The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

by Adrian Cole et al.

  Something strikes the outer wall of our tent. We both leap to our feet, looking at one another in mutual confusion. The wall is thumped again. And again. Then once more.

  Snatching up a flashlight, Miriam darts though the partition into the front portion of the tent. I scramble to follow. I don’t want to be left alone. The thumps against the tent continue. Miriam rifles through an equipment crate, finally coming up with a small pistol which she’d somehow managed to smuggle through. She shoves an ammo cartridge into it, instructing me to grab the flashlight. My hand shakes as I pick it up and reluctantly follow her outside, deriving a shallow sense of security from the Swiss army knife in my jacket pocket.

  The pulsating songs of the nightjars vibrate the very air, giving the area a false sense of life, as if the island itself is a beast ensconced in deep slumber. Warily, we round the tent’s front corner. The beam of my flashlight washes the wall.

  Lowering her gun, Miriam laughs. “It’s only the birds. They’re feeding.”

  In the darkness, our tent walls glow from within. The air is thick with insects. Swarms of beetles and moths cling to the tent walls while nightjars wheel about and bounce off the canvas, plucking the choice morsels off.

  Like a pair of schoolgirls, we share our relief with laughter and make use of the latrine while we’re out before settling back into our tent. Miriam snuffs out the propane lantern, immersing us in utter darkness.

  “We’d be well off to keep our activity confined to daylight hours or we’ll be overrun nightly with unwanted guests. Sleep well, Diana.”

  I settle into my cot. Within minutes, the thumps against the tent walls wane. Eventually, the churring outside tapers off, leaving little more than a whisper of waves lapping the nearby shore. As I drift off in the ensuing silence, from deep within the sand beneath us, I swear I hear a distant moan.

  * * * *

  After breakfast, Miriam tasks me not only with collecting and identifying insect specimens, but with the mounting of an infrared camera inside the populous nesting grounds as well.

  “Be careful where you step,” she warns before wandering off with a charred notebook and a GPS device in hand, her pistol holstered upon her belt. Last night’s levity has vanished. This morning she’s all business.

  As if forced to make an unwanted appearance, the sun looks sullen today. It’s difficult to maneuver around the nests, and whenever I snap an insect into a jar it stirs up a flurry as the birds attempt to draw me away. The eggs resemble small pale pebbles upon the soil, nearly invisible to the untrained eye. When undisturbed, the birds resemble stones as well—thousands of rounded dull brown stones nestled among the surrounding grass and black basalt boulders. Stones with large, obsidian eyes, ceaselessly staring.

  I suspect I’m only here to provide Miriam an appearance of propriety, gathering data on insects and birds while she’s off searching for the fourth dimension. If she should succeed, will she truly include me in her discovery? Why would she if I’m not by her side? I have doubts it even exists, but what a legacy that would be! Yet here I am, scrubbing for bugs which could easily be plucked from a tent wall in the night.

  The collection of more insects can wait. I close the specimen case to scope out a suitable location to mount the camera. As my movement ceases, the birds hush, their assiduous surveillance over me unnerving. Other than the wave action on the shore, the sudden silence wraps me up so tight I’m afraid to breathe, to make any movement or noise. Afraid to be heard? There’s a fraction of taint in the air, an odor of decay and rot, the undeniable stench of an ancient tomb. Despite the protection of my jacket, the brumal breeze turns my blood to ice.

  I glance back at the lone stone monolith which overlooks the sea like some grieving widow whose husband failed to return from his voyage. I wonder for what, or for whom it’s waiting. I’d like to investigate it up close, but it won’t be today. I need to catch up with Miriam before she disappears from my sight completely.

  On an island bereft of trees, I have little choice but to mount a post atop one of the hundreds of barrows that give the island its name. They dot the land in small grassy mounds, from round to oval, giving the illusion of a rolling, hilly landscape. Similar barrows on the mainland have dated back as far as 3000 B.C. It seems profane to drive a stake into a burial mound yet atop a mound will give us the best vantage point for filming.

  Threading my way through the minefield of nesting nightjars, stirring them back into action, I locate a suitable observation spot. “My apologies,” I whisper, bringing my hammer down upon the mounting post, driving it into the earth. As if I’d driven the stake into a living being, at this very moment the island shudders, nearly knocking me off my feet. A rumbling groan gurgles up from deep within the soil.

