Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud AU Read online

  I trust that you are a man of the world, for what I have to say might seem offensive, if not actually outlandish. Plain speaking is in my nature, as is the habit of observation — of the sea and its denizens, whether from the shallows or the deeps. A man of the marine trade soon finds his life depends upon it. I am sir (you see I do not doubt it), a great reader, a habit formed during my voyages. When not on watch, or performing the various tasks of ship-worthiness (caulking, mending sails or nets), there is little to do but fish. Reading matter is beyond price in these circumstances, books being passed from hand to hand, and read until they fall apart from the usage. I have read the length and breadth of the Bible, also Darwin, Dickens and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a good companion on a dark and stormy night.

  From the scientific gentlemen who took passage on my ship, I borrowed their scholarly journals, and was not ashamed to ask them to explain what was at first almost incomprehensible, but with more knowledge, became clearer. Indeed, the time that my vessel was chartered by a zoological expedition was the nigh happiest of my life, even if the ship got cluttered from stern to prow with specimens in preserving bottles. From that, I even got my name attached to a scientific paper, as co-author, thanks to certain observations I was able to contribute, about the adhesive properties of tentacles. I refer you to it, Ravenswood et al, Jnl of Sth Pacific Marine Zoology, Sept. 1913.

  [Marginal pencil note: !!

  Editor’s note: this is the journal article within which the letter was found]

  As a result of that expedition, I became a subscriber to several journals of marine studies, even a correspondent, at times. But tiring of science, religion, and the heavy volumes of the Victorians, I turned to lighter, and more modern reading. I raided my cargo: should the ship be travelling from the Americas to the Antipodes, then the lucky reader has the benefit of readable ballast. Popular magazines, even if outdated, are beyond price on that long route. Thus I discovered Amazing, and latterly Weird Tales. I have become subscribers to both, and others since. I am in short both an omnivorous and discerning reader, a tendency increasing in my widowerhood, and retirement.

  Let me describe to you the circumstances in which I read your interesting story, concerning Cthulhu. I awoke one morning in my bach (for so we refer to a beachside shack), and looking out saw that the sea was calm, despite my living on one of the most violent straits known to shipping. It was a perfect day for boating, and for collecting my mail. I live in a small inlet, with only the sea, the birds, and sea creatures for company. But a man cannot live by fishing alone, and so I need provisions, of the bodily and the readerly kind. The sea is my highway, and so I took it, to the small hamlet several bays along, which boasts all that I need from civilization: a small shop, which doubles as a post office.

  Returning, I hauled my dinghy past the high-tide marker, and headed for the rock pools with my prize: my reading matter for the next few weeks, which included the issue of Weird Tales, including your story. I stripped bare, despite a stiffish sea breeze rising, and immersing my nether regions in a deep pool, waited for my constant reader to reveal herself.

  Her name is Ortensia. I have christened her such, without the aid of holy water but her own domicile of the briny. The name came from a lady, though some might not call her such, encountered in my youth. Nay, not a mermaid, but a friend to seamen, residing in a well-frequented port. What she gave me was hardly the love of a good woman, but an experience beyond pearls. What a grip sir, she had on her! And as you are a man of the world I think you will know to what I refer.

  [Marginal pencil note: I am not sure that I do]

  I never replicated it since, though I wished for it sorely with my late, poor wife, a most un-apt pupil in that area. Now, I waited, until upon my foot I felt a delicate touch, a nuzzle, as if from a parrot, but sub-marine. It is my opinion, though not backed up by science yet, that though she may recognise me by sight, to be absolutely sure she tastes my skin. Now her own pelt responded, changing subtly from the grey of the shell-grit and rocks, to something approximating the shade of my pale and leathery hide. I put out my hand, she put out 1/8th of her equivalents, and we squeezed each-others’ flesh, as if meeting in the street. What a grip she has—and not only of my hand. That is why I call her Ortensia.

