World War Cthulhu: A Collection of Lovecraftian War Stories Page 7

  Chilton gazed down at the object resting at his feet.

  The Sea Hag was empty. All that remained was her captain, who stood on deck, waiting to go down with a ship that remained afloat.

  ***

  To live is sometime to die, to leave behind the world you once knew and to journey, transformed, into the Hell of displacement, separated from everything you knew and loved. This was the hero’s journey, and the course on which Chilton was unknowingly traveling, as the Sea Hag sliced through the ocean waves toward that locus of nightmares.

  Just as he had returned home, he arrived again at his destination, alone on an empty ship. He consulted the chart spread out on the deck, checking his sextant one last time, then dropped anchor.

  Chilton went to the railing and discarded his pistol in the water, then his compass, and finally his club, testing its heft one last time before casting it into the sea.

  With great effort, he unmoored a cannon and dragged it to the center of the upper deck. He sponged out the bore and dried it with great care, then packed the chamber with an extra portion of black powder and wadding, before loading the heaviest ball on ship. He cut the wick of the slow match short and wound the strands tight.

  Leaning against the cold iron of the neck, Chilton reached into his pack, pulling out a small crown. By its size, it could have been a tin children’s toy, or a priceless diadem for a boy king, made of intricately intersecting wires of pure white gold. He removed the white feather from his lapel and stuck it into the top of the crown, before placing it on his head. Then he slowly disrobed, piling his unwashed clothing into a heap that he sprinkled with gunpowder and set ablaze from the lantern he placed nearby.

  His offerings made to the sea, and the signal fire set, Chilton waited.

  It didn’t take long. Just enough time for the sun to set over the land behind him, washing the thin clouds in pink and yellow, and once again merging sea and sky.

  Then they were there, emerging from every concealed spot on the ship and standing in a loose formation. Like a military raiding party.

  Chilton got to his feet, his naked flesh quivering in the biting cold, and looked over the group of creatures. How pale and hairy he seemed in comparison to their smooth, colorful skin, flared with splotches of red and stripes of yellow. Natural war paint. When he finally spotted the one that had given him his crown, he nodded.

  In one movement, he picked up the lantern and straddled the lip of the cannon, forcing down the muzzle toward the deck under the weight of his body. With one last look at the tall creature, he turned and smashed the lantern over the wick, and seconds later the cannon fired, sending its charge down deep into the guts of the Sea Hag, which were packed with a privateer’s fortune in gunpowder.

  The ship exploded like the floating bomb it had become.

  A shower of wreckage descended through the dark water, drifting gently down toward the waiting golden hive, which was already marshaling for a war for which the land dwellers weren’t prepared. This would be a revolution of a different kind.

  Amid the debris, the small crown tumbled, the white feather gone.

  TO HOLD YE WHITE HUSK

  BY W.H. PUGMIRE

  The enemy submarine had torpedoed our warship, and my frantic memory of the event was smoke and fire and men screaming as Roberts and I managed to free one of the lifeboats, which crashed into the churning waters below us. We dove into those waters and manned the small boat, preparing to row from the sinking ship, when we noticed a body floundering in the water, a body we identified as Gustav Sturhman. Moving our vessel to him as he momentarily sank beneath the water, we hauled him in, and then, struggled to row away from the scene of disaster. I watched Sturhman open his eyes and nod at me, and I didn’t like the glassy look of his eyes—that half-dead glaze. We had managed to move a good distance from the warship that was almost submerged when we heard further explosions and screams.

  “They’re torpedoing the lifeboats!” Roberts yelled, with terror dancing in his eyes. It came to me then, the low queer sound of singing. Looking at Sturhman, I saw that one of his hands had clasped the jade amulet that he always wore; his eyes were closed and his lips moved slightly as he moaned a song in the Dutch language. I often thought of how ironic it was, that this very young man, whose family had moved to America and become citizens thereof, was now fighting in a war in which his Dutch nation was not involved. His eyes suddenly opened and his speech grew in volume; words spilled from his mouth that were in a language—if it could be called that, for it seemed more like vocal retching than anything else—that felt like pinpricks on my brain. I was aware of the thick coils of black cloud that began to spin around our boat, coils that rose from the water and sank from above us until our vessel was completely cloaked. I was aware of the violent noise coming from beyond our black cloud, explosions and screaming; but I was far more attentive to how this cloud was affecting my senses, for it smelled like nothing I had ever encountered, and when I sucked wisps of it into my nostrils and mouth I was confused by the twin sensations of sweetness and a kind of rottenness.