  The unexpected seismic activity leaves me breathless. It’s a hasty job accomplished with shaking hands and a racing heart, but I manage to get the infrared camera mounted, aimed, and the timer set. Snatching up the tool bag and specimen case, I hasten toward the center of the isle to catch up with Miriam.

  The nightjars only nest on the lower grounds, leaving the hillside free and easy to navigate, the only impediment being the abundance of grass-covered barrows. Zig-zagging around them, I’m slightly winded by the time I approach Miriam near the hillcrest.

  “I’ve noted a distinct lack of predation here,” I tell her between breaths. “The ample food and lack of natural predators are likely the main factors—”

  “The gateway is up here,” she interrupts, cutting me to silence. “I should have known it would lie within the temple.” She shoves her GPS device into her jacket pocket but keeps her notebook in hand, heading further up the hill.

  “I guess it makes sense that the druids would build a temple on such—”

  “You give them too much credit,” she admonishes. “The druids may have made use of this temple, but they certainly had no hand in its construction.”

  Shaken by another small tremor as we approach the crest, Miriam doesn’t miss a beat.

  “When humankind was barely out of infancy,” she continues, “too young to comprehend what they were incapable of understanding, their superstitious minds deemed this a place of magic when, in fact, it’s simply part of natural reality. Mankind simply needed to mature in order to understand and make proper use of it.”

  Devoid of grass, the crest is littered with toppled pillars of ancient Lewisian gneiss. I wonder how they were brought here, who actually brought them, and why they no longer stand. At one time surely they’d stood as proudly as those at Stonehenge, yet now lie in disgrace, though not necessarily due to time or seismic tremors. They appear to have been felled purposely toward the center of the circle, completely blocking any access.

  “It’s a shame it collapsed,” I dare to voice my opinion.

  “What’s truly a shame, Diana, is that Andrew attempted to deny this to humanity. But great knowledge does not come without its price, and he paid his.”

  She steps to the end of the nearest stone slab, a full six feet tall, equal that in width, and probably fifteen feet in length.

  “Be a dear, Diana. Climb up top and give us a look.”

  I’ve never been adept at rock-climbing but set my tool bag and specimen case aside. After locating several suitable hand and footholds, I lug my way up to the top face while Miriam whispers what sounds like a prayer. The stone seems to shift as I stand and I shake off a momentary lightheadedness. The distinct stench of Tuama is thick up here, yet awestruck, I suck back my breath, then slowly release it, holding strong doubts these stones ever stood upright.

  “Miriam, you really should see this.” The stones are laid out perfectly, like the spokes of a wheel, wider at this outer end, tapering slightly as they converge around the empty, center hub. This is too precise to have been accidental. But why have I never seen pictures?

  The little girl inside of me who used to hide under the covers during lightning storms fully resurfaces, urging me now to run away. Run fast. Run far. Fi
ghting against retreat, I glance back. Miriam struggles to work her way up but I won’t help her. Since she was adamant that I come up here ahead of her, I fully intend to get the first look.

  I force my feet toward the center and peer down, immediately inundated with a potent, vertiginous rush, and swiftly kneel to keep from tumbling over the edge. Below, where the bare earth should be, lies a deep chasm of cosmic darkness swirling with phosphorescent gaseous whorls in druzy black velvet, as if viewed straight through the lens of the Hubble Telescope. I’m gazing into another existence—one beyond all words, beyond time, and into the well of infinite knowledge. A gateway to the fourth dimension. What was a moment ago nothing but unproven theory has become unmistakable fact.

  Though dizzying, it draws me in for a closer look. Behind me, Miriam’s voice drifts through in some uttered litany with guttural words foreign to my ears. The cadence raises an ominous dread in my soul. Before I can respond, the air crackles, electric. All sound disappears beneath the rise of ten thousand nightjars shooting into the sky to blot out the sun, ushering in a false twilight. The discordant din is deafening, their shrill and harrowing cries competing with the booming roar of air rushing beneath their wings.

  Disgorging violently from underground comes a resonant groan. Beneath me, the massive stone heaves and shifts. I cling to the rock to keep from plunging into the cosmic well. From the depths, a nauseating gas spews up, a stench so foul I can only envision a fetid cesspit into which a thousand decomposing bodies have been left to rot.

