Terrors

by Richard A. Lupoff

  The brilliant beams of four Curie lanterns followed the cat as she clawed and fought her way upward on the statue. The thing was monstrous, a variant of the horrible image the Speranza Curie had shown Colonel White the night before.

  The thing was fitted with tentacle-like stalks, uncounted numbers of them, some terminating in sucker-like mouths, others in shining eyes. It had a head, or what must serve as a head, shaped like a five-pointed star, each extremity of this bearing a great, dark eye.

  Most horrifying of all, David White stood paralyzed with shock and fear. And know well, even the noblest of men know fear; it is the overcoming of this experience that comprises true courage. That which had paralyzed White was the sight of the five points of the statue’s face writhing and turning, turning horribly, until the eyes focussed upon My Lady Bast the cat.

  From all directions, tentacles tipped with horrid mouths and rows of teeth resembling those of giant, extinct sharks, wove toward My Lady Bast. From the cat there came a blood-freezing scream of raging ferocity as the pleasantly disposed ship’s mascot was transformed into a whirlwind of fury and violence.

  My Lady Bast flew from the grasping, mouth-tipped tentacles, the points of her claws leaving a trail of punctures from which there spurted a steaming green ichor. Blobs of the foul liquid splashed on the great paving stones with which the room was floored. Each point of contact was transformed into a miniature cauldron that seethed and bubbled and from which a noxious greenish vapor arose.

  The cat by now had reached the star-shaped head of the monstrous living statue. Using the claws of two paws while she clung to the monstrous visage with the others, she shredded one baleful eye, then moved to the next and the next. The monstrous living statue yielded to a series of spasms.

  David White, watching the incredible battle of a feline analog of his Biblical namesake against this titanic alien Goliath, realized to his astonishment that the star-headed monster was actually terrified. He was aware that Siegfried Schwartz had drawn his Bergmann automatic and was firing at the monstrosity. Other members of the exploring party, Rouge, Sidwell-Blue, Speranza Verde, had drawn their own weapons and were pointing them upward.

  Bounding forward to place himself between his comrades and the monster, David White waved his arms and cried out, “Careful! Careful! Don’t hit the cat!”

  Even as the sound of two revolvers and an automatic pistol echoed off the walls and ceiling of the chamber, the great monstrosity, blinded now and bleeding green ichor from its wounds, gave forth a mighty roar that echoed and re-echoed through the hall. It gave a mighty spasm and My Lady Bast, the gray and white warrior, her grasp on the star-shaped head broken by the jolt, was flung from the monster. As if fully accustomed to flight she soared through the darkened reached of the tomb, falling at last into the welcoming arms of Colonel David White.

  But this was no gentle pussy. My Lady Bast had been transformed into a warrior-goddess and she was not so quick to resume her domestic mien. Raking claws shredded White’s military tunic and suddenly terrifying fangs snapped within millimetres of his eye, removing a gobbet of flesh just at his cheekbone. Then My Lady Bast flexed powerful legs, launched herself from his torso and disappeared into the darkness of the tomb.

  Rouge, Schwartz and Verde had advanced cautiously toward the monster. In its great spasm it had flung itself from its plinth and lay thrashing on the stone floor. Its mouths seemed to possess the power of speech independent of one another, and they uttered sounds that resembled human speech as a horrid parody of the human form might resemble a beautiful woman.

  Siegfried Schwartz, surely crude and perhaps cruel as well, was by no means lacking in courage. He had advanced to within an arm’s reach of the monster and was speaking to it in a language which David White did not understand, but which he inferred to be that of ancient Egypt. Astonishingly, the monster seemed to hear and understand the German archaeologist, and to reply in a strange and terrible variant of the same language.

  Without warning the monster managed to raise itself halfway to a vertical position. It turned its eye-tipped tentacles toward the roof of the chamber.

  There, its rays focussed through a lens of tinted mica, the sun casting a single, bright beam into the chamber. The beam had obviously been aimed, how many millennia before there was no way of calculating. In its light one of the painted panels on the tomblike wall seemed almost to come to life.

