by Paula Guran
Gil shook his head. “Jesus fuck, Lymon.”
Lyon smiled. His teeth had become needlelike. “Do you like my second skin? It’s alive, you know. It’s a symbiotic organism, feeding off wastes from my skin and body. It protects me from cold and water pressure and salt damage. For genetic humans like you, we have another sort of second skin. It extracts oxygen right from the water, takes your carbon dioxide and—”
“Lymon—shut the fuck up! You’re . . . you’ve . . . ” Gil felt sick and the feeling overwhelmed him. He had to turn and heave out a bellyful of water.
“Yes,” Lymon said, calmly, as Gil coughed and spat. “I’ve changed.” His voice had that odd, low silkiness as he went on. “The faithful of Innsmouth were not all exterminated. Some were able to escape. They were not entirely changed, themselves. They intermarried . . . and those of us in whom the recessive gene is active—well, after a certain amount of time, as adults, we are called to the sea, and we begin to change.” Lymon took Gil’s elbow, helped him to sit on the mattress again. “He calls to us, Gil, and we hear him, when no one else does . . . ”
The door grated again, and the female came into the room, the one who’d approached Gil underwater. She was carrying a stone jar; she wore the living ooze just as Lymon did.
“That is Darla Jane,” said Lymon.
“Eat,” she said, proffering the jar. Her voice had a reverberant lisp to it.
Gil looked into the jar. It looked like boiled spinach, with bits of fish; there was a rusty spoon in the jar too.
“Seaweed, a variety that will restore your strength,” Lymon said. “And some fish. You’d better get used to fish. I must insist you eat—otherwise, certain persons will enter, and you will be force-fed in a particularly unpleasant way.”
Gil felt heavy, weighted down by disorientation and despair. He had no strength in him to fight. He reached into the jar, scooped up some of the warm food with the spoon, and ate. It was salty, and its texture was revolting, but it restored hope and strength almost immediately.
Lymon and Darla Jane watched in silence. When he’d eaten enough, Lymon took the jar away and Darla Jane pushed him back onto the mattress.
“Breed,” she said. “We breed.”
“Oh . . . no, no, really, that’s not going to work,” Gil sputtered, looking away from her. The smell; the membrane slopping over her—unbearable. He tried to push her away. But it was like pushing away a mudslide.
“You don’t understand,” Lymon said. “It’s not . . . about arousal, really. Not at first. But—she will show you. We need your seed, Gil. We need human seed; we only do hybrids, as children, you see. That’s what works best.”
“But me—Lymon? I’m your friend!”
“And I would miss you, Gil! So you’ll be here with me. I wanted to give you a chance to live your dream. To be something that matters. To really have an impact on the world. We’ve been preparing the planet—encouraging those who deny climate change, through our intermediaries . . . and certain industries. The damage humanity was doing to the sea could not be tolerated. We’ll end it our way. And yet, ironically, global warming is to our benefit! The sea rises! What it consumes, we too will consume. Now let Darla Jane have her way, Gil.”
“No—that’s completely . . . no.”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to kiss her.”
Lymon walked away, and the thing calling itself Darla Jane pressed him back, and straddled him—and the membrane parted at her groin.
Something emerged from her, there. From between her legs. Tendrils, thin and whipping and transparent, restless and seeking, tickling up his belly; then a red hose-like organ extruded from under the tendrils. The living hose opened itself wide, and slowly but inexorably sucked his private parts into itself—clasping testicles and all.
Gil writhed and shrieked and tried to push her away but she was far stronger than he was and he could get no grip on her slick limbs.
The tubular organ squeezed peristaltically, milking his blood up into it, forcing his organ to become rigid. There was a kind of sickening pseudo pleasure in the process but he was gagging at her subaquatic reek, struggling against her clamp-like hands.
The tendrils extruded spines—which stabbed into his thighs.
The pain was piercing, attenuated—but almost immediately vanished. Some biological anesthetic, he thought. Like mosquitoes use so you don’t feel them bite.
