It was one and it was many, it was a composite creature of an incorruptible corruption; it was insanity incarnate.
I screamed and fled from it, but the faces and the feelers flowed forth to envelop me in ichorous essence, so that I drowned in the bubbling blackness of its being. I was consumed by it.
And then there was no fear, and no revulsion, for in its place came an overwhelming expansion of awareness, so that I became a part of it and I knew. My memory was its memory, my knowledge was its knowledge. And my hunger was its hunger—
Memory.
Deep in the jungle they built the temple and reared a golden altar of worship. And behind the golden altar was the great golden ark in which I rested and waited for the sacrifice. Nor did I wait too long, for they came frequently to attend me, bringing me the captives of their warfare, trussed on poles like pigs. And when there were no captives they brought me slaves, and when there were no slaves, they brought me children, and when there were no children they brought me their choicest virgins. All I devoured in the darkness, incorporating far more than flesh—for I took from living things the continuity of their consciousness and added their awareness to mine. So that I grew and grew, eternally enlarging. For I was that which is known in all legends; the creature of darkness which devours the world. And if I were not fed, if my appetite were not appeased, I would flow forth to raven freely as I had—long aeons ago, or was it yesterday, or would it be tomorrow? But if they kept me sated, I was content to dwell in the temple. And when they built the ark I entered it willingly, nor did I try to leave, for it was pleasant to curl and coil and coalesce in the darkness and wait for them to bring me fresh fare. I remembered, now . . .
Knowledge.
Time is a rushing river that flows endlessly, yet never reaches the sea. And it is pleasant to drift upon the stream, drift drowsily and content. So that when I coiled compactly in the golden chest, I willed myself to satiated sleep. And it was then that they hammered down the lid, so that I could not escape; hammered it fast to hold me captive, and put an end to sacrifice. But I was still aware; I knew when the armored white strangers came and prevailed over my worshippers, and I endured as they sought to pry open the lid of the great chest, and then abandoned their vain efforts to talk of fire and of melting down. Finally there was talk of a golden gift to their ruler and in the end the chest was borne away to the ship, together with the altar of sacrifice. I did not stir or struggle, for I anticipated the nearing moment when the chest would be opened again, and I could feast. Feast on flesh, feast on spirit. Yes, I knew, now . . .
Hunger.
I drowsed in the darkness, and then the thunder came, and the shattering sound awakened me. I felt the shock and the shudder as the sinking ship gave way and I fell into the depths; the lid of the chest burst and I was free. Yet I did not come forth, for there was no reason. Not until the bodies drifted down, sinking slowly. Then I put forth a portion of myself, bubbling out from the lid and groping until I grasped the floating forms and drew them to me. I feasted until replete, then slept once more. There was no need to emerge from the chest until the opportunity came to feed again. Time means nothing, for I endure forever. I have but to wait. I neither dwindle nor grow; nothing grows except the hunger.
But the hunger is there, and lately I have stirred, heeding its pangs. The other day I took a man—it was curious, in that he came to me willingly and saw the chest with its lid ajar. He could not lift it, of course, because of the weight of the water, but he felt along the edges. Then I bubbled forth, grasping him and pulling him down, and he threshed mightily so that the lid fell, decapitating him. The body floated away, but I did not pursue. I do not have to pursue. I am aware of his awareness now, and with it I know that there are others of his kind in a ship, just above me. They will follow him down, for they are seeking the chest and the altar. Yes, they will come to me, and soon I shall feast again.
In the feasting there is great pleasure. To taste the memories, to savor the surge of every emotion, to know the nuances of all desires; there is the richness of rage, the pungency of passion, the fine, full flavor of frantic fear. I eat it all, and I digest it, and I retain it, and that is my ruling need. Most of all I want the woman, the golden woman. And I will engulf her with my eyes, and I will take her whiteness into my blackness, and drain her body of all delight—
“No!” I was screaming now, it was my own voice that was screaming, and it was my own sweat-drenched body that threshed in ultimate fright there upon the bed in the moonlight as I awoke.
It had been a nightmare. I knew that now, and yet I believed. No subconscious fantasies can evolve without stimulation, and my stimuli had come from beneath the sea. I believed.
But when the harsh sun rose, my certainty wavered. By the time I rowed out to the yacht, I was half ashamed to even speak about the dream. And when I started to tell Dena and Don of what had shattered my sleep, I was more than apologetic.
“Sure you weren’t hitting the rum again?” Don asked.
“No, I didn’t touch a drop. But even if it was just a nightmare, I’m convinced there’s something behind it. That business of the lid coming down to decapitate Roberto—”
“You know yourself what it would weigh, and how slowly it would move in water at that depth.”
“Yes, but if something were holding him—”
“What could hold him? Your mysterious monster, made out of black bubbles? The one who lives inside the chest?”
“We saw the bubbles, remember?”
