Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (40 page)

The party had stopped at the sound of the officer’s voice. Slowly, the Colonel advanced toward the strangely flat pile, his head leaning far forward of his body, his rifle dipped low to the ground. Examining the pile closely, he straightened and Cordell moved into the clearing himself. He had awaited only the unspoken desire of the commanding officer to inspect the site first.

The soldiers had spread to different points around the clearing, eyes keenly peering in the darkening wood for sign of the enemy, the hems of their greatcoats dusty with snow. A soft sigh of wind moved the trees to song, the opening in the roof of the forest showing brightening stars. The sky and the trees, blue on black. Cordell thought he had better take a quick look so they could leave fast.

For some time, he had realized that the black in the white was that of bodies heaped together and covered by a thick veil of snow. He stopped at the edge of the pile and saw that it was the shoddy clothes of the villagers lying in a grotesque mound. He tried to observe the faces of the people to cement their reality in his mind, if only to certify their existence. It was then he noted something strange. The clothes were lying in heaps placed together, trousers to shirts, shirts inside of coats, stockings in their boots, all lying about like carelessly thrown bodies, except that the clothes were empty. Cordell looked up as the queerness of it struck him. Even the Cheka would not have bothered to be so meticulous, even if they had had the time, which they had not.

“No footprints,” said the Colonel.

Cordell’s head snapped to the side, and he realized that the Colonel had been looking at him all the time. Quickly, Cordell looked around the clearing and saw that indeed, there were no footprints except those leading back to their lines…those they had formed themselves.

The Colonel stepped forward, within the circle of the disturbing heap. Cordell watched him with morbid curiosity. The Colonel was poking at the upper sets of clothes with the toes of his boot, shaking loose the snow that had lodged in the folds of the cloth. With a high swing of his leg, the Colonel threw over, almost to Cordell’s feet, a shower of the topmost items. Cordell jumped back instinctively, still watching the Colonel. The big Czech stood amid the riot of dark raiment, silhouetted against the snow at his back like some guardian spirit pointing at Cordell’s feet. Cordell dragged his gaze from the soldier and looked down at the scattered pieces of clothing and saw brass buttons peek around folds, markings of rank on some of the shoulders and a Russian rifle lying stark against the snow. Cordell looked up slowly, recognition in his eyes. “The uniforms of the deserters from the Russian units.”

The Colonel laughed then, not long; half out of amusement, half pity. “My friend, do you not yet see? Those men did not desert, just as the villagers did not run away. They were literally spirited away.” The Colonel picked his way from the heap and moved to the edge of the clearing. He stared hard into the gloom of the surrounding forest, as if searching for something, then said, “You said one time that people in this part of the world still believed in strange things. That is true. There are some things that will never change; so long as one man yet believes in them, they will survive.

“In my country, some people believe in a thing called Orzuti. Most people, of course, do not, but those that dwell in the wooded mountains do. So they build things to ward it off, things like houses of the dead where sheep are sacrificed. And some say it works.” He continued to stare.

Everything fell into place now, thought Cordell, but how could he believe any of it?

The Colonel continued.

“My village deep in the woods of my homeland built these things for thousands of years, and still did after I had gone. Whether or not the things worked to keep the Orzuti away, I do not know. But I do know that to acknowledge his existence by saying his name aloud would bring him surely to your door. For this reason, no man ever spoke the name of Orzuti aloud.

“I suspect it is the same here in Siberia. That this Ithaqua is a cousin of the forest spirit in my homeland.”

Cordell said, not believing he was treating the whole thing seriously, “Yes, I covered a story in Canada many years ago where my guide, a Monsieur Defago, spoke of an Indian deity called the Wendigo. The Indians, he said, sometimes built funeral scaffolds against it. Perhaps these beliefs were carried over from Asia to North America in prehistoric times across the Bering Sea land bridge.” A pause. “So you think that the villagers must have used the thing’s name in vain, so to speak, and it whisked them away?”

“Yes.”

