The Doom That Came to Dunwich

by Richard A. Lupoff

  “And ours begins,” the naval officer took over. His uniform sleeves bore the broad gold stripes of a rear admiral. “Captain Kinne, are your men ready to get the bomb stowed in Quinalt Victory Monday evening? ONI insists that we do the loading at night, but it must be finished in time to catch the late tide out of the Golden Gate.” The admiral cast a sharp look at Marston. “Dr. Marston has provided all the information we’ll need to get Quinalt Victory safely out of the Bay and on her way by midnight?”

  The utterance was worded as a statement but spoken as a question.

  “We have everything, sir,” Keeler furnished.

  “All right. Let’s go over the complete plan again,” The admiral growled. “There must be no slip-ups, I can’t emphasize that too much.”

  They spent the rest of the day going over the details of unloading the special bomb from its railroad car and loading it into the hold of the Quinalt Victory without a hitch. A squad of white-jacketed mess-men served coffee and rolls at midmorning and a full meal at noon. No one left the meeting for any reason. Marston was able to pass up the coffee and rolls but by lunch time he was forced to consume a few sips of beverage and half a sandwich. This disgusted him.

  When the meeting ended he drove into Port Chicago. He had seen the town fleetingly each day but today for the first time he parked his Cord and walked through the town. He found a motion picture theater and purchased a ticket. They were running a long program, the dramatic film Lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead and Canada Lee, the lightweight Bathing Beauty with Esther Williams, a newsreel and a chapter of “Crash” Corrigan’s old serial, Undersea Kingdom.

  Once inside he settled into a seat and unlaced his shoes, finding a modicum of relief for his aching feet. He leaned back and studied the neon-ringed clock mounted high on one wall of the auditorium. Most of the patrons were servicemen in uniform, whiling away their off-duty hours. None of them were colored, of course. Negroes were excluded from the theater and from the town’s plain restaurants. They had to find their own entertainment, or make it.

  Marston ignored the images on the screen and closed his eyes. Images of undersea life swam through his mind, the peace and serenity of the submarine world contrasting with the pain and violence that dominated the world of the land-dwellers.

  After a while he opened his eyes and glanced at the illuminated clock-face. Even in the long July evening, darkness would have fallen by now.

  He drove back to the naval base, showed his pass to the gate-guard, and parked as near to the water’s edge as he could. He carefully locked the Cord and walked to the base of the pier. A special guard had been placed there, and even Marston’s special pass could not gain him access to the pier.

  Instead he walked back to his car, unlocked the door and climbed inside. He disrobed, left the car again, and walked undiscovered to the edge of the Bay. He slipped into the Bay and swam away from the shore.

  He made his way to the cold, flowing water that he knew came from the Sacramento River. The river water had less flavor than the Bay water. With a start Marston realized that he had never experienced the richness of the Pacific. He turned to swim with the current. His anticipation of the new experience filled him with an almost sexual excitement.

  When he reached the submarine net at the mouth of San Francisco Bay he paused briefly, then pulled himself through it into the ocean. He was terrified but soon calmed himself. He had undergone a rite of passage, he felt, had experienced a sea change. He would explore farther in later days, he decided, but for now he felt emotionally drained and physically exhausted.

  He turned and began the long swim back to Suisun Bay.

  He had seen fewer of the human-like creatures than usual on this night, but as he approached Port Chicago they became more numerous. He was beginning to learn their language and felt eager to converse with them, find out who or what they were, but they kept their distance from him this night, and instead of joining them he continued on his solitary way.

  In time he recognized the submerged landmarks that told him he was at his destination. He had been swimming along the sea bottom, insulated by fathoms of brackish water from the world of men, immune from the noisome companionship of air breathers and land dwellers. He rose slowly toward the top of the water. He was shocked as he breached to realize that he had spent the entire night under water. The brilliant sun now blasted down from a bright blue sky.

