Black Wings III - New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror Read online

  We took photos of the main attraction, mythical monsters carved in wood and painted in gaudy colors, scattered in seeming disorder in the last temple we visited. Among these were smaller human figures, all suffering the tortures of the damned.

  Back in the lower town, we encountered a swarm of curious children. The toddlers wore the Chinese equivalent of a diaper—loose-fitting clothes with a slit at the bottom. One article Jan had read before the trip, she remarked, stated that sales of Pampers had been doubling every year since 1995 in China, though this growth was largely confined to the cities.

  At the buffet dinner that evening on the Nixon, we again sat with Fred and Jean. The two wives spoke endlessly about adoption, while I did my best to chat with Fred, an investment banker and golf enthusiast with whom I could find little in common. He did, though, crack a smile when I recounted how the Chinese travel agent in San Francisco forced me to surrender my rights to free speech.

  It was a relief when the meal finally ended and we made our way to the lounge deck, where about a dozen of us Americans gathered in a corner to hear Tim tell us about the big dam project.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said from his over-stuffed chair in a slurred voice that made me wonder if he’d imbibed too much Chinese champagne. “So what can I tell you about the Three River Gorges Dam? First, it will be by far the largest ever built, three times larger than Hoover Dam. Along with the Great Wall, it will be the only manmade structure visible from space.”

  The pros and cons boiled down to this: The benefits started with flood control. Thousands drowned each year in the spring torrents. Navigation was next on the list. Utilizing a series of enormous locks, ocean-going ships would be able to pass upriver as far as Chongqing. The hinterlands would be opened to trade. Finally, the dam would produce enough power to significantly reduce dependence on coal. Chinese cities would at last be smoke free—or close enough to it.

  And the price? Some 1.3 million people would have to be resettled. The building of new cities to house them all could scarcely keep pace with the timetable for the dam’s completion. Invaluable archeological sites would be lost. The ecological consequences could be catastrophic. No one had ever attempted to alter Nature on such a vast scale before.

  “Believe me, this is no Communist boondoggle,” Tim concluded. “The idea goes back at least to Sun Yat-Sen and the founding of the Chinese Republic.”

  After throwing the meeting open to discussion, Tim answered a few predictable questions. Then someone asked whether he thought the project was a good or a bad idea.

  “I…I just hope it works,” he replied, then he stumbled to his feet, muttered good night, and made a hasty exit.

  Later, while Jan snored away in her narrow bunk, I got up for a walk. I feared it would be hours before sleep came. Outside, on the top deck where we’d watched the bustle of the Chongqing waterfront that morning, all was blackness. Long stretches of the shore of the mighty Yangtze were empty, devoid of any sign of humanity. The only noise was the steady thrum of the Nixon‘s diesel engines.

  As my eyes adjusted to the faint glow cast by the running light on the bridge, I could see the silhouette of another person standing at the starboard rail. I couldn’t be certain, but for a moment it appeared as if this person was attempting to lift a leg over the rail.

  “Hello there!” I called above the engines. The figure paused. The white of his starched uniform was faintly luminous. As I moved closer, I realized it was Tim, our tour director. I joined him at the rail.

  “What are you doing here? You should be sleeping,” he said, his voice sounding even more slurred than earlier. Maybe he’d had a nightcap or two after leaving the group.

  “I can’t sleep. I have insomnia, which gets much worse when I travel,” I said.

  “I don’t sleep much these days either.”

  “Why not?”

  The wind came up at this point, and I had to repeat the question. Tim didn’t say anything at first, and it was too dark to make out his features. Finally, he said:

  “Ever hear of Innsmouth? Innsmouth, Massachusetts?”

  “No, I’m from California. I’ve never been to New England.”

  “I’m from the Boston area. I grew up on the North Shore, in a town not far from Innsmouth.” He made it sound like an unpleasant place.

  “What’s wrong with Innsmouth?”

  “Not much now, not since the renovation of the waterfront and the dredging of the harbor during World War II. But before then…”

  “Yes?”

