Beneath the Moors and Darker Places [SSC] Read online

  The hole into which we had fled was no tunnel at all but an L-shaped cave which, when we rounded its single corner, laid naked to our eyes a hideous secret. We recoiled instinctively from a discovery grisly as it was unexpected, and I silently prayed that God—if indeed there was any good, sane God—would give me strength not to break down utterly in my extreme of horror.

  In there, crumpled where he had finally been overcome, lay the ragged and torn remains of old Jason Carpenter. It could only be him; the similarly broken body of Bones, his dog, lay across his feet. And all about him on the floor of the cave, spent shotgun cartridges; and clasped in his half-rotted, half-mummied hand, that weapon which in the end had not saved him.

  But he had fought—how he had fought! Jason, and his dog, too.

  Theirs were not the only corpses left to wither and decay in that tomb of a cave. No, for heaped to one side was a pile of quasi-human—debris—almost beyond my powers of description. Suffice to say that I will not even attempt a description, but merely confirm that these were indeed the very monstrosities of David’s tale of crumbling Innsmouth. And if in death the things were loathsome, in life they would yet prove to be worse by far. That was still to come...

  ~ * ~

  And so, with our torches reluctantly but necessarily switched off, we crouched there in the fetid darkness amidst corpses of man, dog, and nightmares, and we waited. And always we were full of that awful awareness of slowly burning fuzes, of time rapidly running out. But at last the tolling of the bell ceased and its echoes died away, and the sounds of the Deep Ones decreased as they made off in a body towards the source of the summoning, and finally we made our move.

  Switching on our torches we ran crouching from the cave into the gallery—and came face to face with utmost terror! A lone member of that flopping, frog-voiced horde had been posted here and now stood central in the gallery, turning startled, bulging batrachian eyes upon us as we emerged from our hiding place.

  A moment later and this squat obscenity—this part-man, part-fish, part-frog creature—threw up webbed hands before its terrible face, screamed a hissing, croaking cry of rage and possibly agony, and finally hurled itself at us ...

  ... Came frenziedly lurching, flopping, and floundering, headlong into a double-barrelled barrage from the weapon I held in fingers which kept on uselessly squeezing the trigger long after the face and chest of the monster had flown into bloody tatters and its body was lifted and hurled away from us across the chamber.

  Then David was yelling in my ear, tugging at me, dragging me after him, and ... and all of the rest is a chaos, a madness, a nightmare of flight and fear.

  I seem to recall loading my shotgun—several times, I think— and I have vague memories of discharging it a like number of times; and I believe that David, too, used his weapon, probably more successfully. As for our targets: it would have been difficult to miss them. There were clutching claws and eyes bulging with hatred and lust; there was foul, alien breath in our faces, slime and blood and bespattered bodies obstructing our way where they fell; and always a swelling uproar of croaking and flopping and slithering as that place below became filled with the spawn of primal oceans.

  Then... the Titan blast that set the rock walls to trembling, whose reverberations had no sooner subsided when a yet more ominous rumbling began ... Dust and stony debris rained down from the tunnel ceilings, and a side tunnel actually collapsed into ruin as we fled past its mouth, but finally we arrived at the foot of those upward-winding stone steps in the fluelike shaft which was our exit.

  Here my memory grows more distinct, too vivid if anything— as if sight of our salvation sharpened fear-numbed senses—and I see David lighting the final fuze as I stand by him, firing and reloading, firing and reloading. The sharp smell of sulphur and gunpowder in a haze of dust and flickering torch beams, and the darkness erupting anew in shambling shapes of loathsome fright. The shotgun hot in my hands, jamming at the last, refusing to break open.

  Then David taking my place and firing point-blank into a mass of mewling horror, and his voice shrill and hysterical, ordering me to climb, climb and get out of that hellish place. From above I look down and see him dragged under, disappearing beneath a clawing, throbbing mass of bestiality; and their frog-eyes avidly turning upwards to follow my flight, fangs gleaming in grinning, wide-slit mouths, an instant’s pause before they come squelching and squalling up the steps behind me!

