by Gary Fry
As he advanced from that curious beach, stepping between geometric flora and fauna, the landscape assumed a luminescent hue beneath a wash of incipient moon- and starlight. More of those great blocks, their angles problematic, were mounted like a child’s building blocks, running alongside an impromptu pathway of hollow-sounding earth. George, marvelling at the complexity of beguiling spatial arrangements, turned to his wife, who’d now raised her iPhone to capture what they experienced, even though she had its lens fixed only on him.
“Look at all these things, Christine! They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen before! Such precision! Such mind-rupturing exactness!”
As he swept out one arm to indicate what he referred to, his wife simply looked at him, eyes loaded with pity and unease.
“Yes, darling,” she said, but if she experienced similar awe, why didn’t she observe the territory, its dreamlike wonders and elusive configurations? Why did she rather continue to film him standing in genuine amazement among such sights?
They moved on, up a gradual incline, where George stooped in pounding rain to pluck a carved object from the top of one of those blocks. This appeared to be made from a similar substance but what it was he had no idea. It felt like dried putty in his palm and yet seemed harder than that, failing to yield to a fingernail and almost slipping from his trembling grasp. Whatever its nature, the carving’s styling suggested creatures it would be unwise to contemplate for too long. Here were hints of monstrous limbs, there the tracings of a hideous face; protuberant wings completed the ensemble, whose combined features tempered George’s amazement with abject dread.
“Look at this!” he said, turning again to face his wife, who must have redirected her camera, because when he glanced up he saw that she recorded him and nothing else. “It’s malformed, yes, but surely provides evidence in support of my belief: this island is R’lyeh, where great Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
If Christine now looked worried, George would need to be more persuasive. Struggling to assimilate the image of his wife on the path – for a moment, it had seemed as if she’d stood at an unlikely angle to the many disciplined trees beside her – he tossed the sculpture her way, hoping she might catch it with her free hand. But he’d somehow misjudged the gap between them, the item flying at a wild diagonal, rustling into overly organised undergrowth and coming to rest with a delayed sound.
“Just a rock,” Christine muttered, her voice taking every bit as long to reach him, at least a second after her lips had moved. But was she speaking into her iPhone, enabling its microphone to capture her commentary? Whatever the truth was, George then heard her add, “Serious hallucinations. Unable to throw straight.”
He might have protested if he hadn’t just detected a powerful odour. It seemed to come from behind or maybe even from underneath him, oozing through soil that should be much wetter than it felt. His shoes were still unmarked by dirt, and as he swivelled to advance farther up the slope, that scent grew stronger, heavy in the moist air.
It was how bulls had smelled when he’d been a child and had ventured into Yorkshire countryside. He’d observed fields full of the sluggish beasts, prowling back and forth, looking for cattle to inseminate. The stench had been powerful, eye-wateringly so at times, and now, half a century later, he experienced a similar repulsion, the foul aroma making him consider clamping his hands over mouth and nose.
He looked over one shoulder, wondering how his wife managed to tolerate the same, and was astonished to observe that she seemed untroubled by the stench, her free hand hanging to one side, the other capturing yet more footage.
“Can’t you…smell…that?” he asked, his voice half-broken by all the inhalations he needed to take while speaking.
“Oh, darling,” Christine replied, her tone heavy as if she’d realised that she couldn’t take much more. Indeed, were there tears in her eyes? “Let’s go back to the beach. The authorities will be aware of the crash and will soon look for survivors. If we’re the only passengers who didn’t go down with the plane, searchers might fail to locate us. We should remain in clear sight or they might assume that we were drowned like everyone else.”
George didn’t want to hear this – it interfered with his resolution – but was even less eager to listen to what seemed likely to follow. He turned away, stalking up the hill towards the mountain, whose peak was bathed in churning cloud.
“You’re ill, George,” his wife called, now a fair distance behind him, shouting above the constant racket of falling rain and howling winds. “You’re ill and need help, my love. None of what you’re seeing here is real. It’s just an island, darling. Just an uninhabited island.”
“No, it’s R’lyeh,” George yelled back, already a hundred yards ahead, where the stench grew ever more pungent and the landscape increasingly absurd with weird geometrics. “It’s where It resides, where It waits dreaming, and where It is about to be reborn before bringing down the whole world.”
“It?” Christine replied, giving only tenuous chase, her iPhone no more than half-raised. “What do you mean It, George? You’re not making sense.”
“What do I mean?” he repeated, incredulousness making his voice shrill. “I mean only one thing: It is great Cthu–”
But that was as far as he got.
Because then it happened.
The earthquake.
Its epicentre was here, on this small island. What else could account for the way all the territory around George and his wife farther down the path started grumbling and shaking? After several seconds, George realised that he could hardly stand without his balance being compromised, and then he whirled to observe Christine also struggling to remain upright. Surely she believed him now, but when bestial grunts were added to the disturbance – they sounded like he’d imagined the Whitby Bull might once have done, sonorous calls which made his bones rattle – she appeared not to cower and flinch as he did.
