World War Cthulhu: A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories

by John Shirley

  As for myself, I was only too aware that Hammerstrike was getting ever closer. The captain and I came to our respective decisions at the same time. I hefted the rifle, aimed at the creature bent over the weapon. At the same instant that the captain swiveled and tugged, pulling one of the beasts off balance. I fired; my target stumbled but did not fall, so I put another round in it, trying for the head this time.

  As I was preparing for a third shot, the moving picture shifted again to show a night sky and three Lancasters approaching. Hammerstrike was indeed coming—and the beasts knew about it. The long weapon glowed ever brighter and a loud hum rose to an almost deafening pitch. My target was still standing over it.

  The captain was busy, fighting off the other two creatures—he had one of them on the floor and was tussling with the other, but I had no time to help him. I fired two more quick shots. The beast fell away—but not quickly enough. A blinding flash filled the room. I blinked, and looked down just in time to see one of the Lancasters explode and crumple to fall away in flames. The long tube pulsed again, the glow brightening, the hum rising.

  “Time to go,” I shouted. The captain obviously had the same thought. He pulled a pin on a grenade and lobbed it under the weapon, in the same movement making a lunging jump to the opening where I stood. I lobbed one of my grenades down to almost the same spot and managed to pull him up and out of the dome to roll away just as the twin concussion blasted the top off the structure.

  We slid, out of control, down the steep snow slope as another explosion blasted rock and snow and metal to fly all around us. The night was filled with sound and fury that got even louder as the roar of the bombers came to us.

  We came to a sliding stop on the very rim of the sheer cliff we had come up.

  “Heads down,” the captain shouted, and we cowered, unable to do little else, as the bombers went overhead, and seconds later, the top of the mountain was blown clean away.

  ***

  It took me a while to realize we were still alive, and longer still before I could hear much beyond the rumbling echo of the explosions in my head. The captain tapped me on the shoulder and turned me around to look at what had happened.

  The top level of the summit above the snow slope had been completely obliterated to leave only a pile of rock and rubble that was still smoking. There was no sign that any structure had ever been there.

  We sat there for long minutes, catching our breath, peering in the dark, waiting to see if there would be any movement. But it seemed we were the only things left alive on the mountain.

  “Looks like the job’s done, old chap,” the captain said after a while. “Let’s go home.”

  “Would you have let them do it?” I asked. “If it had been only Berlin, not London, would you have let them do it?”

  He didn’t even think before answering. “No. Actually, I was considering letting them do both—it might have been the only way to finish this bloody thing once and for all. But whatever nefarious reasons those creatures had for stopping the war, I doubt they were doing it for the good of humanity. Remember those two jars we smashed? I wouldn’t wish that death on another living soul—and if they had got their way here, a similar fate might have befallen all of us in time.”

  I will not tell of the descent—I will only mention that it was almost as terrifying as the events that took place under the dome. But we survived. I reached the bottom first and looked up. The captain was still climbing down, still focused on the rock face, so he did not see it. Indeed at first I wasn’t sure I had either—it was merely a darker shadow against the night sky.

  Then the wings opened out, obscuring the stars behind them. It launched itself off the cliff and into the sky.

  The last I saw of it was as it crossed the face of the moon, heading yet higher, the wings unfurled and soaring, far from any war or thought of war.

  I envied it in that moment—and I envy it still.

  LONG ISLAND WEIRD - THE LOST INTERVIEWS

  BY CHARLES CHRISTIAN

  In the course of the Congressional hearings into the so-called “Long Island Incident” and the subsequent loss of over [data redacted on the orders of the Department of Homeland Defense] lives, the following files were located on cloud storage archives. The first eight files are transcripts of interviews conducted by an unknown individual. The ninth file is part of a police Missing Persons report. The tenth and final file is a preliminary autopsy report.

  1

  The Skipper’s Story

  If you want to know anything about the Gold Coast of Long Island, I’m your man. I’ve been running boat trips and supper cruises for tourists around Long Island Sound since I was a kid.

  Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I used to help my Pappy run boat trips back when he left the Coast Guard after World War Two. After I came back from my tour of duty in ’Nam, he retired and I took over the business. Now I’m retired, and my son Jimbo took over the business after he came back from Iraq. I guess if Jimbo ever wants to retire, Uncle Sam’s first going to have to find a new war for his son to fight in!

  They don’t call it the Gold Coast because any gold was ever found there. No; it’s because of all the big houses the millionaires built along its shore during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Whitneys, the Morgans, the Pratts, the Hearsts and the Guggenheims all spent fortunes building opulent mansions and mock chateaux along the north shore of the Island during the era Mark Twain called The Gilded Age. The glory days of many of these properties is now long gone, and they’ve either fallen into disrepair or been converted into condos. And those are the lucky ones that have avoided being demolished! But there’s still plenty enough to see to make the Gold Coast a great location for a nice supper cruise.

  Anyway, you were asking about Beacon Towers.…

  That was one of the last mansions to be built and the first to be demolished. Built in 1918 for Alva Belmont, the ex-wife of a Vanderbilt and a multi-millionairess socialite in her own right, it was a gorgeous property, right on the shore, with its ramparts rising out of the sand. It was supposedly based on an Irish castle but looked more like a French chateau to me. William Randolph Hearst bought it in 1927, apparently because he wanted a castle on the East Coast to match his San Simeon property in California! Well, at least that’s what people say, but in 1942 he sold Beacon Towers to its final owners, who had it demolished just three years later, in 1945.

  Yes, there is an interesting symmetry there, built at the close of World War One and demolished at the close of World War Two.

  Beacon’s heyday was undoubtedly the Belmont era. In fact it is all down to one of her house guests—the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald—that anyone remembers the place today. Fitzgerald based Jay Gatsby’s West Egg mansion in The Great Gatsby on Belmont Towers. The words Fitzgerald uses to describe West Egg and how it was an “imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side” leave no room for doubt.

  But that was in 1923. Twenty years later it was a different story. Hearst had to sell the property to a bunch of Wall Street bankers to settle some mortgages, and while they tried to find a buyer or, anyway, decide what they were going to do with the place, the 140-room property was put in the hands of caretakers. This is where the story starts to get weird, though you have to remember that, back in the first half of the 1940s, I was still a kid in grade school, and a lot of what I heard about Beacon Towers came from either classroom gossip or stories my Pappy told when he was home from Coast Guard duty.

  According to the scuttlebutt, the caretakers were either an extended family of Eastern European refugees or they were Italian refugees now working for one of the New York crime families. Whatever the truth, during those last three years there were some odd comings and goings around Beacon Towers.

  What were they, you ask? Those who believed the caretakers were Eastern Europeans were convinced they were fifth columnists working for the Nazis, and Beacon Towers was being used to land spies
and bombs from German U-boats cruising the Sound. However, if you subscribed to the Mafia theory, then they were using the Towers as a clearing house for mobsters smuggling in black-market contraband from Canada.

  There was also a suggestion that the place was haunted, although that was down to the weird lights that could sometimes be seen shining out from there. I saw them myself a few times—and this was during a war, when there were supposed to be strict blackout restrictions along coastal areas. After all these years it’s still hard for me to describe those lights. They were simultaneously a vibrant sickly green, flickering with violet, and a color I don’t ever before recall seeing in the spectrum. A regular little Northern Lights they were.

  As for the so-called caretakers … Well, they kept themselves to themselves. We never saw them in town shopping for vittles or at the drugstore, and they certainly never showed their faces at the movie house or social events. Then again, if you looked like they did, you’d have kept out of sight.

  I saw them just the once. I was out on the Sound in my Pappy’s boat—he was back home on leave—fishing for sriped bass, when he suddenly passed me his binoculars and said “Look over there, on the rocks in front of Beacon Towers.”

