PROLOGUE
“They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died.”
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
A noisome scent overpowered the raw sea air, and Daniel Vigard couldn’t stop coughing. Daniel sat aft on his small Zodiac, a cup of coffee in one hand and the sea all around him. The sun climbed from under the mountains behind him, and the only ships that ever came out this early were fishing trawlers and charter boats, neither of which was common this late in the year. He could fit five or six people on his Zodiac, but he knew no one who liked to start their mornings this early, even though it was before the wind started blowing and the sun shone too brightly. It was mid-November, and Daniel had been coming out once a week since June to see the whales.
He often found groups of sea lions, but when he saw whales, it was only their spouts, far off in the distance. The last time he’d seen a whale close up had been early August and now it was close enough to winter that he might not see them again until next summer.
On one hand, he was wasting his time, and he knew it. On the other, he hadn’t saved up for most of his adult life to move to the coast, buy a yurt and a boat, and not look for whales. The caffeine-infused ritual of waves and gulls and foam and sea was itself enough to live for. On mornings like this, there wasn’t another boat within sight, and he felt like old Neptune himself.
Today, however, the smell of something horrible intruded on his happiness. It was a tangible, loathsome scent that clutched at him with cruel talons. For the first time since he was a child, Daniel felt fear. It overrode other concerns and worries, nibbled away at his subconscious.
It was hard to put his finger on what the smell was. Decaying meat, rotting fish, salt and brine; all of these were part of it, but none of them were all of it. Daniel considered himself healthier than most retirees, but this smell sickened him. Not in the disgusted sense of the word, but literally. He could feel ailments assaulting him through the stench; he could feel his body dying. His ex-wife had always said he had a gift for melodrama, but there was no other way to put it.
Below him, a great shadow rose. It was as if a shark were swimming under his boat. Except that in this case the shark was as big as a battleship. Something splashed at the starboard, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a slithering snake. There were no snakes in this part of the ocean. Not on the surface. Not to his knowledge. Uncertainty filled him. This snake, if snake it had been, looked significantly bigger than an anaconda.
Fear blossomed even greater in him, a nameless fear, a fear of dark places, a fear of deep waters. Without making a conscious decision, Daniel turned his Zodiac around.
“Fuck ’em,” he muttered, in his great fear dismissing the whales. His heart beat so quickly that he felt he could hear it.
The shadow beneath him grew. It was a somber, royal shade of green that seemed ready to swallow him. Another snake rippled through the waves ahead of him. And then there were snakes all around him, snakes with suction cups, and the stench was so bad, he vomited. His Zodiac was slammed from beneath as something huge hit him, and—.
And there was nothing more for Daniel Vigard ever again.
Chapter 1
It says something about the town of Portland, Oregon at the beginning of the 21st century that there were two different bars dedicated to the pulp writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The original, simply called ‘The Lovecraft Bar,’ sat close to the river and had horror-themed nights and goth parties. It does not much come into this story, save for once, much later. The second bar was slightly farther east, between SE Hawthorne and SE Division, and began humbly in a basement. A home-brewing husband and wife served their friends and neighbors ales while someone read from “Call of Cthulhu” or At the Mountains of Madness. This second bar quickly grew both in popularity and notoriety, and it expanded to an actual above-ground location within six months. Neither of them, the basement nor the bar, had a sign, but both were known to everyone as Shoggoths. Both of the bars, as much as any business in the city, perfectly fulfilled the local mantra of “Keep Portland Weird.”
After the bar opened, the basement fell out of sight, out of mind. There were some stories of hooded figures emerging on moonless nights, whispers of scaled and web-fingered aberrations coming to and fro, reports of men and women entering the house and never being seen again. But this was Portland, a self-proclaimed city of freaks, outcasts, and weirdos, and even when the anecdotes were believed, no one paid them much mind.
***
Maggie stared at her compasses, baffled at their utter failure. Both of them, the red and clear one she’d received from her father on her thirteenth birthday and the newer, much more expensive Brunton, were acting very strangely.
They weren’t broken exactly, but it was like they no longer were certain about anything. One moment they trembled achingly in one direction, and the next they inverted their minds and stretched the other way. She adjusted the East/West screws and the North/South, but it was too overcast to use the sun to calibrate them. Besides, the compass arms were jumping around as though on magnetic fire. She didn’t have a smartphone, so she radioed the Hatchery and spoke to Dave.
He attributed it to defective equipment, but he radioed her back a few minutes later, a little breathless. “Damnedest thing,” he said. “It’s almost as if the poles are shifting, trading places, one minute to the next.” Dave had gotten online and told her this phenomenon was already being discussed on message boards for the outdoor inclined. It wasn’t just compasses—GPSs were similarly affected.
Maggie gave up on charting the creek, and she drove back to the Hatchery and spent the latter part of the afternoon on the forums, reading about compass failure and describing her own experience. It seemed to be focused in the Pacific Northwest, with most of the chatter coming from Washington, Idaho, and especially the Oregon Coast.
