Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  “I asked Dr. Lansing that very question, Wendell. He simply responded by asking me how many bones beyond three I thought would be necessary to collect to prove his point. Five? Ten? Fifty? He said all he felt necessary were three to prove ichthyosaurs travelled this far north. I’ll grant you: that makes little sense, but that’s Dr. Lansing for you. Even he, however, wouldn’t be foolish enough to waste time poring over this discovery. More than likely, it was due to some accident involving the oil men here before us. There’s nothing we can do for the fellow that lost it, and we have more important discoveries to dig up, discoveries beside which this will ultimately pale. Let’s march on. We still have a journey ahead of us.”

  Dr. Hanson resumed walking, Dogan trotting after him. Isaacs looked as though he was going to be sick, but before he could Gauthier shoved him.

  “Keep moving. Standing too long in the open like this isn’t a good idea. You never know what’s watching.”

  Wendell looked around, but all he saw were hills of ice in every direction. If anything was watching, he had no idea where it might be hiding.

  Wendell couldn’t stop thinking about the finger as they continued on. Maybe it was the sound of their footsteps, or the dark beneath his parka’s hood, but he felt increasingly isolated from the group, and as they travelled he became further ensnared in thought. He’d never seen a severed body part before, and though it barely looked real beneath the ice, it still made him uncomfortable. Someone had come to Melville Island and not only lost a finger but decided to leave without it. How was that possible? Wendell shivered and tried to get his mind on other less morbid things. Like water.

  Water is the world’s greatest sculptor. It is patient, careful, persistent, and over countless years it is capable of carving the largest canyons out of the hardest rock. Who knew how long it took to carve the shapes that surrounded the five of them as they walked? It was like a bizarre art gallery, full of strange smooth sculptures that few had ever seen. Wendell reached into his pocket and fished out his digital camera. As he snapped numerous photos, he realized he was the only one doing so. Dr. Hanson barely slowed his pace to acknowledge the formations, and the sight of the towering rocks left Isaacs further terrorized.

  “Do you have to take pictures? Can’t we just keep going?”

  “Dr. Hanson said to document everything.”

  “Then why didn’t you take one of that finger?”

  It was a fair point. Why hadn’t he taken that photograph?

  “It’s not really part of the history of Melville Island, or the life that was here, is it?”

  Isaacs shrugged, then spun around like an animal suddenly aware of a predator. Wendell stepped back.

  “What is it?”

  Isaacs took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.

  “Nothing. I guess.”

  He wanted to say more, but despite Wendell’s prodding Isaacs remained quiet.

  They trudged along the ice, keeping their heads down as they followed Dr. Hanson. He had studied the maps for months and was certain that their best bet was to set up base camp about twenty-five miles in. From that point, they could radiate their survey outward and see what they might discover.

  Wendell wondered, though, if it wouldn’t have been better to remain nearer the shoreline where remnants of a water-dwelling dinosaur might be more evident. He kept his opinion private, not wanting to contradict a man capable of ending his career before it started. Which was why Wendell was both surprised and irritated when Dogan posed the same question. And even more so when he heard Dr. Hanson’s response.

  “Good question, Dogan. I like that you’re thinking. It shows a real spark your fellow team could learn from. However, in this case you haven’t thought things through. Don’t forget that during the Mesozoic area we’re most interested in the Earth had yet to fully cool. Melville Island was more tropical than it is now. The greatest concentration of vertebrates will likely be farther inland. It shouldn’t take us more than a few more hours to get there.”

  The thought of travelling a few more hours made Wendell’s body ache. The cold had already seeped through his insulated boots and the two layers of socks he wore inside them.

  “Maybe we could stop and rest for a second? I don’t know how much longer I can carry this gear.” As Wendell spoke the words, his pack’s weight doubled in tacit agreement.

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Dr. Hanson said, and Wendell wasted no time slipping the burden off his shoulders. Immediately relieved, he then sat on the snow to give his tired feet a rest. Dr. Hanson, Isaacs, and Dogan all followed his lead. Only Gauthier remained standing, one hand on his belt, the other in his frozen beard. He looked across the horizon while the others used the moment to eat protein bars and contemplate what had led them to their seats at the top of the world.

