Dark Tales From the Secret War

by John Houlihan

  “I’m afraid I don’t get the joke,” Blackburn said.

  “Think strategically,” Calvert explained, happy to be ahead of the professor for once. “This war is all about reach. If the ocean is spitting up new islands, the Japanese have an opportunity to build new runways. If they had runways at all these places marked on the big map, some of their bombers could threaten Australia. Even if the runway stayed in place for just a few months, they could wreak havoc.”

  “And the punch line?” Blackburn prompted.

  The lieutenant shrugged. “The Japanese will do anything they’re told, no matter how crazy it might seem. Tell a Japanese soldier to water the flowers, and he’ll do it even if it’s raining out. The thought of the Japanese building runways on unstable islands that then collapse back into the sea is funny, from a certain point of view.”

  “Well, then,” the professor said, “this is our chance to see what exactly is going on, and how stable such a runway might be, or if there’s any other use for the islands. For once, we’ll have first crack at one of these sites.”

  * * *

  As the sun rose, the M/V Copperhead continued its inexorable crawl toward the point marked on the map. The crew slept and ate on deck as the professor had taken over the galley, where he had passed the rest of the night poring over his books and notes. A cry of “Land, ho!” jerked his attention from his reading, and he made his way to the bridge. The sea was calm, and Blackburn could not see anything other than early morning fog hovering over the water.

  “Why did he call out?” Blackburn complained. “You can’t see a blasted thing through this fog.”

  “Don’t get frustrated, Professor,” van Garrett chirped over her mug of coffee. “They can see quite a bit further than we can from up in the crow’s nest.”

  Blackburn craned his neck to look up at the small platform on the mast, some distance over the deck. The sailor manning it saw him looking, but promptly ignored him and went back to scanning the horizon. The professor kept staring into the distance, and soon enough he saw the outline of a small mountain coalesce. As they drew nearer, he could see more detail, and determined it was less a mountain than a high hill on the far side of a considerable land mass.

  “It’s enormous,” he gasped.

  “Yes, it is,” Calvert agreed. “Quite a bit larger than the others you told us about. At least a mile across, maybe more.”

  The hill thrust up at the back of the new island, and then sloped down to what looked like a rocky beach. Two headlands protruded from each side of the beach, seeming to make a natural harbour.

  “Right, then,” Blackburn said. “Let’s put ashore on the beach, and see what else we can find out.”

  Calvert glared at him. “I’ll give the orders here, Professor.”

  The helmsman looked from the professor to the lieutenant, then asked carefully, “Your orders, sir?”

  “Make for that harbour. We’ll put ashore in canoes.”

  The shore party set out in three canoes, Calvert paddling the professor in one, Private Austen paddling the doctor in another. The Maori sailor, Rapata, paddled the third alone, loaded with the professor’s equipment. The beach was a mix of rocky sand and broken coral, and once they pulled the canoes up and disembarked, they saw that the rest of the island looked just as desolate.

  “This is very exciting!” Blackburn exclaimed. He immediately strode forward through the surf, making straight for the high hill at the back of the island.

  Rapata laid a hand on the professor’s shoulder, and forced him down onto his knees.

  “Quiet, little man. Security first.”

  Calvert and Austen were both on their knees, weapons up, surveying the island before them. The doctor casually leaned against a canoe, watchful, but making no move to hurry ashore.

  Austen hoisted his rifle, a US-made M1 Garand. It looked as if the heavy rifle would topple the slight young man over, but he handled it confidently enough. Calvert carried a shortened commando version of the venerable British Lee-Enfield.

  Blackburn sighed. “Is all that really necessary, Lieutenant? No one’s here.”

  “Security is my area of responsibility, Professor. We’re setting foot on an uncharted island that we know the Japanese are interested in, and I’m going to make sure it’s safe. Rapata, Private Austen and I will take the lead. You and the doctor will follow us. We’ll get you your survey, but not before we decide it’s safe.”

