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

by Robert Price

  Here he clicked on the flashlight he had fished out of the desk. No sooner had he done so than he dropped it, shaken.

  His visitor rose to his feet, sloughing off the overcoat.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that. But perhaps it’s for the best. The only way you’d take me seriously. Might as well turn on all the lights now.”

  “No thanks! I’ve seen enough!”

  “No, I don’t think you have. I’ve brought something for you to see. It’s on the floor in front of your desk. Tell you what: I’ll be on my way. Look at the evidence by yourself, and you’ll know what to do next.”

  Short of breath, Senator McCarthy sat as immobile as Lincoln in his Memorial. He said nothing, made no motion, as Arnie Eldridge shuffled past him and into the lushly carpeted hall of the Senate office building.

  The Senator’s head pounded, his breath short. He tried to calm himself, to brace himself against whatever revelations the box might contain. From the shape, size, and color of the deep green cardboard cube, it looked to be a standard evidence file box. The FBI housed thousands of these things.

  He got up unsteadily and flicked the light switches on. The added illumination did not comfort him much. He picked up the box and placed it on a cleared area of his mahogany desk.

  Off with the lid. Why was he suddenly remembering that old story about Pandora?

  There were heavily redacted copies of the original reports of the mission commanders, with whole paragraphs blacked out. There was a pair of broad bracelets and a pectoral, all fashioned from a peculiar gold-silver mixture, or so it appeared to be. There was a separate set of papers about these artifacts. The world ‘electrum’ with a question mark caught his eye. There was a wrinkled paper bearing the letterhead of the Director of the Smithsonian Institution declining the gift of these articles for display in the museum. Holding the items to the light, Senator McCarthy could see the elaborate workmanship depicting crude, yet somehow lifelike, scenes of sexual congress between humanoid forms and less identifiable creatures. It was plain now why the Smithsonian had said ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

  A jade statuette looked like a totem pole such as one finds among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, but the effigy atop the column was a tentacled octopus. Underneath it was something suggesting a toad, though it possessed bat-like ears. Under that was a random collection of bulging eyes and fanged orifices. The detail was startling, though the style was altogether different from that of the pectoral and wristlets.

  There were other, smaller items in the box, but McCarthy’s eyes were drawn to a six-inch tall jar which seemed to glow softly with an inner radiance. This he picked up gingerly and watched as something swirled slowly within. He felt an odd compulsion to shake the jar, but he managed to resist. At the same moment he heard the muted whisper of his better judgment telling him to put the jar back in the box and leave the office. But curiosity had begun to rise within him as if it had been sexual arousal, and all hesitations evaporated. He began unscrewing the jar.

  It was old and long unopened. There was rust in the lid. Residue of the contents looked to have hardened in the grooves, and it took all his might to twist the lid off. The glow increased in intensity as the gelatin within met the air for the first time in who knew how long. And it was definitely moving now, shifting in a slow spiral. Now the Senator felt a black cloud of intense dread settling over him, as well as a sense of wistful regret…but he stood transfixed.

  He did not move an inch even when the silvery gel spewed like a geyser from the jar mouth and enveloped him like the molten salt encasing Lot’s doomed wife. It seemed impossible that such an amount of living mass could have been confined to such a tiny prison. But there was enough of it to cover him—and to devour him. He sank to his knees as he lost consciousness, becoming one with the shivering, quaking, grinding mass. It sprouted eyes and mouths, human facial features that quickly sank back into the jelly, then reemerged, too many of them. Hair sprouted like grass, then fell out. The mass contracted and shuddered. Finally it settled into a stable form.

  And that form stood to its feet and stepped briskly into the office bathroom. It looked in the tall mirror and realized it had better cover its nakedness. The Senator always kept a closet with spare suits, shirts, and shoes. He went downstairs and had the attendant summon a taxi. It took no time to arrive, and the figure, as if used to every detail of its unaccustomed world, climbed into the back seat. He gave no directions, but only looked at the driver’s identification plate. He could see the driver was not the man depicted there, but he did look familiar. When the cabbie turned around to speak to him over his shoulder, the passenger recognized the greasy face and bald pate of Joe Sargent.

