Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud AU Read online

  “And did you notice anything unusual about him?”

  “Well, his appearance, the long, straggly hair and beard, and his clothes. They were old-fashioned, and pretty much in tatters. And I did notice that his legs were badly scratched, but I thought that was just from the rocks.” He paused for a moment.

  “I hear his tongue is missing… How do you think that happen­ed?”

  “Hard to say, exactly, but it looks like it may have been pulled out.”

  The Inspector grimaced.

  “And when I assessed the patient, I found evidence of old injuries long healed, as well as the obvious, more recent injuries. His wrists and ankles are badly scored with scars and festering flesh—it’s as if he’s been bound at both ankles and wrists on and off for very long periods of time. Then there are the nails on his toes and fingers, the ones he still has,” Richardson looked up, “They were so long it would’ve been extremely difficult to use his hands or to walk. We’ve cleaned them up, of course, but his hands are virtually useless.”

  The two men sat in silence for a moment.

  “I did notice his eyes. He seemed to look right through me, and the way he stared wasn’t natural. It was as if he wasn’t all there, if you know what I mean. Or as if he’s seen things he can’t talk about”, the inspector’s voice faded a little, “And you say he’s said nothing at all?”

  “Just incoherent mumblings. It’s almost like he’s trying to say one particular word, but without a tongue, it’s hard to be sure.”

  The inspector shifted on his chair and stood to leave, “Well, thanks for this. Like I said. We don’t really have any leads. So not sure who we could charge over your suspicions.” He turned towards the door, and then looked back at Richardson. “It seems obvious he’s been held prisoner somewhere for years, but where? Where’s he been washed up from?”

  The doctor shook his head, “He can’t talk, can barely commun­icate. Doesn’t seem to like looking at anyone. He’s more likely to close his eyes than to communicate. It’s a shame, though. Someone should be held responsible, and he’d have quite a story to tell, if only he could.” Richardson closed the file on his desk and nodded farewell to the inspector, who stopped in the doorway and looked back.

  “What will happen to him if he does survive?”

  “Well…if he makes it through the first couple of weeks and we can stabilise him, I think I know of a place that might care for him.” Richardson’s face took on a speculative air. “There’s a private facility…coincidentally, it’s directly across from where he was found. Been running for years.”

  “Oh? And you think they’d take him?”

  “I think so. It’s a hospital-come-residential home that was set up decades ago using a bequest from an eccentric old guy known as ‘the Major’.

  KÕPURA RISING

  David Kuraria

  1

  It is strange how investigation into one area of research can reveal a path to another, a path that sends a normal life full of stability and sameness spiralling into a frightening unknown. Tales are numerous where simple adventure leads to peril.

  For some months I had been saving for a trip to the Solomon Islands, in Melanesia, to further my studies in marine reptile toxicology. A colleague, Rita Phillips, showed me maps of the islands and during our free time we researched a little about the history of the area. During my summer break I boarded a flight from Auckland, north to the Solomons’ capital, Honiara.

  Rita drove me out to the airport in South Auckland to catch my flight. As I left her, she handed me a few pages of text she had downloaded.

  “Here, Lomu, a little something for you to read on the plane. It’s about a missing Norwegian anthropologist.”

  I took the stapled sheets and flicked through.

  “Is this another one of your conspiracy mysteries of lost explorers?”

  “Yep,” she said with a grin. “It’s a travel diary from one Tors Haugen, disappeared out in the Arctic Ocean in 1999. These are copies of notes found in his apartment, prior to his last expedition, when he and eight members of his team went missing. The notes are strange, to say the least.”

  I remember being thankful, mainly because there were not too many pages to read. I folded the sheets and put them into my shirt pocket.

  Once airborne and out over the Pacific I took the pages from my pocket and folded them flat. Over the peeps and gongs from the aircraft and overheard snippets of conversations from nearby passengers, I began reading.

  Tors Haugen, meteorologen,

  January 15 1999, Skara Brea, Orkney, Scotland.

