FriendlyHorrorandOtherWeirdTales

by Burke, Jessica

  Silas leaned across the length of the bed and after several tries, managed to grab off the trunk at the foot of the bed, the black, oversized Australian duster and the wide-brimmed leather hat that reminded him of a deranged Amish person. Eventually he was able to pull the coat and hat over his pajamas and shamble into the kitchen to meet his Grandfather and the two agents, themselves wearing crisp brown suits, English Fog trench-coats and fedoras. The creatures’ eyes were hidden beneath what Silas called Old Fart Glasses— the massive, blocky eyeshades used by elderly primates after undergoing eye dilation or eye surgery. The large black glasses appeared to stretch across their bloated, round cheekbones and brow.

  The agents stood around the kitchen table, where Grandfather had been seated. Silas noticed his beloved forebear no longer sported the legs he had used for dry-land, but since he had only arrived back from the sea a few short days since and would be returning again after the evening’s ceremony, legs weren’t strictly necessary. Where his torso met the seat of the straight-backed kitchen chair, there was a tangle of purple-grey and blue tentacles. His Grandfather’s head was more shark-like than octopoid, but Silas recognized the same, warm green eyes. No shred of his auburn hair remained. He spread his arms to embrace his grandson, and, along with the sunglass-sporting agents, Silas was ushered down the back stairs and into a large black SUV parked in the driveway behind the house.

  The ride to the Nest was easier than crawling through the tunnels, uneventful, and more convenient between Grandfather’s tentacles and Silas’ budding flippers. Silas shared his last few days with Grandfather, but spoke not at all to the agents. The SUV was able to pull into what looked a garage structure, just behind the tennis courts west of Brielle Avenue, but in fact that garage led instead directly to the gleaming, silver front doors of the Nest beneath the old Seaview Farm Colony.

  The driver opened the door and Silas was met with a team of their medical staff, some of which dressed in oversized grey lab coats and crisp green slacks and shirts. Only the ones with humanoid appendages wore the shirts and pants. Many simply wore the grey lab coats, or held clip boards or syringes in their tentacles. The medical team, unlike the agents that had escorted Silas, were not remotely trying to hide what they were. Several had fins atop their heads which rose and folded down with each mucous sounding breath they took through their gills. Two of what looked to be females with remnants of large, pendulous, humanoid breasts apparent on the upper portion of their torso and gold rings with flashing gems piercing their head fins. Others bespangled their necks, just beneath their pearlescent gills, with bands of that silvery gold old Obed Marsh so coveted. Whether tentacled, flippered, or armed, each had skin of a deep oily black, mottled with purple and vivid turquoise. Silas was helped from the vehicle to a wheelchair and the team set to work, injecting him, taking his pulse, hooking him up to an IV of grey-green liquid, and what he assumed was a heart-monitoring device.

  They sped him along the wide, gleaming, almost space-ship-like tunnels, so alien to him. It had been many years since he found himself beneath the mounds of English ivy and former dormitory buildings of the Farm Colony. The last time Silas had visited the tunnels, they were fully finished, but hadn’t undergone Grandfather Fern’s polish. They stood as a vast contrast to the disrepair above— the collapsed slate roofs, broken beams, and brick edifices eclipsed by years of graffiti. Beneath ground, however, Silas was taken smoothly along, large round, glass and metal doors opening and closing with faint hums. It was not as dark as he had expected it all to be, neither were the tunnels illuminated in routine primate fashion. His people had developed eyes to see beneath the waves where no sunlight reached. The edges of the hallway and framework of the tunnel, along with some of the mottled flesh of his people, were illuminated in phosphorescent tones of blue, violet, vivid yellows, greens, positively electric pinks— all helped into vivacity by his night vision.

