Arkham International: Call of the Cursed Sea – Chapter Seven: Scapa Flow

CHAPTER SEVEN: SCAPA FLOW

by Josh Reynolds

The barrow was old. A lump of earth, rising like a serpent’s undulation across the rocky ground of the Scapa headland. It might have been something once, or nothing at all. Aboveground, it was… innocuous. Unremarkable. There were more interesting earthworks scattered nearby. The sea was close enough to taste salt in the air. Birds wound in and out of an aerial dance overhead, their cries echoing for miles in all directions. But that was above; what was going on under it?

Roland Banks studied the grassy hill with some skepticism. “This is it, then?” He eased his hiking pack off as he spoke. They’d taken the train from Kirkwall, and walked the rest of the way, pretending to be nothing more than simple ramblers. They’d even dressed for the part, much to Roland’s chagrin. He felt uncomfortable in anything less than a suit.

“So Pickell and I determined, yes,” Nkosi Mabati said, looking up from the map he and Trish Scarborough were studying. “This is the first time I’m seeing it myself. I admit, it doesn’t look like much. Then, such places rarely do.”

“You can say that again,” Trish said. “All of his notes – at least those we have – point to him coming here. What I still can’t figure is why he did so himself.”

“Ambitious, perhaps.” Mabati folded the map and slid it into his coat. “He didn’t strike me as such, but still waters can run deep.”

“Or maybe he didn’t trust you,” Roland said. He lit a cigarette. “Maybe he thought the British government shouldn’t have first crack at whatever is in there.”

Monsters. Monsters were what was in there. He could feel it. The air tasted the same as it had in Innsmouth, as if the land itself were sick. Cursed by whatever was hiding below.

Mabati frowned. “As it happens, I agree. That’s why I alerted the Foundation to his disappearance in the first place. If the Deep Ones are involved, we can’t trust anyone else – especially not our respective governments, and certainly not the local authorities. These creatures have a way of… insinuating themselves into human society. They are parasites, burrowing in and hiding until the time comes to frenzy forth on a red tide.”

“Poetic,” Roland said. “Maybe we should wait for backup.” He didn’t really mean it. Backup was too far away to do any good, if Mabati was right. And he’d never known Mabati to be wrong. The attack on the ferry had proved that much. The Deep Ones knew that the Foundation was on to them now, and like every other lowlife he’d encountered in his career, they were intent on covering their tracks by any means necessary.

“No time and you know it,” Trish said. “If something is going on under Scapa Flow, we need to find it and put a stop to it, post-haste.” She smiled. “The only real question is, who goes first?”

“Me,” Roland said, with a sigh. He drew his sidearm and checked it. It was only thanks to Trish that their weapons hadn’t been confiscated when the ferry reached St. Margaret’s Hope. It had taken some quick talking to convince the local constabulary that it was all a misunderstanding – aided by the lack of a body, hastily dumped overboard by Roland before the crew arrived to investigate. It didn’t sit well with him, doing that, but it had been necessary. Too many questions led to delays and Mabati was convinced that things were building to a head. If they were going to do something, it had to be quick. “Everyone have their flashlights?”

“My torch, you mean?” Mabati asked, wryly.

“I don’t care what you call it. I care that you have it.”

Mabati retrieved his flashlight from his bag and brandished it. “Satisfied?”

Roland grunted and looked at Trish. She turned her flashlight on and aimed it at his face. In addition to her flashlight and sidearm, Trish had a bulky twin-lens reflex camera she’d procured before they’d set sail for Southampton, on the theory that they might need some evidence of their findings.

Besides that, both of them carried the standard wards employed by all Foundation field agents. Roland wasn’t certain what they did, exactly, but he was glad to have it, regardless. Anything to even the odds a bit.

Mabati was unarmed, or maybe armed to the teeth, it was hard to tell with him. He’d given a good account of himself on the ferry, but Roland could tell it had almost exhausted him. Roland had come to understand a bit about magic, albeit grudgingly; it had its limits. It could do a lot, but not everything. And it wasn’t reliable.

Roland pushed the thought aside. “Do we know where the entrance is?” he asked.

Mabati nodded. “Up top somewhere, or so my reading suggested. A hidden opening.”

Roland shook his head. “There’s always a hidden opening, or a secret door. Give me a speakeasy hidden behind a wall any day.” He started up the slope of the tumulus and the others followed. Trish was unusually quiet, for her. Roland wondered what she was thinking but didn’t even consider asking. Trish wasn’t one for straight answers.

It didn’t take long to get to the top. Nor did it take long to find the opening. In fact, it was obvious: a large, round hole in the top of the tumulus. A heavy stone that might once have covered it sat nearby. The surface of the stone was covered in strange, runic markings that Roland didn’t recognize. Mabati seemed to, however.

“These are not proper runes – or, rather, not the sort we are familiar with.”

“Do you know what they say?” Trish asked, taking a picture of the stone.

“It is a warning. And an invitation.” He looked around. “How did he manage to open it by himself? Pickell was not exactly a strapping fellow.”

“Prybar, maybe.” Roland crouched and looked down into the opening. The glow of his flashlight pierced the gloom, illuminating a set of narrow, slab steps carved into the rock. “Well, I guess that’s how he got down there.”

