Shoggoth 2- Rise of the Elders

by Byron Craft

  There was a “click,” and they were accosted with the familiar strain of the outré musical score. The ethereal, rhythmically wavering tonal composition sung in unison by an alien choir rose higher in volume filling the chamber, which echoed and re-echoed through the great hall.

  “It’s that damn music again!” Gideon called out.

  No longer a pillar, it was a mammoth cylinder telescoping upward. The transparent tube retracted into the hole in the ceiling. The immense rugose cone, nine to ten feet high, now fully exposed, turned and observed them. Veins were sunken in the colossal frame with the spaces between them elevated, as the leaves of an oversized garden sage; they pulsated sluggishly. The distended limbs spread out from the body brandishing its lobster-like claws. The weird aspect of the thing suggested a creature from the sea.

  Then it moved. Leaving its resting place, the Elder Being walked by the expansion and contraction of a viscous layer discharged from a base that was as wide as it was tall.

  Pemba screamed again. She cradled her head in both hands and whimpered in pain. “I can feel it,” she cried out. “It is pulling and pushing at me. It knows us. Why? How? When? There is a pressure, it aches!” Gideon dragged Pemba away just as she shrieked, “Nooo! There are three traces of intelligence, interconnected!”

  Gideon took Pemba by the arm, and they ran to the sealed doorway. Unsure of the big-eyed creature’s intent Gideon drew his pocket knife flipping open the short blade. If it came for them, he knew that the knife would be a futile defensive weapon. Nevertheless, it gave him a modicum of comfort. The temperature near the door was hotter than the rest of the chamber. As Gideon and Pemba moved further away from the abomination, they felt intense heat at their backs. Both turned in unison to witness a glowing circle of heat in the center of the five-sided obstruction. The heat was unbearable. Too close for comfort they were forced to turn away closing the gap again between them and the Elder creature. The large spot turned red-hot, then white-hot, then molten resembling mercury flowing onto the chamber floor.

  “The door, it’s alive,” lamented Pemba. At the precise moment of her declaration, they were confronted by an unpleasant mélange of resonances, interspersed with indecipherable whisperings and gurglings. As the liquifying heat intensified, the noise distorted to the wailing of a thousand infants. The last layer of the barrier melted, collapsing inward. Cool air wafted through. Had the five-sided door been a living thing?

  ***

  Dutch was the first to react. His best bud was in danger, and he wasn’t about to let anything get in his way. Still carrying his flamethrower, fuel tanks strapped to his back, he shouldered an M16A. The equipment did little to weigh him down running through the melted passageway, leaping over a heap of molten debris.

  ***

  Overwhelmed plus ecstatic, Gideon observed his rescuers armed to the teeth. Old Tom Ironwood a cheerful, almost comical sight, followed close behind Dutch, giving the impression of a bearded Clint Eastwood lugging an assault rifle. Moses Jones, after stripping off his firestick, pulled up the rear with a Sig Sauer P320 in hand.

  A joyful reunion of five stood in the lofty chamber. Dutch tapped Gideon on the shoulder and pointed toward the interior. A half-a-dozen or more cylinders had raised upward, and a pack of cone-shaped giants skittered about the area.

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Ironwood, “the Great Race, the creatures of our dreams!”

  Alert to notice some differences amongst the throng, Gideon pointed to a couple of them and commented to the Professor, “Interesting, Sir, a few of them have varying characteristics. Look closely, the one we observed first, has two thick muscular extended arms with pincers on the end like a clawed lobster plus a single tentacle terminated with stubby fingers. While those two, over there, have only one clawed arm and two tentacles.”

  “Male and Female?” Ironwood suggested. “Or maybe the ones with two tentacles are a working-class Elder Being?”

  One of the two-tentacled organisms appeared transfixed on the human invaders as it slithered in the direction of the locomotive-sized machine in a smooth continuous motion. Gideon was astonished on how fast the thing skimmed across the chamber floor creating a wake of dust in its trail. Within a few seconds, it reached the machine and grasped two of the long glass rods with its tentacles, pulling them toward it. Pemba let out a squeal of surprise when everyone observed the creature’s head antennae sprout several feet in length and gently tweak five of the bulky test tubes.

