by Adam Nevill
Their bodies are thick, their skin gray and slick to the touch, like that of a frog or a fish. A spiny ridge runs down the center of their hunched backs. Between their elongated fingers and toes are webs of skin they use as aids in swimming. Their arms are long and powerful, but their legs stunted, so that when they move on the land, they do so with the aid of sticks held in their hands to prop themselves upright, or they hop like frogs.
They are immune to disease or old age, but can only die from violence. Dagon himself, the father of their race, may be no more than a Deep One of immemorial years, who over time has grown in size, as some undersea creatures are said to never stop growing for the entire span of their lives. If true, it seems this growth is immensely slow, or does not begin until these creatures are ancient, for apart from Dagon they are not much larger than human stature.
For the purpose of trading and breeding with human beings, they have made many pacts with islanders in remote lands, who agree to keep their existence secret. Scarcely any coastal human habitation is distant from one or more of the undersea cities where they dwell. In matters of business they keep their word, and trade with honor. The human women they take for breeding they make their wives, and honor with marriage ceremonies enacted on the beach by their priests.
The offspring of male Deep Ones and their human wives are wholly human in appearance when they are born, but as they mature they develop physical traits that cause them to more and more resemble their fathers. At a certain mature age, they are able to breathe wholly through their neck gills, and then they leave their lives upon the surface and go to live in the cities of the Deep Ones, returning from time to time to visit their human family—for now you that the Deep Ones prize the ties of family above all things.
These beings are advanced in the arts of warfare, and in their countless millions it would be an easy matter for them to overwhelm the surface of the world, conquer and enslave our race, or if they wished, destroy it utterly. However, they do not covet the dry land, and prefer to trade and breed with us in secret, as it suits their needs.
There is a sign inscribed on certain small stones that the Deep Ones respect in a religious way and will not cross over. Those islanders who wish to terminate their trade and intermarriage with the Deep Ones scatter these stones along their beaches to express aversion. In doing so they risk a terrible wrath, for the Deep Ones do not like to be spurned and will exact vengeance when the chance presents itself. No vessel, large or small, may pass across the waves without their sufferance.
It may be that the signs engraved upon these small stones are linked to an enormous white obelisk carved all over its surface with alien letters and signs that resemble sea creatures. This obelisk great Dagon himself is said to cherish and adore deep beneath the sea, but of its origin, whether on this world or a world among the distant stars, nothing is known.
Table of Contents
Call the Name
Adam LG Nevill
Cthulhu
The Dark Gates
Martha Wells
Yog-Sothoth
We Smoke the Northern Lights
Laird Barron
Azathoth
Petohtalrayn
Bentley Little
Nyarlathotep
The Doors that Never Close and the Doors that Are Always Open
David Liss
Shub-Niggurath
The Apotheosis of a Rodeo Clown
Brett J. Talley
Tsathoggua
Rattled
Douglas Wynne
Yig
In Their Presence
Christopher Golden & James A. Moore
The Mi-Go
Dream a Little Dream of Me
Jonathan Maberry
Nightgaunts
In the Mad Mountains
Joe R. Lansdale
Elder Things
A Dying of the Light
Rachel Caine
Great Race of Yith
Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves
Seanan McGuire
The Deep Ones
