Atomic-Age Cthulhu: Tales of Mythos Terror in the 1950s

by Robert Price

  You will leave soon.

  He continued to sob, wiping his face with his hands and wrists as he watched the nightmares shift toward each other. Then they were joined by more giant monstrosities; one made up of meaty flaps layered around a central twisting core like a pine cone, another comprised entirely of coiled lengths of sinew that strode forward on limbs of fibrous muscle leaving moist prints in its wake, a third seemingly made of blood, bile and urine, the fluids held in place by the thinnest of membranes, bubbling and merging as they bounced together with each forward thrust of their combined bulk. Fedor was acutely aware of the moment his mind finally snapped. It was when the creatures fused together, drawing themselves up into one vast entity that filled the space between the silver plains and the golden roof, twisting, shifting until it was sitting on vast haunches, looking down as the speck of a man between its front paws, and wagging a tail as long as any cruiser in the Soviet Navy.

  Know then, your place in the cosmos.

  Fedor nodded, silent.

  Share what you have seen.

  “I will.” His voice was thin, barely a whisper.

  Speak for us.

  “The capsule. The capsule is your emissary.”

  Tell your world. Tell them they need not strive for the heavens. You will all be among the stars soon enough.

  “I will tell them. But they will not listen.”

  We will make them listen.

  Fedor lifted off the plain, pulled up on invisible marionette strings to dangle before the monstrous dogface in the sky, its tongue lolling out of a gaping maw of muscle and teeth. Fedor could smell hot blood on its breath.

  Then it will be time to play.

  Darkness. White light. Shouting.

  As Fedor regained consciousness he was aware of several raised voices. Through watery eyes he could make out Lev and the general, standing nose to nose, neither man prepared to stand down as they stated their cases at the top of their lungs.

  Lev was an inch taller, and drew himself up further to stare down the old soldier. “You will kill us all, man!”

  “I said move back!” yelled Kozlov, pushing the nose of his revolver further into the Ukrainian’s belly, “The program will not be jeopardized.”

  “Who did you just call?” Lev stretched an arm out for the radio, but the general held it back, out of the big man’s reach.

  “He called in the bomber.” The voice came from the corner of the room, from one of the soldiers who had already set his rifle against the back of a chair and was rolling a cigarette. “He called in the Yak-26.”

  Lev pushed himself away from general Kozlov and turned to the door. “Then we need to get out of here!”

  “Pointless,” the dry voice came from Fedor who stood, swaying, the tendrils still attached to his head, “you cannot outrun what is to come.”

  “Watch me!” yelled Lev Ovseenko. He grasped the door winch as the guard stood aside, and promptly buckled as the general’s gun cracked once, twice, felling him in an ashen heap against the corrugated metal.

  Kozlov swung the weapon around to bear upon Fedor. “What did it say?”

  “Does it matter?” replied Fedor quietly, “you have already chosen our fate. What happens after today is of little consequence”

  “Tell me!” The general turned a darker shade of gray, which Fedor took to be beet-red.

  He smiled and looked at Dr. Kaplan. “I suspect some of us will be playing with Little Curly again,” he looked back at the general, “and then she will be playing with the rest of you soon enough.”

  General Kozlov started to sputter impatiently, but was cut short by a deep thunderclap that shook the room. He turned his eyes upward and murmured, “Sonic boom…”

  Fedor closed his eyes, feeling the tips of the creature against his eyelids, and thought of his tiny apartment. He was vaguely aware of his eardrums bursting as the room collapsed in a bubble of light and heat and then he could taste turnips, horseradish root, and onions. It would have been good soup.

  THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

  BY CHARLES CHRISTIAN

  -1-

  They say a young Negro boy by the name of Robert Johnston was the first to die in the current war. Found dead at a lonely crossroads way down in the Mississippi Delta. Long before my time. I’d have just been a little-bitty kid growing up in Beaumont, Texas, at the time of his death. Still, I did hear some of his recordings much later. That sure was one talented bluesman we lost to the enemy.

  As for the circumstances of his death? Surrounded in mystery, confusion and conflicting claims. Hey, we don’t even know where he’s buried. Last I heard there were at least three different graveyards claiming they held his remains.

  Then there was Glenn Miller. Another great musician who died prematurely in mysterious and never adequately explained circumstances. His body also conveniently vanished from the surface of God’s Good Earth as if it had never existed.

  And finally there’s Hank Williams. I used to listen to him on The Grand Ole Opry. If he was still alive today, he’d be giving us all a run for our money in the charts. But, the same old, same old. He also died prematurely and in mysterious circumstances. Of course there are some explanations for Hank’s death. Trouble is there are too many of them. It’s like people are trying to cover up the real reason for his death. Why? Well maybe there are some secrets people just aren’t ready to hear yet. I think Hank knew his days were numbered, why else would he pen that final single of his I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.

  “Hey J-P, what you doing? You writing another song?”

  I look up, it’s just Waylon. I relax, he’s standing too far away to be able to read what I’m writing in my journal.