  And at last... at last I emerge into moonlight and mist. And with a strength born of madness I hurl the slab into place and weight it with the millstone. For David is gone now and no need to ponder over his fate. It was quick, I saw it with my own eyes, but at least he has done what he set out to do. I know this now, as I feel from far below that shuddering concussion as the dynamite finishes its work.

  Following which I stumble from the roofless building and collapse on a path between stunted fruit trees and unnaturally glossy borders of mist-damp shrubbery. And lying there I know the sensation of being shaken, of feeling the earth trembling beneath me, and of a crashing of masonry torn from foundations eaten by the ages.

  And at the very end, sinking into a merciful unconsciousness, at last I am rewarded by a sight which will allow me, with the dawn, to come awake a sane, whole man. That sight which is simply this: a great drifting mass of mist, dissipating as it coils away over the dene, melting down from the shape of a rage-tormented merman to a thin and formless fog.

  For I know that while Dagon himself lives on—as he has “lived” since time immemorial—the seat of his worship which Kettlethorpe has been for centuries is at last no more ...

  ~ * ~

  That is my story, the story of Kettlethorpe Farm, which with the dawn lay in broken ruins. Not a building remained whole or standing as I left the place, and what has become of it since I cannot say for I never returned and I have never inquired. Official records will show, of course, that there was “a considerable amount of pit subsidence” that night, sinkings and shiftings of the earth with which colliery folk the world over are all too familiar; and despite the fact that there was no storm as such at sea, still a large area of the ocean-fringing cliffs were seen to have sunken down and fallen onto the sands or into the sullen water.

  What more is there to say? There was very little deep kelp that year, and in the years since the stuff has seemed to suffer a steady decline. This is hearsay, however, for I have moved inland and will never return to any region from which I might unwittingly spy the sea or hear its wash.

  As for June: she died some eight months later giving premature birth to a child. In the interim her looks had turned even more strange, ichthyic, but she was never aware of it for she had become a happy little girl whose mind would never be whole again. Her doctors said that this was just as well, and for this I give thanks.

  As well, too, they said, that her child died with her ...

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE SUN, THE SEA,

  AND THE SILENT SCREAM

  This time of year, just as you’re recovering from Christmas, they’re wont to appear, all unsolicited, plop on your welcome mat. I had forgotten that fact, but yesterday I was reminded.

  Julie was up first, creating great smells of coffee and frying bacon. And me still in bed, drowsy, thinking how great it was to be nearly back to normal. Three months she’d been out of that place, and fit enough now to be first up, running about after me for a change.

  Her sweet voice called upstairs: “Post, darling!” And her slippers flip-flopping out onto the porch. Then those long moments of silence—until it dawned on me what she was doing. I knew it instinctively, the way you do about someone you love. She was screaming—but silently. A scream that came drilling into all my bones to shiver into shards right there in the marrow. Me out of bed like a puppet on some madman’s strings, jerked downstairs so as to break my neck, while the silent scream went on and on.

  And Julie standing there with her head thrown back and her mout
h agape, and the unending scream not coming out. Her eyes starting out with their pupils rolled down, staring at the thing in her white, shuddering hand—

  A travel brochure, of course ...

  ~ * ~

  Julie had done Greece fairly extensively with her first husband. That had been five or six years ago, when they’d hoped and tried for kids a lot. No kids had come; she couldn’t have them; he’d gone off and found someone who could. No hard feelings. Maybe a few soft feelings.

  So when we first started going back to Greece, I’d suggested places they’d explored together. Maybe I was looking for faraway expressions on her face in the sunsets, or a stray tear when a familiar bousouki tune drifted out on aromatic taverna exhalations. Somebody had taken a piece of my heart, too, once upon a time; maybe I wanted to know how much of Julie was really mine. As it happened, all of her was.

