Arlo Hollis paced in front of the empty lion habitat that, until recently, had been the Arkham Zoo’s most popular attraction. A short, middle-aged man in the zoo’s standard khaki uniform and pith helmet, he muttered under his breath, red-faced. The workmen paid him no mind as they removed foliage and swept out the cave that had once been the lion’s home. Another workman grunted as he squatted at the little stone wall at the front of the enclosure and pried away a plaque that proudly proclaimed the compound had been the home of Panthera Leo. This act of vandalism set off a fresh burst of expletives from the zookeeper.

“Stop! This is madness!” Arlo shouted. “What’s going on here?”

He was ignored. The man with the plaque stood to leave and the little zookeeper jumped in his way, demanding an answer and trying to wrestle the sign out of the workman’s big hands.

“Sorry mister, but we’ve got orders,” the laborer said, lifting the plaque out of Arlo’s reach.

“Whose orders?” Arlo spat. “I’m the zookeeper. Tell me what you’ve done with my lion!”

“That old cat is old news,” interrupted a rumbling basso voice. Dr. Burtram De Vries approached Arlo with his long hands folded against his chest. The zoo’s head biologist and general manager, De Vries was a lanky, cadaverous man with deep-set eyes and a precisely trimmed beard. “He was elderly. Past his prime. It was long past time to put the old beast down.”

“You had him destroyed?” Arlo’s jaw hung slack.

“Tough decisions had to be made. We needed to make room.”

“Make room?” Arlo sputtered. His brain reeled at the news that his favorite animal had been euthanized without his consent.

“We’ve got a new exhibit. A new, incredible species,” De Vries said. “I’ve procured them at great personal expense. They’re unlike anything mankind has ever seen. We will be the only zoo in the world with such creatures.”

The old doctor smiled, showing a row of crooked teeth, tombstones yellowed by tobacco. Another workman shoved past them holding a new plaque, which he began to screw onto the space on the wall where the old one had been. Seeing red, Arlo tore his gaze away from De Vries to peer at the words engraved on the polished bronze.

Aptenodytes Albus.

***

The penguins were horrid, ugly things.

Far from the tiny birds that strutted around like dapper, waddling gentlemen in black-and-white tuxedos, the creatures that arrived at the zoo were taller than a full-grown man and completely devoid of feathers or fur. Their flabby skin hung off their plump bodies in rolls and folds, their loose flesh the color of alabaster. The large albino birds were eyeless, their beaks soft and drooping.

Arlo loved almost all the zoo’s animals no matter what they looked like, but he couldn’t help but shudder as three of the misshapen abominations were coaxed out of their crates and into the lion’s former enclosure. Their bone-white flesh glistened wetly in the sun. As the laborers prodded them toward the mouth of the man-made cave at the center of the pen, the penguins lifted their small, pointy heads and uttered shrill, ear-piercing squawks that set the zookeeper’s teeth on edge. The horrible noise sounded eerily human. Arlo felt the skin on the back of his neck tighten and break out in gooseflesh.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Arlo started, biting his lip to keep from crying out. Dr. De Vries stood behind him, arms behind his back. His eyes were glued to the penguins as they blindly wandered into the cave. The doctor licked his lips as he listened to their awful screaming.

“What’s wrong with them?” Arlo asked.

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong with those majestic specimens,” De Vries said, his words taking on an edge. “Those are great birds of the rarest variety. Imported directly from Antarctica. An ancient species that lives in caves deep underground, I believe. First discovered by the Dyer Expedition.”

The 1930 Dyer Expedition. Of course. Arlo shook his head. De Vries was obsessed with the doomed scientific voyage. In the two years since that disastrous foray into the Antarctic, it was all De Vries talked about. William Dyer himself had returned a gibbering madman and was now locked away in the bowels of a far-off asylum. Even so, these days one was more likely to find De Vries hunched over Dyer’s research papers and news clippings from the expedition in the Miskatonic University Library than attending to his duties at the zoo. On multiple occasions, Arlo had attempted to complain to the zoo’s Board of Trustees about his superior’s negligence , but his entreaties fell on deaf ears. De Vries was an influential man, always rubbing elbows with Arkham’s movers and shakers. He was a hometown boy too, a Miskatonic graduate just like the trustees. Arlo —who’d come to the zoo from Concord in 1924 —was an outsider. The clannishness of Arkhamites was excessive by even New England standards, and thus De Vries was allowed free reign to do as he pleased without reproach.

“These are extremely rare animals,” De Vries said, turning his stern gaze on the zookeeper. “They’ll require your utmost care and attention if we are to keep them alive and well in captivity. I created a care and feeding plan for them, and you must follow it to the letter. These are your most important tenants. Do you understand?”

Arlo wanted to argue. He wanted to point out he was responsible for the zoo’s other animals, who would surely suffer if all his time was spent on the corpulent monstrosities. But he nodded and kept his mouth shut. These were hard times. Standing up to De Vries would not only be futile but would surely earn him a spot in Arkham’s ever-growing breadlines.

