Tentacles and The Trigger

Tentacles and the Trigger





We watched in horror as the great passenger-class that had once carried us proudly across the ocean in its steel belly was dragged into the black ocean by enormous wet tentacles as thick as houses and as long as rivers. Passengers leapt from the doomed behemoth into the water where the thing’s kindred waited for them hungrily. The ship, which had put up an impressive fight so far, gave a final metallic roar of agony, then snapped in two like a pencil. Greedy, wet arms pulled the beaten mess into the ocean along with hundreds of screaming people.

Those who cried out and splashed at the water done little aside from attract attention to themselves from the things that waited in the gloom. Passengers plopped into the sea like bricks, their lungs filling with ice-cold water, hopefully giving them a merciful death before whatever had gotten a hold of them began its horror.

A skyscraper of a tentacle burst through the water some few hundred yards away, clearly visible in the dim moonlight, almost tipping our lifeboat over. I stared in horror and wonder at the thing, at its impossible scale, at its irrational existence, as it pointed straight upwards at the sky, like an elegant woman stretching a long, seductive leg into the air, or a grim sign of where the best of us would end up. Then it slipped back into the water again, slowly this time, the waves only gently rocking our vessel as though trying to put us to sleep, perhaps to spare us from witnessing the horror around us.

The shrieking and floundering of the drowning began to die out in no time, hundreds of survivors becoming hardly any at all before they even realised they were being snatched. There came a time when all we could hear was the wailing of a single woman, out in the darkness somewhere, beating at the water with determined arms. We searched for her in our lifeboat, but it turned out to be in vain, for several minutes later there was a smacking of water and a choke as the ice-cold rushed into her insides and cut her screaming short.

Then it was just us, and the soft sloshing of the ocean. But not for long, I knew, for soon there would be more dark things coming.

Nine of us had made it out of the RMS Gallant. Just nine out of the three hundred screaming passengers. The rest floated among the flotsam and jetsam, cold and dead; lay at the bottom of the ocean, or were halfway there. No one screamed out for help anymore, nor did they slap the water with desperate arms. We were alone in this boat; Michael, the chef from the ship’s kitchen; Clive, my old acquaintance from London; an eccentric, moustached old man whom I didn‘t know; and myself. Four men in our boat, five in the other, surrounded only by an infinite black void.

Our end did not come as expected. We sat, not a single word leaving our lips, watching the water before us, amazed at how natural it looked; now that all the potential survivors had been taken, the grim darkness and lack of movement made the ocean almost look as though the colossal RMS Gallant had never passed over its surface.

Clive turned to me. His eyes were enormous, and clear in the little light we had. His white hair was like ice in the freezing night. “Alan?” he said. I ignored him, my concentration absorbed by the ominous stillness outside the boat. “Alan, we have to row. Those things’ll come back soon. We were lucky before…”

The old man at the end of the boat gibbered something to himself and stifled a little burst of laughter, cutting off Clive’s sentence. We all turned to him. He took no notice. The ends of his fingers were bleeding where he had bitten into them nervously.

“You okay, sir?” Clive said. The old man didn’t respond either. “Sir?”

Still no reply.

“Leave him. He’s gone.” Michael said. He was still dressed in his chef’s outfit, minus the hat of course. “We can’t help him now.”

“Can’t help him now?” Clive said, turning to him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Michael said, looking annoyed, “he’s gone. Cuckoo. Crazy. A nut job.”

Clive opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. He turned back to the elderly gentleman, who was now making raspberry noises and laughing to himself after each one. I sighed at the sight. I had once seen this man aboard the ship, parading around as though he owned it with his red-haired wife hanging loosely from his arm and his expensive-looking cane jabbing at the floor below him with every step. What a mess he had become.

“Does anyone know his name?” Clive asked.

“I think it was Terrence.” I replied. “Or Thomas. Something like that.”

Clive nodded. The old man had now begun to sing. It sounded ghostly in the night, like something you would hear when walking down the corridor of a haunted house. After a while he gave up completely with the lyrics - or maybe he forgot them - and began to hum the song instead.

“How did this happen?” Michael said, frowning into the ocean. “Giant tentacles…? What the hell happened?”

Me and Clive glanced at one another. Clive looked away quickly.

“What?” said Michael, noticing our exchange.

“Nothing.” Clive replied hastily.

