by Anthology
Then, as the fighters began to descend, I heard a deep, buzzing sound, like a swarm of mad hornets. Yet this was different from the sound that had become so horribly familiar to me; this had a deeper, more mechanized timbre. And then, when the truth of this new reality began to dawn on me, despair again gripped me and I ran out to the runway, waving my arms frantically, trying to make the fighter pilots understand and veer away.
From over the top of the ridge, a swarm of dark, roaring silhouettes appeared, buzzing rapidly toward the descending fighters. The lead Ki-43 had already dropped its gear and was only a few hundred meters from the end of the runway when it disappeared in a ball of flame, accompanied by a deafening boom. The wreckage hit the ground and splattered like liquid fire, sending debris spiraling into the nearest trees. The pilot of the Hayabusa behind it firewalled the throttle, and barely avoided dropping into the inferno itself. I saw the plane’s gear starting to raise and heard its engine straining to lift it out of harm’s way.
But even that heroic effort gained the pilot nothing. An olive drab Tomahawk dropped onto the Ki-43’s tail, its .50-caliber machine guns blazing, tearing chunks from the Ki’s wings. The stricken plane rolled slowly onto its side, and I saw something——an aileron, perhaps——whirl into space. The Ki-43 suddenly nose-dived and smashed into the ground a mere hundred meters from where I stood, the horrendous impact knocking me onto my backside.
Looking up, I saw at least eight P-40s, their noses painted with the distinctive fanged maw and glaring eye insignia of the so-called Flying Tigers. The AVG——American Volunteer Group——must have retained a squadron at Toungoo or Rangoon, which were the only remaining Allied airfields close enough to accommodate the fighters. With deadly, unified purpose, they swung around to pounce again on the low, slow Hayabusas, who, in preparing to land, were at their most vulnerable. I saw a few of the trailing Ki-43s pulling up into desperate climbs, their pilots hoping to gain some advantage on the enemy fighters; but it was to no avail, as four of the P-40s banked away to pursue. Within seconds, three more of our fighters had been blown from the sky, and I saw one of the Ki-57 transports totter in the air and spiral down as it attempted evasive action. The pilot had turned too sharply and stalled the plane, too low to recover. It disappeared behind the nearest trees, and a moment later, another thunderous boom shook the ground. A column of black smoke rolled skyward from the site.
Our Ki-43s were far more maneuverable than the P-40s, and at least two managed to swing around to attack the Tomahawks. My heart leaped as I saw one of them open fire at the trailing P-40, causing a plume of smoke to erupt from its engine. But no sooner had he taken his shots than two more P-40s dove onto his tail and, in an instant, sent him whirling to his death. High above, atop the ridge, the roiling heat haze seemed to regard the tableau as a cold, calculating monarch might watch two enemies struggle to the death for its own amusement.
A few moments later, I heard two more deep explosions in the distance: two more Hayabusas lost. I saw the single, stricken P-40, trailing smoke, climbing toward the ridge, finally disappearing over its crest as it retired from the fight. And shortly afterward, the remaining enemy fighters reappeared from the southwest, seemingly all intact, with nary a Ki-43 in pursuit. Then, to my horror, the lead P-40 banked toward the runway and me. I saw bright flashes from its wingtips as its guns opened fire; before me, twin rows of earthen splashes homed unerringly on me, and I felt a stab of indescribable agony as my left leg was hit. My lower leg buckled at an awry angle, blood spurting through the fabric of my trousers. I toppled to the ground, seeing white bone protruding from a jagged rip in my skin. For a brief time, I went completely numb, feeling only surprise and disbelief at the sudden strike against me.
All I could do now was shout and point to the devilish haze atop the ridge, praying that one of the enemy pilots would notice it and initiate an attack. At least one of the Americans saw my frantic waving, but he merely offered me a mocking salute; then his plane disappeared over the ridge on its way back home. Pain began to creep up my leg again, and a disturbing amount of blood was pooling on the dusty ground beneath me. I could not last much longer. But at least I could now be satisfied that I had died in combat, in defiance of an enemy who had insidiously attacked our hapless fighter group.
After a time, I again heard the buzzing of hornets from direction of the ridge. The heavy pounding began, as on that first night, so deep that it shook my body to the point of nausea. And as the horrid buzzing rose in volume, it once again articulated itself into some language I could not understand. But finally, the syllables began to become clear to me: “Cho-chiyo ich byong mi… Remember… Remember the children.”
