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

by Robert Price

  Troy strained at his bonds. “You can’t hold me forever. I have friends, allies, they’ll come for me.”

  “Do you mean Beria?” Peaslee was suddenly smug. “I’m sorry to tell you, I’ve just gotten word that the Soviets executed him earlier today. Tell me, what happens to your kind when the body you inhabit is killed inside an ELF field?”

  Troy’s jaw set. “You tiny little creatures, you have no idea what you’ve done. You’ve destroyed one of the Great Minds, an intellect that had existed for millions of years, had traveled through space and time almost at will. Had seen things and done things you couldn’t even dream of.”

  “A Great Mind? I seriously doubt it. You’ve made too many mistakes.” A look of incredulity came across the prisoner’s face. “See, like that. I’ve studied your kind for decades, ever since one of you inhabited my father, you don’t do emotions. Oh I think you have them, but I don’t think you’ve figured out how to translate them into a human response. Never have and never will. You on the other hand, seem quite expressive. It makes me think you aren’t like those that came before you. It was one of the clues that gave you away to my partner. He thinks you are little more than a common thief.”

  “How dare you!” shrieked Troy, or the thing that was pretending to be Troy.

  Peaslee whipped out a hand and slapped the Captain across the face. “How dare I? How dare you! You come to our world, inhabit hundreds of our people, enslaved thousands more, and forced them to excavate your ruins, and you think you are entitled to be outraged?” Peaslee spat in the thing’s face. “We’ve tolerated the incursions from your kind because in most cases your actions have been rather benign, or at least suitably inscrutable, but this, what you have done here we cannot tolerate.”

  The faux Troy was suddenly laughing. “You think that you can threaten me, us? I’ll tell you what you want to know, but not because of your threats, but because it amuses me.” He put his hands on the table, the restraints were gone. “You creatures, you humans, you like to classify things, to lump things together, to split them apart. You find it convenient to identify things and say this is what it is. You say ‘communist’, but don’t imagine that a Russian communist might be different from one from China, or Poland, or even Cuba. You call us Yithians, the Great Race, so named because we learned to leap our minds through time. We learned how when no one else could. We move back and forth through time almost at will, without fear of the things that hound other lesser races. We learned it so that we could survive, so that we could leap from one time to another, and survive while all the other races faded into memory. But we’re not a single race. We’re millions of minds, but we’re thousands of races. Individuals hand-picked from the races that we choose to inhabit. It is our gift to them, that some select number of their ranks should join us in eternity. But our mastery of time is not without limits. There are rules Peaslee, universal laws that even we cannot bend. The leap across time takes energy, precious particles that are rare, and difficult to store. The bigger the leap, the more energy that is needed. We are a patient race, we built collectors, batteries, and then planned to make the leap en masse.”

  “But something has gone wrong?”

  “In the far future, the battery is damaged. There aren’t enough tachyons for all of us to migrate. There was talk of a culling, of leaving some behind. Of marooning them in realtime forever. The very thought led to dissent, to conflict, to armed rebellion, and inevitably to war. Some of us, a mere handful, were able to come to this time. We’ve built an army, a nation, and with our superior knowledge and technology we’ll soon come to dominate this age. And you, and all like you will learn your place, and serve your rightful masters.”

  Peaslee stood up and turned away from his prisoner. The door opened and Hollister came in. Peaslee yielded the floor to his assistant.

  “Do you think we are fools? Do you think we would allow you to come here, to do this without permission? You think these people, these humans weak, but it does not occur to you that we spend an inordinate amount of time studying them?” The thing that was pretending to be Hollister sat down.

  “But the leadership rejected them for the migration!” Troy replied.

  “Because we could not subjugate them you fool. Not because they were too weak, but because they were too strong! They learn, they adapt, they overcome. They are more than worthy enough to contribute to our ranks, but we feared what inhabiting them might do to us, and them. So we chose not to, but always regretted not adding their uniqueness to our own. You have solved that problem. When the time is right, Peaslee and his kind will turn off the ELF generator and we will forcibly separate you and your kind from the human minds.”

