Dr. Pickman, I sincerely hope this is getting out. I know you at least are seeing this even if no one else is.
Did you know? How did you know? And how much?
I don’t even know how much longer I’ll be able to send updates. They took the rest of our laptops and have cut off access to the communications room, but apparently, no one remembered this one. Or they didn’t know I had it.
They haven’t decided what to do with us and have just locked us in our cabins. For now, anyway. I can tell the Arkham isn’t moving, so we’re apparently staying here for a while.
Maybe to make sure they finished the job? Then what about us?
I guess I need to say what happened, then upload it as fast as I can. Just in case.
I may not have tomorrow.
—
We started this morning almost as soon as it was daylight. I was balancing my coffee and my camera case–in which I had carefully stored this laptop–as I climbed onto the Kingsport and we headed for shore. The Dunwich was already ahead of us and unloading Dr. Stepherson and his team onto the beach.
When it was our turn Darrin, Reiko, and I took turns ferrying our gear to the beach. Then I made one last trip back to help Atiya get the few dozen feet to shore.
“Thank you, Kalen,” she said, smiling. “But, I think I can wade through knee-deep water.”
I returned the smile. “Just here to help.”
“Well… thanks.” She looked around. “You weren’t kidding. This cleared stretch of beach is… weird.”
“Yeah.” I looked around myself. Dr. Stepherson was talking with his students while Darrin and Reiko were unpacking our gear. There were several crew members onshore too–more than there had been yesterday–and I noticed that they were carrying a few cases of their own. Sara was talking to one of them and gesturing towards the interior of the island.
“We’re going to try to do a better reef survey than we did yesterday, but I should be back on the surface in about an hour-and-a-half. Go for a hike when I am?”
“Sure. I’ll probably take a look around while waiting anyway.”
“See you then.” I waved and went to help Darrin and Reiko.
To my surprise, Donnie was there and struggling into a wetsuit as well. “You’re joining us?”
He nodded while trying to get his leg down the suit. “Yeah, Dr. Stepherson wanted one of us to check what you found down there, and Reiko was nice enough to show me how to use your gear.” He finally got one leg through. “I’m sure what you said you found is correct, but Dr. Stepherson?” He glanced over his shoulder then back at us. “He… doesn’t like you much.”
“No kidding,” I said, then pointed. “You’re putting your suit on backward; the zipper goes in back.”
He looked down, swore, and then started pulling his leg free. Reiko came over to try to help. I turned to Darrin.
“We’ll just do a slow sweep along the reef. Photo document everything you can find. Get gill swabs whenever you can. We’ll only be about 40 feet down, so we should have some good bottom time, but if we can’t do the lagoon, we’ll do a surface interval then do the rest. Sound good?”
He nodded. “Yeah. As long as we don’t have to babysit the linguist too long.” He glared over at Donnie and Reiko as he said that. Donnie was now lying on his back as Reiko pulled on the leg of his wetsuit.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to have a few words with her later. Just stick to your instructions.”
He shrugged, then nodded. “Got it.”
I walked over to where Donnie had finally gotten his leg free.
“Hey, Donnie!” I said, glancing at Reiko as I did. “We’re going to be pretty busy doing our initial reef survey on this first dive. We’ll probably do others later, and we’ll be a bit less busy then, so why don’t you sit this first one out?”
He glanced at Reiko, then back at me. “Well… OK. I guess.” He turned back to her. “I am a little nervous about this.”
She gave a quick glance at me, then turned back to him. “Sure! Take all the time you need. I’ll be able to help you with the next dive.” She gave him a quick kiss then followed me back to where Darrin was standing.
“Sorry, Dr. Ferris. I didn’t mean to…”
I held up a hand. “Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do on your own time, but this is what we’re out here for. We need to do these surveys.”
“Yeah, I know, but…”
“But what?”
“I think that Donnie will be able to help us. We need him on our side.”
I frowned at that. “What?”
She sighed. “Look, I… can’t explain right now. But… we’re going to need friends. And soon. We need to make sure Donnie is on our side.”
“What the hell are you talking about? ‘Our side?’ We aren’t having a competition out here.”
“That isn’t what I mean!”
“Then what do you mean?”
I saw her grit her teeth, thinking. “Do you trust me?”
“What?” I couldn’t understand her question. “Look, you’re my best student.” I winced as I said that, realizing that Darrin was standing next to me. “You don’t need to prove anything to me. But I do need your help out here. We’ve got a lot to do!”
