Shadows Out of Time

When I awoke, there was thick blood in my mouth, tooth fragments on my tongue. I expelled these. Groaning, I climbed out of a malodorous bunk bed in some dark space.

The whining howl of winter winds buffeted the dark walls of the room. I did not recognize it, for the clanking of heavy chain drew my attention away from my surroundings.

I was in fetters and leg irons, I saw. My soul grew cold.

Going to the solitary window, I found an octagonal port. It resembled the pantry window, but was fixed. The world beyond its porthole-style glass was a cold white confusion. Where was I?

The room was small and cramped, its walls a dark plum hue. Like the tea room pantry, but even more unlike it. There were familiar cupboards. I opened one. It was empty. But on the reverse of the door lay a discernable profusion of carven initials. I recognized Thom’s distinctive brand. And Starla’s. I shrank from the impossible sight.

Was I dreaming?

Fumbling open the only door, I came upon a set of rough-hewn plank stairs identical to the tea room’s cellar steps. But this was not that cellar, though the heavy damp atmosphere possessed a similar musty salt tang.

Dragging my chains, I fought my way upward. The plank risers tossed and rolled, fighting me with every uncertain step.

A ship! I thought. I’m aboard a ship…

Sometimes you can be too psychic. Sometimes you can see your own doom. I had heard of this happening. As I struggled toward a heavy oaken door, weird impressions and images hit me hard. Stubbornly, I pushed these figments away. I did not want them. For once in my life, I had no desire to foresee the future. My prospects, even fragmentary and semi-apprehendable, were more than my mind could bear.

But reach the door I did. I shouldered through, only to be slapped by a faceful of salty sleet. Heart pounding, I forced myself on. My fettered feet skidded on a pitching, rolling, warpy surface. I knew it was a ship’s deck. For what else could it be, with three tall masts rearing up into the white curse of a raging Nor’easter? The mast tops themselves disappeared in the infinite ghostly swirl. But the rank upon rank of wind-troubled sailcloth bespoke of wilder days, ancienter times.

I spied Cap’n Terrill planted before a heavy oaken ship’s wheel. His eyes were hard on his course. If he perceived me, he acknowledged me not. I shouted at him:

“Where am I, damn you?”

His weatherbeaten expression changed not a flicker.

“What ship is this? Tell me the name of this vessel!”

He spat to one side, but was otherwise silent.

Making a loop of wrist chain, I flung an angry swipe. It went clean through him, impotent as my furious shouts.

Recoiling, I stumbled back, my lungs sobbing for breath, heart bursting with fear and anger. I wheeled.

And there she stood: Miss Theresa Terrill. She was bundled up in a Mackinaw coat, seeming as impervious to the storm as her descendant, or ancestor — or whatever Cap’n Terrill was in truth.

“Welcome aboard the Blue Moon, Mr. Shaner,” she said without human feeling.

And in that moment, I knew. Clairvoyant flashbacks detonated in my brain. The fragments I refused to see resolved into a chain of clairvoyant connections. The tea room built from the timbers of the shattered old tea Clipper. The December shutdowns. Starla’s impossible cellar hole. My intuiting Siam instead of Thailand. I understood all. Her destruction notwithstanding, the Blue Moon continued making her annual run to the Gulf of Siam and back, long after Siam had become Thailand. The evil tea that was no longer grown and harvested in this century could yet be found — back in the past, where King Mongkut still ruled through brute power and dark wizardry.

This was the true secret of Kingsport tea, whose leaves my scarlet life’s blood would shortly nourish. I knew this. Psychically, spiritually, undeniably, I foresaw my fell fate. I was destined to meet my doom a century before my birth. God alone knew what havoc that would wreak on my Karmic cycles.

I croaked out, “I should never have let you draw up my chart.”

“I told you that you would be impressed,” Miss Theresa intoned. “ Impressment is an old Kingsport tradition, too.”

Behind her, a shadowy Pharaonic mass loomed against the whirling white chaos. Black, faceless, terrible, it was perceptible yet not physically present. No mouth uttered its name. But in the clairaudient silence of my damned soul, I received it clearly: Nyarlathotep.

The howling winds swallowed my scream of wordless terror.

Crom-Ya’s Triumph ROBERT M. PRICE

On the War Path