The Weird Company Read online

  Chandraputra took a deep, almost mechanical breath and in some strange manner changed his voice to become more soothing. Through some supreme effort the monotonous tone was gone and the clicking noises vanished. “Thousands of years ago, men believed the world to be flat. They believed the Earth was the center of the universe. They believed that everything in the universe was comprised of four elemental forces. Science, human science, has changed all that. A globular world orbits the sun in a universe comprised of scores of elements. Man’s view of the world, of the solar system, of the universe has changed. The old texts have been replaced.”

  “Sadly, while science has moved forward, man’s understanding of the paranormal has remained stagnant. The works of Alhazred, Prinn and Von Junzt are held out as infallible sources, beyond reproach. No one bothers to check the so-called facts in these muddled hermetic diatribes. Even those who are privy to some of the secrets of this world, who have parted the veils and held onto their minds, still fail to see the truth. They see so little, understand less, and so assume too much.”

  I was forced to interrupt, “What you are implying is that even we who have been touched by the outré forces of the universe are just as ignorant as the rest?”

  “You Mr. Olmstead are a perfect example, you dance on the brink and think you understand, you’ve gleaned a little knowledge and suddenly you think you have the key to all the mysteries of the universe. You saw Innsmouth, and the images of Cthulhu and assumed so much, too much it seems. From this you extrapolated even further and assume that the Deep Ones would find an ally in the foulness that men know as Yog-Sothoth, not understanding the devastation his entry into our universe would cause.” He paused, but only for a moment. “Were Yog-Sothoth to claw his way into this universe chaos would ensue. The laws of the cosmos as we know them would cease to function. The laws of thermodynamics, cause and effect, gravity, would not only radically change, but be in a constant state of flux. Can you imagine such a universe? How would earthly life survive? Not just men, but all things. Our biologies may be different, but they all follow the same physical and chemical principles. Men could not survive such a change, any more than the Deep Ones or even those from Xoth. Cthulhu and his dreaded spawn may tap into the power that is Yog-Sothoth, just as the Progenitors had done once to create the Shoggothim, but to release him would cause the universe itself to shatter.”

  I lowered my head, “Have we no allies?”

  Chandraputra chuckled, “Not as you think of them. To be sure there are those who are like us, children of the Progenitors, the Q’Hrell. The Deep Ones were their servants, their creations, as are man, and the Valusians, and before them the Cthonians. Some would be our allies. As would be the archetypes, the Old Ones, the titans of Earth: Father Dagon and Mother Hydra for certain, Yig and Bokrug are likely as well. The others, Atlatch-Nacha and the like, who can say? The gods of Earth are as multiform as the myriad of creatures that cover this precious little world, and divining their intent and reasoning is beyond us. They are people Mr. Olmstead, individuals; to think that they would all act in unison is simply preposterous. Even amongst the Deep Ones there are divisions. Some who once stood against Cthulhu and those from Xoth now ally themselves with that they once fought against.”

  “Traitors to the cause,” Asenath snorted in contempt. “Men have heard the Deep Ones pray and assumed we have raised our voices in adulation to the monstrosity, but it is a misinterpretation. ‘Cthulhu fhtagn’ is not a prayer of admonition, it is one of supplication. We do not worship Cthulhu, we fear him and have stood guard over his prison for hundreds of millions of years! Every Deep One prays that ‘Cthulhu dreams,’ and will remain that way.”

  Seizing a pause in the exposition, Elwood demanded an explanation of an event I too was familiar with. “What happened in 1925? The attack from the Alert’s crew? What of that strange couplet ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn’ that LeGrasse’s cultists were chanting? Does it not translate as, ‘In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming?’”

  Again Chandraputra laughed at me. “It is a less than fair translation, there are subtleties that are lost, that change the implications. Perhaps more accurately, I would translate the phrase as ‘Entombed in R’lyeh, the undying Cthulhu dreams impatiently.’ The expanded translation brings forth the suggestion that Cthulhu is imprisoned against his will. There is a subtlety of language here, a cultural context, which requires deep study. For example, the phrase ‘Cthulhu nafl fhtagn,’ translates directly as ‘Cthulhu no longer dreams,’ but it is used by Deep Ones as an idiom when things have gone horribly wrong.”

  “As for the cultists and the crew of the Alert,” interjected Waite, “it has always been implied that they were somehow related to Deep Ones, but what evidence is there for that? Cthulhu has his own servitors, those spawned on Earth using the captured ultra-shoggoth called Idh-Yaa, whom men have known as Yidhra. There are miscegnations of Cthulhu and earthly life: the god-things Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha and Zoth-Ommog. There are others, lesser things, things that can pass for men, and wait patiently for the stars to be right. It was these that crewed the Alert and sought to free their god.”

  I went to speak, to ask another question, but Asenath roared, “ENOUGH! We have no time to dwell on our past failures or to educate Mr. Olmsted on the secret history of the world. For now we must focus on the task at hand, the peril for which I have assembled what Chandraputra so quaintly calls my Weird Company.” The table grew quiet in response to Asenath’s forceful plea.