  Rapata did not appear equipped for security detail. He was dressed in the traditional garb of his people, which was to say not much at all. He wore little more than a loincloth, which revealed well-toned muscles and tattoos of swirling waves and sea creatures on his left shoulder and arm. He wore a large knife on his belt, and carried a short, sturdy spear with a leaf-shaped blade the size of his hand. The two more conventionally armed soldiers finished their scan of the area, and at a nod from Calvert, Rapata sprang up and sprinted forward. The beach was littered with large stones and small boulders, which grew in size further inland. Rapata slipped in amongst them, and Blackburn watched him gradually disappear from view as he dodged between the larger rocks, spear at the ready. Blackburn fidgeted as the two soldiers, weapons ready, continued scanning inland whilst van Garrett sat coolly surveying the men.

  “Professor of what, exactly?” she asked him, never taking her eyes off the island.

  “Anthropology. But also history and linguistics,” he said. He glanced at her, but his impatient gaze was drawn back to the hill at the back of the island as he cleaned his spectacles.

  “Professor,” the doctor said, “the boys take our safety very seriously. Let them do their job.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I’ve not been in the field on many missions like this. I’m used to getting to a site and getting right to work. Might I ask how you ended up here, doctor?”

  She shrugged. “Harvard Medical School. Marriage. Divorce. An unwillingness on the part of hospitals to hire female doctors, let alone divorced female doctors. The Australians have proven quite practical. They’ve always been grateful for my skills, and unconcerned about my past.”

  “I suppose Australians would be. Unconcerned about a person’s past, I mean. It was founded as a penal colony, you know.”

  She smiled, but wasn’t sure if it he was pointing out an interesting fact or simply engaging in dry British humour.

  Rapata reappeared, spear aloft, and waved the others on. The soldiers sprinted toward him as Blackburn stumbled to keep up.

  “Lieutenant, my equipment!”

  Calvert ignored him, eyes and weapon scanning for potential threats.

  The doctor answered. “We’ll come back for it after an initial survey of the island. Let’s move up and see this hill.”

  The group advanced, Rapata scouting ahead, the soldiers leapfrogging past each other as one provided cover and the other moved, and the doctor following at a more leisurely pace. Blackburn brought up the rear, skittering back and forth between rocks, peering at them very closely.

  The doctor smiled at him. “Keep up, Professor. Let the soldiers do their job, and then they’ll let you do yours.”

  “It’s not that,” he said, eyes firmly on the rock he was studying. “These rocks all seem… wrong.”

  He opened his mouth to say more, then saw the doctor staring at the heart of the island, mouth agape. The professor followed her gaze. There, on this island recently thrust up from the sea, a place no humans had ever touched, stood a building.

  Calvert crouched by a boulder, Private Austen a few feet away, weapons trained on the building. It was made of a dense, grey stone, and they could see seams where the stones had been stacked uniformly. An entrance was carved in the side. While it was clear the structure was a building, and the entrance in the side was some sort of doorway, it looked like no building any of them had ever seen before.

  Calvert turned to the professor, who stood gawking at the structure, and yanked him down.

  “I thought we were the
first ones here?!” he hissed.

  “I thought so, too,” said the professor. “I didn’t imagine the stories were true.”

  “Professor, I’ll do what the Old Bird said, but if you’re holding out on me, I cannot do my job. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  Blackburn rubbed his jaw. “I wasn’t being entirely accurate when I said that indigenous people were going missing. Many have gone missing, but we’ve managed to spot a handful. They’ve been on the move recently, trying to resettle their people on different islands away from these events. They say the islands bring bad luck, and bad magic. They say these islands make people sick. And they say that, after a while, the ones who use these temples —” he pointed to the building, “— come back.”

  “We thought it was a mix of tribal superstition and exaggerated tales of the Japanese military. Many of these tribes on these small islands have had little or no contact with the modern world, so to them, a patrol boat or airplane must seem like something sent by the gods. But we’ve seen other things too. Some natives tried to move onto the new islands on a temporary basis, then used them to expand their fishing grounds. They’ve been getting sick, losing hair, teeth falling out, that sort of thing. And we’ve heard reports of the Japanese suffering the same things on their surveys.”