  A row of half-human figures knelt in postures of worship. There was a man with the head of a falcon, a woman with the features of a lioness, a hawk-man, a woman in the grotesque form of a hippopotamus, a being with a human body and the head of a crocodile. David White did not know their names, but he recognized them as Egyptian deities. And they were kneeling in submission.

  Before them stood a party of star-headed, tentacled monsters like the one whose statue had seemingly come to life only to be slain by the ferocity of a ship’s gray and white mascot. And behind the alien beings could be seen a sleek machine, obviously a vehicle that had brought it occupants from some home unimaginable to mere humanity.

  From the shadowed passageway through which the explorers had entered the tomb there came an echoing voice. “It’s time,” came the voice of Sir Shepley Sidwell-Blue. “We’d b-best get back to Rosny. Our t-time is r-running out.”

  The explorers turned toward the passageway. Jemond Jules Rouge leading the way, followed by Speranza Verde and Siegfried Schwartz, preceded Colonel Dwight David White into the passage. White realized that they had all been so busy in dealing with the wonders and terrors of the tomb that they had forgotten the time. It was a good thing that the Englishman had stayed outside the tomb, keeping track of the passing hours.

  Once outside the tomb the party formed up and moved off in the direction of the temporarily dry bed of the Fleuve Triste.

  They had gone only a score of paces when Sidwell-Blue cried out, “Halt!” The decisive and authoritarian utterance from the hitherto timid and uncertain Englishman startled the others into obedience. To their disbelieving eyes Sidwell-Blue ran back toward the dark opening in the rock. He disappeared into the shadowed passageway. Minutes passed. David White studied his own pocket watch, performed a rapid mental calculation and said, “If we don’t move quickly we’ll be trapped by the returning Marée.”

  “But we cannot leave poor Sir Shepley in that tomb!” Speranza Verde cried. She started back toward the rock sepulchre, followed by the others, but before she could reach the opening Sir Shepley Sidwell-Blue emerged into the Saharan sunlight, My Lady Bast nestled comfortably in his arms.

  As they approached the submersible Rosny a mighty aqueous roar was heard and two walls of water became visible, speeding toward them from both directions. The explorers ran at top speed to the submersible and scrambled up Rosny’s boarding ladder. Captain Alexandre herself had awaited them, and followed them into the submersible, counting off as they descended:

  “Rouge.”

  “Schwartz.”

  “Blue.”

  “Verde.”

  “White.”

  “My Lady Bast.”

  Even as the first spray of the onrushing waters spattered her mid-night-tinted uniform sleeve, the Captain slammed the hatch shut and turned its dogs to seal the submersible against the waters of the Saharan Sea.

  Soon all had refreshed themselves and reassembled in the Captain’s conference room. Hot coffee spiked with strong brandy was served, along with nourishing sandwiches. Outside Rosny’s oblong panels of glass, marine creatures swam up to this strange invader of their realm and studied its occupants with as much curiosity as the men and women of Rosny exhibited toward them.

  In a corner of the room, My Lady Bast, her coat now restored to its proper state, enjoyed a treat of fresh fish and rich cream.

  At the table, the explorers gave their complementary reports on their experiences in the ancient tomb. Speranza Verde took special note of Shipley-Blue’s unexpected heroism. “Beneath this senza pretese, how you say, unas
suming exterior, eh, there beats the heart of a lion. I salute you, Sir Shepley.”

  The Englishman turned away shyly. “One c-couldn’t abandon that splendid c-cat, you know.” Even in the artificial light of Rosny’s cabin, his furious blush was obvious.

  At the end, it was Colonel White who asked Herr Siegfried Schwartz, “What was it that the monster said before it died?”

  The German stroked his beard as if in deep thought. “To understand what said the creature, Mein Herr White, it was for me not easy. Its language that of ancient Egypt was almost, but certain differences there were.”

  He paused and drained his cup. When it was refilled he instructed the crewmember to omit the coffee.

  “I think it said, ‘My parents for me will come. Someday my father and mother for me will come.’ You see, Herr Colonel, to us a great monster it was, but in truth that sleeping creature that we awakened, that we killed, of its own kind was a baby.”

