The Weird Company

by Rawlik, Pete

  Asenath slowly drew the blade away and climbed off of my back. There was still something dangerous in her eyes, something that warned me to be careful. “Miss Waite would you kindly explain what is going on? Just a half-hour ago we were talking, now you’ve changed, clothes, and your hair as well, and who are these two girls?”

  There was a puzzled look on Asenath’s face, but she relaxed and seemed to calm down. “My apologies sir, but you seem to have me, all of us really, at a disadvantage. You know who I am but I don’t recognize you, and I really have no idea what you are talking about. I and my companions have been wandering together through the fog for hours.”

  I rose from the ground, shaking my head in confusion. “You don’t remember me, Robert Olmstead, you recruited me a few days ago? I’ve been living at your house in Arkham.”

  A snickering laughter passed through the trio of young girls. “Sir, Mr. Olmstead,” said Asenath, “I assure you that I have never met you before. I have no house in Arkham. I and my companions are students at the Hall School in Kingsport. I do have a home in Innsmouth, but that has been shuttered for many years now.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “I would hardly call what has happened to Innsmouth, its occupation by Federal troops and the arrest of its inhabitants, shuttered.”

  Asenath was outraged by my words, “You lie! When did this happen?”

  “For about three years now. Since the winter of 1927–1928.” I shot back.

  Asenath suddenly went silent, but her two companions were whispering back and forth and casting worried looks in my direction. Cautiously the sharp-faced girl spoke up, “Mr. Olmstead, what’s todays date?”

  It was a foolish question but I answered out of reflex. “The 18th of March, 1931.” My response seemed to displease the trio of young ladies.

  “Sir, when we left the school this evening it was indeed the 18th of March,” commented the sharp-faced girl, “but the year was 1921.”

  “He’s mad,” sneered Asenath.

  “I don’t think so,” interjected the third girl. She had auburn hair and round, soft features. “My mother has written about this in her stories, and my father, you all know what happened to him.” She paused and the other girls nodded. She turned to me and softened her voice. “Mr. Olmstead, my name is Hannah Peaslee, you seem to know Asenath, and this is Megan Halsey-Griffith,” she gestured at the sharp-faced girl. “We came up on to Kingsport Head on a dare, to see if the legends and stories were true.” The puzzled look on my face betrayed my ignorance. “People say that strange things happen on the Head. That people vanish, and others just appear. They say that there are doorways, entrances to other worlds, and even dreams here on the Head. Some of the books call the Head a soft place, where the rules that govern the universe are weak, and can be easily bent. I think that is what has happened to you, to all of us. I think somehow we’ve moved, not to another world, but to another time. I don’t know why, but the how . . . maybe it has to do with the fog that rolled in off of the bay.”

  “The locals call it Blake’s Fog,” explained Miss Halsey-Griffith. “Back in 1880 or so, there was a ship, the Elizabeth Dane, owned by a man named Blake. There was some scandal, and he and his followers were forced to leave town, despite the horrific fog that blanketed the port. The boat and her crew were never heard from again.” She paused and fumbled with her hands. “Ever since, they say the fog has been thicker, colder, and more frequent.”

  “The fog has always been like this,” interjected Asenath. “Blaming it on Blake is just a way for the locals to explain a natural, well preternatural, occurrence. They don’t understand what’s going on, so they make up a myth to explain it. Just a bit of local madness.”

  I ran my hands across my head; there was no hair, but the habit remained. “Perhaps it would be better to be mad,” I said in frustration. “That might be preferable to the things that I have learned over the last few years, and in the last few days as well.”

  Asenath, the younger version of the woman who recruited me, took my hand and guided me to sit down on a log. After the other girls joined us, Asenath implored me, “Tell me what you know about Innsmouth and the occupation. Tell me what you can remember about the future.”

  Having nothing else to do I told her my story, of how I had been searching for my ancestors, how I had found Innsmouth, and how I had been responsible for its destruction. I spoke at length of my slow transformation, of my conversion, and of my desperate cross-country trek to return to Innsmouth. I related details of what I had seen in that seaside hamlet, and how it had forced me to flee not once, but twice. I revealed how I had been rescued and nursed back to health by Doctor Hartwell, and how Asenath’s future self would recruit me and others to a task that had yet to be made clear to me, but somehow the entire world was dependent on. I told them all these things without a care for the consequences that might result, for it was not in my mind that there could be any.

