Shoggoth 2- Rise of the Elders

by Byron Craft

***

  “And that was HUN news,” announced Carl Pursell. “Up next is Vox Populi, presented by America's host, Jessica Esterhazy.” Background music plays, “The Girl from Ipanema.”

  “Good evening American’s. Before we get to my guests this evening, I want to tell you about something that is alarmingly important to each and every one of you. Reliable sources tell us that a treacherous conspiracy may have been perpetrated on the American people.

  “I’ve reported to you in the past of militant attempts to trample on the freedom of the press. Well, now we have found out why they wanted to silence your reporter. It is alleged that scientists, under the leadership of a Professor Thomas Ironwood, actively and knowingly went underground with the intent purpose of releasing alien hordes upon our world.

  “Why? I’ll get to that in a moment, because listen to this. Our station is assured, through its sources, that a covert military operation was allegedly responsible in aiding Mr. Ironwood. This clandestine act was run through the U.S. Navy, at a secret base known as the Naval Weapons Center. Was this a planned coup? Bring up dangerous aliens so that the military must be called up? And then what, martial law? A military takeover of our government? The man suspected to be behind this operation is Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins.”

  An unfavorable photo of Admiral Hawkins flashed on the screen. He is frowning, and the image has been darkened to look sinister.

  “Your number one news station and I are calling for a congressional investigation of Admiral Jack Hawkins. The Department of Justice needs to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate this atrocity.”

  Jessica Esterhazy laughs, “The irony is that although it is alleged that their intent could be classified as treasonous, in the long run, it backfired on the perpetrators. Even though there exists a small faction of militant anti-Elder Race radicals, it appears that most people in the civilized world welcome the diversity their culture brings. In this context, the European Parliament has adopted a resolution on combatting Elderphobia with concrete policy recommendations to oppose anti-Great Race sentiments.

  “At this moment the U.S. House of Representatives, while protecting free speech, is developing guidelines to tackle online hate speech and considering primary legislation to deal with social media offenses so vital, since the Internet plays a crucial role in the spread of Elderphobic discourses.

  “Counter-Elder Race policymakers should work with the Elder communities, not against them, with so-called ‘de-radicalization’ programs. These programs ought to incorporate the re-education of the radical groups and should not target the Elder Beings.”

  ***

  Ironwood walked by a family in the airport waiting for their plane. An elderly gentleman, three small children and a young couple. The old man pulled a roll of one-dollar bills from his pocket, gingerly peeled off three of them and gave one to each child.

  “Dad,” said the young man. “You shouldn't give the kids money.”

  “Nonsense,” he replied. “It makes them happy. When I was little my grandpa used to give us quarters.”

  “Then give them all a quarter.”

  “That was 1955 son and considering the state of the economy; I am well ahead of the game.”

  Ironwood smiled and walked on. Normalcy may be gone forever, he looked at the elderly gentleman, and it tugged at his heartstrings. Cancer took his wife Connie twenty years ago. They never had any children, therefore no grandchildren. It was too late in life for he and Amy to start a family. Even so, bringing a child into this crazy world, he reflected, would be an act of cruelty. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 9500 points, and there was no recovery in sight. Militant anti-Great Race factions were popping up all over the world threatening violence. Darwin was not the only place on the planet with a shoggoth tower anymore. One had been erected, in a matter of hours, on France's Champs-Élysées. Berlin saw one raised the following week, so did São Paulo, Brazil's financial, economic and cultural center and another smack dab in the middle of Piccadilly Circus in London's West End. Ironwood’s friend in the UK, Professor David Hambling, texted him that they were all over the streets of Norwood.

  Ironwood walked on and came to his gate at LAX; it was way at the back of the airport terminal. Each gate he passed had two flat screen televisions suspended below the ceiling. Heads Up News was blaring the latest developments, interrupted, all too often, by the PA system announcing boarding procedures and customer messages.

