by Adam Nevill
He has been given various names in different lands, but the most ancient of these is Yig. So he is called by the copper-skinned barbarian tribes that inhabit the most distant and least known wild places of this world, such as the great island that lies far to the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They dance to appease his wrath. Any man of these tribes who slays a serpent is put to death, for there is no greater crime.
All serpents are the children of Yig. When men kill snakes out of malice or fear, the wrath of this ancient god is aroused against them. He visits them in the night and drives them insane, so that they see and hear snakes crawling everywhere, and mistake their fellow men for the scaly figure of this snake-headed god.
It is the pleasure of Yig to mate with women. Of this union are born deformed offspring with scaly skin who writhe on their bellies and hiss with their long forked tongues. Such monstrous births are known as the Curse of Yig, and seldom survive beyond their first year. Even when they live to maturity, they are idiots bereft of speech who cannot use their hands, but lie naked on the floor and try to bite the feet of those who pass them by.
It is rumored that Yig is worshipped with human sacrifices along with Cthulhu by the ancient race from the stars that dwells deep beneath the earth in a vast cavern known as K’n-yan. This alien race regard Yig as the vital principle in all living things. By the tail-beats of the great serpent they marked their days, and by the shedding of his skin their years.
In their cavern they represented Yig and Cthulhu together as a pair of crouching statues that glare at each other, as though from some deep enmity. They built shrines to these gods, who they may have believed were descended from the primal gods who are known as the twin blasphemies, Nug and Yeb.
It was perhaps from this original practice in K’n-yan of marking the passage of time with Yig, the deathless serpent, that our philosophers and alchemists began to represent eternity in the form of a serpent that bites its own tail, thereby suggesting a circle without a beginning or an end.
Much of our own reverence for the serpent may descend from the worship of Yig by the copper-skinned race of K’n-yan, who in the distant past dwelt upon the surface of the earth and held intercourse with man. To them we may also assign our deep-rooted fear of this creature, who more than any other living thing has been held in the highest esteem yet paradoxically also in the deepest revulsion by human beings.
In Their Presence
Christopher Golden & James A. Moore
Harrington said it was Jacques Cousteau’s fault.
Three years earlier the explorer had found a wrecked Greek ship and had pulled up treasures from the depths of the sea. Harrington blamed Cousteau like it was a joke, but Professor Jacoby wasn’t convinced. He’d dealt with men like Harrington before—wealthy men who cultivated an air of sophistication in certain company but whose true goal was the acquisition of more wealth. Some of them, again like Harrington, also sought fame.
Jacoby cared little for money or fame unless they could be pressed into service as part of his own true goal, which was knowledge. The professor had made a life out of unraveling mysteries and mapping the unexplored fringes of history and folklore.
Thus, as little as they enjoyed each other’s company, Jacoby and Harrington did enjoy a certain symbiosis, each feeding off the other’s interests and pursuits. Even so, neither had imagined those pursuits would land them in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, aboard a small vessel called the Burleson, with a quiet, weathered, stiff-backed old whaler named John Wilson in the captain’s chair, and a crew of New England sailors whose good humor had been swiftly bleeding out as the voyage went on and the nights grew longer and colder.
Professor Edgar Jacoby and Mr. Samuel Harrington agreed on very little, and on less with the passing days, but on this single thing they were in accord: neither gave a tinker’s damn about the happiness of the crew. The boat belonged to Harrington, which meant every man from the captain on down was in his employ. They were being paid for their work and their time, and if the voyage bore fruit, they would reap a share of the rewards. Harrington, of course, would get the lion’s share, but such it had always been and such would it forever be.
“Benson!” a voice shouted. “Gimme a hand here! The boys are up!”
Crewmen thundered across the deck. The shout had come from Doug Trumbull, the first mate, and Jacoby also rushed aft in response. The frigid Arctic wind lashed and stung what little of his skin was exposed, yet he felt flushed with the heat of anticipation.
