The Weird Company (4 page)

It wasn’t long before I was deeply asleep and dreaming. I have always had the most vivid of dreams, and this one was no different. I was in the lab proctoring a class of students through a review of various aquatic microorganisms. We began with a selection of centric diatoms reviewing various species and noting the radial symmetries of their frustules. I wrote the word RADIAL horizontally on the chalkboard. With the next set of slides we examined the water flea daphnia and made special reference to their ability to reproduce both parthenogenically and sexually. As I said these things I wrote the word PARTHENOGENIC vertically on the chalkboard using the R in Radial as in a crossword puzzle. I then moved the class on to examining samples of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria Nostoc, which when exposed to rain has an unusual capability of swelling up to conspicuous proportions, earning it the name star jelly or the rot of the stars. Once again I wrote on the chalkboard, this time using the existing P to spell out PHOTOSYNTHETIC. As I did this I heard a dog barking outside. I asked one of the students to close the window before realizing that there was no window to close. We moved on to another slide, this one of a tardigrade or water bear, an eight-limbed creature that fed on a variety of other aquatic species including algae, bacteria and even other aquatic animals. The tardigrades were notable for being cryptobiotic, able to enter into an ametabolic state in response to unfavorable environmental conditions. As I wrote out CRYPTOBIOTIC using the C in PHOTOSYNTHETIC, the barking dog found friends and the sound filled up the room. The last slide was that of a lichen, a symbiotic composite of a fungus and an algae. As I wrote out SYMBIOTIC using the B in CRYPTOBIOTIC, I had to scream to make myself heard over the dogs. I was telling the students something important, something about the five words I had written on the board. These words were important, more important than the dogs barking. They were so loud, those dogs, they made it hard to think about what I was saying, but I knew it was important. Radial. Parthenogenic. Photosynthetic. Symbiotic. Cryptobiotic. Five words. Five characteristics of what? The Elder Things that Wilmarth had dared to name the Q’Hrell? Their morphology was radial, and the wings certainly could have had been capable of photosynthesis. Many species reproduced parthenogenically, why not the Elder Things? The strange body structure, the independent systems, implied a kind of symbiosis. It all fit except for one word. The dogs were howling now, screaming, yelping in fear and agony. Cryptobiotic meant what exactly? The ability to assume an ametabolic state in response to unfavorable environmental conditions, indefinitely until conditions improved. What conditions? I damned those dogs. What conditions? Toxins, yes. Anoxia, yes. Anhydric, yes. Cold . . . yes! For how long? I asked myself. Indefinitely. What did that mean? A year? A decade? A century? A thousand years? A million? The cave had been sealed up more than thirty million years ago. Could an organism enter into a cryptobiotic state and remain that way for thirty million years? It was impossible; it was madness to think such things. The dogs went silent and where they left off I began.

I woke up screaming.

There was a thud against the side of the plane and then something slowly slid down the hull whimpering in the way only an injured dog can whimper. Acting on instinct, I ran to the hatch, undid the lock and flung the metal door wide open. What I had intended to do I cannot remember, but I know what I saw. It took a moment for me to comprehend what was happening, at first I thought it was just the dogs, for they were scattered about the camp. Some were clearly dead, their bodies contorted into shapes inconsistent with life. Others were bloody and beaten, dragging themselves across the ice with broken legs, broken backs and even the remnants of shattered muzzles dripping blood and teeth and bone. Those that were still healthy, still whole, seemed to be enraged by something behind one of the tents. They were barking and leaping into the air at something I couldn’t make out. Suddenly Watkins dashed from one of the other tents and entered the unseen fray. He was screaming and rushing with one of the massive pickaxes we used for clearing ice. As soon as he disappeared behind the tent my world went silent and still. The dogs had stopped barking, Watkins had stopped screaming, and even the wind had stopped howling. Time stopped as something horrific and unseen played out behind that tent. Something I am thankful that I did not witness.

