“The moment is at hand, this is our final offer...”
The tentacles disappeared back into the pilot’s gaping maw. Its arm still outstretched. Poltergeist could feel the box moving back and forth. Its contents were getting antsy.
Poltergeist, his cape flapping in the wind, finally spoke. “No”.
With that, the pilot exploded into a giant mass of veiny flesh and rammed Poltergeist in the chest, knocking him through the cornfields. As Poltergeist landed he looked up and saw the fleshy mass was now upright, squirming out of the pilot and growing. It was about fifteen feet tall and began to sprout giant pincers. One after another they burst forth until it was standing on twelve, claw-like appendages. Like a fat, demented, fleshy spider it turned towards Poltergeist. The mass crackled and popped as a protrusion of teeth and tentacles extended out. It took a moment to shake off the remaining pilot, and then it scurried towards him.
Poltergeist stood up just in time to have the spider creature knock him into the air, turning to catch him as he fell. It crunched down onto Poltergeist’s body with its teeth and flung him again up into the air again. All the while Poltergeist held onto the box. Knowing that if this monster pried it from his hands, one way or another, the world was doomed.
Poltergeist landed on the ground and whipped out his gun. The creature was coming towards him as he fired all the remaining bullets. As he expected, they did nothing. Poltergeist steeled himself as the creature slammed one of its pinchers through his arm, pinning it to the ground. Poltergeist’s hand opened reflexively and the box tumbled loose.
Poltergeist reached for the box but another pincher pinned his free arm down. The protrusion of teeth and tentacles slowly leaned over him. It drooled an icky, viscous drip as two long, red tentacles slipped out from between the teeth and lifted the box from the ground. They coiled around it and crushed it open. Wood shards fell on Poltergeist as he looked on terrified. There, hovering above him, was a giant, black eye. It slowly spun like a globe in midair. Then he heard rustling.
The cornfields swayed and parted as the first figure emerged from the crops. It wore a cloak and walked towards him. It stopped and stood silently over Poltergeist. The creature retracted it pincers and stepped back a bit. A gesture that seemed in deference to the new, cloaked thing. Soon another figure walked through the crops. Then another. And another. Twelve in all encircled the floating eye. All dressed in the same cloaks with hoods falling over their faces to obscure their nature. Poltergeist sat up as the first cloaked figure raised its arm. A thick tentacle gracefully unfurled from the sleeve and embraced the floating eye of Yog-Sothoth. With that, the rest of cloaked figures all removed their hoods to gaze upon the eye. Their visage was a terrible combination of cephalopod and man. Human eyes recessed into pulsating flesh.
What could be imagined as their mouth opened and soft moans began to emanate. They chanted in some damned language unknown to even Poltergeist. The things seemed utterly uninterested in Poltergeist as he stood up and took a moment to observe the strange sight.
The things keep chanting as yet more rustling was heard off in the distance. Soon enough another cloaked figure emerged to join the already bizarre ritual. The creature walked past Poltergeist with its tentacles outstretched holding the other eye of Yog-Sothoth. Thunder boomed across the night sky. Clouds were parting as a column of light descended down upon this unnatural conclave. The creatures began chanting louder as the eyes of Yog-Sothoth were finally re-united.
Whatever these things were, who they might have been, where they came from, or even their motivations meant nothing at this point. Poltergeist knew that if he was going to stop the imminent return of Yog-Sothoth, it was now or never.
Poltergeist smashed the closest creature in its vile face and grabbed one of Yog-Sothoth’s Eyes. The commotion broke whatever trance the creatures were in as they all screamed in unison. The spider creature reared up and its protrusions of tentacles and teeth danced wildly. Poltergeist ran as the hooded creatures screamed and pointed at him. The creature began to give chase.
Poltergeist griped the Eye tight as he cut through the crops. He could hear the spider creature roaring and lumbering behind him. From the corner of his eye he could see the smoke from the plane. He turned towards it as the creature burst forth and swung a few pincers at him. Poltergeist rolled underneath the blow and ran off toward the crash site.