  I lived the majority of my life in San Bernadino on the San Andreas fault. Whatever this is, it’s like no earthquake I’ve ever experienced before. It feels so much more “alive.”

  A tarry ooze rolls up from the depths at the heart of the wheel, flooding our surrounds with a fathomless, stygian sea, undulating jellylike beneath the splayed stone slabs. Earth vanishes, the sky overhead blackened by birds, the stones inconceivably buoyed above the influx of dark waves. In the focal core, bubbling to the surface emerges a bronzy, serpentine thing, fully ten feet long, followed by a dark orb, faceted with plate-sized hexagonal cells resembling monstrous ommatidia of an arthropod’s eye.

  I scuttle back with nowhere to go, surrounded by the putrescent black liquid that sloshes and slurps hungrily against the sides of the stones. The monstrous eye rises, peering over the edge of the stone, the bronze antenna sinuously waving in the darkened air.

  “I’m sorry, Diana.” Miriam’s voice echoes as if she’s miles away.

  “By the love of all that’s holy, what is this?” I gasp, whirling around. Catching sight of Miriam, I melt into the stone. Her face ashen, she kneels beside her journal at the far end of our impossible raft, her pistol drawn and aimed directly at me.

  “Great discoveries come with a great price.” She keeps the gun steady with both hands. “I had to bring you, you see. It’s nothing personal. But according to Andrew’s journal, the gatekeeper will need to feed.”

  It takes several moments for her intent to hit home and all I can do is glare in gaping disbelief. But, the cold-hearted bitch is going to have to shoot me because there’s no way I’ll go willingly into this horror show.

  At this moment, our impossible raft keels sharply to the left and I cling for my life. Rising like a breaching whale, a segmented, plated crustacean shell, gleaming metallically, arcs up through the ebony liquid—a leviathan bronze deviant nearly prehistoric in nature. It rolls to the right, further rocking our float, exposing countless centipede-like legs.

  Dozens of jointed limbs latch onto the stone, glistening like patent leather on the aboral side, the ventral sides laden with rubbery tubular protuberances which walk across the stone with smooth, hydraulic movements. Every leg joint sports two barbed, writhing tendrils that crack the air like whips.

  We’ve no place to go, trapped like deer on an ice floe.

  One of the tendrils snaps out, coiling around my ankle. Beneath my jeans, my skin burns like a brand.

  I scream. The nightjars scream. From the far end of the stone, comes another scream. Miriam’s.

  Another tendril lashes out, wrapping around my left wrist.

  Recoiling, I yank back. It squeezes tighter. Eight gunshots ring out. Instinctively, I duck, and the tendrils pull me toward the edge of the stone.

  To no avail, my fingernails claw at the leathery flesh wrapped like a tourniquet about my wrist, my hand burning and swelling as the flow of blood is cut off.

  Wriggling my free hand into my jacket pocket, I locate my pocketknife and slice the inner corner of my mouth while prying it open with my teeth. The taste of my own blood fuels my fury as I slash at the tendril above my wrist.

  All at once, the nightjars hush. There’s no time to ponder why, but without their clamor, all that remains are slurps, slithers, and Miriam’s frantic mewls and howls.

  Repeatedly, I slash at the tendrils that bind me, alternately between the one at my wrist and the one at my ankle. A black wave swells, heaving the stone into a precarious slant. I slip closer to the edge.

  Slashing desperately, again and again and again, I’m nicking much of my own skin in the process. The ropy tendril above the coil about my wrist begins to bleed, exuding a milky green mucous as noxious as the fetor at the center of the wheel.

  Gagging back my retch, I continue to hack at the tendrils until I cut through enough to wrench my wrist free. Several more slashes and the tendril above my foot tears apart. I squirm back, away from the edge.

  “Help me!” Miriam cries, sliding toward the far edge of the stone, firmly entangled within a grisly clutch of tendrils. Her right hand still grips her gun, the left one outstretched, her eyes pleading with words she cannot utter.

  I scoot across the expanse and reach for her. Our fingers touch. Interlock. Then, with a deliberate, unconscionable calm, I let go and draw my hand back. “It’s nothing personal,” I say. The gatekeeper needs to feed.

