Shoggoth

by Byron Craft

  “Sorry Lieutenant, I’m gonna stay,” he whispered back. “Gotta try and find Gedney and Delaney. It’s my fault we all came here.”

  “Neely, that’s an order now move,” forgetting our situation I had raised my voice. The seaman just shook his head and backed down the ramp into the dark cylindrical chamber. Still with the flashlight in hand I started to go after him and then I heard the sucking sounds of that slimy thing. It was returning. I laid the light down at the entrance to the circular room for Neely and shouted, “Damn you come on!”

  I ran in total darkness towards the south and hopefully escape. Even though the tunnel was a good fifteen feet in width I would occasionally collide with one of the side walls skinning my elbows and forearms. Eventually I could make out a faint light. Escape was at hand. A tentacle lashed out of the nothingness and grabbed me by the leg. I fell face forward to the tunnel floor staring at the ambient light ahead. I heard a crack and felt a searing pain in my left thigh. My leg was broken, bone matter protruded through my trousers. The slimy tentacle was wrapped about my calf. The creature’s substance soaked through my pant leg and nipped at me with a thousand bee stings. The tentacle stretched for several yards from the north but the creature was not yet visible. Its reach must have been phenomenal. I screamed in pain and drew my sidearm from its holster. I aimed it at the enormous octopus appendage and fired all eight rounds with rapid succession. The .45 caliber slugs tore through it severing its grasp. I observed with stomach-turning terror the severed tentacle moved on its own accord and begin to rejoin with its other half.

  Trying unsuccessfully to pull myself to my feet I became aware of Victor Carroon. He was, within seconds, at my side, pulling me to my feet. I yelled out in agony as he struggled to get me out and into the light. After great effort on Carroon’s part we made it to the wash and he dragged me over to the opposite bank. Carroon collapsed to the sand breathing heavily. He yelled for Reichenheim and Green to give him a hand.

  It was then that I noticed with both astonishment and horror that the creature was at the mouth of the tunnel. The astonishing thing was that it did not come after us. It stayed at the tunnel opening for a few moments with its tentacles outstretched towards the afternoon sky and then abruptly retreated into its interior.

  Green came running down the side of the bank and together with Carroon they pulled me topside. I thought all was safe when they got me above ground until I saw Reichenheim behind the wheel of the transport. He was crazy with fear. His teeth were clenched and his eyes revealed nothing but pure madness. He must have backed the Ford truck up for a running start because he was roaring at full speed in third gear. In a brief second we could all tell where he was headed. We all shouted for him to stop but it was to no avail. The diesel transport slammed into the stone monolith with a loud boom. The antique foundation of the mammoth structure snapped like a twig, falling with several tons of force, and sealing off the tunnel. “No!” I screamed. “Neely is still in there.” But it was too late.

  Reichenheim had cracked his head on the steering wheel but he would survive. As for the truck it would never live again. The truck’s fan had been driven into the radiator and water spewed forth mixing with the desert sand. Carroon said that the engine block had been cracked from the collision as well.

  Day 6:Carroon and Green tried to dig around the fallen monolith in hopes of getting to Neely but it was hopeless. It would take several large earth movers, many days, to complete the task and it was time that we needed to concentrate on our own survival. Green had bandaged Reichenheim’s head and although he was a bit dizzy at times he appeared to be in good health. The common laborer from Ridgecrest was calmer now. I guess the stress had been too much for him. He even helped Carroon and Green with their digging around the monolith this morning. When he asked how the stone structure fell over we realized that he had no memory of what he had done.

  My condition is more severe. None of us are medics and the broken bone sticking out of my leg is beyond any of our skills. The only thing I can do is to try and dull the pain with the morphine supply in our first aid kit.