  The surface of the tunnel walls was caked in shiny mud and was slick to the touch, however it was tough and hard like waves of stucco. At points there were metal protrusions, but those were seldom. Every few feet Silas spotted the skeletal ridges of whitish grey stone lining the tunnel, extending at regular intervals from the hard-packed almost marble ground upward to high vaulted ceilings. Each rib then curved back downward on the opposite wall, giving the entire tunnel an articulated, appearance that reminded Silas of the wishbone of a turkey. Along the ceiling, where the ribs met were crests that held multi-colored phosphorescent balls of light. Around the intermittent metallic plaques and panels set into the wall Silas could see criss-crossing runic shapes. In his admiration of the architecture, he almost missed the area they were crossing into, a six passage central hub where dozens of their defense team soldiers, each sporting a combination of sea green and forest camouflage uniforms, dispersed into different tunnels. A combination of males and females, they all had the same puffy, swollen faces as the agents, and wore similar sunglasses. Several members of the medical team bellowed in clicks and throaty rasps to each other, and some split off to follow soldiers in different directions.

  Accompanied by only two of the original medical team, and one soldier, Silas was taken through a central tunnel the which continued ahead into a glistening white, brightly lit tiled room that reminded him of a hospital. To the left were more soldiers down a tunnel lined with rifles, and stacked boxes of munitions. Many soldiers stood or sat cleaning rifles or putting on body armor. To the right of the hospital chamber were many large black flat desks with rows and rows of computers, radars, and communication switchboards. Passing the equipment was a small contingent of almost frog-like personnel, behind whom were rows of large flatscreen monitors set into the wall. Silas saw on several were illuminated maps of New York City. There were specific monitors for each borough, with Staten Island’s Nest highlighted. Silas then noticed that many outer boroughs had their own network of tunnels not dissimilar to the intricate tunnel system that extended beneath Staten Island. Throughout all the maps were little yellow dots— a vast sea of dots like a swarm of brilliant fireflies. Each dot represented a member of their defense team, and they were all in motion, rapidly expanding outward.

  Silas’ wheelchair was brought to the center of the white room, where many of the uniformly frog-like staff manned phones and computer terminals. As Silas’ black-skinned medical escort brought his chair up short in their midst, they all had momentarily looked up, blinking their yellow pupilless eyes. A deep, rumbling, toadish bark emanated from a distance down the tunnel in the soldiers’ wing. All of the soldiers stood in unison, snapping to attention as a heavy stomp sounded. They then fanned into the circular, center room, lining the walls, blocking the view of many of the monitors. The frog personnel also stood at their terminals and telephones. All paved the way for the creature emerging from the soldiers’ tunnel.

  Like with Grandfather Fern, but on a much larger scale, the lower half of the form was a knot of tentacles that rose the creature up from the floor and undulated it along in a bizarre almost caterpillar-like fashion. The upper half resembled a toad with bulbous eyes and rising fins with each laborious breath. Its broad chest was covered partially by a khaki and blue military shirt replete with rank, ribbons and awards, the front of which was open, revealing a fully armored chest as hard as a land turtle shell. He had appendages, each akin to an eel, extending less bonelessly from his center mass, and each ending in a thick knot of flesh that resembled human hands intertwined with reptilian claws. As this commander approached the medical staff parted in fear and respect, allowing him access to Silas, and the realization of who he was dawned on Silas as an aroma of briny seaweed cascaded over Silas’ senses.

  “My ssssSon, do not be confussssed I know,” he bowed his massive, round, shark-like head, itself fully as wide as Silas was tall. His voice, with wet, undulating syllables, both resounded on the air and was felt inside Silas’ head. “Many quesssstionsss you musst have, but the time will come and anssssswersss you will have as you learn
to lllead our peoplllle.” Placing a tentacle lovingly on Silas’ shoulder, the massive figure, linked several more tentacles into Silas’ wheelchair, and pushed his son across the chamber toward the proper hospital wing with its sea-green glow. With no help from the waiting medical staff, Silas’ Father lifted his son in both arms and several tentacles, and laid him inside the watery incubation tank where Silas would complete the final stage of his transformation.

