Frank Long - Mythos and Horror Stories

A little box, and I put a dog under it. He changed… Jelly! Etheric vibrations generate curious changes in living cells… Process starts and nothing can stop it. Growth! Enormous growth! Keeps sending out shoots — legs! arms! Marvelous growth! Human being next. Put a little girl under it. She changed. Beautiful jellyfish! It kept getting larger. Fed it mice. Then I destroyed it.

So interesting. Must try it on myself. I know how to get back. Will-power. A child’s will is too weak, but a man can get back. No actual change in cell- content.

A tremendous experience! I picked out a deep pool where I could hide. Hunger. Saw man on beach.

The police suspect. I must be more careful. Why didn’t I take the body out to sea?

Horrible incident. Young lady artist. I almost caught her, but she stamped on a leg. Smashed it. Horrible pain. I certainly must be more careful.

Great humiliation. Little boy hooked me. But I gave him a scare. The varmint! I glared and glared at him. I tried to catch him, but he ran too fast. I wanted to eat him. He had very red cheeks. I hate women and children.

Of course they suspect. Little boys always babble. I wanted to eat him. But I gave them all a good scare, and I got a man. He came down after me in a diver’s suit, but I got him. I took him — to pieces. I mean that — literally to pieces. Then I let the fragments float up. I wanted to scare them. I think I did. They ran for their lives. The authorities are fools.

I got back. But it wasn’t easy. The thing fought and fought. “I’m master!” I said, and it gulped. It gulped and gulped and gulped; and then I got back. But my hand was smashed and bleeding!

That fool clerk! Why did he take so long? But he didn’t know how hungry his red face made me. The thing came back without the ray. I was standing before the counter and it came back. I sprang at him. I was lucky to get away.

Terrible trouble. I can’t keep it from coming back. I wake up in the night, and find it spread out on the bed and all over the floor. Its arms writhe and writhe. And its demands are insatiable. Every waking moment it demands food. Sometimes it completely absorbs me. But now as I write the upper portion of my body is human.

This afternoon I moved to furnished room near beach. Salt water has become a necessity. Change comes on more rapidly now. I can’t keep it off. My will is powerless. I filled the tub with water and put in some salt. Then I wallowed in it. Great comfort. Great relief. Hunger. Dreadful, insatiable hunger.

I am all beast, all animal. Rats. I have caught six rats. Delicious. Great comfort. But I’ve messed up the room. What if the old idiot downstairs should suspect?

She does suspect. Wants me to get out. I shall get out. There is only one refuge for me now. The sea! I shall go to the sea. I can’t pretend I’m human any longer. I’m all animal, all beast. What a shock I must have given the old hag! I could hear her teeth chattering as she came up the stairs. All I could do to keep from springing at her.

Into the sea at last. Great relief, great joy. Freedom at last!

A ship. I ran head on into it. Six arms gone. Terrible agony. Flopped about for hours.

Land. I climbed over the rocks and collapsed. Then I managed to get back.

Part of me got back. I called for help. A crazy fool came out of the lighthouse and stared at me. Five of my tentacles sprang at him. I couldn’t control them. They, got him about the leg. He lost his head. Got out a revolver and shot at them.

I got them under control. Tremendous effort. Pleaded with him, tried to explain. He would not listen. Shots — many shots. White-hot fire in my body — in my arms and legs. Strength returned to me. I rose up, and went back into the sea. I hate human beings. I am growing larger, and I shall make myself felt in the world.

Arthur St. Amand.

[Statement of William Gamwell]

There were five of us in the boat: Jimmy Simms, Tom Snodgrass, Harry O’Brien, Bill Samson and myself. “Jimmy,” I said, “we may as well open the lunch. I’m not particularly hungry, but the salmon all have their noses stuck in the mud!”

“They sure ain’t biting,” said Jimmy. “I never seen such a bum run of the lazy critters.”

“Don’t go complaining,” Harry piped up. “We’ve only been here five hours.”

We were drifting toward the east shore and I yelled to Bill to pull on the oars, but he ignored me.

“We’ll drift in with the shipping,” I warned. “By the way, what’s that queer-looking tug with a broken smoke-stack?”

“It came in this morning,” said Jim. “It looks like a rum-runner to me.” “They’re taking an awful risk,” Harry put in. “The revenue cutter’s due by here any minute.”

“There she is now,” said Bill and pointed toward the flats.

Sure enough, there was the government boat, skirting the shore and looking like a lean wasp on the warpath. “She’s heading the tug off as sure as you’re born,” 3aid Bill. “I’ll say we’re in for a hot time!”

“Back water!” I shouted. “Do you want to get between ’em?”

Tom and Bill pulled sturdily on the oars and our boat swung out in the direction of the west shore; and then the current took us and carried us downstream.

A signal flag flashed for a moment on the deck of the cutter. Jimmy translated it to us. “ ‘Stand to, or we’ll fire’,” he exclaimed. “Now let’s see what the tug’s got to say to that!”

The tug apparently decided to ignore the command. It rose on a tremorless swell, and plunged doggedly forward. A vast black column ascended from its broken smoke-stack. “They’re putting on steam!” cried Bill. “But they haven’t a chance in the world.”

“Not a chance,” confirmed Tom. “One broadside will blow ’em to atoms.” Bill stood up and clapped his hands to his ears. The rest of us were nearly deafened by the thunderous report. “What did I tell you?” shouted Tom.

We looked at the tug. The smoke-stack was gone and she was wallowing in a heavy swell. “That was only a single shot across her bows,” said Bill. “But it did a lot of damage. Wait until they open fire with the big guns!” We waited, expecting to see something interesting. But we saw something that nearly frightened us out of our shoes. Between the cutter and the tug a gigantic, yellowish obscenity shot up from the water and towered thirty feet in the air. It thrashed wildly about and made a horrible gulping noise. We could hear the frenzied shrieks of the men on the tug, and from the deck of the cutter someone yelled. “Look at it! Look at it! Oh, my God!” “Mercy in heaven!” groaned Bill.

“We’re in for it!” sobbed Tom.

For a moment the thing simply towered and vibrated between the two boats and then it made for the cutter. It had at least a thousand legs and they waved loathsomely in the sunlight. It had a hooked beak and a great mouth that opened and closed and gulped, and it was larger than a whale. It was horribly, hideously large. It towered to the mounting zenith, and in its mephitic, blasphemous immensity it dwarfed the two boats and all the tangled shipping in the harbor.

“Are we alive?” shrieked Bill. “And is that there shore really Long Island? I don’t believe it. We’re in the Indian Ocean, or the Persian Gulf or the middle of the Hyperborean sea…That there thing is a Jormungandar! ”

“What’s a Jormungandar?” yelled Tom. He was at the end of his rope and clutching valiantly at straws.

“Them things what live on the bottom of the arctic seas,” groaned Bill. “They comes up for air once in a hundred years. I’ll take my oath that there thing’s a Jormungandar.”

Jormungandar or not, it was apparent to all of us that the monster meant business. It was bearing down upon the cutter with incredible ferocity. The water boiled and bubbled in its wake. On the other boats men rushed hysterically to the rails and stared with wide eyes.