She nodded. “OK, fine. Look. Let’s do this survey. Then, later, I’ll… show you something?”
“What?”
“You’ll just have to trust me. That’s all I can say right now.”
I frowned. This wasn’t like her. But… I hadn’t been lying when I said she was my best student. And this wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened on this trip.
“OK, fine. But you’ll have to explain to me what is going on at some point.”
“I will. Trust me.” She glanced around. “Everyone is going to know in a few hours anyway.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“Trust me!” she said, with enough intensity that I had to fight an involuntary urge to step back.
“…OK! Sure!” I wasn’t sure what was going on, but she seemed convinced of what she was saying.
We then turned to the details of our dive plan and entered the water. We didn’t get anywhere near all of the reef covered, maybe a third at most. But we did get some sound samples.
There was one weird thing on the dive. Outside of the lagoon, the bottom drops off severely, thousands of feet, or more. I was idly looking in that direction when I saw something swimming in the water.
At first, I thought it was Darrin or Reiko, but I looked around and they were both with me. Was it Donnie? Had he come down here with us after all? It had seemed to be a person. But when I looked back, it was gone.
Was I seeing things?
We continued our survey until both Darrin and me were low on air. Reiko, of course, still had most of her tank available. We surfaced and headed for shore.
“Was someone else down there with us?” Darrin asked as soon as he had his regulator out.
I nodded. “Yeah, I saw him too.” I turned to Reiko. “Did Donnie come down with us?”
She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t him.”
“Did you see it? Him?”
“No? What are you talking about?”
“I could have sworn I saw another diver down there.” I glanced at Darrin.
He nodded. “Yeah. Someone was down there with us.”
Reiko frowned. “We’ve only got four sets of diving gear on board. Our three plus the spare set that Donnie is using. And I know he wouldn’t have come down without me.”
“So… who was that?”
She shook her head. “You two must have been seeing things.”
“You don’t get narcosis at 40 feet.”
“It must have been a ray or something then. There’s no way another person could have been there with us.
“OK…” I frowned. I had seen someone, and Darrin had seen the same thing. Did Reiko just not want us to know that Donnie had been down there? I had no idea.
We waded ashore, stored our samples, and peeled out of our wetsuits.
“Hour surface time, everyone!” I said as I cleared mine. “Actually, two. We’ve got all day, so no sense in spending all our bottom time immediately. We’ll meet back here at,” I glanced at my watch, “11:30?”
Everyone nodded, and I looked around. Several people were lounging on the beach, and someone had come up with a volleyball net from somewhere that a couple of the students were playing. I looked around until I saw Atiya sitting near the tree line and wandered over.
“I thought you wouldn’t be down that long,” she said, digging in a case next to her. “Beer?”
“It’s only 9:30.”
“Which means it’s after 5 back home. What’s the problem; I’ve never seen you turn down a beer before?”
I gestured with my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m doing another dive in an hour or so. The first drink is after your last dive; that’s how I learned it and how I do it.”
She shrugged, then put it back then stood up. “OK then, how about a walk instead since we’ve got some time off-ship. I found what looks like some ruins.”
I waved inland. “Lead the way.”
We walked in for a while, following a path through the scrub growth that was covering the island. I frowned.
“What made this path?”
“Animals or something? Who knows?”
“If there was a nuclear test here, there shouldn’t be any animals.” I thought for a moment. “Much as I hate to admit it, Dr. Stepherson is right; someone has been coming to this island for some reason. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be here.”
“Well… it leads to the ruins,” she said. “Come on.”
—
“Ruins” was overstating it a bit. There were bits of foundation remaining, but that was it. There had been around two-dozen buildings here as best as I could tell. Dr. Stepherson and his team were working near the center of the area, with a couple of other students helping. They had put a grid of strings over the foundations and were slowly digging into the ground.
“Find anything?” I asked as we came up.
Donnie looked up at me in surprise, then turned back to what he had been doing when he realized that Reiko wasn’t with me. Dr. Stepherson looked up with his usual annoyance.
“We’ve found proof that people were living here at some time. And… their village was apparently destroyed by fire. Beyond that? No, nothing yet. Please leave us alone and let us do our work; we don’t have a lot of time thanks to the two of you!” He glared at me then Atiya.
“I’m sure you noticed the trail here,” I said, gesturing behind me.
He sighed. “Yes, of course. Professor. Thank you for pointing out the obvious. As I said, the people from the other village are obviously coming here. They must be coming to this place for some reason.”
