by Ken Asamatsu
III
It was a calm, clear night.
Claus called Gundi and told her he was going to stay at headquarters, then went straight to Lil Hollander’s apartment.
He put Rommel’s file in the passenger seat of his car. The order to look at it alone at home weighed on him somehow, and he felt that he wouldn’t be able to bear it unless he was at Lil’s place, a snifter of brandy in hand.
It was around nine pm when he parked near the apartment. It didn’t look like there was any danger of air raids tonight.
The steel-reinforced concrete apartment building was so far undamaged by the bombings, but those nearer his parking spot had been reduced to ruins.
The shattered concrete walls, with their twisted rebar poking out into the faint streetlight, looked like something out of a Friedrich painting.
Before stepping out of the car, Claus put a placard reading On Military Affairs in the windshield, to keep the Gestapo from raising a fuss and insisting on checking the parked car.
“I hope Lil’s still awake,” he muttered as he looked up at her apartment. She was on the third floor of a four-story building, farthest to the left. Claus had arranged the apartment for her, to get her out of her dingy boarding house on a Tauentzienstraße back alley. He’d chosen a room near the stairs to make it easier for him to get there unnoticed.
The window of her room was blocked by the blue curtains Claus liked so much. He nodded in satisfaction and picked up the file.
It was then that Lil’s words came drifting back to him.
What was it? She always has bad dreams on nights when that odd engine noise comes from the room next to hers, or something. Claus’s eyes were drawn to the window next to Lil’s, where apparently some old man lived with his granddaughter.
The thin, floral-patterned curtains were closed, but he could see the residents’ silhouettes outlined by the apartment lights.
The figure of a long-haired girl was quickly setting the table. She was talking to another shadow while she worked. The seated figure nodding at her must have been the old man. He was sitting with his back to the window.
The daughter said something to the old man, and he nodded vigorously and raised one hand.
Is... is that some kind of crab’s claw?48 Claus’s heart leaped into his throat. He focused more intently—the man’s raised hand did indeed appear to be some kind of crab-like pincer. There was one large, crescent-moon-shaped claw opposed by a smaller one, and each bristled with fine barbs.
Then...
He heard a small, high-pitched murmuring sound come from the ruined buildings ahead of him. It was a clear, human-like voice, but pitched like the chattering of a record played at too high a speed.
Claus turned toward it, frowning. He held his breath and slowly sneaked up to the ruins. He thought he heard the voice coming from just behind one wall.
“Murmur murmur murmur....”
He glimpsed someone there to go with the voice. But it didn’t seem like a man... or, for that matter, a woman. A child?
What? A doll?
He stopped just short of the wall. The murmuring voice stopped at the same instant.
“Just my imagination?” he said to himself, stretching up to peek over the wall. Just then, a shape about the size of a rabbit sprang from the deepest shadows, letting out that high-pitched voice.
Claus’s heart froze in his chest. He nearly let out a scream of his own.
The thing fled off into the distance, the streetlights sparkling on its fuzzy golden pelt.
It ran on two legs, waving its two front limbs like... arms?
To Claus, it had looked like a small person, about thirty centimeters tall. The tiny man had been covered in golden fur, and had run off like a forest elf taken by surprise.
He pressed his left hand to his head before trembling could overtake him.
“I... I must be suffering from some kind of combat stress as well, ...” he muttered. He wanted to convince himself it was true. For if he couldn’t, how could he ever throw off the chill that was spreading over his back?
He forced his face into a neutral expression, and went to Lil’s apartment. But they did not exchange their usual warm embraces, and he paid no mind to the Mozart coming from her gramophone.
He went to her dining room table and asked her to bring some brandy. While she was pouring him a glass, he spread out the contents of the file Field Marshal Rommel had given him.
“Professor Herzog gave me some wonderful French Cognac. I understand one of his students has been stationed in Paris and sent it back as a souvenir.”
“Is that so? How nice,” Claus answered absently as he stared at the photographs. The first showed a stone structure poking out of desert sand, like an ancient well. However, the soldier standing next to it showed its scale to be unbelievably huge. Each of the stones making it up was as large as a streetcar platform.
The second appeared to have been taken with a flash. It was of a stone wall, the four corners obscured by shadows (darkness?). It showed Christ on the cross and the blessed mother, Mary, the twelve apostles, and....
“Is that a swastika?” Claus’s brow furrowed.
Indeed, the figure engraved at the very bottom of the wall was the Nazi symbol, the swastika. Beneath it was some kind of Latin inscription, but it had been worn to illegibility.
“I told you about Professor Herzog before, didn’t I? He teaches Latin at the university. He’s so old, and has taught there for ages, but has very little standing in the university. I assume it’s because he refuses to join the Party—”
Still chattering on innocently, Lil opened the cork on the cognac bottle. She poured the dark liquid into a snifter and brought it to Claus.
Claus was just laying out the third photograph, presumably of the green stone tablet.
The tablet was covered in Latin inscriptions wrapping around a vaguely human-shaped creature.
The creature’s body was scaled, and it had a conical head with countless tentacles, like those of a squid, sprouting from the tip. The engraver had drawn its hands with webs between each finger.
