New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

by Ramsey Campbell

  I could hardly believe it, if only because it made far more sense to assume that the hands of a boy falling from a collapsing board would have opened and closed many times in a desperate kind of grasping, first at the empty air and then at a smothering wall of water rushing in upon him. What I had failed to recognize was that in such an extremity one may hold on to some small object that has just been picked up - a pebble or a shell - even more tightly.

  There might even be - more to it than that. Not only adult men and women, but not a few children, had endured unspeakable torments without relinquishing, even in death, some small object precious to them, or feared by them in some terrible secret way. The Children's Crusade -

  It was hard for me to imagine what could have put such thoughts into my mind, for I hadn't as much as caught a glimpse of the object which John had seemingly found very quickly. Surely what he had said about it could be dismissed as childish prattle. A dreamlike compulsion, coming upon him suddenly, and forcing him to go in search of it, as if drawn by a magnet. Powerless to resist, unable to break that mysterious binding influence. Not wanting to find it at all, but aware that he had been given no choice.

  Susan had joined us beneath the wreckage, ignoring the wishes of her mother, who had waved her back to make her son's recovery less of a problem. Another small child, hopping about in the sand, would have made it difficult for her to give all of her attention to what I'd just been saying to her son.

  But now she was looking at me as if I had added a new, unexpected complication by my two full minutes of silence.

  'Let him see what it was you picked up, John,' she said. 'Just open your hand and show it to him.

  You're making some strange mystery out of it, and so is he.

  I'd like to see it too. Then we'll all be happier.''I can't,' John said.

  'You can't what?' I demanded, startled by the look of astonishment and pain that had come into his eyes.

  'I can't move my fingers,' he said. 'I just found out. I didn't try before.'

  'Oh, that's nonsense,' I said. 'Listen to me, before you say anything even more foolish. You must have at least tried to move your fingers a dozen or more times before I rescued you. Just as often afterward.'He shook his head. 'That's not true.'

  'It has to be true. That's your right hand. You use it all the time. Everyone does.'

  'I can't move my fingers,' he reiterated. 'If I'd opened my hand it would have fallen out -'

  'I know all that,' I said. 'But you could have at least found out before this whether you could so much as move your fingers. It would have been a natural thing to do.'

  It had been difficult for me to think of his mother in a very special way, so over~vrought had she become since I had gone to his rescue. But something of the beach-temptress look had returned when her son had opened his eyes and had seemed no worse for the tragedy that almost overtaken him. But now she looked distraught again. Sudden fear flamed in her eyes.

  'Could it be - hysterical paralysis?' she asked. 'It can happen, I've been told, in quite young children.'

  'I don't think so,'. I said. 'Just try to stay calm. We'll know in a moment.'

  I took her son's hand, raised it, and looked at it closely. He made no protest. The fingers could not have been more tightly clenched. The nails, I felt, must be biting painfully into the flesh of his palms. His knuckles looked bluish.

  I began to work on his fingers, trying my best to force them open. I had no success for a moment.

  Then, gradually, they seemed to become more flexible and some of the stiffness went out of them.

  Quite suddenly his entire hand opened, as if my persistent tugging at each individual finger in turn had broken some kind of spell.

  The small object which rested on his palm did not seem to have been compressed or injured in any way by the tight constriction to which it had been subjected. I thought at first it was of metal, so brightly did it gleam in the sunlight. But when I picked it up and looked at it closely I saw that it was of some rubbery substance with merely the sheen of metal.

  I had never before looked at any inanimate object quite so horrible. Superficially it resembled a tiny many-tentacled octopus, but there was something, about it which would have made the ugliest of sea monsters seem merely fishlike in a slightly repulsive way. It had a countenance, of a sort, a shrivelled, sunken old man's face that was no more than suggestively human. Not a human face at all, really, but the suggestion was there, a hint, at least, of anthropoid intelligence of a wholly malignant nature. But the longer I stared at it the less human it seemed, until I began to feel that I had read into it something that wasn't there. Intelligence, yes - awareness of some kind, but so much the opposite of anthropoid that my mind reeled at trying to imagine what intelligence would be like if it was as cold as the dark night of space and could exercise a wholly merciless authority over every animate entity in the universe of stars.

