Trey came sliding out behind him,
bumping his back, jostling him down into the muck again. The creature scrambled
up and ran ahead, yelping "Milk! Milk! Milk!" The words echoed in a
cavernous space.
Abernathy rubbed his eyes clear,
blowing the trailing mucus from his mustache, spitting the foul drainage from
his mouth. When he had finally caught his breath, he looked up, squinting,
trying to make sense of his surroundings, and was struck dumb in trepidation
and wonder.
He was in an enormous space, like
an underground cathedral, or amphitheater. Huge pillars, where stalactites
dripped down to meet stalagmites, ringed the vast room, the slick flowstone
leading downward to the bottom of the bowl. There, by a ghastly pale green
light, seemingly shed by itself, lay a pulsating mound that his mind struggled
to understand.
He stood up on shaking legs. At
his feet lay the mucid tentacles, slowly withdrawing towards the glowing mass.
He followed them with tottering, unsure steps, afraid to draw near the inchoate
mass but feeling unable to do anything else, pulled forward by gravity and
fascination and a deep sense that here at last was the heart of the mystery.
The first thing he could make out
clearly was the litter of dog-men, lying in a bulky throng around a central,
shapeless pile of rough globes. He saw Trey, his slobbering mouth attached to
one of the globes, eagerly sucking out a pale liquid that dribbled out the
sides of his jowls. Every now and then he murmured ecstatically, "Milk.
milk." Even as he crept nearer, Abernathy saw him grow sleepy and slow,
falling into a dozing stupor like his brood-mates. The sound of their whizzing
breath filled the air. The dog-men snuggled up to the bumpy mass as if it were
a pillow. The agent drew nearer, eyes darting, trying to locate this dreaded
She that he knew must be near.
Abruptly, as if he had entered
some unmarked sphere of influence, a voice bloomed on his inner ear. It was
neither male nor female, but it rang in his mind in husky, alien tones,
overwhelming his own conscious dialog. He winced under its onslaught, panicking
at the impact of its words.
Welcome, husband, it said.
"Where are you?" he
squawked out loud, looking around wildly, trying to locate the source of the
voice. "Show yourself!"
I am here, it said. All around. I
have been here, forever. And now you shall be too, and our children shall
conquer the overworld, and then I shall be there too, forever.
"Never!" Abernathy
shrieked, climbing the pile, still searching for the speaker. He felt that,
trapped and unarmed as he was, he would in his new panic still try to tear this
thing apart, with his bare hands if he had to, rather than suffer Kindermass's
fate. His eyes darted around desperately. "Where are you?"
You stand on me.
The agent looked wildly down at
his feet. The warty, globular mass he had been treading was already extruding
new groping tentacles from its glimmering bulk.
Only his immediate instinctive
terror saved him. He jumped backward off the sloping pile, scuttering down the
mound of bubbling lumps and through the congeries of sleepily complaining
dog-things, who whimpered at his passing. The tentacles followed swiftly,
questing blindly for his flesh.
He tried to rush up the slimy
slopes to escape back through the tunnel, but slid down, defeated by gravity
and his own weakness. The tentacles advanced on him, slow but inexorable. He
turned and limped away from their progress, exhausted, panicked, blindly
seeking another exit in the dimness of the peripheries of the cave.
As he turned to gauge his
pursuer's approach, he stumbled over something in the dark, sending him
headlong to the ground. His skull rang with the jolt and his battered limbs
blazed with pain. He turned and half-sat up, dazed, looking back. In the
growing green light of the oncoming tentacles, he saw what had tripped his
steps.
It was the now battered and
beslimed bulk of his lost case kit.
He looked up instinctively and
saw, far above in the roof of the cavern directly over the heap, the pale dot
of light, where, distant from these nightmare caves, the clean dawning of the
sun must be illuminating the mouth of the well. The falling case had rebounded
away to this spot. He had only a fraction of a second to grab it before the
tentacles had seized him. They began reeling him back to the knobby mass, which
was now writhing and heaving in apparent anticipation.
Abernathy fumbled the case open
and began scrabbling among its contents. The first thing that came to his hand
was the athema, the mystic knife, wound with incantations and marked with signs
of power. He drew it from its sheath and lashed visciously at the knotty
tendrils that held him.