The divers came up fast, dragged onto the deck, their suits rimed with ice. They emerged from the depths with chattering teeth and nearly uncontrollable shakes. The things men would do for the promise of riches were almost as fascinating as where they would go to find them. Jacoby rushed from man to man as they tore off their masks. When he identified the dive master, Toby Hobbs, he hovered.
“Mr. Hobbs!” he called, as the crew got the divers to their feet and started them toward the hatch that led belowdecks.
Toby gave Jacoby a nod, and the professor felt a fresh rush of exultation. He turned toward Benson and Trumbull.
“Raise the net, and be careful about it! Like your mother’s life depends on it!”
Tired of being ordered about by a skinny, aging academic they rightly assumed hadn’t done a day’s real labor in his life, the men exchanged frustrated glances but set about to work. As they began hauling in the net, Harrington appeared on deck, aromatic smoke rising from his pipe and swirling away on the Arctic wind. His eyes gleamed, but they were the only sign of his excitement. He puffed his pipe and waited.
Jacoby had pored over the records relating to the sinking of the Eleanor Lockley. She’d been at the bottom of the sea more than eighty years, and for perhaps the first thirty of those years, men had sought her wreckage. Over time, as the hope of finding her waned, so did any interest in the unfortunate vessel. A violent and unexpected storm had driven her off course. Prior research into the storm and the ship’s planned route had led to searches further south, but Jacoby had followed a unique line of inquiry, studying all records related to the captain of the Eleanor Lockley, a man named Elijah Fancher. Captain Fancher had spent four years as mate on board one of the ships seeking the fabled Northwest Passage, which meant he had great knowledge of and experience with Arctic waters. Most skippers, faced with a massive storm building on the horizon, would have sailed south in an effort to circumnavigate the deadly weather.
Professor Jacoby had theorized that Fancher had instead turned north, daring the treacherous Arctic waters.
From there, Jacoby could only count fate as his muse. He’d persuaded Harrington—who had reaped significant reward from financing several of Jacoby’s earlier excursions—to supply the boat and crew. They’d only been searching the area Jacoby had pinpointed for six days when Toby’s divers had discovered the wreck of the Eleanor Lockley.
The area where the ship had finally come to rest was isolated and according to the divers the vessel was mostly intact and only two hundred feet below them. There were several very large holes in the sides of the Eleanor Lockley and no indication as to what might have caused them.
But it wasn’t the ship they were after. What they wanted was her cargo.
Endless rumors circulated, as was so often the case with lost ships. Some journalists writing in the era of the disappearance of the Eleanor Lockley had reported stories suggesting no storm had scuttled the ship, that she had instead fallen prey to pirates, thanks to her mysterious cargo. That no pirates sailed the extreme north seas meant nothing, of course. Always, there were those who insisted the improbable was the most likely solution. And pirates sold more newspapers than bad weather, shipwreck or no shipwreck.
Jacoby could not pretend that he was immune to the lure of whatever treasures might be found in the wreck of the Eleanor Lockley. But he wanted to know what had sunk her, what she had been carrying, and why there were so many odd rumors about how she’d gone down. If the ship had manage
d to escape the path of the storm, then what had caused her to sink?
His desire for answers did not overwhelm his good sense, however. Jacoby’s inquiries were intellectual rather than physical. Harrington was paying his divers handsomely so neither of them had to do the job themselves. Ten minutes in the frigid Arctic waters would leave any man screaming in agony, his extremities cramping as the blood flowed to the center of his body in an effort to keep him alive a few more minutes. Heavily insulated diving suits were the only way to survive such conditions, and Jacoby hated confined spaces almost as much as he disliked the idea of freezing to death. Even being belowdecks on board the ship elicited a discomforting wave of claustrophobia. The notion of squeezing into one of the heavy rubber and canvas contraptions and a diver’s helmet was unthinkable.