  “FBI Headquarters, right?”

  He nodded.

  The man was shown at once into Director Hoover’s office, still occupied at this late hour. The tall, heavy man standing behind the desk did not at first turn to face him.

  “It’s done,” his visitor announced prosaically, as if some minor errand were now to be checked off a list. “I’m McCarthy now.”

  “Good,” the man said and turned, focusing his protuberant eyes on the new McCarthy. “I suppose now we can drop all this damn nonsense and focus on a real conspiracy—the god-damn Commies.”

  THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE

  BY BRIAN M. SAMMONS AND GLYNN OWEN BARRASS

  The thick manila folder hit the conference table with a heavy thwap. From it a few small, thin, magazines with brightly colored covers spilled out.

  Special Agent Donald Carson of the FBI looked at his partner, Special Agent Robert Moore, a large bear of a man three years his senior who sat across the table from him. Bob just raised an eyebrow and quirked a bemused grin back at him. The man who had walked into the room and tossed the file onto the table, Special Agent in Charge Mike Bateham, took a moment to light a cigarette before speaking.

  “That’s your next assignment, boys.”

  Carson picked up three of the thin magazines and quickly looked at them. The title of the first one read, The Treader of the Stars and underneath that was a smaller subtitle; …and the Slumbering Abomination! The next shared the same main title but had a different subtitle: …and the Chaos that Crawls! The third of these Treader of the Stars magazines was subtitled; …and the Yellow Menace!

  “You want us to look into these funny books, chief?” Moore asked as he plucked the Yellow Menace issue from Carson’s hand to look incredulously at it. The cover showed a man in a black cape whose face was concealed within a black hood and goggles with his hands outstretched dramatically. This black clad figure was on all the comic book covers, so Moore took him to be the titular ‘Treader’. From the hooded man’s spread fingers, wavy lines were drawn representing energy of some kind that flowed towards a second man. This figure was dressed in tattered yellow robes and wore a cracked white mask. The yellow robed man was sending lightning bolts back towards the Treader from his own hands and it was obvious that the two were supposed to be locked in some kind of magical battle. It was the typical kind of kid stuff that you always found in rags like these. Moore wondered what the big deal was.

  “Some Kraut egghead wrote a book a few months back called Seduction of the Innocent about the evils of those ‘funny books’, Moore,” SAC Bateham said, exhaling a cloud of Lucky Strike smoke. “He claims they’re warping the minds of the kids that read them and causing a rise in juvenile delinquency. Well a bunch of Senators agree with him, so they’re gonna have a hearing on the matter soon. That means the Bureau has been tasked to look into the matter. Mostly to gather names and evidence should criminal charges start getting handed out, the usual sort of thing.”

  “For real, chief?” Carson asked. “I read comic books when I was in the Pacific. They used to come in our care packages to help us pass the time between battles. They were always sort of silly, but harmless.”

  “I don’t know,” Moore said and held up the issue he was holding. “This ‘Yellow Menace’ could b
e about the Chinks.”

  Carson couldn’t tell if his partner was having him on or not.

  “Well the senators want us to look into it and so that’s what we’re gonna do. The boys in New York have their hands full because most of those things come out there. However in our neck of the woods we’ve got a little publisher called Funny Time Comics. They’re the ones who put out that Star Treader crap and that’s got someone, somewhere worried enough to have us look into it. So you’ve got some of those comic books to read and the name and address of the guy that runs the publishing company. The boys in background couldn’t find anything on the guy that writes and draws the comic, so I want you two to go talk to that publisher, lean on him a bit, and see if you smell anything funny or red. Get him to spill on the creator of that comic book. After that, go see that guy and determine if he should be someone worth keeping an eye on. Any questions?”

  Both agents shook their heads.

