The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (14 page)

             
"By now, I was almost sitting, and I shifted my right hand to get a better grip. It was only a few inches, but it was almost the death of me. Whatever had hold of my legs also pulled at just this point, and the yank almost took me the whole way back in!

             
"But it also saved me. I scrabbled wildly with my right hand seeking a stronger hold, and the hand came down on my pistol. As a wave of sand and water eddied up around my middle, spilled out of the sink by my struggle, I wrenched myself around further, thrust the barrel down as close to my leg as I could, while still keeping it clear of the water, mind you, and fired. I kept firing as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.

             
"The thing must have come up near the surface to get a better grip on me. There was a great final heave and a flurry in the muck. I dimly could make out something brownish and rounded emerging briefly from the watery slime and ooze, but it was hard enough to see any detail. I could be sure of nothing except that I had seen
something
. Then, the stuff subsided, and I was left with a half empty gun, sprawled over the edge of the pool. The surface was calm again under the mist and vapor.

             
"I had not forgot that scream. I staggered to my feet and got out my torch. With that in one hand and the gun in the other, I headed for the house as fast as I could. With the
light of the torch, the path was easy enough to view, and I carefully avoided the other pools. I made no effort to avoid the turtles, for there were none. For some reason they all had disappeared.

             
"I lurched up the front step, calling for Strudwick. There was no answer and the house was silent as a tomb. I tried to control my panting breath and listened. Not a sound broke the night I took the opportunity to reload the automatic with fresh .455 bullets. They had been useful once that night already.

             
"Barely had this been done when I did hear something. From the higher shoulder of the slope, behind the house and above it, there came a repetition of that appalling cry I had heard twice before. Loud and long, it rang out in the silent steaming dark. '
Muaah
.
muaaah
!' But this time it sounded well, different with almost a note of triumph, or impossible as it sounds laughter.

             
"I raced through the house, no longer calling. The time for it seemed past, if it had ever existed. There was a back door and leading from it another path. It suddenly occurred to me that the house had been built on the existing path. My light showed that in the mud of the path were many footprints, some of feet shod with canvas tennis shoes, the rubber crosshatching showing clearly. My host and hostess had come this way, but so had others, many with bare feet
.
Another path joined this one a few yards higher up the hill, and there the new feet had come in. Some of them, even in that moment looked strange, as if the feet that made them were blurred and lumpy. Not that I stayed to examine them in detail, mind. For that strange cry was ringing out ahead of me again, and I went on upward, keeping my torch masked in my left fist which gave me enough vision. The moon was still up as well, and the mists were a trifle thinner up here.

             
"The track wound around the base buttresses and outthrust roots of monstrous trees, and vines and branches hung
over the way, sometimes brushing my face. But I had my wind back and went steadily and softly. And all the while that ghastly sound kept echoing down the path, growing louder and louder as I went on.

             
"I must have done a good quarter mile, all steadily uphill, when I saw a glimmer of light ahead and slowed down a bit. As I drew near, I saw that another clearing lay ahead and that it opened out under the moon's rays. I crept on and presently found myself looking at something very strange indeed.

             
"Two steep sides of the island's peak made an angle here, though a shallow one. They, the walls, were rock but covered with mosses and wet growth that hung down over the face. In front of the angled steep, in the V, was a broad, flat place, and here was a much larger replica of the small pools such as lay in front of the house below, a sinkhole two hundred feet across, filled with the same dark water and patches of suspended sand as the ones lower down. Around the wet area was a strip of glistening rock, this perhaps ten yards and a bit in width. And it was full of people. The islanders were there in force, both men and women. Again, I saw no children. They stood silent, facing the pool, and in the center, his back to me, was Strudwick. He was supporting his wife over one arm. She appeared to have fainted, or was, at best, semiconscious.

             
"Now the light, and I must stress this, was most capricious. That is, the moon would illumine bits very clearly for a second or two, and then the drift of the fog and haze from the great pool would blot things out just as one was trying to concentrate one's gaze on some particular detail.

             
"But at the back of the crowd there were figures which made my flesh crawl. Whatever disease affected these people, the ones in the last stages, or at least I surmised, were not good to look upon. I could see long
swaying
necks, covered with leathery skin, and high, arched humped backs which looked rounded and hard. The terminal stages of the peculiar island blight ought not to have been viewed at all, not by normal people. All of the folk, though, were swaying the same way, their bodies still, but their necks weaving, as if in some ghastly parody of those little girls who do the formal Thai and Javanese dances. And all were watching Strudwick and his wife.

             
"Then came that terrible coughing, moaning cry again. And this time I saw, or at least partly saw, whatever made it
.

             
"I had not been watching the pool as I edged closer, since I was looking for possible danger, being noticed by a native or something. Now I saw that the surface, the floating sand and brown scum were moving. And out of the water had come a head.

             
"To this day, I have trouble convincing myself I saw what I
think
I saw. As the head rose higher on a monstrous,
rugose
neck, I half noticed the beginning of a great rounded dome of a back, glistening and rigid in the unearthly moon glow. But it was on the head which I concentrated, because it was moving, the whole incredible thing was moving, slowly with hardly a ripple, directly toward where Dr.
Sylvanus
Strudwick, Ph.D., author of more learned papers than I can
remember hearing, stood holding his wife. And I knew what it had come for, as if I somehow had known all along. This was the Father and Ethel Strudwick was what it wanted.

