The men were naked or wore the odd piece of clothing: some socks, some unbuttoned shirts; one or two retained pants. Their skin was caked in grime, sweat, and blood. Their eyes seemed alive but not with coherent thought. Their gazes seemingly zigzagged at random. At some moments, their faces were ecstatic. At others, their faces contorted at terrors beyond sight.
Muller himself frolicked in a mad stupor with his trousers tied around his neck like a cape. An open, ancient-looking book was draped over his head as a makeshift hat. Most of its pages had been ripped out and were being stomped on in the festivities.
Others crouched or huddled against the railing, too exhausted to continue their capering. Three or four broken souls, listless enough not to escape to the edge of the frenzy, were trampled like the book's discarded pages.
The flautist's song was frenetic enough to tug at Max's exhausted muscles. His body twitched and ached to join the dance but the heat of his revolver anchored him like a magnet to the doorway.
In the cargo bay below and beyond the insane NWI men, a vast black wave of that deadly Huancucho ooze undulated in time with the music. Dozens and dozens of shapes dangled on chains above the ooze. Max allowed himself the minutes it took for his eyes to adjust to the poor light but nearly clawed out his own eyes when he realised the truth.
The shapes were the residents of Huancucho and the captured Huari tribesman. They had been shackled with chains and hooks from the cargo hold ceiling. Like their captors, they were stripped of clothes. All had serious wounds slashed across their torsos and limbs. Some cuts were so deep and ragged, stark white glimpses of bone could be seen. Around a hundred men dangled from the ceiling, each one twitching in agony and dripping blood into the ooze below. Many, mercifully, hung in stillness, their wounds too great; their lives extinguished to feed the abomination.
The ooze continued to undulate to the flute's tune, but every so often, a pseudopod formed from the mass and swelled upward toward particularly free flowing dribbles of blood. The sight sickened Max to his soul.
But one sight above all else sent him reeling. When recognition dawned, his knees buckled and all strength abandoned him.
Close to the mezzanine railing, two faces stood out from among the dangling bodies. MacKenzie hung slumped from two chains. Large hooks jutted from below each shoulder and two mortal wounds were gouged into his stomach and chest. With the extent of the wounds and the way his head lolled forward, Max knew in his heart his friend was long dead.
Beside him, also suspended on hooks and criss-crossed with bleeding cuts, dangled Dirke. The man twitched and swayed on his chains. An especially well-developed pseudopod reached for him just a yard or two short of his feet.
Max found the courage in the sight of his former colleagues to regain his feet. As he did so, Dirke raised his head a fraction and caught Max's eye. Simultaneously, the ethereal flute produced a strong, discordant note that echoed at through Max's eardrum and didn't want to dislodge. The off-kilter note lingered with him as he strode onto the mezzanine deck with his revolver raised.
"You don't deserve this, Dirke," Max aimed at the former mercenary. "But no one deserves this fate, either."
Dirke raised his trembling head as high as he could and mouthed the words, "thank you". At least, Max took it that way.
Max fired. The shot was like a hammer striking a drum and cut through even the mad capering of Muller's men. The centre of Dirke's chest blossomed into a fresh wound and the man immediately slumped against his chains. The momentum of the shot exaggerated his rocking. In the ensuing silence, Max realised the discordant note had been shaken free from his inner ear.
Another boomed thundered through the cargo hold. This time, MacKenzie's chest burst open and his corpse, too, swayed from the impact.
"That's to be sure, friend," Max whispered. "Rest in peace."
Max whirled on the lumbering form of Muller, who had resumed his dance in time with the flute's song.
"Tell me, Muller, who is Lang Fu?" Max shouted at him.
The German paid him no attention.
Max grabbed the man's arm. His grip slid from the sweat until he tightened it, dragging Muller to a halt. "I said who is Lang Fu? Why are you taking this abomination to San Francisco?"
Muller's eyes danced to the music. His sanity was long gone.
"Why, damn it!" Max slapped the German across the face. The book on his head fell to the floor and knocked over a candle. The naked flame almost immediately caught some loose pages and set them alight. Bright, burning chunks of parchment floated through the metal grille and onto the ooze below. On contact, the parchment fizzled but the ooze recoiled. A tremor shook the cargo hold.
Max released Muller's arm. The insane German joined the cavorting once more, oblivious to the exchange or the red welt forming on his check.
Max, too, was oblivious, but to the flute's song and the antics of the NWI men. He watched the ooze relax back into position following its brush with fire.
"Lehmann called it 'The Burned One' ..."
Max backed out of the mezzanine deck, closed the hatch and locked it, before climbing the stairs for the upper decks. Not long after, he found himself on the threshold to the aft deck, staring at up the NWI zeppelin once more.
The airship must have circled because it was positioned about thirty yards behind the ship's aft. The fore-mounted zeppelin machine gunner was there, ready and waiting. Max dashed for the sanctuary of a covered steel stairwell. Mid-stride, the gunner spotted him and swivelled to fire. Max dived the last yards to safety as gunfire ricocheted around him at head height.
