Godzilla vs. Cthulhu
By C. L. Werner
VIII
Godzilla was slow in rising from the bottom of Tokyo Bay in answer to our sonic summons. Perhaps even his amazing regenerative powers had not fully healed the wounds dealt him the previous night by Natanaka's shoggoth. But rise he did, staring in evident distaste at our hovering aircraft.
I had insisted on accompanying the helicopter crew. I said that since it was I who had suggested using Godzilla against Cthulhu that it should be I who shared in the risks of leading the titan to his eldritch foe. But, in truth, I had a less noble reason for being on that helicopter and that reason was Akira Natanaka.
As we led Godzilla out of Tokyo Bay into the green waters of the Pacific, I thought of the old sorcerer. It was on R'lyeh that Natanaka had seen Cthulhu, he alone of his battalion had been spared by the monster-god, though Professor Ashtree had assured me that Cthulhu was beyond actually seeking a man's death, for we were too insignificant to catch his notice.
Natanaka had lived and the others had died. Now Natanaka was returning to R'lyeh and I was determined that he would find the death which should have found him over fifty years ago.
Below us, Godzilla's wet scales gleamed in the morning sun. It was late afternoon when we sighted the mists of R'lyeh.
The island-city of R'lyeh was shrouded from the outside world by a thick bank of grey fog. Was that veil to protect R'lyeh from the eyes of men or to protect the eyes of men from the hideous throne of the masters of an older world? As we led Godzilla into the dense clinging mist, the monster snarled in anger. Godzilla could sense the alien horror which lay so near.
An overwhelming dread clutched at the heart of every man aboard the helicopter as we passed through the grey mists and sighted the nightmarish expanse of R'lyeh!
It covered an area easily the size of Tokyo and Yokohama combined, with the tops of towers and pillars rising from the ocean in every direction, mute evidence of the inconceivable immensity of the cyclopean city which yet lay beneath the sea. What had risen from the deep was a vast expanse of gently sloping blue stone upon which had been reared a host of titanic structures whose size was in the thousands rather than the hundreds of feet, loathsome towers, pyramids, and ziggurats of black stone whose spires reached out in all directions, whose shape was of such alien angles that the strange idea came to me that they had been constructed in four dimensions.
All about the shore was docked an anarchic flotilla of ships, all sizes and shapes, from commercial freighters to yachts to primitive fishing canoes and catamarans. I sighted amidst this chaotic fleet Natanaka's hydrofoil and a sense of triumph filled me, steadying me against the horror of R'lyeh's inhuman architecture.
At the very centre of R'lyeh was a barren space, within which rose a hill of blue stone. Upon this hill, its black surface covered like the rest of R'lyeh with dead and dying sea creatures caught in the island's surfacing, stood a great crypt, two enormous metal doors forming the crypt's face, before which a host of tiny figures danced and prayed and offered sacrifices - the gathered worshippers of Cthulhu.
And, though the concealing mists fought against what seemed a prematurely dying sun and what light passed through was discoloured a loathsome grey, I fancied that I spied an antlike figure bowing before the great doors. An ant wearing a jade green robe.
*****
A sound like the roar of kettle drums thundered through the black expanse of R'lyeh, echoing from the walls of strange towers, their alien angles seeming to capture the sound and only reluctantly releasing it, causing the echoes to degenerate into a discordant din. Screams of mad exultation rose from the worshippers of Cthulhu as the mammoth doors of the crypt slid away, sinking into the vacuity of the tomb at a bizarre and unnatural angle. The roaring sound died away as the cultists slowly advanced upon the enormous opening of the black crypt, gaping like the maw of some deadly beast, all was silence.
His malignancy preceded him like a stench of alien places and cosmic abysses. Even the feeble light allowed to seep through the obscuring mists seemed to darken at his approach. In utter silence a pair of huge yellow eyes burned from the darkness of the crypt, burning with a cold, alien intelligence. Great Cthulhu had awakened.
The Lord of R'lyeh did not stride from his tomb but in a shapeless flood of green flesh oozed through the opening of the crypt, crushing the closest of his worshippers beneath his tremendous mass. Slowly, as it passed through the doorway, Mighty Cthulhu's form took shape, growing ever larger as more and more of his gigantic body emerged from the crypt in a rolling, writhing stream. When at last Great Cthulhu had fully emerged from his prison, his titanic form towered over the now small and insignificant structure; a structure so small compared to the primordial demon that it seemed impossible that it could ever have contained his enormous mass.
He was huge, a living mountain of pale green flesh. His shape was that of a giant, his legs as similar to pillars as the limbs of a toad. His arms were long and thin in comparison to the legs and the great hands ended in lengthy, clawed fingers. From his back sprouted two titanic wings of a distinctly reptilian nature. Atop his shoulders Great Cthulhu's head was the noseless, oval shape of an octopus, a legion of tentacles writhing from his face like a living beard. Two huge yellow eyes stared at the mist-shrouded sky from above the writhing mass of tentacles.
Mighty Cthulhu spread his arms and wings wide, his face tentacles reached into the sky and from his giant body came a trumpeting bellow of triumph, an ear-piercing gurgle which seemed to crawl across the world and which R'lyeh's black towers dared not echo.
Great Cthulhu was again free!