  As Silas changed in the tank, a dais was raised on the shores of New York State’s most southerly tip. It was older than the stone cottage shadowing the crest of the hill behind the beach by more than six thousand years. It was crafted in deep Y’ha-nthlei by their priests and inlaid with runes, gold-work, and bright shells by the priestesses. When it was positioned, along with the altar, idols, and necessaries for the celebration, Silas’ tank was released into a tunnel leading down. He was able to slide his newly finished form through a partially flooded tunnel that was smoother than dragon glass and softer than velvet. Each wall of the tunnel was lined with his people, his family, his kin, and each held a small orb of phosphorescent light. All humanoid clothing had been forsaken. They wore only the vestments of their people. Some wore the high, golden tiaras from Innsmouth, while others wore the linked shells and seagrass from the South Pacific. Silas saw shimmering tridents, conches that sparkled like rubies, and he was most moved by their eyes. Regardless of color, shape, or size, all of their eyes glowed like the orbs, and each of his people knelt or squatted down as he slithered past, depending on whether or not they possessed humanoid feet, flippers or tentacles.

  The journey from the Nest to the dais was long, but direct through this special, seaward tunnel, used as an undeviating link to the ocean. It had junctions at intervals that led to underwater outlets, but his direction took him straight on to the dais. As he slipped past his people, he felt a sense of physical expansion, mental shift, a heightened radius of himself elevating and moving outward, touching each of his kin that he passed. As waves of his being touched them, they began to chant and whisper in the old tongues. Silas heard their words on the air, but also inside his mind. His skin prickled and he moved faster until his gaze met the open Raritan Bay beyond the end of the tunnel. The dais had been set into the oncoming waters, anchored to the shore by some ancient means. The space of beach where Silas emerged was almost completely submerged with the high tide, so he was able to undulate his form from the tunnel’s exit onto the sloping dais.

  His gaze was met with an even more moving scene than the hundreds of his people in various stages of change lining the tunnel from the Nest. He now saw hundreds of his kin lining the beach and rising from the waves— kin that had long since gone to the waves of Y’ha-nthlei. Out into the bay, the waters bubbled and roiled as so many more of his fish-frog brothers and sisters surfaced. The high moon overhead glimmered on their dark skin, reflecting in the silver necklets, armlets, tiaras, and belts that they wore. To Silas’ right, just beyond the tunnel, on the flooded beach, he heard the whispered words and the shouted thoughts of a ring of soldiers, headed by Cotton, chanting in unison the Elder words and songs of protection. On Silas’ left were lines of their female folk, singing songs of prosperity and fertility, all led in song by his sister Jyssamen. Ahead of him, surrounding the dais dancing the ceremonial dances, were the priestesses who would conduct the ceremony with their high crowns, scepters, and silver-gold collars.

  Each priestess had a uniqueness in terms of her regalia and her face, but each had the same purple-black skin painted with phosphorescent sigils, swirls, and runes of power. Each had humanoid figures, with slender webbed legs, and long arms with similar webbed fingers, but their breasts and their genitals, bare as with all of his other people since their kind now had no use for primate clothing, were clearly not humanoid. Each of the priestesses three breasts ended in a large, octopoid sucker lined with silver teeth, giving Silas the notion of three toothed eyes staring at him from the center of their chests. As they moved their bodies, writhing to the music played on drums, flutes, rattles, and conches by the priests standing on the shore before the dais, Silas was relieved that these holy females were clearly not women. He noted that were the priestesses human, they would have revealed their sexes as they spread their legs in the crouching, sinuous movements, but instead, they displayed a delicate mouth, rimmed with tentacles, hiding their most intimate part, their shiny, silver beaks.

  As the dance ended, the High Priestesses received censers smoking thick, oily incense from the priests, still themselves humanoid, with long tentacles above their lips which hung reminiscent of a primate mustache style called the Fu Manchu. Beneath were their purple, brown swollen lips. Each male priest had similar arms and legs to the priestesses, but each bore a long, swaying, tentacle-like penis that ended in a long, silver Sting Ray barb. The priests assembled around a low slate altar in the center of the dais, and began carefully laying bowls of varying colored liquids, placing offerings of kelp, plant matter, and intensely red animal organs of various origins around three golden statues. The statue on the left, of equal size to that on the right, was smaller than the central statue by more than half. The leftmost statue was an exact duplicate, but in much larger scale, of the statue Grandfather Fern had brought to Aunt Julia so many years ago, itself a duplicate of her own father’s statue: an obese winged creature seated upon a pedestal. Its scaly legs ended in what looked like land-animal hooves while large dragon-wings spread from behind a bulbous tentacled, fanged face. The First Priest, the Great Cthulhu!

