Shoggoth
Page 27
It was obvious that the shoggoth hadn’t escaped. There were no sightings of it ever leaving its hole. It was still down there.
Ironwood knew that the fear he had experienced wandering lost through that series of catacomb-like tunnels would stay with him for the rest of his life. He would never forget the creature made from nothing but synthesized matter and putrid slime with multiple eyes that floated freely over its surface, forming limbs whenever it willed. The enormity of the memory wrought unpleasant chills just beneath his skin.
There was a dichotomy, however because Ironwood also felt sorry for the creature. He was certain now of its origins and its purpose. Solar radiation is light energy from the Sun. Ninety-three million miles from the Earth it just sits there with all sorts of nuclear reactions going on. Since the beginning of time, it has always been giving off huge amounts of energy and radiation. That was what fueled the shoggoths during the age of the Elder Beings. Pure solar radiation. And, that was why this particular synthetic life form never left the tunnel. It couldn’t. The tunnels were its home. It is where it worked. It only consumed other organics for fuel when its source, the sun, was cut off.
All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for the Professor. Alan Ward had disclosed that this civilization without any hardware or instruments had willed their artificial life forms into every shape and need. This specific shoggoth, he wanted to shout from the top of the world, had been programmed to be a conveyance. The core of an underground transportation system. If it had pulled any carriages made of conventional materials, after millions of years, they would have crumbled to dust and back into the earth leaving no traces. Or, maybe the shoggoth transport formed its own organic compartments to shuttle its Elder passengers. Given enough time and energy from the sun, we might have witnessed it, he settled. Maybe its strange keening cry was simply the imitation of its master's voice calling out something similar to, "Now leaving on track nine!"
He watched as Gwen put her head on Jason’s shoulder. There was a tenderness there that, for their sake, Professor Thomas Ironwood hoped would last a lifetime. Ironwood leaned back in his seat and wondered what Amy Murchison was doing?
***
The Sikorsky helicopter reached a comfortable altitude of two-thousand-feet, turned to the west and soared towards the setting sun.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to my longtime friend, Fredrik King, editor, writer, and artist, who lent his editing experience to the manuscript. His art can be seen at www.FredrikKing.com.
Thanks also to my good friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, who spent forty-two years of his life in the service to our country. This gentleman aided with valuable info on U.S. Navy protocol, rankings, uniform code, etc., that greatly enhanced the realism of my story.
Finally, I must acknowledge Craig Siefkas, our pro bono tour guide from the Maturango Museum to Little Petroglyph Canyon within the Naval Weapons Center in Ridgecrest, California. Mr. Siefkas supplied accurate data about volcanic vents in the area and CO2 emissions.
Writing this book has been a labor of love, and I hope that I have done some justice to its contributors.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Byron Craft started out writing screenplays, moved on to authoring articles for several magazines and finally evolved his writing style into exciting, sci-fi, fantasy, horror novels.
Craft has published two novels in a planned five-novel mythos series that reflects the influence of H.P Lovecraft. Byron Craft's first novel "The CRY of CTHULHU," initially released under the title "The Alchemist's Notebook," was the reincarnation and expansion of one of his most memorable screenplays. Craft demonstrates he is as capable a novelist as scriptwriter. Craft's second novel, “SHOGGOTH” continues with all the ingredients of a classic Lovecraft tale, with some imaginative additions.
The Arkham Detective series, which includes “Cthulhu’s Minions,” “The Innsmouth Look,” “The Devil Came to Arkham,” and finally, “The Dunwich Dungeon,” are currently available individually and as a collection in both a Kindle format, and softcover.
Craft enjoys writing full-length stories and would love to get feedback from his readers.
If you would like to read more books by Byron Craft, please visit his website: www.ByronCraftBooks.com or go to Amazon.com
The Mythos Project Series
The CRY of CTHULHU
(Originally published under the title: The Alchemist’s Notebook.) This novelization of The Cry of Cthulhu film project is about a shell-shocked Vietnam vet, and his wife. They inherit an old country estate in Germany around the time his company transfers him to the same area. The two soon discover that the coincidence is really too good to be true.
Their home rests near a timeworn door into the earth that is poised to open, exposing all to a horde of four-dimensional beings. Soon the line between our reality and that other space-time will be blurred forever, leaving mankind to be consumed by shrill, shrieking terror. Only one man has the slimmest chance to save our planet and, even though he has no place to hide, he prefers to run. [Book One]
SHOGGOTH
An accepted theory exists that millions of years ago a celestial catastrophic occurrence wiped out every living thing on the planet. This theory may be flawed. Fast-forward to the 21st century. A handful of scientists, allied with the military, discover a massive network of tunnels beneath the Mojave Desert. Below, lies an ancient survivor, waiting...and it's hungry! [Book Two]
The Arkham Detective Series
Cthulhu’s Minions
A Novelette introducing the Arkham Detective. Cthulhu’s Minions are Pilot Demons. Nasty pint-sized legless creatures that crawl on their hands with razor sharp claws and fangs. The diminutive beings must be stopped before they conduct one of Cthulhu's Old Ones to the back alleys and streets of Arkham, likewise the entire planet. The story takes place during the Great Depression, a spot in time where H. P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler could have collaborated. Henceforth the narrative begins, through the eyes of an Arkham Detective.