  “Good Lord!” Calvert’s gaze snapped onto the professor. “Is this place radioactive?”

  “There’s no indication it’s radioactive. But we don’t know what’s causing these incidents, and we must try to find out. If there’s something here that’s dangerous, we need to know about it. Command fears that whatever it is, the Japanese are trying to make a weapon of it. We need to know what we’re facing.”

  Calvert glared at the professor. “I thought this was about runways.”

  “That was your conclusion, Lieutenant, not mine.”

  With that, Blackburn stood up and suddenly sprinted towards the temple, Calvert’s curses following him. The rest of the party followed, surprised at the intellectual’s burst of speed. They all stopped at the doorway.

  The temple was rounded, with a single portal opening on the shadowy interior. It sat on a plain of rock still holding puddles of seawater, and awash with shells, starfish and anemones. The professor paused by the entrance, and began tracing a series of grooves on the walls with his hands. The grooves were a series of wavy lines, as if they had been carved with a rake that had four closely spaced tines. They were uniform, and set in a clear pattern with some of the smaller patterns repeating themselves.

  “My God,” Blackburn gasped, wonder filling his voice. “It’s writing!”

  “Not like any I’ve ever seen,” van Garrett said.

  “Children of the sea,” Rapata said softly.

  Professor Blackburn started at that. “Witnesses have described these places as belonging to the ‘children of the sea’ before. Why did you use those particular words?”

  Rapata shrugged. “My people tell many stories of the children of the sea. They moved among my people long ago, and they taught us many things. And then they left, leaving nothing behind.”

  Blackburn shifted his gaze to the Maori’s arm, and his eyes widened. “Your tattoo! Tell me about it.”

  Calvert looked closely at the tattoo, and saw what had prompted Blackburn’s exclamation. The swirling waves were drawn in the same manner as the marks on the temple wall, and some of the patterns even repeated in exactly the same manner. Others were similar, and still others bore no resemblance at all. But overall the similarities were striking. It was as if one person had taught another to write words in a language he did not know, and he had reproduced it many years later, managing to keep the strokes and style of the characters.

  “My grandfather tattooed me on my day of manhood,” Rapata explained. “He said the waves were the voice of the sea, and he tattooed them on me so I would always have the voice of the sea with me. He said the sea would always recognize me because I spoke with that same voice.”

  “Had you seen this pattern before?” the professor asked.

  “No. My grandfather said he had seen it once on an island far away, when he was a young man.”

  “Rapata, is it possible your grandfather visited an island, like this one, that came out of the sea?” Blackburn asked.

  “He said it was so. My grandfather roamed the ocean, and many thought him mad and accused him of telling lies. But I believed him when he said he had visited the house of the children of the sea.”

  Calvert spoke. “Professor, it seems these ‘children of the sea’ are not Japanese at all in origin. Is there anything else you know that can help us?”

  Blackburn shrugged. “Not really. The tales of these children of the sea are jumbled up with tribal mythology and tales of ancient war chiefs. They could describe a technologically advanced race the tribe had encountered, or a god, or any number of phenomena.”

  “I’m more concerned about getting sick and dying if I go in this temple,” Calvert said.

  “I shouldn’t think so. The people get sick only if they are on the island for an extended period of time. Days and weeks. Shorter exposure seems to have no effect.”

  Without waiting for further conversation, Blackburn lit his torch and darted inside, once again surprising the others with his speed and forcing them to hurry to keep up.

