But before he went under, ripples and waves. His charging enemy broke into sight, making a veering turn. He saw the slanting spread of it, suddenly rising high, like the murky sail of a scudding catboat. At waterline skimmed the jut of a woman's semblance, a sort of grotesque figurehead, hair in a whirl, teeth bare and big.
Cobbett dived, as straight down as he could manage. The cavern-eyed head was almost at him as he dipped under. Groping talons touched his leg and he felt the stab of them, but he twitched clear. As he swam strivingly down, headfirst, he saw the shape of the water-whelmed oak there, standing where the lake had swallowed it. Its trunk looked bigger than arms could clasp, its roots clutched crookedly at rocks. He slid toward it and went behind as that sprawling shape descended to engulf him. It did not want him there below, poking and stabbing. Cobbett's left hand found and seized a stubby branch of the oak. He rose a trifle. As the Dakwa came gliding toward him and just beneath him, he drove down hard with the spear.
The force of the blow would have pushed him upward if he had not held the branch. That solid anchor helped him bring weight and power into his stab as it went home.
All around him the water suddenly rippled and pulsed, as though with an explosion. Darkness flooded out around him, like sepia expelled by a great cuttlefish, but he clung to the branch and forced the spear grindingly into what it had found, and through and beyond into something as hard and tough as wood. As oak wood. He had spiked the Dakwa to the root of the tree.
The spear lodged there as though clamped in a vise. He let go of it and swam upward. It seemed miles to the surface, to air. He knew he was very tired. He came up at the grassy shag that fringed the island's shore.
With both hands he caught the edge. It began to crumble, but he heaved himself out with almost the last of his strength. Sprawling on the grass, he squirmed dully around and looked down to see what he had done.
No seeing it. Just bubbles and ripples, in water gone poisonously dark, as with some dull infusion. Cobbett panted and moaned for air. At last he got to his hands and knees, and finally stood shakily upright.
His thigh was gashed and the skin on his arm and chest looked rasped, although he could not remember how that last contact had come. He almost fell in as he stooped and tried to see into the lake. If he could not see, he could sense. The Dakwa was down there and it was not coming up. Strength began to return to his muscles. He scowled to himself as he summoned his nerve. Drawing a deep breath into himself, he dived in again. Down he swam, determinedly down.
There it was, writhed around the roots of the oak like a blown tarpaulin. It stirred and trembled. He could make out that forward part, the part shaped with head and arms and breasts to lure its prey. There was where his spear had struck. The knife that had been lashed on for a point was driven in, clear to the cross hilt, at the very region of the spine, if the Dakwa had a spine. It was solidly nailed down there, the Dakwa, like some gigantic, loathsome specimen on a collector's pin. It could not get away and come after him. He hoped not.
Slowly, laboriously, he swam up again, and dragged himself out as before. Getting to his feet, he half-staggered to the cabin and inside. Blood from his wounded leg dripped to the floor. He found the fruit jar full of blockade whiskey, screwed off the lid, put it to his mouth and drank and drank. After that, he took the bottle of ointment and spread it on the places where the Dakwa had gashed and scraped him.
He felt better by the moment. Picking up the robe Lamar had lent him, he put it on. More strongly he walked out and to the place where he had gone in to fight the Dakwa.
The water was calm now, and clearer. He could even make out what was prisoned down there at the root of the oak; you could see it if you knew what you were looking for. It was still there. It would stay there.
Midway through the afternoon, Lamar tied up at the dock again. He came with heavy steps to the cabin door, loaded down with a huge can of kerosene and a gunnysack crammed with provisions. Cobbett was inside, wearing the golden gloves robe, busy at the stove.
"Welcome back," he greeted Lamar over his shoulder. "I've been fixing a pot of beans for supper. I've put in a few smoked spare ribs you had, and some ketchup and sliced onions, and a sprinkle of garlic salt I happened to bring with me."
Lamar dropped his burden and stared. "What are you a-doing in my bathrobe again? Did you manage to get chopped up the way you did last night, you damned fool?"
"A little, but not as badly chopped up as something else."
