Shoggoth

by Byron Craft

  They trapped the thing in a packing crate and later, as its appetite increased, along with its size, the Youngbloods built a larger box to contain it.

  Less than one year later, when the box to their amazement was no longer large enough, they closed up a section of the tunnel with the massive door imprisoning the creature in an unexplored subterranean region.

  Many an evening before retiring to bed Isaac would go into the tunnel and stand at the door to its prison to listen through the latch hole. During its off days of feeding the furtive movements of the creature were always the same monotonous route traveling back and forth from its imprisoned end of the tunnel to an unknown location, never varying morning, noon or night.

  This mystery of the tunnels continued its trek. Rather than searching for something, the creature’s movements seemed predetermined as if it was meant to follow an ancient pattern.

  Isaac no longer witnessed its feedings since the afternoon of the sow. It was no longer necessary to observe the process. It never varied its habit; only its appetite increased, so he just looked on while Charlie and John led an old dairy cow through the opened door. Her productive days of milk giving long passed, the tired Guernsey was easily coaxed. They could have prodded her to go in by herself, but the Youngbloods preferred to watch.

  Isaac never asked them why. He assumed that they derived some grotesque pleasure seeing it devour its prey. Isaac suspected that the pair thought less of him for staying behind. He was also certain that the old dairy cow would not be enough to quiet the thing. Tomorrow they would have to feed it a goat or maybe even another cow, anything to satisfy its hunger.

  Isaac held the massive door open with his right hand and hefted the weight of his revolver in his left. He knew it was useless against the thing. Still, it gave him comfort to have it nearby. He took great care in maintaining the weapon, keeping it cleaned and well oiled. An old prospector had taught him how to keep the black powder in the gun dry by sealing the openings of all six cylinders with small amounts of paraffin wax. It prevented the dampness of the tunnels from penetrating the gun’s chambers and spoiling the powder. When fired, the wax would be blown out of the barrel of the six-shooter ahead of the bullet.

  Isaac had applied the same principle in constructing a bomb. It was his safety device. Long after the creature was walled up in its prison, Isaac became uneasy about its increasing size. Worried that someday the door may not hold it, he planted an explosive charge above the door frame sufficient enough to bring the entire ceiling down collapsing the one artery with tons of rock and earth from the desert floor above.

  Knowing that dynamite is seventy-five percent nitro glycerin and that nitro becomes unstable with age, he had fashioned the bomb out of ten pounds of black powder compacted into an old meat tin. After wrapping the whole thing tightly with piano wire, he encased the metal tin, along with a detonator, in a block of paraffin several inches thick. The wires from the detonator were strung along the ceiling beyond the tunnel opening to a small niche in the main cavern. From there he had attached the two wires to the screw terminals of a static generator.

  If the creature of the tunnels did break out of its prison, one quick shove on the handle would generate enough electrical current across the wire to detonate the blasting cap embedded in the paraffin wax.

  Once they were inside, Isaac closed the door on the two Narraganset Indians. The bar lock automatically fell into place. With his back up against the door, Isaac released a long, slow breath of air. The locking bar was cast iron, two inches thick. It made him nervous when the door was unlatched and open; but, it was secure now.

  Shaking, he sucked in a deep breath of musty tunnel air. Through the cracks between the thick yellow pine planking, he could hear the deep bellowing of the old dairy cow. Then, unexpectedly, the mooing stopped. The Guernsey was quiet. Isaac could hear the hurried scuffing of feet on gravel approaching, coming closer. It was Charlie and John running back to the door.

  Charlie yelled at him to open up. Close behind came the eerie cry of the creature cutting through the tunnel barriers penetrating Isaac to the bone with fear. The door resounded with the vibrations of heavy pounding on the other side.

  Isaac flung himself away from the door and stood there staring at the latch, frozen in panic. Charlie’s brother’s voice rose to a shrill scream.

  “It’s coming! Open the door.”