“Yes, doctor,” he said through gritted teeth.

The penguins shrieked in the darkness of the cave.

***

The stench in the enclosure was noxious. It reeked of sour sweat and the tang of ammonia from the creatures’ thick, white guano, which coated every inch of the straw-covered floor. When they weren’t squawking, the penguins were noisily defecating around the habitat with no regard for the cleanliness of their environment.

Arlo banged a ladle on the dented bucket containing their food and watched as three pallid forms emerged from the shadows. They were even more hideous up close, their skin so pale it was nearly translucent and marbled with dark, twisting veins that pulsed with their movements. How could such animals survive in the Arctic, or anywhere else for that matter? They loomed over the zookeeper, bleating as they opened and closed their blubbery beaks. They turned their heads toward the metallic clang, revealing smooth divots where their eyes should have been. Feeding time was the only time they deigned to come out of their filthy den to interact with him.

Gwaaaaaaawwwwwk!

The largest of the three, called Gertie, impatiently shoved her bulk into Arlo, knocking the diminutive man back. His pith hat tumbled off, exposing his balding pate. He felt the penguin’s clammy skin on his face and choked back a gag.

“Hold your horses, you disgusting beasts!” he yelled. He never would have raised his voice to the other animals at the zoo, but these things bypassed any empathy he’d cultivated for the creatures under his care. Every aspect of the penguins offended his senses, and his mind kept returning to a deep-seated instinct that they should not exist. That they were not natural.

“Come and get it,” he said flatly, dipping the ladle in a grayish slurry that smelled almost as off-putting as the penguins themselves. The mixture was a special concoction formulated by Dr. De Vries, who’d refused to disclose the ingredients to Arlo. The slop was delivered in large drums to the storage shed near Arlo’s office along with instructions on exactly how it was to be fed to the penguins.

Gwaaak! Gwaaaawk!

Gertie squatted before Arlo as he gingerly brought the ladle of mush up to her open beak. The flesh inside her mouth was pink and lined with tiny, underdeveloped teeth. Gelatinous ropes of drool dripped down Gertie’s chin and onto the rolls of her chest as he dumped the gruel into her maw. The penguin ate clumsily, and most of the food splattered on her face and body.

He fed each of them in turn. The process repulsed him, but at least it kept them quiet for a few moments. After what seemed like an eternity, the bucket was empty. He stood in the dark, staring at the satiated penguins, who quietly regarded him.

“Better?” he asked, more to himself than the animals. “Maybe you were just hungry. Maybe, in time, we can all get along.”

Gertie sidled up close to him again. He stopped himself from stepping back, wondering if this was some sign of affection. A chance to bond with these bizarre new beasts. He extended a hand and gingerly patted the blubbery expanse of the penguin’s upper torso.

“There, there,” he said. “See, we can be friends.”

Gwaaaaaaawwwwwk!

Gertie let out an earsplitting wail and vomited a deluge of mucus-thickened food directly onto the zookeeper’s head. He fell back cursing and gagging as the penguins retreated to the depths of the cave.

***

Arlo sat in a tattered easy chair in the living room of his cramped apartment. Fibber McGee and Molly crackled out the speakers of his radio. It was his favorite program but he was unable to concentrate on the words. Try as he might, nothing could stop his thoughts from circling back to the penguins. Their unceasing caterwauling still rang in his ears. Their foul stench still coated the inside of his nose and tongue. Their foulness clung to him. He grimaced and snatched another bottle of Narragansett from the crate near his feet. To his surprise, it was nearly empty. He popped the cap and the dingy walls swayed as he took a sizable draught. The audience laughed at one of Fibber’s quips, but the sound was tinny and joyless.

Six weeks. Six weeks of taking care of De Vries’s horrendous pets while the rest of the zoo’s animals went hungry and neglected. The Arkham Zoo had always been small and a bit shabby —certainly nothing like the zoo in Boston —but Arlo took pride in caring for the place and its animals. He loved them. A lifelong bachelor, he considered each of the zoo’s residents his children, in a way. He wanted to care about the penguins too, but try as he might, their presence at the zoo, even the very idea of their existence, disgusted him. Minding them day in and day out hadn’t lessened his disgust. Squalling, naked, like overgrown and misshapen baby birds, they dominated his every waking thought. He couldn’t even enjoy a cold beer, or six, after a long day of work without them invading his mind.

Something had to be done.

Arlo lurched out of the chair and stumbled to the kitchen. He’d never hurt an animal, but remembered when De Vries put down a newborn chimp from the monkey house a few years ago. The ape was born with its organs on the outside of its body, and the poor thing had entered the world in terrible suffering. Arlo had watched with tears in his eyes as De Vries gave it a fatal injection. The animal looked relieved when it sighed its final breath.

“It was a mercy,” Arlo said. He knelt, opened the cupboard beneath the sink, and reached back into its depths. He breathed in the scent of cleaning products and mildew as he pulled out a battered cardboard box. The logo on the front featured a comically fat cartoon rat lying on its back, eyes replaced with large, red X’s.

