holding out crude knives in front of us as if they were enough of a defense.
TwWRKKTrk!? Came a questioning kind of noise. I saw one of the bodies of the Q’Hrell shudder and then something large and pale tumbled out of the incision in its side. It hit the ground with a thump, and then there was a kind of fumbling, flapping noise, the source of which I couldn’t see.
TrKwtttRT! Another of the desiccated husks shuddered and gave birth to a pale, furry thing that flopped out of the interior.
TwRRNNet! I heard the thing shudder and then plop to the floor, but I didn’t see it. I still couldn’t see what we were up against.
There was a shuffling sound, like something large being dragged across the floor, but it was still too far away to see. I turned to Elwood and began gathering up the carafes. I rose up slowly, carefully, and as I did I found myself suddenly looking over Elwood’s shoulders, staring at the thing that was towering up behind him.
In the days that we had been trapped in this ancient, alien city we had learned that we were not the only forms of earthly life to take up residence here. The pools of water that existed on the edge of the warmer parts of the city were home to great sheaths of bacteria, fungi, and an assortment of fish, all of which were blind and devoid of any pigmentation. Likewise, the predators that had evolved to take advantage of this ecology were also albinos and they too were blind. There are no bears in the Antarctic, and we were too far from the ocean for seals to be a threat, but here in the dark of an alien city a new kind of danger had evolved, one that we ourselves had taken to feeding on to survive in this place. There was a vast population of a horrific species of giant penguin. These titans grew much larger than their cousins, and if given the opportunity could likely be a threat to an injured man. When we could we had hunted them for food, supplementing the fish in our stew pot with their greasy, gamey flesh.
I
t seems we were not alone in our desire for something more than a diet of fish. Some of those flightless avians had found their way into the Dreaming Chamber and resorted to feasting on the headless remains within. They had found easy pickings apparently, for though it had taken them time to peck their way through the thick outer integument, once breached, the inner parts must have proven quite nutritious. The thing that reared up behind Elwood was easily five feet tall and so well fed that it could no longer have fit through the gap in the door. It was an evil-looking thing, eyeless, but with indentations in the flesh where the sockets once were. In proportion to the body, the head was small, but as that thick, sharp beak opened up I saw that the maw within was massive, a gaping craw filled with spiny, filamentous teeth that glistened with spittle in the light.
I froze in fear, and slowly, carefully put a hand on Elwood’s shoulder. The slight squeeze I gave alerted him to stay quiet, but he looked up and caught my eyes. I knew what he saw there and he did exactly what I needed him to do, which was absolutely nothing. With a sense of surety I moved to the right and at the same time I pushed Elwood in the opposite direction and he rolled the rest of the way. The creature roared and followed me, I don’t think it even noticed that Elwood had stuck a knife in its belly and cut an eight inch slice in the creature’s abdomen. It came after me, and with each step of its fat body the new gap in its gut opened wider and the viscera bulged out further.
When the thin bag of flesh and muscle finally gave way and that sack of internal organs and blood finally spilled out on to the chamber floor, my worst fears were realized. Like mammalian blood the vital fluids of avians is red; what spilled out of that monstrous penguin’s belly, what began to spread across the floor, wasn’t red. It was green, the same green that I had been draining from the dead bodies of the Q’Hrell. I cursed out loud as I realized what these creatures had become. “Do you remember the last set of triplets we went up against?”
Somewhere in the darkness Elwood responded. “The Fisher Brothers, patients of yours if I recall correctly.”
I nodded, even though I knew Elwood couldn’t see me. “These things likely have a similar condition.” I was moving around the room trying to keep ahead of my pursuer, but away from his friends. “Being animals they might be smarter, and more dangerous than the Fishers.” Elwood chuckled for a second and then went quiet, and from the scuffling sounds in the dark I knew my friend was doing the same thing I was, trying to stay alive.
At the edge of my vision I caught sight of something moving, something that had no neck and waddled when it moved. It had been years since I had studied anatomy, and I was sure that there were some significant differences between that of a man and of a penguin, but I was willing to take the risk. With a two-step running start I dove forward, twisting on to my back as I hit the floor and slid past the animal. My knife found its mark, and I slid it up the side, making sure I was cutting through the peritoneum. When my knife hit bone I plunged it forward and let my hand penetrate inside the warm steaming flesh. The bird squawked in pain, but I didn’t let that distract me. It was thrashing about, trying to reach me with its beak, but I was too far behind it. My hand dug around inside it and found a loop of tissue. I clenched down with all my might and ripped whatever I had latched on to back out of my incision. Loops of intestine poured out like line on a fishing pole. The bird screamed again, or perhaps it was the same scream, and I was finally hearing it. As I wrapped the thin muscular tube around the creatures own legs and wings I made sure to let the gobs of gore and blood spray out over the room. With the last loop of gut I finished dressing my bird by tying that hideous beak closed. I pushed off, and let the struggling thing flail helplessly onto the ground. It wasn’t dead, it wasn’t even defeated, but it was incapacitated and that was good enough.
