Where God Once Lay
Thalassophobia Horror
The boat dips and bobs, as much from the partygoers overhead as the deep choppy waters they’ve drifted into. Below deck, smells of vomit and yeast permeate the cabin. There is also a faint odor redolent of dead fish. The steady thump of bass from the blown-out speakers overhead does little to assuage the man’s mounting nausea. The guttural urge to puke burbles up from the pit of his stomach, while boisterous cheers erupt above-deck. When he stumbles out from the cabin and toward the back of the swaying boat, the muffled sounds of cheers shift into semi-discernible chants and jeers. He reaches the back of the boat as bile and half-digested food spews out of his mouth. His stomach muscles contract and convulse, expelling their contents into the shifting ocean with plops and splashes. Wiping his mouth, he feels another surge of dizziness and is quickly bent over the railing, emptying the remains of his gut.
With his head over the edge and the thud of bass seeming to squeeze his entrails, he fails to hear the motors rev slightly. As he dry-heaves and spits, the boat accelerates suddenly. Before the man even realizes what is happening, he is pitched forward over the railing and into the sea. He plunges headfirst into a world of cool black water, where the only sound is the fading drone of the inboard motor. The man breaks the surface of the water, spluttering and confused. When he finally realizes what has happened, the hum of bass and flash of lights shrinks into the distance with the receding boat. He lets out a feeble cry for the boat to wait, but it goes unheeded. Wading at the surface, an almost total darkness overtakes him, along with a feeling of fear. The bone-white glow of the moon and the tiny pinpricks of starlight are his only source of illumination.
There are no objects within any directional view, and his feeling of fear deepens into the pit of his stomach. The man treads water and his fear rapidly evolves to terror as his total isolation sets in. He shouts and yells into an indifferent night air. When he finally exhausts his lungs, he is met with a new feeling: the feeling of being stalked from below. What if something, dozens of feet below, is watching his swishing limbs at the surface? Frantically he searches the horizon again, spinning and thrashing. Something catches his eye and when he looks back to the spot, he can just make out the small black silhouette of something far off, something with a more rigid penumbra. He looks around again for something closer though he sees nothing but the undulating waves of the blue-black ocean.
He begins kicking water and frantically propelling his way toward the shadow. His heart is in the maniacal grip of an atavistic fear, and his movements are panicked. He hopes and prays and pleads to the disinterested night sky that whatever the shadow ahead is, it is solid and big enough to stand on. Every forceful kick of his feet sends phantom signals to his brain telling him he’s kicked something, or something has bumped into him. He has begun crying from sheer terror, and through his blurry vision and sobs he sees that he is getting closer to the looming shadowy object. On approach to the outline, he can tell it is solid, but it is not a boat. It is unmoving as far as he can tell, whereas anything floating would rock on its keel. He blinks away the tears and stares at the dark shadow. Unconsciously, he slows his paddling. The shape of the shadow has finally solidified into a discernible outline, but it can’t be that - that wouldn’t make any sense… It must be a buoy, or a mile marker - do they have those in the open ocean? Yet, he knows it isn’t any of those things.
He is about 30 feet from the shadow and there is no longer any doubt as to its shape: before him is an immense mushroom, not unlike a portabella. It rises at least eight feet out of the water, like some alien monolithic pillar to a temple long sunken. The color of the fleshy stem is the dingy yellow that white things get after a long time exposed to the elements. That’s just what he is out here -- exposed -- the only omnifarious speck on an otherwise featureless blue landscape; other than this strange growth, that is. He stares at the damp neck of the mushroom, which plumes up into the empty sky above him. The cap at the top of the stem must be at least eight or ten feet across. He is suddenly reminded of neglected teeth, but he isn’t sure exactly why - perhaps the color? He has unwittingly stopped swimming towards it, treading water about ten feet away. His long dormant fear of deep water, momentarily forgotten in the wake of such a discordant sight.
