Kthulhu Reich

by Ken Asamatsu

  The Führer was delighted by what he called “the discovery of the century” and named the Antarctic paradise Neuschwabenland, or New Swabia. Yet there were a great many Wehrmacht officers who denounced Kapitän Ritscher’s “discovery” as an obvious sham born of his own ambition.

  Among them, of course, was a certain Army Major Richart von Hausen: me, in other words.

  I asked a newspaper reporter friend to look into Ritscher’s background. We found he had connections to the banned photo-montage newspaper Arbeiter-Bilder-Zeitung (ABZ), an old propaganda organ used to help win over communist sympathizers to the National Socialist cause. We felt this was evidence enough to prove that the pictures of lush, green lands supposedly taken by the expedition were the products of skilled photographic manipulation, while the film was produced at the Universum Film Studio.

  However, the SS heard of my investigation and thought it unbecoming of a military officer who was not even a member of the party.

  I was thus invited to Wehrmacht Headquarters and given orders to spend a year on guard duty in Neuschwabenland, orders signed by Heinrich Himmler himself. In other words, I was being exiled to Antarctica.

  A total of thirty-two of us were assigned to guard this land that doesn’t exist. Each of us was a member of the Wehrmacht and each of us was considered “uncooperative” with the Nazi party.

  There was also a team of fourteen SS commandos and two Gestapo officers to keep tabs on us, all under the command of SS Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Blaski—who, as it so happens, had previously been taken into custody on suspicion of murdering five prostitutes.

  Blaski was not the only criminal, either. Every one of the SS guards was either a prisoner or, shall we say, “different.”

  The meaning of all this is, I think, self-evident. The army and SS had taken this as the perfect opportunity to rid itself of rabble rousers and the kind of deviants even the SS had trouble with by shipping them all off to Antarctica.

  And so the Hölderlin sailed out of the naval port at Kiel on April 1st, 1939.

  It’s a junker of a ship, just one step from the scrapyard, but since I had the good luck to draw three other like-minded comrades as cabin mates, the trip started off quite comfortably.

  The oldest of my three cabin mates is Kriegsmarine leutnant Klenze, at forty-one just two years older than I. Klenze is the very model of a German soldier, with his platinum blond hair and determined expression, and previously served in naval intelligence. We found out that his father had served in the Great War on a U-Boat which had sunk somewhere in the Atlantic.21

  The other two, Army Major Müller and Luftwaffe Leutnant Heinrich, are both younger than I.

  Major Erich von Müller is twenty-nine years old and the son of a noble family of Karlsruhe. He has an intelligent and aristocratic bearing that I find quite charming, but possesses a neurotic and sensitive disposition.

  On the other hand, Leutnant Heinrich is a big, merry man from the Saarland, and when he explained that his mother was of Belgian descent, I immediately understood his sunny disposition. He is, by the way, twenty-seven years old.

  We hit it off on the spot, and were soon laughing together like long-time friends. But the fun would soon end. Our troubles began ten days into the trip, and soon the pleasant days turned to ones of leaden misery.

  It all began on April 21st, with a furious knocking on our door. It was seven in the evening.

  “Come in,” Heinrich said from where he lay on his bunk, reading a magazine.

  The door burst open. Blaski stood in the doorway, along with one of the Gestapo agents who was in plain clothes and wearing rimless glasses.

  I tried to remember the Gestapo agent’s name (it was Heinecke) while I spoke.

  “Do you need something?”

  “Not from you!” Blaski spat at me, then turned to Müller.

  “If you would come with us, Count von Müller?” he spoke with ironic politeness.

  “Me? What do you need with me?” Müller asked, but Heinecke cut him off.

  “We have just received orders from Reichsführer Himmler. He says it is time for you to put on the Mask of Yoth Tlaggon, Count Müller.”

  At the name, Major Müller’s face went pale as a sheet.

  “I don’t know anything about any mask! What is... no-one said anything about... .”