  I looked at Helen Rathbourne and saw that she was trembling and had turned very pale. I had lowered my hand just enough to enable her to see it clearly, and I knew that her son had seen it again too. He said nothing, just looked at me as if, young as he was, the thought that such an object had been taken from his hand made him feel in some strange way contaminated.

  'You picked it up without knowing,' I wanted to shout at him. 'Forget it, child - blot it from your mind.

  I'll take it to the pool you almost drowned in and let it sink from sight, and we'll forget we ever saw it.'

  But before I could say a word to John or his mother, something began to happen to my hand. It began to happen even before I realized the object was attached to a rusted metal chain and had clearly been designed to be worn as an amulet around someone's neck.

  My fingers closed over it, contracting more and more until I was holding it in as tight a grip as John had done. I couldn't seem to open them again or hurl the object from me as I suddenly wanted to do.

  Something happened then to more than just my hand. Everything about me seemed subtly to change, the contours of near objects becoming less sharply silhouetted against the sky and more distant objects not only losing their sharpness, but seeming almost to dissolve. There was a roaring in my ears, and a strange, terrifying feeling of vastness, of emptiness - I can describe it in no other way - swept over me.

  Nothing actually vanished, nothing was gone, but I had the feeling that I was in two places at once suspended in some vast abyss of emptiness wider than the universe of stars, and still on the beach beneath the wreckage, with Helen Rathbourne, John, and Susan all looking at me in alarm.

  They were staring in alarm because I was moving, I felt, in some strange, almost unnatural way, as men and women were not supposed to move. Like some mindless automaton perhaps, a robot shape with no way of preserving its balance because its cybernetic brain had exploded into fragments and it could only stagger about in the grip of an utter mindlessness that was about to cause it to go crashing to the sand.

  Then my perceptions steadied a little, and when I looked down over myself I saw that no change had taken place in my physical body at least. But I had swung about and was walking towards the surf line.

  Nearer and nearer I came to it, and suddenly I was not alone. John had got to his feet, and both children were pursuing me across the sand. Their mother was following them, frantic with concern, but unable to catch up with them because they were running so fast to join me before I started wading out into the waves that were cresting into foam a few feet from shore.

  The instant they reached my side, my hand went out towards Susan and her small trembling fingers crept between mine. I could not give John my other hand, but he was not in need of support. He had become his sturdy young self again and was striding along very rapidly at my side. The water was swirling about my ankles, and Susan was stumbling a little because it had risen to her knees when I spoke the words that had not even formed in my mind, in a voice that I did not recognize as my own: 'The Deep Ones await their followers, and we must not f
ail to be present at the Great Awakening. It is written that all shall arise and join. We who carry the emblem and those who have looked upon it. From the ends of the earth the summons, the call has come and we must not delay.

  'In watery R'lyeh Great Cthulhu is stirring. ShubNiggurath! Yog-Sothoth! I~~! The Goat with a Thousand Young!'

  'He will be all right now,' the young resident physician was saying. 'I am sure he will be all right. It was your son who deserves all of the credit by prying that lost amulet from his hand just as he was about to go under, after lifting your daughter above the waves.'

  I could hear the voices clearly, although my head was still in a whirl. The crisp white hospital sheets had been so stiffly starched that they cut into the flesh of my throat when I tried to raise my head.

  So I gave up trying, and went on listening instead.

  'It's strange,' came in a voice I would have recognized if nothing had been left of me but a hollow shell, on the darkest of days, 'how quickly the children can become attached to a total stranger.

  Susan risked her life to save him, and so did my son. When he took that hideous thing from my son's hand and I saw it, I thought I was going to faint. I can't begin to tell you how unnerving it was.'

