The Signal
It was nearly midnight at the observatory, and Percy was getting restless.
Private First-Class Percival Shetland was assigned to keep an eye on the observatory's radio and its operator, Professor Hugo. The Observatory made a fantastic listening post, and the two of them had intercepted a half dozen secret German communiques in just the last week. They couldn't break the code, but the information they relayed to Allied Command was vital, they were sure.
It had to be. The transmission they were intercepting were coming from some undetectable base, a closely guarded Nazi secret. Anything let slip from such a place was surely crucial to cracking its nefarious secrets.
This was all a great comfort to Percy as he whiled away the hours, far from the front lines that could make him a hero. A great comfort, but little entertainment he thought as he dealt out his sixth game of solitaire this evening.
He ran his eyes over the dials and tubes of the silent radio, ensuring it was on and ready to receive whatever stray signals eked their way to the observatory. He sighed.
The hours passed slowly, and the darkness weighed heavily on his eyelids. The cards were against him this night. He kept getting stymied by a particularly troublesome Jack. He found himself staring resentfully at the problem card, willing it to leave him alone.
It was so quiet when it started, he almost missed it. The faint beep-beep-pause-beep-beeeeep-beep-beeeeeep-pause of the morse code wafted into his mind. The game of Solitaire exploded as he leapt to his feet, shouting.
"Doc! DOC! Another one!" He yelled down the hall, scrambling to turn on the recorder tapes and snatching up a pencil. He cranked the volume (why the hell was it low?) as he slid into the chair, and started marking down the dots and dashes on a pad of paper in front of the machine.
"Doc are you coming?" He focused intently, terrified of marking something wrong. One wrong dash and the codebreakers would be set back weeks. He was so engulfed in his task that he didn't consciously notice anything at first. The beep-beeeeep-beep-beep-beep-pause-beeeeeep-beep-beep-pause echoed about the room, the simple sounds distorted by the old wood and the cavernous space. But even before that, before the natural decay of sound got into it, there was something wrong with the signal. Percy was starting to feel sick as he worked.
The tones carried on, the beeps perfect and unmistakable and somehow eldritch in their perfection. They wormed their way inside the young private's mind and took root. Beep-beeep-beep-beeeeeeep-pause-beeep-beep-pause. Percy's organs rebelled at the sound, heaving inside him, twisting like a terrified animal trying to escape its collar, but he persisted. What's wrong with me, he wondered. Beep-beep-beep-pause-beeeep-beep-beep-pause.
No... not me... his insides coiled as the realisation dawned on him. He had to shut his eyes, the pencil falling from his still hand as the room started to swim before him. Beep-beeeeep-pause. It's the signal. It's the sound. There's something inside it, something rich and ancient and unearthly. Something... wrong.
His fingers felt like boiling water, his brain was dribbling out his ears, his whole self was some distorted monster that the beeeep-beep-pause-beep-beeeep-beeep-pause was making. He dared not open his eyes as he fiddled for the volume dial. He couldn't find it. He stood shakily, knocking the chair back, and groped with both flopping, nigh-uncontrollable hands, found the knob. He twisted as hard as he could, nearly tearing the skin from his fingers.
He managed to turn the knob almost to the minimum. beep. beep.
The sound was so quiet. Almost gone. Almost. He could feel his body returning to normal. His humanity reasserting itself. He dared to open his eyes.
It took herculean effort, but he managed it. To his enormous relief, his body was still there. At some point he didn't recall, he had fallen to the ground. The beep-beeeep-pause was so quiet now, so distant. The world was normal again. But the sound still writhed within him.
He couldn't move.
He wanted to shout for Professor Hugo, but found his throat took orders from him no more. It was in league with something older.
His fears were assuaged when he saw Hugo walk through the door casually. Percy tried to raise his hand at least, to show he needed help, but even his fingers would not obey him. They were slaves to the beeeep-beep-beep-pause. He was trapped in his own body. But Hugo bent over him, looked him in the eyes, he would see what had happened. He would help.
"Beautiful, isn't it, Private Shetland?" Hugo asked, his face inches away from Percy. The professor pulled away, and lifted him up to a sitting position, before dragging him to lean against the wall. "I have a confession to make, my friend." The professor propped Percy up, slapping him playfully on the cheek as though joking. Percy's eyes could not even relay the terror he was feeling, they were focused on the radio set. Trying to absorb the beeeep-beep-pause. His body hungered for the arcane sounds even as his mind raced to escape it.
"We've not been listening for secret Nazi communications." Hugo stood, and walked to the radio. He placed his hand on the volume knob, and turned to face Percy. "No, something much older than the fool Party. Something a great deal more powerful. There are things in this universe, my friend, that would make even the christian god tremble." He turned the volume up, slowly. Percy wanted to scream. Every fibre of his essence quaked with terrible knowledge. Primal knowings.
"We've been listening for this, Percy. Taking notes, making preparations. The Elders are awakening, my friend. This is their song. What do you think, friend? What does your mind say to the perfect pitch of the beeps and the utter emptiness of the pause? Does it know? Does it understand?" Hugo was almost frenzied with excitement, wanting to share his elation with the paralyzed soldier in the corner, even though he knew what had become of the poor man already. He cranked the volume to its highest setting, shouting to be heard over the wall-shaking beep-pause-beeeep-beeep-beep-pause.
"Are you ready, friend? This is the song that ends the world!" He shouted, his body a torrent of fanatical energy. Percy's lips parted, and spoke his response to the Professor.
"Beeeeeep-beep."
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