  How long we sat there I could not say, but it was long enough for the fog to begin to weaken, to become less dense. We all noticed it at once, but it was only Hannah Peaslee that seemed to realize the implications. “We have to separate!” She suddenly exclaimed. “If the fog disperses we might be restored to our rightful times, but if we stay together we might be stuck with each other and then Mr. Olmstead would be trapped in 1921, or we might end up in 1931! Regardless, we can’t stay together, it’s too dangerous.”

  As was typical, and perhaps a prelude of things to come, young Asenath began barking orders, telling me to travel up the Head, while she and her companions moved down. I was reluctant to be thrown back into my aimless wanderings, but understood why it was necessary. I bid the girls farewell, who despite their obvious revulsion at my appearance, each took the time to award me some token before they moved away. Asenath kissed me on the cheek. Megan Halsey-Smith took me firmly by the hand and suggested that her mother would love this story. I laughed as she walked away. But it was Hannah Peaslee that surprised me the most, for even though her friends could still see her, she violated all rules of decorum and embraced me tightly. As she held me, I felt her warm breath on my cheek, and listened as she whispered in what was left of my ear. “Don’t trust Asenath. She’s not at all what she seems. I think she’s dangerous.” She pulled back and looked into my eyes, and I nodded my understanding, and then without another word she drifted through the fog to join the rapidly vanishing figures of her friends.

  After they had gone, after the last vestiges of their shadows and voices had faded into the fog, I turned away and marched up the grade of Kingsport Head. I moved by the feel of the ground beneath my feet, for the light of the moon provided no direction, and the city lights were still obscured by the fog. I stepped carefully, slowly working my way through the woods and around the boulders that occasionally blocked my way. With each step the fog began to dissipate, and I began to be able to see farther and farther into the landscape around me. Details began to resolve themselves, and in the distance I could hear voices, the tone and cadence of which seemed familiar. I moved toward them, for they seemed so close, and yet I could not reach them. Each step should have brought me closer, but it was as if those steps were infinitely small, and provided me no progress whatsoever. My frustration at the situation turned to panic and I was suddenly running blindly through the woods.

  The woman came out of nowhere. One moment my way was clear, the next it was blocked, and I had to nearly throw myself to the ground to avoid running her down. I was cursing as she helped me stand up. She steadied me and as I regained my footing I stared at her odd outfit. She was wearing a suit and trousers, something smart with a purple and green paisley pattern that complemented her figure. Over this was a grey coat, not unlike those worn by soldiers in the war, but one sleeve was white, while the other was black. Around her neck was a crimson scarf that hid her neck and came up over her head like a cowl. She had changed her clothes while I had been gone, and while I didn’t think it was possible, Asenath Waite suddenly appeare
d more beautiful than ever.

  “Steady Mr. Olmstead,” she said reassuringly. “You’ll be home in two shakes, I promise you.” She held my arm and began walking me toward the voices. “You’re on the right track, you just need an anchor, a way to drag yourself back.”

  I nodded and in the distance shapes began to resolve themselves into recognizable forms. “Thank you,” I muttered. She bent down to pick up a slouch hat that matched her scarf.

  We took another step and the fog was suddenly gone. I could see Chandraputra and Hartwell milling about something that was metallic and glowing. As we approached, Hartwell came forward to check on us, he seemed genuinely concerned over where I had been. Chandraputra seemed more frustrated and annoyed than anything else. I had been missing for almost an hour, though to me it somehow seemed much longer. Elwood suggested that I go inside the ship and try to stay out of the way. They were loading the last of the supplies, including Asenath’s automobile. It wouldn’t be much use in Antarctica, but leaving it on the Head wasn’t something we wanted to do either.

  The thing that Chandraputra called a ship was a large oval, approximately one hundred feet long comprised of a mesh woven together like wicker or rattan. The material itself was white, and radiated a cool, soft glow that provided some illumination to the surrounding area. Chandraputra called it a light-envelope and implied that it was comprised of solidified photons, particles of light that had been frozen in space-time to create an object with very little mass, and the ability to move at unimaginable velocities.

  A normal man probably would have been flabbergasted at such a thing, but I had seen things in my dreams and while I was awake that paled in comparison to this engineered construct and accepted it as I would any new advancement in technology, though I did wonder if all Swamis were capable of producing such marvels of Vedic metaphysics.

  At the mention of the ancient philosophy Chandraputra seemed to take pause. He stared at me for a moment and then suddenly nodded in his odd way. “It is an ancient technology tkrt Mr. Olmstead, one that has existed tkrt long before men walked this planet.”

