The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities

by James Lovegrove

  Dropping his voice to a low, confidential tone, he told me that the timing of our journey had worked in our favour. Had our departure from Arkham not been postponed by the rains, we might have reached Lake Makadewa too soon. As it was, we were here just at the right moment, and if we were lucky we might observe a phenomenon that was without rival anywhere in the natural world. We might even have the opportunity to capture our first specimen.

  Evidently the creatures that spawned in the lake were anomalous, and my apprehension deepened, even as feelings of intrigue stirred. I kept a sharper lookout. Several times I fancied I saw movement in the water, but it was only a thickening or thinning of the mist, which gave an illusion of animation.

  Then the Belle’s engine began to judder, and shortly after that it let out a mournful squeal and a loud gushing hiss, and went silent. All at once we were coasting through the water, gradually decelerating, the revolutions of the paddle wheel slowing, until our momentum diminished to nothing and we were stationary. With a curse, Skipper Brenneman headed below decks to the engine room. The mist drifted over us. Water tapped at the hull like a hundred impatient fingertips. Other than that and the muffled clanking of the skipper’s tools, there was no sound.

  I became more agitated, recalling how the crone had said that we should cross the lake “at a single go”. Here we were, in contravention of that instruction, becalmed. What might that mean for us? Nothing, I hoped, but I could not help thinking that the sooner the Belle got under way again, the better.

  Then Bessie, the canine cat, began to whimper. Charley swept the animal up in his arms, and it shivered in his embrace, peering dolorously around, ears flattened.

  “Bessie ain’t happy,” Charley observed, somewhat redundantly. “There’s somethin’ out there. Somethin’ she don’t cotton to.”

  “Maybe it’s having a coloured breathing his stink breath all over her she don’t cotton to,” said Junior.

  I told the first mate to shut up, and he gave me the eye but did as I said.

  That was when it came: a soft, slopping splash, as of a body breaking the lake surface. We all swung in the direction of the noise.

  “What was that?” said Junior. “Otter? Beaver maybe?”

  “No,” said Nate. “Charley, fetch me a net from the hold. A large one.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Black Water, Red Leech

  SKIPPER BRENNEMAN POKED HIS HEAD UP THROUGH the engine room hatch and announced that a valve had blown on the secondary low-pressure cylinder. Fixing it was going to take twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. Nate said we would surely find something to occupy us in the interim.

  As the skipper ducked back down below, there was another of those splashes, this one closer than the last. Whatever had caused it was no fish, or if it was, it was bigger by far than any freshwater genus I knew of, its proportions more those of a dolphin or porpoise. Perhaps some preternaturally huge catfish? A third splash erupted just off the starboard side, and we rushed, as one, to the rail, only to see the aftermath of the breaching: a seething white turbulence upon the black water. My estimate of its maker’s size had been more or less correct, judging by the dimensions of the disturbance, which spread rapidly outwards in ebbing concentric circles.

  Bessie, whom Charley had left with us when he went to fetch the net, was now whining inconsolably. Junior Brenneman aimed an irritable kick at the cat, and it scurried away, taking refuge behind a water butt.

  The splashes began occurring all around the Innsmouth Belle. Through the mist I glimpsed slimy wet shapes bursting briefly up from the lake. They were dark red, the colour of coagulating blood, and had a horrid smooth texture, not unlike that of a sea anemone when it has retracted its fronds and resembles a blister.

  “What in tarnation…?” Junior breathed.

  Charley came running up with a long-handled net in his hands. Its mesh was made of sturdy woven-silk filaments and could have accommodated an infant, but not, I thought, one of the creatures cavorting around us, not securely.

  “We’re going to need a bigger net,” I said to Nate.

  “We don’t have one,” he replied. “We shall just have to manage with what we’ve got.”