The resumption of time was announced by the most curious of noises. It started as a series of low and slow whistling clicks not unlike those made by cicadas or locusts. There was tone to it and rhythm, a slow painful rhythm that went something like this:

Tek Tek e Li Li Tek Tek e Li Li!

Then as the rhythm sped up and the tone increased in pitch the single source was joined by another, and then a third, all producing that same horrendous sound.

TekTek e LiLi TekTek e LiLi!

The rhythm became faster, forming a vast monstrous harmony that wavered in pitch like a demonic violin screaming for the souls of the damned.

TekTeke LiLi TekTeke LiLi!

There was movement and the body of poor Watkins careened off in multiple directions as the demonic violinists moved from behind the tent and into my line of sight. It should be obvious that the things that emerged from behind the tent were the undamaged specimens that Lake had named Elder Things, but to see them lifeless on the dissection table and speculate about them was one thing. To see them alive and moving, interacting with each other and their environment, that was another matter altogether.

We had thought that they had used their lower appendages to pull themselves about, like a starfish, sliding, slow and methodically across a surface. We should have known better; they moved like predators. The body was held horizontal, with the eyes and prismatic setae facing forward, their necks expanded out beyond what I would have thought possible, allowing their heads to turn with an incredible degree of flexibility which they employed in a manner that seemed to me as if they were tasting the very air around them. Their weight was supported by three of the equatorial and three of the basal appendages; as they moved, their footing was sure and deliberate, and the entire body rotated clockwise along its axis so that with each step a new tentacle found footing on the right, while a tentacle on the left rose into the air. Each step also impacted the wings, three of which were deployed at all times, two partially in a horizontal manner and one completely vertical. That the wings were somehow linked to the book gills and the tentacles in either a hydrostatic or pneumatic manner seemed apparent from the rhythmic pumping of all three systems. Those great wings swayed in the icy wind and I could see already the impact that the re-exposure of these creatures to sunlight had initiated in both the wings and the main body itself. Colors had emerged, deep verdant greens had developed, streaked with reds and oranges; I knew that such pigments were indicative of photosynthetic activity using a variety of wavelengths.

But it was the sound that I cannot forget, the sound and the movement that came with it. For as these things moved through the camp, yet another man appeared, Carroll I think, where he had come from I could not say, but he was unarmed and as he stepped forward he held his arms out at his sides and walked cautiously, slowly toward creatures that he knew had killed but also knew were intelligent reasoning beings, not unlike himself. The octet acted almost in unison, pausing to watch Carroll as he moved and spoke in calming tones. The strange whistling stopped and it seemed as if there was some consideration going on. The vertically held wing on each creature seemed to expand and then explode with colors, there was apparently some ability to control the chromatic display played across the wing. Then suddenly the display stopped and the wings went dark green, almost black. One of the creatures stepped forward, separating himself from the others and then began to emanate a new sound, an eerie hollow noise like that of wind through an attic window or chimney. The creature swelled up, bloated and then in a burst of speed it launched into the air, a vapor trail of condensed gas and moisture followed in its wake, the five wings spread out like those of some monstrous bat or dragon, guiding it directly into Carroll. In an instant the thing was on Carroll with amazing fluidity, the wings folded up and vanished into the furrows, an equatorial tentacle wrapped around Carroll’s neck, and his head spun off like a bottle cap. The attacking creature turned to his cohorts and sang once more.

Teke-li-li! Teke-li-li! Teke-li-li!

I grabbed the injured dog by the collar and as quickly as I could, pulled the poor animal inside the plane. My movements, the sounds, something attracted attention and I saw three of the creatures turn toward me and begin to bloat up. As my hand swung the door shut one of them launched into the air. Panicked I drove my shoulder into the back of the door and just as the latch locked into position I felt the great bulk of one of the things plow into the side of the plane, while I heard two more thump into the ice nearby. There was a purring noise, a soft trilling as the creatures moved back and forth outside the hatch. Something grabbed the handle and turned it, or tried to, for it only rotated a quarter turn before the locking mechanism engaged completely. Metal squealed against metal, as the handle was forced further against the lock. The squealing turned into a creaking and then with an audible pop, the handle separated from the hatch and fell with a thunk to the ice.

