Leviathan

Sergey gazed out at the Kara Sea from the top floor of the lighthouse as dawn broke over the frigid waters. He was an old man. How many more sunrises would he see? Would he live to see any in a warmer, more pleasant part of the world? His retirement drew near. He welcomed it. At the same time, he felt the tundra was part of him: the long days alone, and the deep thoughts which resolved into a tranquil silence. He hoped he could take the tranquility of the tundra wherever he went, but wondered if the tumult of warmer climates and more populated areas would wear on him.

The lighthouse was stationed north of the Matochkin Straight, to fairy ships into the coast as well as into the channel. Sergey was a Naval Officer, and had been stationed on the coasts of Novaya Zemlya since the days of the Soviet Union.

Sergey had seen the indigenous Nenets transplanted to the mainland. He had seen undesirables dragged into the wastes, never to return. He had seen his comrades return with radiation sickness from the nuclear testing and dumping—deformed faces and limbs, flesh pockmarked with sores, not long for the world. What could he have done, protest? He would only have been murdered by the KGB; but he felt for the Nenets, for the undesirables, for his diseased comrades.

His first post was southwest of his current one, in Belushya Guba, where most of the small population of the islands resided, near the coast of the Barents Sea. There he had a wife and daughter, and many friends. Some of these friends were the ones who went north, to drop nuclear bombs and dump waste.

Having spent enough time alone on the tundra, Sergey understands just how unassailable nature really is. Humanity's utopian dreams—as written by Marx, or Jefferson, or St. John, or any of the other prophets of liberation—were naught more than waves crashing against the cliffs, or glaciers forming and melting away into an unforgiving sea.

Yet when he spent time with his family he felt the warmth that nature can provide. It was this warmth which radiated from his lovely wife Anya and his cheerful little Katiya—it was this warmth that made the cold bearable; yet it was the loss of this warmth which drove him farther north, to the isolation of the lighthouse near the straight by the Kara Sea.

He could not think of it now. The incident. Let the ice glaze over it, let it sink deep beneath the frozen sea of his long neglected heart. He had watched the sun rise, and now it was time he settled into his small home for his daily rest, perhaps with a little help from his old friend vodka.

The modern lighthouse was automated, and it was unnecessary to keep a man stationed within it. Sergey knew he could trust the alarms to go off while he kept a normal sleeping schedule, because there were times during the year, so far north, when there was no sun at all, so he had no choice; but he enjoyed his nights in the lighthouse, looking out over the darkened sea as the sun descended and then rose again, the ever resurrected dying god. It made him feel he was one with both the light and the shadow, a walker between worlds, a wanderer who knew the secrets that lie in that subtle divide between serenity and passion, between the lunar glow and the blazing solar fire. Of course, he always joked to himself, and occasionally to the friendly vendors that brought his supplies, that these were merely the mad ravings of a lonely old man. One of them, a man named Aleksandr, gruffly told Sergey he should just write a damn book already. They both laughed over lunch, proposing various silly titles. Diary of a Crazy Old Fart, he would call it, or Lunatic in the Lighthouse.

He made his preparations and descended the spiral stairs, smirking gently, feeling again that small warmth at the memory of human connection, but not following too close on it, not wanting just now to go to those other memories, buried beneath the ice.

He locked the door to the lighthouse behind him. A short path took him through the biting cold to his warm home. When he settled into his armchair in the living room, he found he had no need of the vodka. He suddenly felt leaden, pushed down into the chair by an unseen hand to a deep, welcoming sleep.

***** * *****

The sleep that welcomed him did not, however, receive him well. He awoke, sweating and terrified. He had not experienced a dream so vivid in many years, not since... no, not since the years after the incident. Yet Anya and Katiya were lately absent from his dreams, and he did not know whether to be grateful or sad. Sometimes he missed those vivid dreams of them. Not the memories of the incident, but rather of the times they all shared in the house in Belushya Guba. Those memories were so vivid, that he felt like he was really there with his beloved, with his dear daughter, and he often thought that it must be a blessing from God—albeit a God in which he had long been forbidden by the Party to believe, and in which he was still not sure that he could. God and the Party both seemed absent during the incident, and, blessings or no, he never could quite forgive it.

In this dream, he was underwater. He felt himself as a massive weight, belly sliding along the rocky muck of the ocean floor, a single dim light before his eyes illuminating only a small stretch of the murky darkness before him. Long tentacles stretched out into the darkness, blindly pulling him forward, while behind himself he could feel a large tail fin swaying back and forth, giving his gargantuan body just a little more push—but it was almost useless, he was so damn big! Most of his movement was made by the strong pull of the tentacles, slowly dragging him, and his thoughts dragged too, moving on a track toward a single desire: freedom. Freedom from what? From these depths, where he felt as if he had been trapped, dragging himself through an eternal, pulsating torment, with no future or past, but only an endless, unforgiving present.