  There was an empty seat next to a young woman and a portly middle-aged man. The man was eating an ice cream bar on a stick. The woman stared intently at the overhead TV. “Riots broke out in Brussels today with the protesters chanting, ‘save the race,’” decreed the broadcast. A video clip showed a group of people carrying placards, swinging them at an angry crowd. They appeared to have adopted the ancient lifestyle of beggars, looking unkempt with long beards and coarse cloaks. The women of the group were barefoot and equally shabby. The garments they wore hung off the shoulder, to floor length, and flared at the bottom identical to a hoop skirt. Representations of the Elder Being’s rugose alien flesh had been crudely painted or died into the fabric.

  “What are they wearing?” inquired the woman seated next to him.

  “Looks like a burnoose,” replied portly.

  Ironwood decided to hunt for a seat elsewhere. He got as far as he could from the blaring media and chose a chair by a glass window wall overlooking the tarmac and his approaching flight. A ground crew directed the connection of the passenger boarding bridge from the terminal gate to the plane.

  Something was about to happen, but Ironwood wasn’t sure what it would be. Shoggoth towers were being erected in high populous areas around the world at an alarming rate. But why? Were they preparing to mount an invasion? It didn’t seem logical. Even though the Elder Beings’ numbers were in the thousands, since the ascension, it was a puny amount compared to an earthly population of over seven billion. To date, there wasn’t any evidence of the Elders procreating; no spawn of the Great Race. Whatever the reason, or the outcome, he had a hunch that it would not be pleasant. Pemba sensed it as well.

  Locked up at Miskatonic University was a document that possibly held the answer. Ironwood didn’t have much clout with the faculty anymore, but there was one friend, still, in residence, that might lend a helping hand. That made the trip and the attempt worth the gamble. His flight would take him to Boston Logan International Airport, and from there he would hire a car to Arkham. Ironwood had one small carry-on, his visit would be brief.

  ***

  Gideon Ward was climbing the walls. The professor had run off to his old alma mater leaving him and the two gals to hold down the fort. Gideon had become impatient. Besides keeping watch, there was little to do with his days. Pemba had become more than a comfort to him. He hoped and prayed that their relationship would last a good fifty plus years, but there should be more for an active individual like him to do than look out the window or watch television. The Professor’s satellite service boasted of having over Three-hundred channels and, for Gideon, there was nothing on it worthwhile. He hated to be idle.

  Gideon also had a haunting feeling about that damn tower lurking just a handful of yards away. Pemba didn’t like looking at it. It scared the crap out of her. When she went outdoors, it was usually to the Professor’s and Amy’s patio which shielded viewing of the monstrous spire. There were no more horrific dreams in the below-grade house. The three of them had surmised that since the Elder creatures no longer slumbered in stasis that their nighttime influence had dwindled.

  During his waking hours, Gideon kept his M16A cleaned and loaded with two spare clips in an ammo pouch hanging from his belt. Always be prepared, I should have been a Boy Scout, he bellyached. His military instincts motivated him to reconnoiter. He spent much of his time scouting around the Professor’s property getting as close as he was allowed to the forty-three Marines bivouacked behind a fleet of Humvees and an M1 Abrams tank. The improvised military encampme
nt made up of tents and equipment shelters was declared “off-limits” to Ironwood’s houseguests. Moses Jones was part of the platoon, occupying Darwin, and when Gideon was nosing around, the two of them, at a distance, would exchange a friendly wave or salute. Gideon had heard, on the news, that the French and the Brits had constructed similar military barriers around their unwelcome alien towers.

  Before the platoon from the NWC had fully implemented their defense perimeter, cordoning off the area, a group of nutcases circumnavigated the roadblock on six ATV’s and a beat-up Ford Explorer. Insanely costumed as makeshift Elder Being look-a-likes they chanted gibberish, “speaking in tongues,” they claimed, ending with an appeal to “Star-Gods.” An opening appeared on the east side of the extra-terrestrial monstrosity, and the crazies ran in before they could be apprehended. The passageway quickly sealed shut behind the group with no telltale seam as to the existence of an opening. The Star Children never re-emerged.

  Gideon urged Sergeant Jones and his commander to muster an armed force, break into the tower and liberate the religious cult. His appeal though went against their “wait and see” orders, and he was directed to “move back” and not interfere.