  “You may be familiar with reports out of Miskatonic University concerning both the discoveries and tragedies of its Antarctic Expedition. It was these intrepid explorers that set in motion forces that I must now ask you to intervene against. The expedition’s leaders, Dyer and Pabodie, had provided a very detailed itinerary for the journey, and if they had kept to the route that they had planned, we would not be having this conversation. Unfortunately, from what I can gather, a small group broke off from the main party and wandered into areas that they should not have. Areas in which the remnants of the Progenitors, the Elder Things, and their technology lay hidden, dead but not dead, dreaming of the future, the past, and even the present. Now they have been disturbed. And while the Progenitors are a force to be reckoned with, it is suggested that something worse moves, and faster than would the Q’Hrell. The shoggoths have been exposed to men, they have consumed some of them, and absorbed their knowledge. They have learned much, and that knowledge is spreading. If they are not stopped, contained, sterilized, they will spread across the world and become a foe unlike any other it has ever known.”

  “How exactly are we supposed to travel to Antarctica?” questioned Hartwell.

  Chandraputra rose up. “I have a ship, large enough to hold all of us, and our supplies. It is hidden near the old tkrt Carter Mansion. In space it can move faster than light; here on Earth, bound by gravity, it is considerably slower, but it should get us there safely. I will however need a signal, something to navigate with.”

  “The expedition left a radio beacon at their base, and the receiver is on Kingsport Head,” Waite explained. “That will get us close. Can you fly by sight the rest of the way?”

  “I’ll have to make some adjustments before I move the ship to the receiver. That will take most of the day. It would be best to do that at night; the sight of my light-ship can be unnerving. I wouldn’t want all of Arkham to see it. I’ll also have to fine tune things to the specific frequency at the receiver itself. I could be there by midnight and on our way an hour later.”

  Waite nodded, “Agreed. Chandraputra and Hartwell will go and retrieve the ship. The rest of us will load up the trucks and meet you at Kingsport Head. I’ll expect you about midnight.”

  In retrospect our Weird Company took it all in stride, as if what we had been asked to do was something routine. If we had known what was coming, what was going to happen to us, how some of us would fall before the horrors that seethed and waited in
Antarctica, perhaps we would not have gone at all. Perhaps we would have done things differently, perhaps not. But we spent the day preparing for battle, as if that was what we were meant to be doing, as if we had been waiting for this one day for all of our lives.

  Knowing what I know now, perhaps this is true. Perhaps the only reason I was born, any of us were born, was to be here in this place at this time, and to do these things. Everything else was simply prologue.

  CHAPTER 10

  From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead

  “A Night on Kingsport Head”

  On the windblown cliffs of Kingsport Head the members of Asenath’s Waite’s newly formed Weird Company waited and watched while Chandraputra carried out the strange and complex preparations for travel to Antarctica. Most of the work seemed to involve running wires from the base of the newly installed short wave radio tower. It was this tower that provided communication with the Miskatonic University Antarctic Expedition transmission station in Antarctica. Even though the expedition had long since departed from the southern continent, the transmission station still functioned, kept alive by a complement of batteries. To hear Chandraputra explain it, that signal would be our tether to that far away point of the globe, and he would use it to guide his ship from Kingsport Head south to what remained of the University’s base camp. From there we would fly inland, following the directions provided by the expedition itself, gleaned from their own radio reports, which Asenath had somehow obtained from the files of Miskatonic University.

  While Chandraputra worked, Hartwell, Elwood and Waite huddle together around Waite’s Packard. They had tried to build a fire, but no matter what they did, the kindling simply would not light. There was no wind to speak of, and the leaves and twigs were bone dry, but nothing gathered out of the woods would take a flame. The Packard still ran, so the three of them had gathered around the engine trying to steal what heat they could. My changeling metabolism made me immune to the cold, or at least resistant to it. This allowed me to stand apart from the others, and truth be told I was glad of it. I was not comfortable with these people, least of all Asenath. What I knew of her, what I knew her to be capable of, made me wary to be in her presence. Instead, I stood staring out over the seaside village of Kingsport far below. Seen from above, in the still of the night, there were things about the village that even I found disturbing. A faint green light seemed to radiate out from a hilltop church in the center of the town. The light pulsed through the village streets, which seemed to fade in and out of view, and cast eerie shadows in the bay where the swells seemed to roll too slowly and crash too loudly against the cliffs and beaches. Those beaches were too white and too sharply defined in the thin moonlight, and I tried to turn away, and yet my eyes kept being drawn back. In some ways the village looked to me as it would had I been in a dream. The more I stared at it the more I thought of Kingsport that way, as nothing more than a dream, but whose dream was the question? It could have been one of mine, but perhaps not. The thought that the village of Kingsport was the dreamscape of some vast slumbering mind gnawed at me and sent chills down my spine.

  “Seductive isn’t it?” Suddenly, Chandraputra was by my side.

  Startled, I shook myself out of the trance-like state I had been lulled into. “Wh-What?!”

  Chandraputra placed a mittened hand on my shoulder. “Kingsport, it looks so calm and peaceful. Rolling tkrt waves, welcoming streets and buildings, even the pulsing green light seems to be a greeting. Don’t let it fool you. Kingsport has tkrt its dangers. Once when I was younger, I nearly lost myself inside those streets.”