I pointed to where the trail left the ruins and continued inland. “So, where are they going?”
“To the high point, obviously!” He pointed at the low peak of the island. “They’re probably looking for any evidence of the inhabitants of this island coming back! But the evidence of their existence is here. Now, if you will excuse us…” He knelt down and started scraping at the ground again. I turned to Atiya and shrugged.
“Want to check out the view?”
She nodded. “Why not?”
We headed on into the island and towards the “peak.” OK, low hill. We quickly arrived… and stopped.
Instead of a gradual rise, the terrain climbed sharply ahead of us, but that wasn’t what stopped us. Nor was it the fact that all rocks and plants had been cleared away from the base.
What stopped us was the stairway leading up the steep slope. Made of carefully cut and placed stones, it looked like something you would expect to find in a high-end resort, not on an uninhabited island.
I went up to it and put a foot on the first stair. “It’s completely cleared.”
“What?”
“There’s no blown sand or debris. Someone is clearing this.”
“Really? So… Dr. Stepherson is right? Someone is coming here?”
“Yeah. And he stopped at the first interesting point he found, otherwise he would be here.”
“Who is doing this?”
“His other village?” I waved up the steps. “Let’s see what is so interesting up here.”
We climbed the steps. It was harder than I would have expected because the stairs were a bit too broad and too high to climb comfortably, but we eventually got to the top.
Then we stopped again.
The top was only a dozen feet or so across, but it had been leveled off so that it was, as near as I could tell, perfectly flat. An intricate design of intersecting lines and curves had been deeply carved into it.
“What the hell?”
“Right there with you.”
I took a few steps forward, and… things were different.
All sound dropped away. I had never heard–or not heard, I guess– a silence that intense at any point in my life. Looking around, I saw everything I was looking at in almost perfect clarity. It was as if I was there.
I looked to the lagoon and saw the Arkham, but I may as well have been standing on the deck. I could see everything in perfect detail.
I looked down towards the beach and saw Reiko and Donnie. Suddenly, I was standing right next to them.
“Can I come with you on the next dive?” he was asking.
She shook her head. “Maybe later. We’ll be finishing as much of our survey as we can, so there won’t be too much time to look around.”
“But, I want to meet them!”
“So do I. I need to find out what happened here. But we’ll have time later.”
“Unless they decide we need to leave.”
“From what I can tell, we aren’t leaving. We need to stay here until we get some kind of official OK. Personally…” She looked around, then leaned closer to him.
“Personally, I’m afraid of what that response might be.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
She took his head in her hands. “Donnie? I love you. I really do. But the vast majority of people out there aren’t as… open-minded as you.”
“Who? The crew? This could be the biggest discovery in history! The first contact with a completely different culture!”
She kissed him, then released him. “Oh, Donnie. You have no idea.”
She suddenly stepped back and looked directly at me. I took an involuntary step back, and the illusion faded.
Atiya was looking at me. “Are you OK?”
Shaking my head, I quickly returned to where she was standing. “No. I’m not. Something… weird is going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
I gestured towards the flat top of the rise. “Step out there and tell me what you see.”
She frowned at me but took the few steps forward. She stopped and suddenly started looking around frantically before staring intently in the direction of the Arkham for a long moment, then looking around again.
She finally stopped, staring off to the southwest, before suddenly covering her eyes and staggering backward. I had to grab her before she backed off the edge of the platform. She turned to me, wide-eyed.
“It saw me!” she shouted. “Allah’s name, It saw me!”
“What! What saw you?”
“It! It…” She paused, then shook her head as if to clear it. “What…” She suddenly seemed to realize I was there. “Kalen?”
“What saw you?” I repeated. “What did you see?”
“I looked at the Arkham, and it was if I was there! Then I looked, and I saw… I saw…” Tears suddenly appeared in her eyes, and she grabbed my arms. “The hell, Kalen! What did I see!”
“I don’t know!” I said, putting my arms around her. “But you’re OK now.” She leaned into me, shaking. I glanced out onto the platform. Part of me wanted to go look in the same direction she had to see what she had seen. Another part of me saw how she was reacting and didn’t think that was a particularly good idea.
Finally, she pulled away. “I’m… OK. I think. Kalen, what is this place?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Is it something like those places where you can hear sounds from a long way away?” I wanted to distract her from whatever she had seen.
She frowned and shook her head. “No, the wavelengths of sound and light are way different. And there’s nothing here to focus light anyway. Unless…” She trailed off.
“Yes?”
