“And the sculpture,” Otep breathed, “it is inside?”
“Yes, Mr. Otep, it is. Truth be told, I find the sculpture actually quite ugly and I don’t particularly care for it. The only attachment I have to it is that it was left to me by my uncle when he passed away ten years ago.”
Miles opened the box, revealing an obsidian carved statuette that could only be described as horrific. As he often did when he looked upon it and despite its being an inanimate object, Miles mused that it sat almost malevolently in its ugliness. The carven figure was vaguely octopoid, but it also bore disturbingly humanoid characteristics.
All in all, it was most unpleasant to look upon.
He glanced to Mr. Otep who looked upon it with a predatory longing.
“You see,” Miles explained, “As I wrote, it is not something one puts on display for when company comes to visit.”
“It is breathtaking,” Otep said, much to Miles’ surprise.
“Yes, well,” Miles said, closing the box. Otep looked almost heartbroken to lose sight of it.
“What would you say, Mr. Whitcomb,” Otep said as he turned his black gaze upon Miles, “If I offered you one hundred thousand American dollars for that sculpture?”
Miles visibly started. He blinked in shock before answering.
“As I said in my letters, Mr. Otep,” Miles replied as he slipped the box into his satchel, “I am not interested in selling it. If indeed it is of Egyptian origin, I will be happy to allow you to take photographs and molds of it for your government. Although I absolutely detest the piece, it is a gift from my uncle. I feel obligated to keep it if only as a cherished heirloom.”
“Would you let it go for two hundred thousand dollars?” Otep countered.
Miles looked positively distressed at the amount of money he was being offered for the sculpture, but held firm. He shook his head, “I’m sorry, Mr. Otep. No. I came to Kingsport here at your request and out of respect for your cultural heritage. I did not come to sell the statue. I am most sorry.”
The Egyptian smiled again, and Miles again felt that same sense of disquiet.
“Of course, Mr. Whitcomb,” Otep said, “Forgive my…coveting of your inheritance. Your uncle had an enviable eye for antiquities. May I enquire as to whether or not you have any other objects de art or papers from your uncle’s estate?”
“This is the only thing I have left. I have donated all of Uncle Howard’s letters and papers to Mr. August Derleth in Wisconsin. He is compiling many of them for posterity and for inclusion in a volume of books.”
“That is unfortunate, Miles - most unfortunate.”
Suddenly, Miles smelled a strong fishy odor and sensed a presence behind him. He half turned to see the bartender hulking over him. Too late to react, Miles could only flinch as the bartender struck him with a club.
Miles fell into unconsciousness.
He awoke to find himself once again embraced by thick fog.
In the distance, there was the muted tolling of a channel buoy. Miles also heard the lapping of water and smelled the sharp tang of sea water. It carried the heavy, fishy, decomposing odor of harbor water.
Groaning, he rolled over to find himself on the deck of a skiff. Peering with anxiety through the fog, he saw with some relief that he was still at dock. Remembering what had happened, he whispered a small prayer of thanks to God that he was still alive.
As he struggled upright, he winced as his head thudded painfully, no doubt from where he had been struck. Just as he sat up, he heard the clumping of footsteps and he saw that Mr. Otep and the bartender were approaching from the ship’s wheel house. The dark Arab was talking, and as they drew near, Whitcomb heard their conversation.
“…now that we have the statue,” the Egyptian said, “tell your brethren to meet us. The time is nigh, Obed. Dagon will be pleased.”
The bartender said nothing. He simply stopped by the rail of the deck and began taking his clothes off. Watching with mounting horror, Miles saw the bartender reveal a body that was not entirely human.
The bartender’s skin was rubbery and marbled with veins. It was stretched tight over oddly shaped joints. The creature’s feet, for it was obvious that the bartender was not entirely human, were long and webbed like those of a frog. The horrific beast finally spoke, but not in words that Miles recognized. It made several raspy, wet, croaking sounds, and Otep nodded as thought he understood. It then turned and slid clumsily over the side of the skiff. There was a splashing into the dank water below, and then silence.