  I looked at the giant Hindoo in puzzlement. “It seems too small to get lost in. Situated between the bay, the river you could always see the head no matter where you were.”

  Chandraputra pulled up close to me and whispered in a strange, nasal buzzing voice, “Kingsport is like an iceberg, running tkrt deeper than what appears on the surface, and its nethermost caverns tkrt are not for the fathoming of human eyes. Were it not so, but great tunnels tkrt have been dug where caves and holes should suffice, and things that should crawl tkrt have learned to walk as men.”

  I stared back at the increasingly esoteric mystic. He bowed his head and threw his arms up in a flourish. “I present myself as my first tkrt point of case.”

  Waite abruptly joined the conversation, “Feeling somewhat anthropocentric are we Chandraputra? How long until we are ready to depart?”

  Chandraputra took a somewhat curious bow. “Indeed! Let me assure you that the irony of your words tkrt does not escape me. As for an estimated time of departure tkrt, my work is done, we just have to let the ship plot her course tkrt, and become comfortable with following the signal. She’s not as young as she tkrt used to be, but she’s strong, we should be tkrt underway by midnight.”

  There was a strange look that passed between the two of them, and then Chandraputra turned away and vanished up the slope. Asenath smiled wickedly. “Kingsport Head is strange country Mr. Olmstead, even for one such as you. Feel free to wander about, but stay away from the edge. There is a fog rolling in, and I would hate to see you become,” she paused and searched for a word, and then found it, “lost.” As she walked away there was a sound, a laughter of sorts that annoyed me. I shook my head at the suggestion that anyone could get lost on the slope, with a moon overhead, and the village below. It was simply ludicrous, just another fragment of madness that I had to endure since I returned to New England. Frustrated, I set out to put some distance between myself and the other members of the Weird Company.

  I walked down the head, not with any goal in mind, but simply to get away. There was too much going on, I needed space, quiet, perspective. There were no trails on Kingsport Head for me to follow, and consequently I frequently had to work my way around undergrowth, fallen trees and even the occasional boulder. I walked for quite some time, thinking about what I had made of my life, of how things I had planned had gone astray, and how I had wholly embraced my transformation and forgotten all my own plans. For this, I felt a pang of regret. It was then I realized that it wasn’t I that had created the situation. My entire life had been manipulated by people from Innsmouth. Certainly there was some blame to be laid at the feet of dumb luck and my ancestry, but the majority could be placed on the Marsh family and their successors, in this case Asenath Waite. These thoughts went round and round in my head as I walked, and it seems that they distracted me somewhat, for when I turned around to return to the others I found that they were nowhere in sight. Somehow all that twisting and turning while I walked had led me far away from Asenath Waite and her Weird Company, and just as she had warned I had become lost.

  Even in the moonlight I could see nothing of my companions or their equipment. Desperate, I moved perpendicular to where I thought the cliff was, hoping to encounter the lone overgrown trail that we had followed up the side of the rise, but to no avail. My heightened senses had failed me, and I was left to stumble about in the woods with only the moon and the village below to give me any kind of direction. I knew that I had been walking down the slope, toward the village, so I reasoned that walking up the slope would be the proper course of action. As I walked, I called out but the only response was the call of a lonely owl. I did this for a full twenty minutes, for as I noted before, my actual progress was relatively slow and hampered by debris. Yet no matter what I did, I made no progress in locating my way back to the others.

  The thick fog rolled in off the bay and it moved through the wood like the sea flowing onto the beach; it enveloped everything it touched, and blocked out the lights of the town, leaving only the moon to provide me any sense of direction or light. The fog came with a smell, something sour, and a sound, a kind of hum really, that made my skin itch and my bones ache. The cold came with the fog as well, but while I noticed the temperature drop, it had little impact, my hybrid physiology made sure of that.

  I wandered through the night, through the fog, through the cold, lonely in the woods, on
the side of a cliff, overlooking the ocean.

  And I was lost.

  But it suddenly became clear, I was no longer alone. There were voices, three voices, female voices, two I didn’t recognize, but the third was very familiar. The third voice was clearly that of Asenath Waite! I moved quickly through the fog, not running but stumbling toward the voices. I called out, and I heard the voices pause. I called out again, tripped and fell to the rocky ground. As I struggled to regain my feet three figures gathered around me; even obscured by the fog, I recognized Asenath’s frame and face. I put out my hand and waved it in her direction. “Help me up would you Miss Waite?”

  There was an audible gasp, and then a blur of motion. In the blink of an eye Asenath Waite was on my back and she had a knife at my throat. Her breath was hot on my neck, and when she spoke there was a touch of danger in her voice, “How do you know my name? Who are you? What are you doing here on Kingsport Head?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I looked at my attacker and realized something was wrong. Her hair was different. Her face was different, thinner, as if she was several pounds lighter. Even her clothes were different. There was an odd look in her eyes, and I realized something feral and dangerous was staring down at me.

  One of her companions, a young lady with auburn hair and sharp features, chastised my attacker, “Nath! Calm down. He has every right to be here! As much as we do!”