  For nearly two years now, I have found myself fascinated by tales of a legendary race of ocean dwellers. I have been researching folklore, fireside tales passed from Britain’s Outer Hebrides in the eighteenth century, up through the Arctic Ocean from the Orkney Islands to Greenland—tales of creatures named ‘Kvakeri: the hidden people of the sea’. Whenever temporarily stationed in the Arctic Ocean I have used free time outside official capacity to speak to island locals of myths and legends. In the Hebrides, I was told tales by local fishermen about ‘Blue Men of the Minch’. In the Orkney Islands oral traditions from farmers told of salt lickers, wild tales from leather-faced, grim men with little sense of humour.

  Late summer 1999 I was gathering data on North Atlantic weather patterns for a report that was due. While in Tórshavn, in the Faroe Island, I sought out people to try and find variants on tales I had been told. Over the years I have realised the best place to hear stories is at local inns. It was in Tórshavn where I first heard the name ‘Kvakeri’.

  Fishermen say Kvakeri can take many forms, are able to alter shape and colour. These are repulsive tales where Kvakeri are alleged to feed on the flesh of drowned fishermen—placing mouths against the dead, swallowing salt by licking skin, the creatures’ sandpaper tongues strip­ping flesh from bone.

  I held the notes on my lap and looked about the cabin of the aircraft. I felt a little ill at the disgusting suggestion of licking a dead person’s flesh. I stared at the headrest of the seat in front of me for a moment, to gather my thoughts. Then I looked down again at the pages in my lap and, against my better judgement, began reading the Norwegian’s next diary entry.

  Tors Haugen, meteorologen,

  January 17 1999, Arctic Ocean.

  While in Tórshavn I paid my passage on a local fishing boat to a coastal village on an outer island. I found an inn and introduced myself to a small group of locals at a table. Their dialect was a strange hybrid but I did my best to speak and understand it, and a few drinks of fine Danish Vodka later the three men were willing to answer my questions. These weather-beaten tars soon provided new slants on what I already knew; added colour, finished one-another’s sentences. The oldest, seeming to be in his eighties, had not actually seen these cryptids, but heard terrifying tales when just a boy. He related to me how the skin of the Kvakeri shifted across itself during sunny days, as if muscles underneath were changing shape.

  I remained with these men for nearly half an hour and was told gruesome stories of bloodlust and terror brought to lone fishermen who had strayed too far from shore. I can state here, without doubt, that these men, with their tales of horror, seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  At the end of our conversation I realised that, of all the differing accounts of crypto-marine predators I had gathered over the past two years, it was most likely I was hearing about the same creatures.

  On my way back to Tórshavn I spoke with another sailor on the boat ferrying me, who told me of Kvakeri supposedly living north of the Russian mainland in the Laptev Sea.

  2

  Honiara was a bit of a shock to the system after having been at Manukau Airport only some six hours before. Outside the bustling terminal were market stalls and local taxis, their windows smudged with insects. I went back into the terminal to escape the humidity
and asked about getting out to Bina Lagoon on north-west Mwaia, the largest and most populous island of the eastern chain. I was told to speak to someone at the docks in regard to buying a ticket for the inter-island supply boat, Echo.

  I booked into a backpacker hostel and dropped my bag in my room. I bought a little guidebook and ate at a nearby outdoor café. While there I learned some local Kirabati words I thought would help me fit in. Afterwards I found the waterfront police station and went inside, glad to escape the humidity, and stood for a few seconds under a ceiling fan. I approached two officers talking and waited for them to notice me. They turned and stared. I realised they knew I was not a local. They approached and the shorter man smiled and slowly shook his head.

  “Don’t tell me, you’ve had your wallet stolen, right?”

  “Oh, no. I want to go out to Mwaia and I was wondering if you might know who I could speak to about finding sea snakes. The officers looked at me, then turned to each other. They grinned. Both said at the same time, “Renai.” One of them laughed.