  Müller said, shaking his head, but Heinecke reached out and pulled him up by the lapels. He jerked Müller forward until they were face to face, their heavy breaths comingling.

  “There’s no use in lying, Müller. We know all about your father, Graf Eckhart von Müller, being Mergelsheim’s patron.”

  “Mergelsheim? Who is—” Leutnant Klenze began to ask, wondering at the unusual name.

  “This has nothing to do with you! I recommend you keep your noses out of this, for your own sakes,” Blaski said, and reseated his monocle.

  “So, Count Müller, would you do us the honor? The Reichsführer thinks very highly of your spiritual abilities. We are all so looking forward to hearing what magnificent visions the Mask of Yoth Tlaggon shows you.”

  With that, they took Major Müller out of the cabin, Heinecke practically dragging him.

  The three of us were left behind, speechless, looking at each other in shock.

  After a while, Leutnant Klenze began to talk, his head in his hands.

  “Mergelsheim.... You don’t suppose Heinecke was talking about Klingen Mergelsheim, do you?”

  “Who is Klingen Mergelsheim?” Heinrich and I asked in unison.

  “He’s a sorcerer, they say, and there are rumors he’s the real power behind the Thule Gesellschaft. They also say... he’s lived for centuries. A black magician... .”

  Heinrich and I stared at each other for a moment, then looked back at Klenze.

  “And how do you come to know that name, Leutnant?” I asked.

  “It was written in my father’s diary. But... Listen, this might be hard to believe, but my father met the man in 1925. He wrote that the man was ninety years old if he was a day... .”

  II Von Müller, Oracle

  It is still June 21st and the Hölderlin is continuing southward along the 30 degrees east longitude line.

  We are within 3,000 kilometers of the Antarctic continent.

  The cold grows worse by the day.

  And yet, more than the cold, I am troubled still by the sound of Müller’s screams filling the Hölderlin two months ago now.

  As I listened to those screams, I asked myself, unwillingly imagining the answer, Just what kind of torture are they using on him? And, with growing anger, Why Müller? What did he do to deserve such treatment?

  I stewed, impotent and afraid.

  And yet, when he returned to our cabin some two hours later, there was not a sign of harm on his body. Not a hair was out of place.

  He was merely pale as a sheet of paper, and his eyes were glazed like someone had dosed him with opium. His face occasionally cramped in a painful smile. It was clear that the injuries inflicted upon Müller were ones of the mind, not the body.

  “Are you all right?”

  Klenze reached out both hands to help him, but Müller’s face suddenly twisted in fear and he pulled away, desperate to avoid their touch. He then began to claw at his face, muttering to himself.

  “Was it animal or plant? No, don’t look this way! Don’t turn your star-shaped head toward me! The mountain moves, the terrible mountain of cells!”

  At that, he let out a scream so violent I thought to see blood burst from his lungs—and then fell senseless.

  Heinrich caught his body as he fell.

  Klenze stood to leave, a frown on his face.

  “What do you mean to do?” I asked.

  “I’m going to the infirmary to see if they have a sedative, or even some brandy. Müller needs rest and sleep.” But
even as Klenze spoke, the door behind him opened.

  With it, we heard Heinecke’s voice creep into the room. “There’s no need. I have brought some cognac.”

  Heinecke had a thin, cruel smile on his face and a bottle of cognac in his hand. He drew out the cork with his teeth, then drank directly from the bottle before handing it to me.

  His breath rolled over me in a cloud of alcohol. He’d clearly already drunk quite a bit. The reek of liquor seeped from every pore of the Gestapo agent’s body.

  I gave the bottle to Heinrich.

  “What did you do to Major Müller?” I asked the drunken Heinecke.

  “We made him dream.”

  Heinecke didn’t hesitate to talk. Perhaps the drink had loosened his tongue.

  “What, you gave him hallucinogenics?”

  “Just the mask. We put the mask on him.”

  “What mask?” Klenze wrinkled his brow and stared into Heinecke’s face.

