Call of Cthulhu Bear

The morning was bright for the first time in a week. The typhoon and subsequent rains had darkened the beaches of the small island nation for many days. Fishing had all but come to halt and all of the tourists and locals huddled inside the low concrete structures of the small resort town and the shanty village that had practically grown around it. The Americans and Europeans were irate and tired, especially those who had to go home as soon as the storms abated enough for the airport to open. The few who could afford spend more time on the island and rent boats and yachts to go fishing, since they could afford those too, decided to make the most of their vacations.

The storm wrecked the shanty town, dozens were left homeless and several families with shanties near the water had vanished along with their shacks. A few villagers noticed that a group of families further inland had vanished leaving their homes intact. They were considered odd because they had always isolated themselves from the other villagers and rumors of fishermen who went near their group of huts disappearing or growing ill came and went over the years. The people noticing this would have been genuinely confused by the report of the coastal authority of a short sighting of a group of 5-6 catamarans, glimpsed headed off into the ocean at the height of the storm.

That report hasn't really been given any thought for two major reasons. The first is the sudden appearance of an island, which had been hidden behind the crashing waves, but loomed unmistakably on the horizon. Its distance and apparent size meant that it was gigantic and the Indonesian military quickly became interested. Within three days several of their warships had parked in the town's substantial cruise harbor. And that isn't the second reason most people ignored the report.

The second reason directly involves me, so I suppose I should give some introduction. My name is Dr. Cherrywood, I am a clinical psychologist and I was amongst the tourists vacationing when the typhoon hit. Since I could afford a few more days of vacation, my wife and I were also amongst those to stay. We even had a yacht.

The reason almost no one paid any attention to the report was the sudden and horrible descent into madness that 1/3 of the town and village experienced. Mere hours after seeing the towering new island in the distance people began going mad in the streets. Several of the towns shops were looted, dozens were murdered and in the middle of it I kept asking the question 'why?' It is my investigations that lead me to write this and pray that my connection to the Internet will last long enough for me to post it, for it to reach someone else in the world. I know I already have little chance of surviving the ordeal to come.

The madness struck people without any regard for ethnicity or class, it struck randomly within families. A pair of parents ransacked their own hotel room, nearly killing their own children. A mother and son in a family of five jumped off the tallest building in town at the same time. That first evening as I watched the sun set, I saw figures walking along the beach. I saw hundreds of people calmly walking straight into the sea. The next morning as the bodies washed up on shore it was found that each and every one of them had a unique mark on their chest that looked burnt into the skin. Suns of various kinds, bridges, clouds, crescent moons, even red balloons. Each of the bodies had contented and happy looks, frozen into their faces.

I was quickly conscripted to help in the hospital, filled now with mental patients. The dank structure had been gutted by the storms and anything that could be used as a bed had a body on it. The violent ones were strapped down or secured as best they could be. Over the course of a week they all calmed down, they all vegetated. Nearly a quarter of the town's population lay catatonic before me and I stood powerless.

I realized that it had to be the island and the storms at the root of everything. I asked everyone I came in contact with about what happened during the hurricane. A coast guardsman showed me the reports. An elder man I met, caring for his catatonic son, told me about the shanty town and the families that left. The children whose parents were strapped to adjoining beds in my ward cried in the small room I used as an office for an hour. The family missing its mother and son had been staying in the room next to mine.

All of their ghastly tales held common elements, the most horrifying was the way afflicted people were described by their loved ones as having been morose or distant because of various situations. The parents close to a divorce, the mother and son had been at odds with each other for nearly 4 years. All of those depressed people, the despondent, the tired, the anguished, their minds were being destroyed. And everything came back to "the day the storms stopped."

The best way I could see to get to the bottom of all this madness, the only way to stop the madness, the only cure, would be found on that new island. And I still had that yacht.

Ten days had passed since the clouds broke and the madness began and on the morning of that tenth day I struck out. The authorities screeched commands out of the radio but I knew they couldn't stop me, they'd lost too many people. It took three hours to get to where binoculars would help me see the thing. It looked...bright; it shone on the sea. The towers were gigantic and a bright white, and strangely ephemeral. As I got nearer I could see rainbows dancing over the structures. It was a city, a gigantic island city. The closer I became to it, the more I realized that the towers were mist, bright white mist. What strange lost science made them solid I do not know, but they stood monolithically against the sky, reaching into it for untold reasons.