The creature, angry and slobbering, turned and followed. Poltergeist could feel the ground beneath him rumbling. Trembling not from the creature that followed him, but something else. Something catastrophic. He looked up to see shadows of gigantic tentacles moving amongst the clouds.
As Poltergeist arrived at the wreckage he grabbed a shard of the plane. The creature burst onto the wreckage. Its teeth gnashed and its tentacles danced in horror as it watched Poltergeist toss the eye into the air and spear it! The creature reeled back as another thunder clap deafened the night. Poltergeist looked at the clouds and saw the column of light flicker out and the tentacled shadows fade. He turned to see the spider creature fall over, convulse, and liquify into the ground.
Poltergeist tossed the impaled eye into the wreckage. He watched it burn and walked away as the ashes floated off. He made a torch and walked back to the scene of the ritual. The cloaked figures were gone. Only wet cloaks remained. At the center of them lay the remaining eye of Yog-Sothoth. With the torch, he set it ablaze and waited until it too was nothing but ash.
With this crisis averted Poltergeist slowly walked off into the fields. He had more questions then answers. He had adverted disaster, but was no closer to finding out who, or what, was behind all this. It would be years before he would learn the truth. Until then, he would have more mysteries and monsters to fight.
Dearest Delilah
Jack had been at it for hours, the wooden groans of his chair offering sad accompaniment as he struggled to write what he hoped wouldn't be a suicide letter.
Dearest Delilah,
Today I will try to kill myself. Please believe me though, I am not trying to end my life, but to save it.
I've yearned to say these things to you many times, but the right words, or frankly the courage, never found me. When I look at you, I forget all the things that taught me not to hope for a better life. Your eyes seem to shine with a hope and a love I've never known before. You are my escape to the world I've always yearned for.
But I've learned that I could be the end of that world. Before I can allow you to deliver me to salvation, I must be sure that I will not deliver damnation to you.
Jack set down his pen and sagged back into his chair. Writing this letter was exhausting him but he needed to get through it. If things went badly today, Delilah deserved to know why. He began writing again.
It's difficult to explain my affliction, though there was a time I thought it was a gift. As long as I can remember, I've been protected by a sort of guardian angel. Whenever I was in extreme danger, drowning in fear, I would be whisked away to safety and whatever or whoever was trying to hurt me would simply be gone. I'd only remember fragments, blacking out and waking up not far away, often still frightened but somehow knowing that I'd be safe. My life has been saved this way many times but like I said, I don't consider it a gift anymore.
The first time it happened I was a little boy. My actual father had been gone since before I could remember and my mother hadn't been too picky about finding someone to fill his shoes. One of her early choices had a taste for booze and a habit of hitting anyone who wouldn't hit back. I was little and couldn't do anything to stop him, and I can admit now that he terrified me. Most nights when he was drinking I'd just try to hide somewhere until he passed out. I'd gotten pretty good at it too.
At some point Mom had started pouring out his booze to keep him from drinking, so he started to hide stashes everywhere. I found a few when I was hiding and I stopped using those spots so I'd be safe, but I still wasn't. As Mom got better at finding stashes, he got
better at hiding them. One night he was in a particularly foul mood and I'd hidden in the broom closet under a lean-to of mops and brooms. I found out later that he'd put moonshine in a bottle that looked like rat poison and hidden it in the closet. When he opened the door looking for a bottle of something to erase the last of his humanity, he found me. Of course he immediately thought I was trying to take his stash, but I didn't even know it was there. He must have seen my look of surprise as an admission of guilt and began to beat me mercilessly right in the closet. At first it was with his hands and fists, but at some point he picked up a broomstick and started swinging. I was terrified and in pain, and when he struck at my head with the broomstick, everything went blank.