  “It’s true. We said it before. The Mask of Yoth Tlaggon. It finally fell into our hands two years ago thanks to all of Reichsführer Himmler’s great efforts. A mask of pure platinum, and they say that whoever wears it is given visions that transcend time and space.” A smile played at Heinecke’s lips as he spoke.

  “But why Müller? What does it have to do with him?”

  Heinecke shrugged at Klenze’s question.

  “Don’t you know? Müller’s whole family is famous for their psychic abilities, all through the Schwarzwald. And you know that place, it’s full of all sorts of witches and warlocks, mediums and oracles... .”

  Klenze fixed Heinecke with a grim stare and seemed about to say something more, but just then Müller began coughing.

  “Hey, Heinrich, is he OK?”

  We looked at Heinrich, who had been trying to get Müller to drink some cognac.

  “He’s fine. It just went down the wrong pipe.”

  “Well, make sure you nurse him well. We need him to have some more dreams tomorrow,” Heinecke spat at us and walked out, mocking laughter trailing behind him.

  Müller returned to his senses late that night and told us about the Mask of Yoth Tlaggon and the visions it had shown him.

  They tied me to a chair, and Blaski opened up a safe in the captain’s room. He took out a platinum mask, one made to completely cover the head. It was shaped like a long, inverted triangle, and the ears and chin were long and pointed, with no hint of hair on it. However, the forehead sprouted long, drooping things like the tentacles of a sea anemone. The eyes were narrow slits, slanted upwards, terrible and inhuman, and the mouth was a V-shaped sneer.

  The instant I saw it, I could feel in my bones that this mask was no mere creation of fancy: it was modeled on something, on a real thing. And that thing was no friend to the human race.... Indeed, it could only be called an enemy of all humanity.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Your father and Klingen Mergelsheim both received visions from this mask,” Blaski said, and forced the mask over my face, despite my struggles.

  I have never felt anything like it before in my life. It should not have fit my head, not in size or in shape, but the platinum seemed to stretch and bend like rubber until it had covered everything above my neck.

  At first, nothing looked different. The eye slits showed me only the sadistic SS pig and his sneering Gestapo bootlicker drinking his liquor. But after about thirty seconds, I found myself chanting some kind of invocation, my mouth moving of its own accord.

  “Iä! Iä! Hastuuur!”

  I said I was chanting it, but I think perhaps rumble is better. It was like a vibration coming from somewhere within me.

  The walls and door of the captain’s cabin began to resonate in tune with my voice!

  And then—

  The world turned pink. But not just any pink: it was a fluorescent pink, a pink so bright it hurt my eyes. Then the visions struck me.

  They were so real, more real than film, more terrifying than any nightmare.

  I saw towers of stone, high enough to pierce the very heavens, a series of cyclopean structures dwarfing the works of man. It was a terrible great labyrinth. The layout was chaotic, buildings jumbled without sense or meaning. And all of it, the stone walls and the roofs and the hallways between the structures, all of it ran with a loathsome green ichor, like pus.

  And then, as if by accident, one of the inhabitants of that dizzying, labyrinthine city looked upon my face.

  The terror was so great that I could not help but scream.

  My God, what a creature it was!

  It stood about 240 centimeters tall, and its head was a five-pointed star; indeed it looked much like a starfish. It had a barrel-shaped body along which ran five ridges.

  Ah! It was like a sea lily, yes! They must have been a kind of sea lily. You remember, right? Surely you studied them in biology in school; everyone did at least once. They were ancient, hideous creatures like a mix of plant and animal that covered the earth millions of years ago.

  Anyway, each point of that star-like head bore long, writhing tubes and each of those were tipped with a sphere. One of those spheres turned toward me.

  As I stared at it, a yellow membrane suddenly withdrew, exposing an organ like a red glassy iris.

  You know what it was?

  It was an eye.

  The eye of that sea lily beast, staring at me.

  But that was not what frightened me.

