Strange Eons (8 page)

Keith nodded. “That’s more or less what I had in mind. Do you think I could get cooperation from the local authorities?”

“Hardly. The territory’s outside French jurisdiction. And you know the bureaucratic breed. I take it that’s why you haven’t talked to your own chaps.”

“Exactly.” Keith frowned. “But something has to be done, and quickly, and I’ll need help.”

“Say the word.”

“I was thinking, if I could fly over the area—”

“Abbott shook his head. “There isn’t a charter plane on the island that could make the distance.”

“What about hiring a boat?”

“It would cost you a packet, what with crew and all.”

“That part’s no problem.”

“Getting clearance might be a bit sticky.” Abbott pursed his lips. “Best way to swing it would be to set Pitcairn as your port-of-call—tell the Frenchies you’re working up a book about the descendants of Fletcher-bloody-Christian and the
Bounty
mutineers. Then, if you’re blown off course, it’s not your fault.”

Keith leaned forward. “Is there anyone you might recommend for such a trip?”

“I’d have to ask around, see what’s in port and available. You’ll need a skipper who knows how to keep his mouth shut, and that sort isn’t likely to be running a floating palace.” Abbott gave Keith a level look. “But before we go any further, you’d better tell me the rest. You didn’t come all this way just to make a tour of inspection. Suppose you find what you’re looking for—then what?”

Keith hesitated. “I’m not sure. But if it were possible to get hold of some kind of explosive, depth charges, perhaps—”

“Full marks.” Abbott smiled. “Of course you can’t expect to pick up that sort of thing on the open market. There’s all sorts of ammo and weaponry in the local ordnance, but getting one’s hands on government property takes a bit of doing. I’d have to grease a few palms.”

Keith shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect you to take such a risk.”

“The whole business is risky. Forged ship’s papers, bribing military personnel, handling live depth charges.” Abbott grinned. “Just the ticket for toning up a sluggish liver. With your permission, I’d like to sign on for the duration.”

“You’d come with me?”

“I’m tired of baching it alone, and you’re going to need someone who knows how to set off those charges,” Abbott said. “I had a crack at it a few years back, in ’Nam. Harbor duty with a demo outfit.” He sobered. “Besides, if there’s any chance that what we both suspect is true, the job has to be done.”

“It could be dangerous.”

Abbott shrugged. “Frankly, I think you’re a bloody idiot. But that makes two of us. With your leave, I’ll get cracking on it first thing tomorrow morning.”

It took three days to complete the preparations. Because of their nature, Abbott avoided using the phone to detail his progress. Several times he invited Keith to come out to his home in the black sand beach area on the far side of the island, but Keith thought it best to avoid comings and goings that might attract attention. Accordingly, Abbott reported to him in person at the hotel, and made the necessary arrangements with the cash Keith provided from his bank drafts and stock of traveler’s checks.

On the fourth day they were under way at last. The sea was calm and this proved to be a blessing, for the
Okishuri Maru
was an old tub, and Captain Sato—as Abbott had predicted—did not extend himself in keeping a tight ship. But no one could fault his seamanship, and Abbott seemed satisfied to leave matters in his hands once the course was set.

Keith saw little of the eight-man crew and made no attempt to communicate with them when their duties brought them above deck. “They don’t speak English,” Abbott said. “Pretty scruffy lot, but the best we could scrape together on short notice. I didn’t want local people, for obvious reasons—these boys are out-islanders, from Tuamota. Sato picked up the steward and the cook; he swears they’re reliable and we’ll just have to take them on trust. At least the grub’s not too bad.”

“How much does Captain Sato know?” Keith asked, as they sat over coffee and cognac the first night out.

“A bit more than I’d prefer.” Abbott lowered his voice. “He’s nobody’s fool—at first he must have reckoned we had some sort of smuggling operation in mind, and didn’t turn a hair. Then, when we took the depth charges aboard, he got the wind up. I had to tell him a cock-and-bull yarn about you being an oceanographer, and exploding the charges to bring up rare, deep sea specimens.”

“Did he buy that?”

“Hard to tell. But he knows we’re up to something illegal, and set the price accordingly. When he sees what we’re really after, you may have to part with a bit more of the ready.”

