by Weston Ochse
“Because I don’t want to lose my father,” I tell him. “My father and baseball are the two best things in my life. Without them…” I let the words I don’t say fade.
This time they don’t have to put a muzzle to the back of my head. I’ve been here so often, the thooloo feels familiar. I think about standing on second base and waiting for Ronnie French to hit the ball as it comes, herky-jerky towards me, pieces of it floating and coalescing, as if it’s recreating itself as it moves. I don’t close my eyes. I feel it caress me. I feel it wrap tendrils around me as its thousand teeth snap delicately at the memory of my failure.
~Do you want to know me?~ it asks.
The voice startles me. The thooloo has never spoken before. It is a faceless beast that engorges on memories.
“Wh… what?”
~Do you want to see?~
See what it really is? See where it really is? At the moment I think the word Yes, it shoots me to a place high atop a mountainous bluff, overlooking a sea made of molten, movable darkness. A million million thooloo writhe together in an orgy of… sharing. The moment I realize that they are sharing, I also realize what they are sharing memories. Everything I have ever lost, everything I have ever given up, everything I’ve never wanted to remember is alive within the minds of the sea of roiling thooloo. What this thooloo consumes, they live upon, as if it is a mother for its billion children. I can’t help but gasp as I watch them from my perch so high above. It is a sight like no other. It is a sight that my father would have loved to have seen. Maybe even better than listening to baseball and trying to imagine how Hank looked striking the ball.
I hear the strike of the bat.
I hear the roar of the crowd.
Then it’s all gone.
Chalmers grabs me and spins me around. He sees the blank stare in my eyes and cries, “Kupchak! Hey! Talk to me.”
I open my mouth to speak but I can’t think of anything to say as the vision of the thooloos fade.
Chalmers smacks me across the cheek. “Snap out of it.” He shakes me, then says in a whisper, “Tell me about baseball.”
I touch my cheek where he hit me and look at my hand.
“Tell me about baseball,” he says again. “Tell me about Hank Greenberg. Tell me about your father.”
“What’s baseball?” I ask.
He lets me go and staggers back. He falls into a chair and sags into himself.
I stand there, not knowing what else to do.
I’m back in California working in the avocado fields.
I’m dreaming of nothing.
I’m dreaming of nothing.
I’m dreaming if nothing.
Because there’s nothing left to dream.
On 23 January 1942, the thooloo is used on Gifu, rendering 119 Japanese fighters harmless. Between the bombardments and the efforts of the 17th Special Services Company, 435 Japanese are killed with only 179 U.S. casualties. Twenty-eight days later, the Battle of Guadalcanal is finally over.
Of the 17th Special Services Company, there is no record.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I’ve only written a handful of Lovecraftian tales, but this one is my favorite. Jon Oliver, the editor of Solaris Books, Abaddon Books, and Cubicle 7 asked me to write a Cthulhu story set in World War II. I knew I wanted it occur on Guadalcanal, but I didn’t know what glue I was going to use to hold the story together. I spent quite a bit of time researching the time period and discovered how large baseball was a part of the American fabric. Somewhere along the lines I stumbled onto the iconic figure of Hammerin’ Hank Goldberg and I thought about what kind of fans he would have and how they would have followed him and Private Kupchak was born. It’s a funny thing about memories. They are what make us who we are. We’ve all wanted to forget something in our past. But let me ask you this? Would it make you a better person to not know, or in the knowing of it, did it make you who you are?
Family Man
June 12, 1988
Somewhere in Vietnam
SAM ADMIRED the shimmering length of his finger with a warm sensation of pride. The way the white light hit the even whiter skin and made it glow silver was the only thing that could make him smile. His eyes narrowed as he noticed an invading speck of darkness marring its white perfection. His tongue flicked out and he tasted it and smiled again. It was only dust.
He lay suspended in a pool of light created by a ray spearing the floor of his cell from the single window half-way up the old brick wall. He enjoyed basking in the light’s warmth, feeling sometimes like a snake on a heated rock. Sam held his withered arm up, the finger rising from his fist like a monolith, straight and true. It was as if his finger was holding up the wooden ceiling of the silo-like pit he called home. The finger was more than just a monument to his fortitude, it was a reminder of how things used to be.
The sound of a key scraping within the machinations of the lock on the cell door interrupted the moment and sent Sam scurrying back in a combination of half-rolls and undulations into the friendly, shadowy recesses of the brick wall. Like a whip, his arm shot out and his finger slid quickly into a protective slot in the dark gray mortar between the bricks. He blinked rapidly pulling blood into his brain, peeling his lips back in a broken-toothed snarl, alternately glancing from the door to the camera mounted on the opposite wall. He was ready for anything. Sometimes they let animals in to play with him, usually dogs, the kind he’d seen roaming the edges of the battlefields, starved thin, hair standing out around the sparse scattered mosaic patches of diseased skin.
Sam remembered one moment in particular when he still had three fingers and was foolishly brave. The dog was large and gray. More wolf than pet, it was wild and driven more by primal need than intelligence. The mongrel had stepped slowly across the breadth of the pit, each footfall a dance of pain, its sides quivering with effort as malnourished, shrunken muscles gyrated erratically, struggling to propel hollow bones to its prey. Sam’s sky blue eyes met the cataract blue of the dog’s and he knew a kinship.
Sam remembered the warm acid taste of the creature’s blood flowing between the gaps in his remaining teeth and the greasy animal hair that threatened to clog his throat. Even when it was all over and Sam was left with just two fingers, he felt sorry for the animal, understanding its need to survive like no one ever could.
But that was long ago.
His days of fighting were almost gone. His body had lost its killer memory. His mind struggled daily to prove existence. Sam had decided that when he had only one finger left, he’d sacrifice himself and use his body as a shield before he’d let it go. The finger was him. It was the singular thing that could identify him to his family… to future generations.
His print was his own and he had only one left.
Sam’s head snapped around as the heavy wooden door creaked open. A small breeze slipped in first and stirred the stale air of the pit. Black and white POW-MIA banners fluttered gently along the stone walls. Sam inhaled. The freshness was as nourishing as food. He focused on the door, ready.
An old man, crooked and limping, dragged his left leg into the room. In one arm he held a large stainless steel bowl, in the other, a cane that stabbed the earth. He descended the three stone steps onto the dirt floor of the pit. His route was circuitous as he moved around the many piles of half-dried excrement. The wrinkles of his face were further pinched with a satisfied smile as he reached the center of the pit and upended the contents of the bowl onto the ground. Acrid rice and soft brown vegetables made a slippery pile. The old man prodded the food several times with the end of his cane until the contents were flattened and partially mixed with the contents of the floor.
The guard pinned Sam to the shadows with twin, black dots of hate. After several moments, he chuckled, turned and limped back up the stairs. Sam glared at the back of the man’s head where tight yellow skin gleamed dar
kly. Sam remembered when Old Pham had been Young Pham and had hair. Full and dark, the man’s hair had just begun to show elegant wisps of gray, and like an Asian movie star, Pham always wore dark aviator glasses. Sam watched as the twisted foot was pulled through the exit and the door snapped closed. He’d been angry that day and his anger had cost him half his teeth and an arm. Even though it hadn’t been a fair trade, sometimes, when he saw the pain the ruined leg caused the old man, Sam argued that it had been worth it.
Sam counted to a hundred, monitoring the door. He was always wary of their tricks. Satisfied that they’d leave him alone enough to eat, he slowly pulled his finger from the hole in the wall, and slid it into his mouth for a more portable protection. Dropping to the floor, he began moving his shoulders and hips in a practiced twist, his undulations propelling him across the pit, his body shaping a lengthening S-trail behind him.
When he reached the first grains of half-buried, grime-covered rice, he closed his eyes and allowed his nose to guide him through dinner. He removed his finger from his mouth and placed his hand atop his head; the finger pointed directly upwards, a curious antenna to the slug-like body. His tongue flicked out, its stickiness claiming several grains of the rancid white rice along with dirt and vestiges of past waste. His shoulders and hips worked easily. It had been so long he wouldn’t know what to do with legs. Even his single withered limb with a single perfect finger was more of a trophy than a tool. He didn’t need the others. He could survive without them.
“WHY DO YOU still live, Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
“What keeps you going?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, tired of the old conversation.
The Commandant had been in charge of him for over twenty years now. Sam knew the man’s mannerisms as he imagined he would a wife or a brother, and the man was strangely tense. Standing up, the Commandant’s chair and empty glass were removed by a young serving-girl. Waiting until she left the room, he then placed his hands behind him and began pacing back and forth in the constrained area of the landing. Sam could almost hear the machinations of the man’s mind working.
“I have a surprise for you.”
This was it.
Sam had felt something special about this day. There was something in the way people had moved and stared at him that made everything hyper-real. Even the air seemed fresher, holding a promise of better days. Or was it a false promise – a last gasp before they finally gave up and killed him.
“I’m ready for it.” I’ll fight you, he thought.
The Commandant shook his head, old sad eyes regarding Sam.
“If I’d lost what you have, I would kill myself.”
“I know,” said Sam, challenging. He smiled inside. He knew he had beaten all odds. The man would never understand.
The Commandant closed his eyes and brought his head down until his chin rested on his chest. It was a few moments before he raised his head again, a thin smile now part of his face. Sam recognized it with an internal shudder. It was the same smile he always had right before bad things happened. It was the same smile he’d had when he’d asked Sam if he liked children. Sam had remembered his own one-year-old son and said yes. He’d been weak, and because of his weakness, he’d become a toy that day.
When the children had entered, a strange lump of emotion had formed in Sam’s throat, choking him. They were so beautiful. Against the backdrop of his mutilations and the horror of his living conditions, the full-bodied symmetry and multi-limbed potential of the children were artistry. There was one boy and one girl. He remembered her for her long black hair and impossibly high cheek bones. He remembered him for his quick smile and his gangly arms. Sam had always loved Vietnamese children. They seemed exotic and special, like special animals in the zoo. During the war, he’d always given them candy. He’d ignored the warnings of his leaders. True, he’d heard stories of killer children, but he had never seen any.