  It had been days, and overfamiliarity combined with sheer exhaustion was enough to keep them quiet. No one spoke or glanced another’s way. They simply kept their heads down and tried to recuperate before the next leg of the journey. Dr. Hanson’s eyes were wide as he plotted their next steps. Isaacs experienced jitters, which continued to multiply as the group remained stationary. Dogan, however, was the opposite. With eyes closed and arms wrapped around his legs, he appeared to have fallen asleep. Until Gauthier delivered a swift kick to his ribs.

  “What was—?”

  The pilot shushed him quickly. Dogan, to Wendell’s astonishment, complied.

  “Did any of you see that?”

  They all turned. Around them was the vast icy expanse, wind pushing clouds over the snow-encrusted tundra, eddies dancing across the rough terrain. But Wendell saw nothing different from what he’d already witnessed. A glance at the other men revealed the same confusion. Wendell looked at the towering Gauthier, waiting for the answer to the question before them, but the pilot was silent. He merely continued to stare. Isaacs could not bear it.

  “What? What do you see?”

  “Shut up,” Gauthier hissed, and Isaacs cowered, his breathing uneven. Dr. Hanson flashed an expression that was buried so quickly Wendell didn’t have time to process it.

  Gauthier raised his arm and pointed away from where they had been walking, off into the distant vastness that flanked them.

  “I think something’s been tracking us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve been watching while you four were stumbling along, and I saw something—a shadow, keeping pace with us. It’s been there ever since we left the runway.”

  “Where is it?”

  “There. Do you see it? In the distance. It’s not moving now. Just a shadow. Watching us.”

  Wendell squinted, but still saw nothing.

  “It’s likely a polar bear,” Dr. Hanson said. “I’ve been warned they come to the island, looking for seal. No doubt he knows we’re here.”

  “Should we be worried?” Isaacs asked.

  “It’s not going to come after us,” Dogan said. Dr. Hanson was more hesitant.

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. But there’s enough of us that it should keep its distance.”

  That failed to reassure Wendell. And if he wasn’t reassured, then Isaacs—

  “So you’re saying a polar bear is following us, and we shouldn’t be worried? Nothing to worry about at all?”

  “It’s okay, Isaacs. You’ll be okay. Gauthier, tell them not to worry.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s moving now. It looks too small to be a polar bear anyway. Probably just a pack of wolves.”

  It wasn’t long before they were moving again.

  ***

  They successfully made it to the camp site without further report of being trailed. The lack did nothing to calm Isaac’s nerves, but Dogan reverted to his old ways, insinuating himself between Dr. Hanson and Wendell any time they might have had a moment to speak. It was infuriating.

  The five of them had been awake and travelling for well over twenty hours, and as far as Wendell could tell the su
n had not moved an inch. The clouds, however, were not so bound, and he suspected their speed had as much to do with Hanson’s decision to camp down as did the coordinates Dr. Lansing had provided him. The last thing Wendell wanted to do when they finally stopped walking was set up the tent, but Gauthier helped them all find the motivation through the promotion of fear.

  “The way this wind is breaking? There are storms brewing ahead, somewhere beyond the ridges. The weather here is unpredictable. If we don’t get cover and fast, we might not be around long enough for you four to start digging up bones. Get ready for what’s coming.”

  “But what is coming?” Dogan asked. Gauthier laughed.

  “A storm, man. A storm.”

  In the time it took to tell them, thick smoke-like clouds had rolled across the clear sky, casting a long shadow across the top of the world. Somehow, from somewhere, the men found the energy to erect their shelter, and Wendell silently admitted it felt good to have Dogan as an ally for once.

  The storm arrived as the last peg was hammered in place. The five of them huddled beneath the tarpaulin tent, one of the tall water-carved rocks acting as both anchor and partial shield from the winds. Inside the enclosed space their heat quickly escalated, but Gauthier warned them to keep their coats on in case the wind wrenched the tent from the ground.