  I opened my mouth to respond to this cryptic statement, but before I could he was gone, back to working at the strange controls and panels that seemed integral to the even stranger ship.

  The interior was divided into three levels by two floors of the same strange material. Access between levels was accomplished by a centrally located, tightly curved ramp that reminded me of the central spiral of a conch. The interior of the ship was a cool, frosted white. The walls and floors were smooth, seamless, almost organic. There was something about it that reminded me of the inside of a whelk or conch. Asenath joined me on an outcropping of wall that served as a kind of bench. She looked at me, and I at her.

  “That night in the marsh outside Innsmouth, you sent Chandraputra there. You knew where to find me, because I told you about it in the past.”

  She nodded. “It’s also how I knew about the Federal raid and was able to avoid it. What you told me that night may have been nothing to you, but it has proven invaluable to my efforts to save what I can of our operations.”

  The look on her face was so severe, so serious, but I felt mine grow terrified. “Was that proper? Should you have used that information? Wasn’t it a violation of the laws of the universe? It has been a while since I’ve taken philosophy and discussed morality and the limits of human knowledge, but I think there was something about the laws of cause and effect.”

  She stood up and looked at me with the most icy of stares. “I’ll do anything to save this world. I’ll use any information I can lay my hands on. Whether that comes to me in a dream, or on a mist-enshrouded hill, or in a book that appears to be millions of years old but is written in modern English, I’ll use it.”

  She walked away, leaving me alone on the bench with nothing to do but sit there with the book she had left behind. I had not seen it before, how that was possible I do not know, for it was an inhuman thing, massive, hexagonal, and hinged on every pane. Each page seemed to be made from a thin sheet of metal, but was lighter than I had assumed it could possibly be. It seemed incredibly ancient, and the workmanship was like nothing I had ever seen before, but while the hand-written script was odd, it was clearly in English, and as I flipped through the book, I had no choice but to read and learn what Asenath already knew. It seems that’s what she wanted me to do.

  CHAPTER 11

  An Excerpt from the Zkauba Fragments

  “The Riddle of Thaqquallah”

  I move through the vast gulf of space within an envelope of light at such a velocity that the stars themselves are transformed into streaks of strangely colored illumination. It has been more than a cycle since I was last awake, but that is as it should be. The technique of prolonged suspended animation requires that I emerge at regular intervals, mostly to satisfy a variety of organic functions and carry out routine maintenance on the artifice that generates the light-envelope. I have already carried out a detailed inspection of the emitters, the motivating mechanism, and the ghostly spines that anchor the ship into real-space. With this esoteric maintenance now completed I have still many hours to fill before I can return to my chemically induced slumber. I can no longer bear to study the Tablets of Nhing, so as I have done before, I shall fall back on my earthly occupation and record some event from the eons that I have spent living amongst the Nug Soth.

  I have already written of how I came to dwell within the alien mind of the wizard Zkauba. The cosmic forces that tore me from Earth in the twentieth century and cast me through time and space need not be discussed any further. That I resided inside Zkauba’s psyche, only able to come to dominance when Zkauba’s own will grew weak, is detailed in previous accounts. Though, it may be relevant to once more state that Zkauba was none too pleased with my presence, for he saw me as a verminous mammalian consciousness that he would prefer to see expunged. Zkauba’s opinion reflected the natural philosophical position of his race. The Nug Soth, while bearing some reptilian characteristics, were very similar in appearance to that of terrestrial insects, particularly weevils, though they followed the same general form as men, having a head with sensory organs, a thorax with four arms instead of two, and an abdomen where two legs attached. The six appendages of the Nug Soth were multi-jointed and all terminated in eight articulated, claw-like fingers arranged in two sets of four, opposite each other, such that the eight digits could interlock into a large club-like fist. There was on each set a ninth vestigial digit that was entirely immobile, and consisted of little more than a sharp projection or point: a remnant fighting claw from a more violent point in their evolution. The head was large, bulbous, with a single large, central eye and six smaller, jewel-like oculii, arranged in arches on the sides of the head. Below the primary eye, a flexible snout curved out and terminated in a small, vicious, rasping mouth through which the Nug Soth drew sustenance.

