Nathan Poole Shannon is an emerging writer of the strange and macabre. From crawling shadows to cryptic specters, from generational curses to quiet everyday horrors, he exposes darkness to light without flinching.
~~~
Harry had seemed quite panicked on the phone -- his voice trembled slightly, a higher tone than his usual, and he urged me to come to the harbour quickly. I was frankly a little frightened, as this was unlike him, but I tugged on my overcoat and made with haste to the harbour.
Harry’s words had somehow chilled me: We need a marine biologist. Something completely unknown has been found. I imagined a giant squid wrapped around a sperm whale, some horribly black and deflated thing from the depths, or a shark the size of an tenement building.
Apparently the thing had been brought in by the trawler Petty Argyle the day before, which had come into the harbour fully ablaze, burning brightly even in full daylight, and had been witnessed by a hundred people or more. The ship had sunk before the emergency tugs and fire boats could reach it, and apparently the icehouse portion of the ship was all that remained. The bodies of the crew were not found.
Arriving at the harbor gate, I was met by barriers and a policeman. “My name is Robert G,” I said to him. “I’ve been summoned by Harry K, my colleague, to assist in the investigation. He’s an engineer.” Harry had not mentioned involving me in the investigation, but I felt otherwise I would be denied entry; having said this, the officer reluctantly admitted me. I made my way to the building Harry had indicated, and noticed that there was no foot traffic on the piers. Usually there were lots of people, couples strolling, fishermen or cargo-men making their way to and from the boats; today it was all but empty.
“Hi! Robert!” I heard Harry’s voice, carrying through the emptiness. I saw my colleague and friend leaning out of a door he held ajar
“Is everything all right?” I asked him as we met. Poor Harry, not a man given to nerves, was pale and sweating, looking distinctly upset. “I must say, it’s not often I hear ‘we need a marine biologist’.” My attempt at humor did nothing to lighten his mood.
“Come in, come in,” he said, shutting the door tightly behind me. We were in one of the warehouses along the edge of the water where catch was stored and sent to be cleaned before leaving for markets. I noticed several policemen throughout the building. Harry ran his hand through his hair as we moved along. “It’s incredible, Robert. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s…well, you’ll soon see for yourself.”
We arrived at one of the walk-in freezers. Larger catch, incompatible with pools of cod or herring could be stored in there. Harry slid the door aside and admitted me to the cold room. I was taken aback by what lay on a large and flat block of ice in the center of the room, my hand rising unintentionally to my chest.
“Is that --” I began, and Harry nodded. “It’s not possible!” My mind raced, thinking of how this would rewrite marine biology textbooks. Such a thing had never been caught, never hinted at, yet it lay before me!
The body was striped gray and brown, flecks of pink showing through. I saw the fins running along the sides of the body and the tentacles that stretched from its face. They were lined with spines like fangs, hanging limp and dead off the ice. It was a cuttlefish!
“You must tell me where this came from,” I said to Harry, my thoughts whirling. The enormous cephalopod laying before me was far more gigantic than any specimen ever observed. A typical cuttlefish, even large for its genus, measured no more than two feet in length. “What is this, twenty feet long?”
“Twenty-five,” Harry answered. “We were able to retrieve, by crane, the icehouse of the Petty Argyle, and this creature was the only thing within. Five men, it took, to pull the giant out.”
“This is truly remarkable,” I said, staring at the creature. As a marine biologist with special interest in cephalopods, squids and octopi mainly, their relative the cuttlefish was something I was dearly familiar with. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I stared at the thing before me, its skin coated in a thin crust of ice. “And what luck that it survived the sinking and the fire! Oh, Harry, this is singular!”
“Stay back from it,” Harry cautioned as I moved towards it. “We know nothing of it, and that’s why I’ve called you in. Robert, there’s been a killing.”
“A killing? A murder?” I stopped and turned to Harry. “That would explain the police closing the harbor. What happened?”