“And the soldiers the other night, too?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, wait a minute, I spoke this creature’s name aloud then. Why didn’t it come after me?” Despite himself, Cordell felt some relief that he had dispelled the legend so easily.

“One must say its name aloud and in belief to summon him. You did not, and still do not, believe Ithaqua lives.”

Suddenly, it flashed through Cordell’s mind. “Wait a second, you just used his name. Twice now! And obviously, you believe…”

“Exactly. For too long I have shied away from it, but I cannot long stand by as the creature destroys my men and those of the Whites.”

Cordell circled the clearing in the opposite direction from that of the Colonel. The dark trees wheeled in the periphery of his vision as he said, “You’re going to conjure up this thing, this Ithaqua, to kill it?” He never took his eyes away from the Colonel.

“That is correct, my friend.”

“With me here?” Cordell fought a tremor in his voice.

“Certainly; you are a correspondent, are you not?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m a fool.” At that moment, it was an assertion that Cordell desperately wanted to believe. He was a rational man; there was no such thing as an Ithaqua! The alternative was too ridiculous, too terrible even, to contemplate.

“Are we not all fools at one time or another? I, fighting a war that has nothing to do with my country, so far from anywhere? You, risking your life simply to acquire a story, as if what we do here is merely a game?”

The Colonel fell silent then, circling the clearing, staring into the woods. Then, from deep in the forest, Cordell heard the familiar sloughing sound of snow slipping from a tree branch. This time, the sound ended with an unusually heavy thump as the snow struck the ground. He glanced at the Colonel quickly, in time to see him step between the trees in the direction of the noise.

Warily, Cordell went after the Colonel, following his big footprints in the snow as they wound between the trees. At last he saw him ahead, looking down at something. Cordell stumbled up to where he stood and looked down as well. At first, he was puzzled at the sight of the naked body that lay before him. Then, he noticed its feet and his puzzlement turned to terror. He staggered back, hands reaching out for the support of a tree.

“This poor soul must have been one of the villagers,” guessed the Colonel. “When Ithaqua comes striding across the land, he takes up his victims in his windy arms and carries them off across the world to deposit them again in their own country; hours, sometimes days later. The others are…”

Cordell followed the Colonel’s gaze upward, and in the trees overhead, he saw a number of amorphous white blobs hanging in broken heaps among the branches. After seeing the condition of the corpse on the ground before him, Cordell thanked God he was not able to see the things in the trees with any detail.

Then, a distant swish and thumps coming from deeper in the woods brought his attention back to the present where the Colonel was just concluding his unfinished sentence: “…leaves them their bodies, but takes their lives.”

As if on cue, the wind sighed through the dark trees and the stars seemed to shimmer and fade. The forest protested the rising wind with a flurry of creaks and rustles. Snow fell from the upper branches and struck Cordell over the head. Startled, he lost his nerve then and ran back to the clearing. Arriving there, he suddenly realized that he was alone except for the empty pieces of clothing; the soldiers had managed to slip away. He felt a great weight heavy on his shoulders, forcing him to the ground; he fell to one knee, a hand wrist-deep in powdery, swirling whiteness. He struggled, wobbling to his feet; he took one faltering step, quick and strong; lifting his foot mere inches from the ground and slamming it down hard only inches away, just as a man would with an impossibly heavy load to carry. The wind was a howling whirlwind now. Snow and pine needles stung his face; loose clothes whipped themselves about his feet, seeking to drag him down.

Crushed to the ground, the force of the wind seemed to become even more fierce; his fur cap was dragged from his head and his muffler threatened to choke him. Weakly, he struggled to pull the scarf away until finally managing to get it off.

Shutting his eyes against the slashing wind, he tried to open them again, his eyelashes like black bars imprisoning his vision…or protecting him from the intrusion of a persistent thing that the Colonel had called Ithaqua. The black trees that towered above him seemed to shimmer and sway as if viewed from beneath the surface of the sea; the stars were gone, hidden from sight by a whirling, twisting cyclone of snow, tree limbs, pine needles and bits of clothing that were swept from the ground and up to the treetops and back again. Meanwhile, the wind, like countless tiny fingers, kept pulling and tugging at his own clothes and from the midst of the whirling pillar of debris a shape seemed to be forming.