I woke up in the tall grass at the back edge of the empty lot next to our house. I was bruised and sore, but felt safe. Even though it seemed like the S.O.B. had left me there to die, somehow I wasn't as afraid anymore. I knew that he was gone and couldn't hurt me, even if I didn't know what happened to him.
Jack set the pen down again. The fear he'd felt as a child seemed to soak through him where he sat. He took a sip of his whiskey to steady his nerves and a gulp of cold water to cool his head. He didn't like to dwell on the past and the memory gaps had helped him forget about some of the bad times, but they still left an impression. He'd rarely revisited the episodes this way, but now that he was putting it down on paper for Delilah, it felt strangely good. He stood briefly and stretched before settling back down to continue writing.
The S.O.B. was gone. Mom had been working the night he disappeared and didn't want to ask too many questions when she saw my bruises. I'd like to think she didn't ask because the guilt was too much for her, and maybe it was, but she was angry too. He was a drunken S.O.B. but he brought home a wage. Either way, I was happy she didn't ask any questions since I really didn't have any answers.
There wouldn't be another episode for a long time, but eventually it happened again, and again after that. It became almost common.
Over time, I came to notice more about the episodes. At first I only remembered the sense of safety, but as it repeated I'd remember a little bit more: a deepening sense of safety grew into a feeling of peace, then a feeling that I was flying, then a feeling that I was flying through a tunnel, and finally a bright light. Mostly it was just feelings or sensations though, nothing concrete that might help me understand what was happening.
When I was older I began to tempt fate thinking I was invincible and sure that I'd be protected. I was barely a man but I felt more like some kind of god. Man, god, or otherwise, the world had other ideas about my fate. I couldn't have stayed out of the war if I'd wanted to, but I didn't want to. I was actually looking forward to it, but not for the reasons other people were. To me it seemed like the perfect place to test things, to see what I could really do. But guardian angels don't swoop in and save you from rotten feet and rats. I learned pretty fast that there are lots of ways to die that don't involve violence and even more that do. I was tested all right, and I learned far more than I wanted to.
You can't just disappear in the middle of a battle without raising serious questions about your loyalty, and those were more of the same sorts of questions I didn't want to have to answer. Lucky for me there were stories going around the trenches about ghosts or angels or devils saving or killing friend and foe, and those stories helped me keep my secret. Most of my episodes went unnoticed. The few people that did notice kept quiet fearing for their sanity, and anything else ended up in the whispers of the superstitious soldiers. But those were just stories. What happened to me was real.
So I kept my head down like everyone else and started to be careful. There were still close calls, but this was the beginning of what I now realize is my will to live. Unfortunately it took a while to get there, so this was the time when I had the most episodes. I had become addicted to the peaceful feelings I'd get afterwards, and those regular peaceful sensations started to add up. It helped me deal with where I was, though eventually I began to wonder where all of my tormentors had gone. They wouldn't trouble me anymore, but I hadn't beat them, I had ducked them. So I began to try to avoid anything that would trigger an episode until eventually the bad feelings faded and I felt mostly peace. I had a clear enough head that I started to want to understand these episodes before any more happened. When I was back home, I began to live my life like anyone else. It was the beginning of the life that would lead me to you. But recently, any normal life I had begun to enjoy nearly disappeared.
Jack set the pen down again. He rubbed his eyes and stood up to stretch his tightened muscles. He was sure Delilah knew about what happened, but she didn't know the whole story. Jack's thoughts drifted back to the night of his latest episode as he began writing again.
I was held by the police as part of a murder investigation but I never told you the whole story. It's time that I did.