  “Yes, big fellow, curly blonde Mwain, ripped clothes. Ask any­one for Renai.”

  Echo was a diesel run deep keel, close to thirty-metres long, with old-world touches such as dark wood panelling on the interior of the main cabin. The trip across to Mwaia was quite rough, as the stretches of water between the islands were really open sea. There were only a handful of other passengers on board. In the centre of the enclosed cabin was a wired enclosure opened at the top at waist height. Inside were stuffed sacks and cartons, which I guessed were supplies for the outlying communities.

  It was not too long before we arrived at Mwaia, an enormous green, lofty expanse of jungle and dark rock. I looked up past the valleys and crags and saw that the highest peaks were shrouded in mist. The captain slowed Echo, chugged parallel to the beach and tooted the whistle. He manoeuvred the craft to lie next to a dilapidated jetty, where his crewmen secured the vessel and unloaded some cargo. Some waiting residents of the nearby village, visible beyond a rocky promontory, began loading the cargo onto big-wheeled, wooden, flat carts. I was ignored until I got the attention of one burly man.

  “I’m looking for Renai.”

  He grinned and pointed out into the lagoon. I saw many small islets in the shallow expanse of clear water. Locals were toiling with large rocks and seemed to be building sea walls. I lifted my one bag onto my shoulder, waded out into the lagoon, and made my way towards the nearest of the islets.

  As I approached I saw it was actually a platform of excavated coral with a soil covered top, about twenty by thirty metres. A hut built from bamboo with a woven palm leaved roof was set upon packed topsoil. I waded out of the clear water up onto a sloping beach of sand.

  The sun was still rising behind the massive bulk of Mwaia. On another islet was a big man with a thick matt of curly blonde hair. I watched as he hefted a large piece of coral he had pried with a machete from the bottom of the lagoon. He was helping other men build a platform much like the islet I was standing upon.

  One of the men looked in my direction. He pointed at me and said something to the blonde-haired man, who turned and stared at me. He grinned and waved. I knew I had found Renai. He waded across the lagoon and walked up onto the beach. He looked at the big island filling the foreground, stretched his arms wide and spoke.

  “Ahhh, Mwaia, my strange Melanesian beauty—you are one of the last true oddities on a shrinking planet. Lomu Morgan, aren’t you? Jeez, lad, with your skin you’ll be hard to tell from us locals. So it is sea snakes you are after?”

  “That’s me—just in from Auckland. But how did…?”

  “I heard you were shipping out from Honiara. Cops texted me.” He walked up to the thatched enclosure. “This is my place. I have the only freezer around these parts.”

  He must have seen my confused gaze. He gave a booming laugh.

  “You as well? Oh, I can see that look. How does this Solomon Island man speak such good English? We all do, and our mothers and fathers and grandparents do, too. We have done since the Americans were here during the Pacific War. When you’re bartering with the person who has the most goodies, you soon learn to understand what they are saying. Now that’s out of the way, what say we sit and relax, okay?”

  I was a little dazed at the quickness of it all, but I followed Renai into the hut.

  He took two tins of orange fizzy drink from the icebox he called a freezer. He pointed to the seating arrangement. There were old car seats, still sitting on their metal pipe bases, placed under the thatch roof. I sat on one. Renai handed me a can of drink. He looked out at the lagoon.

  “I’ll speak to some of the elders about helping you with catching sea snakes, but you won’t get anyone to help you today or tomorrow. People here need time to think things over.”

  I looked at him. “Thank you for helping me out, I appreciate it. I’m going to fit into your schedule as best I can. I researched a bit before I came. The sea level is rising in this part of the world. I guess that’s why you’re building these coral platforms.”

  Renai stared at me. “If someone measures that the sea has crept a little higher on a rock face, well, who is to say the islands are not sinking? Anyway, stuff about building coral platforms for rising tides is only half truth.”

  I had to ask. “What do you mean?”