Miles was quite certain that he was losing his mind.
Otep turned, walking towards Miles. He smiled again and Miles felt his blood run cold..
“Ah, Miles. So glad you could join us again. I apologize for my friend’s overzealous in subduing you. It pleases me that you’re not seriously injured as I have other more sinister plans for you.”
“Dear God,” Miles said, “what is going on?”
“I am taking care of some unfinished business, Mr. Whitcomb. It took me a considerably long time to find both you and that artifact your uncle left you. Before that, it took me the better part of twenty years to find that Lovecraft had it. It was fortuitous that he left it to you and that I could strike up a correspondence with you. My luring you here has been a long time coming.”
“Who are you, really?” Miles asked.
“Why, Miles, don’t you know?”
Otep bent down and grinned, his toothy smile seeming too wide and too evil. Suddenly and right before Miles’ disbelieving eyes, the man’s skin seemed to darken and grow blacker, like the ends of a piece of paper placed in a flame.
Miles shrieked and, to protect his sanity from this new horror, Mile’s mind dredged up a memory from his youth. Something he had buried deep down within himself since he had become an adult.
In his mind, he was suddenly twelve years old again and in his childhood bedroom back in Toledo. It was night time and he was reading a copy of Weird Tales by candlelight. The memory flooded over him and he suddenly remembered what he had forgotten in the long years since then.
With dagger-like recall, he remembered that had spent countless nights in his childhood room, shivering in fear and delight as he devoured every story his Uncle Howard had written. He had loved reading all of the old pulp magazines! He had been so proud of his uncle and loved to see the name H.P. Lovecraft on the cover of Amazing Stories or Weird Tales.
He had wanted to write like Uncle Howard, then. It was only when he had grown older and become an adult that he had given up the foolishness of science fiction and horror stories. He felt shame as he realized that he had turned away from his uncle’s genius and his own dreams of becoming a writer in favor of a solid and bland career in Mechanical Engineering. . His shame warred with the dread and horror that he felt as he realized that Mr. Otep was one of the nightmares that could only have been conjured from Lovecraft’s imagination.
All of this came to him as he lay shivering on the mist soaked deck, looking up into Mr. Otep’s black eyes. They were the cold, dead, predatory eyes of a shark and they had no trace of white
“You can’t be real,” Miles whispered, “You can’t be real.”
“Humans are so imaginative,” Nyarlothotep growled, “It’s part of your nature to create and dream and fantasize endlessly, and yet – inexplicably – you all deny the supernatural when in its presence. It’s a special gift you have that is, sadly, wasted.”
Mr. Otep knelt and looked at Miles with those chilling eyes and continued, “Some of you though, some of you are special. Some humans have a special insight that sees more than the imagined. Artists like Hieronymus Bosch, or Hienrich Fuseli, or even your dear, departed Uncle Howard. They look beyond the nightmares and see the horrors that are real and hidden from most humans’ eyes. They see the real, but the other humans see it as simply the fantastic. Lovecraft himself alluded to this in his story, Pickman’s Model. Imagine the horror, Miles; poor Howard Phillips languishing in his agora
phobia and writing about the nightmares that lurked at the edge of his sight. Nightmares that were there, unseen by those around him but undeniably real!”
“No!” Miles screamed. The logical, adult part of him refusing to believe what the long repressed child within knew as certainty. He was paralyzed, frozen in fear.
Just then there was a large splashing in the darkness and fog. It grew louder and louder and suddenly several man-sized, frog-like creatures swarmed aboard the ship, croaking and pointing into the fog. Mr. Otep stood and walked to the edge of the rail, peering into the gloom.
After a long moment there was heavier splashing, but it was subtly different from that of the frog creatures. Beneath the clamor of the splashing there was a heavy, liquid, breathing sound that was both horrifying and inhuman.