She suddenly started running down the stairs. “We’ve got to drop some buoys here!”
“What? Why?” I found myself running after her.
“There’s one thing that could cause that effect. And we may be able to detect it!”
‘What?”
She didn’t answer and kept running. We hit the bottom of the stairs and ran through the ruins. Dr. Stepherson and a few of the others looked up in annoyance, but she kept running full speed. I stopped.
“Hey, Professor Stepherson. Have you gone to the high point yet?”
He looked at me in obvious annoyance. “No! I’m not here to waste time sight-seeing. I’m here to research the local inhabitants, and their village was here!”
I smiled. “Yeah, and the carving they made was up there.” I pointed to the top of the hill. “And the stairs they built; that someone has been maintaining. I just thought you might be interested?”
He frowned but stood up. “What? There is another ruin?”
“Not a ruin. It’s been maintained.” I waved towards the hill. “Just… don’t go up there alone.”
“What?”
“Trust me.” I waved and resumed my trot to the beach.
—
When I got there, I saw Atiya standing knee-deep in the water and talking to the pilot of the Kingsport. I thought about following her, then saw Darrin and Reiko looking at me and so went to them.
“What’s up?”
Darrin looked at me in annoyance. “You said 11:30; we’ve been waiting on you.”
“What? It’s only…” I glanced at my watch and frowned. It was 12:15. I would have sworn that I had been with Atiya for less than an hour.
“Sorry,” I said, shrugging. “I must have really lost track of time.” Which was possible, I suppose. But I was pretty sure that I had been gone less than an hour.
What was going on at the top of that hill?
We managed to cover most of the rest of the reef that dive. I kept looking into the blue to see if I saw anything, but whatever had been there earlier never reappeared. I finally decided that Donnie had followed us down and Reiko just didn’t want to say anything in front of Darrin.
Back on shore, I helped get all of our samples flagged and stored. “We need to get these back on-board and in the freezer as soon as we can.”
Darrin raised a hand. “I’m heading back. I’ll take care of it.”
“Great!” I said, looking around. Atiya and her team were nowhere to be seen, and Dr. Stepherson and his team were apparently still somewhere inland. I noticed several crewmembers on the beach, and many of the students who had come along as “assistants.” I wondered how many people were still on the Arkham.
We carried the cases with our samples and gear back to the shoreline and waited as the Dunwich pulled up close by. Then we loaded everything on board. I was about to turn away when Reiko stopped me.
“You… might want to head back as well.”
I frowned. “Why?”
She hesitated. “I know you were listening in on Donnie and me earlier.”
“What? No! I…”
“I know,” she said, frowning at me. “I’m not sure how, but… I have an idea. Something is going to happen tonight, and… it isn’t going to end well. Well, I hope it works out, but I’m afraid it won’t. Stay on the Arkham! Trust me on this!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Trust me!”
I hesitated, then nodded. “OK, yeah. Sure.” I paused. “You’re going to have to tell me what is going on at some point.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I will. If we’re all still alive in a day or two, I will.”
“What?”
“I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m being overly paranoid. But… I’ll tell you everything in a day or two.”
“You just said ‘If we’re still alive.’ You need to give me more than that!”
She hesitated, then stepped uncomfortably close to me. “I just told you I knew you were looking in on Donnie and me earlier. You were on the high point, right? Listen, I know what is going on here. I know what the high point is. I know what this cleared beach means. And so does Donnie. Are you concerned about my sex life? I’m with him because he’s the only fucking person on this ship who knows what the fuck is going on and that I can talk to! So do this. Get. On. The. Damn. Ship. And hide the fucking laptop Dr. Pickman gave you. He gave it to you for a reason. You… We’ll need it later.”
I involuntarily stepped backward at her intensity. “What the hell?”
“Do you trust me?”
My response was almost involuntary. “I just said you’re the best student I’ve ever had! Yes!”
“Then get on the goddamn boat!”
I nodded. “Yeah. OK, then.” She nodded in return, then started to walk away.
“Wait… What about you?”
She looked at me. “Donnie and I have a couple of things to do. If we succeed, then we’ll see you on-board tomorrow. If we don’t… Well, then it won’t matter.”
“What?”
“Trust me!” She turned and waded back to shore. I looked after her for a moment, but, honestly, I was so confused after everything that had happened that I just turned back to the Dunwich.
I sat down next to Darrin. He looked at me curiously. “What were you and Reiko going on about?”