  “You are taking us back? We would rather die.”

  Hollister shook his head. “We aren’t taking you back, we’re taking the humans. You will remain here, surrounded by military forces you cannot hope to defeat. Trapped by the technology that we ourselves have supplied to the humans. You will be marooned here, and you will live out your traitorous lives in realtime. Oh, I am sure that you will be able to rebuild some of the technology. You might be able to move from one body to another, but for how long? How long do you think you can last, trapped in this world?”

  December 27, 1953

  The Bridge of No Return

  Wingate Peaslee stood watching as the prisoners trundled slowly across the bridge and into the trucks that waited on the northern side. There was a man there, a small Asian man, old, but seemingly spry. As the last prisoner was whisked away he gave an odd three finger salute which Hollister returned quickly. Then the little man, who Peaslee recognized as Doctor Hu, turned and walked out of view.

  “We don’t trust you,” said Peaslee.

  Hollister nodded. “We know, that is why we gave you the designs to the ELF generator, so you wouldn’t have to.”

  “I’ve read Hu’s file. He’s been here a long time, longer than the others. He’s smart. We think he’s a liability. He’ll figure a way out. We have plans to eliminate him preemptively.”

  Hollister shook his head. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you. You are right about Hu. He is smarter than the others, and he will probably figure a way out, in fact I’m counting on it.”

  Peaslee was suddenly annoyed. “The deal was that we were to keep them contained, if Hu gets out . . .”

  “Calm yourself my friend. Hu isn’t your enemy.”

  A look of confusion crept across Peaslee’s face. “But he’s been working with them, planning, rebuilding. He was one of the first.”

  Once more Hollister shook his head. “He’s been working with them yes, planning, and building. But what has he built, but simply a very comfortable prison.” He looked at his watch. “Hu is not their ally Peaslee, he is their warden, and will be for what you would consider a very long-time.” The alien took a small device out of his pocket, it was a strange conglomeration of spheres and rods. “You will excuse me Doctor Wingate Peaslee, but the field is about to drop and I have a very important appointment that must be kept.”

  Peaslee drew his gun. “I don’t think so; we would like you to stay.”

  Hollister flicked a switch and the tiny machine began to move. “You will let me go Wingate, you have no choice. I must keep my appointment; everything we’ve done here in the last few days depends on it.”

  He cocked the pistol and pointed it at the whirling machine. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I am not. If I do not make this leap, you will not be here, you will not have done these things or any of the work you have done for the last forty-five years, and all of our efforts will have been for naught. Unless you let me go, the rebels will be free to move as they please.”

  Peaslee took a step forward and placed the muzzle of the gun as close to the spinning machine as he could. “Impossible, you can’t have been manipulating me for the last forty-five years, I would have noticed.”

  “You are correct Wingate, we haven’t been actively manipulating you, but we
did set things in motion, set you on the path, pointed you in the direction that brought you here today. We did interfere with your life, but only once. Don’t you remember?”

  Peaslee lowered the gun. “Where are you going?” There were tears in his eyes. “Please, I have to know!”

  The machine was nearly invisible now, it moved faster than Peaslee would have thought possible. He could barely hear Hollister speak, “You already know, I have to go to where it all began for you Wingate. I’m sorry, but it’s the only way.”

  The Terrible Old Man fell to his knees, “Tell me!”

  The Hollister-thing’s voice seemed to grow weak, and as the Yithian left and the body it inhabited collapsed he spoke one last time. “I have to go to your father Wingate, I have to displace him. It’s the only way to make sure you’ll grow up to be the man you are, to gather so much information about us, to help us build a trap for our criminals. We need you Wingate Peaslee, we need you to fulfill your mission, to do that we must displace your father, and destroy your family. In order for us to use you, we must teach you to hate us. It’s the only way.”

  And as the man that was Hollister came back to his own time and body, Doctor Wingate Peaslee, the Terrible Old Man, could do nothing but weep.