  'He didn't know about -'

  'How it came to be there? Apparently not. He just arrived at the inn this morning. Since it happened two weeks ago everyone had stopped talking about it. It was so horrible a thing that it doesn't surprise me in the least.'

  'The man was a member of an esoteric cult, I understand. A half-crazed, uncouth fellow with a waistlength beard. There were eight or ten of them roaming about here at one time, but now they have all disappeared. After what happened, it's not in the least surprising, as you say.'

  'I can't bear to think about it, even now. His body was dismembered, and horribly mangled. One of his legs was missing. He was found right where my son picked up the amulet, so it must have belonged to him. Of course everyone has a ready explanation for such horrors. Sheriff Wilcox believes that where the channel widens out by that demolished breakwater there is sufficient depth of water to provide a kind of swimming

  pool for a shark. And if he had stumbled and fallen -' 'Do you think he did?'

  'You either have to believe that, or that he went down deliberately into the water. Are you familiar with the writings of H. P. Lovecraft? He was a genius, of a sort. He resided in Providence until his death in 1937.'

  'Yes, I've read a few of his stories.'

  'Those bearded, uncouth cult members you mention must have read them all. Perhaps that's why they've disappeared. Perhaps they made the mistake of taking Lovecraft's stories a little too seriously.'

  'You can't really believe that.'

  'I don't quite know what I believe. Just suppose Lovecraft didn't put everything he knew or suspected into his stories. That would have left a quite wide margin for future exploration.'

  'Ah, yes,' the resident physician said. 'That's what he claimed before I gave him that second seconal injection. I'm sure he'll feel quite differently about all of this when he wakes up.'

  'I hope he doesn't feel differently about Susan's heroic, close to sacrificial act. Love for a total stranger.

  It's curious, but do you know - I can understand just why Susan felt that way about him.'

  It was what I'd been waiting to hear. I closed my eyes and started humming softly to myself, waiting for the second seconal to work.

  But when it drew me down, the seconal felt like water. Something like a shrivelled face came floating up from immeasurable distances, and I remembered my own words: 'It is written that all shall arise and join - we who carry the emblem and those who have looked upon it...'

  Shaft Number 247 by BASIL COPPER

  The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

  - H. P. LOVECRAFT

  Driscoll looked at the dial refiectively. The Control Room was silent except for the distant thumping of the dynamos. The dim lights gleamed reassuringly on the familiar faces of the instruments and on the curved metal of the roof, its massive nuts and bolts and girders holding back the tremendous weight of the earth above their heads. The green luminous digits of the triangular clock on the bulkhead pointed to midnight.

  It was the quietest part of the Watch. Driscoll shifted to a more comfortable position in his padded swivel armchair. He was a big man, whose hair was going a little white at the edges, but his features were still hard and firm, unblurred by time, though he must have been past fifty.

  He glanced across at Wainewright at the other side; he had the earphones clamped over his head and was turning one of his calibrating instruments anxiously. Driscoll smiled inwardly. But then Wainewright always had been the worrying type. He could not have been more than twenty-nine, yet he looked older than Driscoll with his lean, strained features, his straggly moustache, and the hair that was already thinning and receding.

  Driscoll's gaze rested just a fraction on his colleague, drifted on to bring into focus a bank of instruments with large easy-read dials on the far bulkhead, and finally came to rest on the red-painted lettering of the alarm board situated to his front and in a commanding position. The repeater screen below contained fortyfive flickering blue images, which showed the state of the alarm boards in the farthest corners of the complex for which Driscoll, as Captain of the Watch, was responsible; All was normal. But then it always was. Driscoll shrugged and turned his attention to the desk in front of him. He filled in the log with a luminous radionic pencil. Still two hours to go. But he had to admit that he liked the night duty better than the day. The word 'enjoy' was frowned on nowadays, but the word was appropriate to Driscoll's state; he actually enjoyed this Watch. It was quiet, almost private, and that was a decreasing quality in life.

  His musings were interrupted by a sharp, sibilant exclamation from Wainewright.

  'Some activity in Shaft 639? he reported, swivelling to look at the Captain of the Watch with watery blue eyes.

  Driscoll shook his head, a thin smile on his lips. 'It's nothing. Some water in the shaft, probably.'

  Wainewright tightened his mouth. 'Perhaps... Even so, it ought to be reported.'

  Driscoll stiflened on the seat and looked at the thin man; the other was the first to drop his eyes.

  'You have reported it,' he said gently. 'And I say it is water in the shaft.'

  He snapped on the log entries, read them off the illuminated repeater on the bulkhead.

  'There have been seventeen similar reports in the past year. Water each time.'

  Wainewright hunched over his instruments; his shoulders heaved as though he had difficulty in repressing his emotions. Driscoll looked at him sharply. It might be time to make a report on Wainewright. He would wait a little longer. No sense in being too precipitate.

  'Shaft clear,' Wainewright mumbled presently.

  He went on making a play of checking instruments, throwing switches, examining dials, avoiding Driscoll's eye.

  Driscoll sat back in his chair again. He looked at the domed metal roof spreading its protective shell over them; its rivets and studs winking and throwing back the lights from the instrument dials and the shaded lamps. He mentally reviewed Wainewright's case, sifting and evaluating the facts as he knew them.

  The man was beginning to show signs of psychotic disturbance. Driscoll could well understand this.

  They did not know what was out there, that was the trouble. He had over forty miles of galleries and communicating tunnels alone in the section under his own command, for example. But still, that did not excuse him. They had to proceed on empirical methods. He yawned slightly, looked again at the time.

  He thought of his relief without either expectation or regret; he was quite without emotion, unlike Wainewright. Unlike Wainewright again, well suited to his exacting task. He would not be Captain of the Watch otherwise. Even when he was relieved he would not seek his bunk. He would descend to the canteen for coffee and food before
joining Karlson for a brief session of chess.

  He frowned. He had just thought of Deems again. He thrust the image of Deems from his mind. It flickered momentarily, then disappeared. It was no good; it had been two years now, but it still came back occasionally. He remembered, too, that he had been Wainewright's particular friend; that probably explained his jumpiness lately. Nevertheless, he would need watching.

  He pursed his lips and bent forward, watching the bright green )~encil of tracery on the tube in front of him. He pressed the voice button, and Hort's cavernous voice filled the Control Room.'Condition Normal, I hope!'

  There was a jovial edge to his query; the pronouncement was intended to be a joke, and Driscoll permitted himself a smile of about three millimeters in width. That would satisfy Hort, who was not really a humorous man. There was no point in knocking himself out for someone so devoid of the absurd in his makeup.

  'Nothing to report,' he called back in the same voice. Hort nodded. Driscoll could see his multi-imaged form flickering greenly at the corner of his vision, but he did not look directly at it. He knew that annoyed Hort, and it pleased him to make these small gestures of independence.

  'I'd like to see you when you come off Watch,' Hort went on.

  He had a slightly sardonic look on his thin face now. Driscoll nodded.

  'I'll be there,' he said laconically.

  He waved a perfunctory hand, and the vision on the tube wavered and died, a tiny rain of green sparks remaining against the blackness before dying out.

  He was aware of Wainewright's troubled eyes seeking his own; he ignored the other man and concentrated instead on a printout which was just coming through. It was a routine check, he soon saw and he leaned back, his sharp eyes sweeping across the serried ranks of instruments, his ears alert for even the slightest aberration in the smooth chatter of the machinery.

  He wondered idly what Hort might want with him. Probably nothing of real importance, but it was best to be prepared; he pressed the repeater valve on the desk in front of him, instantly memorizing the latest data that was being constantly fed in by a wide stream of instruments. There were only three sets of numbers of any importance; he scratched these on to his pad and kept it ready at his elbow.