“If we do find something.” Keith glanced out of the cabin porthole, watching the sunset rays striating the smooth surface of the water with multicolored flames. “You know, I never dreamed it would be so peaceful. Hard to believe there’s anything out there that could possibly harm us, let alone what Lovecraft warned about.”

It was not until the morning of the fifth day out that Keith’s calm was shattered.

When Abbott pounded on the stateroom door and roused him to come out on deck, the sight that greeted his eyes rendered him speechless.

Shuddering, he stared at what lay off the starboard bow. It was horrifyingly familiar, and for a moment he thought he was experiencing
déjà vu.
Then he realized that he was gazing at what Lovecraft had so vividly and accurately described in his story—the tip of a single muddy peak upthrust from the ocean depths, atop of which towered a mountainous mass of masonry rising to a monolith formed by gigantic blocks of slime-green stone.

It was R’lyeh, and it was real.

The swarthy crew members jabbered and pointed beside him on the deck. Captain Sato appeared from the bridge, scowling and squinting against the sun at the incredible immensity of the structure rearing above the oozing surface on which it rested and reared in dizzying, distorted angles that defied gravity and sanity alike.

Now at last Keith could believe it all, for here before him was the ultimate proof—proof in a form more frightening than anything hinted at in words or the imagery of nightmare.

Staring at this horror from the depths he knew its power—the power to make its presence known in the dreams of men halfway around the world. It was in dreams that Lovecraft had seen it long ago, and wakened to set down his warning.

And the cult was real, too; the cult whose prayers and invocations had willed the coming of the quake—the long-awaited eruption that had once again raised dark R’lyeh from the vast deep where Great Cthulhu slept deathless and eternal, sending forth his commands.

Commands.
Keith was vaguely aware of Abbott beside him, snapping orders at Captain Sato. The launch was to be lowered at once.

“Make sure to take along a couple of charges,” Keith said. “If we can get that door open to drop them in—”

Abbott nodded quickly, then relayed instructions to Sato.

During the ensuing activity Keith continued to stare at the cyclopean citadel, which gradually took comprehensible shape; at the huge, crazily angled stone staircase that was not meant or fashioned for mortal tread, and the great acre-wide door to which it led. Even at this distance he could see the carvings of strange shapes crawling across its surface—tentacled, twisted, and utterly terrifying. And behind that door—beyond and below—was the reality they represented.

“Are you all right?” Abbott was shaking him by the shoulder.

Keith nodded; glancing down he saw that the launch was now bobbing beside the ship, manned and ready.

“Come on, then.” Abbott clambered down the rope-ladder and Keith followed clumsily until he reached the safety of the boat below. Then they cast off, with Sato at the tiller.

Once again Keith’s eyes returned to the mud-caked, weed-festooned mountain looming ahead, and the massive stone monstrosity that crowned its crest. “Look,” he said. “He wasn’t lying—the way those stones are set all askew, like something from another dimension, and yet they fit.”

Abbott nodded impatiently. “No time for geometry lessons. Let’s get astern.”

The launch was already slowing before the sloping base of the emergent peak. Captain Sato shouted orders and anchor lines went out. Keith noted that the chattering crewmen showed no fear—but then they did not know what lay ahead, hidden and waiting in the darkness behind the great door above the oddly slanted stairs. And that was just as well.

Keith slipped and stumbled up the slope behind Abbott. The crew, he knew, would be lugging up the depth charges behind him, but he did not glance back. His heart was pounding, not merely with exertion but with anticipation and expectation.

At last he and Abbott reached the great door above, set in ornate stone molding, which did not yield to pressure at any point.

Then recollection came. “Remember the story?” Keith murmured. “It’s like a panel, balanced on top.”

Abbott crawled up along the carven side, then pressed the slimy surface of the stone lintel at a point high above. The door tilted inward, and as he slid down the stile, the gaping aperture widened to reveal the ebon depths beyond.

From the opening issued an odor of corruption that stunned the senses, a stench so overpowering in its intensity that Keith almost fainted.