  “Before then, in the 1920s, it was a place hardly anybody would want to set foot in. It was all rundown, practically deserted. Then they started moving in…”

  “Who’s they?”

  “You might say they were…undesirable aliens. Real nasty folk. My mom’s dad was a federal marshal based in Boston. When he was in his cups, he used to hint of a hush-hush government operation to get rid of these…people. He was sworn never to tell. But occasionally he’d let something slip. It made an impression on me as a kid.

  “After college, soon after the Commies decided capitalism wasn’t evil, I moved to China. A budding Sinologist I was. It took years, but once I could really understand the spoken language, I started to hear rumors. Rumors that sounded a lot like my granddad’s queer tales. Of outsiders that wanted to expand their presence in the world’s fastest growing economy.”

  “Where do these outsiders come from?” I asked.

  “The South Seas in the Pacific, apparently. And when I say the South Seas I don’t mean the islands as such.”

  The wind came up, and I felt a definite chill. It was so much cooler on the river than in the hot, dusty cities.

  “Have you ever met one of these outsiders, as you call them?”

  Tim’s delayed answer was lost in the wind. I had to ask again, and must have missed the first part of it.

  “…they’ve been in China a long, long time, on a small scale. Those of mixed blood live on land for extended periods, though they have to keep close to where it’s wet. God forbid that a foreigner like you or me should meet one. Of course, Westerners, until recently, have never come to China in big numbers, certainly not to the more remote regions. I’ve heard stories, though, of missionaries and other do-gooders who strayed too far off the beaten path. China has been in such violent turmoil for most of the century, people didn’t remark much on such disappearances.”

  Now I was definitely feeling uncomfortable, and it wasn’t from the wind either.

  “They were thwarted in New England seventy years ago, but they’re trying again, closer to home, now that times are more stable and prosperous. I didn’t mention another benefit of the Three River Gorges Dam. Its vast lake will serve as a breeding ground…”

  Tim stopped, as if listening for something out on the water. But there was only the wind and the dull rumbling of the ship’s engine. Again, I lost what he was saying.

  “…must think I’m crazy. Why should you believe a word of what I’m telling you? I didn’t believe any of it myself, until the day before the cruise, when I happened to pass by Mr. Ty’s office a lot earlier than usual. The door was ajar and some instinctive sense made me stop. He was talking to someone wearing a hood, who spoke in a guttural language that wasn’t any Chinese dialect I’d ever heard. Then I saw one of the hands, more like a scaly claw….The worst thing was, from the thing’s tone, it seemed to be the boss, telling Mr. Ty what to do.”

  Tim may have babbled on some more, but I was no longer paying attention. I was too busy trying to rationalize to myself what I was hearing, assuming the guy was at least half sane and not totally deluded. Maybe Mr. Ty’s visitor suffered from some terrible skin disease endemic to the Far East.

  “… I need to talk to you some more,” Tim was saying when I tuned in again. “Can we meet at the same place and time tomorrow night? It’s risky, but I’ve learned something else lately, about a specific threat. I have to tell someone I can trust—”


  Tim paused, as if listening again to something out on the river, then he was gone. I may have heard the thud of a door above the wind. I stayed alone in the dark only a minute or so before hustling inside and hastening back to my cabin.

  5

  I woke up in the late morning feeling far from refreshed. Jan was sitting on her bed, watching me.

  “Are you okay, honey?” she asked.

  “Yeah, just my insomnia acting up again. Sorry, sweetie.”

  “You were yelling in your sleep, Phil.”

  “Was I?”

  “Were you having nightmares?”

  “Not that I remember.” In truth, I had only a dim memory of having dreamed, but I could well imagine the effect Tim’s wild story might have had. Yet I hesitated to tell Jan of our conversation. Maybe later, when I’d had a chance to absorb the implications myself, I’d clue in my mate.

  “Since you had such a bad night, I decided to let you sleep late and miss the Qutang Gorge.”

  “These gorges are all alike anyway.”

