by Ken Asamatsu
“I hope you’ll forgive my forwardness, but we would appreciate food and fuel as much as wine.... If I may ask?” the leutnant said, letting the alcohol loosen his tongue.
“Forward?! Nonsense! We owe the German army that much and more.”
“Owe? Have we done something to aid you, Countess?” the corporal asked, gripping his goblet tightly.
The Countess’s crimson smile grew. “Did you not kill that impertinent priest Avram after his abominable insults to the German army, and to myself? He was the vilest of socialists, preaching uprising against the nobility. He said some very odd things, I imagine. Driving stakes through corpses, holding exorcisms... .”
“Just as you say,” the leutnant nodded.
“Rulers must know what happens in their domain. But let us leave that. I would be happy to offer you food and fuel supplies. But first, may I ask you a small favor?”
“Ha ha, how could I refuse such a beautiful woman? I will do anything you ask. Within reason, of course.” The leutnant smiled gently and drained his goblet.
Katarina leaned in closer. “First, would you kindly destroy the stone structure at the base of this cliff? The Roman ruins? They are being used to hide the entrance to an underground communist base!”
“The devil you say!” Corporal Neyer nearly jumped out of his seat. His face looked half-drunk already. Yet it was not the wine that had his head spinning, but rather the seductive aura surrounding the Countess herself.
“But... how can that be?” said the leutnant, whose head was beginning to pound.
Everything seems off. The things she says... the wine... the feeling of this castle, as well.
“Yes, and what’s more, mayor Dimitrie of Ruschetenţi is secretly aiding them. Everyone is. The men, the women. The old and the young. I tell you, as an officer of the German army, you should kill them. Kill them all.”
“We... we aren’t some gang of murderers, ghouls, or vampires. We’re soldiers! We carry the glory of the Third Reich! Our duty is to support the invasion of Ukraine. We can’t— We can’t start a conflict with Romanian civilians! You wish us to sow hate, and shed innocent blood—”
The leutnant went on, weakly trying to refuse the Countess.
But Katarina overpowered him, her words flowing over him in an irresistible flood.
“You are murders. You are ghouls. Werewolves. Beasts. Yes, vampires. Embrace the darkness that seeps into every pore of your bodies, into your very hearts. Who hates whom? Who cursed whom? Who killed whom, who sheds blood here? Remember!
“Your hatred gives life to my children. Your curses nourish them. Your murders help give them birth. And the blood you shed feeds them so that they grow strong!”
The light from the candelabra suddenly died.
The hall was filled with the piercing shrieks of bats and the fluttering of countless wings. The howls of wild dogs sounded in the distance.
“Release them. Release my children of the night.” Katarina’s voice pierced the darkness.
“I command you, soldiers of the Germanic blood.
I, the Countess Dracula, command you.
Katarina commands you!
Destroy the seal that binds
Tsathoggua!
Avenge me upon the people of
Ruschetenţi!
Kill! Kill! Kill! KILL!!!”
The great wooden doors of the castle must have opened.
A terrible wind blew. It carried with it the stink of old graveyard earth, newly turned. Amid the wind’s fury, the darkness remained unbroken.
“Werewolves! There are werewolves!” shrieked Corporal Neyer.
Pairs of yellow lights appeared in the darkness, dancing wildly, weirdly, like fireflies.
Without thinking, Leutnant Weil drew his pistol. He aimed it at the pair of glowing red eyes directly opposite him... at Katarina.
“You! What are you? Lamia, or medusa or hydra? Was zum Teufel bist du?!” he screamed, his voice croaking.
But the only answer was the woman’s mocking laugher.
Before he had a chance to pull the trigger, though, the leutnant’s mind whirled away into unconsciousness.
V Sacrifice to the Children of the Night
The morning sun caressed Weil’s face, and the cold air brought him back to his senses. When he opened his eyes, he was looking up at the boughs of a great tree. He was lying at the base of the cliff.
What happened? He sat up and looked around blearily. Was that all just a dream I had in the truck? he asked himself. Looking to the side, he saw Corporal Neyer lying there.
The truck itself was not visible; he assumed that they must actually have come here under mayor Dimitrie’s guidance.
“Hey, corporal. Get hold of yourself.” The leutnant reached out to shake Neyer and realize he was still gripping his pistol. He holstered it in a hurry, then reached out again to shake the corporal’s shoulder. It was cold and stiff.
He... he’s dead.
He took the man’s chin and exposed his neck to make sure there were no fang marks. He couldn’t see any. Instead, he finally noticed the wooden stake driven deep into the man’s chest.
“Damn them!” the leutnant cried out. “The socialist bastards killed Neyer!”
He heard voices coming from the scattered tents, alarmed at his cries.
Kicking up sand, they rushed to surround the leutnant where he sat, holding the corporal’s corpse.
They had been camping in the wasteland around the stone, outside the village.
“Leutnant! When did you return?”
“An old woman who said she served at Poplar Hall at the top of the cliff came by. She handed out food and fuel and—”
“The truck we sent to town still hasn’t come back, what should we do?”
“Who killed the corporal?!”
The soldiers were talking over each other, explaining and questioning, but Leutnant Weil heard none of it.