So Jacoby wouldn’t dive. But when the divers had been brought into the ship’s belly to get warm, while Benson and the others started pulling up the net loaded with crates from the wreckage below, he was right there waiting. Out of courtesy, no one touched the crates until the divers had changed clothes and had something warm to drink. Jacoby could barely resist, but Harrington had insisted. The crates were carried down into the hold and half the crew gathered there to help or simply to observe.
When the moment came, it was Harrington who did the honors, with Benson and Mackey assisting him. Harrington was footing the bill, so it was his prerogative, and it worked to Jacoby’s advantage in any case, as he wouldn’t have trusted any of the crew with his camera equipment.
He started snapping photos the moment Harrington inserted the crowbar under the lid of the first crate. When the top came free with a screech, the professor felt his heart flutter as he clicked the camera again. He caught a whiff of the stink wafting from the crate and heard several of the sailors reacting in disgust. Benson and Mackey backed away, but Jacoby stepped forward, camera in hand. He and Harrington gazed into a bed of organic rot. Whatever had been inside had decayed over the decades, despite the crates having been very well sealed.
Harrington shot Jacoby a murderous glare. “They’d better not all be like this, or we’ll put the damn crates back in the water, and you’ll be inside one of ’em.”
Jacoby held his breath and took his pictures, fascinated by the remains, in spite of Harrington’s disappointment. There were portions of shells and one claw that looked like it belonged to a lobster roughly the size of a bear. He snapped several photos and then agreed it was time to remove the remains from the ship as quickly as possible. They simply weren’t equipped to preserve what was left.
A few crates held papers and maps that had not completely rotted away thanks to being pressed together. While there were a few snatches of discernable writing, the fragments meant nothing to them and the documents were otherwise a complete loss. The slightest touch reduced the works to sludge.
Just as the group was becoming disheartened—and Jacoby began to worry that Harrington would follow through on his threats—a true find was discovered amongst the remaining haul. Not a crate, but a passenger’s steamer trunk. Within that waterlogged box was a small chest carved from what appeared to be ivory. The surface had been etched with strange runes, the likes of which Jacoby had never seen.
Harrington made to open the chest but Jacoby stopped him. “Not yet, my friend. Let me get proper photographic evidence. If we do this the right way we get as much exposure as Cousteau, and we’ll have men lining up to finance our next voyage. You won’t have to risk your own bankroll anymore.”
Pipe clenched in his teeth, Harrington narrowed his eyes in displeasure. Then he seemed to examine the ivory box afresh and to consider the damage the crowbar might have caused. “Let’s not waste time, Professor. The weather’s been cooperating, but this time of year is unpredictable and I don’t want to be here in a serious gale.”
Jacoby went through a kit of gentler instruments he had brought along, but in the end they settled on a simple, slender letter opener. Harrington worked it around beneath the lid of the ivory chest until he’d broken the latch. In those few minutes, Jacoby blew through two full rolls of film. He’d done a fair job of familiarizing himself with at least the appearance of most known hieroglyphs and archaic written languages and what he saw was not at all familiar to him. The chest’s markings were unique and he wanted to be certain he had thoroughly documented them, in case Harrington’s manhandling did permanent damage.
Contrary to its smallish size, the chest was heavy. Harrington had needed Benson’s help to hoist it from the steamer trunk, and it took both men to remove the lid and set it aside. Jacoby had to rethink his initial assessment. It looked like ivory, but whatever the case was made of, it seemed far heavier. He made a mental note as the men reached inside and began extracting their newly found treasures.
Four stones, each roughly the size of a loaf of bread, each covered with endless tiny etchings similar to the markings on the not-ivory chest. Whoever had carved the stones had not contented themselves merely with those etchings, for each had also been carved into a likeness that seemed almost blasphemous. The first was a crouching winged figure, half aquatic nightmare and half bat. The second resembled a sinister, hooded man, followed by a third comprised of teeth and tongues and eyes in a swirling cloud. The last took the shape of a fusion of wings and pincered legs. Gazing upon the pieces hurt Jacoby’s eyes, and glancing about, he realized he was not alone in this response.