The beak of the third beast caught me in the shoulder, and it burned as it cut along the length of my arm. It didn’t go deep, but it wasn’t a glancing blow either. I felt the hot flow of blood on my back, and the electric shock of pain shot up my spine. It sent me to the ground, and too close to my attacker for comfort. From my position on the floor the thing looked bigger than the other two; certainly the mouth full of teeth was bigger, much bigger than the others. It roared and lunged toward me, I tried to roll but one of the bird’s feet pinned me in place. The mouth closed and the sharp beak became suddenly, dangerously evil. The head wrenched back and that beak sped through the air toward my face. I braced myself for the killing blow, but it never came.
With caution I opened my eyes, the beast was still there, but its head was gone. Like the creatures it had been feeding on it had been decapitated, only a trickle of green fluid marked where the body and head had once been joined. Behind the tottering corpse stood Elwood, but not the Elwood I had known. Something had changed, the look in his eyes said more than any speech ever could. Frank Elwood had finally stopped being scared and embraced what he could do. In his hands he held two heads, their beaks still twitching. He tossed the heads to the side and then proceeded to decapitate the third one.
The manner in which he did this was astounding, for it was an extension of his ability to open a door to the in-between. He used the gap in space that was created as a kind of blade, one that was able to slice through and destroy reality itself. He killed that last bird by simply opening up a gap in the very fabric of the universe between the body and the head. When the gap closed that thin slice of matter didn’t come back with it.
“Nasty things you’ve found down here Doctor Hartwell, very nasty things.”
It took me a moment to stand up and catch my balance. The gash in my shoulder was still bleeding, but I knew that was only temporary. Taking off my jacket it was hard to tell where the blood of the creatures ended, and my own started, after all they were so similar in color, both lovely shades of green.
Elwood didn’t seem shocked at all. In fact he seemed relieved. “I saw you torn to pieces, and then you weren’t. The idea that I could have changed that by stepping back in time; that was just wishful thinking. I lied to myself and my shoggoth duplicate perpetuated that lie, but I think it knew the truth. That is why you were never assimilated, why the shoggoth never replaced you. It couldn’t, you’re immune.”
The wound on my back was already healing, closing up faster than anyone could have hoped. Frank Elwood had learned the secret that I had kept from everyone else, that I was no longer human, no longer subject to human weaknesses, or even death. I had become something else. Something that was neither dead nor alive. I was more like these monstrous penguins, a living thing that had stumbled into a way of becoming something . . . what did Elwood call them? “Nasty.”
Perhaps, but as I sat there looking at Elwood I remembered our earlier conversation. Perhaps we were villains, monsters even. But in this place we had the potential to be something more, to become something other than what was written for us. In this place all the horrible things I had done, all the people I had killed, all the people I had brought back, all that didn’t matter. Here with Elwood and the rest of the Weird Company I could be what I always wanted to be.
A man, with a purpose, a future, a cause.
Asenath Waite had given me hope, and perhaps that was enough to keep me human, for as long as I was needed.
CHAPTER 19
From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead
“The Loss of Asenath Waite”
In the shadows Asenath and I watched as nightmare things labored amongst piles of ore, semi-organic machines and piles of metallic parts and plating to assemble something neither of us could identify. There were a half dozen of the monsters creating something not unlike an immense torpedo. The thing was more than two hundred and seventy feet long and at its widest, forty-five feet in diameter. The body was divided into three sections, with the central section, consisting almost entirely of a kind of cargo hold, taking up most of the length. The one end was a short cone shape that tapered to a point and seemed to be filled with instrumentation and controls.
The other end also tapered to a cone but in this case that cone was significantly longer. There was something organic in the design of the construct and while Asenath called it piscine, it was clear to me that the design was mostly reminiscent of an earthly squid, but the five divisions to be found in both cones made it clear that the inspiration for the design had been the long lost masters of the shogoths, the Q’Hrell themselves!
Asenath and I watched the construction of the odd ship alone. Elwood and Hartwell had gone down to harvest blood from a room full of dead Q’Hrell. Carter along with Mister Ys had gone even deeper into the bowels of the city in an attempt to find allies amongst those Progenitors that still slumbered and dreamed. I thought such a quest a fool’s errand, but Asenath assured me that though many of their number had likely perished over the years, there were still members of the species waiting. “That which is not dead,” she said, “can eternally lie, and in strange eons even death may die.” Mister Ys was less enthusiastic and warned that the Elder Things did not take kindly to being disturbed from their slumber. Carter agreed, suggesting that in the experience of the Nug Soth the Q’Hrell were easy to anger, and hard to placate.
Regardless, the Weird Company had been split into three teams, and I and Asenath had been assigned to provide reconnaissance on the activities of the shoggoths. Their lair had been discovered on the strange map machine that had been in Hartwell’s makeshift sanctuary. The shoggoths had seized control of an upper level of one of the queer spires that scraped the sky. It was a floor that consisted of little more than a single massive chamber littered with debris and stock piles of raw materials. At first glance it seemed an odd, almost cluttered space to work in, but that was a wholly human perspective. Watching the shoggoths work, watching them devour and manipulate raw materials, primarily piles of metallic ore and the like, and then produce parts, extruding whole sections of hull plating, structural beams, screw-like fasteners, and wholly unidentifiable machines and components seemed eerily natural, as if this method of manufacturing was the true order of things.