I lay back on the ground, all my energy spent. I expected now to simply fall asleep and not wake up, for the pain in my leg was simply a dull, distant thing with little meaning. The persistent buzzing no longer frightened me. It seemed an almost soothing, lulling background voice to accompany the final release from my pain.
But sometime later, I heard the deep, droning whine of airplane engines. Craning my neck backward, I saw a lone Ki-57 slowly lowering itself to the runway, barely avoiding the wreckage scattered along its edges. As the plane slowed to a stop, its doors opened, and a pair of frantic-looking crewmen came running toward me. I realized that one of the transports must have survived the attack, and its crew had come to render whatever aid they might.
I recall being carried to the plane by four able-bodied men. But though their limbs were strong, their movements well-practiced, I could see in their eyes the unmistakable look of confusion, and in some cases, outright horror. Even if they could not actually see the thing that watched from somewhere on the ridge, I knew they felt its presence as profoundly as I did. By the time they carefully loaded my near-ruined body into the cargo hold of the transport, I could again hear the distant hornet’s buzzing from the ridge. Glancing out the door, I saw the trees swaying and bending as the thing began to descend steadily toward the field. I cried out for haste, and though the pilot and my attending rescuers probably misunderstood, it was my fear for them that drove me to fitfully scream, “Get us out! Get us out now!”
After that, I recall nothing until I woke in a hospital in Bangkok, and even then I had only a few lucid moments. The doctors were able to save my leg, though the damage was severe enough that I will never regain full use of it. My physical condition improved rapidly, but I remained in a kind of mental fog, the memories of which are disjointed and often frightening.
Throughout this experience, I could never explain to the doctors, or to the officers who came to debrief me, exactly what had happened at the Myatauki airfield. But through them, I learned that the tank group that had been sent to assist my unit had simply vanished as if it never existed. Furthermore, when army investigators arrived at the airfield, they could find no trace of anyone from the 212 Engineering Corps, either alive or dead. Though I cannot recall saying it, I understand my explanation was simply, “They were taken by the children.”
The wreckage of the air group showed all too plainly that we had been attacked by the AVG, and my “valiant resistance” earned me a meritorious discharge, despite the unexplained loss of my entire unit. I was questioned personally by Lt. Gen. Iida, who pointedly asked me if the catastrophe was related to the “unexplained threat” that I had reported on more than one occasion. To this I could only answer, “It must have been,” and no amount of interrogation could draw from me any elaboration.
Finally, after two months, I was sent home. And though my memory of the events in Burma has finally returned to me unclouded, under no circumstances could I reveal to the army, or to my family, the extraordinary truth of my experience. To do so would undermine whatever honor I have remaining, and subject my beloved wife and children to undeserved disgrace. Here, in the security of my home in peaceful Okayama, I have been able to bury the horror of those days beneath the support offered to me by my loved ones. My sweet Machiko has always been unquestioningly faithfu
l, but even to her I could not speak of the things that happened in that dreadful place. It upsets her that I am silent about this matter; she loves me and knows me well enough to understand that some secrets must be held in a man’s heart until the day they are released by his death.
Though the army has publicly maintained that I was released from the service with honor, I shall never forget the look of contempt on Lt. Gen. Iida’s face as he presented my discharge papers to me. I am certain he felt that I am to blame for the disappearance of my unit. Indeed, I am shamed at having been overcome by that awful thing and its brutal minions, yet I am confident that I fully and honorably performed my duties as a soldier. Despite the grievous loss of the 212 Engineering Corps, the task of renovating the airfield was completed, under my leadership, to the exact specifications of the operational commander.
Sadly, I have been informed that a second regiment sent to the Myatauki airfield to insure the security of the region vanished under similarly bizarre circumstances. But due to the minor strategic value of that particular airfield, and now that the Allied bases at Mergui, Tavoy, Moulmein, and Toungoo have fallen to our forces, I have been informed that further efforts to hold the Myatauki region have been abandoned. Yes, I am relieved that no more of my countrymen should perish in that forsaken shadowland; but I am also galled that so many men’s lives were wasted in pursuit of a meaningless goal.
Now, as I write, the Burma Road is in our hands. Rangoon has fallen. Burma belongs to the emperor. It is a day to rejoice, and to forget the dream voices that have followed me for all these months.
How I love to sit beneath the cherry blossoms of my home in beautiful Okayama. Machiko tends to me when my injury precludes me from even the simplest tasks. I enjoy watching over my children, who are half-oblivious to the dark lines and shadows that mar my face. They are old enough to understand that war changes men and have accepted that I returned a different person than they knew before. Yet, they still love me with all their hearts and know that I am, forever and always, their father. And they will always be my children.
