The Creeping Kelp (11 page)

I paused for a moment of prayer before beginning, but I had no fear. In the cell I have always been the master, stronger than any evil the devil has sent for Inquisition, firm in the faith that has sustained me through these many years. It was that strength I felt flow in my veins as I made a start.

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

From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo.

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.

From the journal of Father Fernando, 25th August 1535

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.”

Hearing the profanity from a man he had only ever previously seen on the television being prim and proper somehow brought the situation into focus for Noble.

And if the government is this rattled, then I guess we are in trouble.

“No one knows where it came from,” the Minister finished. “And there’s just too much of the damned stuff for us to handle. Every time we burn it out in one place it turns up in another. It’s almost as if it’s anticipating our moves.”

That was Suzie’s cue and she took it.

“You might not be far wrong in that assessment. And I can’t tell you, yet, how to kill it. But I can tell you where it came from. You made it... or rather, the MOD did.”

The Minister went white.

“That’s the kind of statement that brings down governments,” he said softly. “I
do
hope you have evidence.”

Noble listened as she laid it all out for him—the story of wartime experiments gone wrong, conjecture about a
breakage
somewhere in a shipwreck and their trials and tribulations on the research vessel and Weymouth. The Minister took it all in—a man well used to absorbing information like a sponge.

“The stupid bastard built it to be intelligent?” he whispered.

Suzie nodded.

“But I think the intelligence was there from the start, in the source material from the Pabodie Expedition. The
Inquisition
thought so too.”

She shuffled her papers, then started reading. Noble realised it was some of the Spanish journal, a part he hadn’t yet read.

From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo, 14th August 1535

We will make port on the morrow. It matters little, for the dream is with us now in every waking hour and no distance from the beast will make any difference. It has passed on to us so completely that we will never be free from it. Nor would we wish anything other. Indeed, I am not the only one who has found himself standing over the lead casket just to be closer to the blessed, drifting peace it offers.

There is no pain in the dream, no fear, no hunger, just the sweet forever of the dead god beneath.

I have talked to the crew. We will do our duty and take our captive to the castle. But we will no longer work for the church after this task is done. I intend to set sail again as soon as night falls. There is a spot in the South Seas where a dead god lies dreaming.

We will find him and join him there.

From the journal of Father Fernando, 25th August 1535

I wish now that I had read Santoro’s journal a mere hour sooner, for then I might have been able to prevent the Santa Angelo slipping out of port under cover of night and I might have been able to question the crew as to the nature of the malady that so sore afflicted them.

For I too have been dreaming.

But it is of no matter. The beast is now in my thrall and its secrets shall be mine before the day is out. They will have to be, for I fear I have been lax in my inquisitions. Even as I have been burning my will into the beast’s flesh, so it has been leaving its mark on me. This morning, at my ablutions, I discovered a fleck of blackness betwixt thumb and finger that no amount of scraping will shift. It has now covered most of my left hand, forcing me to wear a glove lest, it is discovered. For if the Inquisitor General were to find out I am tainted, my questioning would be brought to an abrupt end and that, I cannot allow.

The beast will reveal its secrets.

I will begin again as soon as the irons are hot.

By order of the Inquisitor General, 28th August 1535

It is our command that on this day of our Lord, the twenty and eighth of August, that such parts of Father Juan Fernando that can be safely transported ,shall be taken to the place of the
a
uto-de-fe and burned at the stake alongside the blasphemy which has afflicted him with its heresy.

It is further commanded that if the Santa Angelo is found in Spanish waters, it should be set aflame and sunk with all hands and that no man is to touch any part of it under pain of himself being subjected to ordeal by fire.

Any persons found spreading the sedition of the dreaming god shall be subjected to the full force of the Inquisition.

Let this be the end of the matter.

The Lord wills it.

The Minister had looked increasingly confused during Suzie’s reading.

“Is this some kind of joke? If it is, it is in very poor taste.”

“No joke,” Suzie said. “I double checked. The journal is authentic and exists in the Vatican’s library. I believe what we’re dealing with is some kind of intelligent protoplasm, one with a rudimentary degree of telepathy. And it may be contagious.”

The Minister sat back and ran his hands through his hair. He stared into the distance for so long that Noble thought there was to be no reply to Suzie’s readings. When an answer
did
come, it was a political rather than a practical one.

“Contagious, mind-reading slime? That’ll go down well with the PM,” the Minister said, and Noble saw a look in his eyes he recognised.

We’ve blown it.

Suzie hadn’t seen it and kept trying to press her case.

“If I can get back to my lab and just study it further, I may be able to come up with a preventative measure...”

The Minister stood and put out a hand for Suzie to shake.

“That sounds like a good course of action,” he said, but his eyes betrayed him.

He just wants rid of us as fast as possible.