He didn't rest there for long. After a slow ten count to regain his breath, Max ran towards the Wellington's bow. He continued this way in a torturously long game of cat and mouse. With every gain of ten or twenty yards he'd make, the zeppelin floated forward.
When he was confident the zeppelin's bulk was squarely above the ship's aft deck, Max confounded his hunters by slipping inside the main decks. He then doubled back, following the empty corridors he had travelled earlier until he returned to the aft deck. With the machine gunner and any spotters searching the fore decks for him, he set to work opening the aft cargo hold main access door.
The hand winch setup was hard work for one man, especially one whose physical limits had been reached, but tenacity and desperation kept Max to the task. Inch by inch, the cargo hold door split open, allowing the abomination's stench and the demonic flute song to escape.
When the first shafts of sunlight lanced across the creature, it shrank back, but when doors fully opened with a metallic thud, it had no choice but to bear the light. It thrashed its expanding pseudopods in agitation. The phantom song rose in pitch and tempo, mirroring the abomination's distress.
Perhaps alerted by the sound of the open cargo doors, the zeppelin shifted position above.
"No!" Max screamed. He dashed for the Wellington's heavy machinegun placement while the airship was struggling to regain the advantage.
But Max pressed his own advantage, blasting away at the zeppelin's underside as it hovered above the open cargo hold. The vibration from below, and the tune in Max's ear, intensified as the gunfire tore through the zeppelin's outer skin and into the hydrogen compartment beyond.
"No you don't!" Max screamed at no one.
The flute's song rose and rose, matching the booms of the machinegun. Max fought to hold down the trigger, even as the first signs of blood dribbled from his ears.
"No!" he screamed, fending off the agony of the song, the thrumming shaking through his legs and inciting the worms of nausea inside his stomach.
"No!" he screamed again, as the immense hydrogen sack ignited and erupted in giant flares along the airship's surface.
The zeppelin sagged as the holes torn by Max's machinegun ripped the craft apart. The airship erupted into a fireball that plummeted into the aft deck of the Wellington, and the open cargo doors squarely in the deck's centre.
Max abandoned the machinegun as the
rain of flaming debris claimed the ship. With no other option, he dived from the Wellington into the waiting Pacific below.
The last sound he heard as he fell, above the din of the mad flautist's tune and the inferno, was what his mind believed to be a scream of inhuman proportions. The noise rattled through the ship and the flames, and shook the fabric of time and space itself, piercing Max's mind and his very soul.
The scream resonated in his mind long after the ocean engulfed him, as did the flautist's song, each playing off the other in a steadily dying requiem.
The requiem held sway over Max's mind as the Wellington and zeppelin burned together. Joined by the roar and crackle of the flames and the static hum of his Webley, pressed warmly against his skin, the requiem took on a soothing tone. Max allowed himself to drift in the water, losing himself to the final hymn of a twice-burned god.
Immeasurable moments, perhaps hours, later, Max Calder found himself sodden and huddled inside the lifeboat that had broken free of the Wellington prior to its conflagration. The cargo ship was little more than a sinking, flaming pyre in the distance, dragging its inhuman cargo down to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Max watched the Wellington's last moment as his reserves of strength ebbed. The ship's bow bobbed out of the water and remained like a floating tower for a few heartbeats before smashing down onto the water again and finally disappearing below the surface. The column of smoke rising from its decks was cut short by the ship's passing. As the last of the smoke spiralled free and was dispersed on the wind, it was as though the zeppelin, the ship, its cargo, and its passengers, were erased from history.
Max surrendered to fatigue and closed his eyes, knowing the truth of the ghost village of Huancucho and the final fate of the Wellington lay with him alone. Muller and Lehmann's masters at New World Incorporated would be waiting in San Francisco for a cargo delivery that would never arrive.
He slumped inside the lifeboat, content to drift on the current. As sleep took hold, Maximillian Calder began to dream of small hopes and bleak, alien futures, but his dreams were not haunted by a flautist's lunatic tune.
Unnoticed by a mind now wrapped in dreams, a small flute was tucked away next to the lifeboat's oar. Crafted from the darkest of woods and etched with runes in a language long dead, the instrument rolled back and forth with the ocean swell, waiting with the patience of aeons to be picked up and played once again.
* * *
Captain Max Calder will return in another adventure in the Ravenous Gods cycle.
Read about Max's infiltration of an Australian outback cult bent on global devastation in Dreams of Destruction.
Read about unimaginable alien horror in the far-future in "Graveyard Orbit" (published in Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013).
