Such things should not be, not on earth; not in the abyssal depths of the sea; nor even in the dreams of things that once were men.
Pete Rawlik‘s fiction is available in Dead But Dreaming 2, Horror For the Holidays, Urban Cthulhu:Nightmare Cities, Future Lovecraft, Tales of the Shadowmen, Innsmouth Magazine, and the upcoming anthologies Eldritch Chrome, Worlds of Cthulhu and Over the Mountains of Madness. His non-fiction has appeared inThe Neil Gaiman Reader, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and the Journal of Aquatic Botany. In addition to his writing, Mr. Rawlik spends an inordinate amount of time incarcerated in a private institution for the criminally insane in South Florida. His wife and lawyers hope that soon, given therapy and a proper regiment of pharmaceuticals, he will someday be able to stand trial for his crimes.
Story illustration by Robert Elrod.
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Fish Eye
by David A. Riley
Part One
Ray’s Tale
Stood on the quayside in the village of St. Mottram, with its quaintly gabled, clapboard buildings rising up the slopes of the hillside behind him, Ray Wetherell had been gazing out across the sea for some minutes, lost in reverie, when it happened. Early autumn, the climate was mild, barely a breath of wind. Yet suddenly, for no reason, a chill, like some kind of ominous premonition, came over him. He shivered, looked skywards to see if there had been a sudden build-up of clouds, but everything looked the same. The same small clouds and cobalt sky, the same deep red sun slowly sinking towards the hills, the same gulls circling a fleet of fishing boats out across the bay.
Even when he returned to the inn, where he had a room booked for the rest of the week, Ray could not shake the feeling that something was not right. He felt disjointed, as if reality had made a subtle shift.
A couple of his fellow guests were stood at the bar when he strode in and ordered a Budweiser. Later he would have something to eat, but for now a drink would do; it might help shake the feeling that came over him by the quay.
“Hey, what’ve those guys got?”
Ray glanced over to where the others had gathered by one of the windows. Through the nearest he caught sight of the masts from one of the fishing boats, moored against the quay. Its crew were grouped in a tight knot on the quayside, pulling on a rope. Whatever they were trying to raise from their boat, though, looked as if it was too heavy for them to shift.
“Do you think they could do with some help?” one of the men said, a tall, athletic type with greying hair.
“Why not?” the man’s shorter, darker companion said. “Are you with us?” He turned to Ray. “Might be worth our while. Might have caught some extra lobsters.”
Still not feeling himself, Ray nevertheless shrugged. “Okay.”
When they gathered behind the fishermen a few seconds later, the men had already almost succeeded in pulling whatever it was they had onto the quay. Ray craned over and was surprised to catch sight of a shell-encrusted statue almost half as big again as a man.
By the time the fishermen had lowered the figure onto the quayside a crowd had gathered. The captain of the fishing boat, a pot-bellied man with leathery skin and a grizzled beard, tried to scrape away some of the molluscs that covered it in layer upon dripping layer, obscuring its features so much it was far from clear whether the statue was of a man or a woman. One arm was raised as if in salute or some kind of command, and from the tips of the fingers Ray glimpsed the dark, coppery metal it had been cast from, tarnished by the sea.
“How the hell did something like that get in the waters around here?” someone asked.
“Must’ve been dumped overboard,” an old villager said. “Prob’ly contraband.”
“Perhaps there was some ancient civilisation around here no one’s heard about.” Which raised a few raucous laughs.
“Atlantis. We’ve found Atlantis.” The boat’s captain grinned hugely.
“Yai. And now we know what happened to them. They were wiped out by Indians,” another of the locals said.
“Native Americans,” someone corrected. “You’re not supposed to call ‘em that nowadays.”
Ray shook his head, bemused, though fascinated – and at the same time repelled – by the statue.
“Let’s get Professor Collins,” a large, gruff-looking crewman said. “He’ll know what it is.”
“He’s the local celebrity,” one of Ray’s fellow guests told him. “Retired here from Brown University in Providence. Which tells you something, when a retired university lecturer is a local big shot.”
Ray edged closer to the statue, which was laid on its side like a toppled dictator. Gingerly, he stretched one hand to feel it. His finger tips tingled as they neared the statue as if they were closing in on a powerful electric current. The nearer he reached towards it the more intense it became – the more painful it became.
“You okay?”
The voice seemed to come from a vast distance away, as if he’d stumbled into a deep canyon filled with echoes.
“Are you okay?”
With an effort, Ray withdrew his hand from the statue. Immediately the pain in his fingers began to recede.
He nodded his head.
“It’s strange. So weird,” he managed to say.
“You’re not kidding,” the bearded captain said. He scratched the statue’s upraised hand with the edge of a knife. Molluscs were flicked away like black poppy petals to reveal bare metal – and the webbed fingers of the statue’s hand. “How’s that for weird, eh?” the seaman said with an even bigger grin than he’d been beaming before, as if he could already feel the money he was certain would come his way from this find.