  The tendrils drag her off the stone, plopping into the inky jelly below. Miriam froths within the black sea, her eyes wide and white with terror until her screams drown inside gulps and inaudible burbles.

  She disappears into the murk and the turbulence grows still. Only a scathing silence remains.

  Encased within raw cold, I cannot move.

  Dear god, what have I done?

  The nightjars screech, piercing the dead silence. The ebony sea drains into the earth leaving the ground dry and unblemished, the monstrosity within vanquished. The nightjars break away, releasing the recalcitrant sun. The stone which buoyed me rests haphazardly upon the barren earth, the precise layout of the stones no longer existent. Only the burning remnant of a tendril still coiled about my wrist assures me the experience was not hallucination.

  I struggle to peel the remains from my flesh. It clings as if it had teeth and leaves behind bloody gashes as I finally wrest the leechlike tendril from my skin. Flinging the gruesome thing as far away as I can, I watch aghast as it wiggles and burrows like a worm into the soil.

  Easing myself down off the stone, I warily test the earth with my foot. Do I dare trust its solidity? Nearly hidden in the stone’s shadow, Miriam’s notebook lies abandoned in the dirt, the only evidence of what truly happened here. I inch my way to it and snatch it up before forcing my feet to take me back to the shore, grateful they still obey.

  They come to an unbidden standstill when I near the base of the hill.

  Here stands a fresh mound of soil liberally laced with the earthy stench of Tuama. It had not existed when I passed this way on my ascent. No grass grows upon it. The meager sunlight gleams off the barrel of a pistol poking out from the dank dirt of the island’s most recent barrow.

  Tightening my grip upon Miriam’s journal, I note the last few pages had been completely consumed by fire. What horrible truths had been burned from existence?

  Dr. Andrew Whateley was right to attempt to destroy it. I only wish he had succeeded, for humankind will never be mature enough for the eldritch knowledge it con
tains. I bury the book deep beneath the fresh soil. Tuama can keep her secrets.

  The nightjars watch. They stare with accusatory knowing. Unblinking. Unmoving.

  I will be glad to be free of this isle of tombs. But what will I say about Miriam?

  Reaching the dinghy, I push the small boat into the water, scramble aboard and begin to row. The Kintyre Peninsula mainland is little more than a mile distant. I can see it, beckoning like a mother to her lost child.

  I can’t stop shivering and there is no warmth in the sulky sun. My oars smack desperate and hard against the water. Overhead, the sky darkens. Like flies drawn to the dead, nightjars swarm around the dinghy. A flash of bronze skims the crest of a turbulent wave. The boat tilts. Above, spotlighted within a beam of sunlight, a lone stone monolith stares out at the sea—a sea turning black as the night, reeking with the undeniable stench of an ancient tomb.

  MERCY HOLDS NO MEASURE, by Kenneth Bykerk

  A Tale of the Bajazid

  There is an old oak tree that stands sentinel before a drum of curious design on the backside of the mountains men today call the Bradshaws. Hidden behind a thick copse of manzanita, there stands a convex disc four feet in diameter and formed of a rough skin, a pliant bark taut and wrinkled with glyphs almost perceptible, in the wall of a small canyon, an insignificant gully at the end of an unnamed wash. At the center of this drum, an eye within concentric rings of discordant display, lies an artifact of a most unusual nature. At first glance one might imagine a pearl or a piece of ivory stained and yellowed, a chip of well-worn antler or a kernel of quartz stuck in the center of that shield. It protrudes but barely and quivers ever so slightly with an uncertain rhythm, a beat too low, too soft to register the air with sound.

  * * * *

  He had had enough. Of all the professions he had tried in his years, this he determined was perhaps the loneliest. He didn’t mind the solitude, at least to a degree. He had always worked in the company of others but the further west he had come, the more he became accustomed to such quietude. When that time alone stretched beyond normal bounds, when the company of others was denied for a week, a fortnight or more, then he began to chafe. He began to regret his self-imposed exile and determined he had had enough. Some men are hermits by nature and some just in passing. For Samuel Delrosa, the allure of hermitage had long since passed and it was time to return to the world, any part of the world as long as it was far away from this damned hole in the ground.