  He made his way to his Cord, drove home and slept around the clock. He awoke Sunday morning and spent the day in seclusion, sustaining himself with alcohol and music. After dark he made his way to the nearby stream and stood in it, letting its waters soothe his feet. He went home and slept, dreaming once more of an undersea city, and rose late on Monday. He hadn’t realized how far he had swum on Friday night, or how exhausted the effort had left him. Still, the experience had been an exhilarating one and he looked forward to spending even more time beneath the surface, to travelling farther into the ocean.

  When he reached Port Chicago on Monday the transfer of the bomb from railroad freight car to the hold of Quinalt Victory was well under way. Marston’s expertise had been of immense value, he would be told. He encountered Captain Kinne himself on the pier and the usually stern Kinne recognized him and thanked him for his assistance.

  Powerful electric vapor-lights had been rigged to illuminate the operation once the sun had set and their peculiar glare gave the faces of the men on the pier, both white and colored, a ghostly look.

  Marston walked to the end of the pier. When he turned back toward the center of activity he saw that all eyes were fixed on the delicate work at the Quinalt Victory. He checked his wristwatch and saw that it was ten o’clock. Bright moonlight was reflected off the surface of the Bay.

  Instead of climbing down the ladder to the water’s surface, Marston left his clothing in its usual neat pile, stood on the edge of the pier, and dived into the Bay. He swam to the seabed, taking delicious water in and passing it through his gills, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the faint phosphorescence that provided illumination in this world.

  He turned to observe the hull of the Quinalt Victory. He was astonished at the number of human-like forms moving around the ship, gesturing meaningfully to one another, attaching something, something, to the metal hull of the Quinalt Victory.

  Marston swam toward the ship, curious as to what the creatures were doing. This was the first time he had seen them using anything that looked like machinery. As he drew closer several of the creatures turned and swam toward him. As they approached he realized that they were like him in every way. The wide mouth and triangular teeth, the splayed limbs, the webbed hands and feet, the hooked claws, the oversized eyes and flattened noses.

  How had he managed to pass among men until now? How had his alienness gone undetected? The scarf and dark glasses had helped but surely he would be caught out soon if he tried to continue his masquerade as human. He raised a hand and gestured, showing these aquatic beings that he was one of them, telling them in their own language, a language which he was just beginning to comprehend, that he was not a human, not a land-dweller.

  He was not the enemy.

  He was shocked by a brilliant flash from the Quinalt Victory, a glare that seemed as bright as the sun. Marston felt a shock wave, felt its unimaginable, crushing pressure as it reached him. Then, even before he could react, there was a second flash, this one brighter than a thousand suns, and a second shock wave infinitely greater than the first. But he felt it for only the most fleeting of moments, and then he felt nothing more.

  *

  Historic Note

  At 10:20 PM, Monday, July 17, 1944, a huge explosion occurred at Port Chicago, California. Two ships were moored at the loading pier of the naval station there. The E. A. Bryan was fully loaded and ready to leave for the Pacific theater of operations with a huge cargo of high explosives and military equipment. The Quinalt Victory, a brand new vessel built at the Kaiser Shipyard in nearby Richmond, California, was prepa
ring to take on its own cargo.

  Some 320 individuals were killed in the explosion, most of them African-American stevedores. An additional 400 persons were injured. A common form of injury was blindness caused by flying splinters of window-glass in naval barracks. The main explosion was preceded by a rumble or smaller explosion, reports differing, which drew many off-duty stevedores to the windows to see what had caused the sound.

  The brilliant flash, the roar of the explosion, and the shaking of the earth that resulted, were seen, heard, and felt as far away as the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

  The Bryan, the Quinalt Victory, the loading pier, the railroad spur running along the pier, and the ammunition train that was parked on the pier at the time, were all totally destroyed. The town of Port Chicago was obliterated and a visitor to its site today will find only a few forlorn street markers to show where once a community thrived.

  While official statements about the disaster aver only to the high explosives which had been loaded in the E. A. Bryan, critics in later years suggested that the explosion was nuclear in nature. In the summer of 1944 the atomic bomb was top secret and the very existence of the Manhattan Project was shrouded in layers of security. But once the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, speculation began that more than dynamite had been involved in the Port Chicago disaster.

