Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (37 page)

Having long since emptied his stomach of its contents and become accustomed to the smell, he was able to draw himself to within a few feet of the thing. Closer examination yielded no more information. The thing still appeared to him as a formless heap of gelid viscosity. Perhaps the thing could not hold its shape without the supportive pressure of the deep? In any case, Lee was sure the carcass had some connection with the insects he was determined to destroy, and so, he began to collect scattered driftwood and to snap off the dry stumps of branches that still dotted the tree trunks protruding from the thing.

Some time later, he’d managed to cover the thing with enough wood to incinerate any portion of it that lay exposed above the surface of the mud. He was just stepping back from his handiwork when he was startled by a sudden spasm along the surface of the creature’s anatomy. Startled, he stumbled backward, dropping a last arm-load of sticks and prepared to run if he had to.

Watching the thing carefully, he realized that the movement he’d seen, was not the creature itself, but something wholly separate. The dull, waxy surface of the beast was as lifeless as ever, but it quivered in places that seemed wholly apart from any nerve related cause. Gradually, the movements spread over the whole of its surface and Lee, sensing danger, drew back in inexplicable dread. But even as the short hairs at the back of his neck prickled in warning, he couldn’t suppress his scientific curiosity. A curiosity that allowed him to witness the final horror; a curiosity that he would have reason to curse for the remainder of his life…whenever he again had occasion to smell the salty aroma of the sea.

Leaning in close, Lee observed the appearance of certain lesions across the surface of the creature that rapidly grew into knob-like pustules. In minutes, its entire exposed surface was alive with the throbbing sores. Finally, one burst, then another, and another in wetly popping unison surprising Lee into stumbling back onto the dry mud. It was from that position that he discovered the reason for the sudden activity. Half stumbling, half crawling away, Lee’s weakened frame was again wracked by futile heaves that brought only bitter trickles of bile to his lips. On his mind, the squirming, writhing maggots that hungrily ate their way up from the pulpy effluvia that was the interior of the beached Deep One and their almost instantaneous transformation into replicas of the insects that had only recently swarmed off toward the railroad.

Even as he backed away, hand over his mouth, Lee could see the newly hatched young testing their wings as they rose hesitantly from their noxious birthplace into the warm air of the surrounding swamp. Gradually, instinctively, they began to swarm and Lee, cognizant of his danger yet aware also of his duty, forced himself to gather a few of the sticks he had dropped into a small pile. Slowly removing the cumbersome gloves from his hands, he reached inside his suit and removed a tin of matches. Eying the slowly growing cloud of insects who had yet to recognize him as a source of nourishment, Lee lit one of the matches and held it to the small piled of twigs. It took a few tries, but he finally managed to get them to burn. By that time, the new-born insects had gathered into a swarm. Taking hold of one of the burning sticks, he tossed it desperately towards those that he’d used to cover the Deep One.

As soon as the faggot he’d tossed touched the thing, the whole creature burst into flame as if its surface had been covered in oil. Some unknown excreta covering or composing the thing’s body had proven to be naturally combustible, a fact Lee wasn’t going to question. Holding an arm up to protect himself from the mounting flames, he could see with relief that the flames quickly sought out the low flying young that had not yet escaped the vicinity of the carcass.

Hardly waiting to see if his handiwork was completely successful, he turned and began to run as quickly as he could along the surface of the dried mud. Within a few dozen paces however, his feet began to sink again.

He was still busily slogging his way along when his ears were filled with the sound of buzzing. Allowing a gasp of fear to escape from his lips, he looked back to the smoldering heap for the approach of the creature’s insect offspring, but there was no activity from that direction. Then, sweat streaming from his body, he turned back toward the distant forest and realized that the sound was coming from there.

Quickly, he turned direction and recrossed his island hiding place and sloshed again in the soft muck of the mud beyond. The buzz of the returning insects was growing louder by the second as his frenzied mind insisted on picturing for him the details of the creatures’ physiognomy: the electric blue wings, the ugly cilia, the long prehensile stinger with its accompanying sack bloated red with blood…and those tiny, inexplicable but all-too-humanlike hands. It was that final image, of those ghastly, incongruous hands, that drove him crazily over the last few yards of open mud onto dry ground. But any relief he might have derived from the possible safety of dry land was subsumed in the tearing, ripping, slashing sound of the swarm close on his heels. He dared not even glance back to see how close they actually were. He didn’t need to.

His surroundings were a blur of rushing images: trees, pools, bushes, leaves, vines, more trees. He noticed none of them until he burst into a clearing that held a deserted village. His passage through it was so hasty that he barely had time register any of its features. Indeed, it was with some amazement that later in life he remembered any of it at all. Only a handful of empty huts of grass and wood stood in a rough circle around the black pit of the community fire. Here and there the typical belongings of a poor native village. A stand of poles draped with grass fishing nets and crude wooden buoys characterized that the village as that of a tribe of fisher-folk. All was quiet and empty. The village was deserted and later, Lee needed to spend little time wondering about it.