The entire thing unsettles him. Despite being the only solid object for miles, he finds himself unaccountably reluctant to touch the thing. He swims slowly closer; however, the sight becomes even stranger as his proximity increases. The underside of the mushroom is faintly luminescent, with the sleepy red-orange heat of hot coals. As he watches the underside, he notices a slow pulsing to the crepuscular glow, exactly like the tail end of a cigarette smoked in the dark. …the grimy yellow of bad teeth… It even seems to radiate with the timing of regular breathing. It is very unsettling to watch. He cautiously swims closer, all panic and terror leached away by the sight of this bizarre ocean mushroom. He doesn’t want to touch it, let alone climb it, but his fear of the ocean begins to return as his shock wears off. Hesitantly, he swims up to it and when he is within touching distance, he feels a faint heat emanating from within the fungus.
Gingerly, he places his open palm against the warm stem. Once he makes contact with it, he feels his reserves melt away with the warmth. Why was he so hesitant to touch it anyway? Now that he is underneath the cap of it, the vague crimson glow is much more salient. Below the transient heat of the mushroom's cap, he realizes the task of climbing atop it will be exceedingly difficult. He wraps his legs around the trunk - it is much more of a trunk than a stem - and squeezes it with his thighs. There is a slight give to the flesh of the trunk, and his legs leave an impression that makes it easier to hold on. Cautiously, he pulls himself up the stem - his arms just barely reaching around to touch on the other side. The glabrous trunk is soft and smooth, yet it isn’t difficult to climb. He very quickly ascends high enough that his head is brushing against the underside of the cap.
The dark lines of frills against the subtle glow of the cap give an otherworldly effect. The frills are soft, radiating outward, and they give off a sickly-sweet scent. The smell reminds him of hospice and beds on wheels. He gingerly reaches his hand backward, blindly groping for the edge of the cap. His fingertips find the lip, just as he loses purchase and splashes down into the water. He tries again with several more unsuccessful attempts. This time he climbs the trunk as high as he can manage, with his head lost in the forest of soft fringes. The bitter-sweet smell is almost overwhelming. He places his hand against the underside of the cap, then punches as hard as he can. There is a dull oomph sound with the contact, almost as if the fungus groans softly, and the man feels his fist sink into the cap. With a few dozen more well-placed strikes, he’s through. The man’s hand bursts out of the topside of the mushroom like a restless corpse.
Slowly and with great effort, the rest of the man emerges from the widening hole. He climbs up and out, slimy and covered in small bits of spongy plant-matter. He lays down atop the cap, curling himself into the smallest size he can manage. He is assaulted by an impossible need to burst into tears and to laugh with joy. He is out of the water, and suddenly his fear shows itself for the irrational reaction it is. The man oscillates between laughing and sobbing, drinking in the warmth of the mushroom. After his exhausting climb and his bout with manic-depressive hilarity, he finds himself drifting off into a shallow sleep. His dreams are disturbing and ethereal; strange and familiar. He is running on the surface of the ocean but can’t keep his footing because of the waves and ripples. Each time he falls, the sea begins to engulf him, making him feel as though it were trying to consume him. The final time he falls, the water fully overtakes him, and he sinks slowly into a rapidly darkening world. He reaches upward and watches the soft blue light of the surface darken and disappear.
He awakens in a cold sweat on the top of the mushroom, with both arms over the edge reaching toward the water below. He recoils from the edge with a gasp and shrinks back to the center of the cap. That’s when he notices the sun going down on the horizon ahead. But that’s impossible, he couldn’t have dozed off for more than 20 minutes… Then he realizes the place he is curled up on must have a gaping hole in it from where he climbed through. Yet there is no hole anywhere on the surface of the cap - just the soft, bumpy flesh of the strange mushroom. He feels around, checking for some kind of imperfection that would mark the place he mutilated the fungus, but there’s nothing. That unaccountable desire to laugh returns and the man begins to rock himself atop his perch.
Beneath the stifled laughter and sobs, another feeling rises on the man’s gut. It is as unfamiliar to him as the fungus: the feeling of hunger. Sea sickness and fear have wracked his body so thoroughly that the feeling is unexpected. As gray clouds sweep higher into the sky, and the sun melts into an unseen line just above the water, the man begins to lose hope. He will die here, atop this horrible growth in the ocean and no one will ever find him. The orange disk of light bathes everything in amber, transforming the ocean into a sea of blood. Silent lightning flashes in the nascent storm clouds. The man lays down on his side, though his eyes remain open, and he does not sleep. The storm blocks all celestial lights when it arrives sometime later as he lay there. It is a monsoon that falls on him like a physical blow. He can’t see it, save for the occasional flashes of lightning, but he can hear it coming and passing against the surface of the water.