It was this feeling of being trapped, with no hope or understanding of what he was, where he was, why he was, that terrified him. To be conscious of such an existence! To have no knowledge of a birth, no memory of another soul or presence like himself; to be helplessly famished but to feed on dirt scooped from the ocean floor into his giant, slack-jawed mouth; just enough to whet his appetite while never being enough to sate it; just enough to sustain the tortured life of the deformed, putrescent mass that is this monster's body.

Yet entangled with the consciousness of this monster was Sergey's own, and he struggled to convey to it the tranquility he had learned on the tundra, the grace and wisdom of the hermit; but the monster could not understand. It had no reference. It could only blindly batter Sergey's mind with its futile rage, until Sergey felt like a target, like the monster in the dream was honing in on him, searching for him, making him an object of its displaced vengeance against all life. It had been a bad dream, indeed.

He looked at the clock on the wall. It was two in the afternoon, Mid-October, so the sun would be setting soon. Sergey arose and got some coffee brewing. He made eggs and toast. He sat and ate, and tried not to think of the monster, but that feeling of being trapped lingered around him, squeezed him and dragged at him like those long tentacles grasped at the rocks on the ocean floor.

It was only a dream, Sergey thought. It would make a great horror story, but that was not the book he wanted to write, if ever he should take his friend Aleksandr's advice! Perhaps the tundra had gotten to him after all these years. It was good he would retire soon, back into the world of warm human interaction. He promised himself that he would be kind to people, especially those poor souls who felt like the monster in his dream.

He knew that such poor souls existed. Specifically he thought of an old man named Danila, whom he knew when he first moved to the islands. Danila had spent many years in a work camp. He conscientiously objected to the second World War and the Stalinists sent him away. He refused to work in the camp, so they locked him in a cell and fed him the barest subsistence for nearly twenty years, until Khrushchev initiated the release and rehabilitation of many of the old prisoners.

The old man was nearly blind and he was never happy, but he was always kind and measured in response to Sergey's questions. Danila had been sent to Belusha Gubya to peel potatoes in the Navy kitchen. That was all he did, day in and day out. He often remarked that he wished he were dead, but that his faith in God, a religious belief which also informed his objection to the war, disallowed such a sin. Sergey marveled at this.

The monster in his dream had no such faith, only rage and hunger. He was certainly thankful it had only been a dream, but wondered what it portended about him. Was there this rage, this hunger, inside him? Had he been hiding it from himself all these years, along with—

No, still better not to think of the incident. Better to think of his kindness to the old man. He had helped Danila peel potatoes, while they talked of the camps.

Sergey had been born after the war, and after Stalin. How much different would his life have been in another country? It was hard to say. Ultimately, it didn't matter. He had been fortunate enough to be stationed up north, away from overseas operations, like the bumbling mess in Afghanistan, which the Americans had only recently repeated, the damn fools. But he felt for the soldiers—the Americans and the Afghans—the way he felt for his comrades who came back poisoned by the fallout from failed nuclear experiments. Pawns in someone else's game, the poor fellows. So many of us were mere pieces on a global chessboard, but only one King could stand, and even that wasn't necessarily a good thing, depending on who was really moving the pieces.

These thoughts brought tears. Sergey poured his remaining coffee into a thermos and made his way out to the lighthouse. The beacon's automation had already set it ablaze, and the electric light shimmered in Sergey's watering eyes as he unlocked the door. As he climbed the spiral stairs those tears which had quickly turned to ice from the freezing winds gradually melted and ran down his wrinkled cheeks. He did not bother to wipe them away.

***** * *****

In spite of the thermos of coffee, Sergey drifted off again in his chair on the top floor of the lighthouse, and the monster returned. As he traveled with it along the rocky seabed, Sergey began to realize that the monster had keyed into his own thoughts, and was attempting to converse with him. It had no language, but co-opted his own after bumbling around in his mind like a child ransacking a toy-box.

Who are you? The monster asked. What am I?

Its voice was his voice, at first, but as it accessed more and more of his deep memories, the voice changed, randomly becoming the voices of all the people he knew over the course of his life. Yet the monster kept repeating these same two questions, and Sergey kept ignoring them, feeling trapped and terrified, until it dug as deep as it could and found two voices he could not ignore.

Who are you? Anya asked.

What am I? Said his dear, lost Katiya.

“Don't use their voices, please!” Sergey screamed. “Please! I'll answer your questions, but don't use their voices!”

The monster must have understood, because when it spoke next it used his voice again.

Who are you?

“My name is Sergey Novikov.”

There was a long pause as the monster pulled itself along. Sergey could feel the rumble of its body dragging itself through the ocean floor, so large it cut a rut into the seabed. He could feel the two tentacles rise up in the water, stretch out and slam back to the earth, then it would start all over again, a slow but steady pace; nevertheless, inevitable. He felt the monster rapidly assimilating all of his being like a computer analyzes data; calculating, functional. It spoke in a slow and deliberate way, probing his mind for the right words as it did.

I... understand... who you are... but... What am I?

Sergey could sense the hot rage of the monster. It singed his dreaming consciousness, as if he stood too close to a forest fire.