“Do you know George E?” he asked. I vaguely recalled him, one of Harry’s teaching assistants at the university. “Last night, not long after settling this beast in here, George returned to the harbor, bearing an axe in his hands. He…” Harry’s face grew paler still, his throat working. “He killed a young woman. Buried the entire axe-head between her shoulder blades. No reason, seemingly a completely random attack.”
“What?” I said, shocked. “George seemed so mild!”
Harry nodded. “He was. But last night, the only reason more people were not killed was that he couldn’t dislodge the axe from his victim. He tried, and failed, and instead sprang on another nearby man. There was a policeman in the area, and he shot George dead to save the man’s life.”
“No reason, no motive?”
Harry shook his head. “None. Some form of madness, is the theory at the moment.”
I shuddered. “I’m sorry,” I said to Harry. “I barely knew the man, but I know you were associated.”
“He was a friend. When I was asked, as an engineer, to assist with the recovery, I called upon him and Calvin H. I knew they were able and willing to help.”
“How is the other, this Calvin H? Is he aware of what happened?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure the police will want to speak with him.”
“Doubtless,” I said dryly. My eyes wandered back to the giant cuttlefish. What an incredible catch! I wanted to examine it, wanted to immerse myself in this amazing animal! Yet my duty to my engineer friend still lay before me. “What help can I be to you, Harry? Is there anything I can do?”
“Robert, I am no biologist, but is it possible that these two men could somehow be affected by the beast itself? Could there be some sort of toxin on its skin that can cause psychosis?” I was taken aback by the question.
“There are certain species that can have hallucinogenic qualities,” I answered slowly, “normally in venom. I would need to examine the animal in a laboratory.” I gazed at the incredible thing on the ice. “I wouldn’t think that it would be strong enough to cause murder, though.”
We stood morose for a moment, both of us in our own minds. Then, from outside of the freezer came a noise of rushing and shouting. Harry and I looked at each other for a moment and made our way outside.
At the door where we had entered the warehouse, a man struggled against policemen gathered at the entrance. The man fought, frantically swinging at the officers, screaming incoherent threats and missives that were unintelligible. However, the menace was unmistakable. Then, from one of the policemen, a terrible scream of pain! One of the officers staggered away from the altercation, bleeding from the neck, gouts of blood pouring out on his epaulet, obscuring his insignia!
“Dear Lord,” said Harry to me. “That is Jeremiah T! I did not know him before yesterday, Robert, but he was one of the other men that handled the giant cuttlefish into the freezer!” The policemen had finally managed to subdue the man, who was wild-eyed and disheveled. His face was grotesquely smeared with the policeman’s blood and he continued to scream in some unknown tongue as the other officers cuffed him.
“We will need to follow up with anyone who could have touched the animal,” Harry said. “There are three others that I know of -- Calvin and Thomas W. Thomas was a dockworker unknown to me as was the other man whose name I didn’t get, but Calvin has a room only blocks from here. Come on, Robert, we must go find Calvin! If he is also affected then we must assume the cuttlefish is somehow involved!”
#
Several knocks on Calvin’s door and several shouts of his name brought no answer. The roominghouse seemed empty, and the urgency of our call was readily apparent, so Harry and I did the only thing we could think to do -- we broke down his door. Our combined weight splintered the frame and we all but fell into Calvin’s small room.
Inside, we came face to bloodied face with the unfortunate Calvin H. He sat on the floor with his torso leaned against the side of his bed, his arms deeply shredded from wrist to elbow. The air was metallic and the carpet tacky with the spill of his blood.
“Lord!” Harry exclaimed. “The poor man!” Neither of us could bear the all-consuming smell of death that drowned the room and scorched the very air. Before abandoning the place, I noticed a notebook sitting on the edge of the bed next to Calvin and I grabbed it.
“We must find a policeman,” Harry said, visibly upset.
