Frank Long - Mythos and Horror Stories

“Ah, yes,” the resident physician said. “That’s what he claimed before I gave him that second seconal injection. I’m sure he’ll feel quite differently about all of this when he wakes up.”

“I hope he doesn’t feel differently about Susan’s heroic, close to sacrificial act. Love for a total stranger. It’s curious, but do you know — I can understand just why Susan felt that way about him.”

It was what I’d been waiting to hear. I closed my eyes and started humming softly to myself, waiting for the second seconal to work.

But when it drew me down, the seconal felt like water. Something like a shriveled face came floating up from immeasurable distances, and I remembered my own words: “It is written that all shall arise and join — we who carry the emblem and those who have looked upon it…”

I heard Boucke beating with his bare fists upon the cabin door and the wind whistling under the cracks. I objected to both and I opened the door wide. Boucke came in then, with a fierce rush of wind. He was a curious little man, with the sea and sky in his eyes, and he spoke in pantomime. He pointed towards the door and ran his fingers savagely through his reddish hair, and I knew that something had nearly finished him — I mean finished him spiritually, damaged his soul, his outlook.

I didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified. Boucke seemed more human with his queer, vivid gestures and flaming eyes, but I couldn’t imagine what he had seen up on deck. Of course I found out soon enough.

The men were sitting about in idiotic groups of two and three and no one saluted me when I stepped out from the shadows of twisted cordage into a luminous stripe of moonlight.

“Where’s the boatswain?” I asked.

Several of the men heard my question, but they simply turned and stared at me without replying.

“It took the boatswain!” said Oscar.

Oscar seldom spoke to anyone. He was tall and lean and his jaundiced scalp was fringed with yellow hair. I distinctly recall his dark, hungry eyes and his fringe of hair glistening in the moonlight. But the rest of Oscar I can no longer visualize. He has faded into an indefinite ghost of memory. It is curious, though, how clearly I, remember every other shape and incident of that amazing night.

Oscar was standing by my elbow, and I turned suddenly and gripped his arm. It reassured me to grip his strong, muscular arm. But I knew that I had hurt him, for his shoulder jerked and he looked at me reproachfully. I presume Oscar wanted me to stand upon my own feet. But he made a sweeping motion with his arm to assure me that it didn’t matter. The wind whistled about our ears and the tattered sails flapped and wheezed. Sails can speak, you know. I have heard sails protest in chorus, each sail with a slightly different accent. You get to understand their conversation in time. On still mornings it is wonderful to come up on deck and hear the sails whispering among themselves. They make gestures, too, and when they are tired they sway pathetically against the sky.

I took a turn about the deck and bawled out the men and told them to go to the devil. Then I got my pipe out and blew grotesque yellow effigies into the cold air. They danced in the moonlight and made the situation irredeemable. I came back to Oscar eventually and asked him point-blank what he meant by “it.” But Oscar didn’t answer me. He simply turned, and pointed.

Something white and gelatinous oozed over the rail and ran or slid for several feet along the deck. Then a larger bulk seethed out of the darkness and stood poised above the black stern-post. A second object descended upon the deck, coming down with a thud and running at a tangent with the first over the smooth, polished boards.

I saw two of the men get quickly to their feet and I heard Oscar shout out a curt command.

The thing upon the deck spread out and became broader at its base. It reared into the air a livid appendage encircled with monstrous pink suckers. We could see the suckers loathsomely at work in the moonlight, opening and closing and opening again. We were affected by a queer aromatic stench and we felt an overpowering sense of physical nausea. I saw one of the men reel backward and collapse upon the boards. Then a second idiot keeled over, and a third — a third actually advanced towards the loathsome object on his hands and knees, as if fascinated.

At that moment the moon seemed to draw nearer, to actually careen down the sky and hang above the cordage. Then suddenly the amorphous tentacles shot forward, like released hawsers, and struck against the nearest mast, and I heard a splintering, and a noise like thunder. The arms quivered and seemed to fly in all directions. Then they flopped back over the side.

I fastened my eyes upon our black topsail mast-heads, and questioned Oscar in a very low voice. “Did that take the boatswain?”

Oscar nodded and shuffled his feet. The men on the deck whispered among themselves, and I knew intuitively that a spirit of rebellion was rife among them. And yet even Oscar exonerated me!

“Where would we have been if you hadn’t brought us in here? A-drifting, probably — rudderless and sailless. Our sails may look like the skin on a water-logged corpse, but we can use ‘em — when we can get the masts into shape. The lagoon looked innocent enough, and most of us were for coming in here. But now they whine like yellow puppies — and blame it on you. The idiots! If you just say the word-”

I stopped him, for I didn’t want the men to take his proposal seriously, and he spoke loud enough for them to hear. The men, I felt, were scarcely to blame — under the circumstances!

“How many times has the thing crawled over the side?” I asked.

“Eight times!” said Oscar. “It took the boatswain on the third trip. He shrieked and threw up his arms, and turned yellow! It twined itself about his leg, and set its great pink suckers to work on him; and the rest of us could do nothing — nothing! We tried to get him away, but you cannot imagine the sheer pull of that white arm. It oozed slime all over him, and all over the deck. Then jt flopped back into the water, and carried him with it! I “After that we were more careful. I told the men to go below, but they only glowered at me. The thing fascinates them. They sit there and deliberately wait for it to return. You saw what happened just now. The thing can strike like a cobra, and it sticks closer than a lamprey; but the idiots won’t be warned. And when I think of those quivering pink suckers I feel sorry for them — and for myself! He didn’t utter a sound, you understand, but he turned livid under the gills and his tongue stuck out horribly, and just before he disappeared over the side I noticed that his lips were all black and swollen. But as I told you, he was immersed in yellowish slime, in ooze, and the life must have gone out of him almost at once. I’m sure that he didn’t really suffer. With God’s help, it’s we who have to suffer!”

K “Oscar,” I said, “I want you to be quite frank, and if necessary, even brutal. Do you think that you can explain that thing? I don’t want any wretched theories, Oscar. I want you to fashion a prop for me, Oscar, something for me to lean upon. I’m so very tired, and I haven’t much authority here. Oh, yes, I’m supposed to be in command, but when there is nothing to go upon, Oscar, what can I say to them? How can I get them down into the cabin? I pity them so. What do you think it is, my friend?”

“The thing is obviously a cephalopod,” said Oscar, quite simply, but there was a look of shame and horror in his eyes, which I didn’t like.

“An octopus, Oscar?”

“Perhaps. Or a monstrous squid! Or some hideous unclassified species!”