  Strangely, Isaacs was the most at peace during the ordeal. While Dogan and Wendell held down the edges of the tent, their knuckles white, Isaacs had his eyelids closed and head tilted back to rest on his shoulders. He sat cross-legged, his body moving with the slightest sway. Wendell thought he also heard him humming, but convinced himself it was only the wind bending around the sheltering rocks.

  They stayed hunkered for hours, wind howling outside, pulling at the thin barrier of canvas standing between them. The sound of it rippling back and forth was a terrifying thunder, and even after hours enduring it, the noise did not become any less so. Each clap was an icy knife in Wendell’s spine, and as he shook under the tremendous stress he used every ounce of will he had within him to maintain his rationality and tamp down his fear. Deep breaths, slow, long, continued until the knot inside his chest slackened. It was only when he felt he could look again at his fellow captives without screaming that he dared. Isaacs remained blissfully distant, his mind cracked, and he was simply gone from it to another place. Gauthier and Dr. Hanson spoke among themselves, planning and debating the next course of action, all at a volume that was drowned by the howls and ripples. Only Dogan noticed Wendell, and the scowl across his face suggested that whatever truce the circumstances had negotiated for them was fleeting at best. He stared directly at Wendell with a stubbly, twisted face and did not bother to look away when Wendell caught him, as though he wore his disgust with pride. Wendell took a breath to speak and tasted the most noxious air. Dogan shook his twisted face, but it was no use; the fetid odor filled their lungs. Wendell covered his nose and mouth with his gloved hand. Whatever it was, it was sickly and bitter and smelled not unlike dead fish.

  Outside there was a long sorrowful howl that sounded so near their shelter that Wendell prayed desperately it was only the wind echoing between the stones.

  Sleep did wonders for Wendell’s demeanor, and when he emerged from the battered shelter a few hours later he stepped into a world canopied by a cloudless sky punctuated at the horizon by a single glowing orb. Gauthier was already awake, and Wendell found him prepping their equipment, beads of moisture frozen in his unkempt beard. He did not look pleased. Something was wrong.

  It was only once outside the tent Wendell noticed it—something in the post-storm air, some excess of electricity, or maybe a remnant of the foul odor that stained his clothes. Whatever it was, it was troubling.

  Dr. Hanson emerged a few minutes afterward with an eagerness to meet the glaciers head-on.

  “You’re up early. Good man! Why don’t you hand me one of those coffees?”

  Isaacs, too, joined them, and when the thick-set Dogan finally emerged from the tent, the look on his face upon seeing the rest of the team gathered made Wendell certain any ground gained the night before had been lost. Dogan was the same man he’d always been, and Wendell did his best to deal with it. He was frankly too tired to keep caring.

  “After we’ve made our breakfast,” Dr. Hanson said, blind to the turmoil of the students around him, “let’s start our search for some ichthyosaur fossils. Right now, we are most concerned with locating those.”

  “Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs said.

  “We should start at those ridges.” Dogan pointed into the distance opposite, where a slightly elevated ring circled the land. “Water would have receded soonest from those areas, leaving the earliest and most complete fossils for us to find.”

  “Good thinking, Dogan. I applaud that.”

  “Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs repeated.

  Dogan may have gotten the Doctor’s attention, but Wendell was not going to be outdone.

  “Maybe, Dr. Hanson, we should use a grid pattern closer to where Dr. Lansing and his students made their discovery? I mean, it makes sense to me to start with a known quantity and radiate from there.”

  Dogan shot Wendell a look, and Dr. Hanson laughed at them. “Both good ideas, men, but don’t worry. I already have a plan. You see, based on my expectations, the fossil—”

  “Dr. Hanson?”

  Hanson sighed.

  “Please don’t interrupt me, Isaacs.”

  “Dr. Hanson? Can you come look at this?” Isaacs was kneeling by the tent, staring into the ground.

