Pennywise the Clown vs Cthulhu.

Storm at Sea

Dr. Tyson had had a busy day, not really busier than normal, but stranger. The Castle rock hospital had its usual influx of patients, but there was something off about many of them, especially for those who had stayed overnight. What was off about it was that the oddity had been consistent all week. The patients, about two dozen or so, had all been suffering from mild insomnia brought on by nightmares. He personally had to observe most of them, other similar experiences were shared with him by two other doctors who were equally perplexed when Dr. Tyson explained the frequency of the events. What's more, the patients all had closely similar dreams.

At first Dr. Tyson treated it as stress related. He prescribed appropriate sleep medication dependent on the patients medical history, told them to "Take two and call me if there are any side effects." Then he thought little more about it. That was until about the fifth patient diagnosed with the same nightmare induced insomnia.

Apparently, those willing to share their dreams, not that he cared one way or another, told him of a strange and terrifying place. They would say that they had never seen anything like it. They all shared in describing colossal towers the size of mountains or bigger, floating islands, ravenous creatures of various sizes and features, and humanoid robed figures with squid like features chanting some strange garbled language that sounded like. "Cthulhu fatagn." Though when the patients told him the chant, they all pronounced the first syllable of the word Cthulhu slightly different from one another. Furthermore, they all described a titanic octopus like monster with wings and a humanoid body that toward over them. They would say that it beckoned them for some reason, and that it was the size of mount Everest. Finally they would explain, when it looked at me I wanted to die, and I didn't care how. To them he would diagnose depression medication and recommend talking to a therapist.

It was made evident, the severity of this strange nightmare pandemic, by those who had to stay over night under observation for unrelated reasons. They would wake in the middle of the night despite sleep agents, no matter how strong the medication, curl up on the floor with their backs against the wall, and scream in panic at the corner of the room. This happened four times. One such account, a man brought in to have his appendix removed, had gone through such trauma as a result of his nightmare, that he had a seizure for two straight hours; during which time he bit off his tongue and snapped off his front teeth. Another patient, a woman, had to be taken to the psychiatric institute up in Bangor Main for attempting to cut her wrist with a shard of glass from her makeup kit, then trying to jump off the roof of the hospital.

Cat scans would deduce nothing, nor blood work, or history of drug and alcohol use. In fact, with an exception of those who had some health problem prior to the nightmares, the majority of the patients were completely healthy. That is save for a constant nervous restlessness that caused them to jump at their own shadows.

Dr. Tyson had missed several weather alerts in his hasty line of work. Eventually he did catch it. Meteorologists warned of a storm approaching out of the Atlantic. It wasn't yet considered a hurricane, but just a tropical storm. One characteristic about it that made it strange though was that it's spin was in reverse.

Dr. Tyson looked out the window over the ocean. The storm was already visible. Dark menacing clouded spewed forth furious bolts of the most violent lightning he had ever seen, rattling the windows. The wind was already causing the trees to toss about and sometimes fall over. The storm seemed unnaturally strong given that it was still two days out. It seemed to him as more than a tropical storm.

He had made his way toward the trauma center. A man had been brought in that morning who was the soul survivor of a ship wreck. He was cut through the forearm by shards of splintered wood, glass had marred the right side of his face, and a piece of metal had cleaved into his shin destroying the bone. Police were questioning him in hopes of having something to relay to the families of the rest of the crew. What they got was lunacy.

Despite the meds, the man, a Thomas Prow was coherent enough to answer their questions though very slowly.

"Run me through it again." Officer Gilbert instructed. "This time level with me. First of all, where were you?"

The man watched Dr. Tyson as he observed the chart and moved toward the monitors.

"We were about eighty miles out." He said wincing.
"That's to far out to have hit anything. There's not even a reef out there." The officer retorted.
"We didn't hit no reef." Thomas said sighing at the cops disbelief.
"OK, OK then. Tell me, and no monster story this time, what exactly happened."

Thomas nodded at Dr. Tyson as he fed some more pain killer through the tube led to his IV.

"The waves were getting rough. We worked in weather like that before. We even worked that spot before. We heard a pod of whales so we drew in our nets to avoid them. The nets were dry. I'm talkin bone dry. As we were pulling it in I heard my friend Roger say, look at that, so I looked. The pod of whales were all at the surface. They was sperm whales. They wasn't movin though, no spout, nothin. Those whales was dead. The whole pod died at the same time, and the water was turning red.

" here we go again." The cop shook his head. "Didn't I say no monster story."

Dr. Tyson was about to leave the room but thought he would stay just long enough to hear.

"I'm telling ya those whales was dead. Not sharks neither. Sharks don't take on a whole family of whale. They was cut open by something big. I mean real damn big." His voice was starting to slur from the medication.

"Jesus doc, couldn't you wait till we were finished." Officer Roger complained.

Thomas continued. "That's when the ship rose up. Something hit us hard from underneath. It didn't breach us though, but it tossed us out of the water like ten foot or more."
"A wave?" The cop asked.
"Wasn't no wave." Thomas slurred. "This thing hit us hard. Then we saw it. All we could do was stare at it. We didn't know what else to do."

Tears started to swell up in his eyes and his voice became cracked and shaky. "My mates and I were almost tossed overboard. It was like a mountain was growing out of the ocean. This thing musta been fifty feet taller than our ship, and that's what was sticking out of the water. This thing had eyes though, and tentacles."

"Great." Officer Roger moaned squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "That's just great. OK what next?"

"It was like the ocean came alive. There was these voices everywhere. It sounded like it was on the air and coming from out of the water.

Dr. Tyson was on his way out of the room now. Clearly Thomas was in a state of delirium from his experience.

"Just before our ship was completely destroyed those voices were saying something strange. The was sayin somethin like, what was it? Cthulhu or somethin.

Dr. Tyson halted in his tracks. The cops walked out shaking their heads. As they passed the Doctor they pointed back to the room where Thomas lay.

"That guys crazy. He thinks his ship was destroyed by a cracken. You every hear of anything like that before doc?"

Dr. Tyson turned back toward the room, toward Thomas who was drifting to sleep under sedation. Dark clouds where obstructing the sunlight, causing the room to become dark.

"No, I never heard of anything like that." He said, though he was starting to wonder if maybe there was something more to all of these nightmares than he previously thought. As lightning flashed past the window he said. "You guys be careful. We have a long storm ahead of us."