Maybe time and space in this weird place continued to play tricks on his perception. Perhaps the animal noises – which seemed to emerge from underground, as if something was ascending to prompt such geographic unrest – were delayed in transmission, crossing the distance between George and his wife at reduced speed.
Whatever the truth was, it was clear that a major event was about to occur, and that they’d need evidence to convince what few people remained in the world after so much imminent violence. Everyone who survived must become aware of its true source, those seeds of evil from beyond the stars: great Cthulhu and Its minions, about to rise again.
“Keep filming!” George cried, turning to address the mountaintop, whose newly visible peak was only a short walk away. “Record me facing up to this…to this Thing!”
Despite a cry from behind him of, “No, George!” he advanced farther along the path, struggling to remain upright as the whole island shook and rumbled around him. This was no mere earthquake, he thought, sensing rocks tumbling everywhere. That was when he glanced up into the heavens, observing the sky filled with twinkling jewels.
He knew that the stars were right tonight, and that all the knowledge he’d acquired lately had functioned as a spell of sorts, summoning the Great Old Ones from their ages-old place of slumber. Every one of them was about to be reborn. And he must be present when they were.
Moments later, with rain still hissing and the wind whipped into a vortex, the ragged mountaintop burst apart in a shower of falling stones. None of these brute fragments – most as large as people, some the size of small cars – landed where George’s scientifically oriented mind expected them to, each describing wild trajectories and savage arcs. But then intense light followed, like a sudden eruption of volcanic magma. It frothed over the fringe of the giant crater now at the island’s heart, was projected yards high with a violent glug, before falling rapidly, the way light never should, and finally began rolling down the mountain’s sides.
“Leave, Christine! Leave now!” George called over one shoulder, but kept his gaze fixed rigidly
ahead, where the landscape was being pulled savagely apart. “Keep filming at a distance but go and tell everyone!”
There was no response from behind and that worried George, but as the wind and rain grew ever more pervasive, he was no longer able to focus on that problem – and for a very specific reason.
It had at last appeared.
His first sight of the Thing was one of Its immense limbs flopping over that edge of rock and feeling around for purchase. It was as wide as George’s body, greenish in colour, and ended in a suckered snout that clawed manically at the air, trying to establish a secure grip in the world. But how could this appendage be a leg or arm when, in contrast to carved facsimiles he’d seen, it bore no claw, no wedge-like heel, no broadening shaft leading back to its monstrous bearer?
That was when twelve more of these snaking things appeared, each pushing out of the pit like perverted flower-petals and spreading across the crater’s diameter until all were placed equidistantly around the perimeter, like spokes on a wheel.
With a horror that cut directly to his core, George realised what he observed: merely the face-tentacles of great Cthulhu.
And now here came the rest of It.
George briefly glanced back at where his wife had waited earlier but was unable to spot her; there was too much seething madness there. Then he turned to hurry forwards, farther up the mountainside, desperate to achieve communion with the terror that had rocked his life.
Now Its limbs did appear, claw-fronted wedges every bit as large as trucks. All those cattle sounds increased, thumping across a sky packed with impossible light, like a surrealist’s portrait of illness. When Its head arose, as wide as a house, George was just yards from the drop and found himself gazing directly into Its moonlike face. Alien consciousness, an absence of emotion, lurked deep in its unblinking eyes. Weird gases churned in irises surrounding pupils as black as death. The mouth became visible, a huge slash filled with people-high teeth and a tongue like a battle-toughened mamba. Its breath was a combination of feverish refuge and chemical weapons. The wings, flapping rapidly and enhancing the weather’s power, elevated the creature shuffling from this age-old tomb.
Perhaps other entities, lurking beneath the beast and all as eager to emerge, were forcing It out. It was impossible to say. All George knew for sure was that before the Thing made Its final move, before Its bloated bulk tore more wounds into the planet’s flesh, leaving It free to corrupt everyone, he had to make his point.
“You invaded my life!” he called, yelling over the sound of more breaking rocks. Great Cthulhu lay squarely ahead, still hauling Its stupendous body out of the island’s heart, out of mythical R’lyeh. “You overruled my beliefs about people and their capacity to act with reason! You’re uncivilised, you bastard! You murder the good for no better purpose than a tragic truth at the core of our existence: we’re all insignificant in this universe!”
He remembered Christine somewhere back on the path behind him. He pictured his children, David and Vanessa, miles from his current location. He thought of his friends: former colleagues, neighbours, folk he’d met elsewhere. And all this made him despise even more the evil that had violated his life, just when he’d hoped to enjoy a retirement he’d looked forward to. None of it was fair. But that was the nature of the cosmos in relation to humankind: it just wasn’t fair.
By now, the beast had fully emerged and bestrode the mountain’s crater with psyche-shattering limbs. The sky-blotting mass fading into darkness, George struggled to come to terms with Its improbable size. The best he could do was imagine the Thing from a bird’s eye view or maybe from an aircraft window’s. The beast would occupy the island, like some carved sculpture perched on top of a rough plinth or pedestal. It would roar, just as It did now, with a sound that filled the air with intense vibrations, shaking rocks loose from the land and bending so many symmetrical trees to breaking point. It would be followed by similar creatures, each as hideous and cruelly aloof.