  I have called Zkauba a wizard, though this word does not do him or his species justice. The technology of the Nug Soth was so advanced and beyond the ken of men that it can only be described as wizardry. Yet that wizardry was not the artifice of a sparse few practitioners, but rather it permeated their society at all levels, such that even the simplest of merchants and manufacturers could bend the laws of thermodynamics to their will. But, Zkauba was no simple practitioner, he was a servant of the Arch-Ancient Buo, and one of many charged by the aged hierophant with defending the birthing crypts from the ravenous, monstrous, burrowing things that dwelt below the surface of Yaddith. The Dholes were greasy, bloated worms as alien and incomprehensible to the Nug Soth as that species would be to Men, and try as they might, Zkauba’s people found defending their young against the predations of the Dholes a constant struggle. Likewise, there seemed to be little way to deter their monstrous habit of boring through the very crust of the planet itself. This battle to control the Dholes was grounded not only in their attempt to master the planet, but also in the very tenets of their religious veneration. The
Nug Soth’s deity was not an abstract entity, but rather their own Progenitor, the All-Mother Thaqquallah, who is known amongst the mystics of Earth by the name Shub-Niggurath. Thaqquallah had been imprisoned deep within the bowels of Yaddith by those who had created her, and access to the tunnel that led downward into the plutonian interior, where her cenobites tended to her pain-wracked form, was strictly forbidden. That the All-Mother had begot two species that struggled for dominance was perplexing to the Nug Soth. They called it the Riddle of Thaqquallah. How was it, the philosophers of the Nug Soth wondered, that the All-Mother could give her favor to the Nug Soth, and yet let the Dholes remain unfettered.

  Some suggested that the All-Mother be beseeched for mercy, but each time Buo had refused, and warned that any attempts to plead with the All-Mother might have dire consequences. It was best, Buo counseled, to leave the gravid deity undisturbed, and seek solutions elsewhere. Envoys were dispatched in light-envelopes to Nython, Mthura and even the twin planets of the Xoth and Xastur, in search of formulations for employ against the Dholes. Though certain worlds, such as those housing the great machines circling the stars Altair and Epsilon Eridani, and the library world of Celeano, were forbidden. These were worlds of the Q’Hrell, those who had created the All-Mother and then imprisoned her, and these Progenitors bore no love for the Nug Soth.

  Yet despite their efforts, the Nug Soth had found no effective deterrents that could prevent the feasting of the Dholes, save those that were lethal to both species. Indeed, this in itself was a cause of great consternation amongst the philosophers, for it served as a constant reminder that Thaqquallah was the mother of both the Nug Soth, and of the Dholes as well. That the Nug Soth could bear such similar physiologies to beings that could carry out such atrocious acts made many of the more introspective members of the species shudder with fear, and perhaps a bit of self-loathing.

  In such times of great existential doubt, Zkauba, like many of his species, would abandon the avenues that comprised the fronded metal cities that grace the surface of Yaddith and instead take comfort in the Holy Tablets of Nhing. But on one day, the tablets brought no comfort to my unwilling host Zkauba, for the news had not been pleasant. The word had come that one of the brooding ziggurats had been violated and the brood attendants slaughtered. The offending Dholes had then devoured the unprotected larval Nug Soth in a most horrific manner, leaving only a few of the young alive. Such a loss was devastating not only to the individuals whose bloodlines were represented in the ziggurat, but to the Nug Soth as a whole. Larval Nug Soth were mindless, voracious creatures that easily consumed their own weight every few hours, and thus were able to reach maturity about a year after their birth. The metamorphosis of larva into juvenile females involved the rapid development of cognitive abilities, as well as the production of dozens of eggs that needed to be fertilized by adult males. Access to the eggs was regulated through social factors, with young adults having almost no opportunity to reproduce. As the age, and presumably prestige, of an individual increased, so did access to the unfertilized eggs, at least in theory. However, as the individual members of the species were extremely long lived, only the Arch Ancient and his cohorts were allowed to breed on a regular basis; for individuals like Zkauba, despite his rank and ability, the right to visit the brooding ziggurat and pass on his bloodline came only rarely. With each attack decimating the egg-bearing young, it was inevitable that reproduction rights were to be impacted. Yet Zkauba’s interest in the destruction of the young from this particular ziggurat was more significant. It had been in this brood chamber that he and his cohorts had been born and raised, and it was in this chamber that he himself had hoped his gene-line would continue. The brood of the Five Moons was not as prestigious or powerful as those of the Sleeping Eye, to which Buo belonged, but he was proud of their achievements and had no desire to see the line wiped out. The fear of such a disaster, of his brood becoming little more than a memory in annals of history, made Zkauba’s hearts ache, and he stared incessantly at the Five Moons symbol inscribed through branding on the back of each of his squamous hands.