Home From the Sea

by William Meikle

  "I listened as he extolled the virtues of mass-agriculture, of cheap transport for all, of workers freed from drudgery to explore simpler, more artistic pursuits. I scarcely heard him. In my mind's eye all I could see were vast industrial wastelands of hissing steam and clockwork; fumes rising over blasted heaths where vegetation was a nuisance rather than a necessity. I saw a world where mankind's place was relegated to little more than that of a maintenance engineer for the factories. And in the sky overhead, dark things hung like great crows, cackling in amusement at our endless stupidity.

  "What kind of world would you have us build?

  "The question rang long in my head as I dragged myself off to bed and a night spoiled by dreams of steam and clockwork."

  *

  "Over breakfast I finally found the reason I had been brought to the island.

  "‘It is to do with that incantation,' Munroe said. ‘I hear it every time I enter the dream state. It's is a bally nuisance if truth be told, for it seems to block the free flow of communication with the intelligences beyond.'

  "‘I am sure of it,' I replied. ‘Indeed I am sure that the chamber itself is little more than a containment vessel, a prison if you like, to hold what you call the intelligence. Trust me, Doctor. Trust my experience. There is no good to be gained from further exploration in this area.'

  "‘No good? Let me show you different, Mr. Carnacki,' Munroe said.

  "He led me back through the cavern system to the chamber containing the equipment that had mystified me earlier – the one I had thought might be some kind of agricultural implement.

  "‘Do you know what this is?' Munroe asked, placing a hand on a long copper casing that had drill-bits at one end and the most elaborate set of coils, springs and gears at the other. I confessed my utter ignorance.

  "‘It is cheap power for all,' he said. ‘No less than a way to fuel the entire future at minimal cost. This digger will bore into the ground to great depths, and, along with a cunning plumbing method I have also been shown, allow the tapping of the heat from the very core of the planet; heat that will fuel every engine, every factory, every country. Think on it, Carnacki.'

  "I was indeed thinking on it. I could clearly envisage the drill as it bit into the earth, burrowing ever deeper into the darkness. But I could not see any plumbing, nor any future. Instead what I saw were vast plumes of magma, rising up through newly formed tunnels to spout high in the air, sending noxious clouds to fill the sky and scalding lava to cover the earth. And once again, hanging above like a cloak of death, the black wings and echoing laughter of the old landlords as they reclaimed their tenancy in a world once more returned to its primal beginnings.

  "‘What can I do to convince you?' Munroe asked.

  "‘Believe me,' I said. ‘I am more than convinced enough.'

  He smiled, taking my reply as assent for what was coming next. I did not dissuade him of the notion.

  "‘Then you know how to nullify the chant? How to open us up to a full and complete passage of information with the intelligence?'

  "I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and let him lead me back to the main chamber."

  *

  Carnacki broke off again, and on looking in his eyes I saw that our old friend was most troubled.

  "You do not have to continue, old boy," I said. "Not if it is too painful a tale to tell?"

  Carnacki sucked hard on his pipe, then waved me aside.

  "It is a moral conundrum I have wrestled with since my return," he said. "And I am resolved to tell the tale. I will leave you chaps to ask yourselves what you might have done in my place. As for me, I can only hope and pray I made the right decision."

  He took some time getting a fresh pipe going before continuing.

  *

  "Munroe, by this time, had become rather excited at the prospect of being able to remove the influence of the incantation from his so-called dream state, and insisted that we make an attempt on the matter there and then.

  "In truth I was in no mood to wait, for I had made up my own mind on a course of action, one that I was not entirely sure I had the courage to follow through on. Waiting any longer would only have weakened my resolve.

  "‘Are you ready?' he asked me.

  "I did not trust myself to speak, merely nodded my head.

  "Once more, Munroe moved to stand beside the spring-engine. He flicked the switch and the cave filled with the sound of throbbing chords.

  "As before an answering pounding arose from below.

