The following short story, “The Intruder,” appears in the collection

Fragments Of Ruin by Brian Fatah Steele.

That collection is dedicated to

his grandmother, Mary Betteridge.

Find more by the author at

http://brianfatahsteele.com
 Pagnotti climbed the few wooden steps and turned back to look at the beach
before entering. They had made a good choice coming here to St. Croix, it was the
best find yet. And he couldn’t have wished for a better atmosphere. Sun, sand and
surf; just the opposite of the dreary University halls back home.
He had been on break and had taken a leisurely stroll down the beach,
enjoying all the sights the island had to offer. The beautiful dark-skinned
inhabitants and their easy going manners were infectious, as was the island rum he
had been consuming at a quickening pace. Wandering past a group of young
students on holiday from the Netherlands, he had paused to listen to their
wonderful speaking voices. Further down the beach, he had stopped at a small
ocean side bar for a drink and a serving of the delicious chicken curry that he had
grown fond of.
Now back at the house he and his colleagues were renting, he smiled sadly.
They had already been here three weeks and soon their allotted time away would
be up. Called back to show results, they would have to return to Miskatonic and
report. It wasn’t that they had nothing to show for their time here, quite the
opposite. Pagnotti, however, simply wished he could remain forever in this
paradise instead.
Stepping into the small house, he was greeted by a flurry of activity. Mason
was running back and forth between two computers and Sansgaard was shouting at
Brown as the young doctor tried to stick pins in a large map. Fullton was nowhere
to be seen, so that meant he was probably in the bathroom.
“Where have you been?” shouted Sansgaard at Pagnotti, his anger now
turned toward the newcomer.
“I was on break, I walked down the beach. Why, what’s happened?”
“Fucking hell, you better not have been getting wasted on their Caribbean
rot-gut again or...”
“Calm down,” said Pagnotti. “What’s going on?”
“She moved,” said Mason from one of the computer terminals.
“Wait, what? ‘She?’ She or the...” tried Pagnotti.
Brown pulled away from the map, clearly side-stepping Sansgaard and tying
up her long, curly brown hair. She walked over to her small desk and picked up a
tee shirt that was lying across the back of the chair and threw it at Pagnotti. He
caught it as he realized in was the one she had been wearing earlier. It was wet.
“She moved,” said Brown. “She sat up... quickly.”
“My god. Is the subject still...”
“It seems fine,” said Mason. “It started communicating right after she went
back down into the water.”
 “Did you have to force her, or did she go back down herself?”
“She went down herself, very slowly,” answered Brown. “But by that point
we were all crammed in the room.”
“All but you,” sneered Sansgaard.
“Oh, shut the fuck up Erik. I assume Fullton’s in the bathroom now?”
Brown nodded as Sansgaard fumed and turned to the map. Pagnotti began
walking to the other end of the house, a smile playing on his lips at Sansgaard’s
aggravation. Mason called his name out behind him.
“Don’t you want to know what it said?”
“I’ll ask Fullton,” replied Pagnotti as he made his way down the hall.
The house was relatively large, which suited the scholars. Meant for a
family gathering or a party of students, it had four bedrooms and two baths. The
two bathrooms had been essential. Rarely were anymore than two of the team
members asleep at one time, so the bedroom number didn’t so much matter, but
that bathroom situation... that had been a necessity.
Pagnotti rounded the corner and could see Dr. Anthony Fullton sitting on the
top toilet seat, fiddling with a recording device. His gray hair and short-cropped
beard marked him as the oldest of the Miskatonic University team, the field leader
in this little island adventure. For him it was a last chance, but a chance of a
lifetime.
Pagnotti leaned against the open door frame and said, “I heard I missed
some excitement.”
Fullton smiled. “I’m sure Erik told you all about it.”
“I wouldn’t let him,” replied Pagnotti. “What really occured?”
“She sat up.”
“Brown told me that much.”
“She was sitting in here, it was her duty turn,” said Fullton, “When the host
simply, suddenly shot up out of the water. Sat straight up, rigid as a board.
Soaked poor Emily and probably scared her half to death. It was her scream that
alerted us.”
“And then she just slowly returned to the position?” asked Pagnotti.
“Yes. She was already moving back by the time we arrived. It took,
perhaps, all of a full two minutes for her to resume a completely submerged and
settled form.”
“And the Fortian Creature is fine?”
“It spoke moments after she became immobile again.”
