Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud AU Read online

  “This place is huge. It sits under an old, ground-level, single-storey office block. I have seen them drive jeeps and big golf carts with covered backs along the corridors. There is a place here in this facility, called Nightmare Hall. Have I mentioned that? I think it is several levels below my quarters.”

  The video ended. I heard Renai’s voice across the lagoon. I realised I had been holding my breath.

  I looked back at the list of files and saw there was one more to be seen—I’d missed that the first time I checked. I was not entirely sure I wanted to continue. I sat for a while and remembered what Lorraine had said. Then, without thinking about what I might see, I opened it.

  The screen was fairly dark, but I saw what looked to be light reflecting off glass. A caption showed at the bottom of the screen:

  Aquatic Morphs,

  Brine Pool, Level 3, W. Base 30:09

  A camera zoomed on to show a large swimming pool surrounded by darkened glass. I leaned towards the screen on my pad and stared at two creatures standing waist deep in the water. They wore manacles about their midriffs held by chains attached to the tiles on the bottom. As I watched, trying to make out what I was looking at, one of the upright creatures lowered its bulk down into the pool and flattened itself against the water’s surface. I felt there was something wrong with the shape; the thing appeared to restructuring its skeleton. It changed colour—blue and yellow flashed like neon across the mass. White and emerald green flashed back the other way. The other creature, heavily muscled, lowered itself and opened a kind of maw around the area of a rudimentary torso. This second creature flashed purple and yellow. To my horror, in the first creature, another mouthpart opened next to the first. It lifted some kind of appendage from out of the water. I saw it had elongated a section of itself and it now had hold of some kind of meat. Again the colours flashed across the thing’s flattened shape. I realised what I was looking at were subsurface flesh chromatophores, changing colour, similar to a cuttlefish displaying emotion.

  Although the lighting was poor I got the sense these things were intelligent. I saw the one with food deliver that hunk of flesh into one of its mouths. I couldn’t see clearly, but it looked like the mouth stretched out and jerked against the meat, like a hungry calf lunging at its mother’s teat. The colours changed again on the creature and, feeling a little sick at the sight, I wondered if it signified contentment.

  The camera zoomed in, to see a little more detail. It was as if one of the creatures—the one not eating—knew it was being filmed. It inflated part of the flattened area that was floating upon the water’s surface, then it gathered itself up and it stood. I could see a little way into the water below its waist; the water rippling so that I could see there were no arms, just elongating pseudopodia extending to the bottom of the tank. The thing now had a wide slash of a mouth above water. When it opened that slit I saw rows of shark-like teeth. A flash of scarlet spots showed all across its scaled head. The thing knew it was being watched, and it knew it had something to do with the machine above the pool. It stared at the camera and appeared to be mouthing words.

  Renai was standing outside of the hut, looking in at me. He came in and sat on one of the car seats opposite. I shut the pad down, pulled the thumb drive out, and handed it back to him. He waited a moment. I suppose he wanted to give me time to think.

  “That paper by the Norwegian you have. It’s not much of a leap,” he said. “I mean, talk of these creatures and all the books written by different people…if they aren’t real, what’s on the video file? What was on the Sumatra Queen with me? And when Marina’s ROV hit the side of an undersea mountain, why did it ring as if it was hollow?”

  Renai stood and walked a little down the sand and looked out over the water. I had turned the car seat around to face out to the lagoon, and from my position I could see the bulk of Mwaia. As I peered at the green swathe across its peaks and valleys, I wondered, what if? I stood and walked out of the other side of the thatch shelter and stared down onto the white sand at the edge of the water.

  I wondered about the ringing, hollow sound on that undersea mountain. I had seen first-hand, growths and sea life living below the surface of the sea on the posts of harbour piers. After six months, all outward traces of the wooden pile were completely covered. I wondered how long it would take for a silt build-up to thickly cover an artificially made undersea structure. How long would be needed for a long bank to split and break away in a submarine landslide, enough to damage an undersea fibre optic cable?

  Across the lagoon men were moving lumps of coral they had prised up from the sandy bottom. Renai was now over there with them again. I had not noticed him leave.

  Mwaia. I thought about the fierceness and selfishness of The Kwaio Bush People, and I wondered if there really could be a hidden race, a species living alongside us. I wondered if governments were only now rediscovering this race. I heard a loud grunt from one of the men across the lagoon. Someone had cut themselves on the coral. There was blood in the water.

  A while later Renai came back with two men. He introduced them as the ones who would be taking me out on board their craft for my research. This is what I had come to the Solomon Islands for, yet it was only with some effort that I was able to put aside the unsettling things I’d heard and seen since arriving. I knew I had to get on with what I had come to the islands to do. Even so, throughout the ensuing days, thoughts of what I had seen and heard were never more than pushed to the back of my mind. There was one realisation that refused to be suppressed. It was that which, to this day, even though I am now home in Auckland, still nags at me. I wonder now, if this race of beings has been living, hidden and evolving alongside humans, at what stage is their development at? I think I know the answer now. It relates directly to what I viewed in that final scene of Lorraine’s video. The creature, which had been delivering the strip of meat into its chest hole, so shark like, had eaten it and had sealed the orifice before my gaze. It had raised its head and had looked directly at the lens of the camera. It now had a fishlike mouth. I watched the creature move that mouth to form words. Before the screen went black, it gave a grimacing smile, and in its terrifying stare I saw malign intent.