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About the author:
Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as "one of Australia’s leading voices in dark fantasy". Shane is the author of the forthcoming Yokai Wars series (Circle of Tears, Clockwork Legion, and Blight of the Underworld) and the dark fiction books Shards, the Apocrypha Sequence (Deviance, Divinity, Insanity, and Inferno), and the Ravenous Gods cycle (Requiem for the Burning God and Dreams of Destruction). He has won the Australian Shadows Award and two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty other major awards, including Spain's Premios Ignotus.
Shane is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, Shane is an editor and journalist by day. By night (and on weekends), he can be found indulging in hobbies such as playing the guitar, photography, sword fighting, and testing the limits of his cruiser motorcycle.
In his youth, Shane was trained in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him by his sensei.
Shane was born and raised in southern Sydney, Australia. He lived for many years in Perth, Western Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand, but he recently returned to his old home town to revisit the ghosts of his past.
More information on Shane (including his free fiction) can be found online at www.jiraiya.com.au.
Interact with Shane on Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Shane-Jiraiya-Cummings/401910315831) or rate and review his books on Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/jiraiyac).
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If you enjoyed this book, you'll LOVE these books:
DREAMS OF DESTRUCTION
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Backed by the savage power of Dreamtime monstrosities, and supported by shadowy masters, an Australian cult known as ‘The Reign of Terror’ attempts to detonate a supernatural weapon of mass destruction at a meeting of world leaders in Perth, Western Australia. If successful, their bold plan will devastate the earth. Can mercenary hero Captain Max Calder infiltrate the cult, fend off the yakuza and Lovecraftian horrors, and ultimately bring down the plot from the inside – with one hell of a bang?
Winner of the 2015 Australian Shadows Award!
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THE ABANDONMENT OF GRACE AND EVERYTHING AFTER
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Thirteen spine-tingling stories of darkness and desolation from Australia's award-winning master of the macabre, Shane Jiraiya Cummings.
The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After is Cummings at his fear-inducing best: from the seductively erotic autopsy of “The Cutting Room” and the insanity of “Ian” through to the post-apocalyptic tragedy of “Phoenix and the Darkness of Wolves”.
Imagine a secret from the future that could affect creation itself – a secret so dark, demonic powers would do anything to learn it. Ride a train across the Outback as it descends into a bloodbath. Be entranced by a song that threatens to tear reality apart. Listen for screams only a deaf man can hear ...
With personal afterwords from the author that provide insights into each story, and powerful narratives that explore love, loss, and redemption in the darkest of circumstances, The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After is one of the most significant collections of Australian horror ever published.
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SHARDS
Short Sharp Tales
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Take a guided tour of the darkest backroads of the imagination. Imagine worlds that are twisted fragments of our own …
In one, a woman with foresight puts her scarred body on the line to stop crimes before they happen. In another, a pervert channels the spirit of a dead school friend in the hopes of getting lucky. In yet another, the Antichrist is a misunderstood teenager who is tired of being manipulated.
In Shards, the seasons turn deadly, and a day at the beach becomes a nightmare. A vision in the mirror is anything but heavenly. The zombie apocalypse triggers one survivor’s unhealthy obsession. And where do you run when the world begins to physically unravel?
Shards is fiction at its shortest and sharpest, a collection of disturbing stories from a master of dark flash fiction. A shard is a story read in just moments … but it will linger with you for the rest of your life.
Every story is lavishly illustrated by Andrew J. McKiernan.
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The Apocrypha Sequence is a series of dark fantasy ebook collections with interwoven themes and interconnected stories from Shane Jiraiya Cummings:
APOCRYPHA SEQUENCE: DEVIANCE
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Explore the darkness within the human heart …
Set foot inside the morgue at Stratton Memorial Hospital, a place where the scales of life and death have tipped in the wrong direction, and wander the city beyond, where fantasies of sex, drugs, and violence can become frighteningly real. Redemption may be found under a scalpel, in an alley, or sometimes, by embracing the darkest corner of the soul.
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APOCRYPHA SEQUENCE: DIVINITY
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Suffer the capriciousness of the gods …
Imagine the story of Moses from the
perspective of an Egyptian commander who has lost everything to the ten deadly plagues. Can solace be obtained from a religious manifestation that appears only to mock? And in a world of shifting moral values, who is to say the Antichrist isn’t just a decent guy dealing with his own issues?
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APOCRYPHA SEQUENCE: INSANITY
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Explore the human mind as it is pushed to breaking point …
What if every man you’d ever met was named Ian? What if the stress of an unrelenting routine intruded while you were stopped at an intersection? Insanity is a darkness that can envelop you before you’re even aware of it. Sometimes, it begins with an itch, sometimes, a mysterious invitation. Regardless of the catalyst, it never ends well.
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APOCRYPHA SEQUENCE: INFERNO
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Monsters and humanity contend for dominion over the 21st century …
With the Kraken’s rise off the shores of Western Australia, an age of monsters is ushered in. When wits and heroics fail, a secret cabal of guardians will take drastic, devastating measures to protect everything they know and love. In the aftermath, when the world has been razed in a fiery apocalypse, hope will find a way.
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