Someone backed a pickup truck onto the quay and the statue was manhandled onto it. Al Westmore, owner of the local garage, offered to store it till Professor Collins could be contacted. Taking him up on his suggestion, the boat’s crew and several locals accompanied the truck uphill to the garage, while Ray and the others, the excitement over, returned to the inn.
“Mike Rayburn,” one of Ray’s fellow guests volunteered. “And this is my friend Jeb Holowitz.”
They shook hands as the bartender poured fresh beers.
Mike was a six foot, ex-football player from one of the minor leagues who coached sport at a school in Maine. Jeb, a lean, leathery, outdoor type with a Clarke Gable moustache and a pipe stuck in one corner of his mouth, owned a deli in the same town. They had been friends since High School and were here for the fishing. They had hired a local offshore fishing boat and gone out nearly every day after shark.
“And what are you here for?” Jeb asked when they settled down to their second beers.
Ray gazed at his drink for a few seconds before giving his answer. In the face of these anglers with their no nonsense jobs and no nonsense lives, he found it difficult to admit he was recovering from a nervous breakdown after a bad divorce and the near bankruptcy of the advertising company he started up after leaving college. He had come to St. Mottram because this was where his parents had grown up. In a way it was like escaping to his ancestral roots away from the world outside, where everything he had hoped and planned for had gone horribly wrong.
In the end he gave them a brief synopsis. Brief enough to avoid self pity – and brief enough for him not to dig up too many memories he had been hoping to forget on his holiday here.
They commiserated with him, then ordered another round of beers. The topic had been covered. Now they could move on.
For which Ray was grateful. He still felt out of key, almost as if what was happening around him was not quite real, as if it could have been a dream from which, any minute, he would awake. Talking about his recent troubles, his divorce in particular, made everything seem even more surreal. He still found it difficult to believe Janie walked out on him for someone else, that she had been planning it for over a year. That alone had displaced a substantial part of his sense of reality. Nor had he found it easy to readjust to being alone.
Mike and Jeb were already there, tucking into platefuls of pancakes as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They called him over to join them.
“You got anything planned for today?” Jeb asked. When Ray admitted he hadn’t, Mike said: “Why not come with us? There’s room on the boat. And I can guarantee you’ll not be disappointed. When we went out Tuesday we caught us a couple of woppas.”
Though he was not sure how good a sailor he might be, especially in a small fishing boat, their companionship seemed preferable to mooching about by himself with the threat of too many bad memories crowding in, despite the change of scenery.
“You’ll need a good pair of jeans or something like that and a thick jumper. It can get a bit windy out there. Other than that we’ve more than enough gear for us all,” Jeb told him.
It was a little after nine when they left the inn. As they approached the quay Mike recognised the captain from the fishing boat that snagged the statue the day before, and called out to him: “Have you found out what that thing is, Ed?”
Still bubbling with excitement from his catch, the man strode over as briskly as his portly form would allow, teeth flashing in the depths of his beard.
“That Brown University professor’s supposed to be coming down today to take a look at it. He’ll have an idea what it is, if anyone does. We managed to clear most o’ them molluscs and stuff last night. And a damned peculiar-looking thing it is.”
“I thought it looked a bit like the Statue of Liberty,” Mike joked.
Ed gave him a wide-mouthed grin. “You wait till you see it, then tell me that again. The thing’s face looks like someone’s parents got a bit too friendly with a fish.” His laugh was a booming bellow. “Much too friendly!” He turned to call something jocular to one of his crewmen down by the quay, when his laughter died. “Blast it,” he muttered.
Ray followed his gaze. A bank of clouds had gathered across the horizon. Even as he looked it grew ominously darker. At the same time he caught a sudden drop in the temperature.
“Looks like we’re heading for a storm,” Mike said, the disappointment obvious in his voice.
“Yep; no fishing today, I think,” Jeb added, emptying his pipe with disgust.
The clouds spread wide across the skyline, with the distant flicker of lightning.
“That friggin’ statue had better be worth something,” Ed grumbled, his good humour soured. “’Cause we’ll get no more catches today. We’re in for one hell of a storm by the looks of it.”
“Perhaps we should have a look at Al’s garage when the professor comes,” Mike said to his companions. “Not as much fun as going out fishin’ for shark, but, hell, who knows what the guy’ll have to say?”
Neither Ray nor Mike had a better suggestion, so they wandered in the general direction of the garage. Nor were they alone. A crowd had already gathered in anticipation of Collins’ arrival and his expected revelations about the statue’s ancestry. Ray hoped they were not going to be disappointed by the professor’s expertise. He glanced seawards, surprised at how the storm clouds had grown in just a few minutes. The wind was stronger now, and he wondered how many of the crowd would linger once the storm hit.
None of them, though, had much longer to wait for the professor. Whether it was the unusual nature of the find or the fact he had nothing better to do in his retirement, it was only a few minutes before his car drew up at the garage.
There was a ripple of excitement amongst the crowd as the professor, a stern-looking man in tweeds, with a misshapen pork pie hat and a white beard, climbed out. Ed hurried up to show him into the garage.