I was walking home late at night when a man approached me with a small revolver and demanded we step off the street. I knew I was in trouble but I stepped between the buildings hoping that I could hand over my cash and get on my way. It wasn't meant to be. As soon as I offered him my cash, he was instantly angry. It's strange how a man doesn't seem to mind pointing a gun at you and forcing you into an alley but he gets angry when you assume he's a thief. The last thing I remember was the string of foul words that came from his mouth and then I woke up a few blocks away with a cop's billy club poking my ribs. I felt the familiar sense of safety and peace that followed an episode, but I knew I was still in trouble. Apparently someone had seen two men enter an alley just before hearing a gunshot and identified me as one of them. They brought me in for questioning and they weren't exactly hospitable about it. I was being asked the types of questions I hate to answer, mostly because I don't have any answers.
They seemed sure I was a killer, and maybe a little bit crazy. It was clear they wanted a confession, but I had nothing to say. By keeping focused on the sense of peace and safety from the episode, I was able to keep calm. I knew I couldn't let myself feel threatened and trigger an episode, since disappearing from the police station with a cop who would never be heard from again seemed like a bad idea. In the end, since there wasn't a dead thief or even a gun, I figured I'd be safe. So I kept my mouth shut.
It was a bad time, but one good thing came of it. One of the detectives that worked on the case was from out of town. He apparently specializes in strange cases and was brought in to see if he could connect me to anything. That's where it started to get interesting. He actually could connect what happened in my case to others, many others, but he couldn't connect me specifically to the other cases. He seemed to know of cases like mine going back for years in all kinds of different places. Then it got even stranger. He started to describe things about my episodes that I'd never told anyone. He knew it had happened before. He knew I'd have little memory of the episodes, but he also knew about the sensation of peace and the feeling of flying. I was shocked, but that's how I knew he was the real thing. Then he did something I couldn't believe. He told the cops that he couldn't connect me to anything and pretty soon they let me go. That's how I knew I could trust him.
Not long after I was out he showed up at my door and that's when things started to make sense for me. He explained that he'd been studying these episodes and the people they affect for years. It was actually what led him to become a detective. I told him as much as I remembered about my episodes and he explained a lot about other cases he'd seen. The general pattern seemed to be that whenever a person with the affliction suffered a grave threat, some sort of guardian would keep him safe and take the threat away. Usually the protected would be found nearby, but the threat would be gone. The detective seems to think that the threat ends in some other place, maybe someplace far away. That would make sense since no threat of mine ever came back, but I still wonder if they aren't just destroyed. Also, there were rarely any witnesses
to the actual episode, just events before and after. Any official accounts that he turned up were written-off as madness, but they all seemed pretty close to the pattern of my episodes. If it is madness, I'm sorry for what you'll probably find today, but least we'll know the truth.
The detective's stories also helped me to understand why my affliction isn't a gift. Some of the episodes he described included accounts of good people disappearing too, not just the people threatening the protected one. The guardian doesn't seem to know who is a threat and who isn't, just who is close by. There have even been accounts of family and close loved ones disappearing along with the threat. That means they are either destroyed, or worse, they're sent off with the threat to endure whatever torment was meant for the protected one. I can't bear the thought that this affliction might cause you to be sent to some hell with whatever devil decides to do me harm, just because I was holding your hand when he appeared. I have to know that I can never threaten your safety or peace for the sake of my own.
Which finally brings me to tonight. If the threat is sent to another place, then by trying to kill myself I would be the afflicted one and the threat. That should send me away as well. I'll finally know for sure if it's destruction, hell, or just some other place.
So after I drop off this letter, I shall go to the roof of my building and jump off. Before I jump, I shall take my shoes off at the edge of the roof so you'll know where I jumped. If you find me on the ground below, then I must be mad. If I am, again I'm sorry. But if you don't find me below, you'll know I have my answer. If I must pay with my life to spare you a trip to the hell of all my demons, then so be it. I must settle this and I must do it now.
The detective knows about you and he should be around tonight. Though he and I have discussed the possibility of using a suicide attempt to reach the other place, he always considered it too dangerous to try. I'm not sure how he will react to what I've done, but I want you to know that this is my own choice. He is a good man who seeks the truth of this affliction. You can trust him with your life as I do.
1920: The Roaring Anthology Page 7