  I took the glasses and looked. There were four of them sitting there. Thinking about it now, I suppose they reminded me of lizards warming themselves in the sun. They were squat, stocky people, and their skin had a yellowish tinge. They were bald, and through the glasses I could see they all had tiny little ears and large, bulbous staring eyes. Their faces were more like those of a fish or a frog than a human.

  “Gee, Pa,” I said, “do you reckon they’re Nips?” as we’d all seen newsreels about the Japanese and knew they were a race of ugly, deformed, semi-human yellow people. I hope you’ll excuse my political incorrectness, but that’s how the Japs were depicted in wartime propaganda.

  He said, “No, son, they’re not Japs. They’ve all got the ‘Innsmouth look’; they must be some of those inbreds from Massachusetts. I thought the Feds rounded up all of them years ago.”

  At the time I didn’t understand what he meant, though I later learned the seaport town of Innsmouth had a very unsavory reputation—let’s just say for activities of a distinctly un-American kind—and had largely been destroyed and its population resettled in 1927, following a joint FBI/US Navy raid to close down a major bootlegging operation.

  And that was it. I never again saw any of the caretakers, and a few months later the banks ordered the demolition of Beacon Towers.

  2

  The Ghost Hunter’s Story

  Pleased to meet you all. I’m the author of Long Island’s Ghosts & Other New England Hauntings and a whole host of other great books. Is it all right to mention that?

  Normally I always conduct my own personal investigations of any reports of paranormal activity, but in the case of Beacon Towers I’ve obviously got to make a big exception, what with the place being demolished so long ago. Why, it was gone and turned to rubble before I was even born! However, I have done some desk research, and I think you’ll agree that what I found out is fascinating.

  It is true that some of the Gold Ghost hauntings were entirely specious. At least three I know of were invented during the 1920s to disguise the activities of Prohibition bootleggers who used to land their hooch on the private quays on the North Shore before trucking them to the speakeasies in New York City.

  The first reference to a ghostly manifestation at Beacon Towers was during Alva Belmont’s day; however, she was way too much of a blue-stocking and suffragette to ever have anything to do with illicit liquor. It seems several guests and some of the housemaids all reported a creepy, cold sensation when they were near the big fireplace in the Great Hall. What is weird is that they all felt the chill even when there was a log fire burning in the hearth!

  Now what I find especially interesting is that this fireplace was originally shipped from London, England, where it had been moved from the ruins of a Knights Templar preceptory at Dunwich. That’s Dunwich, England, not that awful place on the Miskatonic Valley up in Massachusetts.

  I don’t know if you’ve heard of Dunwich, England. It was a once-thriving seaport town that in mediaeval times had twelve churches, but they’ve all now been washed away by the sea. They say on a clear night you can still hear the church bells chiming from beneath the waves. Isn’t that cute? There are still some monastic ruins left on the cliff edge, and sometimes human bones from the old graveyards can be found on the shore. Pretty gross, huh? But I’d still love to visit there one day; it sounds like a perfect place to conduct a ghost hunt!

  So what I hear you say is: what is the connection between a Templar fireplace and Beacon Towers?

  Quite simply, this is what we call a residual or imprint haunting. These are the most frequent type of ghost sighting, where the spirit is oblivious to its surroundings or anyone present and just keeps living out the same set of past events over and over again. You can’t communicate with this type of ghost. In fact, there is a theory that they are not so much spectral beings as a playback, like a video recording or an audiotape, of an event in the ghost’s past life that was so powerfully emotional or traumatic it left an imprint in the surrounding fabric of a building or the landscape.

  And let’s be honest: as life events go, the fate of the Knights Templar—being arrested, thrown in prison, tortured, and finally burnt at the stake—don’t come much more traumatic.

