The Madness of Cthulhu Anthology (Volume One): 1 (23 page)

“So the shoggoths revolted, eh?” she teased.

“Double-entendre there, my dear. They were revolting creatures. I don’t remember the exact description Lovecraft gave them, but Suzie had it down pretty pat. They were slithering, bloblike creatures with eyes all over, and they more or less ate up or absorbed everything they touched. They were amorphous—they could take on any shape, they didn’t have minds of their own—or so the Elder Things must have believed—but over millions of years they developed thought. Before then, of course, they’d built the underwater cities of their masters, and when they did develop their own minds they were easily able to imitate their masters.” He stopped speaking, thinking that he must be boring her to tears.

But she was watching him with fascination, smiling. “Thank God this ship was stuck up in the Arctic—and not the Antarctic,” she said. She was teasing, of course. But he was surprised to note there seemed to be a little tic of real fear behind her words.

“There you go. Wrong pole,” he said. “We’re safe.”

She frowned. “What about Cthulhu?” she asked. “He’s an H. P. Lovecraft creature, right?”

“Ah, Cthulhu,” Finn said. “He first made his appearance in a short story in 1928—
Weird Tales
. He is mentioned, in a way, in
At the Mountains of Madness.
Creatures are referred to as ‘the spawn of Cthulhu.’ Lovecraft described him with humanoid arms and legs, tiny, rudimentary wings, and a head like a giant squid.’ But he was kind of like the shoggoths—he could take on different shapes and forms and his tentacles could come in and out—pretty creepy dude, all right. That was one of the things I love about Lovecraft—so many scientists give their aliens—life from other planets, not countries!—human characteristics. Lovecraft realized life from alien planets could be nothing like us, that intelligence might exist in beings that were nothing like we’d ever seen and that even aliens might have a hierarchy and that one kind of creature might enslave another. Cthulhu—oh, wait. I’m sorry. I’m over-explaining. You know about Cthulhu—I mean, you asked me a question, so you know something.”

She grinned looking out at the water. “I know about Cthulhu because I bought the cutest little stuffed Cthulhu at a flea market in London,” she said. “I knew he was Cthulhu—everyone around me was excited by the little toy, and I pretended I knew exactly what he was.”

He thought that she looked sad. He wondered if he had really shown her what a total loser he was. She must have thought that he had spent his entire life reading and that it was only thanks to decent genetics that he was tall and decently built—traveling to third-world countries to study at ancient gravesites had kept him in fairly muscular shape.

Otherwise, he might have been almost as much a blob as the shoggoths.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bore you.”

She turned to look at him. “You’re not boring me at all!” she assured him. “I love hearing about the stories that I should have read.”

“No one can read everything,” he assured her. “And … well, I guess a lot of people prone to the sciences have a tendency to fall in love with H. P. Lovecraft. Because of his thinking—perhaps. I mean, people have a tendency to think that the aliens will come and they’ll speak a human language—English, of course, because it’s the American language—and that they’ll have an intelligence like ours and do what we do biologically, but Lovecraft had a more scientific view, perhaps. He loved astronomy, too, and had a true scientific bent, so perhaps that was why he gained such a following. Poor dude—not until he was dead, sadly enough. Only one of his novels was actually published in book form during his lifetime and … wow, sorry. I’m going on and on, I’ll stop. But … I happen to have a copy of the collected works of H. P. Lovecraft with me—you’re welcome to it.”

“You’re a fan?” she asked.

He shrugged ruefully. “I read a lot … I guess my group does.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that!”

“Take my book.”

“I couldn’t take your book. And I could listen to you forever.”

He laughed. “You could easily take a book—and please do.”
And
God help me, if only you’d listen to me for a few minutes at some other time, any other time, again!
“I can buy another at any bookstore when I feel the need. It’s not a first printing or anything like that.”

“A first printing?” she asked.

“You really have to be a book geek to cherish a first printing,” he assured her. “Or be in it for the money, and I’m not. But it’s a new copy, available anywhere, and you’re welcome to it.”

The door that led back to the lounge suddenly opened; a gust of cold wind caught it and slammed it hard against the wall. Michael stood there looking disgruntled. “Hey, come on—everyone is going down to dinner.”