  NAMES ON THE BLACK LIST

  BY ROBERT M. PRICE

  “Look, Senator, I’m just a retired bus driver!”

  “Let me repeat the question, Mr. Sargent. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon?”

  “‘F’ Pete’s sake! That must have been thirty years ago!”

  “Twenty-six years, to be exact. So I’m to take that as a yes?”

  “C’mon, it was just a social club. It was just like the Rotary or somethin’.”

  “Perhaps the Odd Fellows would be a better comparison, Mr. Sargent?”

  “Bah! Whatever y’ say!” Joe Sargent exclaimed, waving a slightly webbed hand in the air dismissively.

  Joseph McCarthy shuffled some papers from the file folder on the podium before him. “Oh, I think it was a bit more than a harmless moose lodge, Mr. Sargent. I see here that you appeared eight years ago before the House Committee on Inhuman Activities…”

  “Dun’t remind me! That was near about as foolish as this!”

  “It seems you were reported as using your jalopy of a bus to smuggle some of your Dagon brothers out of town while Federal agents were closing in on the place.”

  “What smuggle? I told you, Senator! I was a bus driver! I was just making my scheduled run! We didn’t even know your G-men were on their way! M’ passengers were just headed out to Arkham and Ipswich on errands. What, I dunno. Ain’t my business to pry.”

  “Come now, Mr. Sargent! You mean to tell us you had no knowledge of the goings-on out in the sea off Devil Reef? The massing of the creatures you call the Deep Ones, and the, er, Shoggoths?”

  “You called ‘em that, I didn’t. I said all this before. You probably got it all typed up right in front of you. I never seed any o’ those things. Sounds to me like some folks watched that new motion picter about the Critter from the Black Lagoon and thought they was seein’ a news reel!”

  “There’s something to that, Mr. Sargent. In fact, it may interest you to know that we are right now investigating Universal Studios. That ‘make-up’ looked a little too real, though I doubt that surprised you. Why, just look at you! And the rest of you there in Innsmouth! You ought to be marked Exhibit A! What exactly is your ethnic background, anyway?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we got, I got, that ‘Innsmouth look’ yew outsiders talk about. But that’s just cuz m’ pappy was an old New England salt and m’ ma was from the Polynesian islands. Same as most o’ th’ Innsmouth folk. Can’t help it if you all think anybody but white folks is suspicious. You ‘n the Klan!”

  “I’ll ignore that insult against this committee, Mr. Sargent. But why won’t you tell us what goes on in the Dagon Hall?”

  “I done told ya! Told ya thirty years ago! There ain’t many of us left. Yer G-men saw ta that thirty years ago!”

  “Twenty-six, Mr. Sargent.”

  “We mainly drink and play cards. Always have. And we spec’late on why the gov’ment torpedoed the Reef, and why they took away most o’ our young people. We’re a dyin’ town, Senator, and it’s the fault o’ the US gov’ment. Why cantcha leave us old folks be?”

  “I think you’re not exactly being straight with us, Mr. Sargent. You can’t be unaware that more and more people with the so-called Innsmouth look have been popping up in harbor cities on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico, and that wherever they move in, mysterious disappearances increase. And the names! ‘Gilman,’ ‘Marsh,’ ‘Fisher.’ These aren’t real names! They’re jokes! Do you think we’re that stupid?”

  “Whatcha mean, they ain’t names? Why, you got some senators with them names, if I ain’t mistaken.”

  “We’ll get to them, Mr. Sargent. But you seem to know something about them. This committee would very much enjoy hearing more.”

  At this point, Senator Smollet from Rhode Island was heard to groan with barely-suppressed indignation, then: “Damn you, McCarthy! This has gone too far!”

  Turning to look behind him, McCarthy shot back, “Or maybe not far enough, eh, Smollet?” Joe Sargent, who was beginning to enjoy the whole show just a bit, started to snicker, then thought better of it. But he did speak up.

  “Jest what is it you’re so all-fired afeerd of? That we’ll marry yer daughters? We keep to our own kind. They’s few enough of us.”