  “Alright then, get to it.”

  An hour later Moore was behind the wheel of their government issued black sedan while Carson sat shotgun, reading through issues of The Treader of the Stars.

  “So how are the funny books?” Moore asked.

  “Weird, and not funny at all. From what I gather this ‘Treader of the Stars’ is some kind of bodiless, alien thing. It’s really old and from ‘between time and space’ and it went into the body of a professor of advanced mathematics named Langham. Now together, this Treader keeps running into weird things like aliens, ancient gods, monsters, things from dreams. Sometimes the Treader helps the things accomplish whatever they’re trying to do. Other times he fights with them. It’s all over the place and I really can’t make much sense out of it.”

  “So he’s like a superhero or something?”

  “Kind of, but not really. He ‘knows the absolute truth that lies at the center of all space and time’ whatever the hell that means. But that means he reshapes reality as he sees fit because what mankind knows as reality is just a lie. So he sometimes melts people into goo, or summons disgusting things with tentacles on their heads to eat his enemies. Most of the time he just tells people ‘the truth’, that drives them crazy and they usually end up killing themselves in some way.”

  “Yeah, that does sound pretty weird. Anything in there about commies, crime, drugs, homosexuals, or anything else that would get people in a twist?”

  “No, nothing like that. It is against religion as it says the earth is older than humanity thinks and that all the gods man has ever prayed to either never existed, never cared about us, or are just masks of the ‘The Formless One.’ Maybe that’s why the Washington Boys wants us to give the author the business.” Carson said.

  “Hmmm,” Moore sagely commented before slowing the sedan and turning the wheel. “Well time to get serious, this is the place.”

  Moore pulled the car into a weed-specked dirt parking lot next to a small brick building in need of a new paint job. A faded sign out front read Funny Time Comics and there was a rusted green 1940 Plymouth in the lot. There was also a kid with a long, thin case of some kind under one arm, banging on the building’s side door.

  The two G-men got out of their car, put on their hats, and sauntered up behind the teenager without the boy even noticing them. The youth was banging on the door fit to break it and shouting, “Come on, I know you’re in there. I saw you through the window looking at me. You’ve got to listen to me, it’s important!”

  “What’s so important?” Carson said through his best no-nonsense expression.

  The teen whipped around with a start, his eyes wide and lips trembling in mid-shout. His blond hair was lanky, unwashed, and in need of a good cutting. His twitchy face was pockmarked with zits, had a shiny film of oily sweat coating it, and he had a few straggly hairs over his upper lip. The teen’s clothes were unkempt, stained with food, and a nose hair curling stench of body odor wafted off the boy in waves.

  Everything about the kid rankled Moore who did nothing to hide his contempt. “My partner asked you a question, answer the man.” He said through a sneer.

  “You…you guys make comics too?” The kid asked, his face twitching into a thin-lipped smile. “You wanna take a look at my work? It’s really good, honest. Here let me show you.”

  The kid then fumbled with his long, ratty case, tugging on the stuck zipper.

  “No son, we don’t write comic books. Go on home now, we’ve got business here,” Carson said in a firm but friendly manner.

  “No wait, you’ve gotta see this. It’s amazing. Let me just get this open… I swear, you’ll love it. Ain’t no one ever done stuff like this never.”

  “Scram, kid.” Moore said, grabbling the reeking, disheveled youth by the arm and pulling him out of their path.

  The teenager’s beady brown eyes darted back and forth between the two men in front of him and his protruding Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. Then his brow furrowed and a look of rage bloomed in his face. Carson could not remember ever seeing anyone so young look so mad.

  “Beat it, already,” Moore said and took a menacing step towards the boy.

  The kid got the message at last. He turned and slowly walked away in a sulk, muttering to himself as he went, tossing baleful glances over his shoulder at the two FBI men as his shoes shuffled in the dirt. Carson and Moore watching him hop a three-foot wooden fence and shamble away through the neighboring vacant lot.