“I did it.” I replied. Michael glared at me.

“You done this?” he said. “This is your pet octopus, I‘ll take it?”

“It’s a long story.” I started, sighing. I cast my mind back.

“Three weeks ago I travelled through the Amazon rainforest, guided only by yellowed parchment found in a deep room in the Great London Library. I took two men with me; my old acquaintance here, Clive, a biologist and keen explorer like myself; and a huge, dark-skinned local man, Akuji Romanez, also a friend from several expeditions to nearby areas.

“The parchment was written by a man who ended up completely mad, but at the time was a well-respected author. Doctor Alexander Campbell his name had been. I never spoke to him personally, but he had been at a few of the same parties as I. Unfortunately, our paths never crossed until after he was dead.

“His writings told of passages within a book that were capable of bringing forth whole other realms when read aloud. It was a prospect that excited me, though I knew I would have to treat it with caution considering what the revelation had ultimately done to the poor doctor; he had gauged his own eyes out during the night with intentionally untrimmed fingernails whilst under surveillance at the Hyde Park Mental Institution. A failure on their security, I’d say.”

I paused for a moment, Michael watching me intently, waiting for me to move on. There was a gentle splash somewhere in the ocean. Our glances shot to the source, expecting a long tentacle to be poking out of its surface. There was nothing there. My new shipmates turned to me again. I drew in a long, ice-cold breath and began again.

“We crossed the Atlantic via ship, and made our way through Brazil until we reached the huge rainforest. It took us four days on foot before we came to a place that you’d have to see to believe. An area that was almost completely black; for there was no colour to light up. Shadows reached over us with sharp fingers; intimidating us; toying with us.

“The place was sticky and made up of mostly blackened and frail vegetation. The path that we walked became oilier as we continued on until we were traipsing through a kind of tar, and the smell - Christ the smell - it reeked of long-dead meat. And I mean long dead meat.

“Soon we came to an old temple, an oily, relic of a building that looked ready to fall had someone the luck to sneeze within its walls. It didn‘t take us long to find it; the manuscript, bound carelessly in a damp crate, just as the doctor said it would be. I could hardly believe our luck.”

The old man let out a dog-like whine and looked up at us. We turned to him and watched for a moment. Then, once it was apparent that he had finished, I continued.

“The book’s appearance was a disappointment. I had imagined a grim, flesh-clad book, inked in blood and all that; but found myself holding a lightweight leatherback written in boring old ink. The contents, on the other hand, were compensatory.

“Strange hieroglyphics sprawled elegantly across the pages, marks that neither I or my companions had seen before, while vivid drawing of creatures and other realms left nothing much to the imagination. I gazed at the thing longingly for a moment, lost in a world of my own, before I finally managed to regain myself and stuff it in my bag.

“On the journey back, I could not help myself but read the pages despite the warnings from my angered guide. He was visibly shaking, and kept repeating that we should never should have come here. I ignored him. He was a native, after all, and therefore had little knowledge of the sciences - or so I thought. It was when I had recited one of the passages that I realised my mistake.

“I looked through the book for days, alone except for a hip-flask full of Glenfiddich. The drawings I came across were intense. In one, giant tentacles were pulling a Viking barge into the ocean - much like what happened to us. It is the hieroglyphics under this image that I translated from the doctor’s notes and read aloud in just under two hours. Night had just fallen. At first I thought nothing had happened.”

I sighed and shook my head. “That was an hour ago.”

Michael stared at me, his breath coming up in white clouds in front of his face. I knew he believed my story; it was too elaborate to make up - and even then, why would I make something up at a time like this? Finally he spoke up, his voice weak and frail. He coughed and spoke again, his speech’s vitality restored.

“And this book,” he said, eyeing my bag, “where is it now?”

“I have it with me.”

The boat went quiet again. The sea sloshed suggestively. The old man farted and laughed manically to himself. His shenanigans were ignored for the time being.

“Let me see it.” Michael jabbed a beckoning hand towards me. “Give it to me. Why did you bother taking that thing it off the boat?”

“Because this thing is mankind’s single most important discovery of this century - maybe ever!”

“Give it to me.” he demanded again, getting to his knees. I put an arm over my bag and shook my head.

“No.”

“Give me it.”

“Alan, maybe you shou-”

“I will not.” I snapped. I did not like the way these two were turning on the book. Did not like it at all. “He will throw it into the ocean.”