The blade rebounded harmlessly
off the rubbery flesh. The tentacles never paused. He stared incredulously,
then tried sawing frantically away at the binding arms. It was like cutting a
boarding-house roast. In frustration he brought the knife down once more in a
hacking blow. It bounced off, stinging his hand, and went ringing off into the
darkness.
By now he had been dragged back
to the rim of the mass. The dog-men had awakened, alerted by the increased
activity of their eldritch mother. They churned around it, baffled, excited,
crying softly to each other. But they all started yelping and trying to run
away when Abernathy drew out the pistol and shot six silver bullets wildly into
the mass at their middle.
The shots sank harmlessly into
the semi-gelatinous body. For a moment it drew in, like a snail wincing, then
it expanded eagerly.
Ah, silver, it said in his head.
I have not had this sustenance in many years. I thank you for this wedding
gift, my husband. He was dragged in closer to the central mass at the top of
the monster. To his horror he saw a muculent maw opening there, ready to
welcome his unwilling flesh.
Abernathy went wild. He began
throwing the contents of the kit at the creature in a frenzy, willy-nilly,
whatever came to his hand. The thing's tentacles, as if excited and aroused by
all the activity, grasped and batted at the objects as they pelted its
impervious hide. The Bible was torn in pieces, the salt bag exploded by a swat,
the bottle of rum crushed like an egg in one squeezing arm. The five-pointed
star rebounded uselessly off the thing's knurled skin.
There was one last thing in the
case. He seized the ball-like object blindly and hurled it toward the maw. It
was intercepted by one frenzied, coiling arm. Abernathy had one second to
recognize the bomb before the tentacle contracted, squeezing the plunger, and
the world was filled with roaring flaming light that lifted him toward the roof
of the cavern, and he knew no more.
"They found me, they say,
almost a mile from the Kindermass farm, unconscious, naked, bruised, my hair
burned off, but somehow still alive," the quivering, bandaged little man
concluded. "There was no way to tell who I was. I was brought here, a
charity case, and when I woke up, I called for you. I had to tell you, to warn
you ..." He choked.
Frobisher patted the agent again,
his old hand light as a leaf.
"There, there," he
said. "We've got your report now." He leaned back and his face
creased in a wrinkled smile. "And congratulations! You've had your first
successful case. Do you still feel like leaving the Bureau?"
Abernathy's eyes boggled behind
his wrappings.
"Well...no..." he
stammered. "But that monster...the danger to the world..."
"Probably minimal,
considering you seem to have blown the thing up," Frobisher concluded. He
began to bring himself creakily to his feet. He looked over at the secretary,
who was folding up his papers. "Any observations, Mr. Williams?"
"Only that I read in the
papers some time ago that the Kindermass farm was engulfed in a massive
sinkhole," he said briskly. He did up the final latch of the casebook.
"The sisters and their pet escaped just in time. As Mr. Abernathy had been
on the case at the time, I sent an agent to check on the site, but he found
nothing unusual." He reached down to the prostrate agent and shook his
hand. "I had my dreadful doubts as to your survival, but regulations
require a year to pass before I inform the Director officially. Again,
congratulations, sir! You have surpassed all my expectations."
"But ... but we must make
sure..."
"Relax and recuperate,
Ambrose," Frobisher said expansively, stretching his back and taking up
his cane. "It's all taken care of. We'll be getting you moved to a better
hospital soon." He looked around at the cacophonous bedlam of poor
patients who had now awakened and were clamoring for the noon-day meal.
"I'm sure you could use the peace and quiet.”
"But, sir, I..."
"Good-bye, Abernathy."
The old Director lifted his hand and waved over his head, he and the secretary
already well on their way out.
Abernathy lay back and closed his
eyes, weary with telling his tale. Perhaps I should just rest, he thought,
giving up. It's out of my hands now. He tried to relax and ignore the babble of
voices and the sound of none too delicate feeding around him.
He might have drifted off, if it
weren't for the sudden squabble in the far corner of the room. A new patient
was refusing the offer of the watery potato soup the sister was trying to feed
him.
"Don't want it, nope,
nope," came a familiar voice. "Milk, milk, milk!"
Abernathy sat bolt upright,
screaming.
--August 28, 2017 to April 13,2018