“It seems they’re all at the harbor. We should return and alert one of them to this incident as well.”
I opened the notebook I’d found. The first pages were filled with various engineering terms that I was unfamiliar with, then a section of blank paper; near the back of the book, however, was a much shakier and volatile hand. Still, clearly Calvin’s writing, but in an entirely different mindframe.
“Look at this,” I said, and turned the book so Harry and I could read it together. It was, indeed, the closest we were likely to find to a suicide note!
‘Not feeling well,’ I read aloud from the page. ‘I cannot focus my mind. I tried to sleep, but could not. I've never seen anything like the strange fish -- George, the one student with Prof. K, was obsessed with it, touching its tentacles and moving them about. I felt the rubbery flesh itself, taking care not to prick myself on the fang-like spines. It was the only thing left in the wreckage, like it had somehow eaten, or absorbed, everything else in that holding tank. It appears dead, not moving, but I can hear it in my mind.’
I looked up at Harry, who looked ashen in horror.
‘It sings, and I fear for my sanity. It tells me I must kill. I can hear its voice, and although it doesn't speak in any language I have ever heard, it speaks in…compulsions. I dismissed it as being overtired, but I cannot ignore...this cannot be simply a fish, but some horror from the deep that is beyond our understanding...I fear what has become of the others who were in contact with the creature. Jeremiah admitted to the same symptoms, hearing the voice of the thing in his head, like an itch, a burn, impossible to ignore...
‘I cannot bear this horror...this murderous beast has overtaken my mind... it speaks in compulsions and I must...but I cannot kill...THIS HAS TO STOP...I HEAR THE OTHER ROOMERS AND I MUST GET OUT OF THIS PLACE...IT TELLS ME TO KILL...IT SPEAKS IN COMPULSIONS...I CANNOT KILL...I HAVE MY KNIFE...IT SPEAKS IN COMPULSIONS...’
The writing disintegrated into mere scratches, gouging the blood-dropped page. I looked at Harry. A moment of stunned silence passed in the narrow stairs outside Calvin’s door.
“He killed himself,” I said. “He was driven to madness! He writes of ‘compulsions’ -- what could that even mean? It tells me to kill?”
Harry was shaking his head. “I couldn’t begin to speculate,” he said. “Perhaps this strange cephalopod is indeed somehow behind this violence! The crew of the burning ship never was found, perhaps they were maddened by this horror as well!”
“Could that be it? The men who…touched the thing? Some sort of insanity, some tactile transfer of madness?”
“We will need a full list of anyone who has come into contact with the thing,” Harry said, horror dawning upon him.
“I need to examine it. We must rule out coincidence that three men have been affected by it.” I breathed deep. “Harry -- this may be no normal cuttlefish.” If it is a cuttlefish at all, I added, only in my mind.
“One thing that is certain, my friend, we must return to the harbor and destroy this vile creature! We must study it but only once it can no longer do any harm!”
#
Harry recited Calvin’s address to the policeman who met us at the harbor gate, explaining that there had been a suicide. He, along with two other officers, left with as much haste as Harry and I had returned. We made our way towards the warehouse, the freezer where the thing lay. Inside the warehouse was even emptier of people than outside, with no one in sight as we crossed the floor.
“So must we assume, then, that the cuttlefish is alive, somehow?” Harry asked.
“I wouldn’t think so, at least not in the conventional way. The animal is aquatic, and would not be able to survive more than a few moments out of the water.”
“What would you say to me,” Harry said, “if I asked could the thing, the cuttlefish, not be toxic? What if there were…psychic impulses?” I stopped and looked at him incredulously.
“You cannot be serious,” I said, trying not to scoff.
“You’ve said yourself that psychoactive chemicals in nature are unlikely to cause such violence. Given your shock at seeing the beast, it is fair to say that this bizarre creature may be sorely misunderstood. Not just in its size, but other areas of development.” He stared hard at me. “Listen, Robert, I’ve read about psychic waves and extra-sensory perceptions. I’m not a believer myself, but I don’t think we could rule that out until we’ve examined the animal in much greater detail.”