“Yes. How handy,” Mabati said. “But why leave it open?”

Trish looked down into the hole. “Because they don’t care. Because it’s too late to stop whatever is going on down there. Or maybe they just think it is.”

Mabati ran a hand over his bald pate. “Perhaps you were right, a moment ago. Maybe we should wait for reinforcements of some variety. If the Deep Ones are still down there, it will not go well for us, to say the least.”

“You can stay up here if you like,” Roland said, and meant it. “But if Pickell is down there, it’s our job to find him. And deal with whatever else might be present.”

Mabati studied him for a moment and then smiled. “There is nowhere else I would rather be, my friend.” He hesitated and then clapped Roland on the shoulder. Roland nodded and looked at Trish.

“What about you?”

Trish frowned. “What about me?” Before he could reply, she took a photograph of him. “Stop wasting time, Roland. Let’s get down there before someone comes up to meet us.”

Roland nodded and, flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other, started the descent. The steps were slick and the walls to either side were coated in the sort of slime you might see after a particularly nasty low tide. There were glyphs carved into the walls, and Mabati murmured something about marks of the Sathlattae, but Roland didn’t pause to ask him what that meant. Instead, he concentrated on keeping his footing. One slip, and he’d go headfirst down into the dark. Had that been what happened to Pickell?

He could hear water below and somewhere ahead. Not a slow drip-drip, but a steady rumble. The echo of the sea, pressing against the headland. He wondered who had carved these steps, so long ago. Some Viking artisan maybe, or perhaps they were even older. Mabati probably knew or could make a good guess. Roland pushed the thought aside and tried to concentrate on the descent. Even so, his surroundings impinged on his thoughts.

It was as if someone had ripped the earth open and then covered it back. Sowing a seed, he thought. His grandparents had been farmers. He knew that if you wanted something to grow, you planted it deep in good soil. So what had been planted here? What was waiting for them below? And why did it smell like the sea?

Roland paused. He heard a wet, slapping sound from somewhere ahead. He gestured to Trish and Mabati, and they all turned off their flashlights. The sounds paused, as if their creator had noticed. Then, they recommenced and swiftly faded away.

Roland counted to ten and turned his light back on. There was a crude landing directly below, just visible past the edges of a roughhewn aperture. A fetid odor wafted through, reaching up towards them. Like decaying vegetable matter, or sour milk. And light, though what sort of light, he couldn’t say. Not electrical, or the waver of open flame. Something else – something that made his skin crawl to witness it.

He reached the landing a moment later and risked a look. It was more like a plateau than a simple ledge, and from the entrance he could make out several other openings, like boreholes in the stony innards of the shore. The light was coming from the roof overhead; shimmering globules of some unknown matter hung in bunches like grapes, giving off a sickly radiance that painted the cavern in hues of miasmatic green.

Roland turned off his flashlight. The walls were not natural; they had been carved at some point, though possibly not by human hands. The thought chilled him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when Trish and Mabati appeared. Mabati looked around him in equal parts wonder and repugnance. “We stand on the precipice of a place no human eye has seen,” he said, softly. “A tumor in the earth, gestating for eons out of mind.”

“Like Innsmouth,” Roland said, recalling those stinking, tangled streets despite himself. Mabati shook his head.

“Older by far, my friend. Innsmouth was a recent colony, in comparison.”

“Good to know,” Trish said, snapping shots with her camera. She paused. “Still no sign of Pickell, though. Or anyone else for that matter.”

Mabati frowned and continued his examination of the walls. “The Deep Ones are water-breathers. This place is more akin to a– a waystation.”

“A more accurate term might be threshold,” a man’s voice interjected.

Roland turned, and his light caught a disheveled figure standing at the mouth of one of the apertures. The newcomer threw up a hand to shield himself from the light. He looked like ten miles of bad road. His clothing was torn and muddy, and contusions covered his skin, giving it a mottled hue. Roland kept the light on him.

“Identify yourself,” he barked.

The man lowered his hand – a hand that struck Roland as being malformed in some way, though he couldn’t say how – and revealed wide, flaccid features that reminded Roland of the gunman from the ferry. Mabati hissed in surprise. “Pickell!”

“Hello, Nkosi,” Pickell croaked. His eyes were bulbous and shone eerily, reflecting the light like those of some deep-sea fish. His mouth was too wide and oddly shaped. And were those teeth protruding from behind his lips? Roland raised his weapon, but Mabati caught his wrist.

“No. Look.”

Roland glanced around. Eyes shone in the depths of the apertures around them. He could make out hunched forms sidling closer. Roland slowly lowered his weapon. “So it was a trap,” he said.

Pickell spread his hands. “Not for you.”

“Me,” Mabati said, softly.

“No,” Pickell said, with a wet chuckle. “As I was bait for you, you are bait for another.” He extended his hand. “Now, come.”

Trish raised her camera. “Hey, Pickell! Smile!” The flash was brighter than the rest, blinding. Pickell yelped and the Deep Ones shrieked as the light tore at their sensitive eyes. Trish hurled the camera at Pickell and turned to Roland and Mabati.

“What are you waiting for? Run!”

Read or listen to more of Arkham International Season Two: Call of the Cursed Sea.

Read or listen to Arkham International Season One: Shadow of the Drowned City.