  More and more of the creatures were putting in an appearance. The water around the Belle churned with them, like boiling stew. It seemed as though her floating, inert presence had drawn them like a rallying point. I glimpsed them wriggling just below the surface, every so often rolling above it. They were snakelike, but fleshy rather than squamous, with bodies that were broad and blunt at the leading end but tapered to a narrow tip at the other. One came up right below where I stood, its mouth gaped roundly, and I saw plump, sucker-like lips surrounding spiralling rows of teeth – teeth that were sharp, curved and inward-pointing – and suddenly I knew what these beasts were, or at least what they were analogous to.

  “Leeches,” I said. “They’re giant leeches.”

  “Yes,” said Nate. “Now help me with this, Zach. I’m going to lean out and try to snag one. Grab my belt and, for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, don’t let go!”

  Nate bent over the gunwale, and I seized his belt, bent my knees and locked my feet in position. My friend lowered the net to the water, which was alive with the rubicund leeches. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, thousands, writhing, thrashing, coiling around one another in one huge repugnant slippery orgy. Whether they were adults copulating or newly hatched younglings, I could not tell. I hoped the former, for if the latter then the fully grown version of this leech would be a thing of truly behemothic proportions.

  Nate swept the net through the nightmarishly glistening throng of annelids, but each time one was caught up in the mesh it slithered straight out again before he could hoist it from the water. Even with his arms at full stretch the end of the net only just reached the lake, so that it was hard to control and he had inadequate leverage. He declared that he was going to lean further over. I enlisted the aid of Charley, for I knew I could not support Nate’s weight all by myself. Together the big Negro and I eased him over the rail so that he was hanging upside down from the waist, his upper half more or less perpendicular, his legs angled in mid-air, with both of us gripping his belt tight. Should we lose our hold on him or his belt break, there was every chance he would plunge head-first into that mass of bloodsuckers, and that would surely be the last anyone saw of him.

  The net swished to and fro, Nate grunting with effort. At last one of the leeches squirmed into its coils and Nate was able to raise the net clear of the water before it squirmed out again.

  “Quick! Quick!” he cried. “Pull me up! Now!”

  We pulled, and Nate came sliding over the rail, clutching the shaft of the net with both hands for all he was worth, desirous of not losing his prize. He landed on the deck on his belly, while the leech flopped beside him, folded double within the bulging silken mesh. Its loathsome mouth opened and shut in what looked like a paroxysm of speechless rage. We all stared down at it with varying degrees of disgust, all save Nate, whose eyes were filled with something close to adoration.

  Then, with a sudden flexing, quick as a blink, the leech contrived to free itself from the net. Next thing anyone knew, it was slithering across the deck with appalling speed, making a beeline for Junior Brenneman. He stood rooted to the spot, too shocked to move, and the thing reared up before him and pounced. It clamped its mouth onto his thigh, and there was a scissoring, rending sound, and then Junior was screaming.

  “It’s biting me! Jesus Christ, the goddamned b––––––is biting me! Somebody do something!”

  I leapt forward. Much though I had no desire to touch the leech, all I could think of to do was seize hold of its tail end and try to pull it off. This, however, proved counterproductive, for Junior’s screams only increased in pitch. He yelled that I was tearing his leg, and I realised that the leech had its teeth so firmly embedded in his flesh that it would not come free without taking a chunk of muscle with it. Letting go of t
he creature, I turned to Nate in desperation, and in that moment beheld a look upon his face such as I had never seen before. Nate exhibited no concern whatsoever for Junior. Rather, as he lay where he had fetched up on the deck, prone, propped up on his elbows, he observed the first mate’s plight with a detachment that was not just dispassionate but quietly gleeful. It was almost as though he was relishing the suffering of a fellow human being. It was how one imagines a vindictive god might look while meting out divine punishment on some hapless mortal.

  I had no great fondness for Junior, but I did not wish to see the life drained out of him by a monstrous leech. For that was what the creature was trying to do. Blood was spreading over Junior’s pants leg in a crimson cloud around the leech’s mouth, and the thing’s body was pulsing and contracting in gluttonous peristaltic waves. We had to detach it from him somehow, else he would surely perish. Since Nate appeared not to care what happened to the first mate, I turned to Charley, hoping to appeal for assistance. It was only then that I realised that he was nowhere to be seen. I presumed the horror of the situation had got the better of him and he had found some place to hide.