“I can't answer that question,” Sergey replied. “I do not know. I hope you are only a dream, and that I will wake up soon.”

I... am no dream... You... your... Soviets? Yes, your Soviets... did this to me.

“What? What do you mean?”

I... was a... mindless... creature... a... moat creature... like... an alligator... in a moat... I... inhabited... a sunless... city... at the edge... of space. I guarded... a powerful... intergalactic... relic. Yet... I was... unaware... of what I was... until... your Soviets... dropped... a... bomb... and it... pulled me through a... wormhole? A... wormhole... into this cold sea... I was... trapped in ice... but the ice... melted... and now... I AM HUNGRY.

Of course! The glaciers have been melting! Could it be speaking of the Tsar Bomba? Hell, it could be speaking of any of the numerous nuclear bomb tests the Soviets had run up here. But this was only a dream!

No... no dream. I... am real... I... am here. I am close.

Sergey knew it was true. “Are you coming to eat me?”

No... I am already eating you. Now that I know what I am, through your memories, I will eat your... consciousness. Your... pain. Your... despair. Alligators eat... flesh. I hunger for your despair.

It was then that Sergey understood. This monster was down there in the depths of the Kara Sea. It was transported here by some sort of quantum disturbance which had occurred as the result of nuclear testing, but remained trapped farther north in the glacial ice. Now it was free. It was some sort of space creature that fed psychically, yet it only recently became conscious of its own existence.

Yes... Consciousness. I HATE consciousness. And I hate you, and your... Soviets. And all your... humans... and their... bombs. I must... devour... you all.

“I am sorry! Please! We are sometimes terrible creatures, but sometimes we are good! It is not all despair! Please do not do this!”

I see the good, the... warmth... from your... precious... wife... and... daughter. But... I see also the despair.

“No!” Sergey implored, sensing the monster's intent. “Please!”

But the creature did not care about anything but its insatiable hunger.

***** * *****

Sergey was thrust into the memory as if he were really there, but he was a passive observer inside of it, psychically beating against the walls, panic-stricken because he knew what was coming.

He was sitting at the dinner table with Anya and Katiya. They were eating, talking, laughing. Then came a knock at the door. He answered, and there stood his friend, Mikhail, but he did not look so good. His bottom lip was distended heavily and drooping to one side. He had sores all over his skin, and one eye was covered with a white film, while the other stared forward: wide open, bewildered. His body was hunched, as if his bones were malformed, and he was shaking.

“Mikhail, what happened to you?! I thought you were up north!”

Mikhail's reply came out as gibberish. His mouth could not form the words; but he was angry. He shoved Sergey to the ground and began to stomp, screaming unintelligible diatribes. A bone cracked when he stomped into the side of Sergey's knee.

Anya ran to Sergey's aid, and Mikhail tackled her backwards, into the kitchen table, cracking the table in half as he headbutted her in the face, breaking her nose. Sergey was still dazed and struggling to his feet as he watched Mikhail beat Anya to death with both fists. Sergey's left knee wanted to give on him so he braced it with his left hand as he hobbled forward, but he fell.

Kitaya, only nine years old, cowered in the corner, screaming and crying. It drew Mikhail's attention. He grabbed a steak knife which lay near Anya's crumpled body and ran at the little girl, screeching. Sergey rose again and limped forward to intercept but he was too late. By the time he wrestled Mikhail to the ground, the knife was firmly lodged in Kitaya's throat and she was bleeding everywhere.

Sergey struggled with the deformed man on the ground and ultimately subdued him, laying on Mikhail's back so the madman could not get up again. Sergey looked over and saw Kitaya in a pool of blood. She was still, the knife clasped in both hands. In a panic she had removed it and ripped apart her jugular vein.

Sergey screamed. He grabbed Mikhail's hair and beat his face into the floor. The hair came out in Sergey's hands and he screamed louder. He grabbed the sides of his old friend's head again and just kept smashing the distorted face into the floor. How long Sergey could not say, but he knew, when he finally stopped, that Mikhail was dead.

***** * *****

Upon reliving the incident, Sergey thought of the Bible stories he was not supposed to have read, of the revelation of the apocalypse, of the old and new testament descriptions of unfathomable creatures that only God can control. The monster read these thoughts with morbid delight.

Yes... yes... I like these... stories. Especially... this one.

Sergey's consciousness disconnected. As he floated up through the Kara Sea and back to his own convulsing body in the lighthouse, he caught sight of the monster. It looked like a giant anglerfish, with its gnarled, fanged mouth in a perpetual frown; a lone antenna dangling before it, shedding a dim, persistent light. It was so heavy it could not swim. But it did not need to swim, as its two tentacles pulled it forward, and its powerful, radioactive mind succored itself with despair. It would soon sustain itself on the despair of the world, the karmic contingency of humanity's overweening nuclear ambitions.

As Sergey's heart drummed its final beats, he could hear the voice of the monster, yet it was his own voice. With perverted pleasure, it announced itself:

I know what I am.

I AM LEVIATHAN.