Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath (18 page)

That was when the wind came up. First the mist, then the wind - but I’d never before seen a mist that a good strong wind couldn’t blow away! Oh, I’ve seen freak storms before, Johnny, but believe me this storm was the freak! With a capital ‘F’.

She came up out of nowhere - not breaking the blanket of grey but driving it round and round like a great mad ghost - blasting the already choppy sea against the Old Girl’s legs, flinging up spray to the platform’s guard-rails, and generally creating havoc. I’d no sooner recovered from my initial amazement when the telephone rang again. I came away from the window, picked up the receiver to hear Jimmy Jeffries’ somewhat distorted yell of triumph coming over the wires.

‘We’re through, Pongo!’ he yelled. ‘We’re through and there’s juice on the way up the bore right now!’ Then his voice took the shakes again, going from wild excitement to terror in a second as the whole rig wobbled on its four great legs!

‘Holy heaven - !’ His voice screamed in my ear. ‘What was that, Pongo? The rig

… wait - ‘ I heard the clatter as the telephone at the other end banged down, but a moment later Jimmy was back. ‘It’s not the rig,’ he told me; ‘the legs are steady as rocks - it’s the whole seabed! Pongo, what’s going on? Holy heaven— ‘

This time the telephone went completely dead as the rig moved again, jerking up and down three or four times in rapid succession, shaking everything loose inside the mess storeroom. I was just able to keep my feet. I still had the telephone in my hand, and just for a second or two it came back to life. Jimmy was screaming something incoherently into his end. I remember that I yelled for

him to get into a life jacket, that there was something awfully wrong and we were in for big trouble, but I’ll never know if he heard me.

The rig rocked yet again, throwing me down on the floorboards among a debris of bottles, crates, cans, and packets; and there, skidding wildly about the tilting floor, I collided with a life jacket. God only knows what the thing was doing there in the storeroom - there were normally two or three on the platform and others were kept in the equipment shed, only taken out following storm warnings, which it goes without saying we hadn’t had. But somehow I managed to struggle into it and make my way into the mess proper before the next upheaval.

By that time, over the roar of the wind and waves outside and the slap of wave-crests against the outer walls of the mess, I could hear a whipping of free-running pulleys and a high-pitched screaming of revving, uncontrolled gears - and there were other screams, too.

I admit that I was in a blind panic, crashing my way through the tumble of chairs and tables in the mess towards the door leading out on to the platform, when the greatest shock so far tilted the floor to what must have been thirty degrees and saved me any further effort. In that moment - as I flew against the door, bursting it open, and floundering out into the storm - I knew for sure that the old Sea-Maid was going down. Before, it had only been a possibility, a mad, improbable possibility; but now I knew for sure. Half stunned from my collision with the door, I was thrown roughly against the platform rails, to cling there for dear life in the howling, tearing wind and chill, rushing mist and spray. And that was when I saw it!

I saw it … and in my utter disbelief I relaxed my hold on the rails and slid under them into the throat of that

banshee, demon storm that howled and tore at the trembling girders of the old Sea-Maid.

Even as I fell a colossal wave smashed into the rig, breaking two of the legs as though they were nothing stronger than matchsticks. The next instant I was in the sea, picked up, and swept away on the crest of that same wave. Even in the dizzy, sickening rush as the great wave hurled me aloft, I tried to spot Sea-Maid in the maelstrom of wind, mist, and ocean. It was futile and I gave it up in order to save all my effort for my own battle for survival.

I don’t remember much after that - at least, not until I was picked up, and even that’s not too clear. I do remember, though, while fighting the icy water, a dreadful fear of being eaten alive by fish; but so far as I know there were none about. I remember, too, being hauled aboard the lifeboat from a sea that was flat as a pancake and calm as a mill pond.

The next really lucid moment came when I woke up to find myself between clean sheets in a Bridlington hospital.

But there, I’ve held off from telling the important part, and for the same reason Joe Borszowski held off: I don’t want to be thought a madman. Well, I’m not mad, Johnny, but I don’t suppose for a single moment that you’ll take my story seriously - nor, for that matter, will Seagasso suspend any of its North-Sea commitments - but at least I’ll have had the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to warn you.