“That’s great! I’m famished,” Devon said.

She went in; Finn followed. Michael held the door open for him, eyes shooting fire as Finn passed him. Finn was really glad of his height; he could actually look down an inch at Michael.

Devon moved ahead, laughing as she joined the others. Finn’s own group was in the lead; Michael Corona held him back.

“Quit dreaming, you stupid geek,” Michael said.

“Pardon?”

“Can’t you tell when an attractive woman is secretly making fun of you, jerk? Leave her alone; we’re here to do a job. We have a lot riding on this, while you science guys are just along for whatever. I mean, really? What the hell kind of life forms are you going to find on this ship? We have a chance at the big time—leave Devon alone. Let her concentrate.”

He’d met bullies all his life. A few times, he’d tried to use reason. A few times, when he’d been little, he’d just been beaten to a pulp. His work had made him bulk up, so it wasn’t that often anymore that someone wanted to get in his face and it was almost never that he did anything more than stare someone down and walk away.

“We were talking. Devon has all the rights of any American citizen—she can talk to whomever she chooses.”

“You watch your step, geek,” Michael said, striding by him.

Had Michael expected his threat to work?

The dining room was on the promenade deck as well. They walked past empty shop fronts to reach it. Years and years ago, the deck here had offered a haberdashery and a shop called “Lucky Ladies.”

Mannequins watched them from the store fronts. Finn could almost imagine that they moved; if he were alone here now, he might begin to believe in ghosts himself.

When they arrived at the dining room, it was empty. There should have been three waiters/kitchen staff moving around, getting their salads down.

“Wow, this is weird,” Brigitte said.

“Maybe we’re off on the time. We’re on real time and we should be on ship’s time?” Hampton Jones asked.

Anita breezed into the dining room from the kitchen prep area. “No, we’re not on wrong time—we all set our clocks on ship’s time, which we decided would be Eastern Standard Time since that’s the time zone in which we’re due to make port. This is very odd indeed.” She turned and stared at Michael Corona. “It’s probably some ridiculous thing they’re doing to test you all out as ghost hunters!” she declared.

“Barringer. Matt Barringer. He’s an attorney—he’s probably doing this—whatever this is!”

“Oh, come on, we’re legitimate and they know it,” Michael said angrily. “This has nothing to do with us. What’s going on in the kitchen?” he demanded.

“Come see for yourselves,” Anita said.

Curious, Finn followed Anita into the prep area. Plates were arranged on a shiny table—the garnish already in place.

“How curious,” Suzie said. “It looks as if they were getting ready for dinner.”

“Maybe there’s an emergency on board; maybe the captain put out a call—and somehow we didn’t hear it,” Brigitte said.

Granger shook his head, not even commenting that only an idiot ghost hunter would say such a thing. “If there were an emergency, the captain would have put the info through the speaker system—we’d have heard it, too.”

“What if they didn’t care about us? What if they only cared about the crew?” Brigitte asked, and she sounded as if she were getting a little hysterical.

Finn walked on into the giant kitchen. Only one of the ovens and one of the stoves had been in use. On the cooktop, something boiled away. A covered pot remained on medium heat.

He looked into the boiling pot: soup. He opened the oven. Overcooked fowl, burning more with every passing second.

He turned off the stove and the oven. No reason to burn anything down.

“Where did they go?” Michael Corona demanded angrily.

“Well, I hardly think anyone was intentionally trying to burn down the kitchen!” Anita said, the sound of her voice aggravated.

“It’s a trick; it has to be. Some kind of a trick,” Michael said. “Maybe it’s to get you scientists to figure out what’s going on.”

Anita and Granger argued about that. Finn noticed something black on the floor. He walked over to hunker down and study the spot. It looked like a little pool of oil or tar.

He was there when Devon Adair bent down across from him, also looking at the floor, and then anxiously into his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s some kind of black—goop,” he said.

“All those science degrees and you come up with
black goop
?” Michael demanded.

“I would need a lab to determine its exact qualities,” Finn said, not even bothering to look up. It did look like tar.

He touched it; Brigitte gasped. “Don’t touch it—you could turn into something!”