Claus felt for an instant as if his mind had been knocked adrift from his body—the result of incredible déjà vu.
He started to have a vision, to see the thing carved into that stone tablet.
The conical head is white. Pure white. Pure white and glossy, like yogurt. The surface is unmarred, unbroken. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing.... And it trembles, shaking with the thing’s massive body. The tip of that faceless cone-shaped head, like some sea anemone from another dimension, sprouts with countless tentacles. Blood-red tentacles. Poisonous crimson tentacles. They writhe and twist over each other mindlessly, like individual creatures.
There was only one explanation for the clarity of his vision. That very morning, in the bed he shared with Lil, Claus had seen a giant version of this thing in his nightmare.
It... has risen.
He could feel his migraine returning. Claus picked up the brandy snifter and took a sip. He could feel the liquor’s heat traveling down to his stomach. The aroma of cognac filled his nose and mouth.
When he’d settled down a bit, Claus checked to see how many photographs remained. There were two.
Then, there was the bundle of documents. He glanced through and saw Translation of Coptic Church Stone Tablet Inscription typed at the top of one document.
“What do the Copts have to say about this dream beast?”
Claus picked up the report and read through the translated phrases.
Al-Qāhera (Trn. Note: Not the old name of Cairo) is painted red with the battle between Christian brothers. The steel tiger holds dominion over the desert. The beasts who march under the false cross bare their fangs to the world. It is exactly 1,111 years from now (Trn. note: ‘Now’ is around 833AD?). The beasts will offer up
the blood and flesh of the sons of King Rehoboam (Trn. note: Rehoboam was a son of King Solomon. Perhaps the sons of Rehoboam are the Jews?) unto their two evil gods, and to the empire of the beasts. Karneter (Cthulhu? There is another name engraved and chiseled out here) and N—— (This part is completely erased) will surely be pleased with their offering. The world shall dream of the White Triangle.
Claus gave a deep sigh. His migraine had stopped, but even now that dream from the morning came welling up from the depths of his mind like an ocean wave. No, not a wave, a tsunami. His consciousness was swallowed and he fell into a vision again.
A monstrous shadow hovers over city streets lined with brick buildings jutting into the night sky. A man-like shadow. A monster, a mockery of man. Its head is a white cone, with crimson tentacles sprouting from the tip. The massive thing makes a sound, a vibration. Cthulhu fhtagn.... The gypsy crone’s voice overlays that vibration. You have received a great blessing from God. You have eyes that can see the true face of evil. You were born to be an exorcist. The voice becomes that of a man. He speaks passionately. Humanity’s time in the sun comes to an end. The new age is being heralded by grand new men. The ancient prophesies of our northern people have spoken: the world renews itself, the cycle repeats. The old age dies, and with it die its gods. That was something that the Führer had told his closest aids only recently. Sometimes, the Führer spoke of the way he saw the world in obtuse, mystical language, using terms most people could not understand.
He set the stone tablet inscription aside picked up the remaining two photographs.
They were in brilliant color, eye-blinkingly bright.
Those idiots in the intelligence and propaganda bureau must have paid out the nose for this, probably on the whim of the Führer or one of his boot-lickers.
The scene was at the Berghof, the Führer’s secret mountain home. He knew it immediately from the background of green forest, blue sky, and emerald hills.
Sunlight streamed down from the clear sky and fell on a crowd of the Third Reich’s leaders, sitting arrayed around the Führer.
Claus narrowed his eyes.
There’s the Führer and Reichsmarschal Göring. Propaganda Minister Goebbels.... And there I am, far in the back. And then there is... ?
Claus’s gaze followed the line of sitting men until his eyes were arrested by a single figure.
What... is that?
That.
A figure dressed in loose yellow robes, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Himmler. No man. Some... thing.
The thing was partly hidden behind a black stamp reading “VERBOTEN.” The stamp which had placed it there was terribly old and worn, and it did not cover much. Despite the ink blotting the image, the creature was still clearly visible, in vivid color.
A white, conical head. Blood-red tentacles by the hundreds and thousands sprouting from the tip of the cone. And there, that faceless visage was right next to Himmler’s. The shoulders and arms protruding from the robes were covered in silver scales. And the fingers of its right hand, just visible, were webbed.
“I... I remember this. It was last autumn. I’d been invited to a gala at the Berghof, and Himmler had his secretary take this picture as a memento. Next to Himmler it was... Guru Teppa Tsanpo. That’s who was sitting there....”
It was as if the thing had climbed straight out of Claus’s nightmares, as if it had stepped off that ninth-century Coptic tablet and slipped into line with the Nazi leadership. And they sat there smiling, Hitler and Himmler and Göring and Goebbels, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Claus lifted his glass and drained the rest of the cognac. A shaft of fire ran from his mouth down to his stomach. But that was the only sensation: he felt no effect from the alcohol.
He placed the last photograph face up and lowered his eyes.
He glanced at it, then shook his head and struck the table with his fist.
Shocked at the noise, Lil rushed over to him.
