Whispers From The Abyss (9 page)

Cement dust rained across my feet as I whacked my hammer into the crumbling wall where Marty, my supervisor, figured the blockage was and wondered how long it’d been since anyone “maintained” this area.

I’d been working sewer maintenance for the city of
Boston about four months, but I was just realizing there were literally miles of tunnels, even in the little territory of the old North End I’d been assigned. I doubted anyone had visited this one recently and it showed.

I know you’re thinking “the sewer? Sick!” but it’s not that bad – especially considering my prospects were pretty limited. I’m twenty-two so you’d think I’d have options, right? But all I got’s a GED and a pregnant girlfriend and this is a good job. It’s union and pays well—just gotta suck it up and get it done.

I took another swing at the wall hiding the pipe I needed to inspect and howled a little in surprise when the whole thing came tumbling down, throwing me off balance so I fell forward into the tunnel on the other side. Choking on dust and wiping my watering eyes, I thought Marty’s gonna shit a brick, when a wet hissing sound—sorta like when you blow into a straw after your cup is empty—hit my ears. I nearly shit one myself, thinking I’d broken the pipe I was there to unclog.

My eyes were still stinging but I had to check the damage before getting Marty over here, so at least he couldn’t say I didn’t own up to it, and aimed my flashlight towards the sound. Man, I wish I hadn’t! I screamed and dropped my light, but fear of screwing up beat out fear of what was in front of me cuz I picked it right back up and looked again.

The pipe was blocked, alright—by a hissing, stinking thing that reminded me of a little kid werewolf with mange. Its lower half was wedged in the pipe, but its upper half was piss-yellow and brown, hissing, wriggling desperately and swiping at me with unnaturally-long fingers ending in filthy-looking claws. It shrieked when I shone the light directly on it and I saw big, black eyes snap closed in a face more dog than human. I almost felt bad.

I called Marty on my walkie; he was pissed I interrupted lunch, but I said I had something I didn’t know how to handle. He asked if it could wait, I said probably not. He showed up fifteen minutes later, took a look in the hole, swore a little, then said I’d done the right thing. He didn’t seem surprised or nothing, just annoyed.

I was glad someone was calm, cuz I was close to freaking out. Here was this…demon or something in the damned sewer! I asked if I should call the cops, but Marty gave me a sneer and, rummaging in his big toolbox, said, “We’re ain’t bothering them. This is just part of the job.”

“Part of the job?!” I’d signed on to fix pipes and stuff, not deal with monsters.

My eyes went wide as Marty pulled a big revolver from his box and handed it to me with a hard look. I took it, but said I didn’t know anything about guns. “What’s to know?” he asked. “Point and shoot.”

I’d had enough, and said so. Even the new guy needs an idea of what’s going on. Marty actually seemed sympathetic, for once, and patted my shoulder. “Look, Sean,” he pointed towards the little squirmy thing still in the pipe. “That’s a ghoul – just a lil’ baby one, of course. These hills used to be chock full of ‘em and they’d run all around under the city. You’d hear about ‘em sometimes. Not much anymore, but once in a while you find one. They break into the pipes, looking for food I guess, and like it or not, anything that happens down here is part of our job. So—take care of it. Okay?”

I nodded, slowly. It did sort of make sense, even though I didn’t like it. I aimed at the critter and fired, the sound so loud in that little space you’d swear the roof would cave in. Marty hadn’t lied – it was easy, though the kickback made my elbow sore. He helped me pull the thing from the pipe, patch up the holes it’d made and recap it.

When we were done, he packed up his toolbox but as I tried to give him the gun he put up a hand and said “Nah, you’re gonna need it.”

I must have looked at him funny cuz he pointed into the darkened tunnel and said “Babies got mommas don’t they, dumb ass?”

I sighed. Suck it up. Get it done.

Hammich Kellerman had just finished reeling in the last of his three fishing lines when he noticed the floating mass—a lumpy, bluish-green
something
the size of a beer barrel, drifting in the waters some forty yards off the starboard bow.