Then he felt a cold pulsing from the spines—and knew he was being injected. A thick, glutinous fluid was forced into his muscles. It carried a ghastly ecstasy, a vile delight that expanded through him from his pierced thighs . . . and he found himself bucking his hips, forcing his reproductive organs deeper into the externalized genitalia of the thing that held him down until . . .
3. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. June 2037.
Gil delighted in the feeling of being a hand in the glove of the sea. He loved being out here, free of the oppressive weight of the temple hidden under the reefs—the freedom of the open sea, the infinite possibilities. He loved kicking easily along, warm and safe within his second skin. He envied Lymon his ability to breathe directly in water—Lymon didn’t have to look out through a bubble of the membrane. It blurred his vision, around the edges. But he could see well enough: the light wavering down from the surface; a school of striped fish swimming by. How had he ever felt that fish were repellent? They really were lovely—the way they all moved as one, in their school. Someday the interspecies council would move with such graceful unanimity.
The Atlantic Ocean had regained much of its ancient vitality with the awakening of Dagon and the hard work done by His people. The acidity from global warming had been much reduced, with the cultivation of the undersea forests of specially bred kelp. Mercury and other toxins were being sponged away. The council had destroyed many of the ships that had done so much damage; they had blocked the outflow from dirtwalker cities—all that had helped. The wars, too, on the surface, had helped. Struggling for resources in an overheated world, the dirtwalkers were reduced in numbers and thus in power to do harm.
It really was becoming a kind of paradise, along the northeast shore, underwater. But a number of foul dirtwalker settlements still festered on the coast.
Swimming toward the Plum Island Sound, Gil sighed, thinking that perhaps his father would have been proud of him, after all, if he could have shown him all this—his father had always loved the sea. But Pops and Mom were dead. Eddie too—Eduardo had gone a bit mad, after seeing Lymon and his brother Gil, on the trawler, that day.
I thought of him as my stronger older brother, but Eduardo was weak, and foolish, Gil thought. A person of no vision.
He had refused to be recruited. And Lymon’s spies on the surface had reported Eddie’s demise. Dead of a heroin overdose. Gil’s parents had each taken their own lonely path to death. Pops had died of cancer, mom had crawled into a bottle and never gotten out. They’d wasted away in Rowley.
As he gazed out across the underseascape, Gil’s only real regret was that he had no artist’s supplies. How he’d love to find a way to paint this. The kelp forests; the sliding shark, the nosing dolphin. Blue-green water and diffused golden light; green going to black farther down. And the work crew, swimming briskly to the dike. What a sight they were—men and women transformed, merged with the sea.
The work was almost done, he saw, as they approached the dike. The undermining was finished. The chains were being locked into place.
Soon, the head engineer signaled to Gil—who was, now, high priest of the interspecies brotherhood—asking for permission to proceed.
Gil looked around, saw that the tide was high as it was going to be, and the others had drawn back to safety. He gestured, Proceed.
The engineer signaled Darla Jane—who gave that high keening call she had, that came from her vibrating gill-slits . . .
And soon the kraken came from their deep place of slumber.
Their massive oblong bodies stretched out; they tur
ned in the water, their multiple limbs seeking, reaching for the chains; their tentacles entwined the thick steel bands. And the giant squids, bigger than any known to dirtwalker humanity, began to pull . . .
It took almost ten minutes . . . but the underpinnings at last collapsed, taking the dike with them. A great rumbling shuddered through the sea as the dike fell into it, ragged boulders of asphalt streaming bubbles as they plunged down.
But Gil was lifted up. With a cry of joy Gil felt himself carried up, bodily sluiced toward the land as the dike disintegrated into the Atlantic Ocean.
The great wave lifted him ever higher, over the sinking debris; up and up so that at last he broke the surface, and with Lymon and their companions he rode the tsunami in at dawn, the servants of Dagon astride the great wave that would be the first of many to crash down on Rowley, Massachusetts, drowning it as Innsmouth had been drowned, crushing buildings and choking the squirming dirtwalkers, so that the triumph of Dagon, and the glory of Gilberto Lopez and Lymon Barnes was complete . . .