  I have been giving much thought lately to certain tactics used by covert operators, placing themselves in the heart of their enemy’s base for the purpose of gaining intelligence. I have a suspicion that the US military has been engaged in a covert war—possibly since the 40s, the end of World War II—with a dangerous and intelligent race that is indigenous to this planet.

  A new war is coming. Any day now.

  THE WARD OF TINDALOS

  Debbie and Matt Cowens

  Twenty years old and I’m living in my car. I haven’t slept in days. At night I park at the beach and listen to the curling whispers of the ocean. I need a shower but I can’t risk it. I can’t go inside.

  The Hound is waiting.

  The books on the passenger seat hold no comfort, no solace. They whisper of horrors unseen and lives ripped apart. Stacey’s diary, heavy in my lap, screams of them.

  I close my eyes and I’m fourteen again. I haven’t heard of the Hound yet. Stacey is still alive. We’ve taken a train into Wellington unaccompanied, a thrilling taste of adult freedom. Some of the fifth formers said that there’s a new cinema in town where they don’t ID you if you look old enough, and Bloodstalker’s Return has just opened. I’m tall for my age, and Stacey is what my mother refers to as a ‘well-developed girl’ so we figure we have a shot. Armed with eyeliner, a heavy layer of foundation and my three-inch-heeled boots, I am undaunted by the prospect. We check our reflections in the railway station mirror. Seventeen? Probably. Sixteen? Definitely.

  God, we are young. The me that’s watching this all play out again—watching through the gulf of time—wants to warn Stacey, just go home, just turn back and go home.

  My fourteen-year-old confidence drains when
we approach the Rialto theatre. It has not been a long walk from the station but the boots have pinched my toes and Stacey, spurred on by the prospect of a gory horror flick, bolts down Featherston Street at breakneck speed, despite—or perhaps because of—my objections.

  “Who would you rather be killed by: Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers or Seth Bloodstalk?” Stacey asks with a giggle as we enter the lobby and join the queue.

  “Definitely not Freddy Kruger. He’s the creepiest. Besides, nightmares are bad enough without actually dying in one.”

  “But it’d be over quickly. Blade to the guts and you’re gone. Way better than being all strung up for hours while you’re literally drained of all your blood.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” An electric shudder dances up my spine as images of the first Bloodstalker film flood my mind.

  “Seth Bloodstalk is hot, though,” she adds. “If he was after something other than my blood, then definitely yes, please.”

  “Ew, he’s like a psycho serial killer. Besides, he’s dead.”

  “So? People can still have sex with a dead person. It’s called necrophilia,” she informs me.

  I open my eyes, now, here in the car. A sound has brought me back, a scratching and hissing sound that chills me. I look from the roof to the glove box to the sharp lines of the armrest cubbyhole, angular behind the welcoming circles of the cup holders. A growling rumbles up from under the car.

  Clutching Stacey’s diary, its rounded corners smooth in my hand, I open the door and step out into the night. The ocean murmurs beyond the dunes in the darkness. I step away from the car, towards the gentle undulation of sand.

  The beach disappears in a flash and I’m back in the lobby of the cinema. The scent of popcorn anchors me. Stacey is alive again. She grabs my arm as we head to buy tickets. “Hey, do you want to go halves in Jaffas?”

  I nod mutely but I’m nervous that we’ll be ID-ed at the ticket stand. Stacey is fearless. She smiles brashly at the young guy behind the counter and buys our tickets and Jaffas without a hitch.

  We’re the first ones in the cinema and Stacey darts toward the best seats, centre of the fifth row from the back. For two minutes we thrill at the prospect of being alone in the theatre, but soon a handful of people trickle in alone or in pairs. An older guy in a vinyl jacket with long greasy hair and round glasses sits right in front of us, mechanically munching popcorn. I worry that the noise will be distracting, but it only affects the first killing scene, when Seth Bloodstalker silently approaches his victim with a popcorn-crunch soundtrack that was not the director’s intent.

  The rest of the film is unspoiled by intrusions from the real world. If anything it’s scarier, and even gorier, than the first movie. We scream aloud several times and Stacey literally jumps off her seat. We leave the cinema giddy, laughing.

  “Let’s go up to Courtney Place and get something to eat. I’m starving,” Stacey declares. I agree and we make our away across the streets to the alleyway that leads to the city’s main vein of cafes, restaurants and takeaway shops. The sound of traffic drops away as we enter the alleyway. A car park building alongside slab-like apartments form the alley’s multi-storeyed walls, and they block out all surrounding noise. The hollow clacking of our footsteps echoes and our voices fall away. The concrete looks cracked and worn. The corners of the buildings are dented inwards; their sharp edges have crumbled. Empty windows glare down with the hollow-eyed stare of skulls. The bleakness of an overcast day is thicker here. We’re in a dark, dangerous city street that screams it’s the wrong time, wrong place. On a weekday, there would be more people, workers and shoppers. At night, there might be lights on in the buildings, drivers pulling in and out of the car park, other people walking to and fro on their night out. But on this Saturday afternoon, it feels desolate and empty.