Gasping for breath, he regained control and saw that Captain Sato and the members of his crew had now reached the top of the stairs and stood empty-handed beside him.

He frowned at Abbott. “The depth charges—where are they?”

“In the bloody ordnance depot at Papeete,” Abbott said. “You didn’t think I’d actually pinch them, did you? There’s been enough trouble as it is—if you’d only gone round to my place as I wanted, we’d not have needed to go through with all this.” He shrugged. “Then again, I’d have had to come out here anyway to open the door.”

Keith gasped, then turned to Sato. As he did so, he heard a sound of squishing movement from deep within the darkness beyond the gigantic doorway.

Sato heard it too, but his expression did not alter. Instead he inclined his head. The crew’s mate, a burly dark-skinned native, moved up to peer intently at Keith from unblinking eyes set in a wide-mouthed face.

Captain Sato nodded at the man. “Him b’long Cthulhu,” he said.

Then the crew was swarming around Keith, clutching at him with clammy hands to lift him up and over the yawning opening of that demon-fashioned doorway from which something was rising, reaching.

Keith could not bear to behold what lurked below; his eyes closed as he fell forward into the blackness.

His final glimpse was of the crew-men’s fish-eyed faces. Too late he recognized the Innsmouth look.

P A R T   II

L A T E R

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it,” said Danton Heisinger. “He’s dead.”

Kay Keith didn’t answer. She sat there in the bank manager’s office, inventorying her reactions. Kay was acutely aware of the chill from the air-conditioner, the reek of Heisinger’s cigar, the squint of his astigmatic eyes imprisoned behind the thick barrier of bifocal lenses, the rustling of the papers he shuffled as he peered down upon them upon his desktop.

Her responses seemed to be in order—auditory, tactile, olfactory, visual.

But the actual news of Albert Keith’s death produced no conscious reaction at all.

“Here are the reports from the Consulate,” Heisinger was saying. “Eyewitness statements by the captain and several members of the crew. They were questioned separately by police and French governmental authorities, and their stories check in every detail! Heisinger pushed the onion-skin carbon copies forward. “If you’d like to examine them—”

Kay shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it. But getting drunk and falling overboard on a boat in the middle of the South Pacific—that doesn’t sound like Albert. Are they sure the identification is correct?”

“Positive.” Heisinger stubbed the cigar butt in his ashtray, much to Kay’s relief. “They’ve traced his movements all the way back to the time he bought the airline ticket here.”

Kay shook her head, then brushed back the blonde curls with a self-conscious sweep of splayed fingers. “It’s just that it doesn’t seem like something he’d do. Running off to the middle of nowhere. I can’t imagine Albert acting on impulse.”

Heisinger shrugged. “Frankly, neither can I. Your ex-husband struck me as a very methodical man.”

“So there must be a reason—”

“I’m sure of it.” Heisinger nodded. “The point is, we’ll never know just what that reason was. He didn’t consult me before his departure. All I can tell you is that he announced it when he came in, immediately following the earthquake. He arranged to withdraw twenty thousand dollars in traveler’s checks, and asked the bank to help cut through the usual delays and red tape involving his passport renewal. We also helped him find a property-management firm to look after the house while he was away. He paid them for the first month in advance and said nothing about being gone any longer, so we can assume he intended to return within that time. And that’s all I’ve been able to learn.”

Kay frowned. “But why Tahiti, of all places? And what was he doing on this Japanese boat, hundreds of miles from land? He wasn’t a fisherman. He wasn’t a lush, either. The last time I saw him, when we had lunch together and discussed the divorce terms, he didn’t even take a drink.”

“That was almost three years ago, as I recall,” Heisinger said. “People change.” The little bank official smiled hesitantly. “Not entirely, of course. You can take comfort in the fact that your ex-husband never drew up a new will. You’re still inheriting the estate. As his executor, I’m arranging for an immediate inventory. Which reminds me—”

Heisinger opened his upper right-hand desk drawer and produced a key ring from a manilla envelope. “Here you are. Duplicate keys to the house, front door and back, plus another for the garage. I thought you might like to take a look.”

“Thanks.” Kay put the keys in her purse.

“I must instruct you not to remove anything without consulting me.”