Terror Incognita by Jeffrey Thomas

cast from atop the ship. The mayor stumbled backwards frantically now, as if the touch of the snow of petals might be poisonous.
    With the petals still fluttering in the air like moths, a head rose up furtively to gaze down at the villagers. It was silhouetted, and thus difficult to make out—difficult, even, to fathom—but seemed to resemble the fleshless skull of a horse. And then, timidly, the body followed. Ribs curled free of the chest like those of a skeleton, and the vertebrae protruded in a line of jagged dorsal fins. The forelimbs were great pinchers, like those of a crab...and with these the thing was lowering a rope ladder over the side...
    “Dear God!” one of the constables cried, and shouldered his musket, and fired.
    Thunder. The very air was burned. The skeletal apparition went back down out of sight abruptly at the impact. The villagers had all heard its inhuman shriek of pain and surprise.
    “Demons!” cried John Kettle, the blacksmith. “It’s the Ancient People!”
    “No,” said Jane Thistle in a voice so low only her husband beside her heard it. She clapped a hand over her heart, and in a tone of awed, anguished joy said, “It’s our children!”
    “It’s our children!” said Jane Mason at the same moment, in a louder voice and in a tone of absolute horror.
    Now, from above, came other voices. Rumblings, and chatterings...hissing whispers, and panther-like growls...
    “Jane,” said John Thistle, “we must get back to the house...”
    “No!” she replied, moving forward.
    He took her arm. “We must! Hurry!”
    The first of them dropped off the back of the ship, where they were less vulnerable to the constables’ muskets. The villagers could hear them splash as they landed. And then, they charged out of the ship’s shadows, kicking up the poisonous black water as they came. In their speed, in their fury, in their vast and varied hideousness the constables were barely able to aim at them. A ragged line of shots cracked the air, and then the creatures were upon them...
    “Run!” yelled John Thistle, violently pulling his wife along now, but still holding onto his pitchfork. “Run! Run!”
    And despite her terrible joy, Jane did run, when she saw one of the creatures embrace Mayor John Stout in four obese arms dangling folds of creased flesh, and thus engulf him totally. A translucent head which was little more than a gelatinous bag closed over the mayor’s head like a caul.
    As Jane turned and fled, holding hands with her husband, she saw the surgeon John Copper run past her. He was moving very fast for a man of his years, and then she realized that he wasn’t so much running as being propelled along by the momentum of a creature which had hold of him. The thing galloped on its hands and feet but its body was normal enough; like all the creatures, it wore no clothing. From its eye sockets, however, writhed twin nests of milky tendrils like those of an anenome, and its bony hooked jaws pierced Copper’s neck like the mandibles of an ant warrior.
    Thistle let go of his wife and whirled about, gripping the pitchfork in both fists now. He lunged at the creature, and the trident caught it through its own neck. Jetting blood, it collapsed atop the surgeon, but the man was already jumping with his final electrified spasms. Thistle again took his wife’s hand; again they ran. Jane’s black skirts flapped the air like storm-lashed sails, and the ground seemed to hammer with a maddened heartbeat under their thumping footfalls.
    Something that squealed like a pig being slaughtered could be heard racing up behind them as they sprinted into their yard, and whatever it was thudded against their door just as John got it closed and bolted. They rushed from window to window, locking them and drawing the curtains. Finally, John panted, “Upstairs, Jane...move!”
    Jane’s hair was in her face, and her eyes gleamed madly from within its tangle. “They survived, John. Some of them...the