“Dear God!” one of the constables cried, and shouldered his musket, and fired.
Thunder. The very air was burned. The skeletal apparition went back down out of sight abuptly at the impact. The villagers had all heard its inhuman shriek of pain and surprise.
“Demons!” cried John Kettle, the blacksmith. “It’s the Ancient People!”
“No,” said Jane Thistle in a voice so low only her husband beside her heard it. She clapped a hand over her heart, and in a tone of awed, anguished joy said, “It’s our children!”
“It’s our children!” said Jane Mason at the same moment, in a louder voice and in a tone of absolute horror.
Now, from above, came other voices. Rumblings, and chatterings…hissing whispers, and panther-like growls…
“Jane,” said John Thistle, “we must get back to the house…”
“No!” she replied, moving forward.
He took her arm. “We must! Hurry!”
The first of them dropped off the back of the ship, where they were less vulnerable to the constables’ muskets. The villagers could hear them splash as they landed. And then, they charged out of the ship’s shadows, kicking up the poisonous black water as they came. In their speed, in their fury, in their vast and varied hideousness the constables were barely able to aim at them. A ragged line of shots cracked the air, and then the creatures were upon them…
“Run!” yelled John Thistle, violently pulling his wife along now, but still holding onto his pitchfork. “Run! Run!”
And despite her terrible joy, Jane did run, when she saw one of the creatures embrace Mayor John Stout in four obese arms dangling folds of creased flesh, and thus engulf him totally. A translucent head which was little more than a gelatinous bag closed over the mayor’s head like a caul.
As Jane turned and fled, holding hands with her husband, she saw the surgeon John Copper run past her. He was moving very fast for a man of his years, and then she realized that he wasn’t so much running as being propelled along by the momentum of a creature which had hold of him. The thing galloped on its hands and feet but its body was normal enough; like all the creatures, it wore no clothing. From its eye sockets, however, writhed twin nests of milky tendrils like those of an anenome, and its bony hooked jaws pierced Copper’s neck like the mandibles of an ant warrior.
Thistle let go of his wife and whirled about, gripping the pitchfork in both fists now. He lunged at the creature, and the trident caught it through its own neck. Jetting blood, it collapsed atop the surgeon, but the man was already jumping with his final electrified spasms. Thistle again took his wife’s hand; again they ran. Jane’s black skirts flapped the air like storm-lashed sails, and the ground seemed to hammer with a maddened heartbeat under their thumping footfalls.
Something that squealed like a pig being slaughtered could be heard racing up behind them as they sprinted into their yard, and whatever it was thudded against their door just as John got it closed and bolted. They rushed from window to window, locking them and drawing the curtains. Finally, John panted, “Upstairs, Jane…move!”
Jane’s hair was in her face, and her eyes gleamed madly from within its tangle. “They survived, John. Some of them…the strongest. And helped the weaker to survive. All these years, they were building that ship. Building it from what they found on the island…machinery that the Ancients left behind. Building it all this while, so they could return to us…”
“For revenge, Jane!”
She wagged her head. Tears streamed down her flushed cheeks.
John again urged her upstairs, and this time she obeyed him. They entered their bedroom; John shut and barred its door. He turned to close the curtains to the one window, and saw the creature which had been waiting for them.
It had been struck by one of the constables’ musket balls; dark blood was winding down its pallid flesh. It was stooped but towered over them, emaciated yet also suggesting great strength. Its eyes, each as large as a normal man’s head, were two great cloudy sacks, hanging from a head that had not grown since its infancy. Its hair was still wispy as corn silk.
Though the eyes had grown so much larger, its cadaverous body so much taller, Jane Thistle recognized her son, John Sadness, instantly.
“My boy!” she sobbed, spreading her arms. “My boy!”
It took a lurching step toward her, fingers three times longer than they should be curled into a skeleton’s talons…
“No!” John Thistle cried, darting toward the small fireplace to seize up a poker…
The creature fell upon his wife, and she struggled with it. But as Thistle raised the poker above his head, he realized that the thing had crumpled, and Jane was fighting to hold it up. John dropped the poker, and helped take hold of the scarecrow-like body…walked it to the bed with her, where they laid it down.
The creature gurgled up at them. Its pendulous orbs were nothing like eyes, might have been blind. Maybe it was scent that had led it here. Or mere memory. But it reached up feebly, unerringly to Jane’s face and stroked her cheek.
John took hold of its other hand and sat on the edge of his bed. In this bed, they had made this creature. Their son. John watched as his wife bent over John Sadness.
Her tears fell upon its tiny face and great eyes as she kissed it, one last time, on the brow.
Then, with a small contented shudder, the creature died.
* * *
A dozen townspeople had perished in the battle. None of these victims had been children, however, for which the townspeople were grateful.
All of the monstrosities that had disembarked from the ship were finally slaughtered. It took several days to track down the last of them in the woods. Whether there were more aboard the ship, or back on the island, no one could tell…but the strange vessel was gone by the time anyone returned to the beach.
Sometimes Jane would stand at the spot where it had arrived, holding her husband’s hand. There they would both look out across the black lake, staring at where the island must lie, as if hoping the mist would part, sunlight would beam down upon it. But it remained cloaked in its winding sheet of fog. And while most of the villagers no doubt gazed out at those waters in dread, Jane and John Thistle did so with tears in their eyes, and sad smiles on their lips.
Thunderheads
The tentacle came through the ceiling and slithered down toward Warren’s face as he lay back on his bed fully dressed. Unshaven, unemployed and partly unconscious, he had been watching the TV at the foot of the bed in a half-doze of thoughtless ingestion. Game shows, glamour. His country’s hypnotic empty promises.
But the sight of the tentacle undulating toward him roused him to alertness. He spun sideways to the floor and scrambled to his feet, then bolted from the room…and the tentacle followed him. He slammed a door to block it, but it passed through the door as if it were an illusion, immaterial. Yet it was the tentacle that was immaterial, he realized. Though it looked solid, like a clear rubber hose filled with dark smoke, it was the searching limb of some apparition.
In the kitchen of his apartment, Warren slid open a drawer and clawed madly amongst his oddly matched cutlery until he lifted out a formidable bread knife. By now, the blind groping extremity had found him, and was swimming through the air in his direction. With a cry, Warren swung his blade and simultaneously ducked.
The tentacle withdrew sharply, shivering violently in the air. He could see that somehow he had hurt it, as ethereal as it might be. Maybe the sheer energy of his emotion, rather than the steel itself, had wounded it. Whatever the case, thus encouraged, Warren leapt toward it and slashed it again and again. A foot or so of the tentacle was severed and dropped to the linoleum, curling in on itself with a spasm. The rest of the limb, whipping angrily, withdrew. When Warren glanced down again for the severed portion, it had vanished.
Outside, a peal of bass heavy thunder rumbled, rattling his window in its frame.
* * *
Warren had always considered himself a “sensitive”, having seen ghosts on several occasions in his life: that