Leaving the village behind, he plunged hip-deep into a narrow stream outside the ring of huts and crashed through the few dugout canoes still moored there. Thrashing about in a desperate attempt to disentangle himself from the surface clutter, he fell upon the opposite shore and scrabbled unknowingly upward toward a pile of shattered stones. He sensed more than felt the presence of the ferocious horde at his back as he scrabbled up the short ridge of rock that poked up like a finger from the midst of the surrounding forest. His protective suit, torn and shredded, felt heavy on his arms and legs but he was thankful for what protection it still afforded when he felt the first few pricks made by the lead elements of the swarm. Tiring, unable to go much further, Lee braced himself for the final attack as he crested the ridge and fell face forward onto the smooth expanse of rock at the top. Struggling to rise, he found himself too exhausted to continue and finally fell back unconscious.

When Lee awoke at last it was night and the moon had risen and drowned out the dimmer stars in its bright light. Slowly, he stripped off the last shreds of his now-useless protective suit. Standing, he wondered at last why he was still alive. Moving to the edge of the broad shelf of rock upon which he’d fallen, he looked back down the way he’d come. Littered along the steep slope were the decomposed bodies of about thirty or so people. They lay there in the positions they had fallen in the act of trying to escape the angry swarm that had at last caught up with them before they could reach safety. The inhabitants of the village he’d passed through, he realized. And all around them, inches deep like some black carpet draped over the small knoll, were the lifeless bodies of insects. Already, they were being feasted upon by birds and other insects; by morning, almost nothing would be left of their presence. On the horizon, a dull smudge on the eastern sky marked where the last fumes of the burned carcass rose thinly from the mud flat.

Lee turned slowly back to face the sailing moon, wondering why he’d been spared and the tormenting creatures slain. The bright light reflected from off the face of the smooth stone on the edge of which he stood, attracting his eyes. He looked down and saw the shape of the rock. Too regular for nature, it had certainly been carved by human hands. He looked back at those dead villagers then back at the stone. They’d sought safety upon the rock. He alone had reached it and survived. Stepping back for a better view, he again looked at the stone he was standing on and recognized it as the same as the one that had been etched on the piece of cured skin found in the possession of the native that had died at the hospital. In addition to the Deep Ones and something called Clulu, it also included the design of a strange, five pointed star.

Lee hunkered down in the center of the stone and again looked down upon the black carpet of insects below him, relieved that their menace had been ended, whatever the connection between themselves and the star figure. Along with them, the Deep One was destroyed and that was good, but what concerned him were the other swarms, the ones he’d heard in the jungle before ever arriving in Colon. What about them?

Then, as the silence of the evening deepened around him, he thought he heard a familiar, softly building drone…

he snow started to fall again, tracing intricate patterns in the still night air. Mathias Cordell marveled at the total absence of sound in the presence of so much motion. The temperature had risen a few degrees above zero during the short hours of daylight. The gray skies were a single sheet of unbroken clouds that stretched forever in all directions. Now, however, those same clouds were invisible in the night, with only the large, white flakes that suddenly appeared from nothingness to show that they were still there.

One snowflake found its awkward way to Cordell’s eye, forcing him to lower his head. “Damn!” He had to remove his sealskin glove to rub his eye…always an intricate process. Rubbing quickly and replacing the glove fast so as not to leave his bare hand exposed to the chill air longer than necessary, he leaned back against the stone wall and looked to his right.

A line of men huddled with their old Russian rifles against the crumbling boundary until it was lost in distance and snow. The men wore old Russian uniforms and greatcoats, fur caps firmly jammed down over their ears. Most were drawn up in sleep, but a few remained awake, working their frozen rifles. When they spoke, it was in a strange tongue that died in the silence of the storm.

Cordell blew droplets that hung, not yet frozen, from his upper lip and retreated farther down into the recesses of his parka.

The man next to him stirred and turned his head, revealing a dull flap of gold on his collar. “You have never been a soldier.”

A cloud of mist rolled across Cordell’s eyes as the thick accent indicated a statement, not a question. He shifted his position to face the man, forcing his holster into his side, and said, “So what else is new?” The man looked at him strangely, with a slight cock of the head. A smile came to Cordell’s face. “Forget it.” Then: “How long have we got till dawn?” He managed to shift his weight and ease the pressure in his side.

The man looked up at the vanished sky. Cordell watched him as flakes of snow came to momentary rest on his face and disappeared.

“A few more hours. I will waken the men soon,” the man said, looking back to Cordell. “How will you take notes in this storm? Surely you Americans have not invented waterproof paper?”

Cordell allowed himself a chuckle and said, “Not yet, Colonel. I’ll watch the goings-on and get it all down later.”

“There will be much to see when the fighting begins, my friend, and you will be down more often than you are up.”

“You ought to know.”

“By God, you are right, I ought to know. My men and I have been fighting here for several months. If it was not for us, Admiral Kolchak and his Whites would never have had a chance.” The Colonel was standing now, warming to his subject. Cordell followed his gloved hand as it pointed to imaginary targets. “It was we,” he pounded his big chest, “the Czechoslovak Legion, that seized the railroad and gave the Whites a chance to organize. We were the first to fight the damn Bolsheviks and drive them beyond the Ural Mountains.”