Now, remember if you will what Borszowski told me about great, alien beings lying asleep and imprisoned beneath the bed of the sea - evil ‘gods’ capable of controlling the weather and the actions of lesser creatures - and then explain the sight I saw before I found myself floundering in that mad ocean as the old Sea-Maid went down.

It was simply a gusher, Johnny, a gusher - but one such as I’d never seen before in my whole life and hope never to see again! For instead of reaching the heavens in one solid black column, it pulsed upward, pumping up in short, strong jets at a rate of about one spurt in every five seconds - and it wasn’t oil, Johnny! Oh, God, it wasn’t oil! Booze or none, I swear I wasn’t drunk; not so drunk as to make me colour-blind, at any rate.

For old Borszowski was right, there was one of those great god-things down there deep in the bed of the ocean, and our drill had chopped right into it!

Whatever it was, it had blood pretty much like ours -good and thick and red -and a great heart strong enough to pump that blood up the bore-hole right to the surface! Think of it, that monstrous giant of a thing down there in the rocks beneath the sea! How could we possibly have known? How could we have guessed that right from the beginning our instruments had been working at maximum efficiency, that those odd, regular blips recorded on the seismograph had been nothing more than the beating of a great submarine heart?

All of which explains, I hope, my resignation.

Bernard ‘Pongo’ Jordan Bridlington, Yorks.

10 The Third Visitor

(From de Marigny’s Notebooks)

The early morning was quite close, uncomfortable almost, so that by the time Titus Crow and I had finished with the astonishing Jordan document Peaslee had taken off his coat. He had adopted a very businesslike look, donning small-lensed spectacles, rolling up his shirt sleeves and busying himself with a number of files, notebooks, and various other papers from his briefcase. He was past his tired peak, he told us, and having slept on the plane coming over, he had also now just about managed to adjust his body-clock. He looked forward, though, to a short nap in the Mercedes on the way back to London and the British Museum; a nap en route, he assured us, should put him completely to rights.

‘London and the British Museum’; the normal world seemed light-years away. And yet, through the latticed windows, dawn was spreading her pale fingers over the distant capital in what seemed a very normal fashion, and the new day was well on its way. Crow and I were now very tired, but such were those feelings of general well-being engendered by the protective proximity of the star-stones, that neither of us minded the heaviness of our bodies - at least we were completely clear-headed; our minds were free of morbid Cthonian undertones.

It was as I went into the galley to cook bacon and eggs for an early breakfast, as I passed down the short joining corridor between the bunkhouse and the galley proper, that I was thrown against the galley door when the houseboat suddenly rocked violently. From the bunkroom came the clatter of falling glasses, the thud of books, and Crow’s startled query: ‘What on earth … ?’

I opened the galley window and looked out on deck and across the river. The sun’s edge was just showing above the horizon of trees and distant roofs.

There was a very slight breeze up, but the river was white with mist.

Mentally echoing Titus Crow, I wondered: ‘What on earth … ?’ Had some lunatic gone up the river in a large motorboat at speed? But no, that could hardly be, I had heard no engine. In any case, it would have taken an ocean liner to create a wake like that! Even as these thoughts passed through my head Seafree keeled again, this time to an angle of about twenty degrees.

Immediately, I found myself thinking of the Jordan document.

‘De Marigny!’ Crow’s shout came from the open window even as I heard him skidding about on the momentarily sloping deck. ‘Henri.’ His feet clattered.

‘Get that damned pistol of yours, quickly!’ There was urgency in his voice, unnatural strain - and horror!

‘No, no!’ came the professor’s shouted denial as the boat dipped and swayed.

‘That’s not the way, Crow. Silver bullets are no use against this thing!’ What thing?

1 scrambled back through the galley door and down the corridor, across the bunkhouse floor, and up the three steps to the deck. There, clinging to the rail, their faces drawn and white, stood the two men. As the boat steadied itself, I joined them. ‘What is it, Titus? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s something out there, Henri, in the water. Something big! It just now made a rush at the boat -stopped about fifty feet short and sank down again into the water - a Sea-Shoggoth, I think, exactly like those dream-things I told you about.’

