Shoggoth
Page 18
Night time temperature down to 60 degrees. I didn’t sleep. The Eeeeeeee, eeeeeeee, shrieking was intolerable. The wind was a light breeze out of the south but the direction it came from didn’t alter the level of the sound. We were only five miles from the anomaly and it was obvious that that was its source. Matthew Delaney was correct the night before, when he observed that the animal screams were coming out of the northwest. To the northwest is where the so called monolith is located. The volume of its cries was almost ear splitting compared to the previous evening. There were only two weapons in our survey crew. A bolt action M1 with a 5-round magazine and my sidearm. I stood guard leaning against the front fender of the transport smoking cigarette after cigarette. I had chambered a round in my sidearm, prepared for anything that may appear. I had each man take turns standing guard in three hour shifts with the loaded M1, Petty Officer Albert Gedney was the first. The rest of the men had buttoned up their tents and stuffed cotton, from a first aid kit, in their ears in hopes of getting some rest.
Day 5:The rest of the evening was uneventful. At sunrise the amplified seabird keening stopped. Petty Officer Albert Gedney and Seaman Neely were the first to rise. The two had hurriedly gobbled down their morning rations and were headed towards the anomaly. Neely had instilled some excitement in Albert Gedney over the possibility of a great archeological find. Victor Carroon had already taken the surveyor’s transit and tripod along with the lenker rod out of the transport and was setting them up to begin our morning shoot. The transit is used to measure both horizontal and vertical angles along the horizon and the earth to establish property lines. The five-foot-long lenker rod is the surveyor’s measuring stick. We mark the lines with steel pins driven into the ground, which are numbered and entered into a log book. These are called “benchmarks.” The transit we use is equipped with an optical theodolite (a small telescope) for topographic surveying as well.
A quarter of an hour passed and Carroon and I had set three benchmarks when I noticed something peculiar through the eyepiece of the optical theodolite. Gedney and Neely had set out on foot to cross the five miles between us and the anomaly. They were about half way to their destination when I spied what appeared, in the lenses of the theodolite, as a large animal hunkered down in the sand. The hide of the thing shimmered with movement. It was directly in the path of the Petty Officer Third Class and the Seaman. Dropping my log book, I ran to the transport and yelled for my crew to follow.
The diesel engine was warm from the morning sun and it caught instantly the first time I laid on the starter. Slamming the truck into first and spewing sand behind us we raced towards the Petty Officer 3rd Class and the Seaman Recruit. We bridged the distance between us and the two seabees within a few minutes. “Get in!” I ordered slowing to a stop. Gedney and Neely did as ordered. Speeding up again I unholstered my side arm and was ready for whatever lay ahead. Gedney snatched up the M1. Everyone in our battalion probably thought that I was suffering from heatstroke and was off my rocker. Everything had happened so fast that I didn’t have time to brief the men. They were blindly following my lead. Two nights in a row the unearthly screams of a wild animal had laid siege upon us and now it was waiting out there in the sand. All of us were on edge and were suffering from the lack of sleep.
The sand encrusted brakes of the Ford diesel screeched when I forcefully engaged them. I kicked the driver’s side door open and with a two handed grip on my semi-automatic pistol, slid off the seat and faced the creature. Gedney pulled up the rear with the M1 pointed at our prey and I heard him chamber a round.
The thing was dark brown and hairy. There was a horrible stench in the air. It was like a thousand rotting corpses. Our adversary was a large ovoid. The poorly observed Gremory did not shift its position when we approached. A thick layer of flies bristled over its body. What I had witnessed through my surveyor’s scope as movement of a creature was simply the swarming of flies over a rotting corpse. The dead animal had once been a mule. It had become severely bloated as the gases of decomposition built up inside of it. Empty saddlebags nearby told us it had been used as a pack animal. Leading away from it were footprints in the sand, human footprints.