             
"You may ask what the head resembled. It was high
-
domed and leathery. Great flaps, or ears, stood out on the side. The
pink
mouth was frankly disgusting as it opened out for its hideous call, for it projected and there were no teeth, giving it the look of a great beaked maw. The eyes, as well as I could make out, were large and bulbous, of an unwinking black. And as I watched, I saw membranes slide across them and lift again. Yet the most awful thing concerning the whole appearance, if I may so describe it, was something not physical at all. The thing was intelligent. Whatever abysmal lair had spawned it had given it the same germ, DNA or whatever they call it now, that had been given
us
.
It was not a beast, but somehow a hyena would have looked clean by comparison. Its size? Far larger than a human, but how much I really could not undertake to say.

             
"It was now very close to the edge of the rock surface. And Strudwick had shifted his grip on his wife. What madness affected the man, I will never know. Whether he hated her anyway, no doubt with some cause, or whether he had simply made some foul bargain in the interest of 'pure science' (I have always distrusted scientists most when they claim to be pure, by the way), I will never know. Certainly she feared him and his purposes. With good reason, since it was perfectly obvious he was about to chuck her into the grip of the insane-looking form of monstrous life in front of him.

             
"I had to do something and rather promptly. I tucked my torch in my pocket, opened my clasp knife, walked down to the pack in front of me and simply stabbed the nearest in the back, aiming high for the kidneys as a certain Pathan had once taught me, long before our commandos perfected the technique. I managed to kill three in three strokes, so hypnotized were they, and then there was no one at all between me and my fellow
Cantabrigian
.

             
"I had kept my pistol in my left hand. As I got clear of the natives, none of whom seemed capable of moving, I simply called out, 'Strudwick.'

             
"He turned and let his wife slip to the ground, which was what I had been praying for. Above and behind him, the impossible head rose higher on the vast wrinkled neck, and the great expressionless eyes focused on me. I ignored it for the moment. Everything seemed very plain and logical. There really was not time for parleying or argument.

             
"Strudwick must have read my eyes, for he tried to put up his hands. The moon was full on his face as I put a bullet through his brain, quite easy at that range. He reeled backward and fell into the muck with a sodden splash. The echo of the shot reverberated off the rock face behind the pool. I
had no compunction about what I had done and still do not
.

             
"The Father was now about six feet away and perhaps eight above the surface of the pool. I straddled Ethel
Strudwick's
body, which lay very still, and raised my pistol. As I did so, the thing's mouth opened and a rumble heralded the start of the cry. I sighted very carefully and fired three rapid shots into the yawning pink gape, resting one arm on the other forearm as I did.

             
"I watched the death, for my bullets had crashed up into the brain through the roof of the
mouth, just as I intended. And as the light went out of those strange eyes and the giant head slumped, I felt a queer pang well, no doubt you'll think me soft almost of pity. Who knows how old it was, nor how long it had lived there?

             
"The great neck collapsed and the vast dome sank back. A wave of sulfurous water and sand sloshed over my shoes as I bent and lifted the woman. I still had four shots, and I still clung to the knife. I turned and saw the beginnings of movement in that circle of rapt faces. They could not yet believe what they had seen, but the death of the Father and the blast of the shots were beginning to have an effect, even on such very dim and peculiar minds as theirs.

             
"Then, and thank God for it, the moon went out
.
Whether a real cloud way up in the far sky had crossed it or whether an unusually heavy waft of the local murk had done so, I neither know nor care. The effect was all I cared for.

             
"Lifting Mrs. Strudwick, who was damned heavy, I ran right back the way I had come. In thirty very fast paces indeed, I felt a tree bole in front of me and dropped her. I tucked the knife in my belt, still open, and pulled out my torch. Then I bent down and gave her face a good hard slap. I was never going to get down that hill carrying a woman who must have weighed little less than I, and I had to get her on her legs. I jammed the gun into my belt next to the knife and
hauled her to her feet. She moaned, but her eyes were
open. I slapped her again, hard enough to sting, but not disable, and draped her arm over my shoulder. I could hear movement behind us now, and a grunting, cracking sound that reminded me more of the Father's voice than anything
that ought to issue from human lips. The opposition could not be expected to stay quiescent forever.

             
"I shone the torch about, and there was the entrance to the path, just a few feet away. I ran toward it, forcing her to use her feet at least a touch and thus take some of the weight off me. My light was still the only one, but as we entered the trail and headed down, the moon came out again. The mumbling behind us now swelled into a yell, through which ominous grunts came all too clearly. I got a speedy notion that the village 'elders,' the gentry with the high backs and long necks, might not be too slow in action either.

             
"Down that slippery, twisting track we went like a couple of good ones. After a brief spurt she seemed to wake up at last and took her arm away. She was still shaky, not surprisingly, but she got along at a pretty fair clip, and I handed her the light at the next bend. She kept it on the path, which was good enough for me and enabled me to get my gun back in my hand. The cries behind us were getting louder, and some of them sounded like echoes of the '
Muaah
' thing. Worse, though I said nothing, I thought at one point that I caught an echo of the same cry
ahead
of us. I had hoped the whole population would be up on the hill, indulging in what passed for church services, but it might be a mistaken hope. Well, I still had my weapons.