"What are you blathering about? Listen, though. In town, I found out that these resort folks can be made to drain out their lake. If I bring the proper kind of lawsuit in court—"
"Don't do it," said Cobbett emphatically. "Without the water in there, something ugly will come in sight. Right at the foot of the steep drop behind the garden."
"The Dakwa?" quavered Lamar. "You trying to say you killed it?"
"Not exactly. I have a theory that it can't be killed. But I went in all doped over with your sacred Cherokee ointment and smoked up with cedar, and I was able to stand it off. Finally, I spiked it to the roots of the tree down there."
Lamar crinkled his face. He was beginning to believe, to be aware of implications.
"What about when it comes up again?" he asked.
"I doubt if it can come up until the oak rots away," said Cobbett. "That will take years. Meanwhile, we can study the matter of how to cope with it. I'd like to talk to your friend, that Cherokee medicine man. He might figure how to build on the Indian knowledge we already have."
"We might do something with dynamite," Lamar began to suggest. "The way some people blow fish up."
Cobbett shook his head. "The Dakwa might not be affected. And a charge let off would break up that tree, tear down some of the bank, even wreck your cabin."
"We can get scientists," said Lamar, gesturing eagerly. "I know some marine scientists, a couple of fellows who could go down there with diving gear."
"No," said Cobbett, turning from the stove. "You don't want them to have bad dreams all their lives, do you?"
The Kings of the Sea
by
Sterling E. Lanier
Although he has published novels—most notably the well received Hiero's Journey, its sequel The Unforsaken Hiero, and Menace Under Marswood—Sterling E. Lanier is probably best known in the fantasy and science fiction fields for his sequence of stories describing the odd adventures of Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, the bulk of which have been collected in The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes. Unusually well crafted examples of that curious sub-genre known as the "club story" or "bar story," Lanier's Ffellowes stories are erudite, intelligent, witty, fast-paced—and often just plain scary.
That's certainly true of the story that follows, a bloodcurdler that may make you leery about even going to the shore, let alone in the water . . .
I don't remember how magic came into the conversation at the club, but it had, somehow.
"Magic means rather different things to different people. To me . . ." Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, late of Her Majesty's forces, had suddenly begun talking. He generally sat, ruddy, very British and rather tired-looking, on the edge of any circle. Occasionally he would add a date, a name, or simply nod, if he felt like backing up someone else's story. His own stories came at odd intervals and to many of us, frankly verged on the incredible, if not downright impossible. A retired artilleryman, Ffellowes now lived in New York, but his service had been all over the world, and in almost every branch of military life, including what seemed to be police or espionage work. That's really all there is to be said about either his stories or him, except that once he started one, no one ever interrupted him.
"I was attached to the embassy in Berlin in '38, and I went to Sweden for a vacation. Very quiet and sunny, because it was summer, and I stayed in Smaaland, on the coast, at a little inn. For a bachelor who wanted a rest, it was ideal, swimming every day, good food, and no newspapers, parades, crises or Nazis.
"I
had a letter from a Swedish pal I knew in Berlin to a Swedish nobleman, a local landowner, a sort of squire in those parts. I was so absolutely happy and relaxed I quite forgot about going to see the man until the second week of my vacation, and when I did, I found he wasn't at home in any case.
"He owned a largish, old house about three miles from the inn, also on the coast road, and I decided to cycle over one day after lunch. The inn had a bike. It was a bright, still afternoon, and I wore my bathing trunks under my clothes, thinking I might get a swim either at the house or on the way back.
"I found the place easy enough, a huge, dark-timbered house with peaked roofs, which would look very odd over here, and even at home. But it looked fine there, surrounded by enormous old pine trees, on a low bluff over the sea. There was a lovely lawn, close cut, spread under the trees. A big lorry—you'd say a moving van—was at the door, and two men were carrying stuff out as I arrived. A middle-aged woman, rather smartly dressed, was directing the movers, with her back to me so that I had a minute or two to see what they were moving. One of them had just manhandled a largish black chair, rather archaic in appearance, into the lorry and then had started to lift a long, carved wooden chest, with a padlock on it, in after the chair. The second man, who must have been the boss mover, was arguing with the lady. I didn't speak too much Swedish, although I'm fair at German, but the two items I saw lifted into the van were apparently the cause of the argument, and I got the gist of it, you know.