I ordered the men to spread out. We stepped around the body, trying not to think about the flies, some of which were probably already laying eggs in the savaged flesh of the Mule. Reichenheim and Green held shovels in a defensive posture. Matthew Delaney was on my right and Joshua Neely remained close to Gedney, Carroon was still holding on to the lenker rod. Looming before us was the monolith. Seeing it up close it resembled an obelisk except the sides didn’t taper to a point at the top. It was much taller than I had guessed the two evenings prior. It was a narrow square structure about fifteen feet by fifteen feet and at least six stories in height. The top, instead of being flat, terminated in a pyramid. It was no natural phenomenon; it was highly sophisticated in construction. It looked to have been carved from one solid piece of stone. The structure listed slightly to one side, probably due to the deterioration of its antique foundation. The sides were meticulously crafted with great precision and were undoubtedly as smooth as polished marble at one time but for the pitting caused by years of wind and sand erosion. Most likely thousands of years.
Closing in we all stared at it in awe. Engraved into the sides of the structure were drawings, glyphs of a completely unique nature. We had witnessed the petroglyphs in a valley north of our current location but they had been done by prehistoric people with crude stone tools. These were done with delicate execution. They looked machined as if done by a powerful router that had cut into the stone creating multiple horizontal bands of various images. The technique was mature and doubtlessly done by a highly evolved civilization. Much of the art tradition was unfamiliar. There was minute detailing of elaborate vegetation that was rendered foreign by the representation of an alien looking animal life. Cone shaped creatures with thick long tentacles were depicted with astonishing vividness. Neely ran his hand over one of the engravings.
“Pictoglyphs,” he announced. “They’re picture symbols. It’s writing, but in a series of images. You don’t read them, you interpret it.”
“What do they say?” I challenged.
“I’m sorry Lieutenant that was the limit of my knowledge.”
Turning from the stone edifice we could see that the foot prints of our mysterious stranger led away from where we stood and to the west towards a large wash that had disrupted the ground. Washes are common in the desert. Some are small ditches while others resemble miniature canyons that were carved into the earth by rushing water, flood waters that occur when infrequent but heavy rains spill down mountainsides and run across the desert floor like a bulldozer obliterating everything in their path. The footprints disappeared into the wash. Walking away from the monolith we followed the tracks.
The sides of the wash had been pushed up from the massive erosion creating a tall berm. Neely and I were the first to scale it and as the rest of the crew followed from behind we looked into the eroded area. It must have been a good twenty feet deep. We could see that it wouldn’t be difficult to climb into the depression because the sides were gradually sloped making it simple to walk down. When the rest of our crew joined us we hesitated at the top of the berm because on the opposite bank was the opening to a cave. If it would have been an old mine, it would not have deterred us. The hills in the area are dotted with old mine shafts and caves from the prospecting days. Gold and silver were once sought after and mined in this region during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. But this cave was not the results of some makeshift excavation. It was a five-sided tunnel that looked to be the outcome of modern engineering. There were no crude timbers shoring up the opening synonymous of the bygone days of mining. The sun shone on it allowing us to see several feet within the cavity. The walls were as smooth as poured concrete. The tracks, that we had been following, led into the tunnel.
“What should we do Lieutenant,” asked Delaney.
“We don’t know if it’s safe,” replied Delaney.
“It looks like it might be okay,” answered the seaman. “We’ll take it slow and easy.”
“Proceed,” I eventually said.
"Aye, aye, sir," shouted Neely as he raced down the bank.
Reluctantly we followed. I sent Reichenheim to get the two flashlights we kept in the truck. Examining the floor of the wash it became apparent to me that the tunnel had probably extended in both directions (north and south) but had been cut in half and its southern most end buried by the rushing water that at one time created the dry bottom gulch. We were heading towards the opened, north end.
It had already reached one hundred degrees by then and the cool interior of the tunnel was a welcome relief. We didn’t venture in any farther than about ten feet waiting for Reichenheim’s return so we could light our way. We paused and examined what we could see of the walls and ceiling of the tunnel by the ambient light. What I mistook as poured concrete was, in fact, five-sided notched tiles. Brushing away probably centuries of dust and sand with my hand we noticed that the tiles interlocked with such exactness that the joints were hairline.