  [Marginal pencil note: I think I am beyond exclamations at this point. And almost beyond reading any further…though the missive strangely compels me]

  I was at one time inspired to compose a letter on the subject of my two Ortensias, which I sent to Mr. Havelock Ellis. I thought he would find it of interest, given his specialised scientific interests, and his sojourn in Australia. However, he never replied. I cannot imagine why.

  Ortensia the second may or may not recognise her name—for there is much I do not know about her, she being a smallish female of the octopoid ilk, in scientific parlance Pinnoctopus Cordiformis. The Māori, the original inhabitants of these isles, call them Wheke. But she lifts her domed head above the waters, and peruses me, with those eyes, so alien, with their horizontal pupils, like the goats, and yet so disturbingly human in their gaze. I do not know what she wants from me, beyond our brief tussles in the water. But I do know that when I open a book and start reading, aloud as is the habit I developed on ship, when amusing the illiterates among my crewmates, for all the world she seems to be listening. And if I should stop untimely, in the middle of a page, well, then she will reach out and nudge me, to continue.

  Thus I opened this latest issue of Weird Tales, and flicked through it, seeking something to amuse my constant audience. My gaze stopped short at the mention of the sea, and then further on, at the mention of New Zealand. Though we be Pacific neighbours, even if distant, it is rare that my trio of islands gets mentioned over the seas, except when the volcanoes misbehave. And so I read, and read on, to my audience of birds, mussels and Ortensia.

  Have you ever visited our distant lands? I would hazard not, nor to Australia either. I am sure you would not have seen a copy of the Sydney Bulletin, which you mention—we refer to it as just the Bulletin. It is not a daily newspaper, with items of current calamity, as you suggest, but more a weekly journal of opinion, generally strong, relating to literature, politics, mining speculation and the like.

  It is certainly true that ships dock at Darling Harbour, and you state the location of the Museum in Sydney correctly. That I would say you gleaned from access to a well-stocked library. You give an appropriate location, both latitude and longitude, for your sunken city, not like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who once situated a New Zealand farm out in the Tasman Sea. I wrote to him about that, too, and he responded, quite courteously.

  But there is much in your story that imagination cannot supply in the absence of experience. I would think your narrator a man of very poor observation if he could voyage from San Francisco to New Zealand without noting the changes in the Pacific, the weeds, the depths, the different birds. And then has he nothing to say about the mighty Atlantic, on his trip to Oslo? It beggars belief to me that a man would sail into three magnificent harbours, that of Sydney, Auckland and Dunedin, and have nothing to say about them. Well?

  I also add, knowing Dunedin, that the place is too far south to be the base for an island trader. Auckland would suit the purpose far better. And it is cold for most of the year, chilled by Antarctic blasts, such as are generally eschewed by Kanakas, who being Melanesian, prefer the tropical climes. Unless perhaps by Kanakas you meant the Māori, a misconception to which they would take exception, and violently too. Such people of colour as are in Dunedin — the place tending to the Scottish — are generally only temporary, as with the black and white minstrels, popular there. You also mention the woods, but the parlance here is bush.

  And being a man of scientific pedantry, I wondered if your god Cthulhu was physiologically possible, given that tentacles and wings, even scaly, are very unlikely to exist on the same creature. Does your deity owe more to Heraldry than to na
ture?

  [Marginal pencil sketch, similar to the well-known image, but with­out wings. It is then crossed out]

  But then as you write, these nightmare beings seep down from the stars, where the rules of life are likely to be not as we ken it, not at all. I could show you nightmares from another direction altogether, which would chill your blood…

  But I get ahead of my narrative, and that is something no story­teller should do.

  In short, though I have some niggles, otherwise I found “The Call” engrossing, providing much for further reflection. I read it, as it is a long tale, over the course of several days, in my rock pool, with Ortensia. As she did not turn bright red, the usual habit of her species when annoyed, it clearly did not displease her. Indeed, when I finished, she would not pause for an embrace, but immediately hide herself in a hole in the rock, where she would settle, turning herself the matching shadow-grey, deep in what I fancy passes with her for thought.