He looked up at her, arching a brow and concealing a smile. “Honestly, I don’t think so,” he said.

“How about giving us its not quite exact qualities?” Michael demanded.

Finn looked over at him. “Inexact—black goop. Probably tar.”

“Where could they have gone?” Hampton Jones asked. Finn looked over at him. His eyes seemed huge behind his Coke-bottle glasses.

“I’m telling you, it’s a trick. We’re supposed to be unnerved,” Anita said.

“And scientists are supposed to figure it out,” Brigitte said.

“Or we’re on hidden camera and they’re waiting for you ghost-busters to say you feel the cold spots and see shadows or hear voices,” Suzie suggested.

Finn rose. “Hey, let’s face it—whatever is going on, neither group is involved. Who knows—maybe someone is playing a trick, maybe even trying to get us to fight with each other. I say we head to the bridge and find out.”

“I agree!” Brigitte said. She looked around. “It’s totally
un
productive for all of us to get mad at each other over something someone else has done.”

“Yeah!” Devon agreed, standing. “Let’s storm the bridge!” she said with a smile. Her smile became rueful. “Um—where is the bridge?”

“One deck up and forward,” Michael said. “Let’s go.”

“It’s not going to help,” Granger said.

They all stared at him, waiting for him to explain.

“It’s not going to help. They’re gone,” he said. “The kitchen staff is gone—there’s something on this ship.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Hampton asked angrily. “Dead? You mean gone as in
dead
? If so, where are the bodies?”

“Eaten,” Granger told them.

“Oh, bull!” Suzie said. “Trust me—I’m a marine biologist. There’s no creature that got on this ship from the sea and ate people!”

Granger turned to her. “I didn’t say it came from the sea—though, most likely, it did.”

Michael Corona laughed suddenly. “Great! Now the scientists are fighting.”

“Maybe there was something already on board!” Marnie said nervously. “I mean, it was on board the ship when we boarded it.”

“There were engineers running all over this ship,” Anita reminded them.

“Maybe it was hiding,” Brigitte said. “Hiding—because it knew that the ship was at dock. But now, we’re back on the open sea.”

“And maybe, most likely, this is some kind of a stupid trick!” Anita snapped. “Seriously—why else would you put a bunch of ghost hunters
and
scientists on a ship for a simple voyage across the Atlantic? These people want ghosts, they want monsters—they want something with which to create a real tourist trap when this old ship is docked.”

“It’s all simple; Finn had it right,” Michael said. “Let’s head to the bridge.”

The others started to move out. Finn looked around and noted that there was another dot of black goop a few feet away. He walked to it and looked further. There was another drop and another. The drops led to the huge ship’s freezer.

He walked to the freezer, hesitated, and then threw the door open.

Bits of the black goop covered the steel shelving and ice dusted walls.

There wasn’t a bit of food to be seen in the freezer.

“What the hell …?”

He was so unnerved by what he saw that he nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard the question, whispered almost at his ear.

He spun around. Devon had followed him. Wide-eyed, she stood right behind him, shivering.

“Ohhhh!” Brigitte had followed her and stood right behind her. “What is going on?” she demanded, her voice thick. “More tar?” she asked.

No, this wasn’t tar. It wasn’t as mucuslike as the tar had been; it didn’t have the same scent. As he watched the stuff, it almost seemed to undulate before him.

He blinked; his eyes were playing tricks.

“I don’t know,” Finn said. “Let’s join the others. We’ll head to the bridge.”

With the two women following him, Finn left the freezer—locking it behind him—and returned to the dining room. He saw that Suzie was at the tail end of the group heading out; she was on the heels of Hampton Jones.

He used long strides to catch up, but by the time they left the dining room, returned to the long hall with the empty shops, and reached the elevator bank, only Suzie and Hampton were waiting.

“We missed the elevator,” Suzie said nervously. “I saw Granger hitting the buttons, but the door closed on us anyway.”

“It’s okay,” Finn assured her. “We’ll reach the deck and head forward; we’ll catch up with them.”

The second elevator in the bank arrived. Finn could see why they hadn’t been able to stop it easily; the elevators were old. They were in working order, but they didn’t have modern sensors. He hit the button and heard the crank of metal as the little box began to move slowly.