by Gary Fry
“Your wife told me as much, yes.”
“Right. And since talking to your friend Henry Gamble, I’ve become aware of…well, of certain facts, which don’t fit the official view, if you follow.”
The line went silent for a moment, as if Malcolm was in deep thought. Then he drew an audible breath and replied, “You don’t need to bait your hook, my friend. I know exactly what you mean. You’re talking about the damage once sustained by that property, aren’t you? You want to know about what that Norwegian lunatic summoned back in 1975, yeah?”
What else could George do but be honest? “Yes,” he replied, and simply waited for the guy to continue.
Before long, Malcolm did.
“You’re not the first person I’ve told this to – there’s Henry, for one. But you’ll be the only one I’ll have told it all to. Yes, the police were involved at the time – it concerned a missing person, after all – but there’s only so much a local like me can say without fear of ridicule. If I’d got a reputation for seeing…well, monsters out there, in the deep blue sea, my life wouldn’t have been worth living. But what the hell – I’m old now. There are no consequences anymore. You might as well hear what I have to tell you.”
George, his condition challenging his biological clock even more ruthlessly than his informant’s advanced years did his, understood this sentiment. All the same, mindful and even afraid of the man’s use of the word “monsters”, George said nothing before the guy continued.
“As you know, these events happened in March 1975, on a stormy night which only a madman or someone deep in debt would work. Well, this mad debtor – I mean me, of course – did exactly that, taking a boat out into a sea whose waves tossed and churned. I’d sailed a few miles off the coast, hauling up cod and haddock and shrimps: whatever I could sell up in Whitby, all for the tourists’ pleasure.
“Anyway, I was maybe a mile from Robin Hood’s Bay, headed south, when I suddenly detected a great upheaval behind my boat, like a tidal wave getting up. But that didn’t make sense. Although it was a wild night, similar disruptions usually involved far more of them, a great flurry battering me every which way. As I said, this happened just once: a single sweep of water cutting along the coastline, as if something moved that way, leaving a foamy line in the sea.
“That was when I glanced around. Whenever the lighthouse pointed its beam away, as it did right then, there was little illumination, just what came from the stars and moon. At a great distance, I saw the lights of Whitby – windows and streetlamps – twinkling faintly. But then they all went out. This wasn’t for long, but it was long enough to make me believe that something – some vast, dark, stinking thing – had just passed behind the boat, kicking up that wave and then blotting out sight of the town for maybe ten seconds. I remembering imagining that this was what free-floating icebergs must look like at night while passing places where Eskimos live. But surely none had ever moved as fast as this, nor cut up such a fuss in the water.
“That was all I saw, I swear to you, but then, looking back towards the coast as that huge uprising in the sea settled, I noticed that the lighthouse had also been extinguished. At first I assumed there’d been a power outage, but then realised that such places aren’t connected to the National Grid. Only human error can result in a lighthouse failure, but, along with Henry and Jens who operated the foghorn, I knew a few of the men who worked there, and they were all professionals. They’d no sooner let that place fail than the other guys would forget to keep the old Bull roaring at night. Which left only one conclusion.
“Whatever had just passed me, wiping out all sight of Whitby, had reached the lighthouse and done the same to that.
“This was confirmed only seconds later, when the lamp reappeared, rippling across the sea with its usual side-to-side sweeping motion. As it moved, I thought I saw something vast and green – like a massive muscle flexing with rage – standing in front of the shadowy land beyond it. But it was raining heavily and that could have been just water in my eyes, making everything look weird. This must also account for a load of limb-like extensions I thought I’d seen sticking out of the top of this thing, like oily tentacles primed to strike. As I say, maybe it was just moisture blurring my vision, making featureless items appear streaky.
“All the same, I felt scared and started puttering faster along the coastline, travelling the five miles back to Robin Hood’s Bay, where I hoped to deal quickly with my day’s catch and get to the pub for a mighty long drink. As I went, I detected a scent on the wind, like a field full of cattle crammed together hide to hide. As a fisherman, I’m used to such strong aromas, but even with that boat full of dead fish, I could smell that stench. It was a sickening mix of animal shit and some vicious sex-smell. Believe me, man, I felt like puking all the way home.
“Maybe only a mile from my destination, I was distracted again, because that was when the foghorn started misfiring – or at least, that’s what I told myself as I put more and more distance between my boat and…well, whatever could cause such a disturbance. It sounded like bulls fighting like crazy. One moment, a great roar tore across the sky, threatening to make the stars disappear; the next, another would follow, causing the moon to shake in its dark cradle. This went on for ages, as if the boys who ran the station – Henry and Jens, as I said – had either failed to maintain those engines or had become demented enough to misuse them.
“I’m not even sure it was possible to get such thunderous overlapping grumbles to come from a single foghorn. I didn’t learn until the following morning that Henry was away at the time, that only Jens was in the building that evening. Even so, losing control of that machine could never result in anything like this insane noise.
“The disturbance went on for about ten minutes, certainly longer than it took me to reach harbourside. I was relieved when it ended, just as suddenly as it had begun. The air along the coastline felt fragile, as if more violence might be done to it at any moment. Rain kept falling and hissing against the sea’s surface. The wind howled and whistled. But nothing else disrupted my return to Robin Hood’s Bay, where I tied up my vessel, quickly unloaded my haul, and then hurried home and locked the door. I didn’t even go out drinking that night. But with no wife around to nag, I necked a lot of scotch indoors, believe me.”
Malcolm paused again, possibly to seek a nip of the kind of liquor he’d just alluded to. George could admit to feeling a need for something similarly strong himself. But then his mind presented the image he’d tried suppressing since his informant had first mentioned some vast entity hurtling towards the coast, blotting out the lighthouse and causing booming unrest that cold, wet night. He recalled the photographs he’d seen on the Internet yesterday, the ones of sculpted carvings depicting great Cthulhu, a semiaquatic beast whose head writhed with tentacles and which could travel huge distances as its body was made of something other than conventional organic tissue. He pictured this thing clinging to the front of that foghorn building, huge face wedged against it, feelers thrust through shattered windows, making plaster break away from the wall it struck on the far side. Then he saw a cowering person – previously seated at the centre of a heretical pentagram, chanting forbidden rites and surrounded by candles – being claimed by the monster, snatched inexorably away, principally because he “knew too much” or had tried invoking the Great Old Ones when the stars weren’t “right” at the time.
Just then, as George reeled in response to this onslaught of mental imagery, Malcolm Harp spoke again, his voice full of unwitting menace.
“Have you ever seen a slug clinging to the edge of a beer glass, my friend? You know how, when you leave a pint outside overnight and the next morning one of the things has slithered up its side, leaving a trail of gunge, poking its slimy probes over the rim?”
George said nothing, just tried to block out the recollection of another recent event.
“Well, that image haunted me for quite a few nights afterwards.” Then the man’s voice shifted
in modulation, moving in less than a heartbeat from mere tremulous to palsied. “Anyway, soon after I saw the photographs showing something very similar.”
“Photographs?” asked George, heart hammering hard and even inducing a stutter. “Someone took p-pictures of that…thing?”
“Hold on. I need to track back a bit.” Malcolm went silent for several seconds, but not for long enough that George could speak again. “After the events of that evening, the whole area was in turmoil. Emergency services had flocked to Whitby, which had flooded worse than any other place in the area. This was why attention was drawn away from the lighthouse and the foghorn building – because few people lived there. But when a person was reported missing, and as the property he worked in bore unusual damage, certain parties wanted to speak to locals who might have witnessed anything significant that evening.
“We were all interviewed, me and the lighthouse staff and even Henry once he’d come back from his travels inland. None of us said more than we had to – like, me a well-known drinker claiming to see that kind of thing? I’m nobody’s fool, pal – and it was only later, while talking together in the same pub, that our discussion got around to…well, other matters.
“That was when Henry Gamble, my drinking buddy, told us about things he wanted to get off his chest, including what he’d found in the foghorn building after returning that night. It was seriously weird gear – as you know, suggestions of black magic and the like. I was so shaken that I decided to ‘fess up my own story, about everything I’d seen while coming back from my fishing trip. You better believe that by now the pub corner where we sat had gone deathly silent.
“Then the two other guys revealed their photos.”
George felt his mouth miss a rasping breath. But he said nothing at all.
“They’d taken them from the top of the lighthouse, looking down at the…at the intruder further along the coastline.” Malcolm paused to swallow, but then quickly continued, “These were Polaroid snaps and hadn’t needed processing by anyone else. Which was just as well. Because…oh fuck…because the shots – smudged by rain and most of them blurred, as if the taker, one or other of the guys, had been shaking at the time – showed something vast and dark and troubling. Something with far too much body mass. Something twice the width of the building it was attacking, head wedged firmly against the front. Spiny black shapes had lifted behind it, from its massive back. Its clawed feet – or whatever hammer-like things it had at the end of its thick limbs – were sunk knuckle-deep in all the mud and water below. I reckon each of them was as big as a small car.”
By this time Malcolm had worked up a frenzied tone, clearly revisiting memories he’d probably refused to entertain for years. After another pause, during which George certainly heard the man take another drink, he continued, his voice a bit calmer now.
“A few days later, the lighthouse staff left the area, seeking work elsewhere. They’d said nothing to the authorities about what they’d seen that night, let alone shown them those freakish snaps. I could imagine some folk saying we’d all faked them, the way people do when things like that show up from time to time.
“Then – much to my regret, because he was such a good pal – Henry moved all the way to Malton, where he began work with a printing company, which might even have offered the facilities to doctor photos in that way. In any case, even after all the fuss in Whitby had died down, there was no point in taking the risk, in jeopardising our reputations in skilled professions. We all had ourselves to feed.”
“But those photos,” said George, interrupting the guy in full flow.
“What about them, pal?”
After a sharp inhalation, George added, “In fear of public ridicule, did the lighthouse guys take them away, wherever they decided to go?”
“Nope.”
A silence, and then George asked, “Were the pictures destroyed?”
“Nope.”
Long seconds passed, and as his informant seemed unlikely to volunteer the information, George eventually asked, “So what happened to them?”
There was another pause, during which George thought he heard a seagull way above Malcolm’s home, screeching over that ancient cliff-side. That was when the man finished, “I have them.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stockholm was a beautiful place, and one George had wanted to visit for years. It might be the Scandinavian link between the city and Jens Amundsen (as well as Gustaf Johansen, the author of the document George was having transcribed) that had prompted a few weird dreams since his and Christine’s arrival several days earlier, each involving that same geographically implausible island and its mythical denizens.
He’d been thinking too much lately about Cthulhu, ever since his first encounter with its improbable story back in England. The issue was lodged in his subconscious, perhaps preventing him from dwelling on something else lurking in his brain. In that sense, it might even be healthy to continue focusing upon the Great Old One and whatever unspeakable creatures were supposedly buried under the earth, awaiting dark magic to rouse them from slumber. After all, the alternative might be even worse.
His wife had been eager for him to focus on the case, maybe realising that the story was all just the wild imaginings of a bunch of guys with too much time on their hands. All the same, something troubled George about these rationalisations, and his latest nightmares (which he’d yet to relate to Christine) made this concern feel more urgent. But he also realised that he was supposed to be enjoying the first leg of their long-awaited world tour.
They’d spent a day travelling the city’s large number of islands, admiring fine architecture and rich vegetation among it, including countless trees whose yellow leaves calmed the senses, making George feel that only grace existed in the world and that he’d miss out on so much once his time to depart eventually came.
This was a skewed perspective, because while passing convenience stores, they noticed newspaper headlines about the state of the planet and how close everywhere seemed to developing serious problems. But they refused to let this mar their holiday. In Stockholm, the atmosphere was one of refined civilisation, with neatly maintained government buildings, quiet churches and museums, a restrained dining culture boasting multinational cuisine, and a serious-minded yet cheerful population.
All the same, George grew alarmed when they chanced upon an island called Lånngholmen, which boasted sculpture displays. One exhibited the work of an artist who’d scattered geometric blocks around the grounds in random profusion. George, gazing intensely to make sure all remained in perspective, turned to Christine. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I don’t know, George,” his wife replied, with the concerned tone she’d recently adopted when matters relating to her husband’s perceptions were alluded to. “What are you seeing?”
“Well, it’s a…a landscape made of blocks. It’s like something out of Escher. I’m not sure it all adds up.”
“I’m not sure it’s supposed to.” Christine pointed to a sign near the gated entrance, which read: NO HORIZONS. “I think it’s supposed to represent a world in which nothing is anchored by the usual dimensions – no up, no down, no left, no right. Just…free-floating stuff.”
His wife understood more about modern art than he did, and he decided to accept her interpretation. The crucial thing was that he wasn’t imagining this – his dreams remained the property of sleep and had yet to spill over into wakefulness – and he could continue to believe that life was as prosaic as he’d encountered it all his life.
When they returned to their hotel later that day, however, he was served with a blunt reminder that nothing was ever as it seemed.
He’d regularly checked for email during the last few days, ever since Malcolm Harp in Robin Hood’s Bay had promised to take to his local library the photographs given to him in 1975, get them scanned, and ask for help in emailing them. The pictures were apparently blurred and would mean little to anyone not familiar with their ba
ck-story. Only George Cox and maybe five other people in the world (one almost certainly dead) would appreciate their importance.
George now had a message sent from a newly created email account, presumably because the fisherman would have had little use for one previously. While opening the communication, George reflected on how long it had taken him to persuade the man to overcome his technological limitations and send him the pictures. Malcolm Harp had had more reservations about sharing the photos at all. But once George had resorted to Christine’s trick, reminding Malcolm about his terminal illness, the man had eventually agreed to do so.
His wife was in the shower, allowing George to review the images at his leisure. Their hotel bedroom was smartly decorated and full of stylish furniture, but now his attention was reduced to the creature about to be revealed in scanned versions of the original Polaroid shots. As calmly as possible, George activated the first of four attachments.
It must have been twenty minutes before he regained consciousness. George worked this out by reflecting on how long it usually took Christine to change for dinner. After opening his eyes, he saw her leaning across the bed onto which he’d collapsed, presumably while reviewing the contents of that solitary email attachment. Whether the images presented had precipitated a bout of dizziness or this had been a symptom of his tumour, it was impossible to say. The more events unfolded in this case, the more George suspected that these were one and the same thing.
“Are you all right, George?” his wife asked with fretful haste, trying to help him sit up while brandishing a glass of water she must have fetched from the bathroom.
I have Cthulhu in my head, he thought in delirium, but then propped himself up against the headboard, shaking confusion from his skull. He saw his laptop open beside him, its screen turned mercifully away. It wasn’t that he couldn’t recall what he’d seen there – a series of images so profoundly disturbing that he’d felt unstable with impending doom – rather that he was glad Christine was unable to view them. In one sense, he wanted to protect her from such horrors, but in another he didn’t want her to learn how deeply involved he’d become in them. It was all genuinely frightening.