“A kindness. A mercy for a thing that shouldn’t be.”

***

A thin sliver of the moon cast its meager light down on the Arkham Zoo. Strange shadows from the cages and habitats stretched down the cobblestone path winding through the facility. Arlo walked toward the penguins’ enclosure as a bucket of the poisoned slop thumped against his leg with each purposeful step. The zoo was a different world at night. The restless chimps hooted along with the lonely calls of exotic birds and the creaking drone of myriad, unseen crickets. The only hint of human presence was the occasional candy wrapper left on the ground and the faint scent of popcorn and boiled peanuts hanging in the air.

Arlo tripped on a loose stone and flailed to stay upright. He wished he’d brought a flashlight. There was one in the shed where the food was kept, but he’d forgotten it in his haste. If he turned back to get it, Arlo knew he’d abandon his mission altogether.

A circuitous route led him to a gate at the rear of the enclosure that opened into the back of the cave. Arlo gasped when he saw the gate’s heavy padlock lying on the ground. He stopped to pick it up but froze halfway down. The penguins squawked beyond the gate, but there was another noise layered beneath it. He straightened and strained to listen through the high-pitched screeching.

Laughter.

Arlo stepped inside the rank, stygian blackness. The cave was empty. The sound echoed off the walls in a directionless cacophony that made him reel, disoriented and dizzy. No doubt about it, the voices were clearly human. At least one was deep and chillingly recognizable.

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” De Vries boomed over the cries of the penguins. “We bow down before you, humbled by the works of the Elder Things!”

Arlo hugged the wall and shuffled toward the light at the entrance to the cave. The three penguins sat outside the opening, their pellucid skin gleaming in the dim moonlight. They screeched at the sky, throats quivering. A gaggle of figures danced around them in an undulating circle —as many as ten men and women, completely nude and nearly as pale as the beasts themselves. They cackled and spun like dervishes with their hands outstretched, frolicking around the massive birds. He recognized many of them: the zoo’s trustees, a city council member, a face or two he’d seen in the pages of the Arkham Advertiser. Society types. De Vries, naked as the day he was born, pallid and wasted as a scarecrow, led the ritual. Arlo’s insides churned when he saw the doctor’s silhouette turn in his direction.

“I can see you lurking in the shadows,” De Vries said. “There’s no use hiding.”

The others halted their revelry and stared at the cave. The doctor was already moving toward him. Arlo dropped the bucket, letting the tainted mush soak into the straw beneath his boots.

“Come now,” De Vries said. “No use running.”

That didn’t stop Arlo, though his escape attempt was brief. He slipped and slid in the mess on the floor, losing his balance and his bearings in the dark and groping hopelessly for a gate he should have been able to find in his sleep. A raw, unhinged panic set upon him in the suffocating murk and he shrieked uncontrollably. It wasn’t long until De Vries was upon him. The doctor dragged Arlo toward the penguins with unnatural strength for a man his age.

“Please don’t,” Arlo begged. The penguins cocked their heads at the zookeeper’s voice. Gertie stood before them, belly bloated and distended. An albino Buddha waiting for its supplicants.

“Why do you hate them so?” De Vries asked. His eyes were wide, pupils enormous and dark. His baritone voice slurred. Arlo wondered if he was drunk or drugged. “Don’t you understand? These creatures walked beside gods. They are all that remains of a lost civilization eons old and far more advanced than our own. They hold the secrets that will bring us closer to that powerful elder race. You shouldn’t fear them, Arlo. You should kneel at their feet.”

Gwaaaaaaawwwwwk! Gwaaaaaaawwwwwk!

The penguins quivered and cawed. They flapped their scrawny, vestigial flippers. One of the trustees —a portly man wearing nothing but a Miskatonic alumni ring —approached Gertie. The great, blind bird looked down as the man squatted and opened his mouth. The tableaux brought an image bubbling to the surface of Arlo’s mind. A baby bird waiting for —

“Oh, god, no!”

Gertie’s stomach heaved and a glut of greenish liquid poured out the creature’s beak. It filled the man’s mouth and splashed down his bare chest. De Vries and the others cheered as they watched the monstrous display.

“We understand who they are and we honor them,” De Vries proclaimed. “We accept their gift to us. And so will you.”

Arlo yelled and fought, but it was no use. They forced him to his knees before Aptenodytes Albus. De Vries’s hands, iron-strong, gripped Arlo’s jaw and wrenched his mouth open. The huge bird screamed at the distant stars, then bowed its head and opened its fleshy beak.

About the Author:
Chris W. McGuinness is a horror author who lives and works on the Central Coast of California. His work includes the cosmic horror western novella Hellbound Bastards, and his short fiction has been published in Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Lovecraftiana Magazine, Carnage House, Fraidy Cat Quarterly, and many other magazines and anthologies. He is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association. You can learn more about Chris and his work at chriswmcguinness.wordpress.com.