  Something went wrong, thought Isaac, managing to get his mind working again. The creature hungered for Charlie and John.

  Then madness trickled in, and he started to giggle. All he needed was another month, maybe less. Charlie and John may be enough to keep it quiet.

  Charlie and John can be its food.

  The sound of two rifle reports from within the creature’s prison snapped Isaac back to his senses.

  “No,” he cried, “I can’t do this, they have been with me for over seven years.” The pounding stopped, and there was no more gunfire. Isaac could hear another brief shuffling of shoe leather on the gravel, then silence.

  That is a good sign, he thought, as he swung the latch bar up and unlocked the door. If it had gotten Charlie and John it would not be a peaceful death; it would be agonizingly long like the sows. There would have been a lot of noise.

  The door felt heavier than he had remembered. The iron hinges groaned and complained as he slowly pulled it open. There was a faint flicker of lamp light on the other side, but Charlie and John were not there. The tunnel was still. A voice screamed inside his head to close the door, run, but he stood fast. His hands started to tremble, and the muscles in his arms began twitching followed by weakness in his legs.

  He knew he should run, but he had to see, he had to know if Charlie and John were alive. He had to see if there was still a chance. He owed them that much.

  Forcing himself to take the first step, he wrenched his right leg free of the fear that held him back and entered the creature’s prison. He was only three steps in when he found Charlie and John.

  At first, he didn’t realize what he saw. It was almost comical, reminding him of the silly antics of two comedians he had once seen in a music hall. He laughed out loud. He knew he must be going mad. And then the gruesome horror of the spectacle fell in on him. All he could make out of Charlie and John were their blue dungarees flailing and kicking.

  The front halves of the two brothers, from the tops of their heads to about the waistlines, were embedded in the body of the thing. It was as if something had plunged the upper halves of their bodies into the jelly acid slime. Rising above them, extended portions of the creature’s body reared up, resembling snakes ready to strike.

  When one of the snakes turned in Isaac’s direction, he noticed a dark opening on its end where a head should be. It was hollow. It no longer reminded him of a snake rather it looked like an elephant’s trunk. From the dark opening, he heard the noise of garbled breathing.

  My God, he realized, it was a breathing tube. The creature killed with an intelligence Isaac never dreamed it had.

  Looking around the section of tunnel, Isaac could quickly surmise what had happened. The dead carcass of the old dairy cow had been cast aside, a piece of spoiled meat. The two spent muskets were lying at the threshold of the door, and the lamp had been carefully set down on the gravel, not dropped.

  The dairy cow had died, but not from any slow torment inflicted by the creature. Its old heart probably gave out when the thing latched on to it and, of course, the creature of the tunnels only fed on living things.

  Disappointed and hungry it turned on its keepers. That was when he heard the gunshots. One of the brothers, Isaac guessed it was probably Charlie, the eldest, realizing his fate when Isaac hadn’t opened the door, and remembering the sow, intended to make his death as quick and as painless as possible. As if going for a dip at a local swimming hole, Charlie dived head first into the creature, hoping to drown himself in its semi-liquid flesh.

  John, for whatever reason, following his older brother’s lea
d or just recognizing their impossible situation, followed suit. Only death was not going to be quick for the two.

  The creature possessed a devious will to survive. So devious that Isaac became sickened by its clever twisting and manipulating of its flesh that snorkeled up in elephant trunk shapes to create breathing tubes for Charlie and John Youngblood. They were trapped, like the sow, and God knows how many other animals they had mercilessly fed the thing all these years. Trapped, writhing in excruciating pain, as their flesh slowly melted and their souls were absorbed.

  Only Charlie and John could not cry out in pain. Any sounds that they may have been able to utter were muffled by the several feet of artificial umbilical cord.

  Isaac cursed the fear that had kept him from opening the door sooner and the black thoughts he had entertained briefly. Bowing his head, he wept for his two servants and himself.