The girl had screamed when she saw him, the action bringing him to tears. She’d tried to leave, beating the door with tiny porcelain fists that Sam thought might shatter in the offal of the pit. But Old Pham had whispered something into her ear and calmed her and it wasn’t long before the children were circling him, calling him Ran Ong and poking him playfully with sticks.
They giggled and skipped and their play was infectious. It had been a long time since he had made children laugh, so he began playing the part, rising up and flicking his tongue out as if tasting the air. He undulated his body twisting back and forth. He was the perfect Ran Ong. The perfect Snake Man. The more they giggled, the more he pretended.
Finally, he couldn’t contain his feelings any longer and began to laugh and cry simultaneously. Tears poured from his eyes as he rolled in the dirt of the pit, hysterical and naked. He was laughing so hard he was never sure which one hit him first.
A stick met his kidneys with enough force to loosen his bladder. The burnt nub of his penis opened and let loose a thick yellow stream. The next blow was to the back of his head. The pain lanced down his spine. His laughter turned to screams as they began the beating in earnest. He passed out when a bamboo stick entered his anus.
“What makes a man a man?” asked the Commandant, bringing Sam back to the present.
“I don’t know.”
Sam wanted to scream out that he did know. He wanted to yell to the world that he’d not lost his fight for survival. As long as he was alive, there was a chance that he could return to his family, a chance to be reunited. As long as he didn’t give up, he was a man. It wasn’t what he looked like. It was what he was inside. Sam wanted to scream that HE… WAS… A… MAN!
“I have a surprise for you, Sam,” the smooth voice repeated again.
Sam rolled over onto his stomach and with the help of his single thin elbow, raised his upper body to get a better view of the landing. The door creaked open as Old Pham rolled a tall tiered cart into the room holding a TV and VCR. His captors had used it before, when they’d shown him his surgeries. They’d made him relive them over and over. He could itemize each loss of his humanity. The video was no surprise.
“We’ve finally obtained some video of your family, Sam.”
It was such a simple sentence to have such an effect.
He gasped as a video representation of his old wallet photo filled the screen. The yellowed edges of the photo were slightly curled and a ribbon of dried blood ran down one side. His wife was as he remembered her back in 1968, twenty years old and perfect. In her arms was his son, Nathan. He was a year old and had only seen his father once.
“Your son is twenty-one now and working at an insurance company.”
The scene shifted into a full color view of a young man, slender in his two-piece suit, sitting at a restaurant table, drinking wine and gesturing animatedly to a table of friends. Every movement was casual, perfect. A hand came up and swept back thick blonde hair. His son had his mother’s eyes and his nose. Sam felt the cancerous lump return. It was impossibly large and his breath seeped through in a thin whine. His son had been a one year old for twenty years. Twenty years of loss. Twenty years of hell.
The video shifted again, and he saw his son sitting alone in a bar. It was dark and smoky, but he could make out the figure of his son, slumped over a drink. The young man’s shoulders were shaking. Tears began to pour from Sam’s eyes in concert with his son’s. This wasn’t fair. He’d finally learned to deal with his own pain. How could he possibly understand how to deal with his son’s?
The scene shifted again. Blurry at first, it appeared like nothing more than a smear of movement. Whoever had been operating the camera adjusted, however, and the blur reconciled into a sharp picture. Nathan was standing, pumping furiously, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, a look of incredible joy on his face. Sam breathed in as he saw that his son’s partner was another man. He found it impossible not to watch.
“This is about six months old. Your boy was crying because his lover is dying,” said the Commandant. “Americans have this new disease that attacks men who love other men. It’s fatal.”
Sam barely registered the remark, so intent was he watching his son. He found his own breathing join the rhythm of his son’s. With each thrust they both inhaled until finally his son found peace.
The image shifted once again to his son in the bar. The camera man zoomed in and somehow caught the sharp shadows of agony in the eyes of his only offspring.
“Don’t worry. As far as we know, your son wasn’t infected. He will live for a while, yet.”
The scene shifted again, this time to a middle-aged woman pushing a cart through a brightly-colored market. The metal cart was half-full with boxes and cans of all sizes. Her hair was clipped short in a style that he didn’t recognize. Suddenly the camera caught her profile as she examined the back of a box and he recognized her. He remembered how he used to feel the sweep of her hair over an ear – its fineness silky over his fingers.
A groan of need escaped between Sam’s pinched lips.
Her face had filled-out with age, but was still as beautiful as he’d remembered. He’d kissed every part of her. An older man walked up and handed her a small red can. She took it from him, turned and kissed him on his cheek. She spun, her hair catching highlights. Somehow, momentarily, she looked directly into the camera. Her happiness could not be mistaken.
A thin peal of pain escaped Sam’s throat and filled the room with an echoing of agony.
“You didn’t expect her to wait, did you?”
Yes. I did, thought Sam.
“You want her to be happy, don’t you?”
Yes. I do.
Again, he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene. He watched as two kids, each in their mid-teens, joined his wife and the man. They were a real family, perfect and happy. He tried to place himself in the picture – tried to replace the other man with himself.
