Samurai and Other Stories by William Meikle Page B

ascertain the form of my opponent, at the same time it was questioning me.
    I am not the only inquisitor here.  
    And there was something else, something I am loath to relate here lest it is discovered and my sanity is brought into question. I only caught but a fleeting glimpse, just as the lid of the lead casket dropped back into place, but it was unmistakable. As the black thing oozed to the bottom of the box a single eye, pale and smooth as a duck’s egg, opened... and blinked.

    From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo, 29th May 1535

    Calamity has overtaken us, as I feared it might.  
    The thing has plagued our dreams since the start, and the crew has been without sleep for many days. There have been mutterings of mutiny since the beginning of the month, and last night matters came to a head. Three crewmen took it upon themselves to rid us of our tormentor.  
    At least, they tried.  
    Their screams in the dark alerted me to their plight and I was first to enter the hold. It is hard to describe the fear that gripped me as I saw the carnage the thing had wrought on my men. It was obvious that they had lifted the casket, probably intending to throw it overboard. But someone had dropped their end—that much is also obvious from the dent in the leftmost edge. I can only surmise that the jolt opened the casket—and let the beast out.
    What did not need conjecture was the fate of the men after that.  
    The black ooze lay over the bodies like a wet blanket—one that seethed and roiled as if boiling all across the surface. Pustules burst with obscene wet pops and flesh melted from bone even as the men screamed and writhed in agony.  
    Their pain did not last long. All too soon the blackness seeped in and through them until even their very bones were liquefied and, with the most hideous moist sucking, drank up by the beast, which was now three times larger than previously. It opened itself out, like a black crow spreading its wings, the tips touching each side of the hold walls.  
    All along the inside surface of the wings wet mouths opened, and the air echoed with a plaintive high whistling in which words might be heard if you had the imagination to listen.
    Tekeli-Li. Tekeli-Li.
    My every instinct told me to turn and flee. But there was nowhere to escape to except the sea itself, and that was a choice no sailor would make. Instead I stood my ground while Massa, stout coxswain that he is, brought forth some firebrands. Only then did the thing seem to cower and retreat, and only then did I remember the circles of burning oil which we had crossed on entering the black temple in the jungle.
    I called for a barrel of pitch and tried to hold the beast at bay with a brand until aid might arrive. My adversary had ideas of its own. Now that it was free of the casket its powers had increased. It probed at my mind, searching for my weaknesses, taunting me with my dreams. I saw things no man should have to see as I was shown the atrocities that had been committed in this thing’s name by the savages in the temple.  
    The grip on my mind grew stronger.
    I saw vast plains of snow and ice where black things slumped amid tumbled ruins of long dead cities.
    My head swam, and the walls of the hold melted and ran. The firebrand in my hand seemed to recede into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness.  
    A tide took me, a swell that lifted and transported me, faster than thought, to the green twilight of ocean depths far distant.
    I realized I was not alone. We floated, mere shadows now, scores—nay, tens of scores of us, in that cold silent sea. I was aware that other sailors were nearby, but I had no thought for aught but the rhythm, the dance. Far below us, cyclopean ruins shone dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumbled in a non-Euclidean geometry that confused the eye and brooked no close