by Brian Lumley
“And here you are.”
He nodded yet again. “The story was due to break in a week’s time. But not now. Now I’m here—of all places.”
“Of all places? How do you mean?”
“Cornwall,” he answered. “Mermaid country. Didn’t you know that? Why, there are still people in these parts who claim they have mermaid ancestors. And, by God, they’re probably right!”
“You really do know a lot about them, then?”
“The Deep Ones?” he squinted up at me. “Do I know about them? I’ve devoted myself to tracking them down, finding out as much as it’s humanly possible to know about them, everything. My one mistake lies in doing it on my own, I’ve kept it all to myself, told no one—but my trail must have looked a mile wide to the Deep Ones. I might have known they wouldn’t let me get away with it.”
“But what will they do with you? They can’t hold you here indefinitely. They’ve told me that they mean people no harm, that I myself am to be their ambassador, and that—”
“No harm!” he exclaimed, cutting me off. Then his voice became scornful. “And you believe that! ‘Ambassador’, you say? The first mankind will know of it is when they’re crawling all over us!”
And suddenly I knew he was right, and that I was a bigger fool than I had previously been willing to admit. “I’ve had my suspicions,” I answered. “But if they’ve been lying to me … then what do they want with me?”
He shook his head and shivered. “With you? I can’t say. But I know what they want with me.” Behind the streaks of dried blood his face was pale. “I doubt if I’ll ever see the outside of this place.”
“Murder?” I said. “You believe they’d go that far?”
Now he laughed, weary hysteria in his voice. “Oh, you don’t know them at all, do you, John? They’ll go just as far as they need to. All of them—in all their many forms—they’re bent on one thing and one thing only. One goal, and once they’ve achieved that, the next step will be the destruction of mankind, of the universe itself!”
There were so many questions I wanted to put to Belton, but I could only ask them one at a time. “Their many forms?” I repeated him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are those that remain land-bound, who never fully take on the true form of the aquatic Deep Ones. They’re sort of half-and-half. Then there are those that are born on dry land and go to the sea later. These are the real amphibians. Yes, and I guess there are other types. I've had a personal and very real experience with at least one more …” He paused.
I said nothing for a moment, but thought back on what Semple had told me about blind Deep Ones in subterranean lakes. Finally, I asked: “What is this other type you mention?”
“It’s a long story,” he answered. “But since it looks like you're destined to be my one and only audience …” He shrugged. “It started with Haggopian.”
“Haggopian?” I repeated, frowning. “Haggopian! But he’s dead, or at least disappeared, five, six years ago. If ever a man was my idol, Richard Haggopian was that man. Wasn’t there something odd about the way he vanished?”
“Something odd?” Again he uttered his hysterical laugh, finding great difficulty, I thought, in controlling it. “Listen, I was with him at the end.”
“When he died?”
“Yes … no,” he said. He shivered again and hugged his coat closer. “I was with him,” he repeated, his eyes searching the grille almost pleadingly. “Listen, and I’ll tell you about Haggopian.”
VI: Haggopian
“I’ll never forget it,” Belton began. “Richard Haggopian, perhaps the world’s greatest authority in ichthyology and oceanography, to say nothing of all the many allied sciences and subjects, had at last agreed to an interview. I was jubilant. At least a dozen journalists before me, from as many parts of the world, had made the futile journey to Kletnos in the Aegean to seek out Haggopian the Armenian, but only my application had been accepted.
“It's not hard to say why Haggopian excited such interest among the world's foremost journalists. Any man with his scientific and literary talents, with a beautiful young wife, an island in the sun, and—perhaps most important of all—a blatantly negative attitude towards even the most beneficial publicity would certainly have attracted the same interest. And, of course, he was a millionaire.
“For eight frustrating days I had waited on the Armenian’s return to Haggopiana—his tiny island hideaway two miles east of Kletnos and midway between Athens and Iraklion—and just when it seemed that my strictly limited funds must surely run out, then Haggopian's great silver hydrofoil, the Echinoidea, cut a white scar on the incredible blue to the south-west as it sped in to a mid-morning mooring.