  “Weird little punk,” Moore said.

  “Come on, let’s get this over with,” Carson said. He then turned back to the building, pounded on the door, and yelled out, “Mr. Abe Smilansky? Open up, it’s the FBI.”

  After a moment the door cracked opened a few inches and a wrinkled, bespectacled face crowned with wisps of white hair peered out at the two agents. “That meshuggina kid gone?” the old man asked with a thick accent.

  “Yes sir. Agents Carson and Moore, FBI. Open up, Mr. Smilansky, we’ve got to talk to you.”

  The older man shut the door to undo the chain, then opened it wide and told the two government men to come in. “I’m sorry about that. That damn kid has been hounding me for weeks. He thinks—”

  “We’re not here about some kid,” Moore cut him off as he pushed roughly past the smaller man and went into the building. “We’re here about the books you’ve been printing.”

  “What, my comic books?”

  “Yes sir,” Carson said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.

  “We want to know everything about the one you’re putting out called the ‘Treader of Stars.’” Moore said.

  “W…why?” Abe Smilansky stammered.

  “We’ll ask the questions here, pal!” Moore, well into his role as bad cop, emphasized the point by jabbing a thick finger into the man’s chest.

  Carson calmly added, “There’s been some talk in Washington about how comic books are no good for kids these days. They’re full of sex, drugs, violence, and pink-o propaganda. Your Treader comic has got some people worried, and when they’re worried, they send us to look into things. Make sure things aren’t hinky with the guys making the stuff up.”

  “Look, I didn’t write it—”

  “No but you publish it,” Moore cut the little man off. “And that makes you just as responsible for the filth.”

  Carson took a moment to light up a cigarette before giving a well-rehearsed sympathetic sigh. “Look, Mr. Smilansky, we know you didn’t write this thing, and you know you don’t want to stand before the Senate and have to defend yourself like the folks in Hollywood had to do, but that’s where this thing is heading. America is at war with the Commies, and whether it’s shooting them in Korea, or making sure their dirty ideas don’t corrupt the minds of the youth back here, it’s a never-ending battle. And all those not on the right side of things will be treated the same. So, are you on the side of America?”

  Abe Smilansky looked bewilderedly from one agent to the other. Both G-men could smell the fear seeping through his pores, which mean
t a quick and easy day for them.

  “Of course I’m on the side of America. I love America!” Smilansky said emphatically.

  “Good to hear that. Now, tell us everything you know about the guy who writes and draws this rag, a T. Buckwell,” Carson said as he pulled out a note pad and a stub of a Berol Black Beauty pencil.

  “Well I don’t know much about the man,” Abe began. When both agents gave him a dubious look he quickly went on. “Honest I don’t. I’ve never met him. About a year back I got a box from him in the mail with the first four issues of his Treader all drawn out, worded, and ready to print. A letter with it said that if I wanted to publish his stuff that he had three more issues done and was working on more of them.”

  “That seems like a strange way to do business, Mr. Smilansky,” Carson said.

  “Oh it’s very strange, but just a month before that I lost a couple of my regular guys to the big shots in New York, I was desperate for something to put out. So I read what he sent me. Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me, I don’t get a lot of that horror and sci-fi stuff, but it sure sells like hotcakes at the theaters. So I took a chance and published it and it soon became the best seller of all the titles I put out. The kids just love it.”

  “And you still haven’t met Mr. Best Seller?”

  “No. He always said he was too busy ‘transcribing the messages’ to come to the offices. That’s what he called it, like he was having visions or something. The guy is a real odd duck. He often writes crazy stuff like that in the letters he sends with his new issues. For example, when I sent him the contract for his Treader stories, he said he would only sign it if his stuff was listed as nonfiction. I told him I didn’t make such distinctions in my comics and he wrote back that made him happy as there were no distinctions between fiction and reality. Weird stuff like that was common with him. But he always delivered fully written and drawn issues ahead of deadline and, well, he worked cheap.”