Pagnotti leaned across the bathroom, over Fullton and peered into the tub.
Inside was a young woman, completely naked and lying on her side in a fetal
position. Somewhere in her early twenties, she had long dark hair and a slender
form. She had been quite beautiful once, with large dark brown eyes that now
stared off under the water. On the side of her head and just barely cresting out of
the top of the bathtub’s water level, it sat attached to her skull, slightly draping
over her face. It looked almost squid-like, but more solid, more durable. Eight
tentacles laid splayed about her head, the suckers having woven themselves into
her flesh and a small, bulbous bag of organs and fluid rested on her neck. It pulsed
with life, with purpose. Right above the bag, right in the center of the tentacles,
there was an orifice of types.
And it was from this orifice that the creature spoke.
“I thought we all agreed that the host was no longer a functioning
organism,” said Pagnotti.
“We did, and I still stand by that,” said Fullton. “I think the creature was
simply exercising base electrical activity and that was a result.”
“Seems a bit... controlled.”
Fullton looked at the bathtub with concern. “I know.”
“Well, what did it say?”
“Something along the lines of, ‘The Seas Will Gather The Slaves To Make
Amends For Its Culling Time,’ I believe.”
“Still in a mix of broken French and ancient Sumerian?” asked Pagnotti.
“Hence the ‘I believe’ part.”
“Well, Sansgaard is a bastard, but he’s a damn fine linguist. He’ll figure it
out.”
“Careful, it sounds like you might be respecting him,” laughed Fullton.
“Could you watch this while I go use the other bathroom? I could use a moment
with my pipe as well.”
“Go have your piss and your smoke, old man,” said Pagnotti with a smile.
The two doctors exchanged places, and Fullton left. Pagnotti placed the
recorder on the makeshift table across the sink and stared into the tub. The
Miskatonic Fortian Science branch had been searching for something this definite
now for decades. Not since their rise back in the early 1920’s had a find like this
ever come about. It was an elite group of some of the most brilliant doctors and
researchers on the planet; however, many came from fields that were too bizarre or
obscure to find real challenges anywhere else. Miskatonic sent them on excursion
into the occult and the mysterious, sent them to find answers.
So often, they came back with nothing.
When reports came in across their network of a young tourist who had been
stricken with some kind of unknown parasite down in the Caribbean, Miskatonic
sent in a team. Dr. Anthony Fullton was a Microbiologist, Dr. Emily Brown a
Speculative Disease Specialist. Gregory Mason tagged along as Medical Data, and
Daniel Pagnotti slid in at the last minute as their Fortian Zoologist. Pagnotti had
been the one who had suggested submerging the host in salt water after Brown had
muscled her way through the St. Croix hospital staff. The hospital had been more
than happy to see the coma patient and her freakish little friend go.
Once they had obtained the house and filled the tub with salt water, they had
placed the girl along with her attachment into it. Almost immediately, the creature
had begun to speak. Both Brown and Fullton had recognized some of the French,
but realized that either they weren’t fluent enough or that it was speaking in
multiple languages. Sansgaard arrived two days later.
“Where’s Fullton?” came a voice from behind Pagnotti.
He turned to see Sansgaard standing there frowning.
“He went to the bathroom upstairs, why?”
“I don’t answer to you,” snapped the linguist.
“What is your problem?” asked Pagnotti, genuinely confused.
Sansgaard rolled his eyes and stormed off. Pagnotti shook his head and
turned back to the tub. All of the statements from the creature had been translated
as a mixed of French, the young woman’s native tongue, and a form of ancient
Sumerian. They were all usually single sentences, dire warnings of a kind. They
all talked about the seemingly end of humanity and the rise of the seas. Some kind
of broken treaty and the return of elder ones. The department heads back at the
University all had seemed very interested in this.
Fullton came back and leaned against the door frame much as Pagnotti had
done.
“Any change?” he asked.
“Nope,” said Pagnotti. “Sansgaard is looking for you. He’s in a pissy
mood.”
“He’s been increasingly so,” said Fullton. “And he has a particular distaste
for you.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Have you eaten yet?”
“Yeah,” replied Pagnotti. “I got a curry on my break.”
“Damn. I was going to send you to get one for me if you were hungry, too.”
“Hell, I’ll go get you one. I’ll pick up one for everybody. Besides, it’ll piss
off Sansgaard to know I left again.”