  Day 7:It was decided that Carroon, Reichenheim and Green would try to make it on foot back to Ridgecrest to get help. We had a short range field radio they would have been able to use when they traversed about half the distance to town but it too was damaged beyond repair during the crash. I put Carroon in charge. They have adequate supplies to carry. It is a long way. I pray that they can make it. I did not go with them. Carroon insisted that they could jerry-rig a gurney out of one of the truck’s doors and some canvas but I refused. I would only have slowed them down decreasing their chances of survival.

  Day 8:It is the second day without my crew. I am typing this report on my portable. I decided to spend most of my time in the cab of the truck. I’ve been balancing my typewriter on my lap as I write the report. It was the most comfortable way I found but now the pain in my leg is becoming unbearable. The morphine is running low.

  Day 9:Leg has turned black and is beginning to smell.

  Day 10:Can’t type anymore. Everything is blurry. Will put glass tube and metal paper in glove compartment. Hope someone will come soon.

  September 13, 1942

  Hobart Winchell, Commandant, U.S. Navy Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet

  The remains of Lieutenant Hayward Phillips were discovered in his Construction Battalion’s transport at 0600 on September 7th. Carroon, Reichenheim and Green have yet to be found as well as Petty Officers Matthew Delaney and Albert Gedney and Seaman Joshua Neely. We have recovered the glass tube and its contents and are having our scientists examine it. Massive precipitation in that area had caused considerable flooding and our men have found no evidence of a tunnel or a monolith reported by Lieutenant Phillips. It is the opinion of this review board that the writings left behind by Lieutenant Hayward Phillips were the results of a feverish mind and not to be taken as factual. All contents of this report, until further notice, are classified TOP SECRET.

  CHAPTER 20

  SUBTERRANEAN

  This was no simple hole in the ground, Ironwood told his credulous self. It was a vast network of caves leading deep into the impenetrable darkness. Ward and the Professor walked out of a narrow stone artery into a wider passageway. Shining their mini LED flashlights in several directions the two could see that the tunnel they were in was the same size and configuration as the one Gwen Gilhooley found herself in after falling through the earth.

  “This is five-sided like the other tunnel,” Ironwood opined.

  “Yes,” Alan replied in a low hushed voice momentarily distracted by an object on the tunnel’s ceiling.

  Ironwood fixed his gaze higher pointing his light beam upward. The remains of a mechanical device hung from above. A twisted frame with brown wires dangling from it was all that was left of the mechanism. “A light fixture?” he conjectured. “A chandelier of some sort?”

  “Could be,” said Alan. “Look over here,” he followed, pointing his light at one of the walls. Inscribed into the tiles with great precision were images. “Glyphs,” he announced. There were two images skillfully carved, each image about three feet high, delineated above their heads. One was a cone shaped creature with a bewildering array of tentacles, tendrils and enormous claws akin to a lobster, attached to thick stalks protruding from the side of its body. The other was a rod or staff with a pointed end. Alan stopped talking mesmerized by the outline of the conical being’s profile.

  “I wonder what it means,” Ironwood put forward.

  Alan snapped back to the moment and slowly answered, “I studied picture symbols like these in several ancient texts.”

  “You can read these?”

  “Yes,” he replied still not taking his eyes off of the wall drawings.

  “Well, what does it say?” prodded the Professor.

  Turning in Ironwoods direction with a faint smile on his face Alan pointed into the tunnel. “It says, ‘this way.’”

  The two proc
eeded to walk deeper into the five-sided conduit. “Did it say anything else?” implored Ironwood.

  “Nope.”

  “Are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know it was telling us to walk farther in?”

  “It was an ancient form of a directional arrow. Like our one-way street signs.”

  “You are certain of this?”

  “No,” said the ex-English teacher from Miskatonic University, turned amateur archeologist. “But it is a good guess.”

  “I thought so,” said the Professor with a scowling grin.

  “Given more time I could probably draw out additional meanings. The best I can do right now is to offer a guesstimate, and beyond that, it would be heavier on the guessing part. Don’t blame me if, later, I tell you it’s about Lady Gaga on a unicycle.”

