No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) Read Free Page A

that
followed set them to pulling at their reins, but they were knotted too tightly
and the old leather refused to break as it came out of the mist towards them.
     

     

So
close, the bird was truly monstrous.
     

Otherwhere
     
     
     
    (Manuscript recovered by the
whale ship Fury , arctic sea, 1845)
     
    Screams
from above reached sickbay, and I found Borr raving up above, covering the deck
with bloody, smeared smiles. Three others held him as I opened my bag; his
screams wound down to watery gurgles.
    When I got
him into sickbay later, I asked, knowing he wouldn’t live through the night, if
there was anyone I should write to for him. We were passing into the arctic
places and it might be some time before we could next put into port.
     
    A certain
kind of man may find himself on a ship and he will bring with him a certain
kind of madness. In many ways, it’s looked for. I can’t say I am any different.
I’m the doctor onboard, though not one onshore.
    Think of
the kinds of frustrations you would encounter in such a place. It’s the sort of
environment where everything can be taken as a slight — someone talks too
loudly, or a bad joke or annoying laugh follows you about in your head all day
until you have the fellow’s eyes out over cards the same night.
    Everyone
exists at the point of violence, and there are few real things one can do to
pass the time. Drinking yourself blind and gambling are the two chief
activities, as well as fishing, but precious little else. Stranger men still
were the ones who took up this last with enthusiasm. They weren’t really
fishing; the water was far too deep to catch anything. They just stood at the
rail with a rod in their hands, smiling at the ocean.
    There were
times when the sea decided to purge itself of something; something without eyes
or tentacles, or something like a sphincter with a maw of needle teeth. When
these things were offered up by the sea, these men found themselves engaged in
a second’s violent murder, still smiling all the time.
    Oft times
I would take the creatures and what remained of them before they could cast
them back to the depths. For my part, there was a certain medical curiosity.
    Other
times, they wouldn’t cast them to the waves below, but into a cauldron or pot
they set up on deck. They did not eat them, but dropped them into the boiling
water only to see them change, or not. The cauldron’s own hunger for their
offerings reflected the hunger each of them felt.
    In truth,
it was marked on all of our faces.
     
    Ice
becomes a fact of life when travelling in northern climes hunting for whales.
It gets into your lungs, your skin; smell and pain become things you forget you
had.
    If strange
men take to life onboard a ship, stranger women take to life in such ports as
there are in the arctic places. There were always enough to keep us warm. A
mixed bunch for sure: Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Poles, with the odd
Scandinavian blonde thrown in here and there. None of the women in these places
ever asked, “How much?” The exchange was only of heat and maybe some pleasure
to relieve the boredom of daily life.
    We came
into one such port. It was the sort of place where fathers might lie with
daughters in winter — where rats amounted to the town watch. We heard a story
in what served as tavern, brothel, and hotel.
    “There was
a ship goin’ north, much as you boys are,” the old duffer said.
    As long as
we kept his cup filled, he was content to talk while we waited for our turn
upstairs.
    Not that I
was taking part, but where the crew goes, it’s advisable for the doctor to follow.
    “I’stead
of findin’ whales, what they got was ice, and they was locked in for the
winter.” He smiled, displaying a mouth mostly empty, save for a few stone-like
teeth. “There was seals close by, so it weren’t so bad as all ‘at. They wasn’t
goin’ to starve or nothing…naw, it was boredom what started to thin their
faces.” He paused as a