Fullton laughed as they traded spots once more. Pagnotti slipped down the
hallway, almost wishing for a confrontation with the linguist. Back in the living
room, he found only Brown and Mason at work. He told them of his plan, of
which they both thanked him for greatly. Pagnotti made it through the front door
without incident.
He took his time walking down the beach, enjoying the feeling of the warm
breeze. Night was just beginning to fall and the lights of the town glowed orange
and yellow close by, a distinct opposite to the gorgeous shades of darkening blue in
the sky. Pagnotti couldn’t understand how Sansgaard could be so miserable in a
place like this. The stars started to erupt in the heavens above, twinkling in a
majestic way that they never could back home. He could hear faint singing off in
the distance and he smiled.
Finally at the small ocean side bar, he ordered five medium curries to go and
had them bag up the meals. While he waited, he ordered a small drink, more of
that “Caribbean rot-gut.” As Pagnotti sipped on his island rum, he noticed an old
man, blacker than he had ever seen any other human, staring at him. Pagnotti
smiled at the man and titled his drink in the elder’s direction. A few minutes later,
the curries were delivered and Pagnotti made to leave.
He was just about to step out of the light of the bar when the old man
grabbed his arm.
“You an intruder here, boy. An’ it’s gonna take you,” he said grimly.
“Excuse me?”
“The waters, it don’ like yo’ kind,” he replied, getting agitated.
Pagnotti pulled away from the old man as the bartender started yelling.
“Papa Lucia, you leave that nice doctor alone now. You get on outta here,
Sir. Pay no mind to Papa Lucia.”
Pagnotti nodded and made his way off down the beach, glancing behind him
only once to see the old man shaking his head, then hobbling back to his table and
bottle of rum.
The Zoologist bit his lip, his thoughts running dark. He tried to banish them,
to let the warm Caribbean air blow them from his mind but they stayed rooted as
firmly as the creature did to the poor French girl’s skull. What exactly were they
dealing with back at the house? So far, none of them had really wanted to theorize
on the ramifications of what the creature was saying. They were scientists, not
theologians, and they had all been very quick to dismiss anything outside their
little realms of expertise.
All the scientists, except for Sansgaard, thought Pagnotti as he stepped
through the front door of the house.
As he thought this and stepped in, he had only moments to see the horrific
scene displayed before him before pain exploded in the back of his head. He
dropped the bag of food and fell to his knees, a hand coming up to the back of his
skull defensively. That had merely opened his ribs for a swift kick, sending him
sprawling next to one of Mason’s computer terminals.
Pagnotti felt wetness on his arm and, through the dazed pain, he lifted it to
see it covered in blood. Mason’s blood. Mason lay back in his computer chair, his
throat slit wide open and red draining down his front. It had splattered all of the
terminals and began to pool on the floor. Across the room, Brown sat on the
couch, her limbs dangling awkwardly about in death, her throat even more
viciously slashed open.
A shadow fell across Pagnotti.
“I want to kill you. I want to kill you for my Lord, but it desires you,” said
Sansgaard.
“Sansgaard... Erik, what have you...”
“Be silent,” he said getting down next to Pagnotti and placing a large kitchen
knife at the Zoologist’s throat. “Be silent and listen.”
“Listen to wha...”
Sansgaard punched Pagnotti in the face with his free hand then pointed
towards the hallway. She sauntered in, almost gracefully, naked and dripping with
salt water. Her eyes were blank, staring like the dead. In her hands she carried the
creature, only a few blemishes to mark where it had attached itself to her.
She spoke, not as a young French tourist, but as the creature, the strange
words now tumbling from her lips.
“And The True Kings Reside In The Deep,” translated Sansgaard. “The
Children Rise To Vanquish Those Who Would Intrude.”
“Erik...” tried Pagnotti as the girl knelt down beside him.
“It has already laid its first egg in her,” said Sansgaard with a smile. “Now
you’ll be the next.”
Pagnotti sought to struggle, but Sansgaard brought the knife up to face,
cutting him in a shallow motion. He gestured with the blade towards Pagnotti’s
throat, and the Zoologist fell back. Teeth clenched, his muscles grew taught as
what used to be the French girl drew near with the creature. At the last moment,
his eyes shot over and he saw the fangs of the underside mouth undulating in need,
and Pagnotti screamed.
And then, Pagnotti knew nothing but the ocean...

Copyright 2010 by Brian Fatah Steele