  It was night when Gideon decided to penetrate the Marine’s fortifications and invade the shoggoth tower. Clouds obscured the moon making his stealthy movements all the easier. The military line concentrated on the tower with little or no attention to anything behind them. He was creeped out by the damn thing. His experience in Afghanistan told him that you don’t build something like that without a very good reason. After the disappearance of the religious cult, he decided that the Elder Beings’ reason wasn’t to make nice, nice. He wished he had a couple of grenades.

  ***

  Neville Stream removed the piece of paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it. In a few minutes, he had a meeting with a joint session of Congress. One of his aids had gone ahead to prepare his podium and to make sure that everything was set-up properly on the teleprompter. He was going to make an announcement to the country that, “after a bunch of soul searching and in the midst of our international crisis, he had decided that it was his God-given responsibility to the nation and the world to run for the Presidency of the United States of America.” A bit sappy, he thought, but the time was ripe, and the dupes will lap it up. His staff had made sure that every major news network was present. This was the easy part.

  The Congressman stared long and hard at the sheet of paper. He couldn’t get that stupid poem, written in red ink, out of his head:

  That is not dead which can eternal lie.

  And with strange aeons even death may die.

  It shouldn’t bother me, pondered the Congressman, but somehow it did. The Elder creatures were now up and at em’ and that should be the end of that! He had covered his tracks well, and there should be no need for worry. There were a few slip-ups, of course, but he took care of them. He had kept close scrutiny on Ironwood, after their run in last year. That was how he learned about his association with that black bitch Pemba. He had employed a hitman in London to take her out, to make it look like a botched robbery, but the idiot got himself run over by a bus. In the long run, it didn’t matter. The press was slaying her and her beloved Professor in the media, an appropriate finish for anyone that got in his way.

  Demonstrations had become commonplace in the USA, and with a few well-placed rabble-rousers, riots will be breaking out soon. The anti-Great Race factions had been growing in numbers. A lucky stroke that couldn’t have gone better if he, Neville Stream, had planned it. A firebrand of instigators is all that is needed to push them toward violent unrest. And eventuality, a demagogue, like him, will rise as the nation’s crowd pleaser, the people’s savior.

  Still, in all Neville Stream’s years of research, which culminated in the beneficial knowledge of the Elder Times, there was another verse, not a rhyme, but equally archaic as the one he now held. Somehow, deep inside he felt that they were connected. What were the words now? “Oh yes,” he whispered to himself, “Do not call up that which you cannot put down.”

  ***

  Bulbous discharges boneless and jawless propelled across the floor. Ground level was covered in a viscous goo that aided the locomotion of the purple-pink bodies. Dozens of the odd shapes, serpent wriggling intestines, gushed a milky mucus. A firm, springy texture, wet with horny teeth at one end and an ooze streaking tail at the other. The odor they carried was stomach-churning, it made Gideon queasy.

  An opening appeared the same as when the Star Children approached the shoggoth tower, caked in moss and goo. The gunk of moss and goop coexisted as an integral part of the orifice binding it together analogous to a mixture of sawdust and glue. For Gideon, it would best be characterized as the maw of a grotesque sea beast encircled by green fuzz. It was scary as hell and smelled like crap. The crazies must have been truly crazy to walk in there, he concluded, and now, he was going to throw down his lot with them.

  It was easier than Gideon had reckoned to steal up to the tower. Trading his camo clothing for black attire plus the starless night helped, and so did a couple of lazy sentries that didn’t keep a constant vigil, allowing him to sneak past. The easy part behind him, Gideon forced his legs to move stepping across a living threshold feeling the squish of mucus beneath the soles of his boots. The opening slurped shut behind him. He turned, witnessing his means of retreat vanish, and something soft “popped” underfoot. It gushed juice and slime. It was the viscous, slippery in-betweenness of the organic; a placental wetness becoming trampled and flattened. The odd shapes on the floor, squirmed and fidgeted around his boots, never touching, as if sensing danger, keeping a short distance. Hundreds of slime pores in them reeked of the stench causing Gideon to gag before hastily moving on.