  “Iä! Iä!” Silas chanted the familiar words alongside the priests and priestesses. Cthulhu’s statue seemed to glow as it absorbed the light from the phosphorescent priestesses and the light of the full moon overhead. The statue on the right, was the same size as Cthulhu, but less detailed, more amorphous. It gave the impression of an indistinct creature, half humanoid, half sea creature. This was the patron of perpetual growth, Father Dagon.

  “Iä! Iä,” came the familiar refrain as Silas’ voice rose with the clergy, set against the chants of protection from the soldiers and prosperity from the females.

  The final and greatest was the statue of the Magna Mater. Some called her Lilith, Hecate, Mother Hydra, or the Thousand Faced Moon. The names were of no matter, for She was still She, the Mother of All. Her waters lapped the shore and Her face shone down from the heavens. The statue was the essence of each of the priestesses combined. The limbs ended in delicate fingers, themselves ending in long, silver claws. Instead of hair, her head was topped with a styled crown of tentacles and a large gemmed diadem. Unlike the priestesses, the golden statue of the Mother was enameled with brilliant swirls of emerald and sea green.

  Silas’ awareness and his chanting was distracted by a squad of soldiers ushering forward dozens of younglings from Hatchery unit of The Nest. All were still in human form and so were clothed in the same standard blue-green robes. They were brought forward to kneel amid the surf while whispering prayers and incantations of their own. They were here to witness and experience one of their first and perhaps the greatest of ceremonies. Turning back toward the altar and the golden statues, Silas bobbed his head at an approaching priests. One held an age-worn stone bowl carved deep with runic markings similar to those painted on the priestesses and on the statue of Lilith. It held a richly scented, resiny black oil. The second priest dipped thinly boned and webbed fingers into the substance and began anointing the front of Silas’ chest, arms, flippers and tail in the shape of those same runes and sigils. As he did so, a third priest drew runes on Silas’ back. A fourth priest came forward with a sandstone box containing a collar and golden armlets similar in style to the tiaras and diadem of the priestesses and Magna Mater. A priestess began placing them about Silas’ neck and arms.

  As they continued this preparation with a second priestess smudging the entire procedure with a heavily smoking censer, Silas noticed more of his Father’s soldiers in formation, but with the high traditional sharp spears from h
is people. At the center of the soldiers were several more of the priests each carrying large, almost humanoid shaped bundles. The priests stopped at the base of the dais, each holding their bundle, waiting for some signal or a particular moment in the ceremony.

  Just as Silas was fully adorned, two priestesses approached the altar. Each held an immense scarlet conch decorated with inlaid golden spirals, runes, images of fish, and encrusted with black, green and purple gems. The priestesses lifted the shells and stood awaiting their two bundle-bearing brethren. The priestesses blew the first blast, and rising from the still churning water came three shapes, taller than giraffes and as wide as an elephant.

  “Gorgo! Mormo! Ereshkigal! Thousand Faced Moon! Mother of Night! Attend and welcome our sacrifices!” The priestesses cried, each in a different dialect of our people. Silas watched the three forms rise, phosphorescent, undulating, tentacled and each crowned with larger versions of the Magna Mater’s diadem. Silas recognized his sister Lispeth, his grandmother Lenore, and Aunt Julia’s mother Isadora, despite each having undergone her complete transformation. The first three priests, bearing their first three bundles came forward, knelt and offered each of the rising creatures a bundle. Lispeth, still too eager and revealing that she was younger than the other two, snatched the bundle and devoured it in her gaping, purple maw without bothering to remove the white cloth wrapping. Lenore clacked her beak in distaste while she carefully unwound the cloth with several tentacles while others grasped the limp form of one of the blond, pirana children from Silas’ ice cream route and tore the child rather messily in two. Lenore bubbled off a space to consume her delicacy while Isadora did the same to another transformed human, one unrecognized by Silas.