The next morning, as she sipped from a cup of coffee and warmed her hands against the crisp morning air, Maggie got an email. It was sent to her personally, not her work address, and the sender identified only as [email protected]. The message said, rather dramatically: “Seek ye Shoggoths.”
Dave was about the age of her father and knew the reference right away. Maggie read mainly nonfiction, but even she had heard the name H.P. Lovecraft. She knew little besides the name, however, and Dave told her about Cthulhu, the octopus-dragon–like creature that slumbered under the sea, and shoggoths, shapeless monsters made of bubbles. It was all a little juvenile, and she didn’t understand why so many people were transfixed by a giant octopus.
Maggie ignored the message, but the next day another one came, from the same sender. It read: Maggie, please listen to me. Great evil is afoot. You need to find the source of it. Go to Shoggoths.
She didn’t use her personal email for anything but staying in contact with friends and family. She marked the message as SPAM and blocked the sender. But the phrase kept tumbling through her mind.
“Seek ye Shoggoths.” When she told Dave, he told her about the bar in Portland. “Maybe they mean there?” He had laughed away the idea of a stalker. “You probably linked to something with your name. Or it’s someone who knows you in real life. Elena down at OSU, maybe. I mean, who would stalk you, Maggie?” he asked, not in an unkind way. She liked how he teased her. But he had a point, too.
Maggie’s hair was long, always worn in a braid, and she wore a stained bandana when she was out in the field, which was most days. She wasn’t fat but knew she was considerably thicker than the women in magazines. She hadn’t really dated much at all, not even in college. Men didn’t hit on her, and the few times she had initiated, it always backfired. Not that it truly bothered her. Portland and even Hood River was full of pretentious white boys obses
sed with the relics of childhood—be it comics, fiction, or windsurfing. They didn’t like a dark-skinned girl like her. And the ones that did saw her only for skin, for her heritage. Why was it so hard to find men who saw her for herself?
Maybe her dad was right. He always said she needed to date one of her own kind. He was a disastrous oh-for-three on picking dates for her so far though. And her dad would be the first to admit he was rarely right about anything at all.
The stalker idea didn’t really sound plausible, and she had to come into Portland anyway, to pick up the month’s supply of chow and pills for Kamuks. He was a mutt through-and-through, mostly black but specked with white spots. He was getting old now, was a little blind in his left eye and not as fleet of foot as he had been, but he was a good pooch. She almost didn’t mind the small fortune on his food and heartworm medicine. He rode in the back of her pickup as she cruised the sixty miles along the I-84. There weren’t any cops, which was an unexpected bonus.
The shopping trip was uneventful, though Maggie did unexpectedly buy a six-pack of pumpkin beer. After she dropped the heavy bag of food in the back of the truck, patting Kamuks on the head, she cruised around for some time. Southeast Portland was a warren of narrow streets, many claiming to be two-way but with room for only one. There were roundabouts, traffic circles, and plenty of streets that just ended abruptly.
At long last, feeling more stressed than she should, Maggie parked under a tree that had already shed half of its bright yellow leaves. She could see Shoggoths. As Dave had described, it was a signless place between a Bhutanese food cart and a joint that served only pancakes made with microbrews.
“Seek ye Shoggoths,” Maggie muttered. Her impulse to come to this bar seemed silly now. She didn’t go out much, and being around people she didn’t know made her feel uncomfortable. But Dave was something of a regular here, and he would ask her about it tomorrow. What could she say? She wouldn’t tell him that she was afraid. It was too easy to fall into a rut and do the same things every day.
Decision made, she scratched Kamuks on the chin. “Stay,” she told him, leaving him to guard his own food, and crossed the street. Shoggoths was a converted old house, with half a flight of stone steps lit by pumpkin and white star lights leading up to it.
Though it was dark, it was early, not yet seven, and the bar was mostly empty. And still the indolent bartender dismissed her with a glance. In her faded jeans and flannel shirt, she was from Oregon’s industrious past and not part of its illustrious future.
She hesitated at the long list of choices—54 beers on tap someone had written with pink chalk on a board above the bar. She wavered between ordering a Cthulhu Kaiju Kölsch or a Headless Horseman IPA before ordering a Chocolate Cucumber Stout that she quite enjoyed.
But the clarity she sought was not to be found. No one tried to make eye contact with her, no one came up to speak to her, and she sat there glumly, wondering what she would tell Dave. She didn’t feel comfortable ordering another beer and driving home. Drink finished, she paid and left. The night air was chilly for early November, and the darkness had grown. She sighed. It was going to be a long, cold drive back to Hood River. The heater in her pickup had stopped working years ago.
She was halfway across the street when two men grabbed her. She twisted and spun. They were wearing skinny jeans, black jackets, and light green ski masks with several tentacles dangling from the mouth.
“I’a! I’a!” one of them whispered hoarsely at her.
The other pulled his arm back. Something dark and shiny glittered in the streetlight.
Maggie opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped down on her as a third man grabbed her from behind. She felt the tentacles from his ski mask whip into her head as she fought back, stomping hard on his foot.
