The Weird Company Read Online Free PDF

even the remnants of shattered muzzles dripping blood and teeth and bone. Those that were still healthy, still whole, seemed to be enraged by something behind one of the tents. They were barking and leaping into the air at something I couldn’t make out. Suddenly Watkins dashed from one of the other tents and entered the unseen fray. He was screaming and rushing with one of the massive pickaxes we used for clearing ice. As soon as he disappeared behind the tent my world went silent and still. The dogs had stopped barking, Watkins had stopped screaming, and even the wind had stopped howling. Time stopped as something horrific and unseen played out behind that tent. Something I am thankful that I did not witness.
    The resumption of time was announced by the most curious of noises. It started as a series of low and slow whistling clicks not unlike those made by cicadas or locusts. There was tone to it and rhythm, a slow painful rhythm that went something like this:
    Tek Tek e Li Li Tek Tek e Li Li!
    Then as the rhythm sped up and the tone increased in pitch the single source was joined by another, and then a third, all producing that same horrendous sound.
    TekTek e LiLi TekTek e LiLi!
    The rhythm became faster, forming a vast monstrous harmony that wavered in pitch like a demonic violin screaming for the souls of the damned.
    TekTeke LiLi TekTeke LiLi!
    There was movement and the body of poor Watkins careened off in multiple directions as the demonic violinists moved from behind the tent and into my line of sight. It should be obvious that the things that emerged from behind the tent were the undamaged specimens that Lake had named Elder Things, but to see them lifeless on the dissection table and speculate about them was one thing. To see them alive and moving, interacting with each other and their environment, that was another matter altogether.
    We had thought that they had used their lower appendages to pull themselves about, like a starfish, sliding, slow and methodically across a surface. We should have known better; they moved like predators. The body was held horizontal, with the eyes and prismatic setae facing forward, their necks expanded out beyond what I would have thought possible, allowing their heads to turn with an incredible degree of flexibility which they employed in a manner that seemed to me as if they were tasting the very air around them. Their weight was supported by three of the equatorial and three of the basal appendages; as they moved, their footing was sure and deliberate, and the entire body rotated clockwise along its axis so that with each step a new tentacle found footing on the right, while a tentacle on the left rose into the air. Each step also impacted the wings, three of which were deployed at all times, two partially in a horizontal manner and one completely vertical. That the wings were somehow linked to the book gills and the tentacles in either a hydrostatic or pneumatic manner seemed apparent from the rhythmic pumping of all three systems. Those great wings swayed in the icy wind and I could see already the impact that the re-exposure of these creatures to sunlight had initiated in both the wings and the main body itself. Colors had emerged, deep verdant greens had developed, streaked with reds and oranges; I knew that such pigments were indicative of photosynthetic activity using a variety of wavelengths.
    But it was the sound that I cannot forget, the sound and the movement that came with it. For as these things moved through the camp, yet another man appeared, Carroll I think, where he had come from I could not say, but he was unarmed and as he stepped forward he held his arms out at his sides and walked cautiously, slowly toward creatures that he knew had killed but also knew were intelligent reasoning beings, not unlike himself. The octet acted almost in unison, pausing to watch Carroll as he moved and spoke in calming tones. The strange whistling stopped and it seemed as if there