  "My head swam and I felt the allure of the dance pull at me. It needed all of my will to resist. I saw that Munroe had no such qualms. He stood still, hands at his side, face raised to where the light came in the high dome, eyes closed as if in ecstatic supplication.

  "Voices rose to join the beat, the chant I had recognised previously.

  "Ri linn dioladh na beatha, Ri linn bruchdadh na falluis, Ri linn iobar na creadha, Ri linn dortadh na fala.

  "By now my suspicions had been confirmed. This chamber was indeed little more than a prison, Munroe's intelligences were the inmates. . . and the chant was the lock that kept it closed.

  "I heard the inmates whisper to Munroe, promising a bright shining future, showing pastoral scenes of a happy world. I saw designs and diagrams of more machines, more clockwork and springs. I had not a single clue as to their purpose. But I knew that I had to do something to prevent them from ever becoming reality.

  "I brought to mind a ritual from the Sigsand mss, one I have never before had a need to use, and one I pray I never have to use again. Raising my voice to carry above the hubbub I called out the chant. I will not repeat the words here, for to do so would put you chaps in the utmost peril, and to have uttered it even once is almost more than a man can bear.

  "Suffice to say, it worked. But not as Munroe intended, for instead of opening the lock and releasing the inmates, I had done something far worse.

  "I summonsed screaming chaos from the Outer Darkness itself, calling it up from beyond to do my bidding.

  "The cave started to dim, as if a veil was being drawn over the sun. The whispers of the inmates turned to screams, shrieks so hideous that I thought my ears might burst. The dark began to swirl and spin, spiraling columns of blackness that danced over and around us in ever more frenzied motion.

  "Munroe shook himself, as if coming out of a trance.

  "‘Is it working?' he asked.

  "I started to pull him away towards the exit."

  "‘All too well," I replied. ‘Come away. It is over.'

  He laughed at me.

  "‘No. It is only just begun.'

  He walked to the center of the chamber and threw another switch. The organ pipes squealed even louder. The dark swirls gathered into deeper, more violent spirals, whirling dervishes that sucked up anything that wasn't fixed to the floor, crushing and mangling the copper plate, cogs and gears of Munroe's creations and turning them into fuel for ever faster destruction.

  "I backed away as the dark swelled over me. I muttered protective incantations under my breath, knowing even as I did so that I could not waste any more words on Munroe, for any pause would have meant joining him there in the chaos.

  "The last I saw of him as I backed off into the corridor was his ecstatic face raised high, the huge copper organ pipes thrown, dancing, in the air around him as the blackness swelled high above. . . and fell on him."

  "I only just managed to make it to the jetty as the caves collapsed in on themselves and I'm afraid I lost all of my luggage in the chaos, but that was the furthest thing from my mind at that point.

  "I had a frantic minute's worry as I tried to figure out how to pilot the boat, and I had only just managed to exit the small harbor before the whole island fell in on itself in a great gout of hissing steam. At the last a dark shape seemed to loom over the foaming waters, one that was torn into wisps by the wind and scattered even as the seas calmed.

  "Of Munroe's island, not a single trace was left.

&
nbsp; "I managed to get back to Tighnabruaich later that evening, and instructed the locals to burn the boat and anything they found on it. They were only to keen to comply, removing the very last vestiges of Munroe and his experiments from the face of the earth."

  *

  Carnacki stopped.

  He went quiet, and I thought he was done, but when he looked up there were fresh tears of anguish in his eyes.

  "Do you see, old friends? I have become that which I have fought against these long years. I have used the powers of the Outer Darkness to further my own ends. What say you? Am I to be eternally damned?"

  Arkwright spoke for us all.

  "Do not fret old chap," he said. "If what you related is indeed true, then you have spared us from a bleak future; one in which the Outer Darkness conspires to remake the world into a place suitable for all the haunts and bogles to inhabit."

  Carnacki was inconsolable.

  "But have I? Have I really?"