I wasn’t sure myself but shrugged. “She wants to stay ashore for a while to show Donnie how to dive.” I winced as I said it, but it was the best I could come up with at the moment.
He frowned and looked back at the shore, where Reiko and Donnie were walking along the beach, SCUBA gear in hand. “I’ll be glad when we’re back in Boston.”
I nodded as the Dunwich‘s engines started and we turned towards the Arkham. “Yeah… me too.”
—-
We didn’t say anything else as we made the short trip back. Back on-board, I helped Darrin store the samples then headed back to my cabin.
There, I pulled a ceiling tile free and stuck this laptop above one of the lights. That was the best way I could think of to hide it for the moment. I did trust Reiko. I hadn’t been lying when I said she was my best student, and I had plenty of evidence that something weird was going on with this trip. I then cleaned up, stuck my personal laptop in my vest where I had been carrying Dr. Pickman’s, and then headed out.
I was heading for the cafeteria but saw Atiya and her students unloading from the Kingsport and went over to them.
“Find anything?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve put a ring of buoys around the island. Once I get their feeds in the computer and analyzed, I can see if my theory is correct?”
“What theory is that?”
She smiled and wagged a finger at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you first.” She gave me a quick kiss. “Grab a table and a beer in the cafeteria for us, and I’ll tell you in a few minutes.”
—-
I had expected it to be longer, but she and her entire team arrived in the cafeteria no more than 15 minutes later. Her team went for the coffee dispenser, but she came straight to the table.
“We’re cut off!” she growled as she sat down next to me. I handed her a beer as she continued. “Our Internet is cut off! And Sara says it is for ‘security reasons’ since we’re at this possible ‘nuclear’ site.” She twisted off the cap and tossed it aside, then took a long drink. I absentmindedly picked up the cap and stuck it in my vest pocket.
“Not possible, but definite!” she said, slamming her bottle down loudly enough that the other people in the cafeteria looked in our direction. “What the Hell is going on? I need that access for my research! Someone needs to get out here to see what happened so we can do our jobs!”
“Yeah, I’m with you.” I leaned closer to her. “But I think we’ve stepped in something really deep here.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a nuclear test here. One of ours, based on what I can tell. A secret nuclear test. Something that some people don’t want to be known. And we found it.”
“Ugh.” She took another drink. “So, what do we do?”
“Apparently, nothing.” I leaned even closer, whispering in her ear. “We may not be allowed to do anything.”
“What?” She jerked away from me.
“No one was supposed to come here. Whatever happened here was supposed to be lost. Forgotten. Then… Dr. Stepherson discovered something about the island and attracted attention to it. So we came here.”
I took another drink. “We’ve found something we shouldn’t have. The nuclear test. Whatever is happening on the high point. This ‘other village’ that is keeping the beach here cleared. We… no one was supposed to find those things. We did. And now? Someone wants to keep what we’ve discovered here a secret.”
“Who? The crew? Why would they care?”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “Remember, most of the crew here are ex-military, working for us on the same agreement that gets us ships like this. I think…” I paused. What did I think?
“Yeah, you said. So?”
I hesitated a bit longer before continuing. “Have you… ever read some of the stories they write about us? At Miskatonic? Not the news articles and such, those fantasy and horror novels.”
“What? Well… yeah, a few. When I was still an undergrad. I thought it was funny when I actually started teaching here. What does that have to do with anything?”
I grimaced. “What… What if some of those stories were true?”
“What?” She laughed loudly. “Oh Kalen, apparently, I misinterpreted your mental state.”
I shook my head vigorously. “Wait, seriously… hear me out.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I don’t think so.” I paused again. I knew I was endangering my relationship with her, but something suddenly made sense about this whole expedition.
I stood up abruptly. “Let’s go to the minisub.”
“What? Kalen!” She shook her head. “I’m… not in that kind of mood. Especially with you acting like… this.”
I shook my head in return. “We’ll just talk. But… we need to talk in the minisub.”
She frowned, but something in my expression must have gotten to her.
“OK…” she said, somewhat dubiously. “We’ll talk.”
“Good!” I gestured towards the door. “After you?”
—
She led the way to the sub but paused at the entrance.
“You take the back seat, OK?”
I shrugged. “Sure.” I climbed onto the minisub, opened the hatch, and dropped into it. I found the aft seat and waited as she climbed down after me and took the front one.
I gestured upwards. “Close the hatch. And the beer is in the specimen locker to your left.” As she reached for it, I felt under the seat. The microphone there had been reconnected. I grabbed it and pulled it free.