“Sure we did. And we saw the fish that made them, churning up the silt down there in the crevice.” Don wiped his forehead with a hairy arm. “Personally, I think you cooked up this yarn because you’d like to chicken out of making a dive with me. You were pretty shook up yesterday, weren’t you? Sure you were.”
“Leave him alone,” Dena said. “The poor guy almost drowned. If he doesn’t want to go back down, I don’t blame him.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Then come on,” Don snapped, “Juan has our gear laid out. The sooner we get started, the better.”
We stripped down to our trunks, and I followed the teddy-bear over to the rail in silence. Juan helped us into our equipment. And then it was time to lower ourselves along the shot-line, lower ourselves into the drowned domain of darkness and seek what waited there . . .
Don reached the bottom before me. Spear in hand, he jackknifed through the gloom in the direction of the crevice, then waved a flipper to urge me forward.
The fish did not swim here today, and we could see the ribs of the skeleton-ship wavering weirdly in the water. And Don swam between them, then lowered himself to the sand as he groped forward, digging his spear into the bulky buried outline of a shape set against the side of the rocks. Suddenly he flung up a flipper again, gesturing impatiently as I held back. The spear scraped over the encrustations and bubbles rose.
Then I saw the glint and hurried forward. He had found something—it was the altar!
There was no way of determining if it had fallen flatly or upended itself in the sand—in either case it was huge; far larger than I’d expected. And its surface, beneath the silt, was hammered, gleaming gold. I peered into Don’s face, beneath the goggles, and read the exultation in his eyes.
We’d found what we were looking for.
The cost of rigging up a winch and windlass to raise it from the depths would be tremendous, but the reward was worth the effort. This was a prize surpassing the dreams of any treasure-seeker. And there was still the chest—
Again, it was Don who moved forward, deeper into the debris centered between the ribs of the hulk. He stooped and groped and probed, then rounded a rocky outcropping in the wall of the crevice and literally stumbled across the rectangular lid of the great chest sunken in the sands.
I was beginning to feel faint. Part of it was residual fear, of course, but most of it was sheer excitement at the realization of our discovery.
&n
bsp; Whatever the cause, I was conscious of a growing giddiness, and I moved back, not wanting to stray too far away from the shot-line. Don waved at me, but I shook my head and continued to retreat. Only when I saw the line slanting before me did I halt and gaze off into the crevice.
Don had stooped over the imbedded outline of the lid and now he was digging at it with his spear. I remembered his own remarks about the weight of the water and knew his puny efforts would be futile; perhaps he was beginning to suffer from nitrogen narcosis too.
But no, his attempts were not useless! Because even as I watched, the lid was rising. Slowly, very slowly, and the sand began to slant and shift beneath the spear. And now I could see an opening inch up, and there was a blackness and a bubbling. It was like the blackness and the bubbling I’d encountered yesterday, during my dive, but there were no fish about to churn the silt. Yet the lid continued to rise, and the darkness flowed forth.
The darkness flowed forth, just as it had in my dream.
And then Don was backing away, and he flailed the spear before him; flailed frantically at the faces that seethed and surged in shapeless shadows. And out of the faces emerged the feelers, coils of twisting tentacles that shrouded him in smoke. I thought of the legends of the huge djinn imprisoned by Solomon in tiny bottles, and I thought of how lambent gases are compressed in minute containers, and I thought of protoplasm that proliferates instantaneously in response to the blind, insensate forces which spawned life out of the insane vortex of chaos when the world began. But this was not djinn or gas or protoplasm; it was nightmare. Black nightmare, boiling out of a golden chest at the bottom of the sea, black nightmare that emerged now in sudden, shocking solidity; oozing obscenely aloft until it towered titanically amidst its twining tendrils.
And I saw the central coils part to reveal the eyes, the eyes which were like mouths—which were mouths, because they were swallowing Don. The coils whipped him aloft, forced him against the openings, and the lid-lips came down. I could see Don’s legs threshing in a blur of bubbles; one of his flippers had come off.
I forced myself forward, spear in hand. But the chest was closing; the tentacles were forcing it down from within. The black, threshing mass disappeared, carrying the white mass of Don’s body with it, and the lid clanged shut. Behind it floated a mass of bubbles, a tangle of reddish skeins, something small and curiously white. Don’s foot, sheared off at the ankle by the closing lid—
I blacked out.
Half an hour later I found myself gasping and retching on the deck in the warm sunlight. I had no memory of how I came to the surface; apparently Juan had seen me ascend and came down to hold me through the decompression stages. He bent over me, and his brown face was almost as pale as Dena’s.
I told them about Don.
In Dena’s face I could read only doubt and incredulity, plus a strange compassion. But Juan nodded, slowly.
“We must leave this place,” he said.
I shook my head. “But you can’t leave now—there’s the gold, it’s really down there, and it’s worth a fortune—”
“What is gold to a dead man?” he murmured. “We will go back to Barbados.”