  After we were married, we left the old trails behind and broke fresh ground. That is, we started to find new places to holiday. Twice yearly we’d pack a few things, head for the sunshine, the sea, and sometimes the sand. Sand wasn’t always a part of the package, not in Greece. Not the golden or pure white varieties, anyway. But pebbles, marble chips, great brown and black slabs of volcanic rock sloping into the sea—what odds? The sun was always the same, and the sea ...

  The sea. Anyone who knows the Aegean, the Ionian, the Mediterranean in general, in between and around Turkey and Greece, knows what I mean when I describe those seas as indescribable. Blue, green, mother-of-pearl, turquoise in that narrow band where the sea meets the land—fantastic! Myself, I’ve always liked the colours under the sea the best. That’s the big bonus I get, or got, out of the islands: the swimming, the amazing submarine world just beyond the glass of my face mask, the spearfishing.

  And this time—last time, the very last time—we settled for Makelos. But don’t go looking for it on any maps. You won’t find it; much too small, and I’m assured that the British don’t go there any more. As a holiday venue, it’s been written off. I’d like to think I had something, everything, to do with that, which is why I’m writing this. But a warning: if you’re stuck on Greece anyway, and willing to take your chances come what may, read no further. I’d hate to spoil it all for you.

  So ... what am I talking about? Political troubles, unfinished hotel apartments, polluted swimming pools? No, nothing like that. We didn’t take that sort of holiday, anyway. We were strictly “off-the-beaten-track” types. Hence Makelos.

  We couldn’t fly there direct; the island was mainly a flat-topped mountain climbing right out of the water, with a dirt landing strip on the plateau suitable only for Skyvans. So it was a packed jet to Athens, a night on the town, and in the mid-morning a flying Greek matchbox the rest of the way. Less than an hour out of Athens and into the Cyclades, descending through a handful of cotton-wool clouds, that was our first sight of our destination.

  Less than three miles long, a mile wide—that was it. Makelos. There was a “town,” also called Makelos, at one end of the island where twin spurs formed something of a harbour; and the rest of the place around the central plateau was rock and scrub and tiny bays, olive groves galore, almonds and some walnuts, prickly pears, and a few lonely lemons. Oh, and lots of wildflowers, so that the air seemed scented.

  The year before, there’d been a few apartments available in Makelos town. But towns weren’t our scene. This time, however, the island had something new to offer: a lone taverna catering for just three detached, cabin-style apartments, or “villas,” all nestling in a valley two miles down the coast from Makelos town itself. Only one or two taxis on the entire island (the coastal road was little more than a track), no fast-food stands, and no packed shingle beaches where the tideless sea would be one-third sun oil and two-thirds tourist pee!

  We came down gentle as a feather, taxied up to a windblown shack that turned out to be the airport, deplaned, and passed in front of the shack and out the back, and boarded our transport. There were other holiday makers, but we were too excited to pay them much attention; also a handful of dour-faced island Greeks— Makelosians, we guessed. Dour, yes. Maybe that should have told us something about their island.

  Our passports had been stamped over the Athens stamp with a local variety as we passed through the airport shack, and the official doing the job turned out to be our driver. A busy man, he also introduced himself as the mayor of Makelos! The traction end of our “transport” was a three-wheeler: literally a converted tractor, hauling a four-wheeled trolley with bucket seats bolted to its sides. On the way down from the plateau, I remember thinking we’d never make it; Julie kept her eyes closed for most of the trip; I gave everyone aboard an A for nerve. And the driver-mayor sang a doleful Greek number all the way down.

  The town was very old, with nowhere the whitewashed walls you become accustomed to in the islands. Instead, there was an air of desolation about the place. Throw in a few tumbleweeds, and you could shoot a Western there. But fishing boats bobbed in the harbour; leathery Greeks mended nets along the quayside; old men drank muddy coffee at wooden tables outside the tavernas; and bottles of Metaxa and ouzo were very much in evidence. Crumbling fortified walls of massive thickness proclaimed, however inarticulately, a one-time Crusader occupation.