  “I sure am sir,” I reply. “As I keep telling you, the only way you’ll ever get rich in this game is to write your own material. You’ll make far more from songwriting royalties than you’ll ever earn from record sales or even your share of the ticket sales here. Wherever here is, that is!”

  Waylon laughs. “Here happens to be The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and you’d better remember that when you go on stage in thirty minutes time.”

  “With this darned influenza, all I’m going to focus on remembering is that I’ll have finished my act and be off stage again in seventy-five minutes time!”

  “Flu or no flu, you know you’ll knock ‘em dead in the aisles once you start your Oh Baby you know what I like routine with the telephone. Catch you later. Gotta go, Dion wants to discuss something with me.”

  As he heads off down the corridor, I shake my head. This Winter Dance Party is turning into a winter nightmare. If I have to spend another night on that freezing tour bus, I think I’ll throw it all in and be going back to Texas.

  Ed Murrow was on the radio the other night, talking about the late and much unlamented junior senator for Wisconsin. Murrow described Joe McCarthy as a bully and a charlatan. He was all that but he was also a darned fool. A dangerous darned fool.

  He accused the Army of disloyalty and blamed them for aiding our enemies, the Russian commies. Little did he know the Army is our one remaining hope against an enemy far worse and more powerful than the Reds. In fact from what I hear, the Russkies have their own hands full right now, fighting our mutual enemy out in the snow-covered tundras of Siberia. You know those deep-frozen mammoth remains they keep digging up in Russia? Well it seems they also dug up something else that should never have been allowed to see the clear light of day.

  I also remember hearing McCarthy ranting on during the last year of his life about the danger of teenage culture. How American youth was being corrupted by Rock ‘n’ Roll music and why movies like Godzilla, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Them! and It Came from Beneath the Sea were slandering our attempts to protect this great country of ours from the commies.

  The way McCarthy tried to tell it, these movies were nothing more than malicious left-wing propaganda because they suggested our atomic bomb tests were creating mutant monsters that we
re a danger to mankind. He also said the movies were intended to frighten the American people into such a state of hysteria, that it would sap morale and leave us believing we could never win a war against Russia.

  That man got it so wrong. There are monsters out there but they are not the product of nuclear radiation from our tests on Bikini Atoll. No siree, we now know these are ancient monsters our bombs accidentally woke from hibernating deep down in the Mariana Trench beneath the Pacific Ocean.

  As for rock music? God gave Rock ‘n’ Roll to us and it may be our only salvation in the years to come.

  I notice Tommy Allsup coming my way. There’s a decidedly jaunty look to the way he walks.

  “Another change of plan,” he says. “Only this time it could be good news. Buddy’s looking to charter a plane to take us to our next gig.”

  “That’s Moorhead, Minnesota. Right?” I ask.

  “Man, it sure beats traveling all night in that freezing cold old bus. Soon as I hear more, I’ll let you know,” he adds, as he wanders off.

  I know what you are thinking. Things from the deep! Monsters! Get outta here. I’d have thought the same thing five years ago. But that was before I was drafted into the US Army and did my time serving Uncle Sam. Now, here’s the story of how I found out the truth…

  As some of you may know, I started out as a disc jokey at Radio KTRM about ten years ago. In ‘53 I got a pay rise and promotion. Perfect timing as it happens. My wife Adrianne was pregnant with our daughter Debra Joy. Adrianne’s pregnant again now and we’re hoping for a boy. Anyhow, along with the extra dollars, I also took on some management for KTRM dealing with our advertisers and sponsors.

  Sometime later, it must have been in the fall of ‘54, I got a call from one of our advertisers, the owner of a department store in Beaumont, who said he’d heard some terrible stories about Procter & Gamble and was concerned about continuing to advertise with us when we were also broadcasting Procter & Gamble-sponsored soap operas. Of course if he was concerned then so was I so I asked him to tell me more.

  He explained that one of his oldest customers and friends, a much-respected God-fearing Southern Baptist gentleman, had told him he’d heard for a fact, from one of the gentlemen he played golf with, that Procter & Gamble was in league with Satan and their corporate logo was proof of this. Apparently, so the story went, the face on the logo was Old Nick himself and the stars in the sky referred to a passage in The Book of Revelations that foretells of a woman wearing a crown of twelve stars on her head.

  I confess it all sounded a little cockamamie to me but I know better than to question other folks’ religious convictions, particularly when they might also be commercial convictions, so I contacted Procter & Gamble up at their head office in Cincinnati and asked for an explanation. Two days later I get a personal visit by the head of their advertising agency, who has flown all the way down from New York City. He was one of those sharp-suited, button-down collar Madison Avenue types who liked his scotch and his cigarettes and, from the way he was checking out the talent in the bar, his women. Don Draper was his name and despite his no-nonsense, bristly outward appearance, beneath the surface he had a good down-home way about him. He also brought with him a thick file of papers that answered all my questions.

  Seems these rumors were all started by P&G’s competitors. And then he pointed out that not only is the face on the logo quite clearly the Man in the Moon, rather than a horned devil, but also there are in fact thirteen stars, not twelve in the logo, representing The Thirteen Colonies that founded this great country of ours back in the days of the Revolutionary War.