  If the Port Chicago explosion was indeed nuclear in nature, further speculation is divided between those who believe the explosion was accidental in origin, or was in fact a test by the United States government to measure the effects of a nuclear bomb. Certainly the weapons base at Port Chicago would have made a fine test subject, with ships, a railroad spur, temporary and permanent buildings, and many hundreds of expendable human subjects.

  Perhaps the Port Chicago explosion was a nuclear accident. If so, it represented a major setback to the American nuclear weapons project. The successful Alamogordo test did not take place until July 16, 1945, one day short of a year after the Port Chicago explosion. Nuclear weapons were exploded in the air over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month, bringing about the end of the Second World War and providing an object lesson for Josef Stalin.

  Where the Port Chicago naval weapons depot once stood, there is now the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a major loading area for the United States Pacific Fleet. The storage of nuclear weapons in barrow-like bunkers at the naval weapons station, while not officially acknowledged by the US government, is one of the most ill-kept secrets of our era.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE VOORISH SIGN

  It was by far the most severe winter London had known in human memory, perhaps since the Romans had founded their settlement of Londinium nearly two millennia ago. Storms had swept down from the North Sea, cutting off the Continent and blanketing the great metropolis with thick layers of snow that were quickly blackened by the choking fumes of ten thousand charcoal braziers, turning to a treacherous coating of ice when doused with only slightly warmer peltings of sleet.

  Even so, Holmes and I were snug in our quarters at 221B Baker Street. The fire had been laid, we had consumed a splendid dinner of meat pasties and red cabbage served by the ever-reliable Mrs. Hudson, and I found myself dreaming over an aged brandy and a pipe while Holmes devoted himself to his newest passion.

  He had raided our slim exchequer for sufficient funds to purchase one of Mr. Emile Berliner’s new gramophones, imported by Harrods of Brompton Road. He had placed one of Mr. Berliner’s new disk recordings on the machine, advertised as a marked improvement over the traditional wax cylinders. But the sounds that emerged from the horn were neither pleasant nor tuneful to my ears. Instead they were of a weird and disquieting nature, seemingly discordant yet suggestive of strange harmonies which it would be better not to understand.

  As I was about to ask Holmes to shut off the contraption, the melody came to an end and Holmes removed the needle from its groove.

  Holmes pressed an upraised finger against his thin lips and sharply uttered my name. “Watson!” he repeated as I lowered my pipe. The brandy snifter had very nearly slipped from my grasp, but I was able to catch it in time to prevent a disastrous spill.

  “What is it, Holmes?” I inquired.

  “Listen!”

  He held one hand aloft, an expression of intense concentration upon his saturnine features. He nodded toward the shuttered windows which gave out upon Baker Street.

  “I hear nothing except the whistle of the wind against the eaves,” I told him.

  “Listen more closely.”

  I tilted my head, straining to hear whatever it was that had caught Holmes’s attention. There was a creak from below, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing, and a rapping of knuckles against solid wood, the latter sound muffled as by thin cloth.

  I looked at Holmes, who pressed a long finger against his lips, indicating that silence was required. He nodded toward our door, and in a few moments I heard the tread of Mrs. Hudson ascending to our lodging. Her sturdy pace was accompanied by another, light and tentative in nature.

  Holmes drew back our front door to reveal our landlady, her hand raised to knock. “Mr. Holmes!” she gasped.

  “Mrs. Hudson, I see that you have brought with you Lady Fairclough of Pontefract. Will you be so kind as to permit Lady Fairclough to enter, and would you be so good as to brew a hot cup of tea for my lady. She must be suffering from her trip through this wintry night.”

  Mrs. Hudson turned away and made her way down the staircase while the slim young woman who had accompanied her entered our sitting room with a series of long, graceful strides. Behind her, Mrs. Hudson had carefully placed a carpetbag valise upon the floor.

  “Lady Fairclough.” Holmes addressed the newcomer. “May I introduce my associate, Dr. Watson. Of course you know who I am, which is why you have come to seek my assistance. But first, please warm yourself by the fire. Dr. Watson will fetch a bottle of brandy with which we will fortify the hot tea that Mrs. Hudson is preparing.”