“Some engineering, Lieutenant?” whistled Neely.
Reichenheim came running up with a flashlight in each hand. I took one and Neely wanted the other along with Delaney and Gedney but when I noticed the look of fear on the laborer’s face I knew that it would be better if we didn’t try to pry it from his two hands that he now held with an iron grip. Perspiration ran down Reichenheim’s face and I could tell that it was more than the heat of the day that caused it. He looked truly frightened. Maybe it was claustrophobia, maybe it was the uncomfortable evenings we spent listening to the chilling screeches that kept us from sleeping followed by our discovery of the monolith and now the tunnel. I decided to let him keep the flashlight. It definitely gave him comfort.
The floor of the tunnel was covered with sand that had drifted in and the footmarks of the person we were tracking led deeper into its interior. I took the lead and Reichenheim pulled up the rear searching for phantoms with his flashlight at every step. The tunnel curved to the west and after several hundred feet in we came across a squalid form. It was a man. Or what was left of a man. He was dead. The flies had made it in that far and circled his face and hands foraging for their morning meal. A crumpled fedora laid by his side. He appeared to be old because he wore a white shaggy beard that covered half his face. But the rest, the countenance, would have baffled any coroner. There was no fatty tissue left in the body. His skin was paper thin and taught stretched over the skull and boney arms as if all the life had been sucked out of him. Reichenheim screamed and Carroon and Green pushed him up against the opposite wall.
“He looks like a prospector,” Neely offered examining the dead man’s clothes.
“Maybe he came in here looking for the motherlode and dropped dead of a heart attack. He looks like an old timer,” Matthew Delaney added.
“We will need to report this,” I said. “They’ll see that this fella gets a proper burial.
“Lieutenant, can we please go a little farther in. There could be something valuable in there,” Neely pleaded.
I looked around at everybody. Reichenheim had regained his composure but refused to look at the corpse. The rest didn’t appear too badly shaken by our gruesome find. “All right,” I finally said. “We will give it a look see. Everyone stay close together.”
The tunnel continued to curve to the west. The morning light no longer reached in that far and without our two flashlights we would have been engulfed in total darkness. I became aware of a sweet smell. Was it honeysuckle? The fragrance was pleasant and grew stronger as we progressed deeper into the tunnel. Delaney commented that it reminded him of the lilacs on his Aunt’s farm in Iowa.
We halted our progress when we came across the entrance to a subterranean room. A ramp led downward and we followed. We were entering a very large chamber. A cathedral-sized chamber. The best we could tell by the light of our battery powered torches was that the room was circular. Around the cylindrical room we followed the slope that spiraled down along its walls. Reaching the bottom all of the men stayed close together as ordered. There were tall tables spread about the room. The table tops reached head height and standing on our tip toes we could see sheets of a thin material that looked like metal but had the flexibility of paper. Neely grabbed one of them and shaking the dust off of it noticed that it contained some kind of foreign writing. After giving up on trying to read the thing he tried to tear it in half and found it to be indestructible. Delaney tried to light one up with his Zippo but it wouldn’t burn either. “Wow!” he said. “We could use this stuff as the skin on our fighter planes and bombers. I bet it weighs nothing.”
All along the walls of the giant room were large metal drawers. They reminded me of the coffin sized drawers that coroners use to store the remains of poor dead souls. Each drawer displayed more of the foreign writing. I didn’t think that the place was an age-old mausoleum but it did impress me as probably a library belonging to an ancient colossal race.
