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

by Robert Price

  The tentacles folded around him. He screamed, just once, and began to fade, becoming thin, like the creature that had him in its grasp. Outside the guardhouse the song rose to a climax.

  She dreams of her lord in the space in between,

  And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.

  The creature started to drift towards me. I stepped back out of reach of the tentacles then stopped as a chill ran down my spine and it rifled through my mind again. This time it knew what it was looking for.

  I descend through deep turquoise, feeling the cold water around me, at the same time hearing the song in my head; the song that now seems more like the forlorn call of a lost love. And, from somewhere far, far, below, the call is answered. A wash of pure joy runs through me.

  My link to the entity was cut off by the rat-a-tat of automatic rifle fire. Six squaddies had come to my assistance, and although their shots did not appear to damage the entity at all, it at least paused in any attack, either physical or mental.

  “Fall back,” the Colonel shouted. “The bomber’s on its approach.”

  That gave me impetus to move. I turned and fled, beating the retreating squaddies to the line of Nissen huts. I stood beside the Colonel, guessing that he would know what was a safe distance if anyone did.

  The singing rose again from outside the gate, until the noise of the approaching bomber drowned it out. It was another song; the one I had heard the first line of on my exit from the bar.

  In the fire, the queen will come.

  “No!” I shouted. “Call it off.”

  But I was far too late. The reactor building exploded in a roaring flame. The blast wave knocked off my feet and down into a deep darkness.

  It felt welcoming. I let it take me.

  I woke in a hospital in Inverness two days later, and was home in Glasgow within the week. Of course the Army chaps declared the matter over. The site was secured and no further Russian infiltration would be allowed.

  But I have strange sores on my body, wounds that refuse to heal. The booze helps dull the pain of course, but I cannot quash the memories, of descending into deep turquoise waters, and hearing the call…and its reply. Two things prey on my mind.

  The first is the line from the song sang by the townspeople.

  She dreams of her lord in the space in between,

  And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.

  And the second is in today’s newspaper. The Yanks are testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean. The water is deep and turquoise there. And that makes me wonder.

  Who is the Lord mentioned in the song?

  And what else may be sleeping, down in those depths, waiting to be woken, in fire?

  THE ROMERO TRANSFERENCE

  BY JOSH REYNOLDS

  T minus 24 hours, fifteen minutes, twelve seconds.

  “It’s not a question of if, gentlemen, but of when,” Freeman said. He leaned back in his chair and looked around the conference table. “Einstein said it best, ‘mutually assured destruction’.” The other men in the room shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, to a man thinking thoughts full of fire and Hiroshima shadows on Heartland walls. Freeman let it sink in.

  The clapboard office was hot, the window fan barely stirring the air. Outside, the Frenchman Flat facility was baked brown by the Nevada sun. Frenchman Flat was south of Yucca Flat. Officially, it was a dry lake bed. Unofficially it was a Federal landing strip. In reality, it was Freeman’s personal fiefdom, thanks to a healthy blend of paranoia and preparedness on the part of the current administration.

  He let his gaze drift out the window while his guests chewed over the imminent apocalypse. Freeman had designed the facility himself, and selected the staff personally. He didn’t know their names. As far as he was concerned, they were all anonymous drones with similar high and tight haircuts and smooth faces, picked from a federally approved pool of potential candidates. But he knew every inch of the facility. He had gone over every foot of dry, cracked ground with a theodolite and a notebook. The layout was based on a theoretical geometric coil which limited the number of right angles and provided a dedicated hyperspatial run-off. It had only taken a year to finish construction; as far as Freeman was concerned, it had taken far too long. They were running too slow.

  Two years earlier, the Russians had made their first successful atomic test. Things had escalated quickly and where before there had been one superpower, there were now two, both mutually hostile. The nuclear shadow had been cast and the world was out of time; rockets in Red Square and the almanacs predicting a decidedly nuclear winter.