  How wrong I was. The very next instant, Charley came charging out from the galley, and with him he had a drum of cooking salt. This he unlidded and tipped up, dumping its contents over the leech. The creature immediately began to shrivel and foam. Relinquishing its grip upon Junior, it collapsed to the deck. Oily bubbles formed and popped across its skin, and it vomited up much of the blood it had ingested. As the salt continued to do its desiccatory work, the leech darkened and withered, like a chunk of wood burning in a fireplace. Soon its agony-wracked death throes ceased, and all that remained of it was a gently effervescing black lump as thin and long as a baseball bat.

  For several moments, all any of us could do was draw panting breaths and wait for our elevated heart rates to subside.

  Then Skipper Brenneman popped up from the engine room hatch again. “Done,” he stated. “Whut? Did I miss suthin’?”

  * * *

  The spawning leeches lost whatever interest they had had in the Innsmouth Belle as soon as her engine started chugging away again. The turning of her paddle wheel seemed to alarm them, and they sank out of sight. In a short while the lake surface was as placid as before, and then the mist started to lift, and a half-hour later the far shore appeared as a thin dark line on the horizon.

  Nate got straight down to dissecting the slain leech, and made copious notes on his findings. I detected a distinct disgruntlement on his part that the creature had been largely destroyed. He would have preferred an intact specimen. Equally, he had shown no willingness to fish a second leech out of the lake, given our unpleasant experience with the first. Clearly scientific curiosity only went so far.

  Junior’s wound, ugly though it was, was superficial. I applied salve and a bandage, and told him that he should rest the leg and keep the affected area dry. There was no reason to think he would not make a full recovery, with no inhibition to his locomotion, although the scarring would be extensive.

  In the wake of the incident, the atmosphere aboard the Belle was febrile, everyone on edge, including me. I thought that our encounter with the oversized annelids was as bad as it would get, but as we entered the next section of the Miskatonic, things only got worse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Mi-Go Expedition

  A SENSIBLE PERSON MIGHT PRESUME THAT JUNIOR Brenneman’s attitude towards Charley would improve after the way the resourceful Negro had come to his rescue. At the very least he would exhibit some gratitude towards him.

  Alas, the opposite was the case. Junior was, if anything, sourer in his dealings with his shipmate. I think he resented Charley being the hero of the hour and his saviour. His persecution of the giant thereupon became positively vicious, little short of a vendetta. Never once did he miss an opportunity to castigate or insult him. Charley took it well, with stoic fortitude, but in his eyes and hunched shoulders there was the constant flinch of a man awaiting the inevitable next blow from the scourge.

  I took the skipper aside for a quiet word about his son, hoping that a piece of gentle fatherly remonstrance might temper Junior’s tongue. To my disappointment, but perhaps not to my surprise, the older Brenneman sided with the younger. Although he wasn’t blind to Junior’s less attractive traits, he said, the boy was an adult, beyond the reach of parental correction. Blood was blood, moreover, and the skipper could not put Charley’s considerations above those of family. He had a healthy respect for Charley, not least because the fellow was such a hard worker. All said and done, though, he was just a deckhand.

  “I may have erred in a-givin’ him employment,” he said. “Junior’s always hed certain tendencies, an’ maybe I should have known better than ter force him ter live in close quarters, day an’ night, with a Negro. I thought it might if nothin’ else do him some good, show him that people’s people whatever the colour o’ their skin. Learn him suthin’. Clearly, if there’s been no change in him after three years, there never will be. I guess if it becomes too much for Charley he can always quit. I’d hate ter lose him, but I’d hate ter lose my son more. That make sense?”

  I cannot say that it did, but the skipper appeared no less resistant to change than his son, so I refrained from pressing him any further.