The Innsmouth Look
The second story in the series that brings the detective back, investigating a murder and the kidnapping of a small child, which leads to Innsmouth by the sea, the frightful creatures that lurk there, and what they plan to call up from the depths.
The Devil Came to Arkham
Follow the Arkham Detective as he attempts to discover the source of a deadly epidemic. Is it the devil? Is it a Night Gaunt? Or both? Find out when you read about a soul sucking creature that is bent on turning Arkham, Massachusetts into a ghost town.
The Dunwich Dungeon
In this final chapter, a seven-foot tall man in black has caused the Detective's good friend to go missing. A woman is brutally murdered in a museum, and mysterious artifacts lead us on a trail to inter-dimensional horrors. This time the Arkham Detective is armed to the teeth, and determined to avenge murder with mayhem.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Byron Craft’s
The CRY of CTHULHU
The CRY of CTHULHU
Warning
The statute of limitations has run out. What I stole from Miskatonic University, they still want back. They want to hide the truth.
The theft of what the news media called the “Alchemist’s Papers” was made public in January of 1984 but the cover-up that followed, and the failed attempt to retrieve them, left the story only half told. The truth is a fold in the soft and otherwise smooth surface of time. It is a harbinger of evil so destructive that the current state of the world, plagued by terrorism and economic chaos, would only be a footnote in history by comparison.
The tabloids had a heyday with the story, claiming apocalyptic doom, while the mainstream media labeled it as another crackpot interpretation of the “Book of Revelations.” Neither were accurate. Miskatonic University of Arkham, Massachusetts had done an effective job of discrediting the papers and me, and until now, no one would publish them.
The one piece of information that they w
ere unable to keep from the public was the existence of a covert organization within the university itself. We were a group of select scholars that investigated what appeared to be supernatural occurrences all over the world. It was alleged that during some of these investigations the group had acted like vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, passing out judgment where they saw fit.
My name is Thomas Ironwood. I was a resident professor at Miskatonic and head of the Physics Department. I was a member of the group, known then, to only a few, as the “Mythos Department.” My confessions to the press were not out of remorse for any wrong doing, rather as a revolt against my colleagues who were becoming dangerously lax in their retaliatory measures.
I believed then, and believe even more today, that the individual stories of Faren and Janet Church, and Faren’s great Uncle Heinrich Todesfall, constitute a warning to an already endangered world and should not be suppressed. The rampant ignorance in the world has left me no alternative but to come out of hiding and go public with the documents.
The plausibility of our planet being threatened by an ageless horror may automatically arouse suspicion to the authenticity of the following chronicles and possibly create a backlash from the more serious elites in the media. How Miskatonic acquired the papers may be questioned. Why hide them if they are only a hoax?
The chronicles are authentic. They required some editing to clarify the time lines. The accounts original forms were as a journal, a diary and a series of tape recordings. They have been edited into separate narratives subsequently breaking the work down into four parts.
With the help of my publisher, we have struck out redundancies which often occur in personal journals and eliminated digressions which the elderly Todesfall was guilty of doing when his mind would stray from the story and wander unchecked into the intervening years. Faren Church’s was the least polished of the narratives because his was a hasty account left on tape and required more extensive editing.
For the remainder, we have left well enough alone. The chronicles accurately tell the whole story without additional enhancement.
***
PART ONE
THE SCHLOSS
From Janet Church’s Diary
I am almost out of Valium, only one more pill left. The stress is beginning to get the best of me. The tranquilizer is the only thing that has made life bearable for me these last few days. I wonder now what will happen next, if they will come for me after the drug runs out, or if I will be allowed to numb my last few minutes.
They won’t come close to the schloss now. I have the lights burning in every room. I even have the oil lamp I found going, and every candle I could lay my hands on is lit.
They won’t come this minute. They won’t come until the mist hides the stars and the moon.
Dear God! I am not even sure who they are!
***
This evening, the mist rolled up from the hollow and engulfed the schloss and beyond. It moved across the road, lingering in low spots and ditches until the entire countryside was covered by the milky vapor. It spreads throughout the thick woods for miles, and on humid nights, such as this, it has often reached as far as Valsbach.
The countryside surrounding the house, even on the brightest days, is desolate and foreboding. Now, at dusk, the twilight lends the field behind our house a strangeness that sets it apart from the rest of the area. It suggests a watchful malevolence to the ancient trees, to the descending marshes with their thousands of chirping insects and the incessant croaking of frogs, to the time worn and vine covered stone walls pressing in upon the perimeter of the old estate, closing in on our home as if intent upon holding me fast.