  Immediately, Wendell was certain it was another finger. Another pale white digit trapped beneath the ice. Or perhaps it was a whole hand. Something else lost for which there could be no reasonable explanation. Dogan approached, as did Gauthier, both alongside Dr. Hanson. Wendell remained where he was, worried about what they would find, though their faces suggested it wasn’t anything as mortally frightening as a severed finger. But it was also clear no one knew if it was far worse. Wendell hesitated but approached Dr. Hanson, his heavy boots crunching the ice underfoot. When he reached the four men, any conversation between them had withered.

  Something impossible was caught in the tangle of boot prints surrounding the tent: an additional set of tracks in the crushed and broken snow. They differed from the team’s in size—they were smaller, hardly larger than a child’s, and each long toe of the bare foot could clearly be traced.

  “Is it possible some kind of animal made them?”

  “No,” Dr. Hanson said. “These are too close to hominid.”

  “They can’t be, though. Can they?”

  “I thought this island was deserted.”

  “More importantly, what was it doing standing here in front of our tent?”

  “I don’t like this,” Isaacs said. For once, Wendell agreed with him.

  “Dr. Hanson, what’s going on?”

  “I wish I knew, Wendell. Gauthier, what do you think?”

  Gauthier looked at them over his thick beard. It was the first time Wendell had seen puzzlement in the pilot’s eyes. Gauthier looked at each of them in turn as they waited for him to offer an explanation, but he had none to offer. Instead, he turned away with a furrowed brow.

  “Where is everything?”

  Wendell didn’t initially understand what he meant, not until he walked into the center of the camp. He looked back and forth and into the distance, then pushed the insulated hood off his head.

  “It’s all gone. Everything.”

  It had happened while they slept. Someone or something had come into the camp and stolen all their food and most of their supplies.

  Things became scrambled. The men spoke all at once, worried about what had happened and what it might mean. Wendell was no different, a manic desperation for answers taking hold. Dr. Hanson did his best to calm them all, but the red rims around his eyes made it clear he too was shaken.

  “I don’t understand it,” he repeated. “There aren’t supposed to be any visitors h
ere beyond us.”

  “It looks as if you were wrong. There is someone here. Someone who’s been following us.”

  It sounded crazy, and Wendell fought to keep from falling down that rabbit hole. Perversely, Dogan was the one Wendell looked to for strength, and only because he could imagine nothing worse than failing apart in front of him. Isaacs on the other hand suffered no such worries. He was nearly incapacitated by terror.

  “We can’t stay here. Didn’t you guys hear it? Last night? That muffled creaking? And the crunch—I thought it was something else. I thought it had to be. It couldn’t have been footsteps, but all I see on the ground are thousands of them, and all our stuff has vanished. We can’t stay. We have to go. We have to go before it’s too late.”

  “Calm down. Nobody’s going anywhere,” Dr. Hanson said. “This expedition is a one-time event. It took all the grant money to send us here. If we don’t bring back something, we will never return to Melville Island.”

  “Good,” Isaacs said, his whole body shaking. “We shouldn’t be here. There’s something wrong.”

  Dr. Hanson scoffed, but Wendell wasn’t certain he agreed. Dogan certainly seemed as though he didn’t, but said nothing. After the journey they’d taken and what they’d seen, they had to trust Dr. Hanson knew what to do.

  But what he did was turn to Gauthier for an answer, only to receive none. The pilot was more interested in sizing up Isaacs. When he finally spoke, it startled all of them. Isaacs almost screamed.

  “The kid is right. We can’t stay here. Even if we wanted to. Our supplies and rations are gone. We wouldn’t last more than a few days.”

  Dr. Hanson shook his head. Wendell could see he was frustrated. Scared, tired, and frustrated.

  “I told you: we can’t go back. This is it. There’s no time to spare, not even a few days. Not if we’re to complete our tasks in the window. We have to stay here.”

  “Do we all need to be here, Doctor?” Dogan asked. His voice wavered with uncertainty.

  Dr. Hanson hesitated a moment. “No,” he said, “I expect not. At least, not all of us.”