On her foot. For a moment, Maggie had had her body pressed against the third attacker and had felt soft breasts pressed into her back. This realization took a moment of Maggie’s time, only a scant moment, but it was enough.
The one with the dark metal in his hand brought it down. Maggie twisted so that, instead of her heart, it plunged into her hand. The bright pain slashed through her body and her mind reeled. Blood spurted out; far too much blood, far too quickly.
Now she screamed. The three closed in on her, blood leaking from the hard blade onto the dark street. They pressed in on her, and she felt more hopeless than she ever had. The blade was in the air again, and she realized it was volcanic, an obsidian dagger.
The dagger clattered to the ground as a savage shape hit the knife-wielder. Kamuks leaped in front of Maggie protectively and growled in a way that Maggie had never heard. It was a primal protective growl, the kind that brooked no dissent.
Faced with a fanged guard instead of an unsuspecting victim, the three ski-masked assailants fled into the dark night. Maggie stumbled to the sidewalk and slumped to the ground, afraid to look at the deep cut.
A young woman with blue hair dropped her bike to the ground and ran to her. “Are you alright? I saw you, but I thought you were filming a movie or something.”
“I’m fine,” Maggie said with effort.
“Let me call the cops.”
“Don’t do that,” Maggie said. “My dog. He bit them.”
“He was defending you,” the blue-haired girl said.
“Do you think that will matter to them? I’ll be fine. Really. Thanks for your concern.”
The girl stared at her as she climbed back into her pickup, Kamuks in the passenger seat now. Maggie drove out of the city and back toward home. An old shirt staunched the blood, but the pain and the aching only grew.
She didn’t want to deal with the police, but she did need a doctor. Health insurance was expensive, and she had opted out, gambling on her good health so she could save for grad school. At any rate, she could clean and bandage the wound herself tonight and deal with it tomorrow.
Maggie suddenly pulled her truck over and leaped out into the darkness. Kamuks whined plaintively at her, but she hardly heard him. She vomited into the bushes as the reality of the attack finally set in. Her body trembled irrationally, and the old cloth wrapped around her hand was soaked through.
She looked up at the night sky and forgot the attack, the throbbing in her hand, forgot everything. It was dark on the road from Portland to the Gorge; the shadows were awash in starlight. But they were the wrong constellations. She was looking at the wrong galaxy. The stars were wrong.
Chapter 2
“What is that smell?” Anna asked. Her nostrils flared as she scanned the beach for any possible culprits. But there was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. No obvious collections of garbage or boats filled with rotting fish.
“Noe lukter vondt,” Cato said. He wore black-rimmed glasses and skinny jeans.
“Um, in English, please,” Carter asked.
“Something smells terrible,” Anna translated. Her gaze turned to the sea. “Look at that cloud. Is that usual here?”
Carter looked. The cloud in question was ominously hovering over the sea, alone in the blue vastness. It was colored a sickly green, like someone had vomited pea soup.
“I haven’t ever seen anything like it,” Carter said. “It kind of creeps me out.”
“We don’t have such clouds in Norway,” Cato said.
“We don’t normally have them here,” Carter replied. “Maybe it’s that cloud that stinks. Some kind of gas accumulation?”
“I don’t think it’s the cloud I smell,” Anna said. “Come on.”
“I don’t want to get in the way of your couple time,” Carter said. “Three’s a crowd.”
“We’re not a couple,” Cato said. Anna just laughed. People always thought that. Didn’t they realize that most people spent more time with coworkers and friends than they did with their partners? The probability did not line up.
“Why does everyone here think that?” she asked, shaking her head. It seemed a silly assumption. “I just don’t get it. Anyway, let’s g
et to exploring the beach.”
Cato followed her, as he always did. They were coworkers from Scancom, a small technology firm in Oslo. The two were in Oregon for a week researching a new type of desalination that promised to change the world. That was the official purpose of their trip, at any rate.
After working through jetlag in the Portland office for four long fourteen-hour days, they were going to the beach for the day. Their American liaison, Carter, who worked for an affiliate company, had offered to drive them. Both had accepted, though each would have rather gone rock climbing or downhill biking or done something more active.
They had slept in that morning and driven out from Portland to a small town called Seaside. It was a significant tourist attraction in the summer, but on this cool autumn weekday the beach was nearly empty. A couple walked hand in hand, leaving footprints in the wet sand. A toddler threw a stick for a dog while his parents beamed and took dozens of pictures. A young woman sat in the grass and sketched. Apart from them, the beach was deserted.
The smell grew worse as they walked south. After half an hour, they saw the gulls, hundreds of them. Thousands of them. The white birds were swarming over the sand and landing in the shallow waves. Cato gagged and had to pull his shirt up to breathe.
“Is that what I think it is?” Carter asked.
“I think so,” Anna answered. “Come on.”
The shrieks of the gulls as they fled before the human interlopers were nigh deafening. Their flight revealed a twisted sight. Thousands of dead sea creatures were washing ashore—fish mainly, but also seals, octopuses, even a few massive sea lions. More were brought in with the fresh waves even as they watched.
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