Dream Thing

“I’m going to get these people recuperating in bunks on the Flying Fish,” announced the young man with the biomedical background.

But the shipwreck survivors, the naked woman and her moody boyfriend, had no intention of getting into bunks. The entire group set off on a march around the island, spaced out to cover the entire beach from waterline to the edge of the ruins.

They didn’t get far.

“Things are looking up,” Lagrasse exclaimed aloud, but to himself. There were ships coming in from the south, carried like derelicts in the current.

The team of researchers began panicking. Shipwreck virgins, Lagrasse thought disdainfully. “They’re gonna crash!” exclaimed one of the older men over and over.

Lagrasse had to admit it was an awesome sight. Even he had never seen so many ships coming in together. All big ones, too. As the current flung them onto the shore one after another, the spectacle was breathtaking.

“Now, that was cool,” Sandy commented.

“Your pals don’t think so,” Lagrasse grumbled. The researchers were crying and praying as the last of the giants settled noisily on the basalt slope.

Lagrasse approached the nearest gigantic crushed V of a cruise-ship hull, investigating the grotesque clots of mush and gore that seemed to be hanging from every protrusion on the ship, at and below the water level. One big clot dangled on a side of the hull that was now raised twenty feet into the air, and a strand of tissue separated. The clot fell and landed with a thump.

It was a squid, bigger than any squid Lagrasse had ever seen. It had to be one of those giants that were found in the stomachs of whales.

He inspected the pulpy remnants that clung to the hull. There was even a mass of them shoved into the cage around the main props. The creatures had sacrificed themselves to disable the ship.

Lagrasse felt a curious satisfaction. This was as it should be.

The team of cryptozoologists helped the survivors free themselves of the grounded ships, and the population of the island ballooned. Soon there were hundreds of able-bodied men and women joining in the rescue effort. They told stories that couldn’t be believed—about giant squid that attacked as a group to disable the ships.

“It couldn’t have been deliberate,” Williamson protested to one of the cruise-ship captains.

“It was,” the man said. “I’m not saying they came up with the plan on their own, mind you. I bet it was people controlling them with subsurface ultrasound or something. Maybe a new kind of terrorist threat.”

“We’re a few days too late to discover these,” Goodall said, nudging a squid carcass with his foot. “They just displayed a Colossal in Chicago.”

Lagrasse overheard the comment, and he found his opening. “That? That’s nothing.”

Goodall and Williamson looked at him.

“You want a big octopus, I can show you one ten times as big as that.”

“It’s a squid,” Williamson pointed out.

“The one I’m talking about is an octopus, kind of. I think it has eight arms, anyway, but its head has wings like a squid.”

“You sure you didn’t hallucinate it?” Williamson asked.

Lagrasse knew the man didn’t like him. “Ask Sandy. She’s seen it. You wanna know the strangest part? It’s amphibious.”

“Ridiculous!” Williamson said.

“Lives in a shallow water pool in the center of the island.”

“That’s absurd!”

Lagrasse shrugged. “Want to see it for yourself?” They followed Lagrasse inland. A constant trickle of cruise-ship survivors was already heading for the three-sided pyramid, lured by the song in their heads. The cryptozoologists questioned the marchers, but the answers they received were vague. The closer they came to the pyramid, the less communicative the marchers became.

“They’re like zombies,” Missy Juk said, adjusting the straps of her supply pack.

Mick Chad didn’t answer.

When they reached the lip of the courtyard, they found the stream of silent human beings filing into the pyramid. There was a silent queue of a hundred people waiting to enter. Above their heads the bones were ejected, tossed by the tentacle of something that was out of sight inside. A hill of human bones and skulls had collected against the base of the pyramid and formed an entrance ramp.

They were stunned into silence until Missy Juk began crying for help.

“It’s Mick! He’s going in!”

They bustled after Mick Chad, who was heading for the pyramid without noticing Missy dragging on his arm. The researchers huddled around the hovercraft pilot and brought him to a standstill. Mick didn’t even look at them. It was as if his mind were already dead.

Something like a growl came from inside. The queued victims waiting to get inside the pyramid turned on the research team and wordlessly grabbed at them. The researchers were outnumbered twenty to one, and they were battered with fists until they became pliant—then they were pulled into the pyramid.