Emmy-nominated, Stoker Award-winning author John Shirley has written more than two dozen novels and numerous short stories, many of which are collected in his eight fiction collections. Although best known for science fiction and horror, Shirley’s most recent novel is Wyatt in Wichita, a work of historical fiction. A collection gathering his short Lovecraftian fiction, Lovecraft Alive, is forthcoming. He also writes screenplays and for television. As a musician, Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others.
“All women are balanced somewhere on the witch’s scale, but some barely make the weight requirement.”
RIPPER
Angela Slatter
I
Kit hadn’t seen the first one, but PC Wright told him not to worry—this one was worse.
The throat was cut—that wasn’t too bad, quite neat in fact and he had witnessed that sort of thing before—but the woman’s skirts (Kit could see in the lamp light that she wore several against the cold, green, brown, black, some red ruffles) had been part-pulled up, part-torn, and her fat little middle-aged belly exposed and slashed open to leave a bloody abyss. Intestines reached over each shoulder; a separate piece of about two feet had been lopped off and put to one side as if whoever did it had a grander plan. Thick wavy dark hair acted as a pillow for her head and mutilated face; the lacerations weren’t in the usual fashion of whores getting sliced by their pimps or dissatisfied customers. There was a design here and that disturbed him even more than the smell of shit and piss emanating from the unfortunate woman, who was no longer in a position to care or to cover herself and try to preserve a little bit of modesty. No, thought Kit, that’s what bothered him most, that the woman was so terribly exposed in her death, so terribly, terribly helpless.
Hanbury Street was quiet though Kit knew that was only temporary. PC Ned Watkins had sounded his whistle but a moment ago, and soon the place would be crawling with bluebottles, pressmen, terrified whores, and general gawkers. Thomas Wright, who’d been crouched down peering closely at the body while young Watkins threw up his pint and pork pie in a corner, made a noise—that strange noise Kit had come to associate with police who’d found someone they knew on this kind of day. It held despair, disappointment, disgust, rage and, peculiarly, a kind of knowing lack of surprise, as if this was somehow to be expected. Kit was coming to recognise it in the first pursing of the lips, the earliest expulsion of air. He wondered if he’d start doing it soon.
“It’s Annie Chapman. Dark Annie,” Wright said and spat. “Watkins, buck up, man.”
But Watkins was having none of it and determinedly continued to dry heave after his stomach was well and truly empty. Wright shook his head, then nodded at Kit. “Off you go, lad, you’re fast. Straight to Abberline and Himself at Leman Street—although, if you’re passing the Ten Bells stick your head in and see if the good Doctor Bagster Phillips is in. Fair chance—he’ll need to be called anyway.”
Kit nodded and turned away, relieved to pour his nervous energy into a useful activity; unfortunately he bounded straight into the oncoming form of PC Airedale, the largest, most unpleasant copper in all of Whitechapel—which meant he beat out some fairly stiff competition. Kit bounced off Airedale’s torso, almost ending up on his arse, and the big policeman snarled, “Watch where you’re going, you half-wit.”
“Leave off him,” snapped Wright, “He’s only doing what I told him. Get going, boy.”
Kit sped off into the night as Airedale sneered, “What? You told him to run into me?”
The air was cool but Kit could feel his face burning, not only with embarrassment, but also distress at seeing the woman so abused. What had Wright called her? Chapman, Annie. The first one was Mary Anne Nichols. Although Kit hadn’t seen her, he had seen the pitiable Martha Tabram, pierced all to hell by a bayonet. And still that wasn’t as bad as Annie Chapman and her torn-apart belly. He rubbed a hand across his own flat stomach in sympathy.
He’d read the reports on Nichols, too, while they sat on the Inspector’s desk. As a child Kit had become expert at reading upside down as much out of genuine interest as self-preservation. He’d learned early on that the only hope of conversation with his father was in discussing whatever the Reverend Caswell was reading over the breakfast table (in spite of his wife’s protests).