  On my way back along the Embankment I saw a large group of workers lower a great machine into the new tunnel workings for the Central Line enhancement program. The huge drill-bit at one end looked like a giant, ravenously hungry, mouth.

  Carnacki's last words stayed with me all the way home.

  The Terror That Came to Dounreay

  I didn't know what to expect. All they'd said was that it was a matter of national security. Just what they wanted with a fifty-year-old doctor of Biology with a gammy leg and a drink problem I wasn't told. I was given a train ticket and a contact name and sent off on an interminably slow train to Thurso.

  Once there I was met by a sergeant and a truck -- both of them well past their best. We rattled along an unpaved road for what seemed like hours, coming to a sudden halt at a manned checkpoint. A large sign at the side proclaimed the place to be Dounreay Site, AEC. That didn't help me much. There was also lettering underneath, but that was mostly covered by a strange construction of leaf and twig that had been hung over it.

  An attendant waved a torch and a gun in my face, I showed him my paperwork and we were allowed through to a cordoned off area of Nissen huts with a towering concrete structure beyond.

  The whole site lay along the top of what looked to be a raised beach, with the largest building clustered closest to the sea. A fogbank hung a mile offshore and moonlight danced in rocky coves. In other circumstances I might have found the spot calming, but I was not in the best of moods after my journey.

  Without further ado I was marched inside one of the huts to meet the commander of the base. I'm afraid the Colonel, a stiff little man with a stiffer little moustache, didn't take to me. From what I understood of my short briefing, I was seconded to this unit to ‘do my bit against the Soviets'. But by the time his orderly led me, via a warren of corridors through and between the maze of Nissen huts, into a lab that butted onto the concrete block, I was still none the wiser. It was only when I was introduced to the head of the team that I began to have some inkling as to why I had been summonsed.

  I knew Professor Rankin by reputation as an iconoclast, a visionary. . . and as mad as a bag of badgers. We'd worked together for a brief period during the war, and last I'd heard he had gone over to the Yanks for a huge stipend at one of the West Coast think tanks. I never expected to meet him here on a remote Scottish shoreline. His unruly mop of white hair shook as he grasped my hand. He was as thin as a rake, but his grip was as hard as cold steel.

  "Ballantine. And not a minute too soon. Come over here, man. You need to see this."

  He dragged me over to a long trestle covered with electronic gear; all lights, switches, meters and dials.

  "You know this isn't my thing," I started, but he was insistent.

  "Just look."

  He flicked a switch. Lights started to flash, meters started to swing.

  "What am I looking for?" I said after several minutes.

  "Look closer."

  I was at a loss. Clearly there was something important here I was meant to understand, but for the life of me it just looked like a series of lights and meters. It was only when I gave up looking for an answer that one came to me. I had to squint to see it, but it was there, a persistent flickering shadow that played over the instruments. As elusive as smoke in wind.

  Rankin leaned over and switched off the equipment. Now that I knew what I was looking for I could see it as it dispersed, rising away from the electronic gear.

  "What the hell was that?"

  Rankin smiled, but there was no humour in it. He looked to be more angry than anything else.

  "That's what I'm hoping you'll tell us," he said. "Come on, I've got some Scotch in my hut. Let's see what we can do about getting some of it inside us."

  *

  First of all I had to get myself settled. I was given a bunk in a dormitory-sized hut occupied mostly by squaddies who were already either bedding down for the night or preparing for night shift guard duty.

  "What are they guarding against?" I asked Rankin once I had joined him in his quarters. He had a small hut to himself, and had done his best to make it appear homely. Shelves filled with technical books filled the walls, and a pair of armchairs had been arranged beside a cast iron stove that filled the room with heat. Rankin poured two generous measures of Scotch, handed me one and waited until I got a pipe lit before starting.

  "I don't suppose you know anything about what we're doing here?" he said in reply to my question

  I shook my head.