  Sturhman began to cough violently, and Roberts bent over him to smooth a piece of white cloth over the young man’s face. The Dutchman had removed the amulet from around his throat and he now offered it to Roberts. “It’s a very old family heirloom,” Sturhman rasped, “centuries old, Johnny. Please try and return it to my family.” He then became very still, and his eyes lost the light of life. I don’t know how long we floated there, in silence, before the black cloud finally dissolved. We were alone on the waters; no other lifeboats or their shattered remnants in sight. We prayed over the corpse of our young mate, and then we carefully lifted him out of the boat and into the water. We did not watch his sinking body, but stretched our aching limbs and moaned, and shut our eyes, and dreamed unsettling dreams.

  I was awakened by an odd cry, which I thought had come from my companion; but when I pushed upward with my elbows I saw that Roberts was asleep, with Sturhman’s odd amulet clasped within closed hands. Our lifeboat moved through a thick mist that made it impossible for me to detect the time of day. Bending to the small cabinet that had been built into each lifeboat, I removed the canteens of water and tins of jerky that were always kept there, and I nudged my companion awake and offered him sustenance. We ate in silence, and as he ate Roberts examined the amulet.

  “It’s damn old,” he said, nodding to himself. “It reminds me of a pendant I once saw, an old silver sphinx charm from South India that a swami was trying to peddle. But the facial expression on that was benign—this is pure malevolence. Made out of jade, I think. The wings suggest that it’s supposed to be some kind of sphinx, or maybe some outlandish winged hound effigy.” He finished his jerky and seemed to notice the mist for the first time. “Weird. I was just dreaming about a mist like this and something hovering above the boat that I couldn’t quite make out, something that bayed and flapped huge wings. Don’t usually remember my dreams. How come you’re so silent?”

  “I’m listening. Do you hear it? The sound of waves on a surface?”

  My words seemed to act as conjuration, and the dim form of an island broke through the mist. Without thinking, I grabbed hold of the length of rope that was tied to a metal ring on the bow of the lifeboat and dove into the water, swam to where a little plot of sand was surrounded by an outcropping of rock. Struggling onto the land, I heaved the boat toward me. Roberts finally jumped from the vessel and joined me in pulling it to the surface of white sand. Exhausted, we sat and heaved heavy breaths, and I examined the landscape. There were no signs of human occupation, enemy or otherwise. Although the foggy air made it difficult to see the land fully, what was revealed seemed strange and surreal.

  “What a riot of colors!” Roberts exclaimed. “It’s like a Klimt painting come to life.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s a controversial artist I met some years ago in Vienna,” my companion explained as we continued on our way. “Look at those trees jus
t ahead, at how their upper branches conjoin and form a kind of tunnel—and those trees have such an eerie, almost sinister form. And there beyond them, you can just make it out through the fog—some kind of ruins.”

  Roberts had come from money and had lived a rather Bohemian existence before being called to serve his country; but to hear him talk of relics found in India, of foreign painters met in Vienna, was a bit unreal to a guy who had been raised in poverty. But I understood what he was trying to get across. The trunks of the trees on each side of us resembled stout crones out of some medieval fairy tale, and the way their sinister-looking branches reached over us and met would be unnerving to one who had a sensitive imagination. The multicolored leaves on those trees were like nothing I had ever beheld, and the way they littered the ground made me feel as if I was treading on the spilled contents of some outlandish kaleidoscope.

  “It’s like we’re walking through a dreamscape,” young Roberts went on. “If I touch you, are you really there?” He reached out to lay his hand on my shoulder, and I was so unnerved by his weird behavior that I playfully locked his head in my arm and roughed him up a bit.