The world was about to end. And George, now borne away by a sweeping tide of light that smelt like burning lava, wouldn’t be around to experience that. Death had triumphed as it always did; and life, its brief postponement, was over.
EPILOGUE
“I know this is a difficult time for you, Mrs. Cox,” said Dr. Kilroy, “but any evidence of…well, of the way George’s condition affected him before his death might prove useful to colleagues carrying out research into brain tumours.”
From her chair opposite, Christine nodded with resignation. She’d had several weeks to come to terms with the plane crash, how she’d waited nearly a day on an island experiencing a low-grade earthquake and how recovery helicopters scouting the area had located her, shivering in a cave with only her phone for comfort. It had been a frightening time, especially when her husband had been swept away by lava from the island’s mountain. In hindsight, Christine wondered whether this was a merciful development. George had lapsed into serious delusions at the end, imagining the place as other than it was and being compelled to climb to its upmost point to rage against something. It had been hard to endure, but it was over now.
“That’s why I agreed to attend this meeting,” Christine explained, pulling her iPhone from one pocket and handing it across to the doctor. “As we discussed months ago, I made recordings of George’s symptoms. You’re welcome to download the files, if you wish. I haven’t reviewed them all yet. It’s…well, it’s too soon, if you know what I mean.”
“I understand that, Mrs. Cox, and I’m grateful to you for sharing this.” The doctor – about thirty years old, exhibiting much textbook knowledge about life and death – attached a cable from his computer to the phone, before transferring all the video files. “I’m assuming these recordings include footage from the island?”
“They do.”
“Thanks.” The doctor nodded, pursing his lips in thought. “Haven’t other authorities asked to see that one, too?”
“Oh yes, just about everyone’s requested the final recording. Our travel company. Media reps. A number of insurance agencies. I’ve had no choice but to share them, many times.”
“And…and have you watched it yet?”
“It would have been difficult not to.” Christine smiled but only thinly; the expression didn’t touch her eyes. “What with so much else going on in the world right now, it didn’t receive much attention in the national news. But as you’ll see, it’s all quite dramatic.”
The doctor nodded again, glancing up from his computer. “I understand you were lucky to survive the crash.”
She looked away. “It was just the way the plane split apart – directly in front of George and me. My husband acted quickly, as if he’d known he had to. We were the only ones who broke free in the time available before the plane sank.”
“That’s quite remarkable.”
“I realise that,” she replied, and finally looked back at him, as if trying to suppress disturbing suspicions. “Anyway, there’s nothing on those recordings detailing that event. It all relates to what happened later, on the island.”
Dr. Kilroy glanced again at his screen, reached forwards to close a page (almost certainly George’s medical records), and then gazed back at his late patient’s wife.
“May I watch it?” he asked, detaching her phone from his computer and passing it back to her.
“Why not?” Christine stood to walk around the desk and collected her device. “It doesn’t show…well, it doesn’t show George’s final moments, only the island in chaos – the earthquake, I mean. That terrible upheaval.”
Christine noticed that the young man had reopened a webpage he must have been consulting earlier, one documenting events that had crippled the planet in the last few weeks – ever since Christine had been rescued, in fact. There’d been further violence in North Africa, escalating conflict in the Middle East, a threat of nuclear exchange on the Korean Peninsula, a retreat to economic protectionism by the USA, further brutal Chinese conversion to the free
market, skyrocketing unemployment and civil unrest in the Eurozone, and a rise in organised crime in South America, to such a degree that the whole continent hardly functioned as an interdependent collective.
Christine had been aware of this news but her grief had cushioned its impact, ruling out the way it troubled many peers, including her adult children, who were now concerned about bringing offspring into such an unstable world. Christine was simply glad that George hadn’t lived to witness all this; it would have cut against the grain of his humanistic beliefs, the admirable work he’d achieved as an academic, before being tragically struck down by a thing with little compassion for people.
When she looked again, the doctor had closed the Internet and started the file playing. The footage, she knew, lasted about twenty minutes and involved images of a tropical island unoccupied by human dwellers, where natural structures had been left to their wild ways, including many straggly palm trees and misshapen rocks. The place was volcanic, with random sculptures flanking makeshift paths, all of which appeared to have been created by streaks of hardened lava. It was certainly possible to make out shapes in this dried magma, but surely none had been intended. George, now onscreen and indicating one of these items as if perceiving a significance there, must have simply imagined figures in the rock, offering them up as evidence in favour of his delusional theory.
The symmetrical blocks he pointed out were nothing of the sort. He’d lost eye-to-hand coordination, tossing a piece of stone her way with pitiable inaccuracy. Next he’d detected a stench, one powerful enough to make his eyes glisten, but all Christine could recall smelling was pungent ozone and moist vegetation. It had been terribly sad to observe, but it was over now. That was the important thing. All her husband’s suffering was gone.