  But now my tale must turn to darker matters. Specifically, Osvaldo. He is not a creature of the shoreline rocks, his usual hunting grounds being several bays away. I named him, as I did Ortensia, for the O. The original Osvaldo was human, a shipmate of mine many years ago, a strapping youth from the South Americas. That they may have had a grip in common I know not, for though seamen have the habits of improvisation, any port in a storm, the original Osvaldo was a very hot-tempered young buck, best avoided — though easy on the eye.

  Are Osvaldo and Ortensia acquainted? I suspect so, from the knowledge that so much in the sea is interconnected. But I hope they keep their distance, not only from jealousy, but also from the likelihood that he would either eat or mate with her. Or both. He is a large example of his species, she, petite. And did you know that after Octopi mate, they die — not only the male, as with the arachnids, but both of them, for having mixed their intimate matter in their pearlaceous eggs, they are surplus to nature’s requirements? What would become of human civilization, should we do the same?

  I sought a fish dinner…and not wishing to deprive Ortensia of some prey, I rowed to the next bay along, and cast my line. Not expecting a bite immediately, I took Weird Tales with me, intending to peruse the other stories in the issue. I had my boat, my bait, and my reading, and on a day of bright sun and calm sea, what more could a man ask for, except a tasty catch?

  In a little while I felt a tug on the line, hauled at it, and it hauled back — too strong for a mere fish. Then I saw the water below my line boil red, a large writhing mass of tentacles. Osvaldo had grabbed my catch! I threw the contents of the bait pail at him, but in his red rage he thought it poor pickings. I bent over the side of the boat, and pulled hard on the line, as if in tug of war. Osvaldo responded with a jet of sea-water from his siphon, aimed precisely and nastily at my eyes. In a rage now myself, I threw the first thing that came to hand — the precious copy of Weird Tales. It hit the water — and in an instant Osvaldo had released the fish and was shovelling the precious pages into his maw.

  [Marginal note: A nightmare to chill my blood indeed]

  Well I took my fish home, a little gnawed though it was, and ate it in poor spirits. I tried reading the other magazines in my mail, but they had little interest. I wandered along to my rock pool, but Ortensia was either absent, or so well camouflaged that even I, her habitual companion, could not sight her. And ended that day, with me most out of sorts.

  The next day produced lead-grey skies, and a dead, sullen calm. I wandered across the sand, beachcombing as usual. Finding few pickings, I took the boat out, avoiding Osvaldo’s lair, for I was still angered at him. My destination was a beach of our black, volcanic pebbles, frequented by a seal colony. Once I would have hit the beasts on the head, for the sake of their fat, and their silky pelts, but now I let live. When a man is sick at heart, as I was, the sight of their chubby pups at play in the surf can cheer immensely.

  As I rowed, I began to feel a sense of creeping unease. The sea lapped greasily at my gunwale, the water messy with weed, or even mud. Was it possible I had slept through a minor earthquake, as is common in these shaky isles? Things were either too quiet, or too busy. I would appear to be utterly alone, but then flocks of gulls would wheel high in the sky, shrieking, or shoals of fish dart underneath the boat, in agitation, or so it seemed. I turned around once, fancying myself watched, but all I could see was the far distant Kaikoura Mountains, looming across the strait, their topmost reaches pale with snow.

  So high! And then, offshore, a precipice, heading into the watery deeps. Of us warm-blooded creatures only the whales take that long road downwards, and what they see they do not tell us. Dark cities, such as in your story, and even darker denizens? I have witnessed a whale washed dead on the beach, with on its hide the marks of suckers, as with Ortensia and Osvaldo, but far bigger, scars left by a colossus, a Kraken as the old-time sailors called it.

  I reached the seals, but found no play, with the entire colony, battle-scarred bulls, sleek females and their young, on the beach, as if they were boats drawn up high out of the reach of a stormy sea. They were clumped protectively, staring anxiously at the waves. To get between a seal and the sea, their retreat, is folly, I knew that. But from the way these creatures acted, it was as if the sea itself had become a threat.

