Byron Craft [Craft - Shoggoth

SHOGGOTH

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Rev. 4

Copyright 2016, United States Library of Congress; Shoggoth

www.ByronCraftBooks.com

Artwork by Eric Lofgren; www.ericlofgren.net

ISBN-13: 978-1533451309

ISBN-10: 1533451303

DEDICATION

To my lovely wife, Marcia and my devoted dog Sherlock for putting up with me during my days of seclusion while writing this book

SHOGGOTH

CHAPTER 1

CONSCRIPTION

Trihls long green tendril inched along the shelf. The slender appendage wormed its way past stacks of bulky file drawers. After carefully selecting the correct bio-number in one stack, a stud moved, and a ready light winked. The lower lobe of Trihls third brain projected the combination, and the fluid lock in one of the drawers gurgled briefly, raising and lowering the levels in its five chambers to their prescribed heights. Within the span of a few seconds a shiny metal box slid out of a narrow recess, unlatched, and noiselessly swung its top open.

Trihl would have smiled if Trihl had something to smile with, but the wooden expression on the big Kroogs face was indigenous to their race. While Kroogs had an advanced level of multiple brains, colossal size, and strength, unparalleled dexterity of tentacles, tendrils, and antennae, they lacked any facial muscles. Nevertheless, there was a warmth inside the huge conical body that radiated joy because Trihl was about to come full circle.

Trihl had completed the Kroog conscription that all of their species must commit to and now the journey of millenniums lies ahead.

Excitement shot through Trihl like a bolt of electricity. It was doubly exciting because not only was Trihl now free to travel through time visiting the lives of future ages, but Trihls contribution to the Kroogian race had been equally as magnificent.

Trihl had spent three-fifths of a pentad developing the new life form, and Trihl knew that the outcome of this discovery would radically change the lives of all Kroogs in the galaxy, this was Trihls conscription.

Trihl placed the fifteen sealed tubes of proto-cells in the box where they would be preserved, if need be, for centuries. If ever there was a need to call up any one of these original formulas they would be here, safe in stasis.

Enthusiastic about the adventure that lay ahead, Trihl quickly gave the locking command. The lid snapped shut from a heavy, invisible force and the stasis box slammed back into its recess. The noise echoed within the library chamber and down the granite hallway. That echo, Trihl thought, with a touch of cosmic irony, may reach farther than my travels; only time will tell.

CHAPTER 2

FEEDING TIME

Isaac looked around the damp room; it was almost time. Charlie Youngblood will be here soon. That Narraganset had an uncanny sense of time. Although he never carried a watch, he can tell you the time of day within a couple of minutes of accuracy.

Isaac was nervous. He allowed his mind to wander, anything rather than to think of feeding that thing behind the door. More and more its ingesting of its food became repulsive to him.

He recalled when he first came to the area. The desolation was unbearable. It still was. It took almost eleven months to travel the distance by wagon train, and he had almost died that first year of influenza. Another year followed in which the tunnels were located, and his house could be built over the site.

Isaacs eyes followed the hieroglyphics along the curved walls of the subterranean room. And here I have been these past seven years; he brooded, painfully deciphering the history of a lost age.

Isaac forced his attention to a ledger on the writing desk, dipping a feather-quill pen in an ink well he made an entry on page fifty-seven. Printed across the top of the page in bold letters was the word LIVESTOCK. Below, written in longhand, were the words: 6 cows, 2 sheep. Below this, Isaac wrote the amount of food needed increases with each feeding.

It would not be so bad if it ate like any one of Gods creatures, but it did not. It... absorbed its food, he decided. It drank its painfully mewling prey slowly, savoring each moment of the animals agony.

Isaac was sure the thing savored its food. He had a sickening feeling in his stomach. He always felt that way when it neared feeding time. He remembered when they first started to feed it. It was small then.

Isaac used to observe the terrible process with a mixture of horror and scientific curiosity. Then it started to grow, it got bigger, and its needs grew along with it. It would only feed on living things; nothing else would satisfy its lust. Small game was enough at first; jackrabbits, squirrels, prairie dogs, even lizards, and mice. It did not discriminate as long as its dinner was alive.

Soon its needs outgrew prairie dogs and mice. It ate much larger animals now, mainly cattle and sheep, occasionally an old Mustang if one could be caught, and on one occasion, a pig. Isaac cursed God for that day. The agonized ululations emanating from that pig were blood curdling and unforgettable.

He had bought it that morning from a Yuma Indian on the outskirts of Darwin. He had paid an exorbitant price for the two-hundred-fifty-pound sow, but livestock was scarce that spring. An early and harsh winter the previous year had delayed the cattle drives from west Texas and New Mexico, and the surrounding desert offered very little. He could have purchased a dairy cow from one of the locals, but they were beginning to get suspicious.

Charlie Youngblood had told Isaac that he had heard talk in Darwin centering on the abnormal amounts of livestock they required for a household that consisted of only Isaac and two servants. The last thing Isaac needed was a group of superstitious and excitable townspeople bursting in on his studies.

He had done his best to keep a low profile, staying at home as much as possible, only venturing out when it was absolutely necessary. When he did go into town, he was always cordial to everyone he met, but never lingered. If asked, he said he was an archeologist studying the Indian artifacts and petroglyphs that could be found in and around the Coso Range.

He had also done his best to keep the noise down when it was hungry. At these times, they would blanket the door to the tunnel with bags filled with sand to muffle the sounds it made followed by a careful search above ground for any fissures or old volcanic vents that may have opened on the desert floor with the shifting of sand. A vent, if opened into one of the tunnels below, could allow the noise to be heard for miles.

He was afraid that they would be discovered when the pig started to squeal; that was, he recalled with a shudder, the worst day of his life. The poor animal uttered a sharp, shrill, prolonged cry when the thing latched on to it. The sow did not see the creature at first. It grabbed the pig from behind and pulled her squealing and screaming into its jelly-like mass. The creature made sucking, slurping sounds. It was quick, deadly quick. The sow was stuck fast, rooted to the flesh of the thing.