At first he merely thought it to be an illusion. A shadow slithering about the vibrant waters of Broad Sound. Lord knew he’d seen stranger things in his many years of seafaring. But when he squinted for a sharper view he saw that it was real enough.

“Edwin,” he called to his son, who was busy on the opposite side of the May-Craft reeling in his own lines. “Come here a sec.”

Edwin, a mountain of a man with short red hair and a thick red beard, finished up his reeling, then went to his father. “What is it, pop?” he asked, a light Bostonian accent peppering his words, just as it peppered Hammich’s—the unavoidable side effect of living on the Winthrop peninsula, a stone’s throw from Beantown.

Hammich pointed at the mass. “Tell me I ain’t crazy. Tell me you see that there.”

Edwin followed his father’s finger. “Ayuh,” he said. “I see it. What do you think it could be?”

Hammich lifted his wool fisherman’s cap and scratched his mostly bald head. “You got me. I reckon we go in for a closer look.”

His son nodded and brought up the May-Craft’s anchor, while Hammich fired up the boat’s dual Yamahas. He got the boat within a few feet of the curious flotsam, then killed the engines. Once Edwin had the anchor deployed and their coordinates punched in the GPS, they canted over the port side railing and had a look.

What they saw surprised them. The mass was not bluish-green, as it had seemed from a distance. It was clear and gelatinous and its surface bore deep, coral-like corrugations. It was also bigger than they’d first thought, its irregular dimensions matching that of a partially submerged Austin Mini.

Theories as to what it might be briefly flitted through Hammich’s mind—a rare convergence of salp, a big clump of comb jelly, a shit-ton of fish eggs, a giant jellyfish—but none of them washed true.

Edwin asked him what he thought and Hammich just shook his head and grabbed a clean chum bucket from the boat’s rear storage compartment. He tied a rope to the bucket’s handle, cast it into the water, then drew it quickly across the mass’s edge. Like a spoon through pudding, the bucket scooped up a good portion of the stuff, and Hammich pulled the bucket back in.

Up close, the stuff resembled translucent jello, with an intricate network of thin white filaments running all through it.

“Huh,” Edwin said. “I’m stumped. You ever seen anything like it?”

“Not that I can recall,” Hammich replied.

Edwin rubbed his chin, thinking. He lifted his head and gazed north across the Sound. “Maybe we ought to take a sample to Telly,” he said.

Hammich’s bushy grey eyebrows arched upwards. Telly was Hammich’s old Navy buddy Abe Teller, who worked at the
Northeastern University Marine Science Center on nearby Nahant Harbor. If anybody knew what this stuff might be, it’d be Telly.

“Good notion, boy,” Hammich said, clapping Edwin on the back. “I’ll radio Nahant, see if I can’t get a hold of him. You take the wheel and get us headed that way.”

*     *     *

It took some finagling but Hammich finally managed to raise Telly at the center. His ever-jubilant old friend sounded quite interested in their find and agreed to receive them personally when they arrived at Dorothy Cove.

True to his word, Telly was there waiting for them when they pulled into the Cove’s small marina fifteen minutes later. Following a hearty round of hugs and handshakes—it had been eons since Hammich had last seen his old friend—Hammich handed Telly the bucket. Slipping on his bifocals, Telly took the bucket and gave the stuff inside a good, long look.

“Definitely organic,” he eventually said. “Similar to the mesoglea of jellyfish but not quite the same. Mind if we take this back to my lab for a little more testing?”

“Pay the docking fee and you have yourself a deal,” Hammich said.

Telly laughed, said he’d already paid the fee and they all piled into his beat up Jeep Wrangler.