He ordered the nearest soldiers to take the corporal’s body.
Then the leutnant stood.
The men fell silent under his bloodshot gaze and the terrible aura emanating from him.
“Ready the mountain gun. Aim it at that... stone... miliarium thing,” the leutnant ordered, his voice shaking with mad rage.
“But... What reason could we have to...?”
“There is a socialist base under there!”
The men brought the mountain gun to bear.
The soldiers pulled it about thirty meters away and trained the barrel on the ancient Roman ruins and the marble pedestal within.
They sighted on the line “Fight the people of the dark with us.”
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
“Fire!”
The men fired on the leutnant’s order.
The Gebirgschutz 36 7.5 cm mountain gun roared and jerked on its wheels. At roughly the same time, the marble pedestal, that for nearly 2,000 years had stood in this land and resisted the people of the dark, that had served as the seal of the toad-shaped Tsathoggua, was blown to dust.
All that remained was a jagged scar, like the mark of three great talons, and a gaping, bottomless pit.
“Let us see, then,” the leutnant spat, his lips twisted in a snarl. The soldiers only stared at him. None believed that this great crack in the earth was the entrance to a hidden socialist base.
“What are you doing?! Turn the gun! Now, aim it at the village. The place is a nest of communists!” ordered Leutnant Weil, shaking his fist.
Behind him, the sound of hooves approached.
“No! Don’t! You do that, many bad things happen!” cried Mayor Dimitrie, rushing up on horseback.
“I sent you and the corporal to the Countess. That was my revenge. For the priest. But... this... It’s terrible! Oh no, I called down this
terror! I was a fool!”
The leutnant smiled and nodded slowly. “Oh yes, you truly are a fool. Now, die!”
He drew his Walther P38 and fired. The horse reared at the gunshot and threw the mayor into the air.
When he hit the ground, all could see the red and black hole in the middle of Mayor Dimitrie’s forehead.
I must... report to... Katarina at once. Leutnant Weil felt himself pulled as if by invisible strings, guided like a marionette up the 1,111 stone steps.
From time to time, the screams as his soldiers pillaged and murdered the villagers rose to him from the foot of the cliff, and the thunder of the mountain gun broke the silence between cries of anguish.
Violate the women, kill the men. The soldiers, young and old, had reverted to the ancient, brutal rules of warfare. Just as Weil had commanded them, the troop of the damned, whose blood had fed Katarina....
Blond-haired beasts are loose in the mountains of Walachia. Mad soldiers all.
His heart was pounding as if it would burst.
When he finally arrived at the top, the leutnant stood again before the door and looked upon the corroded copper plaque. He saw, now, what the true name of this house was.
The German did not read Haus Zitterpapeln, Aspen Hall.
No, it said Haus Zittern. Hall of trembling. Hall of shuddering. Hall of terror.
Leutnant Weil smiled and wept.
He stood before the door and opened it himself.
Dozens of bats came swarming out and shredded his cheeks with their claws.
Still pulled by those invisible strings, Weil entered the castle hall. The door shut behind him.
“It is finished, mistress... .” Weil turned respectfully toward the dark-shrouded seat at the head of the table and bowed.
The hall was then filled with light, by lamps burning human fat.
The sight before him was both like and unlike the dreamy reality he had experienced the night before.
The floor was piled not with ermine and silk, but with human bones. The walls were hung with blasphemous paintings and upside-down crosses. The center of the room held an enormous, blood-smeared sacrificial altar.
Behind the altar stood a figure, untold hundreds of years old, a mummy shape with gray hair like cobwebs.
Before her were a goblet and a massive, ancient tome. The light fell on the book’s cover. Surprisingly, it was written in German.
It read Unaussprechlichen Kulten, by a man named Friedrich von Junzt.
The ancient woman opened the tome and spoke in a hoarse voice. “I must thank you, Leutnant Weil. With your help, we have finally managed to destroy that cursed stone, and even now your soldiers are eliminating the villagers who have guarded it these long years.”
Leutnant Weil unbuttoned the collar of his uniform.
“No, no, that won’t do. My children are so very, very hungry. I cannot keep your blood all to myself,” the ancient woman said, and lifted her face to the heavens. She bared her teeth, two great fangs, and as she did so she came to resemble the bat creature of his dreams. The transformed Countess then performed the ritual, outlined in that terrible tome, to call her children home.
“In blood and slaughter. Between grief and hate. O Children of the Dark... Come. Come! COME!”
And then, from afar rose the screams of men in agony.
Those were not the cries of the men of Ruschetenţi. The soldiers under Leutnant Hjalmar Weil were screaming.
The thunder of the mountain gun ceased. The sound of hand grenades and gunfire faded.
From time to time came the choked sound of a rifle or pistol going off, but... mostly just screams. And then, the sound of innumerable shapeless bodies as they slithered forward. The nauseating smack of chewed meat and slurped blood, of bones being sucked to the marrow. And again, movement. Growing louder....
“Leutnant, you alone are special. I shall allow you to enjoy this blessing with a clear mind,” said Katarina, smiling.
Behind Weil, the sound of the wooden doors opening....