As she handed me a beer, she looked at what I was holding. “What is that?”
“A bug someone planted in here.” I tossed it aside. “We don’t have much time to talk.”
“About what?”
I waved a hand. “Listen. We both know something strange has been going on with this expedition.”
“Maybe? Yeah? But what…”
I waved her off again. “No, just listen to me. You want to avoid me for the rest of the trip? Fine. Just… listen to me.”
She looked as if she was about to say something, then simply nodded. There was a mixture of concern and fear in her face as she did.
“Look, you saw… whatever was going on at the high point. You saw that locked room in the cargo hold. You know there is something radioactive in there, as well as the radioactive remains here. And you know something strange has been going on since before we left!”
She started to say something, but I cut her off. “I know this doesn’t make sense, but… suppose some of those stories they tell about Miskatonic are real.”
“Kalen,” she said, concern in her voice. “I know you’re under a lot of stress, but…”
“No, listen!” I almost shouted. “What if they are? Not all, but some? What would be the best way to keep things a secret? Make everyone believe it was just a story or something! And how to keep an eye on everything, so you will know if someone else discovers what you’re keeping a secret? Set up a honeypot! Someplace that will attract those people who are even just thinking about what you are hiding, so you can keep an eye on them!”
“Why do you think we get these ships? Why do you think we have a crew of ex-military veterans? We’re being used!”
Her expression had turned to concern. “Kalen, I…” She was interrupted from saying more by a pounding on the hatch overhead.
I sighed and gestured upwards. “May as well open it. Just… remember what I just said.”
She continued to look at me dubiously but spun the hatch open. Canton was looking down at us. “Is everything OK down there?”
I picked up the bug and held it up to him. “Looking for this?”
He frowned and stood up. “Dr. Ferris, I need to ask you to come out here.”
“Why the hell did you put a microphone in my minisub?”
“Come out of the sub, Dr. Ferris. Now.”
I gestured to Atiya. “After you.”
She looked from me to Canton with confusion on her face. She started climbing up the ladder, and Canton stepped aside to let her out.
I saw her pause as she reached the top, but after a moment, she continued. I followed.
When I cleared the hatch, I saw why she had hesitated. Sara was on top of the sub, too, and she was holding an ugly rifle of some kind. And pointed in my general direction.
I tried to sound more confident than I was. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive over your listening equipment,” I said, holding up the bug.
Sara’s expression didn’t change. “We’re responsible for everyone on this ship, Doctor.” She emphasized that last word a bit too much. “We need to monitor everyone no matter where they go. Just in case.” She turned to Atiya. “What were the two of you talking about in there?”
Atiya glanced at me and hesitated for a moment. “We were… trying to figure out the best way to approach things. It’s… kind of crowded in there, you know? And the last few times we’ve been in there, my back had been killing me before we were done.” She gave me a weak smile as she said it.
Sara continued to gaze at her for a moment, then turned back to me. “I’ll need your laptop, Dr. Ferris.”
“What?”
“I’ll need your laptop.” She held out a hand. “Now.”
“Hey, I need my laptop for my research.”
“No. You don’t. And I won’t ask again.” She tilted the rifle a bit more towards me. “So… please.”
I sighed, unsnapped the pocket on the back of my vest, and handed the laptop to her. “I’ll need that back.”
She nodded. “Of course. Now, Doctor. It would be best if you stayed on the ship for the rest of the day.”
“Are you telling me what to do?”
She sighed and leveled the rifle. “Doctor, let’s quit pretending. I don’t know what Dr. Pickman told you, but… we have people back in Boston who are talking to him. After tomorrow, I don’t care what you do. But, for the next 24 hours or so? You will stay on this ship. And tell your students the same thing.”
“What in Allah’s name?” Atiya asked suddenly.
Sara swung her gaze to her. “And you should stay on board too, Dr. Parimala. And I would like to look at the readings from those sensors you dropped off. They may be of use to us.”
“Us?”
She glanced in my direction, then turned back to Atiya. “How would your husband react if he knew you were sleeping with Dr. Ferris here? I understand that’s a pretty serious offense in your religion.”
I saw Atiya’s face tighten. “He’s too busy fucking our neighbor to notice. And what the hell do you know about me.”
She shrugged. “I just know when I was in Iraq, things didn’t always work out the way you might have wanted. Now, both of you. Stay on the ship. All of this will be over tomorrow and, if you agree to a couple of conditions, everything will be back to normal in a day or two. You have work to do out here? So do we. Now… stay where we know you are. And out of this thing.” She kicked the hatch, then lowered the rifle. Conner nodded, then the two of them left.