It was past six by the time they got to the center and the place was a ghost town. After a quick tour for Edwin’s sake—he’d never been to the center before—Telly brought them to his lab where he hastily set up a row of test tubes and filled them with various chemicals and reagents. To each he added equal portions of what he called “the clear substance”. Reactions occurred in some and not in others. After documenting his findings on a small tablet device, Telly prepared a couple of slides and began examining the substance microscopically.

“Hmm,” he said several times as he fiddled with his high-tech microscope’s knobs and lights.

When he was finished he regarded Hammich and Edwin with a queer look, then strode across the lab towards its furthest wall, where a large map of Broad Sound was mounted. “Hammich, could you show me on the map where you found the substance?”

Hammich joined him at the map and tapped a finger on a spot near the Sound’s outer fringe. “Right about here, but we have the exact coordinates.” He glanced at his friend. “So what’s up, Telly? What’d them tests tell you?”

Telly adjusted his lab coat, removed his bifocals and ran a hand through his side-parted hair. “Inconclusive, I’m afraid. I’d really like to do some more testing.” He peered at Hammich. “Think you’d be willing to take me back out there in the morning? The center will pay for the fuel—I’ve got a nice expense card for that. And I can bring some equipment out with us, maybe get us some more answers.”

Hammich studied his friend’s face closely. He suspected the man was holding something back from him, but he wasn’t overly concerned about it. While he and Telly weren’t as close as they’d once been, the bond they shared—forged during their years gallivanting around the globe aboard the
USS Elrod
—hadn’t weakened due to lack of use. Hammich fully trusted Telly and expected he would disclose what he knew when he felt the time was right.

“You bet,” Hammich said.

They agreed on a sunup meeting time at the Cove’s marina, then Hammich and Edwin took off towards Winthrop.

During the trip back Hammich noticed that Edwin was acting quieter than usual, a trend that continued into their late dinner at Rossetti’s Tavern. When Hammich inquired if he was thinking about his dead ma again, Edwin said no and muttered something about the sea having its secrets, secrets they probably shouldn’t mess with. Assuming the lad was just tired—Edwin tended to get a bit whimsical about the sea whenever he got drunk or sleepy—Hammich advised him to envision himself as an explorer making a new discovery.

“That’s how I’m thinking of myself right about now,” Hammich said. “I got a feeling, boy. A feeling we might’a found something significant out there. And I’m getting kind of excited about it, you know? Like I ain’t been excited about anything since, well . . . since your ma was around. You remember how adventurous she was? Something like this would’ve been right up her alley, don’t you think?”

Edwin contemplated that in between long pulls from his bottle of Killian’s. “Okay, pop,” he said, digging into his plate of steamed clams. “Okay.”

*     *     *

The May-Craft came to a stop at the coordinates Edwin had saved in their Garmin.

Telly, outfitted in fisherman-esque khakis, flannel shirt and black galoshes, gravitated to the front of the boat and eagerly began surveying the sparkling waters.

“See anything?” Hammich called out as he signaled Edwin to hold off on dropping the anchor for the time being.

“Not yet,” Telly replied, lifting the binoculars hanging around his neck. “You’re sure this is the right spot?” He said it casually, almost jokingly, but Hammich thought he detected a hint of impatience mixed in there.

“I’m sure,” Edwin said, moving to port side. He cupped a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes and set to scanning the myriad little waves.

Less than a minute later Hammich shouted out in alarm. He’d positioned himself at the rear of the boat and was staring down at the water directly behind the Yamahas. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s right here!”

Edwin and Telly flocked to his sides and looked. The mass was indeed there, floating mere feet away from the stilled motors.

“Did we run over it or something?” Telly asked.

“Would’a felt that,” said Edwin.

“Maybe it drifted back there after we passed—“ Hammich started to say, but then his eyes narrowed and he abruptly fell silent.

“What?” Telly asked.

Seeing what his father saw, Edwin gripped the railing tight. “Pop,” he said, “I ain’t so sure this is the same stuff from yesterday.”

“It’s not,” Hammich said.

“What do you mean?” Telly asked.