‘Yes, a Sea-Shoggoth,’ Peaslee breathed. ‘One of the Deep Ones. All the way from Deep G’ll-ho to the north,

I imagine. It can’t harm us -‘ He sounded sure enough of his facts, but nevertheless I noticed that his hushed voice trembled.

The mist was thick on the river, its milky tendrils and eddies coming almost up to the deck of the houseboat, making it seem as though we stood aboard a mere raft. I could hear the chop as the disturbed waters slapped the hull, but I could see nothing. I felt my pulse start to race and the short hairs prickling at the back of my neck. ‘I’ll get my pistol,’ I said, intending to go back down into the boat.

As I turned from the rail Peaslee grabbed my arm. ‘Useless, de Marigny,’ he snapped. ‘Pistols, no matter what kind of ammunition they take, are useless against this type of creature!’

‘But where is the thing?’ I asked, peering again at the misted waters.

As if in answer to my nervous question, indeed, as the last word left my lips, an iridescent, blackly shining column of what looked like mud or tar embedded with fragments of broken, multicoloured glass rose up out of the swirling river mist. Eight feet wide and all of twenty feet tall, dripping water and bobbing like some great sentient cork, the thing towered above the water …

and the sun glinted from its surface and from its myriad eyes!

The creature - stank! There is simply no other way of expressing the nauseating stench that issued from it. Lines from Alhazred again leaped into my mind: ‘By their smell shall ye know them,’ and I knew exactly what the so-called ‘mad’ Arab had meant! It was the very smell of evil. Twice in a matter of hours my senses had been thus assaulted, and this time the worst!

Thank the Lord that the houseboat was upwind, what little wind there was, of the horror; we received only a minimum, but even then too much, of that miasmal, deep-sea effluvium.

It had mouths, too, many of them, but I caught only a glimpse. As the thing made a frantic, nodding rush at the boat I threw myself down the steps after Kant’s pistol. No matter what Peaslee said, I refused to stand undefended against that! Any weapon seemed better than none at all. In my panic I had completely forgotten the fact that we were not at all weaponless, that in fact we had the best possible protection! In any case, I couldn’t find the pistol.

Where had I put the thing?

The houseboat rocked again, yet more violently, and I scrambled back up the steps to the deck empty-handed. Fighting to keep his balance while hanging on to the rail with one hand, Peaslee was holding up a star-stone and shouting at the horror in the water. The thing was already rushing back in yet another monstrous, bobbing charge. My concentration divided itself equally between the professor and the creature bearing down upon the boat. Peaslee was rapidly chanting: ‘Away, slime of the sea, back to your dark and pressured seat. With the authority of the Elder Gods themselves I command you. Away and leave us in peace!’ The tremor had left his voice and his old, slim frame seemed somehow tall and powerful against the backdrop of iridescent horror sprouting beyond him from the river mist.

Before Peaslee’s chanting and his showing of the star-stone there had been no sound from the Deep One other than the natural noise of the water rushing past its nightmare shape as it charged. Now -

It was screaming, apparently in rage and frustration, certainly in a manner suggesting some sort of alien mental agony. Its - voice? - had been just too far up the sonic scale before; there had been a high, almost inaudible whine in the air. Now, though, the professor’s chanted words, repeated over and over again, were almost drowned out and I had to grit my teeth and slam my hands to my ears as the creature lowered its hidepus cries. Never before in my life had I heard so unbelievable a cacophony of incredible sounds all in one, and it was my fervent prayer that I never hear such sounds again!

The screaming was still in the main high-pitched, like a steam engine’s whistle, but there were grunted undertones, throbbing gasps or emissions such as the reptiles and great frogs make, impossible to put down on paper. Two more bobbing, water-spraying, abortive attempts it made to breach the invisible barrier between its awful body and the houseboat - and then it turned, sank, and finally left a thrashing, thinning wake in the rapidly clearing mist as it headed for London and the open sea beyond.

For a long time there was an awkward hush, wherein only the subsiding slap of wavelets against the hull, our erratic and harsh breathing, and the outraged cheeping of momentarily quieted birds disturbed the silence. Peaslee’s voice, a little less steady now that it was all over, finally got through to me after a second asking of his question: