ToZ' Trinkets By Andy Thomas In the hidden silent sea that which is hideous remains imprisoned in an ageless tomb. From before time itself was invented; from before man was more than a blueprint in some mad designer’s mind; from that age perhaps even preceding the creation of what we call our solar system; from those hoary days of yore rests to this day that hidden and terrifying evidence of the long past solar wars. In the deep darkened chasm of blackened ocean water do various beacons of light emit forth from those very walls. The light though is not white, nor even yellow, but red; the fiery red of lava pouring forth from deeper still within that which we like to think is solid when it is indeed hollow. There in the timeless silent sea rests an ancient and terrible visitor from the vast reaches of forever. The monster is chained there, even in its (for I should hesitate to use “his” or “her”) inhuman power, waiting while the descendants of its original minions dance outside the sunken pyramid shell, sounding off in an eerie underwater dirge that the reader can only be thankful he has never heard. Pray that you never will hear that alien song of lament, for to the human ears it is only as destructive and deadly as a terrible poison. When a ship goes down in a terrible Pacific storm, onlookers and survivors chalk it up to the emotionless forces of nature. Instead the cause of many of these storms and subsequently the wrecks those systems have claimed often have their source in that very hideous being which sits chained in those unknown depths. Other times, the minions of the terrible monster simply cause the wreck; one of them will surface and play havoc with the ship’s propellers, leaving such a craft dead in the water on some stormy night; one of them might play any number of other, equally deadly tricks on the usually unwary Pacific wayfarers. Heller stood watch over the perimeter. It was 4 a.m. The dawn would arrive in another several hours. Heller wondered why the hell he was there. Heller had seen many men die. Some of the dead had been his friends and comrades, and many of them had been enemy soldiers. Heller didn’t see the point in it any more. He was in his second, voluntary tour of duty in Vietnam. At least the dead could rest. Some of the wounded were scarred terribly for life; some of the otherwise physically unwounded were emotionally scarred for life. There he stood in the cold darkness and kept his eyes peeled on the perimeter, bending down from time to time when taking a puff of his Camel behind the cover of his bunker. The cigarette itself stayed out of view of anything which might have ostensibly been on that perimeter, for in the darkness he didn’t want to attract any kind of sniper fire. Otherwise Heller looked and watched, the sometimes pleasant smell of the smoke wafting gently through that cool Vietnamese night. Heller would finger the trinket around his neck from time to time as he waited. Other than the occasional cigarette or the infrequent fingering of the trinket, Heller stood and pondered whatever various and sundry topics would come to his mind; anything to help him remain awake for the last hour of his watch. Heller would think of the days playing baseball when he was a kid growing up back home in Redding. He thought of those days playing in the Redwood Forest, and of various friends and relatives he’d had. Pondering his past wasn’t especially productive, but there wasn’t a lot he could have done there on his tour of duty which would have made him such in any event. Living in his mind amongst those old ghosts for minutes or even hours at a time would keep him awake in the then and there as he would continue to scan the perimeter with at least some of his concentration. The rest would take him in his mind back to those arguably happier times, with the baseball games during warm summer days and the barbecue parties out in the yard at night, and of all things his favorite memories of the time spent with his uncle Sid in the man’s small fishing vessel out on the coast. Indeed Sid had given him the trinket he presently wore around his neck, at first glance a crude thing of silver. At closer glance it revealed itself to the onlooker to be quite the conspicuous smattering of odd angles and admittedly impossible lines. The trinket itself was of some kind of underwater creature, a sort of half-man half-fish with obviously webbed feat and frog-like facial characteristics, with human arms but again webbed hands. The trinket had the strange property of disorienting many who looked upon it. Heller had inspected it as a little boy, and he knew that to stare at the object for too long meant to be taken into some strange distant mental state, where the real world would dissolve in a person’s mind and they would be confronted with other milieus, at once vast, forbidden, and alien. He’d remembered being quite frightened in doing that once shortly after his uncle Sid had given him the trinket, and although the experience had not been pleasant, it hadn’t frightened him either. He’d known by instinct to blink and he was instantly back to see the trinket in front of his eyes in the familiar surroundings of this world. He had visited the worlds of the visions brought by the trinket only once or twice as a child, and had grown bored by that and simply decided that he really liked the trinket in any case, and that he was going to wear it without staring at it, for even to fondle it in his fingers would at any time give him a pleasant feeling, as if he were in a boat plying playful waves upon a gentle sea. The one or two visions he’d seen had been spectacular but not inherently unpleasant. He could remember vast oceans of swirling, stormy water, and on small islands, processions of vast numbers of the kinds of beings illustrated by the trinket itself, beneath “tiki” torches; half-human, half-seagoing creatures in some kind of ritualistic exercise under nighttime flaming light. He could see gleaming cities jutting from rocks overlooking the torrid, bubbling oceans of that place, and more interesting, he could remember one of those two or three deep trances where he’d experienced breathing beneath the water and seen a vast underwater city, with some very large and alien monument at its center, again with minions similar to that represented by the trinket marching in some sort of eerie procession around the base of the underwater obelisk. He could even remember some far off chant insistently repeating a strange little phrase, one which had stuck with him, even to that day. It was the sound of, “Tee-Oh-Zee,” for lack of a better description. The background voices had been deep, powerful, yet pleading in a somewhat inhuman fashion, as if the inhuman chorus were awaiting the arrival of some entity or force within those imaginary worlds; someone or something named what had sounded like “Tee-oh-Zee.” Even then, as Heller fingered the trinket there in the dead of night, while all of his buddies around him slept and he remained awake, he thought of the strange sound of the word, for he’d never forgotten that, for whenever he would think of it his heart would often seem to skip a beat, as if it were itself more cognizant of the meaning of the word, than his conscious brain would ever be. Sid Heller manned the twin-40mm bofors gun and watched as some crewmates quickly changed ammunition magazines. A few jap bombers circled overhead. The planes flew to far off of the end of the stern, then began a descent as the captain of the ship itself gave out orders for evasive action. As the starboard side of the ship revealed itself to the attacking planes, they released their torpedoes and climbed again, one of the three having been picked off by the American anti-aircraft fire in the process. It was too late for the light cruiser though as the evasive maneuvers had exposed the side of her to the incoming torpedoes. The captain had thought the jap planes were dive-bombers, and they’d fooled him with their sudden torpedo run. Within moments as the planes pulled away and circled high above waiting for the opportunity to fly low once again and perhaps strafe the ultimately doomed ship, the torpedoes struck home and immediately dealt fatal damage to the cruiser. In addition then to the sea odors in the air and the smell of anti-aircraft munitions going off, there were those of fire in the ship’s bowels, and the horrible odor of burnt human flesh. Heller didn’t have much time to think as the ship began to list just moments after impact. He did look behind him to see the thick smoke pouring forth through a myriad openings in the superstructure as the uncontrollable fires raged from within the ship’s very insides. He knew then that the ship was doomed, and jumped off into the water as the listing continued to port. Once in the oily water around the ship, Heller swam frantically in his life jacket. The South Pacific Water was warm. It was early in 1942, and they’d been trying to get from Australia back to Pearl where they were to join a then-assembling cruiser task force. It was during those first days of the war with Japan that the Americans had put together cruiser forces, as all of their battleships were too slow at the time for serious naval maneuvers; all of their serviceable battleships in any event, for several had been damaged or sunk at Pearl Harbor. Either way, battleships sunk at Pearl would have had little or no impact on the war; in the early days of the Pacific war, the only fast U.S ships were the carriers and cruisers. The fast battleships were just then being built, stateside. The ship went up behind him in some savage explosions, as if the flames had found the her ammunition magazines. She lurched up out of the water, then settled quickly toward the her proverbial watery grave. The vacuum phenomena surrounding these events had momentarily pulled Heller under the water in the wake of the dying ship, but due to his life preserver he’d moments later made his way back up to the surface. Treading oily water and sputtering and coughing because of the water he had inhaled, he knew that without his life jacket he would have never seen the surface again. Even as it was he’d taken a good amount of water into his lungs. He would cough and hack, and the water would come back out his nose and mouth, leaving him at the very least breathing. He heard a human voice, and turned and looked behind him to spot a crewmate who was in about the same predicament as he; treading oily water in a life jacket on the South Pacific. The jap planes had left. They’d not felt the need to sadistically strafe any and all survivors after all that day as they’d been rumored to do in quiet conversations at night amongst those occupying the bunks of various allied naval ships at the time. He paddled over to the other crewmate, and they were both in decent shape; no broken bones or severed limbs, just some water inhalation at having been swept under momentarily by the dying ship. Smith was the other survivor. They scanned the horizon and agreed to paddle for the only visible piece of land, there to their South perhaps a mile away. From the distance it appeared to be a rather strangely colored, barren island, but they weren’t thinking of anomalies in rock formations, but rather of simply finding a place where they could get out of the water, for both of them knew that walking on land; any solid ground had to be better than dogpaddling the waves of what could turn at any moment into an angry sea. Then though the skies were clear and the ocean almost as calm as glass. An oil slick trailed along with the current as the cruiser continued to give up those liquids and to take on water, there in its resting place perhaps by then a mile or two below Heller and Smith. Smith and Heller calmly swam toward the island, and hoped to make it there before dark, for in the pitch black of night, even with the stars overhead giving them some light, it was to be moonless that date, and they probably wouldn’t be able to see any distance after dark. Luckily, they made it to that strange island just ahead of twilight. There they sat exhausted on the shore, for a time exchanging nary a glance nor a word as they were both nearly spent by the ordeal. The island itself was rather odd indeed, for it had none of the geology Heller had noted on other islands he’d set foot upon his duties in that area of the world. Instead the place appeared to be littered with the tiny splintered fragments of ancient bone fossil, and it had no trees but instead hillsides covered completely in the off-white color of the apparent bone fragments themselves. Steam arose from holes in the ground. There by twilight the two men fell into an uncomfortable sleep upon that apparent ancient clam or oyster bed, then worn into fine fragments by the passage of time. The air wasn’t too cool, and the men were able to sleep that night without the threat of overexposure or hypothermia. Strange dreams came to Sid that night. Sid had never had a terrific imagination, but in his weakened state some proverbial switch must have been thrown inside his head, and there he dreamt of the most fantastic and horrifying places and indeed, things; if you could in fact call them that. Sid saw vast underwater cities, and in the dreams it were as though he was able to swim beneath the surface of the sea and explore them. In one particular city the low murmuring sounds of some hideously powerful presence had permeated the water about the place. He saw in the dream that he was not a man, but had webbed fingers and toes, with which he could swim at ease amongst those apparently ancient, alien, undersea dwellings. Where was he in that dream except in some place for removed from our very planet, for anyone here with an ounce of sense knows in fact that there are no such thing as underwater cities on earth? He would swim those depths and explore the strange structures, in the center of which was a vast underwater pyramid, surrounded itself by chanting, gurgling creatures such as he himself had become, as if they were calling to some unseen entity trapped within those underwater pyramid walls. In the face of that low moaning in the background - some incomprehensible alien dirge - he also began to walk the bottom of the ocean within the procession, and even himself found that he was chanting some foreign phrase through his then water breathing body. The sounds as they were underwater were certainly alien, indeed; if from nothing else but the standpoint of the unusual acoustics alone. Upon waking in the early dawn light Heller asked Smith if he’d had any strange dreams, but Smith’s had been a dreamless, restful sleep. By comparison Heller’s had been a sort of vast, incomprehensible revelation. They decided to stick together and explore the island to see if they might be able to find fresh water there, for by then they were parched and their lips starting to blister. They climbed over hill after hill, and walked through valley after valley of the same sort of bone material that the entire place seemed covered with. They did at mid-day happen upon a creek running through the strange terrain. The creek flowed swiftly so they thought it safe to drink of those waters. After replenishing and washing themselves on its bank they decided to follow the thing to its source. Perhaps somewhere along the line they might find some vegetation; perhaps even a coconut or papaya tree, for by then they were hungry even though their thirsts had been slaked. Sometime during the hot afternoon they found the pools at the head of the stream, but there was still no sign of vegetation, or for that matter, any other type of living creature about that strange place. By then they were quite weary of the unnerving features of the landscape, and somewhat fearful of being without food. At least with the water flowing from below the ground and into the pond at the source of the creek, they would be without want of that, so they were probably safe for a day or two. Johnson toyed aloud with the idea of swimming for the next island over, as they’d spied one not a couple of miles away from one of the peaks of the island they were on. At that distance they’d both seen the inviting green hues of the vegetation which appeared to grow there. Heller asked Smith to wait for just another day. He had a small mirror with him and would use that to signal any allied aircraft which might fly over the area, either routinely or in searching for they as survivors of the sunken ship. Heller hoped that a Catalina would pass and see them, and that by signalling such; they would be able to make it off of the strange, if not accursed place, for by then they’d seen more than one or two horrible fossil remains within the otherwise innocuous bone fragments which made up the soil of the place. Toward dusk as they wandered back to pick up their life jackets where they’d left them that morning, along the way Heller happened upon something shiny which stuck forth from the whitened soil of the place. There in the odd soil was a shining silver trinket, a little caricature of some fish-like, but otherwise humanly shaped creature. Heller was struck by the trinket as it seemed to him to be a visage of what he’d actually become in the dreams of the night before, one of those amphibian minions circling the ancient underwater pyramid in a trance while the nearly indiscernible low underwater moan had gone on in the background. As he dug the trinket from its resting place half-buried in the strange soil, Heller felt some small odd twinge of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There wasn’t a tangible terror or even a twinge of fear, but some strange emanation was indeed coming from the small trinket. He ripped a piece of his T-shirt and used it as a necklace for the anomalous bauble. Smith looked on in disinterest as the whole incident unfolded, and they were quickly on their way back to the place on the beach where they’d left their lifejackets. They figured they had just enough light left there at dusk to where they could make their way back up to the banks of the creek, on a plateau where the next island could be seen from. Although they were both becoming weaker by the moment from lack of food, they agreed that they would have to swim for the next island the following day, as sitting on the one they were on would invite death by starvation. Neither of them was gaining strength and the long swim to the other island appealed to both of them by then, more than sitting and awaiting slow death from lack of food. As night fell completely they made their way to an alcove or a dip in the terrain where they tried to comfort themselves in preparation for another night’s long sleep. The new moon was visible as a sliver in the sky. The star-lit canopy remained clear as it had been the day before, and the water below it was still nearly as smooth as glass. From their perch along that plateau, if either of them left the dip in the terrain and stood on the landing itself, they could see not only the island they intended to swim to, but the way from which they’d come, not two or three miles away in the other direction. In their exhaustion they didn’t say much to each other and instead both fell off into sleep, Smith once again in a quiet, peaceful rest, and Heller with more of the bizarre, unsettling dreams. On that second night there Heller thought he’d brought back some obscure little phrase from his dream. Upon awaking to see Smith eyeing him and waiting for him to finish his sleep, the phrase “Tee-oh-Zee” or something just as inane filtered through his mind. Before they were about to head for the next island via the certainly dangerous but perhaps inevitable swim they’d planned, Smith had taken a look back to the water they’d come from not 48 hours previous to that. There was an American destroyer, zig-zagging through the flotsam as it would surface from the wreck so far below. Smith excitedly yelled for Heller to use the mirror to attract them. Heller pulled out the mirror and began reflecting sunlight into the direction of the destroyer. The destroyer captain had put men on watch in every direction, and one of those observers happened upon the mirrored light as it came from the strange-colored island in the distance. He immediately told his superiors, and within minutes a landing boat was heading across the yet strangely calm ocean toward the pale island in the distance. Heller and Smith saw the boat on its way and they ran with glee for the original shore where they’d landed. Even in their physical weakness was a jubilance at being discovered which carried them quickly to the shore. Within a few minutes the small boat had come to the shore and had whisked them off of the anomalous island. Heller toyed with the trinket held around his neck by ripped strips of his T-shirt. After being taken aboard the American destroyer, the men were examined and then left at an Australian base. At the hospital there they were treated for exposure, then given a couple of weeks to rehabilitate, then they shook hands with each other and said their good-byes as they were assigned to new ships. Heller had ended up on the aircraft carrier Enterprise. There he’d made it through various battles - including Midway where the Japanese had seen their naval air arm crushed and their best aircraft carriers destroyed - and had later in the war had earned a medal for shooting down a jap kamikaze with a Bofors. Throughout those years he’d worn the trinket around his neck. He referred to the thing as his “good luck charm.” From time to time he would have some of those strange dreams at night. After the war he’d made his way back to central California, where he’d given the trinket to his brother’s son. Heller could remember first receiving the trinket from his uncle when he was a small child. He could remember that even then it had somehow fascinated him. By 1967 he was 26 years old; older than many of his fellow soldiers but still fairly young. The war hadn’t stolen much of his youth, but instead had snatched away much of his innocence and peace of mind. Heller was a hero. He was the best soldier many of his commanding officers had ever seen. It seemed that the luck of the draw would always go his way, even when he would walk point on the patrols. It was his great combat prowess which had helped him decide to stay for a second tour. He was still a great fighter, and all of the other soldiers wanted to be in his squad, for it seemed that wherever he and his squad would appear for a firefight, their overall platoon would win great victories with few casualties. Heller’s fighting was part of the reason for this. There that late night and into the early morning though Heller was just a PFC - albeit highly decorated one - keeping watch for his fellow platoon members. The sky was dark and starless, and it would shower heavily from time to time then let up, but other than that everything was quiet. In depths are the dark waters which shroud the incomprehensible mysteries from the prying eyes of mortal man above. There in the depths of the undersea trenches sit the remains of some ancient, unearthly society. Beneath an undersea pyramid sits the incomparable ToZ, buried there in that imprisoning crypt by some superior being. ToZ himself is ancient ruler of those dark waters. The despotic reign of ToZ came to an abrupt halt during those solar wars, and his compatriots were all either buried or destroyed. Circumspect ancient tomes in alien, indecipherable lost and forgotten languages hint at terrors beyond human comprehension. Translators of such volumes are rarely successful, but where they make headway against those decrepit scripts they find intonations of complete and ancient alien tyranny. ToZ sits beneath that pyramid, and even those truly rare humans who make a life of studying lost languages off of the scrawlings left on disintegrating parchment have been able to paint only a fragmentary picture of that legendary entity. Those dark and dismal scholars postulate that ToZ sits in his stony silent watery tomb, and gnashes beneath the metaphysical binds left by one rumored to be known only as Aiwwai. ToZ is in himself incomprehensible. Even the words “he,” or “him” do not fully adequately describe that silent, sentient, unearthly powerful being, for ToZ is without gender, as least in any way which is comprehensible to human beings. ToZ sits in silence and without movement, and simply dreams the dreams of an imprisoned despotic god. ToZ dreams of the moment when he will again be released from that ancient cell, and once again wander the seas of the earth, and further find those dimensional doors which will take him to any other world containing water, for above all else he cannot exist outside of water. It can almost be said that, at least prior to the great solar wars and the imprisonment of the challenger gods including ToZ; that ToZ was himself the water. Today ToZ sits ostensibly silent in the depths, still deeper down than any human submersible has yet explored, for ToZ lies within a great crevice, something so deep it makes the Marianas trench look like a small pond in comparison. Human geologists have still not discovered the trench of ToZ, nor the remains of his once spectacular underwater civilization, maintained by that monument to his scurrilous ingenuity, the Cemonculus. That odd breed of human-fish was indeed the average denizen of ToZ’s underwater domain, for it was those very minions who worshipped ToZ in totality, and further who brought to ToZ great treasures, and who performed for ToZ acts of violence and terror on the surface of the planet where those pure humans roamed. The Cemonculus were some strange sort of human-alien hybrid, for they resembled not a fish from this planet, but some alien underwater life form, the eggs of which ToZ brought here that he might create just such a hybrid for his own purposes. To this day those minions who remain play in the waters of the Pacific, intelligent in their own right and thus able to stay out of the way of humans, for ToZ has ordered that they should all remain anonymous and outside of the human sphere, until that moment when he himself might be freed and where he might then order his remaining minions again into the types of terrorist activities they’d once carried out upon the surface in those misty antediluvian days of yore. ToZ sits then, unmoving but restless nonetheless, and fitfully dreams the dreams of an alien and ancient, supernatural despot. He dreams of the city he’d once built with those hands he’d himself created, from that hybrid of his own creation. Under his watch the Cemonculus had built all of the monuments - outside of that sealed pyramid which was the work of the imprisoning entity - some 20 miles beneath the surface of the ocean in a trench unknown even by modern human science. There his remaining minions, without a means to reproduce (for ToZ had controlled every detail of that), and without orders from their master, continue to circle the pyramid in the otherwise silence of those depths while chanting the very name of their creator, even through the gurgled emanations which hail forth from their fish-like mouths. There they circle and continue to chant ToZ’s name, even as the god itself fills the surrounding, blackened water with his own nearly silent return call, there from his imprisonment within that darkened pyramid. ToZ is ultimately more machine than anything else, for ToZ waits in those blackened depths, all the while running calculations within its logic unit, a metaphysical and organic super computer encased in fleshy outer walls. ToZ tracks all of the missing trinkets from those darkened days of his once near-total dominion over the waters of the Earth, and sends signals to his remaining minions as to the locations of those missing trinkets which, if they were to all be assembled there in front of that vast and hidden underwater prison of a pyramid, would cause the opening of those ancient sealed doors and again the release of ToZ, to once again wreak havoc on the high seas, and to send new and greater numbers of minions onto the land itself in a bid for complete world domination, for to ToZ our planet is but a speck, and in his ancient and unholy alliance with the other challenger gods he sees something more like a great portion of the known universe to be his rightful domain. ToZ waits indeed, beneath those trenches at the bottom of the Marianas gap; below the giant blind worms who get their sustenance from the heavy metal emulsions washing forth from those apparent fissures in the earth’s crust itself, the worms themselves there six or seven miles below actual sea level. Indeed our best human scientists have ventured down and even photographed the bubbling trenches of molten metal, and they’ve found the giant blind worms who literally live off of the toxic wastes spewing forth from those very fissures, but those same observers have not yet discovered what it is which lies further below; the hidden sea, buried deep within the earth and fed with salt water from some incomprehensible shafts leading downward from hidden caves, themselves miles below the surface of the Pacific. The sea which holds the pyramid is for all intents and purposes inaccessible to human exploration, for we have no direct route into that vast sealed other world which lies within, because the shafts which open from above are themselves shrouded deep within the tangled morass of those caves which modern science does know of, but of which we are blocked by their geology from exploring, for to find one of those shafts which lead so far down into that hidden sea would be a miracle in itself; those water-filled narrow caverns which so twist and turn as they wind their watery way deeper and deeper toward the ultimately molten bowels of the earth. Only the minions of ToZ know the way from the sunken sea to the surface. Only the minions of ToZ from time to time swim upward in order to - one by one - collect all of the ancient trinkets in the hopes of one day resuming the rule of ToZ. Not a moment before that last statuette is in place though will that ever occur. Heller fondled the trinket again and wondered about those dreams he’d had over the years, the ones where he’d been breathing underwater and marching in some sort of strange, haunting procession around an underwater megalith in the shape of a giant pyramid. The pyramid itself wasn’t terribly unusual, beyond its dimensions dwarfing those of any such similarly ancient structure found on the surface. The unusual part of that recurring dream was his memory of being a creature, just like the one the statuette he fingered represented. That was the haunting part; the thought that in the dreams he were no longer human, but rather some strange sort of man-fish creature spawned from God knows where. In any event Heller had never considered taking the trinket off for any length of time, and he was always sure to wear it any moment he anticipated any sort of trouble, for whether the trinket itself was the cause of all of his luck in combat, his slightly superstitious mind certainly didn’t care to find out. So it stayed around his neck in any situation where he thought danger might be lurking, for up to that point he’d been quite fortunate in every such situation, and that superstition of his had led him to believe in some small way that the trinket actually was like an invisible shield protecting him. He could think back to the day his uncle Sid had given him the indecipherable bauble, and the words his uncle had used: “Son, as you are my brother’s son I want you to have this. It’s been my little good luck charm and it got me home safely from the war, and so here it is yours that you might be protected from whatever danger may await you. For I have no children of my own, and it appears I never will.” Heller had not understood the part about having or not having children, but he did know that his uncle had served in the navy during the Second World War and that he’d seen some battles and arrived home safely in the end. Heller didn’t know about the strange whitish island where his uncle had originally found the bauble; that island with its wistful silent sounds and crystal clear creek, however devoid of vegetation it may have ever been. Heller crouched and lit another cigarette, and stood and released the first puff into the night air. There was that certainty in the about him that sunrise and dawn must indeed soon arrive, but there was also some haunting, creeping presence - which Heller had detected and dismissed earlier in his watch - in that same invisible space around the camp, but which now was almost unbearable in its own strange way. He bent to take another puff behind the cover of the bunker when a claymore went off on the perimeter. Immediately that same perimeter was lit by spotlights as Heller quickly rose and let out a burst of M-60 fire from his machinegun. The cemonculous minions struggled mightily up from that hidden, horrible, sunken sea of their ancient ruler’s