Harrington strained to lift one of the pieces, his arms shaking, muscles standing out in hard cords. Finally, Benson had to help him place the object on the metal table.
“It’s heavier than it should be,” Harrington said. He looked defensive but no one in the room doubted his strength. The strain had been obvious on both of the men.
At that moment something slipped from the chest and fell across the table. Jacoby never even considered taking a photograph. The entire event happened too quickly, and even if he’d thought of it, the odd globule of light—he couldn’t have described its color to save his life—seethed across the metal table, then simply evaporated like ice dropped on a hot griddle.
Aside from the stones and that strange, impossible light, the only thing inside the chest was a long, wide cylinder, perhaps twice the size of the four sculpted figures. Unlike the figures this was metallic, a dull gray with a few small indentations at the top and the base but otherwise unremarkable.
“What the hell is that supposed to be?” one crewman asked.
“Never mind that… is no one going to remark upon that light? It just—”
“Quiet,” Harrington muttered. “Let the professor finish his work and then we’ll start sorting out what it all means.”
Jacoby nodded to him, then began to snap photos of the cylinder. He was about to ask Benson to turn it over, but he couldn’t get the words out. A sudden wave of nausea swept through him. His stomach lurched and his mouth watered with vile, sour spittle. His heart thudded in his chest and he stepped away, dropping his camera from hands gone suddenly numb. The sound of it breaking caused him to cry out inside, but that despairing voice in his head seemed quite distant.
One hand over his mouth, fighting the urge, Jacoby saw that he was not the only one affected. All of the men around him were also overwhelmed.
The sickness hit hard and fast and then it lingered.
Several men vomited, including Jacoby, and after a while spent trying to stand and recover themselves, they cleaned their messes and made their way to their cabins.
It wasn’t food poisoning.
Jacoby knew that as sure as he breathed. It was something else entirely and all he could think about was the odd, heavy essence he had seen dissolve into the table. At the time he had been overwhelmed by the pure strangeness of everything to do with that carved chest, but now whenever he thought of that glob of light, the queasy feeling in his gut returned. Whatever it had been, it had marked them all.
Sweating, feverish, shaking from the sheer strain of his now dry heaves, Jacoby fell ont
o his cot and curled into himself.
And dreamed.
In his dreams the void between the stars is filled with unknowable colors. The planets look vibrant and alive in ways he’s never imagined and the vast gulf of deepest space echoes with impossible sounds. He tries to look away, to find a spot that isn’t so overwhelming to his senses.
To his left a planet seethes with dark vitality and a swarm of nightmares lifts from the planet’s surface, sweeping into the darkness between the worlds, searching, seeking. They move on wings made of the aether and they sing in a single, communal voice that fills his mind with angry screams.
A nightmare made solid rides the cosmic currents beside him, its body encased in layers of hard shell. Its many legs curl close to the carapace, thick, deadly pincers held tightly to the body. The head of the thing resembles a bee’s skull, but covered with a cluster of flagella that wave and undulate, long tendrils that pulse and convulse like newborn maggots.
There are eyes within that nest. They study him with intense curiosity…
Professor Jacoby woke to the sound of men whimpering and moaning in their sleep, and rose weakly from his cot to explore the ship.
Though the waters were calm, the deck seemed to sway and buck beneath him. No one stood on watch. The entire crew lay in a stupor brought on by whatever had slid from the chest. Jacoby himself didn’t think he’d be moving for long.
Still, he made it down into the hold and to the table where the stone figures lay. He rested in the closest chair, his eyes drawn to the odd markings. They called to him or seemed to and his hands wandered to the stone that he now saw was shaped a bit like his dream companion. In his dream the creature had extraordinary wings, great sails that were designed to traverse the cosmic winds. The statue’s wings were nubs, and if not for the clear markings he’d surely have thought that time had worn them down to almost nothing. His fingers touched the hard surface, softly tracing the markings.