  “But more all the time! Haven’t you been listening to me, man? What can you tell us about your kinfolk who’ve recently arrived in New Orleans, Boston, Providence, and so on?”

  “Dunno, Senator McCarthy. I reckon they’s the sons ‘n daughters o’ the good Innsmouth folks what done ran off when the G-men overran the town all those years ago. But I never met a one of ‘em.”

  During a recess in the proceedings, once Joe Sargent had been dismissed as a witness, one of Senator McCarthy’s colleagues, not one of his Committee members, approached him. “Joe,” he whispered, with a quick look around to make sure no reporters were snooping, “I don’t see why you’re opening this thing up again after all this time! I mean, Sargent’s right, isn’t he? He’s a poor half-breed hick! And why this vendetta against his dying town? Just wait—it won’t be long before they’re all dead.”

  McCarthy’s beady eyes narrowed even more. “Chuck, did you ever read the reports on the 1928 raid? It reads like science fiction. It’s our men who described these giant amoebas, the Shoggoths. And the two-legged fish! These can’t be trustworthy reports! If you ask me, it means the men who filed these crazy documents were co-conspirators with the people we sent them after! How they wormed their way into that position, I have no idea. But that just goes to show how far-reaching the conspiracy must be! What on earth could they be after? It’s subversion, sure, but why? What do they represent? I’m stumped. But I’m also worried as hell! Are you beginning to see?”

  The other’s eyes were wide, though not as wide as Joe Sargent’s.

  “I don’t know, Joe. It’s the first I’ve heard of this. You sure it wasn’t some practical joke?”

  “If it was, it wasn’t very funny! And did you know the guys who filed those reports, the ones on the subs, have all disappeared? Well, time to start again.”

  It had been a long day. And it wasn’t over yet. When Senator McCarthy got back to his office to make a few preparations for the next day’s hearing, he saw that he must have left his desk lamp on after turning out the other lights. Well, he didn’t really need the ceiling light, so he sat down, reaching for a folder within the circle of the lamp’s illumination. But before he could read it, he was startled by a rasping voice from an unseen figure that had to be sitting in the chair over in the far corner of the room.

  “Quite a performance today, Senator!”

  McCarthy recoiled, backing away from the desk in his rolling chair. Away from t
he direct glare, his eyes began to adjust to the outlying shadows. He could see a man slumped in the chair. He looked as if wearing an enveloping overcoat or robe, like a boxer. The outline of the man’s head was indistinct, perhaps surrounded with a towel, though the voice was not muffled.

  “No, Senator, don’t get up. And don’t come any closer. Not to worry; I’m not armed. Except with the truth.”

  “Who…?”

  “I knew you wanted to speak with me, but you didn’t know where to send the subpoena. The name’s Arnie Eldridge. You know, I was assigned to one of the subs that attacked the Reef. Off Innsmouth. You were talking about me earlier today.”

  “How did you…?”

  “Guess. You’ll probably be correct, as correct as you were about some of that stuff you said earlier. Let me get to the point. I and some others were assigned to the mission for the very good reason that we grew up in the area. I’m from Innsmouth itself. The other commanders were from Ipswich and Newburyport. We knew the whole layout, the depths off shore, and what was hidden there. And once we got our orders we contacted the higher-ups in the Dagon Hall. They couldn’t get everybody out, but most of the older folks who never used to leave their boarded houses got out through a network of tunnels. Many of the common folk followed the old train tracks out of town, and a few more got out on the rattletrap bus. And others, well…just…swam away. There were a number of undersea refuges. Yha-N’thlei was just the tip of the iceberg, you see. We had to buy some time for all this, so we summoned the sea-shoggoths—you know about them, I believe—to keep the subs busy, at least looking busy, as long as we could. We hadn’t wanted them to be seen, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  “Sounds like a bad dream to me. A fairy tale. You expect me to believe this? How do I even know you are who you say you are?” McCarthy was raising his voice to cover the sounds of his fumbling through a desk drawer. “But I have seen your picture. Maybe I’d recognize you…”