pyramid and place of banishment, struggling in their ascent as they reached the passages yet beneath the Marianas Trench. Through those blackened spaces they made their way upward through the salty water, first in its coolness, then in its heat as they reached the places in their journey where lost passageways meet with live lava flows. Some would perish in that particular ascent, on accidentally encountering those very lava flows, for though the hide of a cemonculous is tough like some kind of ancient, alien leather, it cannot withstand the heat of lava. Those that survived the jaunt found themselves hovering just over that Marianas Trench, looking down upon some of those very lava flows they’d avoided in their ascent, and studying with human curiosity left over from the day of their invention those giant blind worms who inhabit the trench and who live in but their own phosphorescent glow - the only other light being that from molten flows - whilst eating and breathing nothing but salt water and the toxic, superheated sludge which pours forth from those crevices. After the minions had assembled above the trench, they headed upward and diagonally through the water, to the coast of a place known to Americans as “VietNam.” The minions knew of Heller’s trinket. There were only three more of them to go. One was safely tucked into a cave somewhere in the Aleutians, and they knew it was available to them any time, and another was deep in a bunker beneath our Pentagon. That would be the toughest to retrieve. Of course time were on ToZ' side. The task at hand was simple though. Within hours the school of forty or fifty of them reached the shallow water off of the coast. They waded ashore for perhaps the first time in centuries, and headed undetected toward Heller’s position. Of course to the Cemonculus invaders a name, any name was irrelevant except that of ToZ, their inhuman creator imprisoned so far below. The Cemonculus platoon walked gingerly through the dark jungle night. Some stumbled for it had been aeons since they’d walked upon land. For some of them only their racial memories gave them the instincts needed to perform that upright, waterless gait. The Cemonculus whispered in an unearthly tongue amongst themselves, coordinating their movements as they neared their prey, and that treasure which their despotic ruler had for so long missed. Suddenly one was blown to bits in a searing sheet of white light and a thunderous roar, and only an instant later did the spotlights come on. The Cemonculus could all see Heller’s trinket across the perimeter. In their ancient gait they walked the suicide march toward the object of their want. Heller began firing long bursts, mowing down the invaders with ease. Only one or two of them even came close to reaching his position, although it was clear that was where they were all headed. Heller was thinking about other things though, for the attackers weren’t “Charlies” but they were some kind of hideous, upright sea monsters, covered in scales yet with some human features which made Heller’s skin crawl. Their dying cries were almost debilitating to his human physiology yet he kept firing. After the short firefight, in which Heller had dispatched twenty or so of the beasts before anyone else in his platoon had even opened up, Heller cautiously climbed over the wall of his emplacement and crouched as he moved toward the nearby dead bodies beneath the continuing glow of the spotlight. The rest of the platoon couldn’t believe their eyes. The Catholics among them made the crucifix sign across their chests. The others gasped and prayed aloud. Out in the field were dozens of those stinking, ghastly, half-human carcasses. Heller fingered the statue and then it hit him. He took it in his hand and looked down at it. It was a figure representing the exact creatures whose dead bodies he saw before him! For whatever reason Heller lost it then and there. He ripped the trinket from his body and threw it out into the field, before collapsing in a weeping heap there on the soft ground aside the stinking, inhuman, and unearthly corpses. The mortar round came in without notice. Heller was blown to bits when it hit. A couple of the others, standing with their heads sticking out from their positions, were wounded by the blast. This time it was a real attack, not some monster assault. That night, enough high explosive rounds were dropped by both sides about the field before those American positions that the Cemonculus corpses in the field were left in a state beyond recognition. The trinket remained out there, somewhere in that field, somewhere buried beneath the soil in the aftermath of battle. With the casualties they’d suffered, the platoon tried to forget the strange little incident, and at dawn they all mourned the loss of Heller and some of the others. None of them ever again spoke of the slimy monsters they’d seen in the fading darkness of the night before. It were as if there wasn’t anything to say and the whole thing would be best forgotten. In any event they packed up and left those positions that day, being airlifted out by choppers and leaving their claymore perimeter and their bunker positions for the Viet Cong. After they’d departed, a scrappy veteran of the other side went over their abandoned positions. Half-buried in the field in front of them he found a small trinket, that of some odd little half-man, half-fish. The brave little man pocketed the thing and took it home to his children that afternoon. Andy Thomas 1997