  No, what frightened me was the unmistakable intelligence that glittered in that inhuman organ!

  Müller said that he realized the monster was sending him a message directly into his thoughts.

  And that message was this:

  Stop. Stop your journey south. Stay far from Leng.22 For all that awaits you here is the great evil that nearly destroyed us all.

  III Antarctic Phantoms

  It’s now July 23rd. The Hölderlin has finally reached the Antarctic Circle, having passed 66 degrees 32 minutes south latitude.

  Upon landing, we disembarked along with the dogs and sleds while the other soldiers spent a full day unloading the heavy payload from the hold.

  When they were finished, we stared in astonishment at three tanks and not a single snow crawler.

  “What on earth? What is Blaski... no, what is the Führer thinking?” Klenze said, aghast.

  “Surely they don’t think there are any enemy bases in Antarctica?!” Heinrich said, his face a mask of disbelief.

  The unexpected appearance of the tanks had unsettled us all, enlisted and officer alike.

  Blaski, perhaps noticing the spreading unease, called out to us over a loudspeaker under guard from his SS commandos, Bergmann submachine guns at the ready.

  “Meine Herren, I understand your surprise! However, we do have our reasons.”

  The loudspeaker howled in feedback, twisting his voice into something demonic.

  “The leaders of the glorious Third Reich have discovered a potential threat located to the southwest of our new territory of Neuschwabenland.”

  “What kind of threat?” I shouted at Blaski as he stood there on the deck.

  “I am not yet at liberty to say. All you need to know is that I will lead you across those mountains, and we will destroy all that lives in their shadow.”

  “What mountains are those, then?” I demanded further. Blaski turned his eyes on me then, his look grim.

  He took a deep breath and replied, “The Mountains of Madness.”23

  When Müller heard the name, he fainted dead away.

  Gott im Himmel.

  A grown man, an iron-willed soldier of the German army, fainted at the sound of a name.

  The Mountains of Madness.... What horrors await us there?

  We listened to Müller while we greased the moving parts of our Bergmann submachine guns to keep them
from freezing up.

  “It appears the Mask of Yoth Tlaggon also serves as a kind of map to the ancient South Pole.”

  All four of us—myself, Klenze, Müller, and Heinrich—were aboard the same large dogsled.

  We were headed toward Neuschwabenland, some 1,000 kilometers from where we had landed, and then, of course, the Mountains of Madness beyond it.

  “The reason the Leutnant forced me to wear the Mask of Yoth Tlaggon and have those visions was to help find out where the Mountains of Madness lay, and what lives beyond them.”

  “Do you remember what you saw?” Klenze asked Müller.

  “No. I feel like perhaps my mind has sealed the memories away, repressed them, to protect me from the horror. I don’t remember anything... .” Müller shook his head.

  “I remember, though, those things you babbled about that first night,” Heinrich said, grimacing. “The mountains were moving and such, mountains of cells... .”

  “So, does that mean the Mountains of Madness are giant living things?” I looked at Heinrich.

  He shrugged. The blowing snow between us looked like the scratches on old film. “Who knows? I lack the imagination for all this.”

  I chewed at my bottom lip and looked up at the sky.

  The heavens were filled with oatmeal-colored clouds, which dropped clumps of snow the size of a baby’s fists over us. The wind that carried the snow over the ground was dry and freezing cold, far beyond what bare skin could endure.

  We sat huddled in thick fur hoods, colored goggles, and masks covering our mouths and noses, looking for all the world like giant insects. Or perhaps we resembled bizarre sea creatures—some kind of seals or sea lions, armed with guns.

  The swastika flag at the front of the sled had quickly frozen over and was stuck tight to its pole.

  Suddenly, the cold wind brought a rumbling sound as well.

  When I looked up once again, the reassembled Messerschmidt Bf110 soared proudly through the air, its steel wings spread wide.

  “Damn that Blaski. He’s going to beat us there,” Klenze spat.