  “You also missed breakfast. Here, I brought you a peach. You have to hurry and dress if we’re going to make today’s excursion.”

  “I think I’ll skip today’s excursion.”

  I found a chair in a shady spot on one of the lower outer decks. Too tired to read, I watched the monotonous scenery slip by. On occasion, the boat would glide past a humble stone house, typically abandoned and in ruins. Few of the ordinary buildings in China seemed built to last, and I couldn’t help thinking that their submersion would be no great architectural loss. I napped fitfully.

  Over dinner, folks at our table talked about how abnormally high the river was running this summer. If you wanted to see them in their full glory, you didn’t have a lot of time left to plan a return trip. The gorges would be covered by the new reservoir, due to be filled to its interim level of 443 feet above sea level in 2003, one well-informed teacher asserted.

  That night, as Jan and I prepared for bed, I still hesitated to tell her about my unsettling conversation with Tim, perhaps because I had yet to decide whether I was going to meet him as planned. But Jan was soon fast asleep, and I knew that morbid curiosity would ensure my making our clandestine rendezvous.

  Around midnight, I slipped into some clothes and made my way as stealthily as I could to the top deck. There I stood at the forward rail, listening to the low thrum of the boat’s engines, my face turned to the breeze blowing across the bow. After a couple of minutes, a figure emerged from the shadows, in his faintly luminous starched white uniform.

  “I don’t have much time,” Tim announced, sounding no more sober than the night before. “They know I know. At the very least they’re not going to let me out of the country. When you get back to the States, you have to warn people.”

  “Warn people about what?”

  “Of course, this is based on a secondhand report—what I heard from a Chinese doctor in Chongqing, an acquaintance of mine, who’d come back recently from one of the rural orphanages. Do you realize that Americans who come to China to adopt don’t get to choose their own baby? The state simply hands you a child. They tell you nothing about the child’s origins. From what the doctor said, though, you can expect to see a lot more boy babies in the years ahead.”

  “What’s this got to do with the, er, aliens you were telling me about last night?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? They tried the same trick in Innsmouth. It was part of the bargain the Yankee traders made with them on those Pacific Islands before the Civil War. According to my granddad—”

  Suddenly, I realized we weren’t alone. Somebody else had joined us on the deck, the engine noise having masked the sound of any approaching footsteps. I could dimly discern another white uniform, but not identify the wearer. “Carl,” groaned Tim. The Chinese guide said nothing, but even in the dark it was clear who was master and who was servant in their relationship. Without a word, Tim followed Carl down below. A minute later, on the verge of panic from some instinctive fear, I raced back to the safety of my cabin.

  6

  The next morning I work up from terrible dreams—of things swimming in the river or the ocean whose features I dreaded to look at close up. Jan was holding me in her arms and doing her best to console me.

  “What’s wrong, Phil?” she pleaded.

  “More nightmares. My insomnia’s only getting worse.” Again, perhaps out of some perverse subconscious impulse, I resisted confiding in the one person who might have been able to put my worries to rest.

  I pulled myself sufficiently together to appear at breakfast, though I touched little on my plate. I did my best not to think about Tim’s absurd and incoherent claims. Jan and I skipped the morning excursion to a local temple and played Ping Pong instead. The game did much to calm me down, and I was able to eat a full lunch, including pineapple Jell-O with coconut for dessert.

  Meanwhile, the boat had passed through the first part of the Xiling Gorge and docked at the town of Maoping. We crossed a pontoon bridge to shore and boarded a bus for the hour-long ride to the dam construction site.

  We stopped at the Three Gorges visitors’ center on a hilltop more than a mile away from the site, a vast hole in the earth. Because of the brown haze that hung in the air, the view wasn’t all that exciting. Besides, there didn’t seem to be anything going on. Our Chinese guide explained that work was at a temporary halt while foreign engineers checked the progress to date. Those in charge wanted to make sure they got it right. Some of us spent more time studying the model of the finished dam at the visitors’ center than gazing at the scooped-out shell of the real thing.