The sun had almost set as I got close to the island. Its structure was so great that I didn't know how to tell I was close until I saw the boats. All manner of sea-craft lined the now visible shore of the island. Pontoon boats, yachts, even what looked like a warship, with Chinese markings. Hundreds of boats. When I got close enough to shore to wade in I inspected one, it was a little local fishing boat, and found it filled with various knick-knacks. The amount of pink bows and flags with rainbows arching between clouds was almost blinding.

It was as I ascended the island and walked through the city that I saw its true shape and substance. The ground and buildings really were mist; they smelled a sickly sweet and everything seemed brighter and brighter as I made my way in, despite the encroaching night. The sky looked as blue as it would at noon but I knew the sun had set. All around stood statues depicting mighty ursine beings; nearly bears but nearly something else. What struck my eye was the emblem each wore proudly on its chest. Each had a perfect version of the symbols I'd seen on the chest of the drowned villagers.

I realized that I'd been walking through this strange, beautiful yet terrifying scenery for far longer than an hour when I saw the central blister of the city, down a wide boulevard. The spire rose so far into the sky that I do not know where it ended, it's hazy outline obscured itself into the stratosphere. My approach seemed to create a loud noise to emanate from it. I am loathe to admit it but I fell to the ground quivering with fear and a sort of warm fuzzy feeling.

The sound continued but it took on a rhythm that told me it was not aware of my presence. I continued on, fueled by morbid curiosity and purpose. I wanted it to make sense, I wanted the madness to end. I only wish I'd been scared to the point of running away.

I ascended the hill, though it seemed more like a great thunderhead, a billowing tower of cloud. It was then that the sound resolved itself into words, horrible words not to be heard by mortal ears, no less spoken. I have at least the sense not to write them here.

Once I reached the top of the hill and got to the center spire I saw the source of the noise. A crowd of worshipers standing around a humongous shrine; the outline of cyclopean doors just visible here at the base of the great spire. I found a hiding spot and decided to rest there, when I checked my watch, I was surprised to discover that it was nearly 10:30. I'd walked nearly 5 hours. As I sat and rested in an little regarded corner I dozed off exhausted, hungry and afraid.

I awoke to a horrible sound; a crashing, thumping sound like the largest elephants pounding as hard as they could across a drum the size of a football field. Covered with cymbals. As I shakily brought my head over my cover to look I saw the cause of the noise. Twenty or thirty giants stood a hundred feet over the assembled crowd; mindlessly, or at least carelessly, trampling and crushing dozens beneath them. The sounds of the crowd were filled with a strange sense of bliss and happiness, not fear or anguish. The crowd was the furthest kind of insane. The giants were moving to the doors which dwarfed even them and pulling them open.

I don't remember if I screamed; I couldn't even feel my own body as the terror and madness swept through me like a knife. An awesome and terrible figure stepped forth from the doors, ducking as it came out. It looked up at the sky and above a blazing light came forth. A yellow sphere formed overhead surrounded by daggers of flame; it opened its forty-odd eyes and looked down at us; it smiled.

I hasten to describe the figure now, as I am short on time. It was green, a bright and sickly green, and covered in a thick coat of fur. Its head was like a gigantic octopus, its beady eyes on either side of a bulbous mass of head, tentacles streaming down like a beard with a mind of its own and I may be succumbing to madness but I believe it had a button nose. Simile can truly do no justice to it. And on its chest blazed a bright and powerful sun with a single eye staring at everyone at once. Its bellow deafened the crowd as surely as it deafened me. It looked down upon the closest of the crowd and knelt down. The green arms seemed to stretch out around the crowd and embrace each and every one of them. The monster pulled them all close to it and devoured them, one by one. I could see the glee on the faces of some, the terror on others. Bits of the greater group seemed to sober, to see their terror for what it was and began to move away from the monster.

It was at that point that I began running myself, back to the shore, back to the boats. I could feel the giants chasing the crowd in my feet. As I ran I managed one glance over my shoulder and I saw it, I saw the great monster looking straight at me. The eye on its chest pierced into my psyche, ripping it to giddy shreds.

As I ran I eventually found a helicopter that had come here with more appetizers for its owner's god. I got inside and found a laptop inside was connected to a satellite connection and started writing this piece. The giants seem to have passed it by and I have managed to hide from their eyes so far.

If anyone is able to receive this message I hope it is warning enough that you will be able to send warning. To ready for the battle with a great and terrible evil and stop its fluffy and kind-hearted destruction of humanity. I can see no end in sight to its hunger.