“Calvin wrote that it sings, and it speaks in compulsions,” I said. “It appears that he was hearing it, whatever it was. Normally hallucinations from toxins tend to be visual, distortions, imaginings.” I sighed. “Without further examination, you’re right, we shouldn’t rule it out. But for the record, I feel it is prohibitively unlikely.”
“But not impossible. You, as a biologist, should be unwilling to rule out possibilities without investigation. There is much, Robert, that we don’t know about the natural world. This may be an entirely new species!”
“True,” I replied. “But I don’t expect that psychosuggestive abilities are something we’re likely to find.”
With that, we entered the freezer. Immediately, we stopped in our tracks. The giant cuttlefish-thing remained on the ice, however its body was all but destroyed! In a pool of the monster’s blue-green blood lay a fire-axe, much like the one used in the initial attack by George! Shocked, I staggered closer to the creature -- I saw its eyes, the distinctive W-shape of the pupils, dry and dusty, and a ragged tear down the spine of the thing; there were shards of bone, the infamous cuttlebone from which the animal drew its name, sticking out like arrows from the hump of a buffalo!
The tentacles had been bodily moved aside as if the corpse had been searched; I could see the beak of the thing, black and hard as diamonds, in the freezer-light. I still dared not touch it, but I leaned close. My scientific curiosity overrode my fear, and I barely heard Harry from behind me.
“Robert,” he called unacknowledged. “Robert!”
I stood straight, reminding myself not to touch anything, and turned. Harry was pointing behind the finned head of the thing, where I saw a pair of trousered legs sticking out, coated in blood. I stepped away from the beast and followed Harry’s gesture.
“Thomas W,” Harry said quietly. On the floor behind the horrid thing were two bodies, the burly dockworker Thomas, and a policeman. The men had both been shredded, as if set upon by a wild animal, with ragged tears in their clothing and the flesh beneath. Their faces were frozen in terror, ice crystals beginning to grow over their eyes in the subzero environs.
I saw in the policeman’s hand his service revolver. Cautiously I plucked it from the dead man’s grasp and saw that it was fully loaded. It had not been fired, and none of the wounds on Thomas W seemed to be gunshots. The policeman had been attempting to defend himself, but not from Thomas.
“What has befallen these two? Could they be more victims of the cuttlefish?”
“We must believe so,” Harry said. “But why would he -- or someone -- destroy the fish like this?”
Then, from behind us, towards the corner of the freezer, a bedraggled sigh with a wheeze. We turned, Harry and I, to see another man crouched in the shadows, wounded and bloodied. In his hand, hard to see in the dark, he clutched what appeared to be a long knife.
“It sings,” he said in a quiet, assured voice. His face and posture indicated he, too, had been maddened, but his voice began calmly. “Can you not hear it? It is the music of the beyond, the spheres at the ends of the universe.”
“It’s okay, old boy,” Harry said, raising a hand in a peaceful appeal. “Everything’s fine, you’re fine. Let us help you. I know you -- you helped us move this fish into this freezer!” It was the anonymous fifth man, then.
“The singing,” the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard Harry. “The voices of the aeons, the sound of our own prehistory! Billions of years in wait lying below the cold sea! It sings!”
“It’s okay,” Harry repeated. I felt my fingers tighten around the handle of the gun.
“It speaks to me,” the man said, his voice beginning to rise. “I must. It tells me that I must kill -- it sings to me! It speaks in compulsions!” I felt my blood run cold, remembering the same words frantically scratched into Calvin’s suicide note. “I tried to kill it, you see, but even in death, it is singing RIGHT NOW!” The knife in his hand wavered and he began to rise.
“Stop,” I said, levelling the pistol at him. “Stay where you are. Drop the knife.”