  "Top secret stuff, I'm afraid," he continued. "And the Colonel will have me shot if I say too much. But let's just say that inside all that concrete there's an atomic facility. We're testing the effect of different doses of radiation on a variety of materials."

  "Why?" I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  "You're not that naive, Ballantine. You've seen the guards and the guns. This is, first and foremost, a military operation."

  I thought about that for a while as I got some of his, admittedly excellent, Scotch inside me.

  "So, why me? And what did I just see?"

  "One answers the other," he said, somewhat cryptically. "You specialise in exotic forms of life, don't you? Well this one seems to be as exotic as it gets."

  "That wasn't life," I said, but stopped when I saw the look in his eyes.

  "It grows, it moves under its own volition and it shows signs of intelligence. You tell me what it is, Ballantine."

  He got up and poured more Scotch for the two of us. I wasn't about to complain. He sighed deeply when he sat down again.

  "It started when we got the reactor going," he said. "My design, my baby, I had to be here for the big day, had to be the one hitting the switch. And so it was that I was the one who first noticed it. . . the only one that first time. I put it down to stress, but soon after that the night watch started to get twitchy and reports filtered through of badly scared men and ghoulies in the lab. I took to keeping watch myself, monitoring its behaviour.

  "Oh yes, Ballantine. It has behaviour. I study it, and it studies us. It never strays far from the reactor core, and seems most interested in the control board. It has never done any damage, as far as can be seen. But, and here's the thing that has the Top Brass worried, Ballantine. . . it is growing."

  *

  So began the strangest week of my life. I spent most of it on the night shift in the lab, and my days on the hard dormitory bed, trying to grab some sleep while the installation worked on around me. The only booze to be had was what I could scrounge from Rankin and after several days of no progress in my investigation he cut me off.

  It was on the first Saturday following my arrival that I decided to take a walk in to town; I needed to clear my head after some peculiar events the previous night, and a long walk on the sea cliffs seemed the best solution. The guard at the gate refused to let me leave, showing me instead to the Colonel's hut.

  There I had to listen to a long lecture about the importance of secrecy, and I was left in no doubt that the Col
onel believed our intruder to be a device of Russian origin.

  "And I will have no hesitation of blowing it to Kingdom Come if it comes to that."

  With one final admonishment against talking to the locals, he gave me a daily pass, told me to be back by seven p.m., and I was finally allowed to leave.

  It was one of those typically Scottish days where the sun only comes out sporadically between long periods of fog and drizzle. But I scarcely noticed. My mind was still reeling over the events of the night watch, and I let my feet follow the road while I tried to make sense of what I had seen.

  I have said that Rankin was not pleased with progress. That is because there had been none. I had observed the behavior of what we were now calling the entity, but had gleaned no new information.

  Last night that had all changed.

  As before I stood in front of the control panel and flicked the switch. And as before, the thing seemed to seep out of the concrete wall that housed the reactor core. What was different this time was the size. It had more than doubled, and seemed somehow more solid. Two long tendrils, like spectral arms, reached out towards me from the main mass and a chill seized the length of my spine. The squaddie who, until now, had stood quietly at the door let out a shriek and left at a run, but I was unable to move, frozen into immobility as something rifled through my mind as if it were little more than a filing cabinet. Memories I thought were long forgotten bubbled unbidden to the surface only to be tossed aside and discarded.

  And so it went, for what seemed to be an eternity. Until we came to my holiday experiences in the Mediterranean. I relived hot days on the ocean in a succession of small boats, but when we came to my time spent snorkeling among tumbled ruins the rifling through my brain stopped, and I experienced, all over again, almost in slow motion, my descents into blue deeps.

  Then, as quickly as it had come, the thing seemed to leave me. A thin mist hovered above the instrument board for several seconds then drifted off, once again soaking through the concrete until I was left quite alone. It was long minutes before I could bring myself to move, and even then all I could manage was to light a cigarette with a very shaky hand.