Several of the drawers had been pried open. Their fronts were ripped off and the contents had been removed. On one of the tall tables was an empty glass tube. It resembled a chemist’s test tube except it was approximately three inches in diameter and a good foot long. The top, along with its contents, were missing. I gingerly picked it up and like the strange metallic paper, it felt weightless. I banged it against a tabletop and it didn’t shatter. Slamming it harder against the table it still wouldn’t break. Next I tossed it straight up into the air and watched it bounce off the stone floor without breaking. Neely scooped it up on the second bounce and threw the tube with all his might at one of the metal drawers. It bounced off the drawer with a resounding “clang” and Neely caught it on the rebound. Turning to Delaney and waving the oversized test tube in the air he shouted, “How about this stuff for windshields in the cockpits of our fighters. The Jap Zeros have nothin’ like this.”
It was then that we heard the eeeeeeee, eeeeeeee, which haunted our desert evenings. The screeching was much louder than we had previously heard. The rattling sound that always followed its wail was no longer faint. It must have been very close, I thought. Could the tunnel be its lair?
I took the large test tube from Neely, rolled up a sheet of the metallic paper and shoved it inside. I stuck the tube and its contents in the side pocket of my slacks.
“Sir!” Neely exclaimed with a gulp.
“It is time for us to leave gentlemen,” I ordered. “Everybody close order, single file, now move!” We headed for the ramp double time. What seemed like a gradual sloping of the ramp upon descending became achingly tiresome on the way up. Reaching the top, I heard movement. It was a moist sucking sound. I leaned back from the five-sided archway to the tunnel and motioned for my men to do the same. Reichenheim started to whimper but Carroon stopped him with an elbow to the gut. I failed to order the men to turn off their flashlights but they didn’t seem to attract the revolting organism that flowed through the tunnel at frightening speed. I had a clearer view than anyone else being at the head of the line and peering around the edge of the archway. The thing was colossal and repulsive. I almost threw up my breakfast. It was an enormous ball of mucus that filled the tunnel from floor to ceiling propelling itself with an array of tentacles and tendrils. Hundreds of human sized eyes and mouths continually burst forth from bubbles that popped opened in its slimy flesh and then quickly unformed. None, thank God, ever glanced in our direction. It was heading south, towards the wash and the open desert. What would happen I thought if this thing was free to roam the outdoors? If we were lucky enough to get out of the tunnel, would it be out there waiting for us?
Eeeeeeee! Eeeeeeee! The sound was deafening. Over and over it repeated its hideous cry as it headed south. Then as quickly as the animal’s s
hrieking began it suddenly stopped. There was nothing, not even the usual rattle that followed. Several of the men, breathing heavily, were the only sounds within our subterranean prison.
Half of us, by then, had huddled on the left side of the archway with the rest on the right, peering out, not even trying to guess our next move. When I decided to give the order to “move” hoping that the creature from the tunnel was a safe distance away, the damn thing returned. It was screeching again. Maintaining our refuge within the archway to the cylindrical room I ordered Reichenheim to turn off his light and I did the same. The creature was bearing down, coming closer uttering its earsplitting scream. It somehow seemed all the louder in the dark. If any of the men were like me the impending horror played hell with their nightmarish imaginations. Just when I thought it would pass us again, this time, allowing us our gateway to freedom, I believed I detected several screams mixed up with the greasy thing’s thunderous keening. Something wet sprayed the side of my face. Then all was quiet again. Several minutes passed when I gave the order to turn on the flashlights. Petty Officers Matthew Delaney and Albert Gedney were gone. Reichenheim screamed and pointed a shaky hand at me. The right side of my face was covered in blood.
Day 5, 6: p.m. It took me only seconds that morning to realize that the blood on my face was not mine. It was probably from Delaney or Gedney, or both. There were five left in my crew, including the civilian laborers we hired, and I was not about to risk them searching for the two that were missing and presumed dead. The body of the old prospector was evidence of the creature’s deadly intensions. I ordered everyone to head south and out of the tunnel as fast as their legs would carry them. I pulled up the rear. Starting to run I took a quick head count and noticed that one was missing. It was Neely. He was still standing in the archway to the subterranean room. “Neely, get going, on the double,” I ordered in a harsh whisper.