  Once again, Pemba and Gideon were met with the familiar alien music. “You told us,” addressed Gideon as he turned to the Professor, “that eventually everything they created was organic. Do you think what we are now hearing is one of their motors operating? The biological equivalent of the sound of one of our car engines, the furnace at home kicking in, or the dishwasher running?”

  “I think you are spot on, Gideon. Although, I believe your dishwasher analogy is a bit of a stretch.”

  “What is the thing doing?” asked Sergeant Jones.

  “Look!” cried Pemba.

  Pouring from the trumpet-shaped orifice end was a bubbling mass, an incredible affair with tentacles like ropes. A horrible, wet sound followed a sucking, slithering, hungry sound.

  Dutch was quick to act again. He ignited the barrel end of his firestick and charged the bubbling mass. The air first filled with the sweet sickening smell of honeysuckle, then the fragrance was swiftly overcome by the unpleasant odor of blazing fossil fuel. The big Dutchman fire-bombed the emerging shoggoth before its formation was complete. Now a new scent assailed their nostrils, the tang of burning plastic. There was no place for it to retreat, trapped between its creation device and the controlled stream of fire. In the blink of an eye, it was incinerated.

  From behind Dutch the towering cone-being came and lifted him into the air with one of its tentacles. The muscular form of the big man fought to break free, except the power of the Elder Being was too great. It peered at him through the gloom of the chamber with three eyes that glowed red as if examining a lab specimen. Dutch unshouldered his M16A, but the second tentacle slapped it from his grip. The rifle fell clattering to the floor. The one-foot thick distensible limb rose up. Its enormous claw opened and grabbed him by the chest. The alien mandible was an arrangement of serrated edges surrounded by large, rounded, molar-like teeth. The claw contracted, its sharp edges severing the straps holding the flamethrower backpack causing it to fall to the floor as well. A guttural scream emanated deep from the throat of the Dutchman as his chest crushed and his heart burst.

  A voice sprung from the Elder Being sounding like a wind-blown reed. It rose a note or two, a sonorous quality, that seemed to ring in triumph. The tone changed again and took on a sudden, demonic bite of crazed amusement. The heartless creature released its prey and Dutch’s lifeless form slammed into the granite floor.

  Hope did not spring eternal when Gideon gazed into eyes like coals under a bellows, worn by a creature that to him was spawned in hell. Rage and revenge were the only considerations that occupied his thoughts. Gideon scooped up the fallen M16A and began to lay waste to the hellspawn. Gideon fired one round after another in rapid succession with the vengeance of an experienced killer. Of genuine blood there was none; only a fetid greenish-yellow ichor that gushed from each puncture wound painting the floor and alien machinery.

  Ironwood shouted for Gideon to, “Stop! To them, we are the invaders. We must try to communicate with them!”

  Gideon ignored his appeal. He tossed his M16A aside; its 30-rounds spent and seized Ironwood’s weapon from his grasp. Firing once more he proceeded to empty the rifle’s magazine into the creature; only the attempt had now become pointless. The two-tentacled Elder Being had toppled, its sides fell inward resembling a collapsed tent. The being that had survived millions of years in stasis was still, never to rise again.

  Despair crawled through Gideon’s body and doused his insides icy cold. He fell to his knees alongside his dead friend and wept.


  ***

  Pemba rushed to Gideon’s side. She wanted to comfort him, but she felt a tremendous bolt of fury and remorse pouring from his soul. It was an emotional wave so severe that she dared not get any closer to him. A blood-freezing scream of raging ferocity shot through her. It sent an icy shudder down her spine. She began to weep reflecting his deep feelings. Unable to handle the emotive trauma any longer she stepped back and away from the man she was falling in love with and nearly fell backward. Ironwood caught her and dragged her away from Gideon. “Come Pemba,” he softly spoke to her. “Leave him with his grief.”

  Pemba dried her eyes with the back of her hand. Deep within the interior of the massive chamber, she could see that the Elder Beings, still growing in number, recoiled from their human aggressors. For the first time, she could read them. She sensed fear. An emotion not unknown to the alien cones, nevertheless a sensation that was seldom communally experienced. Straight away she comprehended their dismay. The longevity of the Great Race lessened its love of life; if they were ever capable of feeling love, however, their long life likewise didn’t prepare them for the demise of one of their own. These hominids, she perceived, had killed one of theirs’s and destroyed shoggoths. The bipeds were mere Pliocene apes to the Great Race that somehow obtained death-dealing technology.

