“How was that?” Rankin asked. “Flamboyant enough, do you think?”
I spent that night getting roaring drunk in the mess. I wasn’t the only one.
In the morning we started preparing for the field test.
Noble looked up to see Suzie staring back at him.
“It gets worse,” she shouted, waving the remaining papers at him. He moved to take them, but at that same moment, the Captain came through from the cockpit.
“Five minutes,” he shouted above the din. “Saddle up.”
They’d agreed as they were getting suited up that Noble would be the one to go down if there were any samples to be taken. Now he was starting to regret the burst of machismo that had led him to volunteer so readily. Suzie and the Captain strapped him into the harness.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go down instead?” he asked Suzie with a smile. “I’m sure you would find something fascinating.”
She tightened the strap around his groin, making him wince, and bringing a laugh from her.
“Up in London, you’d have to pay for this service. Now stop whining and be a good boy.”
The Captain opened the chopper door. A blast of warm air came in at a rush. Noble sidled over to the door and hung out, looking down at the churning sea. At first, all he could see was water being thrown up by the downward blast from the rotors.
Maybe it has gone.
The first tendril that rose lazily out of the water put paid to that idea. Noble was glad he’d arranged to have a long knife secured in a sheath at his thigh—he had a feeling he might need it. Suzie attached a glass sample jar to a hook on his belt. She accompanied it with a kiss on the cheek.
“Be careful,” she shouted.
He didn’t have to be told twice. He swung out into space, blowing a kiss back at Suzie in the doorway even as the winch started taking him down. He swung slightly, buffeted by the downdraft, but this wasn’t his first time on the end of the tether. He maintained his body position and held it still until he was four feet above the water. He looked back at the chopper and gave an okay sign with thumb and forefinger, then opened the glass jar in readiness for a sample.
He had just got the jar open when the first dark tendril came up out of the choppy water and made a reach for his ankle. It wasn’t a serious attempt—not like those he’d seen back on the research vessel.
It’s almost as if it doesn’t know I’m here… as if it doesn’t expect me to be here.
He kept a close eye on the water, waiting for a sign of movement. He didn’t have to wait long. A lazy, black tendril came slowly out of the water; thin as a pencil at the end that rose up towards him and flaring to almost the thickness of Noble’s thigh at the point where it broke the surface. He swung himself around in the harness so that he was nearly hanging upside down and tried to calm his rising panic as the snake-like appendage reached ever closer.
Slowly, with no sudden movements, he released the knife from its sheath and just the weight of it in his hand eased his fright.
He waited until it was inches from his nose then, with one smooth cut, lopped nearly a foot off the end of the tentacle and let it fall in a curl into the glass jar. He flipped the lid and closed the jar securely before turning in the harness, jerking his thumb upwards.
Suzie was at the door, staring down at him. She had a smile on her face… one that quickly turned to horror as her gaze shifted to a point to his left. The winch started up, but he had taken too long… a tentacle, thicker and broader at the base than the last, came out of the water like a cobra on the attack, latching itself onto his ankle. The water surged and roiled. Something black and huge started to rise under the surface.
Pull me up. For pity’s sake—pull me up!
The winch squealed as the tentacle pulled and tugged, tightening every second. Noble once again turned and twisted, slashing out with the knife, raising wet welts across the surface of the tendril. That only made it grip all the tighter to his ankle.
Pull me up! What’s the problem here? But he knew exactly what the problem was. The thing is too strong. It’ll take down the chopper.
Above him, he heard the noise of the chopper get louder as the pilot pushed it to its limit. Slowly, but gaining speed, he started to rise up. The tentacle didn’t let go. The sea parted below and a dark mass rose up, coming along with the tendril to which it was attached. It looked like nothing more than a vast hairy carpet, a mass of snake-like tentacles thrashing and waving in frenzy as an area the size of a small house tried to drag itself up towards him.
The pain in his leg was excruciating. He kept slashing with the knife, as frantic as the tentacles that reached for him. Finally, when the tendril was little more than a torn mess of tissue, it fell away from him, back into the foaming sea where the whole thing sank with barely a splash.
The winch started to pull him back into the chopper, but he scarcely noticed. The pain was throwing him into shock and he was no longer sure if what he saw was real or a dream induced by the searing heat of pain.
Right at the far point of the chopper’s turn he caught a glimpse of something glinting in the sun. Far away, almost on the horizon and shimmering in the heat, stood what looked like a city of glass… or plastic? Massive towers and turrets rose high above the sea, and gargantuan black shapes slumped through cavernous streets. He remembered something that Suzie had said earlier.
The Shoggoths were made. Made as builders.
He blinked and the image had gone, taken out of view by the completion of the chopper’s turn. The winch pulled him up to the chopper doorway. The last thing he saw before darkness took him away for a long time was Suzie, staring at his leg, tears pouring down her face.
July 21st - Lyme Regis
Jim Black enjoyed these evening trips more than the afternoon ones. The sun was lower, the heat level was usually less severe, and the tourists tended to be older and more controllable than the post-lunchtime crowd. And tonight, there was just the right number, about a dozen elderly tourists. Any more than that and they became harder to manage, any fewer, and what little tips he made were hardly worth the effort.
It was still very warm after a scorcher of a day on the beach, but he was hopeful of a nice tally of tips from this crowd. He’d already showed them the steps where Louisa Musgrove jumped off the Cobb to Captain Wentworth’s dismay, and the spot where the Duke of Monmouth landed at the start of his Rebellion. Now it was time for the highlight. The desired effect worked best when the wind howled and threw spume up over the Cobb, but then again, weather like that cut down on the number of tourists… and the tips. This was much more preferable. He led the small party out to the end of the stone pier.
He hoped they had all seen the movie. Time was—a few years back, you could count on it, but the very same time was not kind to once-popular culture. The fact that the group was older helped; when they were younger, they tended to reply to his next question with blank, uncomprehending stares.
“Okay,” he said. “Who wants to be Meryl Streep?”
The sudden smiles told him all he needed to know. It turned out they all not only knew what he meant, but they all intended to get the appropriate pictures taken. Jim had to organise them into an orderly queue so that they could step up, right out on the edge of the Cobb, pretending to be pale and interesting.