Thick vapors from the hollow swirl and eddy about the schloss and the room in which I sit fills with moisture. The fog ascends in spirals from beneath the door, and its long, wet fingers creep across the carpet with caressing strokes.
Crowning a grassy summit, whose sides are wooded near its base with gnarled trees of the black forest, stands the old home of my husband’s ancestors. For centuries, its lofty tiled roofs and tower have looked down upon the rugged countryside. The exact age of the house is not known. Its roots, I guess, must go back centuries, before the beginnings of the Church family line. I know very little about the family lineage not being a Church by blood, only by marriage.
The villagers say the ancient house has always been here. They tend to be superstitious and sometimes given to fanciful tales. One teller of these stories is a homeless old woman who makes her living sifting through the back alleys and dumpsters in town. Her name is Ilsedore Hulse, and she is probably the oldest living resident of Valsbach.
Once when I was able to get her alone and ask about my husband’s ancestry, she confided in me that the house had a blackened past and that, “evil still prevailed there as sure as the trees of the Black Forest have leaves and the creatures that dwell there have eyes.” She summed up our meeting by informing me in a dramatically lowered voice that the old house was there even when her great-great-grandmother was a child.
Superstition plays an important role with these people, and their fears can be justified living in an isolated area far from anywhere you, and I would consider mainstream. I can excuse their actions; their attitude towards us, however, is less than tolerable. It did not take me long to accept the shunned indifference by the shopkeepers and townspeople.
What I did consider strange is the lack of visitors to the surrounding area of the schloss. Travelers seldom enter the woods that border our property, and none come within walking distance of the old house.
I have never seen any wild animals on our property. The woodland creatures, if there are any, are probably wise, because the overall aspect of the region would give anyone the impression of leering death. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seem unnaturally large and twisted, and the other vegetation abnormally thick and feverish; while curious mounds and hummocks in the weedy, pitted field behind our house, remind me of snakes and burial plots.
The strain is critical now, by tonight, I am afraid that if my husband does not return home . . . I will be murdered.
The woods appear to close in tighter about this lonely house.
***
Damn it, where is Faren? He better get here soon.
I have to remain calm. I won’t end up screaming into the night. I’ll start at the beginning. The record must be complete. I’ll tell you about my husband. I’ll tell you about Boston, Chicago, and New York before receiving the telegram, and I’ll tell you about this place.
I met Faren while still living with my parents in Ipswich, that’s in Essex County, Massachusetts. At the time, I was in the midst of making what I thought were two very important decisions. One, should I keep pursuing a major in art history and, two, how to clear up my complexion, when an old Dodge van lumbered down the street and died in front of our house. “Bring our boys home” and “Impeach Johnson” was painted on its side in day-glow colors.
The sound of the ancient motor in its final death throes was followed by the slamming of the driver’s door. A moment later the hood was violently flung up and amidst the fury of clanking tools and sharp cursing, a full head of tightly curled hair shot out.
“Have you got a piece of wire?” he shouted. Then he added impatiently, “A bobby pin, a shoelace, anything? Don’t just stand there; I have to strap this distributor cap down, I’ve got to be in Chicago tomorrow.”
I wore my hair down and with a headband in those days, and although I knew I didn’t look like I had just come from a hardware store, I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t and blurted, “I’m wearing sandals.”
His blue eyes looked right inside of me, and then he cracked a smile on one side of his face and said, “Hey, what’s your name?”
I was back in junior high again being asked to go steady for the first time in my life. The sensation shot through me; I became flushed, I am sure he picked up on it because he relaxed some, and with a broader smile stepped forward, wipi
ng his hands on an oil stained rag.
“I’m Faren. Faren Church. You still haven’t told me yours.”
It didn’t take us long to get acquainted. I was able to get the required length of wire from my dad’s garage, and in the time it took him to make the repairs on the van, he was off, and I went with him.
THE MYTHOS ALLIANCE
This is Byron Craft’s tribute to a secret society of mythos authors and artists known only to a select few as THE MYTHOS ALLIANCE. Please check them out:
F. Paul Wilson . . . is an extremely prolific author, primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. He is the winner of multiple awards: two-time winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, 2005 World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, 2009 Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, and twice has received the Prometheus Award for Best Novel. Mr. Wilson has requested that we showcase his most Lovecraftian tale, “The Barrens & Others: Tales of Awe and Terror,” available at Amazon
Sean Hoade . . . writer extraordinaire who, like a butterfly within a chrysalis, has masterfully developed inside a cocoon of literature and has, so far, written novels about a murderous RV salesman, Charles Darwin on the Beagle, and vis-à-vis Lovecraftian monsters attacking an Edwardian household. Mr. Hoade would like you to examine his novel “Cthulhu Attacks! Book 1: The Fear” Check it out @ www.CthulhuAttacks.com