"'But, Madame,' the mover kept on saying, 'are you sure these pieces should be destroyed! They look very old.'
"'You have been paid,' she kept saying, in a stilted way. 'Now get rid of it any way you like. Only take it away, now, at once.'
"Then she turned and saw me, and, believe it or not, blushed bright red. The blush went away quickly, though, and she asked me pretty sharply what I wanted.
"I answered in English, that I had a letter to Baron Nyderstrom. She switched to English, which she spoke pretty well, and appeared a bit less nervous. I showed her the letter, which was a simple note of introduction, and she read it and actually smiled at me. She wasn't a bad-looking woman—about 45-48, somewhere in there, anyway—but she was dressed to the nines, and her hair was dyed an odd shade of metallic brown. Also, she had a really hard mouth and eyes.
"'I'm so sorry,' she said, 'but the baron, who is my nephew, is away for a week and a half. I know he would have been glad to entertain an English officer friend of Mr.'—here she looked at the letter—'of Mr. Sorendson, but I'm afraid he is not around, while as you see, I am occupied. Perhaps another time?' She smiled brightly, and also rather nastily, I thought. 'Be off with you,' but polite.
"Well, really there was nothing to do except bow, and I got back on my bike and went wheeling off down the driveway.
"Halfway down the drive, I heard the lorry start, and I had just reached the road when it passed me, turning left, away from the direction of the inn, while I turned to the right.
"At that point something quite appalling happened. Just as the van left the drive, and also—as I later discovered—the estate's property line, something, a great weight, seemed to start settling over my shoulders, while I was conscious of a terrible cold, a cold which almost numbed me and took my wind away.
"I fell off the bike and half stood, half knelt over it, staring back after the dust of the lorry and completely unable to move. I remember the letters on the license and on the back of the van, which was painted a dark red. They said, Solvaag and Mechius, Stockholm.
"I wasn't scared, mind you, because it was all too quick. I stood staring down the straight dusty road in the hot sun, conscious only of a terrible weight and the freezing cold, the weight pressing me down and the icy cold numbing me. It was as if time had stopped. And I felt utterly depressed, too, sick and, well, hopeless.
"Suddenly, the cold and the pressure stopped. They were just gone, as if they had never been, and I was warm, in fact, covered with sweat, and feeling like a fool there in the sunlight. Also, the birds started singing among the birches and pines by the road, although actually, I suppose they had been all along. I don't think the whole business took over a minute, but it seemed like hours.
"Well, I picked up the bike, which had scraped my shins, and started to walk along, pushing it. I could think quite coherently, and I decided I had had either a mild coronary or a stroke. I seemed to remember that you felt cold if you had a stroke. Also, I was really dripping with sweat by now and felt all swimmy; you'd say dizzy. After about five minutes, I got on the bike and began to pedal, slowly and carefully, back to my inn, deciding to have a doctor check me out at once.
"I had only gone about a third of a mile, numbed still by shock—after all I was only twenty-five, pretty young to have a heart attack or a stroke, either—when I noticed a little cove, an arm of the Baltic, on my right, which came almost up to the road, with tiny blue waves lapping at a small beach. I hadn't noticed it on the way to the baron's house, looking the other way, I guess, but now it looked like heaven. I was soaked with sweat, exhausted by my experience, and now had a headache. That cool sea water looked really marvelous, and as I said earlier, I had my trunks on under my clothes. There was even a towel in the bag strapped to the bike.
"I undressed behind a large pine tree ten feet from the road, and then stepped into the water. I could see white sand for about a dozen feet out, and then it appeared to get deeper quickly. I sat down in the shallow water, with just my neck sticking out, and began to feel human again. Even the headache receded into the background. There was no sound but the breeze soughing in the trees and the chirping of a few birds, plus the splash of little waves on the shore behind me. I felt at peace with everything and shut my eyes, half sitting, half floating in the water. The sun on my head was warm.