He lays that way, silently enduring the doldrums, as time passes him unseen, until hunger and thirst dominate his thoughts completely. He inches over to a slight concavity in the mushroom where rainwater has pooled. He sucks it up greedily and feels his thirst evaporate. Then, without ever really deciding to, he crawls to the edge and breaks off a chunk of the mushroom and places it into his mouth. It has a strong salty quality and leaves a bitter aftertaste of iron in his mouth, as if he bit his lip. The small chunk he consumes is enough to sate his hunger, and he makes to crawl back to the center of the mushroom. However, before he does, something catches his eye. Below him in the water, something seems to shift - the faint shadow of some unseen thing. He can’t tear his eyes off the spot; all his fears of the ocean well up inside him.
As he stares unblinkingly at the shadow, it slowly dawns on him what he is seeing. There below the surface, perhaps ten feet or less, lay the cap to another mushroom. The harder he stares, the more certain he is that there are dozens of mushrooms below the surface. He can see fleeting shadows and faint phosphorescent glows if he stares long enough. He retracts his head from the edge of the mushroom and curls up at the center. He has no idea why, but he finds himself horrified at the prospect of those deathly plumes sleeping just below the ocean surface. He holds himself tight and lays on his side. Eons seem to float by and yet he does not move. At some point he slips away into a restless sleep. He dreams of a boy isolated and stranded on a tall mushroom in the sea, but the sea has all drained away.
The man dreams of the boy on his promontory, overlooking a barren land of ridges and canyons where water once pooled. He watches the boy from some undefined place high above, as in the peculiar way of dreams. He watches the boy look down from his minute plateau, to gaze at the lower shapes of growth rising from the dark and dry sea floor. He knows that there is no life anywhere in the world, but that everything has been emptied out - or perhaps never filled in the first place. And in the way of dreams, the man becomes aware of a thing down there in the dark - a thing that has always been aware of him. The man’s stare bores a hole through the darkness, and he finds a point to fixate on. Something down there waxes and wanes with an almost alchemical glow; like some arcane power thrumming out terrible truths in an inimitable dirge.
The glowing point widens, and the man can feel an eldritch presence fixate on him, then it roves onward to other things; more consequential things than he. In the brief and eternal moment it fixated on him, he became intimately aware of his size in the universe, and it was no size at all. The boy that was on the mushroom berm has dissipated into the substance of dreams, and now the man finds himself on the mushroom, gazing over the edge into an empty alien landscape. Down there, where he can sense the omnipotent eye and in the varying degrees of darkness, he can discern shifts in the darkness that insinuate a living thing. But as he begins to discern its quality, he awakens on the top of the mushroom, staring down over the edge into the ocean. On the surface of the water, he catches a glimpse of his reflection and his face appears to glow. Then he realizes it is just another of the pale lights emanating from yet another mushroom. He cowers away from the edge back to the center of the mushroom and makes vows to never sleep here again - vows he cannot and will not keep.
Again, he lays motionless while time unquantifiable passes by. Another storm pours over the area and water fills the spaces between the tubercles atop the shroom. He drinks mindlessly and eats spongey hunks of the integumentary matter, almost hoping that it proves poisonous. All the while he obsessively contemplates the depths of the sea and the mysterious therein. Such monsters as that featured in his dream could not exist, for the world could not go on as it was in the presence of such a thing. When he sleeps again, it is after a prolonged struggle against the increasing weight of his eyelids and the weakening of his disbelief in monsters. Consciousness eludes him however, and the veil between this world and another thins as he drifts down into the deeper places of sleep. Again, he is in an elevated place above the mushrooms, and again the sea is drained of its lifeblood. A primordial storm covers the firmament, and it is heavy laden with the burden of rain.