  If the creature of the tunnels ever harbored any semblance of logic, it was ravaged by its enormous hunger. With no visible means of locomotion, it moved silently towards its tearful keeper.

  Isaac looked up and saw its horrible mass bearing down on him. The size of a railroad locomotive, it slithered noiselessly over strewn fragments from the tunnel’s wall, over the discarded body of the cow, and over the two muskets and the lantern left by the Youngbloods.

  Isaac turned and completed only two hurried steps toward the door when a coiled tentacle grew from the creature’s body at lightning speed and entangled his legs with sticky strands.

  Isaac’s fleeting thoughts of reaching his safety device outside the creature’s prison and activating the detonator were obliterated by searing blasts of pain when the creature’s flesh seeped through the fabric of his trousers making contact with his own.

  Falling face forward he made a futile attempt to reach for the door, and his hand fell upon the leather strap that hung from the back side of the latch, gripping it tightly in his right hand he laughed out loud once more.

  The strap was used to pull the door shut from the inside. Once in and the door closed, the locking bar would automatically fall into place and could only be unlocked from the outside.

  Isaac knew well that without someone on the other side to throw back the iron bar, he would be sealed in this tomb forever. The tentacle yanked on his ankles, and dragged him across the sharp stones. The door pulled along with him, closed halfway.

  “You are killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” he shouted in a mocking half insane voice. It yanked again, pulling Isaac and the door another foot.

  From the outer tunnel, a six-inch vertical band of light poured in through the remaining opening, the inner tunnel grew darker. Isaac’s lamp had shattered and went out when he was knocked down. The Youngblood’s lamp was extinguished by the crushing weight of the creature’s advancing body. It yanked, and the door stopped within an inch of the jam.

  “You are biting the hand that feeds you,” he screamed. “You will wither and atrophy to nothing without me.”

  Yank.

  The door closed and Isaac heard the muffled clang of the locking bar falling into place. Total darkness surrounded him.

  “Why would anyone create you,” he said crying, “for what purpose.” Realizing that it was futile to hold on any longer Isaac let go of the leather strap.

  “To eat, to grow, and to wander back and forth,” he said in a low, defeated breath. He was dragged to it. The creature’s slime protracted, traveling up his legs and wrapped around his waist, the lower half of his body stung with a thousand needle punctures.

  Jolted by the pain, Isaac drew his gun from his belt and put the barrel to his head. He was going to have the last laugh. The creature of the tunnels was going to be hungry sooner than it had bargained. His legs twitched and kicked involuntarily from the pain.

  Remembering the sow, he pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE DREAM

  It was the dream that woke Alan. He sat up with a start shivering from the experience. His eyes focused on a framed painting of a farmhouse and barn. It was one of those cheap, Wal-Mart prints that were sold by the truck load. The frame had been drilled in the corners and secured to the wall with four brass screws. What an odd way to hang a picture, he thought. Where am I?

  On top of an avocado green Formica dresser was a beat up RCA portable television. Trailing from the back of the set was a braided steel cable, the other end of which was bolted to the wall. Nothing looked familiar. Shaking his head to free the cobwebs from his brain, Alan looked around for something, anything in the room that might be familiar to him. When he saw the hotel rate card on the back of the door, he remembered where he was, the Red Mountain Inn just outside of Ridgecrest.

  Alan stretched, kicked his legs out from under the covers and sighed with relief. The dream always had that effect on him. He would wake up feeling as if he had just returned from another life followed by a brief span of amnesia.

  He didn’t know what was worse, the dark beckoning aspects of the dream or not being able to remember where he was or sometimes who he was upon awakening? At these moments he felt that his lapses of temporary memory loss were more frightening than the dream. Much of the dream’s detail faded from memory moments after waking. It wasn’t until after years of reoccurring nightmares and extensive analysis that the haunting quality of the dream would remain with him during the day.