  Treasure of the Red Robe Men

  The sun woke Splash Shanahan that morning as it did every morning he spent aboard the Goby. He didn’t have an alarm clock aboard the battered sloop and he wouldn’t wear a wrist-watch. He was willing to keep an old Seth Thomas in the binnacle to use along with tide tables when he wasn’t sailing by sight of the stars, the wind on a wetted thumb, and the feeling in his guts that had saved his life in the Great War. He’d always had an instinct for survival, and part of that instinct was the ability to know where he was on land or sea.

  He wasn’t sure that he was grateful for that instinct. It had brought him alive from the disaster aboard the USS Cichlid, one of the feeble steam-driven submersibles that the United States Navy called submarines, the only crewman to survive Cichlid’s encounter with a German flotilla in the North Atlantic. The gem of that flotilla, the light cruiser Regensburg, had dumped half a dozen depth charges in the vicinity of the Cichlid and the American submarine’s hull had cracked like an eggshell.

  The sub had plunged two miles straight down, carrying fifty-five officers and men to their doom. The lucky ones were killed outright, or drowned in a matter of minutes. The others were trapped in an iron tomb, waiting for the air to run out and with it their lives. They might have lived for hours, even days, before the oxygen aboard Cichlid was exhausted and they suffocated in the stale exhalations of their own breath.

  But Torpedoman Third Class Seamus “Splash” Shanahan’s gut had saved his life.

  He tried not to think of that frightful day a decade before, he tried not to think about it during his waking hours and he prayed not to dream about it when he slept, and usually he managed to keep his mind on the present and out of the past.

  Usually.

  Shanahan stretched, sighted in on Mount Fatmalapa, and hauled in the sea anchor that had kept Goby in her place during the dark hours. He set course for the narrow strait between the islands of Nguna and Pele. A soft easterly breeze filled Goby’s canvas. Shanahan posted himself at the helm and tacked skillfully through the strait. The waters of the Coral Sea were crystal clear, and fishes peered fearlessly at the little sloop as Shanahan made for the tiny settlement of Sivin on the northern shore of Efaté.

  As he guided Goby toward the shoreline he encountered native fishing craft headed out to sea. The Ni Vanuatu had seen white men before, they recognized Shanahan and exchanged greetings with him as they passed.

  He’d been sailing the waters of Vanuatu for four years now, getting to know the scores of islands in the archipelago and learning the languages and beliefs of the Ni Vanuatu, the people of the Land Eternal. He was one of a special breed of men—and the occasional woman—who plied the waters of the Western Pacific in small craft, alone or in two’s or three’s, eking a living from the sea and the islands that dotted its vast spectacular stretches. They were a strange fraternity, crossing paths and meeting occasionally, whether in Tarawa or Truk, Ponape or Palau. They had their own culture, their own code, and their own crude set of ethics. They had their legends, including the legend of the Treasure of the Red Robe Men, and tales of the Sea Lynx, a beautiful woman who sailed alone and could face down any man who challenged her to drinking bout or knife fight.

  For the most part they got along well enough with the natives who populated the islands where they dropped anchor, and most of them learned more about the ways and the beliefs of these peoples than any university professor could ever hope to learn.

  Not that Shanahan was a scholar devoted to the study of native cultures. He was a practical man, had always been a practical man. He had rebuilt the Goby with his bare hands, restoring a near derelict sloop, and launched her from a pair of davits in a little shipyard on San Francisco Bay. He then taught himself the art of seamanship by exploring the bay and its tributaries as far upstream as Suisun City. When he was confident of his skills he had ventured past the Golden Gate, into the Pacific as far as the Farralon Islands, then back through the welcoming Golden Gate.

  Little by little he had extended the range of his expeditions, until he was ready to challenge the ocean, and he had done it and won. The shattered survivor of the destruction of the Cichlid had emerged a broad-shouldered, iron-thewed, sharp-eyed and keen-witted miniature giant of a man. Barely five-and-a-half feet tall, he could wade into a sailor’s bar anywhere in the world, give away fifty pounds to a rough-hewn opponent, and more than hold his own with fists or with knife.

  He would not use a firearm. Not in these bar room encounters and not in any other situation. He was a throwback, if you will, to an earlier age when warriors faced each other and fought to the death if needs be, using only muscle and bone and blade. A throwback, something of a misfit in the world of the Twentieth Century, but he had made peace with himself, peace by withdrawing from the surroundings of skyscrapers and motor cars, and making a life for himself on a tiny sailboat that plied the currents of the mighty Pacific Ocean.