"I don't know what made me open my eyes, but I must have felt something watching, some presence. I looked straight out to sea, the entrance of the little cove, as I opened them, and stared into a face which was looking at me from the surface of the water about eight feet away, right where it began to get deeper."
No one in the room had moved or spoken once the story had started, and since Ffellowes had not stopped speaking since he began, the silence as he paused now was oppressive, even the muted sound of traffic outside seeming far off and unreal.
He looked around at us, then lit a cigarette and continued steadily.
"It was about two feet long, as near as I could tell, with two huge, oval eyes of a shade of amber yellow, set at the corners of its head. The skin looked both white and vaguely shimmery; there were no ears or nose that I could see, and there was a big, wide, flat mouth, opened a little, with blunt, shiny, rounded teeth. But what struck me most was the rage in the eyes. The whole impression of the face was vaguely—only vaguely, mind you—serpentine, snakelike, except for those eyes. They were mad, furious, raging, and not like an animal's at all, but like a man's. I could see no neck. The face 'sat' on the water, so to speak.
"I had only a split second to take all this in, mind you, but I was conscious at once that whatever this was, it was livid at me personally, not just at people. I suppose it sounds crazy, but I knew this right off.
"I hadn't even moved, hadn't had a chance, when something flickered under the head, and a grip like a steel cable clamped onto my hip. I dug my heels in the sand and grabbed down, pushing as hard as I could, but I couldn't shake that grip. As I looked down, I saw what had hold of me and damn near fainted, because it was a hand. It was double the size of mine, dead white, and had only two fingers and a thumb, with no nails, but it was a hand. Behind it was a boneless-looking white arm like a giant snake or an eel, stretching away back toward the head, which still lay on the surface of the water. At the same time I felt the air as cold, almost freezing, as if a private iceberg was following me again, although not to the point of making me numb. Oddly enough, the cold didn't seem to be in the water, though I can't explain this very well.
"I pulled back hard, but I m
ight as well have pulled at a tree trunk for all the good it did. Very steadily the pressure on my hip was increasing, and I knew that in a minute I was going to be pulled out to that head. I was kicking and fighting, splashing the water and clawing at that hand, but in the most utter silence. The hand and arm felt just like rubber, but I could feel great muscles move under the hard skin.
"Suddenly I began to scream. I knew my foothold on the bottom sand was slipping and I was being pulled loose so that I'd be floating in a second. I don't remember what I screamed, probably just yelling with no words. I knew for a certainty that I would be dead in thirty seconds, you see." He paused, then resumed.
"My vision began to blur, and I seemed to be slipping, mentally, not physically, into a blind, cold world of darkness. But still I fought, and just as I began to be pulled loose from my footing, I heard two sounds. One was something like a machine gun, but ringing through it I heard a human voice shouting and, I thought, shouting one long word. The shout was very strong, ringing and resonant, so resonant that it pierced through the strange mental fog I was in, but the word was in no language I knew. Then I blacked out, and that was that.
"When I opened my eyes, I was in a spasm of choking. I was lying face down on the little beach, my face turned sideways on my crossed arms, and was being given artificial respiration. I vomited up more water and then managed to choke out a word or two, probably obscene. There was a deep chuckle, and the person who had been helping me turned me over, so that I could see him. He pulled me up to a sitting position and put a tweed-clad arm around my shoulders, giving me some support while I recovered my senses.
"Even kneeling as he was, when I turned to look at him, I could see he was a very tall man, in fact, a giant. He was wearing a brown tweed suit with knickerbockers, heavy wool knee socks and massive buckled shoes. His face was extraordinary. He was what's called an ash-blond, almost white-haired, and his face was very long, with high cheekbones, and also very white, with no hint of color in the cheeks. His eyes were green and very narrow, almost Chinese looking, and terribly piercing. Not a man you would ever forget if you once got a look at him. He looked about thirty-five, and was actually thirty, I later found out.
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