She looked over Claus’s shoulder at the last photograph on the table and said, “Oh my, what’s that? Some kind of circus performer or sideshow freak? Or a strange joke? Trick photography?”
In a panic, Claus flipped the photograph over, but the image was clear in his mind. Two men in trench coats and fedoras (clearly Gestapo men) stood holding a tiny person by the arms. A coated woman stood behind the figure, her face twisted in terror as she stared at the minuscule thing. The... person? also seemed overcome with fear and was raising both hands up to the Gestapo men in supplication. The figure couldn’t have been more than fifty centimeters tall.
When he turned it over, Claus saw that the white verso had a caption typed in red ink.
“Kunstlicherzwerg: Artificial elemental spirit produced from blood, skin, and life force of resources harvested at Auschwitz. October, 1944.”
Claus looked through the bundle of documents. In addition to the translation of the stone tablet and the attached report, he found three other reports. The titles leaped out at him: “Plan III-5 for Communication with Extraterrestrial Planets and Extraterrestrial Intelligences,” “Guiding the Popular Unconscious Via Dreams,” and “Plan for the Production of Energy from New Resources, Including Blood, Flesh, and Life Force as well as Hatred, Anxiety, and Fear Harvested from the Untermenschen.” The titles alone made him want to vomit. He felt dizzy, and was suddenly convinced he was still trapped in his nightmare.
He needed something, something real to hold on to—otherwise he felt he might be absorbed into the nightmare as well.
Claus stood and turned slowly around, then took Lil, who smiled uncertainly, into his arms.
He was awakened by a mechanical hum around three in the morning.
He looked around, and saw Lil standing with her back to him.
She stood as if she’d just gotten out of bed, her graceful neck, alabaster back, and alluring hips all exposed, lit from somewhere outside. He could even make out the tiny blonde hairs softening her skin. She stood stock still, like a mannequin.
What’s wrong? Claus wanted to call out, but he found he couldn’t move.
He was overcome with sleep paralysis.
He could move only his eyes. Looking down, he saw something long curling around at the foot of the bed. He followed the thing with his eyes. The motor-like humming grew louder. Red sparks filled his vision, drawing circles in the air. And below that, when he lowered his eyes, he saw... it. About one meter tall, low and flat and brilliant pink in the darkness. It held out one massive claw, working it somewhere near Claus’s feet.
A crab... a giant crab... from under the bed....
Lil turned around. Her eyes glowed bright red. Her face was blank.
“You should be more accepting of Guru Teppa Tsanpo’s emanations.” In that moment, Claus felt a mass of terror rising from his stomach. It fell like a wave, like another tsunami—a great, heavy rush of fear that washed his consciousness away.
IV
The next morning, Claus left for his job at Army Headquarters at 7:30.
He sat at his desk smoking until his coworkers began showing up around 8:30. The whole time, he thought things like If the Soviets are going to come south, they should do it now. Our army needs to surrender to the Allies as soon as they can, over and over again. As he did so, a man’s voice suddenly called out to him.
“Good morning, Oberst. I suppose you are to blame for this?” the voice asked.
When Claus turned around, he found Major May looking at him.
“What are you talking about?” asked Claus around his cigarette.
“This. This pile of burned photos and documents I found in the rear garden,” said May, pulling a stack of charred papers out of his satchel.
“I still don’t think I know—” Claus said, playing dumb.
Major May took a long step forward. He spread the charred remains out over Claus’s
desk.
Claus caught his breath and swallowed back the thick sputum filling his throat. He looked slowly over the charred photos and documents covering his desk.
He saw before him the smiling faces of the Führer, Göring, and Himmler at the Berghof, surrounded by their generals. The Tibetan man, now in an SS uniform, was there as well, and above him a large stamp reading NACHRICHT... Report.
The edges of the reports were also charred, but a title was still legible. It read “Overview of Armored Assault on Belgium by 6th, 4th and 9th Panzerdivision.”
“Forgive me, but as these documents are already four years old, I saw no further need for them. I got here early this morning and took it upon myself to burn them.”
“These might be just old useless photographs and outdated battle plans, but we never know what use a spy might make of them. In the future, feel free to use the headquarters incinerator.”
“Yes, I understand. Please accept my apologies.”
“As long as you understand.”
Major May gave him one final look and turned to leave. Claus stared at his tin-soldier back and thought No. It was no mistake. The photos and reports were replaced.
He’d been awakened at six in the morning by a radio blaring painfully.
It was replaying a recording of an address to the Reichstag from two days earlier. Goebbels was speaking.
“The propaganda of our enemies attacks us, claiming that the government of the Third Reich is oppressing Jews, gathering them into concentration camps, and subjecting them to criminal, inhumane treatment. However, these enemies of the people ignore the fact that the German government is actually protecting the Jews in the national spirit of tolerance, and giving them new accommodation in comfortable, hygienic facilities—”
When Claus got up, he found a new brown radio in the room. It had not been there the night before. It was one of the ubiquitous Volksempfänger, he saw, the cheap radio receiver mass-produced by the Nazis to help spread their propaganda. It was designed to receive domestic stations playing announcements from Party headquarters and Wagner performances from morning to night.