Fiction

Fear & Loathing
In Arkham,
New England

by Sam McCall

The lonely, curious countryside of New England is periodically visited by freak thunderstorms. On these occasions, baffled meteorologists shake their heads and villagers lock their families in for the night as flashes of lightning—menacingly bright and, some whisper, of extraordinary colours—silhouette the ancient trees that line the hill-tops. The wails of wolves within the sinewy creak of the forests can be heard when the thunder stops. The storm rouses this austere land into a frenzy of motion; black branches clawing wildly at the sky, flocks of leaves whirling through the air like crows.

The black Miskatonic River boils with raindrops as its usual dark mutter becomes an insistent roar. Lonely standing stones and peculiar monuments that guard the countryside are occasionally illuminated as the sky fills with light. Tomorrow morning, certain credulous but hardy local men will swear blind that the areas surrounded by stone circles have remained dry overnight, and that glimpses of strange, twisted figures were caught lurking within them. Later their stories will make an amusing column pertaining to the strength of the notorious Dunwich moonshine for the Boston Enquirer. Still, if the writers of those columns had been here on this night—shivering and alone, at once mesmerised and terrified by the storm—even they would find it all too easy to believe that something was abroad tonight.

We were somewhere around Arkham, on the edges of the Miskatonic Valley, when the storm began to take hold. The Great Red Shark had been handling the muddy track without difficulty for the last forty miles or so, but now the lashing rain had almost liquefied the road. The engine, which had previously produced a fine purr, began to splutter and retch. The tyres skidded crazily in the sludge, throwing the car from side to side like a crab on speed. Cold, wet mud spattered the bodywork without remorse. Things were undoubtedly beginning to turn ugly.

My attorney’s face was a mask of terror. I was driving, of course: that poor bastard had almost run us off the road with his tomfoolery at the State Border. Without warning, he’d begun to wail hysterically about ‘electric snakes with eyes aflame’, pushing the Shark’s snarl to a roar and changing direction with a handbrake turn every few minutes—presumably to confuse the snakes. All good fun, perhaps, but such eccentric behaviour would surely arouse suspicion in this witch-haunted corner of New England. Would local villagers believe that our unpredictable driving was necessary to escape the snakes? Did they even know about the snakes? Unlikely. Best to keep a low profile and keep going.

But keep going where? The energies of the Great Magnet had drawn my attorney and myself to this god-forsaken backwater of New England. That much we knew for certain—the question was, what next? My internal compass had been drawing me to Arkham, which from the two-dollar map we’d bought in a gas station the previous day looked to be the largest settlement in the area. Hotels, I’d thought; or at least a motel. Somewhere safe.

As the engine gave one final hack and shudder, however, it was becoming clear that this place was ‘safe’ by nobody’s definitions. We’d already caught glimpses of shapes—not men, not animals, but awful, shambling shapes—moving quietly amongst the hilltops, cloaked by the night. A few miles back, we’d wondered what they could be. If that dumb-shit attorney of mine didn’t know how to restart the car, I had the feeling we’d find out only too soon.

“The car’s stopped.” A petrified whisper, like a child’s.

“You think?”

My companion was going to be of very little help indeed. After the incident with the snakes at the Border, he’d mellowed out a little and even sang along to ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ as I drove. But as night began to fall and we caught the murmurs of a brewing storm in the sky, he fell quiet. After the second sighting of those dreadful, lumbering figures there was no doubt about it—wide eyes, pale features, hands clutching our only Rolling Stones cassette so tightly it had started to splinter. My attorney was getting the Fear.

“It’s a set-up,” he breathed. “We’ll never get out of here alive.”

“Not without golf shoes.” I wound down the window and spat into the nearly liquid sludge below. “Listen man, you’ve just got the Fear. Nobody’s set us up. We came out here by our own choice, right?”

“Your choice.” He attempted to sneer the word, but mixed with the obvious panic in his voice the effect was merely amusing. “What the hell did you drag me to New England for anyway?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t think of an answer to that one. Planning ahead only distracts one’s harmony with the energies of the Great Magnet.

“And how’re you going to get this goddamn convertible restarted when we’re a thousand miles from anywhere?”

Another shrug. Years of dealing with my neurotic, drug-addled retard of an attorney had taught me not to bother opening my mouth until he’d calmed down. I sounded the horn playfully, trying to ignore him.

“What the HELL are you doing? Do you want them to hear us?”

“There’s nothing there.”

“Look.” No anger this time, just quiet, awed dread and a finger pointing out of my window.

“What, you stupid asshole? Holy Jesus!”

Twenty or more of the monstrous, shapeless things—my frozen brain had named them Shamblers—were congregating atop the hill nearest to us. Each one was around the height of a house and lumbered slowly, but with a dreadful, chilling sense of purpose. They had stopped now, and silently turned as one to face—if they had faces—in our direction. For a very long time, they watched us without eyes. Then the first one began to move down the hill.

“Run,” I hissed, mesmerised by the Shambler’s horrible, lolloping advance. There was no reply. When I looked over, the passenger door was hanging open and my attorney was sprinting at good speed towards the opposite hill—for such a fat bastard, he can certainly run when he needs to. I cursed, quickly unbuckled my safety belt and followed him.