  * * *

  West of Lake Makadewa, the Miskatonic grew steadily narrower and the landscape around it hillier and more densely forested. There was a sense of the wilderness tightening its grip on us. The trees loomed ever larger, with towering dark conifers coming to outnumber their deciduous counterparts and casting long saw-toothed shadows across the river. At times we had to navigate around rocky outcrops in midstream, with bare inches of leeway to port and starboard. Skipper Brenneman nudged the Belle past these boulder obstacles with considerable skill, drawing on his many years of experience as a waterman. Charley assisted, fending off with a boathook whenever the paddle steamer ventured too near a potentially hull-holing hazard. Junior, for his part, did little except limp about on his wounded leg and gripe. His injury excused him from all but the lightest duties, leaving Charley to shoulder his workload, which the Negro did uncomplainingly. In truth, it was not a heavy burden, since Junior did not do that much anyway. His position aboard the Belle was the very epitome of nepotism, and I presumed his father kept him on as crew simply because the fellow would have found it difficult earning an income anywhere else.

  On the third day following the events at the lake, Nate requested that we put in at the northern bank so that he might mount an expedition inland. The skipper obliged, and Nate and I sallied forth bearing various items of equipment; primarily a length of rope, a flask of chloroform and a Winchester repeater. Only when we were some distance from the Belle did Nate vouchsafe the objective of our sortie. Around these parts, it transpired, there had been sightings of man-sized beasts that resembled nothing so much as winged crustaceans. Eyewitnesses reported coming across lone specimens of such creatures which, caught unawares, either scuttled off into the undergrowth or took to the air on their chiropteran wings. Singly, then, the beasts were prone to skittishness. When encountered in numbers, however, they were apt to go on the offensive, sometimes lethally so. Hence the Winchester, which Nate carried fully loaded. Just in case.

  They were known as “mi-go”, these monsters, and many a local Indian legend had sprung up around them. Originating from the stars, they had visited Earth since the Jurassic Period, to mine certain minerals that could not be obtained elsewhere in the universe and which they ferried back to whatever distant celestial body they called home. So said men of the Pennacook nation, and the Penobscot, and the Abenaki, and the Huron, and others besides, with a consistency that was remarkable given how disparate and widely dispersed those tribes were. This, to Nate, suggested that the folklore was likelier a set of observed, attested facts than myth. The mi-go, moreover, were not animals, their appearance notwithstanding. They were instead agglomerations of fungus,
capable of locomotion and communication, achieving the latter by means of their heads, which changed colour to express feelings and convey information. They could also, it was averred, replicate human speech, by means of rudimentary vocal cords.

  What a coup it would be to catch one of them, Nate declared. What a triumph for science to have a mi-go in captivity, and then upon the dissecting table, teasing apart its secrets. How could a fungus attain sentience? Was a mi-go actually several different forms of fungus that had evolved to operate in concert? Was each individual a small collaborative community, which in turn formed part of a larger collective? To what use did they put the minerals that they unearthed with such troglodytic industriousness? Was it as a foodstuff? Fuel? Imagine being the one to plumb these mysteries and divine the answers.

  Nate’s eyes were alive with excitement, that zeal for intellectual advancement that I myself knew so well. As we tramped up hill and down dale, his enthusiasm kept my spirits high and my apprehension at bay. The miles we walked seemed to pass like nothing, until all at once we came to the spot where mi-go were reputed to roam. Here, the forest petered out, ceding to rocky terrain interspersed with spills of scree. The sun seemed cooler and the breeze sharper, generating a mournful sough as it raked across the barren land. Nate advised me to keep my ears pricked. In particular I should listen out for a subtle whispering not unlike the buzzing of bees which might or might not contain snatches of English, for mi-go were at least passingly familiar with the languages of all who dwelled in the region, obtained perhaps through a form of telepathy, unless it was mere mimicry like that of the mynah bird. By this insidious whispering they were known to disorientate and lead astray intruders upon their territory, rather as the “little people” of Celtic myth were wont to do.

  Nate wished to take a mi-go alive if possible, drugging it then binding it with rope to lug back to the boat. Failing that, dead would suffice. He gave me the rifle to hold and demonstrated the lever action that transferred a round from the magazine into the breech and at the same time re-cocked the hammer. Clutching the flask of chloroform, its cork loosely in place, he proceeded stealthily forward.