The man shifts his focus to the place he does not wish to see. He tightens his eyes closed and silently prays to nothing that the deep and sunken place lay open and empty. But when he opens his eyes, it is not empty. He can see the shapeless form of the demiurge, but he cannot feel its malignant gaze. He knows, in the way of dreams, that the thing is sleeping, and that perhaps it has been sleeping for a very long time. That perhaps the only time it had not been asleep was a time unaccounted for, unreckoned and unseen by mankind. From deep within the storm clouds there flashes a white lightning, and from its ghostly light the man is given a glimpse of the scene. The shroud of darkness falls again, and the man is left with a horrifying image of frozen time burned into his mind. The impossible body of an ancient sleeping god, with a gaping wound in its side - or perhaps it is just some unidentifiable aspect of its alien anatomy. From the hole grows a whole host of mushrooms that stretch across the seabed. Several grow upward, and a branching path of growth snakes up a tall stalagmite. From the tip of this rocky precipice grows the mushroom that he currently dreams atop.
The rain falls like the somber curtain of a closing act, heavy and final. The lightning flashes and gives transitory light to the scene. In the darkness, the muted glow of the mushrooms pulse steadily like the flexing of alien lungs. A clap of thunder, not unlike the creation of the universe, rings out through the wasteland. And the ancient thing stirs. The old god of the deep shifts and billows like a tangible pillar of smoke. It is a massive and inhuman form, indescribable in quality and infinite in complexity. At times he thinks he can descry a vestigial wing folding and unfolding, then at another time a prehensile claw grasping at the air, yet another flash of lightning reveals an antediluvian tendril. Each image the flare of lightning composes is more horrifying and varied than the last. The man hides his face from the sight of the passing presence. It utters low and droning rumbles that rattle the man’s teeth. There is a steady and deep clicking like the thick boat chain of an anchor being drawn in, or the groaning metal shudder that a ship makes as it capsizes.
The man awakens in the dead of night to find himself half draped once again over the mushroom's edge; arms outstretched to the deep. His own weight begins to pull him over the edge, and he is forced into frantic snatches at the lip behind him. None of his flailing lends him purchase and the mushroom droops slightly as he slides off into the water in an ungraceful dive. His deep-seated phobia of the ocean has taken on a new hideous shape in the form of a primal fear of the thing in his dreams. He sinks beneath the surface of the water and feels suffocated by the darkness of his closed eyes. Suddenly the sound from his dream rings out through the sea, compounded in force by the water. The bellowing sound is so powerful that it shakes the very marrow of his bones and sends his viscera into a quiver. Unthinking, he opens his eyes, already certain what he will see. The seawater blurs his vision but somewhere below him he sees a dirty orange glow like a floodlight.
His eyes burn from the saltwater, and he screws them shut tight and fights to make it to the surface. Already he is screaming and expending air in a useless gesture. He can feel some sort of force pulling him downward toward the nightmare made reality. With his eyes closed, he feels a sensation like the need to sleep press down on his mind. He bursts through the surface screaming and panicking. Moments after he breathes air again, he feels an odd sucking sensation at his back, the feeling of a vacuum. Then the unmistakable sound of something large, larger than any known creature, breaching the surface of the water. The man swims with the drive and fury of all fear as he hears terrible and ear-splitting noises from behind him that seem to crack the very night. His terror overrides a masochistic bend to turn and look upon the face of the deep.
He swims furiously and feels the pulling sensation intensify tenfold, like a sudden increase in gravity. Then comes an unaccountable sensation of falling backward, as if off someplace high. The ocean water has suddenly vacated the area immediately behind him, and he falls backward into the center of something like a whirlpool. He screams out sounds of pure terror as he falls backward with his face up to the night. In the fleeting seconds of his descent, he sees the gaunt light of a full moon and then watches it flicker as something immense and unearthly passes in front of it: like a thick pillar of smoke mixed with a fiery tornado of sloughed off limbs. He sees a wall of water surrounding his skyward view, sees it collapsing in to flood the place where god once lay. The mausoleum now lay empty, and the world will become a lazaretto - stricken and smote by the wrath of that ancient thing.
WHERE GOD ONCE LAY
Anthology of Hidden Places, 2/5
This is tremendous! I can’t even say anything else; the words have been smacked from my mind. I love it!
A wild ride! Very creepy and quite Lovecraftian. Also reminds me a little of Stephen King's story Crouch End.