* * * *
Administrative note: The preceding manuscript was discovered among the belongings of Colonel Kenjiro Terusawa, formerly of the 212 Engineering Corps, XV Army, and forwarded to Operational HQ, Rangoon, for investigation following the slaying of his young son and two daughters. The details are particularly brutal, for the once-honored officer had apparently decapitated all three of his children and mounted their heads on bamboo pikes in front of his home. The only words that the subject has since uttered are, “Remember the children.”
Terusawa’s wife, Machiko, was reported to have committed suicide shortly after discovering the murders.
Col. Terusawa has been confined for the remainder of his life to an institution for the criminally insane in Hiroshima.
—Gen. Shibata Ryuichi
Operational Commander, XV Army
June, 1944
THE CALL OF CTHULHU, by H.P. Lovecraft
Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival…a survival of a hugely remote period when…consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity…forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…
—Algernon Blackwood
I
The Horror In Clay
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things—in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.
My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1926-27 with the death of my great-uncle, George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Angell was widely known as an authority on ancient inscriptions, and had frequently been resorted to by the heads of prominent museums; so that his passing at the age of ninety-two may be recalled by many. Locally, interest was intensified by the obscurity of the cause of death. The professor had been stricken whilst returning from the Newport boat; falling suddenly; as witnesses said, after having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams Street. Physicians were unable to find any visible disorder, but concluded after perplexed debate that some obscure lesion of the heart, induced by the brisk ascent of so steep a hill by so elderly a man, was responsible for the end. At the time I saw no reason to dissent from this dictum, but latterly I am inclined to wonder—and more than wonder.
As my great-uncle’s heir and executor, for he died a childless widower, I was expected to go over his papers with some thoroughness; and for that purpose moved his entire set of files and boxes to my quarters in Boston. Much of the material which I correlated will be later published by the American Archaeological Society, but there was one box which I found exceedingly puzzling, and which I felt much averse from showing to other eyes. It had been locked and I did not find the key till it occurred to me to examine the personal ring which the professor carried in his pocket. Then, indeed, I succeeded in opening it, but when I did so seemed only to be confronted by a greater and more closely locked barrier. For what could be the meaning of the queer clay bas-relief and the disjointed jottings, ramblings, and cuttings which I found? Had my uncle, in his latter years become credulous of the most superficial impostures? I resolved to search out the eccentric sculptor responsible for this apparent disturbance of an old man’s peace of mind.
The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for, although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing. And writing of some kind the bulk of these designs seemed certainly to be; though my memory, despite much the papers and collections of my uncle, failed in any way to identify this particular species, or even hint at its remotest affiliations.
Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evident pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestions of a Cyclopean architectural background.
The writing accompany
ing this oddity was, aside from a stack of press cuttings, in Professor Angell’s most recent hand; and made no pretense to literary style. What seemed to be the main document was headed “CTHULHU CULT” in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of. This manuscript was divided into two sections, the first of which was headed “1925—Dream and Dream Work of H.A. Wilcox, 7 Thomas St., Providence, R. I.,” and the second, “Narrative of Inspector John R. Legrasse, 121 Bienville St., New Orleans, La., at 1908 A. A. S. Mtg.—Notes on Same, & Prof. Webb’s Acct.” The other manuscript papers were brief notes, some of them accounts of the queer dreams of different persons, some of them citations from theosophical books and magazines (notably W. Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria), and the rest comments on long-surviving secret societies and hidden cults, with references to passages in such mythological and anthropological source-books as Frazer’s Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch-Cult in Western Europe. The cuttings largely alluded to outré mental illness and outbreaks of group folly or mania in the spring of 1925.
The first half of the principal manuscript told a very particular tale. It appears that on March 1st, 1925, a thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect had called upon Professor Angell bearing the singular clay bas-relief, which was then exceedingly damp and fresh. His card bore the name of Henry Anthony Wilcox, and my uncle had recognized him as the youngest son of an excellent family slightly known to him, who had latterly been studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys Building near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but great eccentricity, and had from chidhood excited attention through the strange stories and odd dreams he was in the habit of relating. He called himself “psychically hypersensitive,” but the staid folk of the ancient commercial city dismissed him as merely “queer.” Never mingling much with his kind, he had dropped gradually from social visibility, and was now known only to a small group of esthetes from other towns. Even the Providence Art Club, anxious to preserve its conservatism, had found him quite hopeless.