I glanced over at Atiya. “Believe me now?”
She looked back, face ashen. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, me too. Something is about to happen. Something nasty.”
She nodded. “What can we do?”
“Nothing. Unless you have a big gun like that.”
“MP-5,” she said almost automatically. “Sorry… when you’re Arabic, even in the US, you get used to seeing guns pointed at you.” She paused. “What are we going to do?”
I shrugged helplessly. “What can we do?”
“You can tell Dr. Pickman! You said you had your magic laptop! Tell him! Or… warn him, since it seems whoever these people are are after him as well.”
I gestured towards Sara. “I don’t think she’s going to give it back!”
Her eyes widened. “That was…”
I knew I was lying, but I nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t want to leave it alone and had it with me.”
She visibly slumped. “What is going on?”
“I have no idea.” I looked at the half-empty beer I was still holding. I drained it in one gulp, then threw it away as hard as I could, watching it clear the railing and splash into the ocean below. I flung the bug after it, and it bounced off the deck a few times before falling over the edge as well.
“I’m out of beer,” I said. “Guess we’ll go back to the cafeteria.”
—-
We had been there for over an hour, and for a few beers, when Darrin and Anna came in. He looked around in annoyance then came in our direction.
“What the hell did you two do?” he asked, standing and looking down at us. “We tried to get on the Dunwich to head back to shore, and they told us that both of our teams are restricted to the ship!”
Atiya and I glanced at each other. “Something–I don’t know what–is going to happen tonight. Something that our not-so-former military crew doesn’t want us involved in.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I sighed. “We’ve been used. This is a government operation of some kind. They wanted an excuse to send a bunch of military personnel to this island without attracting anyone’s attention, so we’re here. We figured out a bit too much, so they don’t want us to interfere with anything.”
His brow narrowed. “So… it has something to do with Dr. Stepherson’s research?” He didn’t question what I had just said.
“Yeah, I think so. That’s why they kicked Dr. McNamara off and brought us in; they didn’t want Dr. Stepherson to have any allies on board.”
He paused for a moment, thinking. “Reiko is still on the island,” he said, finally.
I grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, but… I think she knows more about what is going on here than we do. She’ll be ready. I hope.”
He nodded, his own face tight. “Yeah. Me too.”
The four of us sat and talked for a while. I filled Anna and Darrin on what had happened and what I was thinking. Sondra joined us after a while, and I updated her as well. A few of them looked at me a bit dubiously at a few points, like when I described what Atiya and I had seen at the high point, but no one directly contradicted what I was saying. I guess everyone had picked up on enough weirdness by this point that they knew something was out of the ordinary. Atiya jumped in a few times to confirm what I was saying, like the details of the high point and the time Sara and Conner had confronted us in the cargo bay.
“So how does Dr. Stepherson’s work fit into this?” Sondra asked when I had finished. “Why is that so important?”
I gestured around. “You’ve seen the damage here. The antenna. The evidence of a nuclear blast. And the fact that we have something radioactive in our cargo bay. I think they, whoever ‘they’ are, are trying to finish what they started years ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ‘other village.’ They killed everyone here, then dropped the bodies into the ocean, then set off a nuke. And now, apparently, there’s another village. I think they are planning to get rid of it too.”
“You can’t think…”
“Yes. I do. That’s why they’ve got us isolated here. So we can’t warn Dr. Stepherson.”
“Reiko is still on the island,” said Darrin. I could tell he was worried.
“Yeah, I know. But from what she said to me before we headed back, she’s way ahead of us in figuring out what is going on. I’m pretty sure she’s got something planned.”
“I hope so.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’m just…”
He stopped, but we had all heard it. A long, clear tenor note, sounding as if someone was holding down a key on a massive pipe organ. It wasn’t loud, but it penetrated; we felt it as much as heard it.
“What the hell?” We all stood up and headed for the exit.
It was late in the afternoon. The sun wasn’t yet setting, but everything was taking on that orange hue that indicated approaching sunset. Others were coming out of the cabins and from below decks. Apparently, everyone had heard the sound.
The note repeated as we all headed for the railing. I was coming from further into the lagoon, towards the beach.
At first, I didn’t see anything. There were about a half-dozen people on the beach, but at this distance, I couldn’t recognize any of them. A large bonfire had been built in the middle of the cleared area of the beach. It appeared as if it had only recently been started as the flames were still spreading through the piled driftwood.