“That is where it belongs!” Michael yelled. The passengers of the other lifeboat leaned over their wooden sides to see what was going on.

“God no!” I cried. “This belongs under the eyes of professionals, of scientists, of those who do not believe in the supernatural or paranormal. Do you realise what finding this book has done to everything that we once knew? This changes everything!”

“And look what its done! Look at what happened to hundreds of passengers. They are all dead because of your stupid book! Because of your stupid expedition! Now give it to me before I throw you and it into the water together!”

Michael stood up as Clive cowered away. I glowered with anger. Even if I managed to get him to back away, he might try and take the book while I slept. I couldn’t risk that. The book must be protected.

The chef didn’t seem to realise that he wasn’t in the kitchen, and that we weren’t under his command. Whatever he was used to, it was over now. It didn’t exist anymore. We were all equals on this boat; there was no leader. Or at least, there was no appointed leader yet. We would soon see who was the real alpha male.

I stood from my sitting position and faced the threat. What I didn’t tell Michael, or even Clive, was the feeling of satisfaction and warmth that overcame me while I read the book’s pages. Man has always needed an objective ahead of him to feel complete, we’re so narcissistic that we had to invent a place where we go when we die, just to have the willpower to go on. I was no different, or at least I was until I read those golden pages. Now I felt blissful and alive, like I had been given a get-into-heaven-free card.

“Try it take it.” I sneered to my opponent, raising my arms aggressively. “Come on!”

“Guys, I don’t thi-” Clive whimpered.

"This is your last warning." Michael said.

"I know." I nodded, smiling.

“Alright then.” Michael nodded. “Have it your way.”

Michael threw himself at me so fast I almost didn’t see him coming.

Almost.

I sidestepped and grabbed him as he passed, swinging his heavy body and throwing him roughly to the wooden floor. His head cracked against the surface painfully and he let out a yelp of pain. The boat rocked with the sudden movement. I almost tumbled over with him. The passengers of the other boat began to yell at us. “Break it up!“ they cried, but we didn’t listen.

Michael pulled himself to his feet, a single bead of blood meandering its way down a large cheekbone. The old man was weeping now. Covering his face and weeping.

“Stop it!” Clive yelled with the vocal power of a pre-adolescent boy. We took no notice. “Stop it now!”

My hands were so cold I could hardly bunch them into a fist. I raised my eyebrows at the threat to the book as if to say ready to go again? He confirmed that he was by launching himself at me a second time, this time knocking me flat on my back and battering the back of my skull off the side of the boat. There was a white flash and my ears shot awake like alarm clocks. I turned my head and the world kaleidoscoped. The stars were now bright arcs in the sky above me, the moon an enormous fountain of light.

Slowly, my vision came back to me.

I pulled myself up in time to see Michael reaching into my bag.

“NOOOOooo!” I hollered like a mad man.

I threw myself to my feet, rushed for him, rocking the boat violently with every step, and grabbed him by the back of the head. He ignored my attack, concerned only with his mission, pulled open my bag and revealed the leather clad book within.

“NOOOOooooo!” I howled again, this time more manic and inhuman than before. I forced my fingers into the sockets of his eyes and pushed with all my might. I felt my fingers break through into a warm ooze.

Michael began to scream like a pig that had just trod on a foothold trap. I pulled my fingers from the warm sockets and pushed him away onto the floor. He wailed and kicked his legs violently. He was a danger to the boat, he had to go. I done what I had to do.

There was more yelling from the other lifeboat. Cries of anger and dismay. Shouts of “Bastard!” and “Murderer!” They were coming for me. They began to paddle towards our boat with their arms. I would soon have to send another five to their makers, or at least try, but not for a while yet; they were making slow progress.

Clive pushed me from behind, catching me by surprise. I toppled forward, right onto the boat edge, and stared into the blackness before me. The ocean seemed to be pulsing with invisible life. I could feel a thousand eyes on me from the gloom. My companion’s hands clasped around my legs. He was going to toss me over!

I turned and grabbed my so-called friend by his neck, choking him and forcing him upwards. He let out a pathetic little yell and tried to take me with him, making me lose my balance and almost go into the ice-cold darkness myself.