  Throwing his legs over the side of the double bed, he hesitated briefly before rising, trying to recall where the bathroom was. A half-empty pint bottle of Passport Scotch rested on the bed table. A chaser of water stood alongside. He knew that it was against his doctor’s orders, but it was the only thing that helped him sleep. The scotch numbed the fear of his nightmares, and for some reason, the Passport didn’t leave him with a hangover.

  Two doors stood off to his right; both were closed. Pulling his lanky frame up, he staggered to the one he was certain led to the bathroom and opened the door. It was a closet. “Crap,” he whispered and went on to the next one.

  Reflected back in the bathroom mirror under the harsh fluorescent light he saw the man he recognized every morning through the muddled confusion of the past eight and one-half years. Forty-two, but looks sixty, he thought. Long, bony hands that his Aunt Betty had told him, at least fifty-times when he was a kid, were “piano fingers.” A hawkish nose, a receding hairline and a pair of close-set eyes glared back at him. “Ward,” he said aloud. “Alan Parker Ward,” he followed in a voice both a bit too high and loud. “Every time,” he lamented. “I do this every damn time.”

  Staring back at his reflected image, old feelings of apprehension crept over him. He hadn’t hesitated to look in the mirror like most mornings. He drank more than usual the night before, and he was still a little light headed. He had forgotten to be afraid. Most mornings it would take him several seconds to build up the courage to look in the mirror. His thoughts, of that time, were always clouded with dark, crawling things. Things that faded from his mind the moment he tried to concentrate on them but left him with the fear that if he gazed at his reflection, what he would see looking back at him would not be human.

  CHAPTER 4

  IRONWOOD

  Ironwood was pissed. Scores of unutterable curses flooded his brain. Those political clowns have killed my project; a voice screamed inside his head as he knuckled his hands into fists. They want to start their own Solyndra, right here out in the middle of the Mojave. The Department of Energy has doled out millions to support the solar industry, a sector fraught with technology challenges, propped up with billions of taxpayer dollars. To date, they have spent one-hundred-fifty billion dollars on these initiatives and yet the industry cannot survive without government giveaways. Now they are going to rob the funds from my project to further add to their fiasco, he fumed.

  Professor Thomas Ironwood steadied himself in front of the conference table. I cannot let this collection of bureaucrats get the better of me, he told himself. Don’t let the angst consume you again. Vice-Ad
miral Hawkins had told him of the change in his research department as he was preparing to sit down. It was just like the crafty old bastard to catch him off guard. Hawkins looked like an emotionless stone monolith. He was a giant of a man that seemed taller while sitting than some men were standing. He had delivered the deft blow to Ironwood with abstract indifference. The Professor was certain that everyone around the table knew he was furious. He could feel the blood swelling in his face, and his ears began to ring. I must be as red as a beet, he speculated.

  Ironwood moved away from his usual seat to the end of the table opposite of Hawkins and sat down, the spot was reserved for Captain Eastwater, but he was late. Conveniently late, Ironwood grudgingly surmised. Taking Eastwater’s seat was a childishly symbolic gesture but a gesture of defiance all the same. It was also a tactical maneuver. It gave him time to think. Eastwater had been trying to take control of Ironwood’s department ever since he had come to the Naval Weapons Center. He was the new order, young, ambitious and an Ivy Leaguer that didn’t care for the mix of civilian and military personnel at the base. If he had his way, he would run this place as if it was Conflict Resolution 101. The truth of the matter was that the number of civilians employed at the NWC outnumbered navy personnel by three to one. It became an absolute necessity in the 1970’s and ‘80’s to bring in more people from the private sector. The Navy needed the infusion of the scientific and business communities in order to create some of the advanced weapons technology in use today. If it hadn’t been for that coalition, people like Eastwater would still be trying to invent the microchip.

  “Admiral,” Ironwood said with the controlled voice of a negotiator, “Project Sunshine is the reason I came to China Lake.”

  “We are aware of that, Professor. Please don’t think of this change as permanent. Project Sunshine has only been . . . temporarily sidetracked.”