  Venturing further in, Ironwood stopped abruptly. He laid a hand on Alan Ward’s shoulder stopping him. “Alan, wait! Don’t you notice something?”

  “What?”

  “The floor,” he snapped back. “I get the sensation that it’s slanting. I believe we are on a decline.” Setting his flashlight down on the tunnel floor Ironwood lets go, and it started to roll. The light cast eerie patterns on the floor and wall as it moved. The LED penlight picked up speed, made an arc to the right and disappeared. It could have been a foolish action on my part, thought Ironwood; if Alan weren't carrying his light, we would have been left in total blackness.

  “It seems to have chosen our direction for us,” observed Alan.

  The two moved on together. Alan and the Professor walked by several passageways of equal size branching off in opposite directions, ignoring them, for the time being, in pursuit of the mobile torch. It became increasingly obvious to them that they were treading deeper into a cavernous, eon dead honeycomb of ancient tunnels. Ironwood felt a touch of anxiety when thinking of the primal entities that may have dwelt in this subterranean place. Already, they had descended for what he thought must have been many stories below the earth, and the temperature grew cooler with every step. Was this a new-found gateway to secrets of inner earth and vanished eons, he almost marveled out loud?

  Rounding a bend in the tunnel, they made out a pale blue-white light ahead of them. The torch had lodged itself up against the edge of an opening in the side of the passageway. The powerful lumens illuminated a portion of its interior.

  “Come here my little drone,” said Ironwood. Ironwood walked quickly ahead, stooped and retrieved his light off of the floor. Shining it into the adjacent room he stood frozen to the spot and stared inside in utter amazement.

  “Thomas, what’s wrong!” shouted Alan pulling up the rear.

  Within a second, they were standing shoulder to shoulder gazing inward. It was a room of considerable size. There were more of the ancient glyphs carved into the walls. They were covered in some of the symbols they had seen in Alan’s copy of the Necronomicon. Consistent with all of the foreign construction they had thus experienced the room was approximately fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet high. Unlike the tunnels, it was cylindrical and in place of wall tiles, the bulwarks consisted of large stone blocks. Incongruous to the alien architecture were the furnishings within its interior. Crudely fashioned book shelves lined one side of the room jammed packed with papers, books and what appeared to be scrolls, all dust laden as if they had been resting there for a very long time, perhaps years. In the center of the chamber were two rough-hewn tables, several chairs, and a writing desk all piled high with papers and books of varying antiquity. Next to the furnishings was a cot that had collapsed under its own weight, its cloth bedding rotting away. Opposite the shelves, the size of Ironwood’s Willys was a wooden barrel lying on its side, the end painted in red letters were the words, “Coal Oil.”

  Professor Ironwood was first to break the silence, “What on earth…”

  Alan Ward ran into the chamber waving his flashlight around spasmodically and shouted, “Oh my God, I know what this is! It has got to be Isaac Morley’s study.”

  ***

  Rummaging through the clutter spewed across the tables and desk, Ironwood came across several well-used candle stubs and eventually located a lantern. “Your Morley was a lousy housekeeper,” he proclaimed walking over to the wood barrel.

  “What is coal oil?” asked Alan.

  “It’s an antiquated term for kerosene.” After filling the lantern’s reservoir from a spigot on the barrel, Ironwood raised its glass globe and lit the wick with a butane lighter.

  “You don’t smoke; why do you carry a lighter?” queried Alan Ward a little befuddled.

  “Living in the desert I try to have all means of survival at my disposal. You should see inside my glove compartment.”

  “Better than rubbing two sticks together?”

  “You’ve got it.” Ironwood lowered the glass globe and the lantern flashed a ring of light around the circular chamber with a warm glow. The room, lit by the flame of the old lamp, the notion of architecture from a nameless geologic past grew stronger.

