Even before I opened the casket I felt the thing tickle in my mind, but I pushed it away. My God is stronger than any heathen devil. I mouthed the Paternoster as I lifted the lid.
Once again the black ooze surged and the tickle in my mind turned to an insistent probing. Memories rose unbidden in my thoughts of summer days in warm meadows, of lessons learned in cold monastery halls, of penance paid for sins. Things I had thought long forgotten were exposed and interrogated, and old shame was examined anew.
I was under questioning.
That, I could not allow. I am Master of the Inquisition in the cells. I pushed the thing from my mind. Several wet mouths opened in the black ooze, as if it were hungry. Using a pair of pliers, I plucked a hot coal from the brazier and as another mouth formed I let the coal drop inside. It was enveloped in the beast with a hiss and a sudden tang of acrid vapours.
The grip in my mind released immediately, to be replaced by a formless scream—one which quickly became a chant, echoing around the cell. I knew the words. I had read them in the Captain’s journal.
Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.
A long tendril reached from the lead box, coming towards me. It tasted the air and then made for the back of my hand. I took a poker from the oven and with one smooth strike, thrust it through the black material. The tendril curled and charred and fell to the stone floor of the cell, burned away from the main body. The blackness in the casket seethed and rose up. I took another coal into the tongs and showed it to the beast. The ooze retreated, shrinking back as far into the corner of the lead casket as it could get.
I leaned forward, a fresh hot poker now held in my hand.
“Are you guilty?” I asked and stabbed down hard, ignoring the fresh wails that echoed around me. These old walls have heard far worse and will do so again.
The Inquisition proper has begun
Will this nightmare never end?
The beast, despite its incarceration, has steadily increased its hold on us since we forced it back into the casket. We cannot allow ourselves to sleep, for when we do, we are trapped in its spell, lost in the dream somewhere above the cyclopean ruins.
In truth, the dream is seductive, even more so than drinking endless flagons of wine or constant inhalation of the weed that the natives smoke in the New World. Three of the crew have succumbed, falling into a deep slumber from which they cannot be awakened. They breathe and their eyes are open, but I cannot get them to eat and they are already close to starving. I fear they will be long lost afore we reach port.
Some days, I almost feel like joining them. I am kept awake by a suffusion made from a roasted bean, a drink we discovered among the native tribes where we landed in the New World.
Would that were all we discovered.
Some of the crew have reported that the beast is also reaching into their minds during waking hours. Many of them have had the same compulsion –to go down into the hold and open the casket, releasing the thing to roam the decks. No one has yet given in to the demands, but it is another reason to make for port with all speed.
I know not how much longer we can hold.
It has taken more than a week and sorely tested the Inquisitor General’s patience, but finally, after I have burned away more than nine-tenths of its matter, it has weakened. I have found that the mind-grip works both ways. If I concentrate hard I can catch glimpses of what the beast is thinking and feel its fear.
I have put it to the Inquisition and it has answered me.
As shocking as it seems, the beast has no conception of our Lord. Indeed, it seems never to have encountered a single Christian, despite the fact that it is possibly the oldest living thing on the face of the earth. That revelation came as something of a shock to me. The creature has memories going back to a time when ice covered the face of the earth. Its first encounter with man shows a savage race clothed in furs, with only rudimentary speech, and I am at a loss to know how such a thing can be reconciled with what I know from my study of the biblical texts. I must seek guidance from the Inquisitor General, for my thoughts are troubled and dark.
This beast I have under my ministrations is devious and subtle. It works constantly at me, testing my belief with scenes of lust and debauchery; maidens in states of undress displaying themselves wantonly for my pleasure and of hot blood flowing to feed my appetites. I have to see these things and endure, for in the seeing, I also learn more about the beast’s drives and passions, which are mightily strong.
I had almost come to believe that this might be the most ancient of evils, the great deceiver himself. But the thing has memories even older than the time of ice, memories of a time when it was but a servant of something vast and strange… memories of a creator that I do not recognise as being anything resembling my Lord. I am at a loss to know what to think of this new information and must question the beast further.
I have learned one other thing. The creators gave it a name, a moniker by which it recognises itself. It is known as Shoggoth.
Noble sat up abruptly. He had almost fallen asleep and had to re-read the last few paragraphs to make sense of them. Even then, he struggled to focus. He gave in and let his tiredness take him. Despite the draft in the corridors of power, sleep came quickly and he fell into the dark.
There were no dreams, at least none that he remembered.
He was brought out of it sometime later by another sharp dig in the ribs.
“Looks like they’re finally ready for us,” Suzie whispered. She stood. Noble tried to join her, only to find that his injured leg had stiffened into what felt like a lump of cold stone. He would have fallen flat on his face if Suzie hadn’t put her shoulder inside his armpit and hefted him upright. Like participants in a drunken three-legged race, they staggered into the Minister of Defence’s office.
The Minister raised an eyebrow as Noble fell into a chair, but said nothing. In fact, Noble thought the Minister looked tired. And there was something else there that Noble was fast coming to recognise.
He looks afraid.
It took Noble several seconds to find a comfortable seating position where his leg didn’t feel like it was about to fall off. Pins and needles, strong and warm, almost electric, ran through the whole limb and it was all he could do to keep from screaming as a cramp hit. Suzie had to poke him in the ribs again to get his attention. The Minister was looking straight at him, an exasperated look on his face.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the Minister said in those sarcastic, clipped tones that only politicians seem capable of. “But things have worsened considerably overnight. And I’m afraid we may have brought you here for nothing. I’m not sure you are going to be much help. The PM has declared a state of emergency all along the South Coast. If we’re very lucky we might save Southampton.”
Suzie looked stunned, but only for a second.
“Tell us,” she said. “And then I’ll show you what we have. Then you can decide what to do with the information.”
The man smiled wanly.
“That is my job, after all.”
He started in a flat monotone, telling a story of carnage and destruction in the night. Weymouth had been lucky in that the army was already there, if not fully prepared. Other towns along the coast had fared much worse. The man spoke in numbers that Noble could scarcely comprehend, tens of thousands dead or missing and many small coastal towns destroyed completely.
“Hundreds of years of coastal defence, fighting off the Armada and the Nazis, and we’re brought to our knees by some fucking seaweed.”