“With binoculars from the flat white roof of my Kletnos hotel?—I watched the hydrofoil circle the island until it disappeared behind Haggopiana’s wedge of white rock. Two hours later the Armenian's man came across in a sleek motorboat to bring me news of my appointment. I was to attend Haggopian at three in the afternoon. A boat would be sent for me.
“At three I was ready, dressed in sandals, cool grey slacks, and a white T-shirt—civilized attire for a sunny afternoon in the Aegean—waiting for the motorboat when it returned to the natural rock wharf. On the way out to Haggopiana, as I gazed over the prow of the craft down through the crystal-clear water at the gliding, shadowy groupers and the clusters of black sea urchins, I did a mental check-up on what I knew of the elusive owner of the island ahead.
“Richard Hemeral Angelos Haggopian, born in 1919 of an illicit union between his penniless but beautiful half-breed Polynesian mother and millionaire Armenian-Cypriot father; author of three of the most fascinating books I had ever read, books for the layman, telling of the world’s seas and all their multiform denizens in simple, uncomplicated language; discoverer of the Taumotu Trench, a previously unsuspected hole in the bed of the South Pacific almost seven thousand fathoms deep; benefactor of the world’s greatest aquariums and museums, etc., etc., etc.
“Haggopian the much married—three times, in fact, and all since the age of thirty—an unfortunate man, apparently, where brides were concerned. His first wife (British) died at sea after nine years of wedded life, mysteriously disappearing overboard from her husband's yacht in calm seas on the shark-ridden Barrier Reef in 1958; number two (Greek-Cypriot) died in 1964 of some exotic wasting disease and was buried at sea; and number three—one Cleanthes Leonides, an Athenian model of note, wed on her eighteenth birthday—had apparently turned recluse, since she had not been seen publicly for more than two years.
“Cleanthes Haggopian—yes! Expecting to meet her I had checked through dozens of old fashion magazines for her photographs. That had been a few days ago in Athens, and now I recalled her face as I had seen it in those pictures: young, natural, and beautiful in the Classic Greek tradition. And again, despite rumours that she was no longer living with her husband, I found myself anticipating our meeting.
“In no time at all the flat white rock of the island loomed to some thirty feet out of the sea and my navigator swung his fast craft over to starboard, passing between two jagged points of salt-encrusted rock standing twenty yards or so out from Haggopiana’s most northerly tip. As we rounded the point I saw that the easterly face of the island was formed of a white sand beach, with a pier at which the Echinoidea was moored. Set back from the beach in a cluster of pomegranate, almond, locust, and olive trees there sat an immense and sprawling flat-roofed bungalow.
“At the dry end of the pier my quarry waited until, with the very gentlest of bumps, the motorboat pulled in to mooring. He wore grey flannels and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled down. A wide, silken, scarlet cummerbund was bound about his waist. His thin nose supported heavy, opaquely-lensed sunglasses. So this was the great man—tall, awkward-seeming, bald, extremely intelligent, and very, very rich—his hand outstretched in greeting.
“He was something of a shock. I had seen photographs of him, quite a few, and had often
wondered at the odd sheen such pictures had given his features. I had always taken the quality of the shots as being simply the result of poor photography. His rare appearances in public had always been very short ones and unannounced, so that by the time cameras were clicking or whirring he was usually making an exit.
“Now I could see that I had short-changed the photographers. He did have a sheen to his skin, and there must also have been something wrong with his eyes. Small tears glistened on his cheeks, rolling thinly down from behind the dark lenses. In his left hand he carried a square of silk with which, every now and then, he would dab at this telltale dampness.
“‘How do you do, Mr. Belton?” His voice was a thick, heavily accented rasp, conflicting with his polite enquiry and manner of expression. ‘I am sorry you have had to wait so long, but I am afraid I could not delay my work …’
“‘Not at all, sir. I’m sure this meeting will amply repay my patience.’