  The men in Freeman’s office were a mix of bureaucrats and brass, military men and politicians. The men who thought they made things happen, as Peaslee had been fond of calling them back when Freeman had been on the tenure track at the university. Freeman glanced at the class ring on his finger. He hadn’t seen Peaslee since Potsdam. Wingate wouldn’t approve of what he was preparing to propose, he thought, but needs must when the devil drove. Necessity was not the mother of invention but the child of desperation.

  Freeman cleared his throat. They had stewed long enough. “It’s an ugly phrase, isn’t it? It implies that we are locked on course. The future is immutable. Someone’s finger will slip maybe today, maybe in ten years, and we will burn. Mutually assured destruction,” he repeated. He tapped the top file on the pile in front of him and continued, “Or perhaps not.”

  “You’d do well to remember that you’re not in a classroom, Doctor,” one of the men grunted. “Are we finally going to get to see what this little money-sink of yours is for?”

  Freeman frowned, stung. “Point taken,” he said. “And this ‘money-sink’ of mine, as you call it, is going to save the lives of every American from nuclear annihilation.”

  “How?” one of the others said.

  In reply, Freeman slid several files forward. “These are copies of the relevant portions of the Hoccleve texts, among others.”

  “What about—?” someone began.

  Freeman spoke up quickly, re-evaluating. Someone had done their homework. “Those as well, and I’ve included reports from the subsequent Australian expedition by those involved, including myself.”

  “Have we had contact with them recently?” the quick study continued, “Einstein, Oppenheimer, or one of the others from Groves’ old circus?”

  “Nothing recorded,” Freeman said. “Which is why we’re due, according to—” his face twisted in a grimace, “—certain sources.”

  “Care to name these sources?” someone said. The quick study leaned forward, face pale.

  “Was it Cold?” he asked softly.

  He wasn’t asking about the temperature. Freeman swallowed. “Agent Indrid Cold has been invaluable to this project, yes. Lieutenant General Groves made the recommendation, as did the director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence. He has also pinpointed a potential subject zero for transference; a-ah-‘first contact’ scenario, if you will.”

  “You’re going to kidnap one of them,” the quick study grated.

  “We are going to expedite a mutually beneficial arrangement, yes,” Freeman said tersely. He leaned forward. “It will work gentlemen. It has worked, and it will work again. The American people will survive the coming storm.”

  “In one form or another,” the quick study muttered.

  No one thought the comment was in good taste.

  T minus twelve hours, twenty minutes, ten seconds.

  Romero gnawed on a knuckle as they read the charges. Freeman watched him from the back of the room and thought, gotcha. They almost hadn’t. Romero, whatever his other faults, wasn’t inobservant. When the MPs had come for him, he’d already been on the move, heading south, away from Nellis Air Force Base. They’d caught him quickly enough, thanks to Cold.

  Freeman glanced towards where the spook stood, leaning against the wall and smiling. The name suited him. He was like an icicle dressed in Hoover’s best, black on white, tie and shiny
shoes, black gloves, but it looked wrong, like a wrapper on a rotten fish.

  As if he’d heard Freeman’s thoughts, Cold’s ever-present grin widened unpleasantly. His face was like wax and he had eyes as dark and as black as the lenses of the sunglasses in his breast pocket. “Good things come to those who wait,” he said. There was something about his voice…Freeman shuddered and looked away.

  Cold worked for one of the alphabet agencies, or maybe all of them. Hell, he might have started half of them. Freeman, in contrast, was a consultant. And Romero…Romero was an asset. One acquired just in time. Time was a valuable commodity these days, the most precious resource on the planet, depending on how you thought about it. It was all about time, or the lack thereof. They had no time, and that made what they did next very crucial indeed.

  Romero made a sound halfway between a groan and a snarl as the verdict was read out. His restraints clattered as he gripped at the air. Romero wasn’t a brute; indeed, he was handsome enough, in Freeman’s opinion. Too bad such a good looking package contained such a nasty surprise. He couldn’t restrain a smile. It faltered when Cold pushed away from the wall and joined him in watching Romero being led out.