  Ironwood brushed aside some papers on the writing desk and placed the kerosene lamp on its wooden surface. Some of the papers slid off the desktop exposing a thin leather bound book.

  Alan snatched up the slim book. Shaking the dust off of it the letters I.M. appeared, engraved upon the cover. He quickly flipped through some of the pages. The leaves were covered in a crabbed, archaic penmanship. “This is Isaac Morley’s journal,” Alan whispered visibly shaken by the discovery. “It appears to cover all his studies in the region,” raising his voice a little louder as he flipped through the pages. “Ironwood, do you realize what this means?” his voice echoing off the stone rotunda. “This is possibly one of the greatest historical and archeological finds of our era. Why there must be a myriad of secrets here waiting to be unlocked from the earth’s past. These walls are a standing library going back, dare I say, thousands of years.”

  Ironwood had left Alan’s side and was examining the glyphs carved into the wall. It was what archaeologists called a vanished language, he summized, images and symbols of a forgotten time. The stones of the enclosure were cut smoothly. They looked machined. The ancient writing weren’t chiseled into their surface by any crude method; rather they appeared to have been engraved possibly by an advanced cutting tool similar to a diamond tipped dado or maybe even a laser. Who could have made such a thing for God’s sake, and why? Shifting his attention from the wall, he started to examine the clumsily built shelves. Although there were some books and papers, the majority of their contents consisted of scrolls. Each had been tied snugly with a strip of leather. Grabbing one at random, he attempted to untie the leather strip only to find it crumble to pieces at his touch. Ironwood unfurlled it and was faced with more of the same alien script. Running his fingertips along the writing surface he could instantly tell that the scroll was not comprised of any ancient parchment or papyrus, it was metal that had, after all this time, maintained the flexibility of a brand-new sheet of paper.

  “Alan look at this,” said the Professor walking back to the desk and into better lighting. “It has more of the glyphs similar to what is on the walls of this place…”

  “And the Necronomicon,” offered Alan, finishing his sentence for him. Only glancing in his direction but keeping his nose in the journal, Alan shouted again, “This is amazing! Morley writes that he built his house over this spot shortly after discovering the entrance.”

  “It would take a team of archeologists to cover this place . . .”

  “Your Captain Eastwater can keep his little section of the tunnel! We have got a hundred of them to explore,” Alan declared triumphantly.

  “Except for this room, everything we have seen so far has been void of all portable contents, a circumstance which leads me to believe that this was the result of a deliberate desertion. The wall engravings and all these scrolls must be the remains of a vanished epoch. They contain a portion of its history.”

  “That m
ust have been Isaac Morley’s calling. From his journal and all of these notes he undoubtedly spent years deciphering them.”

  “Definitely a man dedicated to his work,” added Ironwood. “The answer or answers would probably have taken him years to unravel. All of the extraneous, unconnected and redundant information he would have to sift through just to obtain one morsel of truth. Alan,” he implored. “It would be similar to future archeologists endeavoring to learn relevant information about us by deciphering our train schedules.”

  Ironwood could tell that Alan was no longer listening. Lost within Isaac Morley’s Journal and occasionally referring to one of the old scientist’s notes on an arbitrarily selected sheet of paper it would take artillery fire to bring him back to earth. Was Morley’s obsession with a long forgotten past also Alan’s mania? Did Alan also believe that this preoccupation with lost eons would help him to find the lost years of his life? Ironwood was exceptionally tired. He no longer wanted to do any additional speculating. It was only three in the afternoon, and he shouldn’t feel so sleepy. This weary feeling, he was experiencing from time to time, he recollected, started after the day that he went spelunking through Gilhooley’s tunnel with the top brass. Maybe he had picked-up a flu bug of some sort. Hopefully, he smiled internally; he hadn’t picked up a ten-thousand-year old virulent disorder. As a matter of fact, he observed, Alan looked done in as well. Ironwood slammed his fist on the old desk, and shouted, “Alan let’s go.”