“His handshake was unpleasant, and I unobtrusively wiped my hand on my T-shirt. Patently, that sheen to the man’s skin was the result of sun oil. His hand had seemed greasy. An allergy, perhaps, which might also explain the dark-tinted glasses.
“I had noticed from the boat a complex of pipes and valves between the sea and the house, and now, approaching that sprawling yellow building in Haggopian’s wake, I could hear the muffled throb of pumps and the gush of water. Once inside the place it soon became apparent just what the sounds meant: the building was nothing less than a gigantic aquarium.
“Massive glass tanks lined the walls, so that the sunlight filtering through from exterior porthole-like windows entered the rooms in greenish shades that dappled the marble floors and gave the place an eerie, submarine aspect. There were no printed cards or boards to describe the finny dwellers in the huge tanks, and as he led me from room to room it became clear why such labels were unnecessary. Haggopian knew each specimen intimately, his rasping voice making a running commentary as we visited in turn the bungalow’s many wings.
“‘An unusual coelenterate, this one, from five hundred fathoms. Difficult to keep alive—pressure and so forth. I call it Physalia haggopia—quite deadly. Makes a water-baby of the Portuguese man-of-war.’ (this of a great purplish mass with trailing, wispy-green tentacles undulating horribly through the water of a tank of huge proportions).
“Haggopian, as he spoke, deftly plucked a small fish from an open tank on a nearby table, throwing it up over the lip of the greater tank to his ‘unusual coelenterate’. In a frenzy, the fish swam straight into one of the green wisps—and instantly stiffened. A few seconds more, and the hideous jellyfish had commenced a languid ingestion.
“‘Given time,’ Haggopian grated, ‘it would do the same to you.’
“In the largest room of all, I paused, literally astonished at the size of the tanks. Here, where sharks swam through brain and other coral formations, the glass of these miniature oceans must have been very thick. Backdrops had been arranged to give the impression of vastly sprawling submarine vistas.
“In one tank ugly-looking hammer-heads of over two metres in length were cruising slowly from side to side. Metal steps climbed up to and over this tank’s rim, then down the other side and into the water itself. Haggopian explained: ‘This is where I used to feed my lampreys—they had to be handled carefully. I no longer have them; I returned the last of them to the sea three years ago.’
“Three years? I peered closer as one of the hammerheads slid his belly along the glass. On the white and silver underside of the fish, between the gill slits and down the belly, numerous patches of raw red showed, many of them forming clearly defined circles where the close-packed scales had been recently removed and the sucker-like mouths of lampreys had been at work. Obviously a slip of the tongue—three days, more like.
“I stopped pondering my host’s mistake as we passed into another room whose specimens must surely have delighted any conchologist. Again tanks lined the walls, smaller than the others I had so far seen but marvellously laid out to duplicate perfectly the natural environs of their inhabitants. And these were the living gems of every ocean on Earth. Great conches and clams from the South Pacific; tiny, beautifully marked cowries from the Great Barrier Reef; hundreds of weird uni- and bi-valves of every shape and size. Even the windows were of shell—great, translucent, pinkly glowing fan shells, porcelain thin but immensely strong, from very deep waters—suffusing the room in blood tints different again from the submarine dappling of the previous rooms.
“My tour was interrupted here when Costas, the Greek who had brought me from Kletnos, entered this fascinating room to murmur something of obvious importance to his employer. Haggopian nodded his head in agreement, and Costas left, returning a few moments later with half a dozen other Greeks, each of whom had a few words with Haggopian before departing. Eventually we were alone again.
“‘They were my men,” he told me, "some of them for almost twenty years, but now I have no further need of them. I have paid them their last wages; they have said their farewells; now they are going away. Costas will take them to Kletnos and return later for you. By then I should have finished my story.’
“‘I don’t quite follow you, Mr Haggopian. You mean you’re going into seclusion here? What you said just then sounded ominously final.’