  It was an expansive area. The walls, if that was what they were, were cloaked in shredded organic material that pulsated and writhed. Was it breathing? Gideon, with his left hand, held his flashlight against the handguard that surrounded the barrel of the M16A, his right folded around the pistol grip and trigger. Wherever he pointed the light, the semi-automatic trained on the same locale.

  A GoPro with a head strap camera mount rested on Gideon’s brow. It was equipped with Wi-Fi. Professor Ironwood broadcasted his satellite internet, by way of Wi-Fi, to the townsfolk, and Gideon was pleased that he was able to receive the signal inside the shoggoth tower. The GoPro also had voice control, and he gave the simple command, “GoPro, start recording,” when entering the tower. Gideon hoped that he would be able to score some shots evidencing the true nature of the Elder Beings. Except he did not know the color of their stripes, yet.

  A swishing sound met Gideon’s ears. And then he smelled it. The nauseous odor subsided replaced by a sweet one. He had learned, all too well, the body odor of a shoggoth. He had hoped that he wouldn’t encounter one while invading the tower. Why did he think the word “invade,” he stressed? Empirical evidence had demonstrated that the only way to eliminate a shoggoth was total incineration and their flamethrowers had been abandoned in the tunnels.

  Before penetrating farther into the interior of the beast, and remembering the Professor’s hare and hounds trick, Gideon plunged the blade of his pocket knife into the area where the doorway once was leaving it there. The knife marked the spot of escape if he returned. What is the matter with me, he lamented. The pessimistic concept manifested by the word “if” had entered his thoughts. Gideon Ward was not one to give in to pessimism. Being inside the belly of a shoggoth must be having a gloomy effect on me, he settled. “Resist!” he told himself.

  Gideon sloshed through more of the slime noticing that it was becoming ankle deep. The wall he had perceived earlier now had a ramp leading upward at its center. That ramp wasn’t there before. It was a gradual incline that pierced a dark recess. Slow, but sure-footed he plodded uphill. The slippery mucus prevailed on the slope, but the gradient was so measured as to make the ascent trouble-free. Halfway up the ramp, the slime started to
dry becoming glop, then farther on the glop became stringy paste dangling from the sole as each boot raised. The ramp spiraled higher following the inside cylindrical curvature of the wall.

  Something told Gideon to stop and look below, into the organic stairwell. Perspectives kept changing; beneath ground entry he at once detected a lower level. A basement? The ramp seemed to appear out of nowhere and now an underground room? He aimed his gun barreled light at the subterranean murkiness. Liquid churned below. A fatty residue floated on the surface. The flashlight panned the aperture. A water's edge of sand and rock came into view. Moist clumps of wrinkled cloth scattered along the rocky shoreline. Twice wrinkled, as for their soggy displacement, secondly due to the artwork on the fabric. Revulsion overcame Gideon when he witnessed a human skull emerge from the depths. The cranium, evidently void of any brain matter, a hollow recess cupping air, reacted like a fisherman’s bobber, nodding up and down in the greasy fluid.

  Horror and loathing became unbearable to the Afghan vet. His footing becoming unsure upon the ramp, he leaned back against the living wall and stared at the many levels above him. The voice of reason screamed inside his head to, “get the hell out of there!” He had discovered the fate of the religious cult, and the basis of their demise promptly grew to a gut-wrenching suspicion. Go down and run or go up, possibly learn the cause of their misfortune and the motive of the creatures in the towers. Even though the cult that worshipped them were a bunch of loons, he reasoned, their downfall deserved closure. Depression, envisioned as the long knife of a Taliban guerrilla pierced Gideon’s heart.

  The despair was becoming overwhelming, and Gideon shook himself free of the hopelessness by way of an old acquaintance, anger and rage. What in the hell am I doing here if not to find out what these bug-eyed creeps are up to, the voice inside his head screamed a change in judgment. He tried to push himself away from the wall he rested against, but he was stuck. Was something holding him back? Gideon pushed harder and flung himself to the center of the ramp. The back of his shirt ripped loose. A flap of black fabric remained adhered to the wall; thin, reedy stems had penetrated the weave of the fabric exhibiting circular squirming movements. The humid air inside the shoggoth tower stung Gideon’s bare back.