  The newcomer had not said a word, but her face gave proof of her astonishment that Holmes had known her identity and home without being told. She wore a stylish hat trimmed in dark fur and a carefully tailored coat with matching decorations at collar and cuffs. Her feet were covered in boots that disappeared beneath the lower hem of her coat.

  I helped her off with her outer garment. By the time I had placed it in our closet, Lady Fairclough was comfortably settled in our best chair, holding slim hands toward the cheerily dancing flames. She had removed her gloves and laid them with seemingly careless precision across the wooden arm of her chair.

  “Mr. Holmes,” she said in a voice that spoke equally of cultured sensitivity and barely repressed terror, “I apologize for disturbing you and Dr. Watson at this late hour, but — ”

  “There is no need for apologies, Lady Fairclough. On the contrary, you are to be commended for having the courage to cross the Atlantic in the midst of winter, and the captain of the steamship Murania is to be congratulated for having negotiated the crossing successfully. It is unfortunate that our customs agents delayed your disembarkation as they did, but now that you are here, perhaps you will enlighten Dr. Watson and myself as to the problem which has beset your brother, Mr. Philip Llewellyn.”

  If Lady Fairclough had been startled by Holmes’s recognizing her without introduction, she was clearly amazed beyond my meager powers of description by this statement. She raised a hand to her cheek, which showed a smoothness of complexion and grace of curve in the flattering glow of the dancing flames. “Mr. Holmes,” she exclaimed, “how did you know all that?”

  “It was nothing, Lady Fairclough, one need merely keep one’s senses on the alert and one’s mind active.” A glance that Holmes darted in my direction was not welcome, but I felt constrained from protesting in the presence of a guest and potential client.

  “So you say, Mr. Holmes, but I have read of your exploits and in many cases they seem little short of supernatural,” Lady Faircloug
h replied.

  “Not in the least. Let us consider the present case. Your valise bears the paper label of the Blue Star Line. The Murania and the Lemuria are the premiere ocean liners of the Blue Star Line, alternating upon the easterly and westerly transatlantic sea-lanes. Even a fleeting glance at the daily shipping news indicates that the Murania was due in Liverpool early this morning. If the ship made port at even so late an hour as ten o’clock, in view of the fact that the rail journey from Liverpool to London requires a mere two hours, you should have reached our city by noon. Another hour at most from the rail terminus to Baker Street would have brought you to our door by one o’clock this afternoon. And yet,” concluded Holmes, glancing at the ormolu clock that rested upon our mantel, “you arrive at the surprising hour of ten o’clock post meridian.”

  “But, Holmes,” I interjected, “Lady Fairclough may have had other errands to perform before coming to us.”

  “No, Watson, no. I fear that you have failed to draw the proper inference from that which you have surely observed. You did note, did you not, that Lady Fairclough has brought her carpetbag with her?”

  I plead guilty to the charge.

  “Surely, had she not been acting in great haste, Lady Fairclough would have gone to her hotel, refreshed herself, and left her luggage in her quarters there before traveling to Baker Street. The fact that she has but one piece of luggage with her gives further testimony to the urgency with which she departed her home in Canada. Now, Watson, what could have caused Lady Fairclough to commence her trip in such haste?”

  I shook my head. “I confess that I am at a loss.”

  “It was but eight days ago that the Daily Mail carried a dispatch marked Marthyr Tydhl, a town situated on the border of England and Wales, concerning the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Philip Llewellyn. There would have been time for word to reach Lady Fairclough in Pontefract by transatlantic cable. Fearing that delay in traveling to the port and boarding the Murania would cause intolerable delay, Lady Fairclough had her maid pack the fewest possible necessities in her carpetbag. She then made her way to Halifax, whence the Murania departed, and upon reaching Liverpool this morning would have made her way at once to London. Yet she arrived some nine hours later than she might have been expected to do. Since our rail service remains uninterrupted in even the most severe of climatic conditions, it can only have been the customs service, equally notorious for their punctilio and their dilatory conduct, which could be responsible.”