  “We’re real enough, buddy,” I assured him; yet when I laughed and looked into his eyes, I was nonplussed by their expression, which seemed to belong to a haunted soul.

  Escaping from the canopy of sinister trees, we stood before the ruins, which looked to me like the mausoleum of some slumbering giant. It appeared to be constructed with huge blocks of sandstone, and one sensed that it had been erected centuries ago. We entered one of the three arched thresholds, and I was glad that the muted daylight fell through those portions where the roof had fallen. We stepped over debris and down a pale stone stairway, into a kind of antechamber, past thick columns and a mammoth black statue that depicted a faceless winged demon. This was not a place of buried and discarded treasure, but more like a pit of decay and wreckage; and we did not want to touch any of the relics that littered the ground as we walked to the thing that squatted on its dais of circular green stone—that enormous figure that seemed vaguely familiar. I heard my companion’s breathing and turned my head to squint at him; and when I saw that his hands clutched the strange amulet fastened to twine that encircled his throat, I suddenly recalled where I had seen the likeness of the mammoth statue before us. The difference between the two carved creatures was that the forelegs of the statue on the dais were raised so as to hold their burden of white flesh, that shapeless bundle of something that might once have been human.

  “All hope abandon ye who enter here,” Roberts whispered, quoting something that I suspected was from the Bible, a book I’ve never read. Although I wasn’t religious, I had a sense of sin, of that which went against what was good and right. “This temple isn’t real, and we’re not really here. No, don’t look at me like that. This is some kind of crazy hallucination that has plagued us, from fatigue or lack of sustenance. Look around you—this place is mad delusion.” The location wherein we stood was indeed all wrong. There were too many walls, and several of them were at odd angles and made you dizzy if you stared at them for too long a time. Hieroglyphs had been etched onto some of the walls and columns, but the alphabet was puzzling and somehow revolting. It seemed an outlandish coincidence that the huge statue before us should so resemble the amulet that had been worn by our dead comrade. My brain grew tight with pain as I tried to figure it all out, and I rubbed my eyes with one hand in an attempt to soothe the discomfort away. I was vaguely aware that Roberts was moving to the three levels of the dais that might have been meant as steps. I watched in silence, my head pounding with pain, as he went to the misshapen bulk of flesh held by the statue; and I moaned a little as Roberts raised his arms and used them to lift the dead thing from the carven thing and place it, almost reverently, on the surface of the dais. Fragments of penetrating light, a manifestation of faintness, pierced my eyes; but I ignored my discomfort and staggered to the dais, climbed its steps and knelt beside my friend. I regarded the white thing, and I knew that Roberts was right—we had entered some kind of macabre dream.

  The husk of pale flesh was flattened and utterly void of color. Even the places where the flesh had been ripped—bitten into, I think—were bleached. But the head of the thing was bloated, round and puffy—and it wore the face of Gustav Sturhman. “This cannot be,” I moaned.

  “It isn’t. I told you, we’re hallucinating. Maybe the jerky was bad and we’ve been poisoned.”

  “This isn’t a dream, Johnny,” I answered. “It’s diseased reality. This stone that we kneel on is real, look how my fingers bleed after I’ve scraped their flesh across its surface. Funny; I feel no pain.”

  I rammed my fist down on the floor of the dais, again and again as I screamed insensibly, until Roberts stopped me and clutched my bleeding hand. He then grew as white as the husk of flesh before us, as some shadow passed over the portions of roof that had not fallen in ruin. We heard the baying of some nightmare thing as the smell of my blood coiled to our nostrils.