They came through the cockpit next, smashing the windows and tearing through the seats trying to get through the door. The hatch held there as well, and I watched through the porthole as one of them crawled into the cockpit and examined the various controls and instruments. That it knew what the compass was, and perhaps all of the instruments, seemed apparent for it gently tapped the glass coverings on the dials and housings and gauged their reactions or lack thereof. Satisfied it had explored everything, the creature reached beneath the control panel and pulled at the bundles of wires and cables that it found there, in the process rendering the controls, the instruments and the radio useless.

Under the assault, the cabin rocked back and forth and inevitably I lost my footing and tumbled violently against the edge of a bulkhead. I went unconscious for only a moment and when I came to there was blood in my eyes. Disheartened I slumped back into the main cabin and soon became resigned to my fate. It was then that I picked up pen and journal and began this record. I cannot express the sheer difficulty, the incredible stress that I have been subjected to in the last two hours. As I have written this account of our expedition, of our deceit, of our discoveries and of the terror that followed, the horrors inflicted on our team have not abated. When we discovered these things in the ice there was never any doubt that we would subject them to vivisection, as scientists often must to understand the true nature of a life form. It is not then without some level of understanding on my part that I watched as the Elder Things pulled a plane from beneath its sheltering tent and then began to carry the dead and injured dogs inside. That such actions were taken out of the need for scientific exploration, I can understand, but the dogs were expended, and replaced with the corpses of men, and those were expended, and replaced with the injured and dying. Scientific exploration was exceeded and passed then into the purposeful cruelty of torture and mutilation that no man would dare to inflict on another. Even in the cabin I could hear the screams, the gurgling blood-choked screams that ceased only after the judicious application of something that sounded heavy and blunt, not once, not twice but in most cases three times.

1045

As much as I tried to ignore it, when I heard Lake’s voice, heard him crash through the tent and onto the ice, I went to the window to watch. Even from a distance I could see that he was naked and that as he crawled across the freezing landscape tore bits of his flesh away leaving a trail of blood that froze instantly behind him. He was less than five yards away from the tent when one of the Elder Things came walking out after him. It stood on all five lower appendages, using them like a spider uses its legs, rotating them through wide and graceful arcs, in its upper tentacles, the ones that split into five and then again into twenty-five smaller manipulators it carried one of our own pickaxes, with a horizontal blade on one side and a spike on the other. Before I could turn away the thing spun across the ice in a blinding pinwheel-like motion and drove the spike through Lake’s back, pinning him like an insect to the ice. He screamed in agony and I could hear him beg for the mercy of death. But instead the thing turned and left him there, he flailed helplessly against the ice for a few minutes. Then he grew silent and still and I knew he was dead.

1200

It is clear to me that the injured dog and I are the soul survivors of Lake’s sub-expedition. Over the last hour the Q’Hrell, I will not call them Elder Things anymore, it denotes too much undeserved respect, have been doing something; I hear noises, queer noises, as they rummage through the camp. When I dare I snatch glimpses through the porthole, they have loaded up all three sledges with equipment and materials from the camp including the drill and ice-melting equipment, as well as other scientific equipment, texts, survival gear, furs, and foodstuffs. One sledge was stacked high with material I did not recognize beneath a tarp. The wind provided glimpses of lumps of frozen crystalline crimson, and I shudder at the implication.

1245

They bury their dead. I watched them do it. They held their dead brethren upright as they packed snow around their bases and then up over the top. I cannot be sure, for my location does not provide for a proper perspective, but I think they made the graves into five pointed stars and then decorated them as well. While they did this I covered the portholes with whatever I could find. Only a small crack allows enough light in for me to write.