Clive was half over now. I had him by the back of his suit jacket now, in complete control of his fate, toying with his racing mind, both of us staring into the black water. There was no question about it; he was a threat that had to be extinguished. I tightened my grip on him and prepared to toss him overboard. The men in the other lifeboat were roaring with fury now, only a few minutes of paddling away, not close enough to save him.

The great gloom where we were facing rippled slightly, then suddenly broke. A browned, slippery vine rose from is surface and unravelled like a rapidly blossoming flower. It bore down on Clive and slipped down his sweaty face with its suckers as though testing him. It must have liked the way he tasted, for at that instant five more tentacles poked from the water and began to wrap around my poor old friend. His eyes bulging out of his head, he began to scream and jerk desperately, trying to get out of its tight snare. It was no use. “No! NO!” he managed before he was wrenched from the boat in one sharp tug and sent head-first into the ocean.

The air began to sing with the screaming of men. I turned to the other lifeboat, now only meters away, and almost squealed with delight. More tentacles writhed and constricted around the pathetic wooden frame. The wood was creaking and groaning, ready to give way, then it finally burst with the pressure, sending planks and passengers shooting into the water. The men tried, like the others, to escape the things in the water desperately.

They failed.

One by one I watched them dropping into the water as though they had suddenly gained one-hundred stone in an instant, their screams stifled by the freezing cold ocean before they could really begin.

I sat back, panting and excited.

The book had protected me, saved me, and now I was forever in its debt. I would protect it and make sure it got to land safely. That was my task, a task I would fulfil, a task only I was capable of. Michael was no longer moving, he lay in a swaying puddle of blood and other transparent goop that I gather was from his eyes. It was a shame to kill him, and Clive too, but they had both become threats to the manuscript, and both had to be disposed of promptly.

There was a stifle of laughter from before me. The old man still sat at the end of the boat, his hands over his eyes, opening and closing his fingers rhythmically, playing peek-a-boo. I had forgotten about him, he had been sitting there in silence for a while now. I could easily have tipped him into the water, fed him to the things from the pages just in case, but I didn’t. The old man was no threat to the book, and it would be nice to have some company, babbling insane or not. Plus, he could provide some musical relief for the duration of the journey, now that the RMS Gallant’s band were lying at the bottom of the ocean and pretty much out of service. He was not the most desired replacement, but better than nothing, better than listening to the ocean and going swiftly mad myself.

In fact, I found myself desiring for a song as those thoughts ran through my head, but I knew it was no use asking him in tongues. I would have to get him started. I raised my arms and began with a little Tommy Johnson. The old man smirked at me as I cleared my throat.

“IIII asked fo’ water,
and she gave me,
gasoliiine.

IIII'd aaaasked for water,
gave meeee gasoliiiine”

The old man laughed heartily at first. Perhaps he didn’t know that one, I thought. Then he leant his frail head back, sighed once, then let out one of the most beautiful singing voices I’d ever heard. I almost went right there in my pants with sheer delight.

“IIII asked fo’ water,
and she gave me gasoline.
Loooord, Good Lordy, Looord.

Criiiied, Lord I wonder,
will I,
evaaa’ get back hoome?”

Terrence (the name I had decided to give him) and I went through just about every delta blues classic from the twenties and thirties worth singing; Tommy Johnston, Johnny Shines, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnston, Earl Hooker, Son House, Snooky Pryor, even a little Willie Brown. I felt incredibly honoured to be in the presence of such a jaw-dropping voice. I told him so several times, but he just smiled and clapped his hands like a child. Perhaps that was his way of showing his appreciation towards my compliment, I did not doubt as such considering the state of his mind. I suggested that we start a band once we reached land, as I was an avid guitar player myself. We could make millions! I exclaimed, but my accomplice simply laughed and kept on clapping.

After a while my throat began to ache from the freezing-cold air and all the singing. Terrence seemed unaffected, so I just left him to it. My stomach had began to rumble rudely, it was a problem I hadn’t foreseen, but should have. If I died of hunger, the book may never see land, and I couldn’t have that. I needed to eat.

My eyes fell to the body of Michael. He still lay in the sloshing scarlet, his face a mess of cloudy pink. He was a fairly big guy, more than enough for two people to eat comfortably on for several days until we were rescued. It was too perfect, an offering from the book, no doubt. I smiled to myself. It was incredibly ironic that after eating Michael’s food on the ship for so long, I would now be sampling him!

Imagine!








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