Panting and shaking, I caught up with my companion in a thicket halfway up the slope. In the gloom I could just about make out the blasphemous forms below spilling into the valley; some had clustered around the Great Red Shark and begun pawing at it with bestial curiosity. If they smashed it or tipped it over, we were done for. But there was no time to worry about that—a few Shamblers, bored with the car, had started up the hill towards us. I had the sickening feeling that they were moving much faster now; that they could move as fast as they liked, and that this slow, torturous chase was a source of primitive amusement to these abominations. But we had to keep going, so I grabbed my whimpering attorney by the arm and ran.

A sense of terrified relief washed over me when we reached the top of the hill and looked down over the other side. Arkham must have been closer than I thought; for at the bottom and not more than a few hundred metres’ breathless dash away was a large spread of buildings. But something was wrong. I glanced at my attorney.

“No...lights...” he gasped, hunched over. He was right—the town was completely dark, although it couldn’t have been much later than eleven o’clock. “Look at...the buildings...”

Vile, terrible, unspeakable. My desperate eyes had wanted to see Arkham so badly that they hadn’t registered what forms the structures took. Tall towers, larger at the top than the bottom by an absurd degree, jabbed at the sky. Vast, spiraling pillars reached like claws from building to inexplicable building. The entire city—in fact, it was looking more and more like an immense temple—seemed to be hewn from the same enormous black rock, and atop some of the taller towers I could see loathsome, unholy runes scratched in depraved decoration.

I was afraid, certainly, but the unspeakable city had an awesome effect on my attorney. The man had become a quivering shell, eyes bulging almost out of their sockets, his voice nothing but a hoarse, semi-conscious whisper.

“R’lyeh...”

My companion, useful only as a waste-bin for surplus food or drugs ninety-nine percent of the time, was nevertheless an authority on the ancient religions he had studied in his youth. R’lyeh, I remembered...the city of the dead, the temple of a prehistoric god so foul that even his primal worshippers had committed mass suicide rather than live another day under his cruelty... “Cthulhu?” I hazarded.

“Shut up! You stupid bastard!”

Too late. As if in reply a throatless, disembodied whisper floated from the city, filling the storm-ravaged air.

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn...”

My attorney was past speech now, but I didn’t need him to translate the vile tongue. Its meaning burned through my ears directly into my brain. “In the city of R’lyeh the Dead, Cthulhu dreams and waits...”

A low, insistent, hungry moan behind us. The Shamblers, almost forgotten in the light of this new terror, had gained on us and now lined the brow of the hill. Scores of them, too many to count—but no longer moving. Some appeared to hunch over in the darkness, fold in half like card tables. Were they—they couldn’t be—were they praying?

No doubt about it now. It was an awesome sight, as fascinating as it was horrible—over a hundred of these awful, formless beasts prostrating themselves before the temple. A bright light, greenish-yellow and with a hint of something else, began to leak from a vast dome in the centre of the city. A soft, murmuring chant, slow and thick from tongueless mouths, began amongst the Shamblers.

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn...”

My attorney and I, caught between dread city and dread beast, were trembling and clutching to one another. The chant became more insistent, the ray of light brighter, and a tearing, rumbling noise began to emanate from the dome. Was the ground shaking?

The next few events are hazy and uncertain, and I’m sure that we both must have lost consciousness shortly afterwards. Whenever I try to remember precisely what happened after the dome tore open, throwing shards of black rock in every direction—what insane, unthinkable force was locked within that onyx prison—my mind recoils in terror, unwilling to recall the facts. I remember the Shamblers rising in a sort of primitive salute, their bodies looking more shapeless and unnatural than ever, as the dome burst. Sometimes I think I saw a long, muscular tentacle reaching out from the city just before I passed out—but I can’t be sure. Usually I try my best not to think about that night at all.

When I awoke, it was morning. I looked about sharply. We were back in the car, my attorney’s snoring head slumped against the dashboard. I reached over to wake him up, and he gave a violent start, sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat.

“Cthulhu!” he wailed, before cautiously looking from side to side.

The clear blue sky above gave no suggestion of the previous night’s storm. The valley was full of flowers and lush green grass. We could hear the Miskatonic River babbling happily, mixing with birdsong from the forests. Without looking, we both knew that there would be no terrible city waiting for us over the next hill.

We sat that way, silent and motionless, for a very long time. Then, with some deliberation, I started the car and turned us around. Pausing only for one last look over my shoulder, I pulled off and we began the long journey back to Hollywood, California. Safety. Obscurity. Just another pair of freaks.

Whatever the Great Magnet had wanted us to find in New England would have to remain hidden. Evidently it was guarded by ancient and terrible forces, far beyond the control of a couple of burned-out junkies and their convertible. I don’t think either of us have talked about that brain-searing night since; certainly we will never set foot in New England again. Too many bad memories.

That's the end of our story. We had visited a place unseen by human eyes, saw creatures too terrible even to contemplate and felt - if only for a second - that black, dull throb of raw evil that courses through everyday life, disguised by mundanity. We had escaped from the brink of madness and lived to tell about it. It was over, we were sure of that. But to this day if you stand on a tall Miskatonic hill and listen carefully—and with the right kind of ears—you may just hear a low, grating murmur carried by the breeze:

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn..."