Ray allowed himself to flow in with the rest of the crowd as the professor stared at the statue, propped upright against some oil drums. Ray was surprised how many of the molluscs encrusted to it when it was dragged from the sea had been removed to reveal the stained metal beneath. Ed had not been exaggerating about the statue’s face. It did look extraordinarily fishlike. Eerily so. Ray had seen The Creature from the Black Lagoon on late night TV, and the statue had some vague similarities. But so much that wasn’t. In fact, its face looked far more intelligent, despite its fish-like features. It also looked unmistakably evil. Its body was more portly than The Creature, with a pronounced paunch and a frog-like look to its legs, though its splayed feet ended in long, curved, razor-sharp claws.
Professor Collins had so far not spoken. Nor had he touched the statue, remaining a good few feet from it.
“Well, what do you think?” Ed asked eventually, impatiently tapping the scaly chest of the statue. “Is it valuable?”
The professor made a gesture as if to say don’t touch it, then took a step back from the statue.
“I do not think it would be wise to handle it,” he said.
“Why? Is it poisonous?”
The professor shrugged. “There may be pollutants. There very probably are.”
“Pollutants? From where? There aren’t any industries around here, professor. We only picked this up a mile out to sea. There’ve never been any pollutants there.”
“You don’t know how far this thing might have drifted.”
“Drifted? This? It hasn’t moved more than half a dozen feet for years. It’s too friggin’ heavy.” He laughed heartily, but Ray could see he was disturbed. “D’y’ave any idea what it is? Where it might’ve come from? It ain’t Injun, is it?”
The professor shook his head. “Whatever it is it isn’t native to this area. It’s made of metal – possibly copper – for a start off. And the style, the features are unlike anything seen around here.”
“Where did it come from then? How’d it get here?”
Professor Collins shook his head again. “Someone may have dumped it offshore. That I can’t answer. As to where it came from, it will need a more detailed examination than I can give it here to answer that. It would need carbon dating for a start off to determine its age. It may be modern. Some avant-garde artist could have created it.”
“Artist, eh?” Ray could see the calculations in the seaman’s mind. “A famous artist, maybe?”
Professor Collins shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Art isn’t my field. But it may be.”
Somehow, Ray was not convinced the professor was being as honest in what he was expressing as he was trying to make out, that he was concealing something about the statue. Why else did he look at it with so much wariness, Ray wondered, unless he also felt the strange electrical sensation he experienced the previous day?
The storm clouds had meanwhile drawn over the bay, making the inside of the garage even gloomier, and Al Westmore went to switch on more lights. The statue, looming as it did over the professor’s head, looked menacing, as if it was about to bring its upraised web-fingered hands down in a savage blow. Shadows darted about its face, giving it a strange semblance of life as a gust of wind made the neon lights hung from the rafters swing back and forth.
“If you wish I’ll get in touch with Brown University and see if they can examine it for you,” Collins told the fisherman. “That’s the best I can offer. I could phone some contacts I still have there when I get home.”
Ed looked dubious at the thought of bringing others in to look at the statue, perhaps, Ray thought, because he feared the thing might slip through his fingers – along with whatever money he might make from it. But in the end the captain nodded his head. “You do whatever you think best, professor. I know you won’t try and cheat me.”
Thunder was peeling closer now and the first heavy rain was beginning to clatter against the tin roof above them, drowning out their voices.
“Time we went back to the inn,” Mike said, “before we get ourselves drenched.”
Ray decided to linger for a short while and told the others h
e would follow in a few minutes.
Bemused at his interest in the statue, Mike said they’d meet back at the bar, then hurried out into the rain.
As the others drifted out of the garage, Ray made his way to the professor, still staring intently at the statue.
“Did you feel it too?” Ray asked.
Professor Collins looked at him, his face pensive.
“Feel what?”
But Ray could tell: he could feel it all right. Of that he was certain.
Ray tentatively held one hand towards the statue. Three feet away, it still emanated a strange pulsating tingle that seemed to bite the flesh of his fingers straight to the bone. He drew back his hand and massaged it as he turned once more to the professor.
Collins nodded. “Not everyone seems to be sensitive to it,” he said. “Ed Gamley isn’t. He wouldn’t have spent so much time clearing those shells from it if he was.”
“Or the molluscs either,” Ray said. “Not unless they like that kind of pain.”
Collins smiled wryly. “Odd, isn’t it?” He pursed his brow in thought. “My first thought was it was radioactive. But that wouldn’t explain why most people don’t appear to be affected by it. Nor is the sensation what you would expect from radioactive material.”
“You can’t feel radiation,” Ray said.
“Quite. Which makes it even odder.”
“You have any idea who created it?”
The professor paused before answering. “I didn’t like to say anything in front of that crowd – most of them would think I’d gone crazy – but, yes, I recognise something about it. It’s not something you would find mentioned in any standard work on history or religion. Or on cults, for that matter. I’m not even sure I believe it myself – though I know colleagues at Brown University – most of them retired some time ago now – who would talk about things similar to this.”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 40