  After returning to the ship, Jan and I wondered why we remained moored. Normally, the boat resumed cruising down the river soon after a land excursion. We would have to wait until dinner for an answer.

  During the coffee course, Carl stood up and said, in his fluent English, that he had an important announcement. Due to the extraordinary flooding on the river, the boat was unable to pass under the bridge that spanned the Yangtze near the dam site. A chartered bus would take us to Wuhan the next morning instead. The trip would last about five hours. He was terribly sorry. Almost as an afterthought, he added that Tim was indisposed and wouldn’t be joining the farewell festivities after dinner.

  The prospect of a long bus ride the next day wasn’t a happy one, but what choice did we have? I tried not to think of Tim, who for all I knew had been bundled off to a Chinese loony bin while we were all at the dam site.

  7

  We were up at 5:30 for a 7:00 o’clock departure. It was the Fourth of July, and several of the bouncier members of our party initiated some singing of patriotic songs, starting with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as our bus drove out of Maoping on what promised to be a blistering hot day. Suffering from too little sleep, I was in no mood to join the chorus.

  Fortunately, the bus was equipped with comfortable seats and air-conditioning, and we had plenty of bottled water. We drove along an empty two-lane highway through a flat, dry landscape until we came to a small city, where we stopped at a modern hotel. Our Chinese guide, Molly, advised us that this would be our last chance to use a Western-style bathroom before reaching Wuhan.

  We now entered a region of cultivated farmland, greener than the earlier terrain if just as dull. The trip seemed endless, and Molly confirmed that we were running nearly an hour behind schedule. With the uncertain state of my bowels, I doubted I could make it without another bathroom stop.

  A couple of hours later, around noon, we made one. The bus pulled off the road into a parking lot, occupied on one side by an unprepossessing outdoor market. Jan and I first inspected a cluster of tent-covered stalls where a few peasants were buying and selling produce, then crossed the parking area to a one-story, windowless, white-brick building, the public toilet. Guided by the universal signs for female and male, we each entered the appropriate door.

  Despite a gap for ventilation between roof and wall, the stench was overpoweri
ng. In the murky light, scarcely a single tiled surface appeared devoid of filth. With a handkerchief to my nose, I first secured some newsprint-like paper squares from the communal box near the entrance, then picked my way carefully across the slimy floor down the row to the last, gaping stall of a size to accommodate a large farm animal.

  I precariously perched myself on the little pedestal platform above the stinking hole, then dropped my pants. As I squatted in relief, I heard a bubbling, slopping sound nearby, followed by some slobbery grunting.

  Then, just as I was about to tug up my shorts, a vile, fishy odor cut through the pervasive cloacal smell. It was all I could do to repress my gag reflex. Then I felt something clammy on my calf—almost as if a hand had reached up from the noisome pit below and grabbed me. It squeezed, I shrieked, I struggled, and in the moment before I fainted, I got a glimpse, as it slipped back into the liquid muck, of a greenish-blue, iridescent, webbed paw.

  8

  When I came to, Jan was holding my hand. Out the bus’s front window, I could see the towering new buildings of Wuhan looming on the horizon. Jan murmured in my ear that I had Fred to thank for rescuing me. Apparently, he had just finished his business in another stall down the line when he heard my screams and ran to see what was wrong. He had hauled me unconscious away from the stall and carried me outside. I looked closely at Jan and realized that, however sympathetic, she could never understand. If I tried to tell her what had really happened in that ghastly roadside convenience, she too would dismiss my tale as a delusion or hallucination brought on by the heat, lack of sleep, and repellent but otherwise quite natural sights and smells.

  In a state of numbness I got through the late lunch at our Wuhan hotel, our final group meal. I nearly fainted again, though, when Fred casually mentioned, as we said goodbye to him and Jean, that he had felt a bit of inexplicable resistance when he pulled me from the brink—as if my feet were stuck in quicksand or, he quipped, quick shit. After lunch, I took a bath in our room, fell into bed, and didn’t awake until the next morning, despite being assailed by hideous dreams.