  3

  The Lighthouse Keeper’s Story

  Yeah, I guess it is kinda ironic. After spending all my working life with the U.S. Coast Guard service manning their lighthouses, I’m now spending my retirement with the U.S. Lighthouse Society, helping them to preserve and promote this great country’s lighthouse heritage—as well as trying to undo some of the harm the Coast Guard causes when they decommission old lighthouses. Okay, that last remark was personal.

  Why Long Island? Because it has one of the greatest collections of lighthouses in the country. Over 30 have been built here since 1796 and they include some of the most iconic lighthouses ever designed.

  How the Coast Guard ever got away with knocking down such a fabulously beautiful and historically important light as the Shinnecock Bay Lighthouse in 1948 we’ll never know. It’s weird; it could have been saved by public support, which is one of the reasons why the Lighthouse Society was established. It was the same story a year previously, in 1947, when the original Lloyd Harbor Lighthouse was apparently accidentally destroyed by fire. Had there been a local group caring for it, it would probably still be standing today.

  4

  The FBI Agent’s Story

  As the Supervisory Senior Resident Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for this area, I am authorized to supply you with the information you requested under the Freedom of Information Act 1966, save only where information has been redacted or is otherwise deemed exempt from disclosure and to remain secret on the grounds of national defense and law enforcement.

  And if it is any consolation to you, some of this stuff is so weird I don’t even know what it refers to or why it still must remain secret after all these years.

  I can tell you it is incorrect to say the Beacon Towers residence was demolished in 1945 on the instructions of the bank that owned the property. It was actually destroyed by a company of the Fighting Seabees; that’s right, members of the U.S. Navy Construction Battalion, acting under a direct executive order of President Harry S. Truman. It is interesting to note this was one of the first orders President Truman gave when he succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House.

  You have to remember that the Seabees are not only good at building things; they also understand how to knock them down again. As you can see from the parts of this document that have not been redacted, the Seabees were to pay particular attention to the destruction of any cellars, subterranean passages, crypts, vaults, catacombs, bunkers and concrete pens lying beneath the building. Given the location of Beacon Towers
on the shore, I can only assume that some of these underground chambers were either below sea level or provided access to the ocean.

  You will also notice the records report the Seabees encountered fierce armed resistance that was only overcome following a sustained firefight involving the use of pistols, carbines, axes, machetes, sub-machine guns, heavy machine guns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and bazookas. All of which seems a little excessive, since the Seabees were just dealing with a group of caretakers.

  I confess I’m also at a loss to explain the heavy casualties sustained by the Seabees, including seven dead or who subsequently died from their wounds, four missing in action, and five who spent the rest of their days in the secure psychiatric wing of the U.S. Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, Virginia.

  I am also permitted to inform you that the same company of Seabees was subsequently involved in the destruction by fire of the old Lloyd Harbor Lighthouse in 1947 and the demolition of the Shinnecock Bay Lighthouse the following year. Both these events were also authorized by executive order of the President.

  The documents reveal no reference to any fighting or casualties; however, there is a cryptic comment which reads Throughout history, lighthouses have been erected to guide mariners away from harm and towards safe waters. However, sometimes they attract that which is unwelcome.

  5

  The Cryptozoologist’s Story

  Now don’t you go all surprised that I’m a woman of color. Cryptozoology is not just a game for old white men. I’ve been the Professor of Cryptozoology and Teratology at the University of Miskatonic, Arkham, for the past three years now.

  For the record, cryptozoology literally means the study of hidden animals. This includes looking for living examples of animals considered extinct, such as dinosaurs; animals whose existence lacks physical evidence but which regularly appear in myths and legends, such as Bigfoot and Chupacabra; and wild animals dramatically outside their normal geographic ranges, such as big cats, like cougars and panthers, being reported in urban areas. Teratology is the study of abnormalities in physiological development, such as two-headed calves. It was the preponderance of such creatures being born in this part of Massachusetts in the mid-1920s that first led to the establishment of my department. It was expanded to include cryptozoology in the 1950s.