  Confused and disconsolate, I rowed back. But then suddenly my boat was bumped from beneath, nearly causing me to lose an oar. It slapped back onto the sea and I beheld the black and white face of a Killer Whale, the sea-wolf, with behind it the fins of several of its fellows. I waved my oar threateningly, lest it try and upset me again. Their faces appear painted, like those of blackface performers, without expression beneath. But I would swear this beast looked frightened — of what, when his species are the top predators of the sea? Then he slapped his tail, soaking me, and he and his pod shot off, for all the world as if they were pursued.

  I had intended anyway to give Osvaldo’s inlet a wide berth, but at its mouth, I stopped, at first curious, then becoming aghast. In my travels I have witnessed the boiling mud pools in the volcanic regions, and the surface of the bay was equally as active—and blood-red. I had seen water that colour before, but stagnant and putrid, invaded by algae. Or, on my one visit to Iceland, when I witnessed a pod of small, harmless whales driven into a cove and slaughtered, weltering in a mix of seawater and their own blood. Truly we abuse the sea, and its creatures, until I fear one day they will have a dire reckoning with us. As I realised at what I was looking, I felt that time had come. The sea was the colour of not one angry octopus, but hundreds, writhing and seething, an army being rallied for invasion, or so it seemed. Quickly I took my leave, praying not to be followed.

  At my bay it was calm again, thank goodness. I leapt from my dinghy into the shallows, and ran to my rock pool, still brandishing an oar, as if I needed a weapon. “Ortensia! Ortensia!” I shouted. I jumped bodily and rudely in, and when I could not see her immediately, started poking at the rocks with the oar’s end. “Ortensia!” It met pulpy resistance, and then she changed her hue, charging at me, in an instant changing from rock-grey to red, her siphon drenching me with not only water, but the black of her ink.

  I ran, near blinded, back onto the land, and did not stop, stumb­ling and panting over the hills of the coastal scrub, and inland. At one point I encountered some moonshine makers, with a still, and bought some of their hooch. Finally I passed out in a ditch, and awoke the next morning at dawn, head splitting but alive.

  I have not dared go back to my bach since. What may be happening out in the strait I do not know. I fear I may have to become a landlubber, which at one time I would have regarded as a fate worse than death.

  It is only fair, Mr. Lovecraft, that I let you know what has happened. I have gradually realised, over the years, that the Octopi have more intelligence than they are generally credited with, and that they communicate in subtle but efficient ways. Ortensia was, I fear, too apt a reading pupil; and Osval
do, whom now I suspect was her crony all the while, devoured your work both as food, and as us humans do, for information. Like the cult devotees in your story, these Cephalopods hear the call of Cthulhu. It is up to you, Mr. Lovecraft, to silence that call forthwith, or as you said in your story (see, I can remember it almost verbatim): Loathsomeness will rise from the deep and decay spread over the tottering cities of men.

  I remain,

  Yours very truly

  Jack Smith (Capt.)

  [Marginal note in pencil: If this is Klarkash-ton’s work, very droll, and I must in revenge hoax him forthwith. If not, then I really should communicate with Captain Smith, even if I do put audacity before caution.]

  THE SILENCE AT THE

  EDGE OF THE SEA

  Dan Rabarts

  “First place in the world to see the sun rise,” the pilot says into the radio, as the tiny islands and their scatterings of sea-swept rocks emerge from the murky ocean.

  Augustus Shandon nods, but doesn’t reply. He’s not sure which has irked him more, the interminable flight, this flyboy’s incessant chatter, or the thought that here, at the edge of the world where the sun first rises, so too does the sun first set. The day is getting on, foreshortened for Augustus Shandon by the curvature of the earth—lost time he will never recover—and soon it will be night.

  The Sunderland descends, Chatham Island swelling but never quite filling the windscreen. From the air, the island resembles the profile of some beastly skull, Petre Bay a toothy maw hanging open, Te Whanga Lagoon the great empty eye-sockets of a leviathan laid out to rot on the ocean floor, this remnant of its being the only fragment to graze the mortal world. As they make their approach, the blustery grey South Pacific dominates the horizon. The sea is reflected in the glowering sky, dwindling these scraps of rock and sand and tree to insignificance on the ocean’s vast canvas.