Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Oh, how we tiptoed past the bones. Our shadows, tall and cruelly sharp, capered and spilled across the walls, mocking us. Grown men, with daggers and swords, we huddled together and held hands like children passing through that crypt. Halls crissed and crossed and doubled upon themselves. Sergeant Bakker broke out the chalk so we wouldn’t become lost forever in the warren.

The stairwell to the main floor had collapsed, confining our search for riches to those lower levels. I filled a burlap bag with coins. Brass, bronze, copper, reliefs worn smooth and shined to a glow I could see in the near dark. I swept all kinds of bullshit into that sack on the chance it would fetch a kind word from the Captain or at least spare me from the lash. Pewter cups and pewter plates, mostly cracked, but who gave a rip? Metal tongs and shattered candlesticks. Hurt rejoiced to find a trunk he thought would be jammed with valuables. Alas, mostly dirt and moldering cloth. He saved a moth-eaten tapestry that had grayed with antiquity.

Smoke hung in the fumy haze of our torch. More slimy lichen covered the walls. More slimy white mushrooms puffed beneath our tread. My breath huffed forth, and I sucked it and the torch smoke and the pall of the mushrooms in again and my thoughts revolved around themselves and my mood lightened even as a tear of desperation leaked from my eye. Intoxicated, dear daughter — no matter the source — is one way to pass the time in hell, should you ever need to know.

Hurt and I struck it rich in a dead end passage. I leaned against the wall to rest my sore backside. The stone crumbled and sloughed away and there in a queerly shaped cell, were two-dozen obsidian eggs stacked within the remnants of rotted crates. I’d seen their like once at a jeweler’s shop in Victory City: hollow for the placing of a gem or prayer scroll while other others contained several smaller versions, each nested within its kin. Richies collected them in sets of fanciful design and jewelers crafted them in a drover’s dozen lands.

I lifted one and turned it over. Different from the fabricated pieces I’d encountered, yet similar enough to give me hope of high value. Hard and edgy as the obsidian it resembled and seamless as any true egg. Something inside rattled the way a musician’s gourd rattles.

“Why’n hell they got no latches?” Hurt said the way a child will of a Solfest upon discovering there’s no gifts on the breakfast platter.

Surely the exotic nature of the eggs would fetch a fair coin. We’d get double rations at camp and that pleased me well enough to clear my foggy brain. I admit to a larcenous nature — knowing well that Hurt was too dumb to count, I socked away three of the eggs with the intention of smuggling them back to civilization and brokering a fortune of my own.

Hurt gathered our comrades while I set about fashioning a travois to transport the other goods we’d gathered. Soon the others arrived bearing their own dubious treasures. We stowed our spoils and proceeded for the surface. A train of scout ants dutifully transporting crumbs back to the colony.

Somehow, and maybe the brain-fog returned to beleaguer me, I lost the way. I’d taken the hind teat of our column as I dragged a carpet-load of junk treasure and no one wanted to trip over it in the gloom. One moment, Hurt trudged a couple paces ahead, and then I stubbed my toe on a loose stone and the men went around the corner, gone. Grunts and laughter and curses quit upon an instant as did the glare of their lamps and torches. The sudden stillness sobered me right smartly.

I shouted to them. My voice echoed through the labyrinth. It didn’t rebound; it kept on going without answer. Then I felt in my pockets for flint and in moments ignited a brand from a sconce. A feeble reddish hue flickered from that ancient pitch. Nowhere did I spy Sergeant Bakker’s chalk marks. I thought of all those skeletons in their cells and the weight of the rock overhead, and of the mold and slime oozing in the cracks. Somewhere, wind moaned through a crevice. Dread coiled around me, sure as the noxious smoke.

Hold still, young Ruark. Someone whispered from the shadows. Hold still, child. I’m almost with you. My father’s gruff voice, though he’d died several winters before, crushed beneath the felled trunk of an oak. Later, I became convinced it was my imagination, but in the moment, that coldly eager whisper was enough to get me moving. I abandoned the load and set forth with alacrity.

The hall wound this way and that and tightened until rudely carved rock dug into my shoulders. I squeezed through and stumbled into a cavern. Saints know how big — couldn’t see far as the brand smoldered to a nub. Earth crumbled away from the toes of my boots into a pit. A foul breeze moaned up from that abyss and snuffed the dying flame.

Sapped of fight, I curled into a ball and fell asleep right there on the lip of oblivion. Chill and damp woke me. Didn’t know what else to do, so I crawled. Crawled because I dared not risk tripping into sudden doom. I rested often; so thirsty I sucked at water seeping through rock, so hungry I licked the salty blood from my scabs, so weary I’d slip into dreams of the home cottage and Mother’s honey porridge before the miserable cold roused me and I crept onward without direction or hope. The hunger became terrible. I sorted through my pockets, mad for the smallest crumb, and came across three of the obsidian eggs I’d stuffed in there and forgotten. I nearly pitched them away, until something stayed my hand.

Strangely, the jagged edges had smoothed and softened as unfired clay does over time. The shell curved, pliable as leather as I caressed it. In a daze, I obeyed a mindless command and cracked the egg and took its clabbered bounty in a gulp. The darkness was complete, thus I couldn’t discern what yolky, blood-warm mass sludged down my throat, nor what fine bones and bits crunched between my teeth. The taste of it, horrible and delightful, a rancid ambrosia, smoldered in my guts. The next two went down the hatch with more ease. I heard my own grunts and gulps echoing from the rocks around me. Horrible. And I licked my fingers and the ground for any drooling trace, and when I’d done, crawled onward.

The Dark looks after its own.

I found a chimney vent and wriggled my way until I popped out on the surface. I wept and rolled in that bog mud. You’ve seen the scars upon my back. You know how Captain Vanger greeted me upon my return to camp. After twenty lashes at the whipping post, they clapped me in the stocks for a night and chalked it off as a lesson learned. The Captain said I reminded him of one of his stupider nephews.

I wasn’t the only sod who disappeared. Only one who vanished and then came back , though. Vanger ordered the company to withdraw. Apparently he took a gander at the obsidian eggs Hurt and the other lads hauled out of the depths and made the call right there. Loose talk spread through the ranks — Jon Foot wanted the eggs, had sent us into the wilderness for the very purposes of securing them, gold and gems be damned.

Damned.

The company made good time on its return journey. The weather stiffened and that sent the blue-bellies into their warrens for the cold season. On the eleventh sunset when we camped near the Thrush Meadows, I went forth to fetch wood for the bonfires. Dreadful pains stabbed through my innards. A foul, sickly sweat oozed from my entire body and made my clothes sodden. Phantasms of delirium cascaded through my mind. I bolted from the work part and squatted behind a log and voided my bowels.

Women groan about the agonies of giving birth. Well, lass, they have my profound sympathy. Shite and blood burst from me. I thought myself liable to split apart at the seams, as it were. Miracles and horrors! Three eggs dropped from me and lay in the muddy stench. A clutch of my very own. Each glistened in the muck; roughly the size of a hen’s and translucent. Shrimplike embryos coiled in jelly. I recognized the black wisps of my hair, the imprint of my own coarse features, my own eye gone molten yellow that flashed with unnatural awareness. Within a few heartbeats, the eggs crusted over, sealed by a jagged black shell.