  ***

  The posse of Tunnel Archeologists roared across the desert terrain. The interlopers had trespassed on their Dead Man’s Point, and they were going to set them straight. It was their top-secret rendezvous place where they had stored their precious belongings. Before the men in black and tan had ripped away the timber barricade to the old miner’s cave, there had been room enough for them to squeeze through. Even though entering a cave on foot violated their “motorbike access only credo” it became their one exception, christening it their “Cavern Clubhouse.” Inside were the Tunnel Archeologists’ private stash of Marvel comics, two years of Spiderman back issues, the club charter, and a four-pack of Barefoot Red Moscato wine, for initiation purposes only, they claimed.

  Noah had reported the trespass to his Aunt Gwen, and he hoped that her past connection to the Naval Weapons Center would be enough to get them evicted. His Uncle Jason was stationed there, and the two might have enough clout to get the job done.

  Madison hung tight hugging Noah’s waist as they approached the tunnel opening on his Magician dirt bike. Stitch speeding ahead was first to approach the cave; he was always first. Dead Man’s Point looked deserted. They followed Stitch’s lead, entering the cave, with Dudette, Junky Beast, and E-Monkey close behind. Stitch, still wearing the Nazi helmet, hunkered over the handlebars of his Yamaha YZ450F slowing to a crawl. Noah new that Stitch always liked to show off, “taking point,” he would say, playing the role of their commander. He would sometimes refer to their group as the TA’s which Noah thought might be taken the wrong way, this time, however when charging in; he declared their group to be the “Marvel Strike Force.”

  Noah, driving while in first gear, had to fight to keep the bike erect, balancing their combined weight at a slow speed along the bumpy ground. At first, they were greeted by the diggings and tunneling typical of mining from the olden days. Every eight feet or so were the roughhewn vertical support timbers propping up a horizontal member constructed to hold the cave’s ceiling in place against potential cave-ins. The arrangement of reinforcing remained constant for approximately one-hundred yards in and then everything changed. The bracing discontinued and the crudely dug square cave became perfectly smooth, a walled cylinder, ten feet in diameter. The passageway kept straight maintaining the same direction but sloping downward. Noah had an uneasy feeling. It got colder inside as they traveled deeper. They should have just collected their stuff and booked, he decided. He didn't like this one bit.

  Stitch brought his Yamaha to a stop and signaled for his followers to do the same with a raised hand. Lowering his kickstand, he did the unthinkable. He got off his bike! Stitch turned off the bike’s motor and motioned for everyone to follow.

  They all hesitantly, but dutifully lined up behind their commander. The carved tunnel opened into an enormous cavern. The Tunnel Archeologists huddled together and peered around the excavated cylindrical edge. The area had not been hollowed out by the tunnel boring machine. It was a naturally formed grotto. Stalactites hung from a high rock ceiling joining with stalagmites below forming geological columns. An area had been cleared to allow for the assembly of steel scaffolding. An all-terrain vehicle with an enclosed metal cab and windshield rested nearby. And clustered behind the TBM were the men they saw two days before. The bald man in the blue suit stood with his hands on his hips shouting orders. They were unable to make out what he was saying over the racket of the machine. To the Tunnel Archeologists’ surprise, they observed it cutting into a shiny metal wall.

  Chapter 16

  - Escape -

  Gideon sat on the chamber floor with his back against the smooth granite wall, his eyes moist with grief. The engraved illustration of an oversized mollusk wielding tentacles perched crown-like above his head. Pemba, alongside, held his hand.

  “Dutch was more of a brother to me than Alan ever was,” he offered remorsefully. “We served in Afghanistan together. The Taliban, at one time, held power over roughly three-quarters of the country until being overthrown by the American-led invasion. We were in the eastern section of the Islamic Republic, outside of Kabul.” He stared at the distant ceiling, “A group of Taliban fighters had assassinated western medical aid workers; men, and women. Using long knives, they slit their throats and skinned them.”

  Pemba was horrified by the image he presented but said nothing.

  “Dutch and I were on reconnaissance. We were eyes on the ground. Just scout, take no action, and report back were our orders. We found evidence of a camp ten klicks south of the Hindu Kush mountain range.”