  Upon entering, a short stairwell took them down into the structure. It soon became obvious the whole building was composed of one room — a single great hall. Slender pillars ran along either side. The ground was featureless stone, worn smooth, but still holding some puddles of seawater. The walls were overgrown with plants and coral, and appeared all the more lush after the barrenness of the island’s surface. The coral grew in a riot of shapes, sizes and textures. Some patches were so soft and delicate-looking they could have been feathers, whilst others appeared dense and rigid as stone. As the party’s eyes strained to make sense of the byzantine patchwork, they saw that some corals were even emitting soft, bioluminescent light. Delicate blues and teals dominated, but some corners had soft purples and cold, Arctic greens. Amongst the glowing corals, various undersea plants and vines filled yet more space.

  Private Austen held his weapon at the ready, but a look of wonder covered his face as he peered around. “Why isn’t anything growing on the ground?” he asked. “Or on the surface of this island? Why just on the walls in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Blackburn conceded. “It’s certainly curious, isn’t it? It actually reminds me of something… ah, yes! Gardens! It almost looks like it’s been cultivated as an undersea garden! It’s amazing, isn’t it? And the implications! My God, think of the intelligence that must have put this together!”

  A sharp intake of breath drew their gaze to Doctor van Garrett, who stood at the far end of the chamber.

  “It’s a garden, all right,” she said. “Come and look from over here.”

  Crossing the room, they saw it immediately. The different textures, colours and plants all appeared to have been arranged with the utmost care. The entire amalgamation was one large mural, with corals and plants used as texture and shading, to chronicle all manner of stories the party could hardly comprehend. From a great blue circle in the centre of the ceiling poured forth the now-familiar four-lined waves, and a multitude of fish and animals. Whales and giant squid fought, sharks pursued game fish, and other sharks in turn were eaten by larger, stranger creatures the like of which they had never seen. But the main panel showed stories of men: Their rise from apes, their wars with each other, and a series of maddeningly vague panels that seemed to show men entwined with strange creatures.

  Rapata pointed; those strange creatures were formed of the swirling pattern on the door and his tattoos. “Children of the sea,” he said reverently.

  “Indeed,” Blackburn said. “But the picture is hard to interpret.”

  “They’re fighting,” Calvert said matter-of-factly.

  “Are they?” Blackburn asked. “Or are they mating?”


  Van Garrett laughed. “Why can’t it be both? That kind of describes my first marriage.”

  Calvert laughed too. “I can relate to that. So, Doctor, which one are you? The human or the… child of the sea?”

  She opened her mouth to answer when a cry of ‘Sir!’ drew their attention. Private Austen stood at the very back of the hall, shining his torch into what appeared to be another small chamber. The space was too small to fit them all, but a pedestal of coral sat with a slowly undulating form hovering over it. Like an amoeba, its outline was transparent, shifting and indistinct, and at its heart was a perfect, azure sphere that glowed enticingly.

  What the strange globe was made of, they couldn’t say. It had the dark blue-purple hue of the ocean as viewed from an airplane, and it was hard to tell if it was solid or liquid. An iridescent quality, similar to that of a pearl, made it look solid, but a slight ripple on its surface indicated a liquid. Or was that a result of the odd light in this place, which seemed to subtly shift on its own?

  “What in the blazes is that?” Calvert whispered.

  “I’m not sure,” Blackburn said. “Though whatever it is, you probably don’t need to point your rifle at it. Neither do you, Private Austen.”

  Both men reluctantly lowered their weapons. Van Garrett turned to study the mural again.

  “Is it just me, or is that the same blue thing on the mural that shows everything coming out of it?” she asked.

  Before anyone could answer, and to their great surprise, the professor reached out and grabbed the blue sphere. It pulsed with light and, as they watched, its clear body seemed to break away from the pedestal and collect in Blackburn’s hand. He sucked in a breath, and when he exhaled, a cold fog wafted from his mouth.

  “Oh, my — the Heart of the Sea,” he gasped, collapsing.

  As the doctor dashed forward to help him, Calvert heard the unmistakeable chattering rattle of machine gun fire followed by explosions.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Calvert swore, and began barking orders.

  “Doctor, take care of the Professor. Rapata, help her move him, and then join us. Private Austen, on me.”