A quick look in at the Ten Bells showed no sign of the police surgeon for Whitechapel, so he concluded the good doctor had at last gone home to his own bed. Kit hared along, barely out of breath, until he came to the steps of the nick and took them three at a time, sketched a brief wave at the sergeant on the entrance desk, and then darted up the internal staircase to the second floor.
Abberline and Himself were ensconced in the office they’d been forced to share since the former had been seconded to Leman Street in order to coordinate the Whitechapel murder investigations. This was the billet he’d occupied as head of H Division for nine years; somewhat inconveniently, its current occupant, Edwin Makepeace, had refused to move out and make way for the senior man. What had been a fair sized space for a single person, was now a rather cramped affair for two. Their desks butted up against each other like charging bulls. Neither inspector had spent much time at his individual residence since Nichols had been brought in; whether it was devotion to duty or a concern that unguarded territory might be fair game was a matter for discussion amongst the lower ranks. Kit suspected it was roughly equal measures of both.
Kit gave a hasty knock and opened the door a little before permission was given, and found himself the subject of rather steely gazes. Abberline was of middling height, in his forties, heading towards stout; a neat man with muttonchops and a meticulously tended moustache. His companion was, in contrast, tall and lean, and as neat as Abberline was, Makepeace was scruffy. Even when he was dressed for a meeting with his betters, even with all the spit-polish in the world, Kit had observed, his boss still had the air of a man who’d just been dragged backwards through a hedge.
In the no man’s land where the desks met was an open bottle of whisky and a couple of tumblers, each containing differing levels of amber liquid. It seemed the masters had reached some kind of an accord. In spite of himself, Kit found his tongue tripping over words, and all he managed was an inarticulate stutter. Neither man was cruel enough to laugh, although Abberline grunted, “Spit it out, boy.”
Kit took a deep breath, trying not to appear to do so, and spoke. “There’s been another, sirs. Another woman’s been murdered.”
If it surprised the men that Kit didn’t say “another whore’s been ripped,” that he displayed some respect, if not tenderness, for the dead woman, they didn’t show it. Perhaps they just thought it a display of his youth and assumed he’d harden the longer he stayed in the job. Perhaps they were too tired to care.
“Do you have a name for this victim, Caswell?” Makepeace stood, slowly, careful not to thrust his chair back into the too-close wall. He hooked his green checkered coat from
the rack and shrugged in it; the fabric seemed to shudder, unwilling to accommodate the man’s shoulders. When the operation was completed and the item of clothing surrendered, Makepeace threw Abberline a tweed jacket so the inspector might make himself presentable.
“Yes, sir. Annie Chapman, sir,” replied Kit, adding, rather unnecessarily, “She’s another prostitute, sir.”
“A wandering beauty of the night,” sighed Abberline, startling Kit. He’d not given the Inspector much credit for a poetic soul. “Will you tell us where, boy, or shall we meander through the streets until we stumble upon her?”
“There’s a good chance you’d find the wrong body, sir, this being Whitechapel and all,” said Kit before he could help himself, then wanted to bite off his own tongue. Abberline and Himself guffawed in delight, and Kit thought the whisky had probably been his savior. “In Hanbury Street, sirs, number 29. I looked for Doctor Bagster Phillips on my way here, but he wasn’t at the Ten Bells.”
“Try his home. If you can’t find him there then I cannot imagine which mistress he is favouring this eve, and we’ll have to get some other sawbones to hack at her.” Makepeace sighed. “I’d rather it be him.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Off you go, Kit, you’ll have run half the city before this night’s out.”
II
Stopping at the Limehouse lock-up added an extra twenty minutes to the journey home, but it couldn’t be helped. The seemingly ramshackle shed was hidden deep in the overgrown back garden of 14a Samuel Street, and Kit wasn’t the only person with permission to use it, but he knew that his visits were carefully scheduled to ensure that no one else’s tarriance clashed with his. Privacy was of the utmost importance and the Orientals understood that better than anyone Kit had ever met. Honoring debts was of equal importance, Kit had discovered, and was grateful that the debt in question was owed to him and not the other way around.