“Wait!” I begged. “We’ve got to think things over. Dena, you understand—”
“Yes.” She turned to Juan. “We can’t decide anything now. Can’t you see he’s exhausted? Look, let me take him ashore. Tomorrow we can decide what must be done. There’s no sense talking any more. And no reason to get all excited over hallucinations.”
“Hallucinations!” I sat up, shaking.
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Never mind. We’ll discuss it later, when you’re rested. Come on, I’ll go in with you. Juan can have one of the men row us ashore.”
I was silent. It took all my strength to get over the side and into the rowboat. When we landed about a mile down from the Cove, Dena and the crewman helped me walk up the steep, winding path which led to the old house I occupied on the hill. Looking down, I could see the yacht riding out there on the waters, silhouetted against the sunset.
The crewman went back, but Dena stayed. My serving couple, Felipe and Alicia, prepared a meal for us. Then I sent them away. The food and a few drinks restored me. By the time darkness came I was ready to talk. And Dena was ready to listen.
We sat on the terrace outside the house. The sky was bright, and I had the feeling that, if I wished, I could reach out and grasp the moon and the stars. But I was content merely to sit there and watch the play of moonlight and starlight in Dena’s golden hair.
Dena filled our glasses and sank back.
“All right,” she said. “What really happened down there?”
I stared out at the water. “But I already told you.”
“We’re alone now. You aren’t talking for Juan’s benefit, or the crew’s.”
“I realize that.”
She sipped her drink. “Can’t you remember? Was it really all hallucination?”
I leaned forward. “Dena, none of it was hallucination. It happened just the way I told you. We found the treasure. And that creature down there. I dreamed about it, but it’s real, it actually exists. Maybe it’s not the only one, either—what about all these legends of sea serpents and monsters? What happened to the crew of the Marie Celeste? I’ve read about such things on land, too; jungle villages, whole primitive civilizations which had been apparently destroyed instantaneously without warning. Suppose there are life forms we know nothing about, spawned when the earth was young and still surviving—or spawned even before the earth evolved? What about the beings that might have come here from the stars, the alien entities that never die? Those legends—”
“Legends!” Dena brushed the hair back from her forehead, frowning. “I’m interested in the truth.”
“But I’m trying to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain.” She stared at me levelly. “I know what happened. You and Don went down to the wreck. You found the altar, perhaps you even found the chest. And they were gold, all right.”
“Yes. I wasn’t lying. Those objects would be worth a fortune if we raised them.”
“Of course. You thought about that, didn’t you? And you thought how wonderful it would be to have that fortune, keep it for yourself. So you got hold of Don’s spear, and you killed him. And then you came back up with your crazy story about the monster, knowing it would frighten Juan and the others, keep them from going down to look. Now you’ll wait until they go, get your own crew, and salvage the treasure. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it? You killed Don.”
“No.”
She came closer, her voice low. “I understand. It wasn’t just for the sake of the money, was it? You wanted me. You knew you’d have to get Don out of the way, first. And you remembered what I said, about not having the guts. So it’s my fault, too. I’m not afraid to face the truth—I’m partly responsible.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do. I’m saying that I’m sorry, but it’s happened now and I can live with it. We can both live with it. We will get the treasure together. You and I. And then, if you still want me—”
Then she was in my arms and I looked down at my tarnished angel, at the golden toy, mine now for the taking. And I smiled, and I pushed her away.
“It’s too late. I don’t want you. Now, or ever.”
“I’m not good enough for you any more, is that it?” She stood up quickly. “Now that you know about the gold, you think you can keep it all for yourself and you won’t need me because you can buy other women.”
“I don’t need you. And I don’t need other women any more, either.”
“Oh, yes you do! You need me all right! Because all I have to do is go to that precious mayor of yours here on the island and tell him who murdered Don.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “We’ll see what happens when he tries to pit himself against a god. For it is a god, you know. Stronger and stranger than any entity of Earth.”
&nb
sp; Dena stepped back, still staring. “You’re crazy,” she whispered. “That’s it. You’ve gone crazy.”
“Because I don’t want you as a woman any more? Because I’m through with sentimental day-dreams about teddy-bears and angels? Oh, no, Dena. I’m not crazy. I was crazy, perhaps, until I gazed on the ultimate realities. What I saw was not pretty, but its truth transcends terror. I’ve gazed on something far more powerful than the petty forces that rule our little lives and our little lusts. There is a power stronger than all earthly desire, a hunger greater than all earthly hunger. And when I saw it today, when I recognized it down there, I did the only thing a mortal may do. I bowed down and worshipped, do you hear, Dena? I remember now what happened after Don died. I sank to my knees on the ocean floor and I worshipped!” I rose and faced her. “And then I went over to the chest and I opened the lid. I was not afraid any longer, because I knew it was aware of my emotions. I could realize that. And I could release it without harm, because it understood I meant to serve it. Dena, I opened the lid!”