  Roberts began to chuckle—or maybe it would be best described as chortling. He had removed the amulet from around his throat and was working its cord over the bloated head of the dead thing. A current of noisome breath propelled from the corpse, an exhalation that contained a kind of language. I shuddered at the sound of it, and at the sight of Roberts bending low so that he could press his ear against Sturhman’s distended lips, those lips that subtly parted. I shivered violently as Roberts began to mimic the language that was whispered to him, the insane chanting that was an epitome of evil. The air quivered at the unholy utterance, and I sensed again that winged thing, hungry and hidden, that beat its wings above the edifice. I watched, with eyes that began to burn as if they had been doused in acid; and I trembled, as the dead thing below us raised one arm so as to hold its awful amulet to Johnny’s mouth, to those lips that moved as they continued to chant in whispered voice the nameless words of outrageous idiom. I could not flee or scream as the dead thing’s mouth moved to Roberts’ throat and began to feast. I could only laugh like a mad fool, and dig my fingers into my face, and cry like crazy as I plucked out my smoldering eyes.

  THE SEA NYMPH’S SON

  BY ROBERT M. PRICE

  1

  Etchings and Odysseys

  Hear, my friends, and I shall relate to you the strife of titans and heroes. Of King Agamemnon, great general of the Argive hosts, the second Theseus, slayer of the Man-Bull in pitched combat. And of mighty Achilles, invincible son of the sea-nymph Thetis and scourge of all men. It was boasted that he possessed nigh-invulnerability to weapons, his divine mother having dipped him into the flow of the Styx, forgetting only the heel by which she gripped the infant tightly so he might not slip from her grasp and perish in the icy waters. But none had seen such powers displayed for the very good reason that their supposed possessor was so skilled in battle that his opponents collapsed to the ground inert before any might lay a hand or sword upon his person. Invulnerable or not, Achilles was surely gifted with more than mortal prowess. Days before, all had witnessed a dispute between the two heroes as great Achilles professed himself too high and too mighty to take orders from a mere mortal.

  Agamemnon had at first refused to give in to Achilles’ petulance, then repented in vain once Achilles refused to lead the army onto the field of battle against their Trojan foes as formerly. The general dreaded the hobbling of his men by the gloom that must settle upon them if the Son of Thetis did not lead them. Thus great was his astonishment the following dawn when Achilles emerged, fully armored, from his tent and wordlessly mounted his mighty stallion, awaiting Agamemnon’s command with uncharacteristic humility. Agamemnon wondered whether the face beneath the visor of the other man’s helm registered emotions of resentment or of stolid resolve. But the king’s relief made all doubts and fears flee like wind-blown leaves. He ordered the men to advance to the plains outside the city.

  The Achaeans cut through the defensive lines of King Priam, following Achilles
’ lead as a great ship divides the waves before it under the figurehead atop its prow. And so the battle went until that happened which no man dreamed possible.

  Achilles fell.

  As word spread, the Achaeans hesitated and the Trojans rallied. Achilles’ blood scented the air, and the tide turned. It was all his compatriots could do to retrieve his corpse and retreat to their ships, the rear guard keeping the vengeful Trojans from their flanks as they fled in shameful disarray.

  And today the rites of mourning were in full swing in Agamemnon’s camp. He walked slowly to the tent of the fallen hero now, in order to collect some mementos which should become prizes in the games to be held later in the day to commemorate the slain champion. There were subtle sounds of motion inside, and Agamemnon drew his sword, thinking to surprise some jackal looting the tokens of Achilles. He drew back the tent flap.

  And beheld Achilles.

  His massive back faced Agamemnon, and he did not at once turn to greet him. But he did speak, and the voice was truly his. “Things did not go well yesterday, O great Agamemnon, did they?”

  The stunned general stammered in reply. “But you were … all thought you slain … How…? Your corpse awaits the pyre even now”

  “It is the body of Patroclus. Know you not his face?”

  “In truth, I do not. Did not. But neither have I seen your own face, mighty Achilles.” For indeed the Son of Thetis was never seen without his helmet, except by a select few, such as Patroclus, a common Myrmidon, but Achilles’ favorite; some whispered, even his lover.

  “Foolish Patroclus liked not to displease you, nor to disappoint his fellows. And so he begged the use of my armor to play his doomed masquerade, and I allowed it. Do not permit some young pup to win it in your games, Agamemnon. I’ll be wanting it back. I mean to use it tomorrow.”