“It tells me to kill! I MUST KILL, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! IT SPEAKS IN COMPULSIONS!”
“Don’t --” I began, but the man, suddenly wildly energetic, leapt. He sprung through the air like a wild animal, and as he did, I reflexively squeezed the trigger of the pistol three times, hearing the huge roar of the gunshots blanking out the feral roar he made. Having never fired a gun before, I only hit him with one round, which by sheer dumb luck pierced his heart!
His body still fell on Harry, who crashed to the ground beneath the dockworker’s weight. I lost sight of the long knife in his hand, but I feared what I would find as I went to help my friend.
Horrified at everything -- from the disintegration of the dockworker into a feral half-man, to his incredible leap, to my firing upon him -- I went to Harry, pinned below his attacker. I dropped the pistol and rolled the man, heavy in death, off of him.
From his chest stood the knife that the maddened man had, indeed, plunged into him. Harry’s face was already turning white, perspiring in pain, and black heart’s blood burbled up from his collar.
“Harry! Hold on, man, we’ll get you help!” His eyes blinked heavily, trying to focus, searching for me. I reached down and pulled out the knife he’d been stabbed with, pulling the bloody thing from him. I clamped my free hand over the wound it left, feeling the movement of blood against my palm. “Harry, please stay with me,” I begged. I looked around and there was no one. I was about to stand and flee the freezer to find help for my dying colleague, but Harry gripped my wrist frightfully tight.
“Don’t touch it,” he sputtered, blood flecking his lips. “Don’t touch it!”
“It’s okay, I’m keeping pressure on the wound! You’ll be fine, Harry, but I have to go and find help.”
“No, no,” he insisted. His eyes seemed to lose track of me. “It’s not a knife. Don’t touch it, or you’ll go mad as well!”
Shocked, I looked down at the thing in my hand, that I’d pulled from Harry’s chest; it was a shard of the cuttlebone! It was sharp and jagged, somehow torn from the creature by the dockworker, and deadly effective. I loosened my grasp around it and the shard fell to the blood-soaked floor with a clatter. As it slid from my hand I felt it tear my palm, and looked to see my own blood flowing.
I’d touched the thing. Both Harry and I had. I felt my heart begin to pound, racing and throbbing in my chest. Would the same fate befall us that had happened to the other men who had handled the creature?
Beneath me, Harry began to laugh. He spluttered a cough, holding his hands over mine compressing the wound in his chest.
“I can already hear it,” he said. “The singing.” His eyes closed and he subsided into a fit of coughing, which pushed more blood up through his collar. “I hear it, Robert. The others were right… it sings!” I felt my hand go slack over Harry’s chest and I fell backwards, away from him. “It’s telling me, it’s making me kill,” he said, his frail voice rising. He clawed at me weakly and fell back. “It speaks… in…” and my friend died then and there, in a pool of his own blood mixed with others’ on the freezer floor.
“Compulsions,” I finished the sentence for him. Already, I could feel a strange cold spreading from the wound in my hand, as if my blood were freezing. I pushed away from Harry’s body, my boot-heels slipping in the blood, and I noticed that I could hear it too.
Singing. The music of the spheres, the man had said. The ends of the universe. I could hear it! It was a warm and wonderful sound, trillions of voices rising, a vibration in the very fabric of the world. I glanced at the cuttlefish, hearing its siren call, and realized with a great finality that it was not a cuttlefish at all. Something ancient, something hidden in our ocean depths but not from the ocean… something from outside.
Kill, I heard, underneath the music. There was no one left in the freezer, but I knew I must obey. It was a voice without language, wordless yet clearer than fine crystal, and completely overpowering. I struggled to my feet, picking up the shard of the cuttlebone and clutching it like a knife; I began to make my way towards the freezer door, knowing the policemen outside would come to me.
Kill, it said again. Speaking in compulsions. Kill. Kill. Killkill
KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL
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