  Draper went back to New York and I went back to the radio station. The explanation convinced me and it also convinced our advertiser, so that was the end of the matter as far as I was concerned.

  Less than six months later, I got my call-up papers and was drafted into the United States Army to do my patriotic chore.

  I wasn’t expecting much to happen. Well there wasn’t a war going on, apart from the stalemate in Korea that is. But then, one day during basic training at Fort Ord in California, I get called into the base commander’s office and there waiting to see me is a special agent from the CIA. Can you imagine it, the Central Intelligence Agency wanting to speak to a Texas DJ!

  The agent is a good ol’ boy, who asks me a lot of far-out questions that seem to take longer than a country mile but then suddenly he pulls out a file containing a transcript of the meeting I’d had with Don Draper! He says he likes my attitude. He calls me “skeptical, pragmatic and willing to think outside the box” whatever that means. He also says he’s going to have me assigned to Majestic 12, a special operations team based out of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where my cover will be that of a radar instructor. Then, just as I’ve been dismissed and am about to walk back out of the door, he adds “And if you think our conversation today was weird, just wait until you get to Fort Bliss.”

  That CIA man sure didn’t lie as I spent the next three months in Texas being lectured by the Army, more CIA agents, radio and sound engineers and a trio of guys who looked like they might be more at home in a Three Stooges movie. Except instead of Moe, Larry and Curly, we had Willy, Ivan and Robbie.

  Willy Ley was a little German who’d once supervised deliveries of the US Mail using rockets in Upper New York state, was friends with Herr Doktor Wernher von Braun and now wrote popular science magazine articles about space flight and mythical creatures like dragons, sea serpents and giant squid.

  Then there was Ivan Sanderson, a former Naval Intelligence officer with a heavy Scotch accent. He could have been the role model for that James Bond character whose books are now so popular. Ivan ran a private zoo at his home on the New Jersey shore. I’d already heard him on the radio before I joined the Army and knew he was interested in the paranormal but there in El Paso he was given free rein to ride his pet hobby-horse. Cryptozoology is what he called it: the study of mysterious animals that people thought were either extinct or the stuff of folklore.

  He and Willy Ley were close buddies but Ivan wasn’t just a theoretician as he’d also gone out on field trips to investigate reported sightings of cryptids - that’s the technical term for these critters - including the Jersey Devil, or Shantak, which Ivan said was a hoax.

  Finally, there was Robertson Lancaster, an archaeology professor from Indiana who seemed more like a treasure hunter than any university lecturer I’d ever met before. Lancaster (Willy and Ivan inevitably called him Robbie) used to bring to his lectures copies of pages from an ancient manuscript he called the Al Azif Grimoire. They were xerographic copies of a manuscript kept hidden away in the library of the British Museum in London, England. Robbie said the original was too dangerous to touch because the text was written in human blood on parchment made from the skins of murdered infants.

  Anyhow, after I’d been at Fort Bliss about a month, they felt it was safe to reveal Majestic 12’s Big Secret. Humanity, they said, was engaged in war for survival with what they called the Alter Kinder, which translates as Earth’s Other Children. Willy coined the phrase after World War Two, while he was researching his way through some secret files liberated from the Nazis. Seems the entire Third Reich was obsessed with the occult and weird science and had a whole SS division, Das SS Ahnenerbe Brigade, searching the world for monsters, magical talismans and lost passages deep in the Earth leading to the original homeland of the Aryan Race.

  According to Ivan, the Alter Kinder could be divided neatly into three categories. There were the mythical beings from legends and folk stories, such as ogres, trolls, wights, djinn, gnomes, demons, goblins, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and all the other denizens of the Faerie realm. There were the cryptids that had been reported living in remote parts of the world for generations, such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Chupacabras, the Thunderbirds and all those lake monsters, including the famous Loch Ness Monster. But, there was also a third group of creatures that had been hibernating at the bottom of deep ocean trenches
for millennia but were now rising up again, having been woken by our A-bomb testing.

  This third category were code-named the GO2 - or the Great Old Ones to give them their full moniker. Professor Lancaster said (and last I heard of him, he was down in Peru trying to get hold of some ancient extraterrestrial crystal skulls before the Russkies could get their hands on them) the best way to describe the GO2 was as a race of super-intelligent dinosaurs or dragons from somewhere in Outer Space beyond the Oort Cloud.

  Of course one month previously, all of us recruits at Fort Bliss would have laughed out loud at these ideas but, thanks to our sessions with The Three Stooges, it had begun to seem distinctly plausible. Not least because it provided an explanation to some of the mysterious things that happen in this world.

  “Hey Señor Big Bopper. I’m flying on an airplane tonight!”

  I look up, again. This time it’s the little Mexican kid Ritchie Valens. Young, good looking, great voice, plays a mean guitar and he can take over the drums when push comes to shove, as it did the other week when Carl Bunch was hospitalized with frostbite. Oh, I am seriously not looking forward to traveling on that cold old tour bus again.

  “What do you mean you are flying on an airplane tonight? And you can save that cute Mexican accent for the girls, we all know you grew up in LA!” I reply.