The dark man at the rail laughed and raised his arms, a parody of Christ on the cross. The sounds drew nearer and nearer and suddenly, out of the darkness, a giant ropy alien appendage appeared. The unnatural limb was smooth and black. It was grotesque and wrong and throbbed from within with an unnatural luminescence. The tentacle wrapped itself around Otep, caressing his dark clad form in greeting. Meanwhile, the frog creatures began croaking and moaning and chirping in orgiastic pleasure at the arrival of this new terror.
And then, when he thought it could get no worse, Miles felt something within himself snap as he saw more of the bioluminescence slowly emerging from the fog. Whatever it was, the monstrosity that was approaching was terrifyingly huge. It was mind-boggling and Miles could feel an evil wind coming in draughts through the chill fog.
“DAGON!” screamed Otep.
At this, and fearing that his life and very sanity were in peril, Miles’ paralysis broke and he leapt up from the deck. In a mad, fear-filled dash, he scrambled over the far end of the skiff to the dock below. He fell painfully, but was up in a flash, running in blind terror into the fog and darkness-cloaked streets of the small sea town. Behind him, he heard Otep let out a cry of rage and he heard other sounds; sounds of the frog creatures moaning in despair, the sound of flapping feet in pursuit, and, finally, a bellowing roar. It was a roar that would haunt his nightmares; it was a roar of a creature that did not belong in this world.
It was the roar of the black, glowing creature.
It was the roar of madness.
Miles did not look back. He darted in primal fear up the twisted alleys and treacherous cobblestones of Kingsport.
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally found his automobile. Safely within it, he raced southwards towards Boston. He realized with mounting dread, that he still had his satchel with him. Afraid of what he might find, he felt with trembling fingers within the leather bag. As he had feared, he touched the familiar polished surface of the box Uncle Howard had left him.
“Dear God,” he whispered, “they’ll never stop looking for this!”
His mind already damaged and his heart thudding like a drum within his chest, he drove on through the night, uncertain of what to do next. He was only sure that he had had his eyes opened to a new, terrifying world and that the dark and not entirely human Egyptian would never stop looking for him or for the artifact he had at his side.
“Thanks, Uncle Howard,” he moaned.
Fat Bill and the Sea Monkeys
The sea and large open water is terrifying. Beyond its cold, merciless, crushing depths – there’s the things that live within it. I grew up within a 1000 yards of Lake Erie, and spent two or three weeks of every summer vacation at the Gulf of Mexico. Large bodies of water have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember… and so have the nightmares of what might be lurking within. - DAC
As you take me in your sea-stained sweetness
It spills, it tingles and it stings
All the pleasure that it brings
'til the door has let the outside inside here
- Peter Gabriel, Growing Up
‘Fat’ Bill Gordon awoke from a sound sleep with a start. He laid there for several minutes, his ears straining in the dark room for the strange noise that had awoken him. He heard nothing; but the loneliness of night descended on him and his already strained heart refused to slow down. He snorted with disgust at himself and decided he’d get up and take a look around - just in case.
Fat Bill – as he was known to all who resided in the quiet resort town - lived above a small grocery store; his grocery store. His tiny, two-room apartment was dark as he grunted and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the bed squeaking indignantly at his cumbersome bulk. He stood and padded barefoot across the room, giving his ass a scratch through his boxer shorts.
He crossed the bedroom to the living room/office/kitchen and felt in the dark for the switch on the other side of the doorframe. His pudgy fingers found what he sought and he flipped it.
Nothing happened.
“Goddammit!’ he muttered, blackly, and flicked the switch a few more times in frustration. Still nothing happened.
He realized unhappily that he was going to have to go down to the store and get a new bulb. He grunted as he crossed the blackness of the room, its familiar landmarks now obscured by the dark. Fat Bill bumped into the coffee table and his ratty, faux leather recliner before he made it across the room to the doorway and steps that lead down into the store.