Hammich wiped his palm over his face and gestured at the mass. “This has to be twice as big as the thing we took the sample from yesterday.”

“At least twice,” Edwin agreed.

Countenance going taut, Telly leaned a little further over the railing and started whispering and nodding to himself. After a lengthy spell of this, he withdrew from the rear of the boat and went to the forward storage compartment, from which he extracted a silver trunk. He popped the trunk’s latches and opened the lid, revealing the foam-padded contents of his mobile lab: a ruggedized microscope, two handheld analyzers and their test cartridges. He removed the entire lot, shut the trunk and suction-cupped the microscope to the trunk’s surface.

“Hammich,” he said, inserting the test cartridges into the analyzers and returning to the rear of the May-Craft, “would it be possible for you to get another sample for me?”

Hammich found another bucket and did as Telly asked. In the meantime, Edwin procured his own set of binoculars from the May-Craft’s wheelhouse and headed for the bow, where he took up post watching the waters.

For Hammich, the collection process went as smoothly as it had the first time. When the bucket was half full, he pulled it back into the boat and handed it to Telly. His friend took a couple of small samples, fed them into the cartridges and initiated his tests. “Should only be a couple of minutes,” he said as he brought the bucket to the microscope, where he prepared a single slide and locked it into the scope’s stage.

“All right,” he said, putting his eyes to the scope’s oculars while Hammich looked on. “Here goes nothing.”

*     *     *

Save for the rhythmless lapping of waves against the May-Craft’s hull, all was silent on the boat for close to three minutes. Then the analyzers beeped and Telly pulled away from the microscope to check the results. His face filled with wonderment as read them over.

Hammich, growing anxious, cleared his throat. “Talk to me, Abe. What’s the situation?”

Telly shook his head in what looked like amazed disbelief. “It’s them,” he said quietly. “They’re real. I mean, I was raised to believe it all and saw hints here and there, but I don’t think I ever truly believed, even after what happened to...” He removed the slide from the microscope and tossed into the ocean.

“Raised to believe what?” Hammich queried. “You ain’t making much sense.”

Telly packed up the analyzers and microscope in the trunk and restowed it in the forward storage compartment. In its stead he pulled out a black backpack, which he quickly toted to a seat along the boat’s starboard side. “Hammich, there’s some things I need to share with you. You’re going to think I’m out of my tree, and rightly so, but please understand I’m not pulling your leg. What I’m telling you is the God’s-honest truth.”

Hammich saw the seriousness in his friend’s eyes and nodded. “All right. I’m listening.”

*     *     *

Although he’d told everyone on the USS Elrod he was from Ipswitch, Telly’s family actually hailed from a smaller town close to Ipswitch which had a rather nebulous history. He didn’t want to get into the specifics of it except to say his family, mainly his grandfather, was deeply involved in many of that town’s darker affairs. When he was seventeen his father had moved them to Ipswitch in hopes of breaking free of the town and starting a new chapter in their lives.

Soon after the move, Telly joined the Navy to further distance himself from all of it. After two enlistments, he left the service and used his GI Bill at
Miskatonic University, near Boston, where he obtained his masters in marine biology. Diploma in hand and with no intention of returning home, he began scouring the east coast for jobs—but a call from his father brought him racing back to Ipswitch. The family’s ties with the other town, it seemed, had flared up in recent weeks and his mother and sister had unfortunately fallen prey to what Telly cryptically referred to as “elements of the Old War.”

“My dad was devastated, as was I,” said Telly. He took a breath. “Because of the injuries he’d suffered while trying to protect my mom and sister from what came, he said it was upon me to balance the scales if I could and then provided me with all the knowledge I’d need to make such a balancing happen.” Telly reached in his backpack and withdrew an archaic looking book. “The things that took my mother and sister have their own enemies. Many in fact.” He looked at the sky, then glanced down at the ocean. “In there.” He moved his gaze to the gelatinous substance. “That there.”