  Gideon, hoarse with the consequence of screaming rage, forced himself to continue. Pemba perceived the release of pent-up rage. She squeezed his hand, knowing that he needed to purge.

  “Dutch headed to the northern mountainous countryside, and I held to the south. We were to keep our heads down and rendezvous back to our starting point in thirty minutes. Separation is not a good tactic, but he talked me into it. Dutch was a big risk taker, and he assured me that he’d lay low.”

  “Dutch talked?” she asked gently.

  “He could then,” he answered after a long pause. With a faint smile, he added, “Given the chance, Dutch could talk your ear off.”

  “What happened Gideon?” afraid to ask.

  “A half hour later he didn’t return. I went north, followed his tracks.” A tear streamed down Gideon’s cheek. “I found him and the Taliban guerrillas’ camp. They had beaten him badly. They had stripped off his uniform and staked him to the ground. Blood was flowing from his mouth. I recognized what they had done to him. They had cut out his tongue. It was laying in the dirt beside him.”

  Pemba sensed the rage rising in him again. “Oh, God,” she moaned and took both of Gideon’s hands in hers.

  “There were ten of the bastards, enjoying themselves, they were going to cut him some more, then they saw me. They hesitated, killers are cowards . . . they just stared, I was detached, it was righteous revenge. I shot them all before they could react. Their fear made them waver, and I shot them one at a time. And then I shot them all again and again!”

  Gideon grew quiet, his head became heavy, and he dropped his chin to his chest. Pemba held him close pressing her face against his. In a low voice, he continued, “I did what I could to slow the bleeding. I called for a medevac unit on my sat-phone. Dutch had become unconscious by then, thank God. In a little while, a chopper took him to the National Military Hospital in Kabul. He was never able to form words after that. I am sorry, but when I heard his gut-wrenching death cry, I lost control.”

  Pemba reached deep inside herself to come up with the appropriate consolation, but the opportunity became lost when they we
re distracted by a piercing metallic screech.

  Sergeant Jones ran up, slammed a fresh clip into a spare M16A and tossed it to the recumbent Gideon. “We’ve got company,” he announced.

  Duty called for the ex-soldier, and he jumped to his feet.

  ***

  When they first entered the chamber, astounded Ironwood gazed at a forest of cylindrical columns withdrawing into cavities in the ceiling. It took only seconds for him to comprehend the spectacle when revealing their contents. The columns were hollow, tube-shaped. “Stasis tubes!” he declared. “Hibernation chambers for the Great Race. It is amazing that they could remain in suspended animation for millions of years and yet regain consciousness,” he marveled. The academic in him was aroused from his wonder when Dutch was killed, and Gideon gunned down one of the revived lifeforms. Ironwood cautioned everyone to “back away” from the fallen creature. Four of the two-tentacled cone-shaped giants slithered to the alien corpse, lifting it they carried it beyond the jungle of stasis tubes and out of sight.

  Professor Ironwood retreated to the wall of pictoglyphs, joining Gideon and Pemba when witnessing the tunnel boring machine slice an opening through the far end of the massive chamber. A ten-foot diameter circle of gleaming extra-terrestrial steel fell inward to the granite floor, echoing with a resounding “clang.” All gathered at the pictoglyph wall except Sergeant Jones. He had given his last rifle clip to Gideon and said he would return to the JLTV, by way of their melted access in the five-sided door to, “retrieve more ammo.”

  “Wait! I want a gun,” demanded Pemba.

  The Sergeant did a double take and handed her his SIG Sauer. “Do you know how to use it?” he asked with a grin.

  Pemba smiled and chambered a round two-handed. Jones satisfied, ran off.

  Gideon, his grief put in a box, took Pemba by the hand and motioned Ironwood to follow, “Time to give ground,” he ordered and headed to the five-sided door. After a few paces they stopped. A dozen of the Elder Beings skimmed rapidly across the stone floor raising centuries of dust in their wake. One of the beings, the first one to come out of stasis, had a flat satchel hanging by a strap at the base of its neck where a shoulder ought to be. It slid to a halt and opened the bag. The single tentacle with stubby trumpet-shaped fingers removed a tablet. It was slimy, big as a coffee table, and writhed when touched. Thin feelers projected from the device and attached to an undamaged portion of the door. Three of the giants skittered through the hole.