  Something grabs my shoulders from behind and I scream. Stacey erupts in giggles and releases her grip.

  “Not funny,” I grumble.

  “No, it was hilarious. You practically jumped out of your skin,” she smirks. “Did you think it was the Bloodstalker?”

  “No, you just surprised me.”

  “Well, you should have been paying more attention. Your mind’s always drifting off somewhere random.”

  The buildings dissolve in an instant and I’m back on the beach, damp sand pressing on the soles of my feet and crawling up into the spaces between my toes. I look up at the black expanse littered with unfeeling stars. Don’t take me back, I plead to the empty night, but there’s no point. I always spiral back to the beginning.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and hear my words echo across the years.

  “I wasn’t drifting off, I was observing our surroundings, actually.” My voice is defiant but I can hear the uncertainty underneath. The lost moments, the slips of consciousness I didn’t understand back then.

  Stacey’s eyes dance around the alley walls. “Yeah, some of the murals here are pretty cool.”

  I had barely noticed how the scattered graffiti progresses into intricate and impressive works of art in the alleyway. Vibrant waves of turquoise and violet surround a three-eyed octopus with lurid green tentacles; a coffee-skinned angel beckons in front of a pillar, a red Samoan sei flower worn in her hair.

  “I came here with Aaron after his gig in the Street Festival,” Stacey says. Aaron’s her cousin. He’s nineteen, achingly hot and plays guitar in a band. Stacey has a huge crush on him and he’s pretty cool about letting us hang out sometimes when his band is jamming.

  Stacey didn’t invite me to come with her to see them perform last year, though I’ve heard about it many times since. Some less glamorous details have fallen through the cracks in her boasting—Stacey and her brother Gareth had accompanied the band, and she’d had to lug microphones and amps up Cuba Street. No mention of the alleyway or the street art has featured in any of Stacey’s previous renditions. She grabs my arm and pulls me round the corner into a narrower vein off the central alley.

  From my place on the sand, in the future, I want to think that I resisted, that I suggested we turn back, go home, but I don’t know what lies ahead. I don’t know that I should be afraid.

  On both sides the concrete walls bear giant murals. The one on the right shows rows of bullet-shaped fish with white clock-faces for heads, flying over waves against a blood-red sky. The other fills the entirety of the bottom storey of the car-park building. It’s faded and less striking than the other, less vivid and surreal. Its painted background of a night sky looming over a dead end alleyway is chipped; the murky violets and greys are scarred with scratches of exposed concrete as though cuts have been made into the wall with rhythmic repetition. Swirls of pallid mist are painted rising from the ground, creating the illusion that the thick vapour exists as much in the real world as in the mural. At the heart of the mural is a swelling darkness, which tears its way through the mist into the back corner of the alley, like shadowy claws ripping gashes through the mist. Two pale green eyes stare out from the swollen blackness, and beneath them the glint of piercing fangs, but I can see nothing else of the terrible creature. I wonder if the artist had painted it as some sort of illusion, like a magic eye trick, and if I just stare into the blackness hard enough, my eyes will adjust and the image will leap off the wall.

  “It’s called The Hound,” a husky voice informs us. I blink hard as my eyes struggle to focus on a man who steps away from the wall and turns to face us. He steps right out of the heart of the darkness and I know that he was not there before, not when we entered the alley and not when I lived this experience. Yet here he is in my memory. His wispy hair is greying and pulled uneasily back in a ponytail. His face looks as faded as his worn jeans and bush shirt but his green eyes gleam with a brightness that is at odds with his unshaven appearance. There is something not quite right about his eyes. They unsettle me.

  “Yeah, tell me something I don’t already know,” Stacey says
sarcastically. She does not seem to have noticed that he was not there a moment ago. Perhaps for her he was always there. “And I know it’s cursed.”

  “Cursed? That doesn’t cover the half of it,” he replies. “That’s the Hound of Tindalos. If you knew a fragment of the truth, you wouldn’t look into it, lest the Hound look back.”

  Stacey cocks her head and stalks past him, her gaze fixed on the green eyes in the centre of the mural. She reaches the wall and turns, sticking one hip out. “So it’s fine for you, but not for us? Do you think the Hound sees me now?” She rubs her hip against the mural and smirks.

  He yanks the sleeve of his shirt up and examines the three wristwatches strapped to a heavily tattooed forearm. “Almost,” he says breathlessly. “Time will tell.”

  “They haven’t even painted a hound. It’s just eyes and teeth in a black mess,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.

  Fourteen-year-old me is beginning to feel uncomfortable but boredom is an easy mask for my fear. There is something too intense about the old guy, and worse is the way Stacey looks at him. I have seen her flirting with boys at school and the hot barista at the corner cafe, but the three-watched man gives me the creeps.

  Stacey walks up to him; her curiosity makes her brazen. “Tell me,” she insists, her voice lower. “I’m not afraid.”