  Once we’d trundled to a halt in the town’s square, the rest of the passengers were home and dry; Julie and I still had a mile and a half to go. Our taxi driver (transfer charges both ways, six pounds sterling: I’d wondered why it was so cheap!) collected our luggage from the tractor’s trolley, stowed it away, waited for us while we dusted ourselves down and stretched our legs. Then we got into his taxi.

  I won’t impugn anyone’s reputation by remarking on the make of that old bus; come to think of it, I could possibly make someone’s name, for anywhere else in the world this beauty would have been off the road in the late sixties! Inside—it was a shrine, of course. The Greek sort, with good-luck charms, pictures of the saints, photos of Mum and Dad, and iconlike miniatures in silver frames hanging and jangling everywhere. And even enough room for the driver to see through his windscreen.

  “Nichos,” he introduced himself, grave-faced, trying to loosen my arm in its socket with his handshake where he reached back from the driver’s seat. And to Julie, seated beside him up front: “Nick!” and he took her hand and bowed his head to kiss it. Fine, except we were already mobile and leaving the town, and holiday makers and villagers alike were scattering like clucking hens in all directions in our heavy blue exhaust smoke.

  Nichos was maybe fifty, hard to tell: bright brown eyes, hair greying, upwards-turned moustache, skin brown as old leather. His nicotine-stained teeth and ouzo breath were pretty standard. “A fine old car,” I opined, as he jarred us mercilessly on nonexistent suspension down the patchy, pot-holed tarmacadam street.

  “Eh?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “The car,” I answered. “She goes, er, well!”

  “Very well, thank you. The car,” he apparently agreed.

  “Maybe he doesn’t speak it too well, darling.” Julie was straight-faced.

  “Speaks it,” Nichos agreed with a nod. Then, registering understanding: “Ah—speak it! I am speaking it, yes, and slowly. Very slooowly! Then is understanding. Good morning, good evening, welcome to my house—exactly! I am in Athens. Three years. Speaks it much, in Athens.”

  “Great!” I enthused, without malice. After all, I couldn’t speak any Greek.

  “You stay at Villas Dimitrios, yes?” He was just passing the time. Of course we were staying there; he’d been paid to take us there, hadn’t he? And yet at the same time, I’d picked up a note of genuine enquiry, even something of concern in his voice, as if our choice surprised or dismayed him.

  “Is it a nice place?” Julie asked.

  “Nice?” he repeated her. “Beautiful!” He blew a kiss. “Beautiful sea—for swim, beautiful!” Then he shrugged, said: “All Makelos same. But Dimitrios water—water for drink—him not so good. You drinking? OK
—you drink Coke. You drink beer. Drinking water in bottle. Drinking wine—very cheap! Not drinking water. Is big hole in Dimitrios. Deep, er—well? Yes? Water in well bad. All around Dimitrios bad. Good for olives, lemons; no good for the people.”

  We just about made sense of everything he said, which wasn’t quite as easy as I’ve made it sound here. As for the water situation: that was standard, too. We never drank the local water anyway. “So it’s a beautiful place,” I said. “Good.”

  Again he glanced at me over his shoulder, offered another shrug. “Er, beautiful, yes.” He didn’t seem very sure about it now. The Greeks are notoriously vague.

  We were out of Makelos, heading south round the central plateau, kicking up the dust of a narrow road where it had been cut through steep, seaward-sloping strata of yellow-banded, dazzling white rock to run parallel with the sea on our left. We were maybe thirty or forty feet above sea level, and down there through bights in the shallow sea cliffs, we were allowed tantalizing glimpses of white pebble beaches scalloping an ocean flat as a millpond. The fishing would be good. Nothing like the south coast of England (no Dover sole basking on a muddy bottom here), but that made it more of a challenge. You had to be good to shoot fish here!