The tone sounded a third time, and this time I saw the source. Someone was in the water a few dozen feet out from shore. Only their head and arms were visible, but they were holding what looked like a long horn to their mouth. They seemed to be wearing a helmet of some kind, so they must have the faceplate open.
As if on cue, several other heads appeared and started wading out of the water and towards the shore. From what I could tell, they were all wearing diving gear of some kind, a bulky breathing apparatus on their backs and helmets on their heads.
Who were they? The people from the other village? Did they swim from there to here?
“Bloody fucking hell!” I suddenly heard from beside me. I turned to see one of the students who was along as part of the crew. Peter, I think his name was. He was backing away from the railing, shaking his head. I noticed that he was holding a pair of binoculars in one hand, and I pulled them from his unresisting grasp.
He turned and ran away from the railing as I brought the binoculars up to my own face.
I looked at the beach. I quickly saw the bonfire, which seemed to have been built in the middle of some kind of intricate pattern scratched into the sand. Dr. Stepherson and Alisha had been standing near the fire with a few other students. But now, all of them were slowly backing away from the water. I didn’t see Reiko or Donnie.
I quickly moved to the figures now wading ashore. They were wearing wetsuits, with that same bulky apparatus on their backs and large helmets with bulging goggles over their eyes.
Then I blinked and saw what they really were.
Humanoid, but not human. Bulky bodies covered in dark, short fur. Spines that I had mistaken for hoses protruded from their backs, and they exited the water on webbed feet that I had mistaken for fins. Their heads were broad, with wide, thin lips and bulging eyes. More spines protruded from the back of their heads.
I felt an almost primordial fear rise up inside of me, and I took a step away from the railing myself. “What the living hell?”
“What? Let me see!” Atiya grabbed the binoculars from me and turned them towards the beach. I heard her gasp, then a long string of what I took to be profanity in Farsi.
Then the gunfire started.
I looked back at the beach. Most everyone on it was now in open flight towards the tree line, but several people were stepping forwards, firing automatic weapons of some kind at the new arrivals. Two of them were cut down almost immediately, while the others dove back into the water trying to escape. More gunfire followed them.
The organ notes started up again, but this time there were multiple notes, a discordant tune that didn’t sound as if it could even be something that could be heard.
Almost immediately, what looked like a waterspout started forming in the middle of the lagoon. The gunfire from the beach began reaching for the source of the sound, but the distance combined with the diminishing light made it a difficult target.
The waterspout lurched inland towards one of the people firing on the beach. They broke off and started running at the last minute, but the storm enveloped them and flung them away. They fell to the sand, arms flapping for a few moments before lying still.
More gunfire erupted, this time from the Arkham. I quickly turned in that direction to see two more crew members firing at the figure with the horn. Then, there was a sudden sharp crack. I quickly looked back to see someone lying on the top of the bridge, a long rifle in their hands. The discordant music stopped instantly, and I turned back just in time to see the figure with the horn slip beneath the surface.
Everyone was yelling, including me. I didn’t know what to think. I frantically looked from side to side until I saw Sara walking towards the group of us at the railing.
“What the fuck is going on!” I shouted.
“Nothing!” she said sharply. “It’s over. It’s all over. Now, go back to your cabins; it’s too dangerous to be out here.”
“What?”
“Go back to your cabins! Now!” She drew a pistol from a holster that I hadn’t noticed she was carrying and aimed it in our direction. “Conner!”
One of the crew members who had been firing ran over. “Yes?”
“Make sure all of our academics get back to their cabins. They will be safer there.”
“Of course,” he said. He aimed what Atiya had identified as an MP-5 in our direction. “After you, Doctors. Students.”
—-
We were escorted to our cabins and forced inside. Later, I heard drilling and found that latches were being attached to the outside of our doors. We were being padlocked in. My objections were only met with having another rifle pointed at me.
Since then, I’ve heard that discordant tune played twice more, always followed by more gunfire. Once the Arkham lurched, as if had been hit by something big, but I don’t know what happened. I can’t contact anyone else, our internal communications are down, so I don’t know what is happening.
This may be the last post I get out. I have no idea what is happening.
I hope you’re still out there, Dr. Pickman. They, whoever ‘they’ are, said they were sending someone after you.
What were those things in the water?
Something has happened here. Something is happening here. Word needs to get out.
Whoever is reading this, spread the word. Spread the links. This is happening. And I don’t know what I can do about it.