It bulged and billowed, its outline at the mercy of the ravening wind. It grew huge and then dissipated, reassembled and grew huge again; it had shape and substance and yet was insubstantial too. The vision prompted Cordell to renew his struggle to escape but all he succeeded in doing was to pin his arms beneath his body. Slowly, the thing moved over him, enveloping him, and it was then he began to feel a different kind of tugging. Not the wind pulling at his clothes, but something felt inside him. He felt his personality slipping away, whatever it was that made him Mathias Cordell and no one else, and suddenly, his mind opened up and he thought he saw the yawning emptiness of eternity stretching out before him.

The vision inspired a new desperation in him. He found new reservoirs of strength he did not know he had and gradually, he began to lift himself from the ground, against the continued force of that mighty wind. Suddenly, his hand felt the hard leather of his holster. The snap had prevented the pistol inside from being dragged away. More with instinct than active thought, he undid the snap and took the pistol into his hand. Raising it in the direction of the nebulous form that continued to occupy the center of the whirling cyclone, he fired the gun in the direction of the ghostly form. There were a number of explosions from the gun before the clicking sounds of empty chambers were all that was left and in that instant Cordell realized that nothing remained between himself and the wind-creature that was once again moving to envelop him in its terrible embrace. Once again, he found himself being drawn outward, slipping, slipping, his mouth open in wordless, useless protest as the wind continued to whine in his ears.

Then something stepped between him and the wind thing. Whatever it was, it spoke, and from its throat emerged a string of guttural, barking noises, spat out like unclean things that had been swallowed and needed to be regurgitated:

Iä! Iä! Ithaqua, Ithaqua! Ai! Ai! Ai! Ithaqua f’ayak
vulgt-mm vugthlaghn vulgtmm. Ithaqua fhtagn! Ugh!
Iä! Iä! Ithaqua Iglucks fah’tn! Ai! Ai! Ai!

The sounds seemed to anger whatever it was in the wind. The speed of cyclonic forces increased in tempo and Cordell was forced to protect his eyes against the driven snow, pine needles, and dust that had been scoured from the exposed earth.

When at last he was able to see again, the trees around him were still whipping about and there were a number of sharp cracks indicating the splintering of mighty branches deep in the forest. The debris-filled cyclone still moved near the center of the clearing but now seemed to be winding down as the sound of snapping trees ceased and were replaced by the creaking of massive trunks that sounded more like the death rattle of some titanic beast.

And then, finally, all was still.

Cordell still crouched in the position he had assumed when he began firing his pistol into the wind: his eyes staring ahead along the length of his upraised arm, the gun still in his hand.

“Come, my friend, the battle is done.” The Colonel lifted him to his feet. “The recitation of certain sounds sent the creature back to its prison — for a time at least.”

“Then I didn’t just dream the whole thing?” Cordell asked, still recovering from his experience.

“Perhaps we both did; after all, one man’s belief is another’s superstition. Who is to say, if another man had been here, he would have seen the same as we, if anything? It is a tenuous thing, belief. Do the old gods really exist, only gone until another believer summons them forth? Like Ithaqua, one must believe in order to be threatened. Is belief, then, born of fear? To think a being such as man must be at once superior to all other creatures and yet so insecure!”

As he felt the Colonel’s strong arm beneath his shoulders, Cordell thought once more about the big Czech…was he only what he appeared to be, or was there something more to him? He had once seen a look in the colonel’s eyes and now, seeing it again, he recognized it.

It was the look of someone who was slipping…slipping…

arrived home late that night after a hectic day at the office and had it in mind to hit the sack early after a quick drink. A prosaic opening to a tale whose implications hold dire tidings for the future of the human race…but despite the number of years that have passed since the events it describes, I still find myself struggling to come to terms with them.