  Shanahan had slept well aboard the Goby; now he raised enough canvas to catch the morning breeze and bring the sloop close to the sandy beach. He could see the Goby’s shadow moving across the white sea-bottom. Grotesque crabs scuttled away. Brightly colored fish, their curiosity satisfied, darted away from the sloop.

  Sivin didn’t even have a pier. The Ni Vanuatu used both single-hull and catamaran canoes. The beach was wide and smooth and they simply pulled the canoes onto the sand when they weren’t putting out to sea. Shanahan couldn’t quite do that, but he consulted the tide tables and brought the Goby in to two feet of bright, clear water at high tide. With her cast-iron keel hauled up, the sloop drew remarkably little water. Once the tide went back out the Goby would beach herself on the smooth sand. Shanahan only had to wait for another high tide to haul anchor and sail away.

  The town of Sivin consisted of a handful of native fishermen’s huts, a tiny trading station, and the inevitable saloon. Shanahan made his way into the trading station. He was wearing his customary striped shirt and faded jeans. He owned a pair of shoes but he hadn’t worn them in so long that he wasn’t sure where they were any longer.

  A few Ni Vanuatu were visible in the town. A couple of old women worked at weaving baskets of palm fronds and the tough local grass. Naked children played in the dirt. There was no sign of the few men of the village but that was no surprise to Shanahan. He knew they would be fishing from the catamaran canoes they favored. Contrary to the images of popular fiction and romantic motion pictures, the natives of these islands did not live a life of dreamlike idylls. They rose before the dawn and paddled their craft to the coral reefs where they knew the finest eating fish made their homes. No doubt they had observed Shanahan’s sloop as they made their way to their fishing grounds. He had not bothered them; they would not bother him.

  To the east of Sivin the shoreline dipped away forming the U-shaped Undine Bay. Directly south of the town rose lush tropical rain forest. To the west the land rose sharply forming a steep escarpment that dropped vertically to the shore. Here also was the mouth of Valeva Cave, accessible from the beach when the tide
was out but flooded to invisibility when the waters rolled in.

  Here in the village, one of the old women looked up from her basket and addressed him in the local pidgin. It was Bislama all right, the common pidgin used throughout the Vanuatu chain, but Shanahan knew that there were endless variations and dialects, even one that borrowed more from the French language than from English, and the one the old woman spoke sounded strange in his ears.

  Even so, he addressed her. “Good morning, Mother. Is there a white man who runs the station?”

  The old woman smiled at Shanahan. “Yu toktok Bislama?”

  “Ating, ating. Yu oraet, Mother?”

  “Yes.”

  Clearly the old woman was delighted to be addressed in Bislama. Whether she knew enough standard English to carry on a conversation, Shanahan could only guess. But even his limited command of the local pidgin had won him a friend.

  “Mi stop lukaot bos blong.” There had to be a white man around. The trading station wouldn’t have been left as it was unless someone was in charge.

  The old woman nodded toward the saloon. “Longwe.”

  Shanahan thanked her and headed for the saloon. The whole conversation had probably been unnecessary; all he had to do was poke his head inside the grass hut and he’d know. But he was reluctant to do that. Even as he crossed the few yards that separated the basket-weavers from the saloon, he stopped to exchange a few words in Bislama with the naked children who stood gazing at him as if he had just descended from the moon instead of arriving aboard the Goby.

  It took all of Shanahan’s reserve to step across the wooden threshold of the saloon. Moving from the bright sunlight in what had to pass for a village square into the coolly shaded interior of the saloon was a gut-wrenching act.

  Shanahan had been a drunk. There was no other word for it. He’d beaten the bottle but stepping into this musty, cramped building was both painfully difficult and at the same time far too easy. The smell of stale liquor was too welcoming, the friendly bottles ranged behind the bar seemed to smile at him. The rickety chairs summoned him. And there was the figure behind the bar, a total stranger to Shanahan but one he had seen in a thousand bar rooms in a hundred cities from Providence to San Diego.