  Renai looked out across the lagoon. The intensity of that look made me uncomfortable. He pointed at the great island of Mwaia. “These people, my family, are suffering an old problem with upland Kwaio who won’t let us share and farm their roaming place.” Renai again pointed to the looming mass of the island. “Mwaia is not what it seems.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, during the battles here last century, American soldiers disappeared up there.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Patrols were sent to find Japanese outposts on the Beast; the patrols didn’t return. Other patrols were sent after the missing soldiers. They were never found.”

  “So the search patrols came back empty handed. No clues?”

  “No, I mean the search patrols never came back.”

  It was easy to believe soldiers could fall into hidden caves or get murdered by locals, especially back in 1942, when there were no cell phones or social media, and there was a war going on. If the soldier carrying the one radio fell down a crevasse, well, that was communication gone. Renai cut into my thoughts.

  “A fern grows here, with tiny leaves that mesh thick, and covers holes, so unwary people fall down open cave mouths, and when the fern springs back into place, all traces are lost. Even if you looked you would see nothing but spongy moss. Step in the wrong place and down you go, not a trace. There are World War Two rifles and water canteens and belt buckles hidden down holes, and in caves, all across The Beast, with skeletons right up alongside”

  “What do you mean by ‘The Beast’?”

  “It is a living thing, Mwaia, not friendly to some.” He pointed at the towering mass of the island. “Upland Kwaio own the coastlands on this east side, and all the sands. Their spies, the shore people, work the croplands here and stop us from getting the good earth to feed ourselves. They say their roaming place is Tambu to others, and they enforce it. I’ve seen my friends speared and threatened with machetes, and so we have to feed ourselves with fish and taros. The only reason anything actually grows on our garden lots is because we risk attack by sneaking ashore to get buckets of dirt.” Renai turned in his chair and watched his friends wading in the lagoon, then turned back to me.

  “I’m going be gone for a while, talk to some people. When I come back we can fix a place for you to sleep for the next few days. There’s some dried fish under netting on those racks, and some fruit in the cool box over there.”

  I watched him wade out into the lagoon to his friends now shading themselves under the palm thatch roof of the living quarters on another of
their constructed islets. With nothing else to do but wait, I grabbed a bottle of water from the icebox and sat on a car seat. It was a good time to finish reading about the Norwegian explorer.

  Tors Haugen, February 3rd, 1999,

  Stavangar, Norge.

  Back here at my office in Stavangar. I have just been informed by a colleague that a Russian climate expedition from Moscow University is missing somewhere on the arctic Severnaya Islands. The Severnaya group is in the Laptev Sea, and I am reminded of the old sailor in the Faroe Islands, and what he told me about the Arctic Sea north of the Russian mainland.

  I had not even had time to settle back into my lodgings and properly unpack from my Faroe trip when I got the phone call. Now I have been instructed to join a group of experts, a well-equipped joint Russian Norwegian team including meteorologists and geologists, in order to locate the first expedition. For the first time since beginning my research into the Kvakeri legend, I am feeling uneasy. The rescue expedition with guides has been set up and tomorrow I set off by air to the Arctic wilderness.

  Tors Haugen, February 6th 1999,

  Tamyr Severnaya, Laptev Sea.

  Four month twilight of Arctic—red and purple cloud cover. Tamyr Severnaya landmass black and grey, uninviting, frightening. I am with a rescue party on lowlands looking at the forbidding mountain range. My team has argued about which is the safest route up the massif to the entrance of the cave system. My colleagues are not immune to concocting pointless mysteries better left to lay people. I feel trepidation at the thought of entering the caverns.

  I wish these notes to remain in the care of my research collaborator and mentor, Anna Markesson. Anna is leaving us here at the Massif and returning to Stavangar. She has agreed to collect my diaries and research notes for safe keeping until my return.

  I turned the page over to look for further diary entries, but there were no more. I dropped the pages next to me, stood and stepped from under the thatch. The mist had dispersed and the imposing peaks of Mwaia were now in view. It looked impressive, even a little scary. I thought of the soldiers who had disappeared there, as if the island had eaten them whole.