“‘Seclusion?’ Here? No, Mr. Belton—but final, yes! I have learned as much of the sea as I can from here; my education is almost complete.’
“He saw the puzzled look on my face and smiled wryly. ‘You are at pains to understand, which is hardly surprising. Few men, if any, have known my circumstances before, of that I am certain. That is why I have chosen to speak now. You caught me at the right time, for I would never have taken it upon myself to tell my story had I not been so persistently pursued. Perhaps the telling will serve as a warning. It gives me pause, the number of students devoted to the lore of the sea who would emulate my works and discoveries.’ He frowned, pausing for a moment.
“‘Tomorrow when the island is deserted, Costas will return and set all of the living specimens loose. Even the largest fishes will be returned to the sea. Then Haggopiana will truly be empty.’
“‘But to what end?’ I asked. ‘And where do you intend to go? Surely this island is your base, your home and stronghold. It was here you wrote your wonderful books, and—’
“‘My base and stronghold, yes,’ he harshly cut me off. ‘The island has been these things to me—but my home? No longer. When your interview is over I shall walk to the top of the rocks and look once more across the water to Kletnos. Then I will take my Echinoidea and guide her out through to Kasos Straits on a deliberate course until her fuel runs out. There can be no turning back. There is a place unsuspected in the Mediterranean, where the sea is so deep and cool, and where—’
“He broke off and turned his glistening face to me. ‘But there, at this rate the tale will never be told. Suffice to say that the last trip of the Echinoidca will be to the bottom—and that I shall be with her.’
“‘Suicide?’ I gasped. ‘You intend to—drown yourself?’
“At that he laughed, a rasping cough of a laugh that jarred like chalk on a blackboard. ‘Drown myself? Is a watery grave so distasteful, then?’ He laughed again.
“For a few moments I stared at him in dumb amazement and concern, uncertain as to whether I stood in the presence of a sane man or …
“He gazed at me intently through the dark lenses of his glasses, and under the scrutiny of those unseen eyes I slowly shook my head, backing off a step.
“’I'm sorry, Mr Haggopian, I just…’
“‘Unpardonable!’ he rasped as I struggled for words. ‘My behaviour is inexcusable! Come, Mr. Belton. Perhaps we can be more comfortable out here.’
“He led me through a doorway and out on to a patio surrounded by lemon and pomegranate trees. A white garden table with cane chairs stood in the shade. Haggopian clapped his hands sharply, then offered me a chair before seating himself o
pposite. Again I noticed that the man’s movements seemed oddly awkward.
“An old woman, wrapped around Indian-fashion in white silk and with the lower half of her face veiled in a long shawl answered the Armenian’s summons. He spoke a few guttural but gentle words to her in Greek. She went, to return shortly with a tray, two glasses, and (amazingly) an English beer with the chill still on the bottle.
“I saw that Haggopian’s glass was already filled, but with no drink I could readily recognize. The liquid was greenly cloudy with sediment, yet the Armenian did not seem to notice. He touched glasses with me before drinking deeply. I, too, took a deep draft, for I was very dry; but as I placed my glass back on the table I saw that Haggopian was still drinking. He completely drained off the murky liquid, put down his glass, and again clapped his hands in summons.
“At this point I found myself wondering why the man did not remove his sunglasses. We were, after all, in the shade. A glance at the Armenian's face served to remind me that he must suffer from some allergy, for again I saw those thin trickles of liquid flowing down from behind the enigmatic lenses.
“The silence was broken when the old woman came back with a further glass of her master’s drink. He spoke a few more words to her before she once more left us. I could not help but notice, though, as she bent over the table, how very dehydrated her face looked, with pinched nostrils, deeply wrinkled skin, and dull eyes sunk deep beneath the bony ridges of her eyebrows. An island peasant woman, obviously. She seemed to find a peculiar magnetism in Haggopian, leaning towards him noticeably, visibly fighting to control an apparent desire to touch him whenever she came near him.
“‘She will leave with you when you go. Costas will take care of her.’