And with them, the rush of countless things, tiny and starving for blood and coming on like a flood, and Weil could only listen, sane and conscious to the end.
Gigantomachia 1945
Zeus banished the Titans to Hades, enraging Gaia their mother. Gaia then gave birth to the Gigas, the race of giants, to make war upon the Gods of Olympus. The Greeks called this Gigantomachia, or the War of the Giants.
I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons
that out of the green waters rise.
—H. P. Lovecraft, Nemesis
I Operation Exorios
Silence filled the belly of the great iron fish.
It was an absolute silence, those within not even daring to breathe. It filled every space: between the pipes running along the ceilings and the handles on the bulkhead doors, between the round gauges sticking out from the walls and the people watching them.
Anxiety also filled the stagnant air.
There were forty-two crew members on the U-boat, along with one intelligence officer and one woman. And, of course, one man shrouded in mystery. All shared the silence.
The shrieks and waves have stopped. What’s happened? First Lieutenant Erich Berger looked up and wiped away the cold sweat running from his chin down his neck.
The shrieking roars and the shockwaves they presumably caused had stopped for the first time in five hours, the five hours that.. . thing... had been pursuing them.
Have we escaped it? he thought, and slowly let out his pent-up breath.
The silence was broken by a metallic ping that pierced the silence. Lt. Berger turned to see what had made it, as did Executive Officer Lieutenant Leffer, and even Ship’s Captain Sigmund Roggenhagen turned away from the periscope.
Was that the sound of a lighter? Lt. Berger felt his heart leap into his throat. She couldn’t have, could she?!
Yet indeed, Inge sat there, holding back her long brown hair with an annoyed look on her face as she lit a cigarette.
“Smoking is forbidden on U-boats, Fräulein Welser.”
Inge showed no signs of putting out her cigarette, despite Oberleutnant Leffer’s admonition. She made a show of closing her lighter with another snick.
“Oh, come now! The roaring has stopped, and those shockwaves too. Now I suddenly realize how mad this all is, hiding out here at the bottom of the sea from some giant monster.”
Inge aimed her smoke-tinged complaint at Captain Roggenhagen. Lt. Berger wasn’t sure her husky voice sounded as alluring as it normally did, all things considered, for there was no telling when the figure of that monstrous thing might reappear, its horrible howls with it. Under such conditions, that seductive, husky voice was the sound of a siren singing them all to hell.
The conning tower filled with tension. Captain Roggenhagen, barely thirty years old, sought to break the foul mood as quickly as possible.
“As you say, Fräulein Welser, and yet.... It was no phantasm pursuing us: it is a thing of flesh and blood. You have witnessed its attacks since May 1st, when you joined Herr Saga. Surely you—”
The captain was interrupted by a sudden fierce shudder wracking the whole of the U-boat.
“Whoa!” Leffer gave a tiny cry as he stumbled a step. Lt. Berger, however, very nearly went tumbling head-first. He was no sailor of the Kriegsmarine or U-boat crewman, and was not at all used to life on a submarine.
“Put out that cigarette at once!” he ordered Inge sharply. Inge nodded slightly and threw her cigarette down. She trod on it, the sole of her low-heeled shoe crushing the flame.
“Sonar room, get a fix on
the enemy with the Jena I,” the captain ordered.
He pointed then to the periscope and spoke to Berger. “Look for yourself. The searchlights are lit. With that bearing, you should be able to see it all.”
“Me?!” exclaimed Lt. Berger.
“You. You’ve been saying all along that perhaps this has all been some mass hallucination, a product of hysteria. Perhaps some new weapon of the Allies. Don’t you think it’s time you uncovered the truth? Isn’t that your job, as the intelligence officer who’s accompanied Herr Saga since he left Vienna?” The captain’s words were filled with malice, each syllable packed with hate.... No, with murder.
“Yes, captain. Let me see.” Lt. Berger stumbled forward clumsily. He gripped both handles of the periscope, then struggled to pull it down further. He leaned in close to the eyepiece.
The circular field of vision it offered was a green blur. A single shaft of light pierced the gloom: the searchlight. The beam was normally blue-white, but 250 meters below the surface of the sea it was tinted orange.
He traced the beam of light until it suddenly cut off, reflected off a strange round, crimson plate. It looked to be about 1.5 m across.
It was no manta ray or octopus.
Indeed, the usual schools of tropical fish in their clouds of red, green, blue and yellow were utterly absent. And not only the fish. There was not a crab or shrimp to be seen.
The ocean floor around them was utterly devoid of life.
The only think apart from the U-boat was... It.
The thing that had bellowed its howls of rage and had paddled through the water with two great arms to catch the fleeing U-boat.
What is that thing?! Lt. Berger tried to swallow the hard lump that had risen in his throat as he stared through the periscope.
The thing the searchlight illuminated was perhaps forty meters tall—however, the limits of using the periscope underwater likely meant it was somewhat smaller in reality. Whatever the case, it was a creature the size of a hill. Its silver scales glittered in the light, and each one was like a plate of battleship armor. The beast’s scale-clad arms stretched straight ahead, reminding Berger of the autobahn running through the outskirts of Berlin.