  “He’ll do nicely,” Cold said.

  “Yes,” Freeman said. He couldn’t help but stare at Cold’s face, especially the spots where the pearlescent skin twitched and stretched. He swallowed a sudden rush of bile. They’d warned him about people like Cold, back at the university. There were stories about midnight festivals in out of the way houses and deep, dark tumors under American soil where things bred and squirmed that made the Commies look like Minnesotans on a bender.

  “I’ll have him brought to your patch at Frenchman Flat tonight, Mr. Freeman,” Cold said, his smile threatening to split his face, “After he’s been debriefed.” Cold never stopped grinning, that was the word from on high.

  “That’s quicker than I expected.”

  “Soonest started is soonest done,” Cold said. “The Red Chinese took Seoul last Wednesday, Mr. Freeman.” He said it as if it were no more important than the weather. What do we look like to you? Freeman thought, and then wondered where the thought had come from. It clung to the surface of the mind like a stubborn mosquito. Do you even care that we’re facing Armageddon? He didn’t ask either question. He didn’t think knowing the answer would make him feel any better.

  Instead, he settled for protocol pedantry. “Doctor,” Freeman said curtly.

  Cold smiled benignly. “Doctor Freeman,” he said. “Time waits for no man and the shadows lengthen.”

  “Very poetic,” Freeman said.

  Cold’s smile didn’t waver. “I’ll see you at Frenchman Flat, Doctor.”

  Freeman watched Cold walk away and tried not to think about the things that seemed to be moving in the other man’s coat. “Evil the mind that is held by no head,” he muttered.

  T minus five minutes, eight seconds.

  It was hot.

  Strange shapes swam through the waves of heat that coruscated across the space between his office and the Box. Lupine, feline, of no earthly genus, the shapes swelled and reached and then burst like clouds. Freeman ignored them as he strode through the dust and sunshine.

  He’d gotten some sleep. Not much. His dreams had been bad; no, worse. They were always bad, but these had been horrific, full of empty cities, a hundred thousand Hiroshimas, coated in blankets of ash and shadow-shapes, with no more substance than the dust beneath his feet, hunting him through the ash fall of a nuclear winter.

  He knew the Russians were working on their own plans, their own back-doors and fire-escapes and bolt-holes. Earth might be reduced to slag, but the great Soviet state would continue on, lurching towards oblivion on some vast and multi-angled, multi-dimensional plateau that could barely be seen, let alone colonized. Then, it could hardly be worse than Siberia, eh comrade?

  Would they still be Russians then? Would America be America, when America had been pounded into atomic dust? They would be minds without bodies, minds with new bodies, thrown forward or backward into a chronal fallout shelter…would they thank him, or would they curse him?

  Cold was waiting for him in the control booth, ever-present grin in place. “Ready, Doctor?” Cold said as Freeman entered the booth and someone handed him a cup of coffee.

  Freeman didn’t bother to answer him. Now that he was on the cusp of it, he wanted to say no. He wanted to take his time, to explore the ramifications of transference. But they didn’t have time. Instead he leaned over a technician’s shoulder and checked the control panel. The Box was part bunker and part temple. He had designed it himself, built it to call up and cage what came.

  Freeman looked through the observation window. Romero was the only thing in the Box, strapped tight into a steel chair that looked as if it had been requisitioned from the base’s dentist. He had been doped to the gills. There was no reason for him to be conscious for this. “You’re looking green, Doctor,” Cold said.

  Freeman didn’t look at him. “What we’re doing is very close to human sacrifice,” he said.

  “Romero is a murderer, Doctor,” Cold said. “And sacrifices must be made for the greater good.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it,” Freeman said, stung. Who was Cold to lecture him on sacrifices? “I said I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the implications.” The truth, if a bit hypocritical, he thought, even as the words left his mouth.