He unbolted the door and made his way ponderously down the stairs, the steps creaking and groaning and popping under his girth. At the bottom, he had to unbolt the door to the store and turn sideways to get through it. The store was lit by the soft streetlight pouring through the front windows of the small grocery. Fat Bill grunted again, a sound that he was personally very fond of, and walked to the front of the store. He knew that, from his seat behind the counter, he could lean against the glass and see the digital clock and temperature at the Metro 25 bank at the end of the block.
He went behind the counter and looked out at the street. It was fall, and all of the tourists were gone for the summer. Every year, at this time of year, many of the shops and antique stores closed for the year and the main street took on the look of a ghost town. There were no cars on the street and all of the other buildings were dark. Looking across from his shop, he could see Whittaker’s Crab Shack and a parking lot. Beyond that, swallowed in inky darkness, laid a small beach and the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Fat Bill leaned his forehead against the plate glass window and looked down the street to the south.
The Metrobank sign flashed 3:47. A second or two later, it flashed 52o F; and then 11o C.
“Fucking four in the morning and I’m wandering around like an asshole,” Fat Bill muttered. He turned, ignoring the greasy mark his forehead had left on the window, and padded back towards the deli. He stood for a moment, and worried at an itch in his crotch while he contemplated the meats and cheeses behind the counter. After a moment or two of indecision, he finally decided and pulled out a block of corned beef. He turned on the meat slicer and shaved a good half pound off of the block. He then proceeded to stuff the cut corned beef into his mouth as he casually threw the larger block back.
Between every few chews, he had to stop and breathe heavily through his mouth, as his nose always seemed congested lately. He finished chewing and swallowed the wad of meat with a smack of his lips as he came out from behind the counter. He stopped, leaned a pudgy hand heavily against the deli counter top, lifted an immense leg, and released a sustained and rumbling burst of gas.
“That’s the good stuff!” he chortled, relishing the sulfurous scent he’d produced.
He began to waddle towards the hardware section to get a light bulb, but suddenly stopped short. He had felt a cold breeze and smelled the salty aroma of the sea air. Turning, he looked towards the swinging double doors that lead to the stockroom and saw that they were swaying slightly, as though the back door were open.
“Fucking Croft kid!” he said. Danny Croft was a local fifteen year old Fat Bill employed as a stock boy and the stupid kid must have left the back door open when he
’d left.
Fat Bill began trundling towards the stockroom but stopped again when he heard a clicking sound in the store behind him.
He spun as quickly as his girth would let him, and his heart made a funny jump.
He had seen something out of the corner of his eye when he’d turned. Something had moved past the front of the windows at the front of the store and just as quickly melded into the darkness near the register.
“What the fuck?”Fat Bill gasped, remembering the initial fear he’d felt when he’d first jolted awake. The fear was quickly replaced by a boiling rage.
“You mother fuckers! You can’t rob me in the daytime like any self-respecting crook?” he yelled into the darkness.
Fat Bill advanced down the aisle, his bulk making cans on the shelves thrum and his bare feet slapping loudly on the white linoleum floor, “You picked the wrong store to rob, motherfucker. I’ll break you in half, you scrawny fuck!”
The enraged sight of all four hundred plus pounds of Fat Bill bearing down would normally give any man pause to think, but to Fat Bill’s surprise, he saw someone step out from the end of the aisle. The newcomer moved silently and actually took a slow step towards Fat Bill.
As Bill closed the distance, he saw through his rage enough to realize that it was a woman. Or at least it looked like a woman. She was wrapped in the gloom of the darkened store, hidden from the wan glow of the street lamps outside the store’s big plate glass window. Fat Bill could still see her womanly curves however, and brought himself up short a few feet away the intruder.
She stood there, and he heard her giggle, a low, husky feminine sound that somehow made his rage disappear. He suddenly smelled a strange odor, like a musky perfume, and he was suddenly dizzy. He took another step towards the woman and saw that she was naked and beautiful. He was certain that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and his heart ached to be near her. The perfume she wore filled his head and overwhelmed his senses and he took the last few steps towards her.
Disturbed Graves: Tales of Terror and the Undead Page 9