  Cold made a sound that might have been a chuckle, though whether because of Freeman’s words or his thoughts, the latter couldn’t say. Several of the drones seated in the booth shifted uncomfortably. Cold had that effect on them. In the spook’s case, familiarity didn’t breed contempt. The longer you were around Cold, the more frightened of him—of what he represented—you became.

  Freeman took a sip from the cup of coffee in his hand and swallowed convulsively as his eyes slid up the observation window to fix on the man in the box. “Time?” he asked, breaking the tense silence of the control booth.

  “Two ‘til,” someone murmured, checking a wrist watch.

  Freeman licked his lips and looked around the booth, taking in the pale sweaty faces and nervous expressions. They had good reason to be nervous. There were a thousand ways that things could go wrong in such an operation.

  “You’re certain this is the time?” he said, looking at Cold.

  “As one can be,” Cold said lazily.

  “That’s not good enough,” Freeman said, knowing it didn’t matter.

  “One minute,” another technician, or maybe the same one as earlier, said.

  “Too late now,” Cold said.

  Romero twitched, making the chair rattle. Freeman tensed and looked back at him. “Did we check those straps?” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. Someone said yes and he relaxed.

  “Nervous, are we?” Cold said from beside his elbow.

  Freeman jumped, startled. Cold ignored his startled curse and leaned forward, his face nearly pressed to the glass of the observation window. “Of course I’m nervous. We’ve never tried this before,” Freeman stuttered.

  “The Russians have already made contact—” Cold began.

  “I understand that,” Freeman said, trying to control his revulsion as he watched Cold’s face move as the agent spoke. “But this is not the same as that. We are—”

  “Contact,” someone said softly.

  The air in the box went wet and heavy all at once, like the bottom falling out of a storm cloud. Water beaded on the observation glass and dark, damp patches grew on the reinforced concrete walls. Even in the control booth, the sudden change in temperature was obvious. Freeman dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief, his eyes never leaving the man in the box.

  He twisted and jerked as if he were dancing to some melody undetectable by those gathered in the booth. Froth built at the corners of his wide open mouth and his tongue waggled like a worm emerging from a red tunnel. His eyes bulged and the frame of the chair gave a groan
as he jerked. The straps held.

  “Is this normal?” Freeman asked, unable to look away.

  “Define ‘normal’,” Cold said and gave a wet chuckle that set Freeman’s stomach to roiling. Romero screamed and slumped forward. “Transference complete,” Cold said, stepping back from the window.

  “How can you tell?” Freeman demanded.

  “He’s stopped screaming,” Cold said.

  Freeman swallowed and looked at Romero. “Status,” he barked.

  “Breathing normally,” one of the drones said. “Vitals are good.”

  “As promised,” Cold said, still grinning. “Well, Doctor? You wanted to question one of them. Here is your opportunity.” He gestured to the door that led from the booth to the box.

  Freeman licked his lips. “Will he—will it—understand me?”

  “Yes,” Cold said. He cocked his head. Freeman realized that he hadn’t ever seen Cold blink.

  “Are you sure?” Freeman said.

  Cold said nothing. Freeman knew what he was thinking. He was stalling, and Cold knew it. The funny thing was that he’d volunteered for this. Hell, he’d suggested it. And now, on the rim of the gulf, he hesitated to take that last step. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he opened them and gestured to the door. “After you,” he said.

  T plus two minutes, five seconds.

  His mouth was dry and he could feel the itchy tingle of a migraine building at the base of his skull. He’d been working too hard, not getting enough sleep. There wasn’t any time for sleep, just naps, full of monsters and phantasms and clinging worries.

  The box smelled like a swamp. The air was like syrup and his clothes were instantly damp. Cold didn’t seem to be bothered, but then, he never was. This was old hat to Cold. He’d been doing this since before the first crate of tea had hit the waters of Boston Harbor, if you listened to scuttlebutt. Better the devil you know, that was what they’d told him after the first meeting. Better the devil that was as American as apple pie and Betsy Ross and witch-burning.