As Esgrith roughly shoved the terrified teenage girl in front of the shoggoth, it gradually ceased fluting and growling, until the only sound was once again that of the wind-driven rain. All its eyes were fixed upon the girl, bathing her in their alien luminescence, at once intimidating and hypnotic. For long seconds they remained perfectly still, as if creature, girl, congregation and Carla had been frozen in time. Carla was almost psychotic with tension, only able to imagine the vile cryptid shearing off the girl’s head with the same relish with which it had dispatched the goats.
Her hand flew to her throat as she saw two plasmatic extrusions begin to coil themselves gently, but firmly, around the girl’s wrists – and then it attacked.
With the speed of a striking snake, the shoggoth splayed itself across the girl’s face like a shiny, molten mask, gripping her limbs with crushing force as she struggled. Carla rose to her feet instinctively and was immediately restrained by Gary.
“She’s OK!” he hissed. “It’s not killing her! It’s infecting her. Travelling to her brain.”
“She’ll die!”
“She won’t die! She’d be better if she did. The First Flesh calls to Father Dagon, he’ll always be with her now. Look!”
The monster was releasing her, almost tenderly. She fell to her knees at once, gasping for air. Beside her, the shoggoth thrashed the air with scores of tentacles and roared through a dozen bubbling vents, sending ropes of mucous flying through the air. The crowd cheered and applauded wildly and Esgrith hobbled back to the girl’s side, grabbing her hand and lifting it in the air as if he was declaring the winner of a boxing match.
“Ia shoggoth!” he cried, hoarsely.
“Ia shoggoth!” chanted the congregation.
“Ia Dagon!”
“Ia Dagon!”
“Ia, IA CTHULHU!”
As the crowd screamed rapturously in response, Esgrith threw his arms wide and his head back – staring straight up through the skylight at Carla’s terrified face.
`He can’t see me’ she told herself. Not with those cataracts, how could he? But as his expression changed she knew that he had.
“Oh, shit!” yelled Gary, and took off, back towards the plank. “Come on!”
Below her, Esgrith’s face was contorted in fury and he was barking incomprehensible orders at the congregation, jabbing a finger upwards at the roof. Confused, they stared upwards, hundreds of misshapen, misplaced eyes, trying to squint past the glare from the striplights.
Carla was already on her feet when Gary came racing back for her. “Come on! What the fuck are you waiting for? We gotta go! Now!”
Grabbing hold of her cuff he led her in a kamikaze sprint across the slippery roof, ushering her in front of him as they reached the plank.
Carla’s earlier reservations about the safety of the improvised walkway disappeared, as the door of the warehouse burst open with a roar, and the furious crowd spilled out into the street. She closed her eyes and flew across the gap, the wood springing her into the air as her feet came down once, twice – nearly there – and over, onto the opposite building.
Gary wasted no time in following, his arms windmilling in the shrieking gale as he sprang sure-footedly across. As they made for the fire escape, their footsteps on the metal roof sounded thunderous. `Just follow Gary’, Carla told herself. `He knows where to go. You just have to keep up with him. Don’t think about anything else, just keep up.’
A succession of running jumps took them down the fire escape. She could hear engines being revved nearby, motorbikes and pickups. Gary risked a quick peek around the corner of the building.
“We’ve got to get to the harbor, find a boat. It’s the only way we’ll get out of here. It’s down the waterfront, to the end.”
“What is that?” panted Carla. “Like three hundred yards?”
“Something like that. Can you make it?”
“Yeah. Can you?”
“They’re gonna see us and chase us, so it’s got to be a sprint. You ready? Come on.”
They sprinted out onto the waterfront. For a few seconds, Carla thought they might actually make it without being spotted, but a shout and an angry roaring behind them made it clear that they had been. She could hear vehicles turning, the engines being over-revved, doors slamming. `Treat it like a race’ she told herself. `Catch up with Gary. Don’t let him win.’
The strength of the wind made it hard to catch breaths and she found herself gulping at the air. She daren’t take the time to look over her shoulder, but she could hear a big, heavy vehicle gaining on them, grinding its way up through the gears. Powerful headlights brought the road before her into sharp relief, the shearing raindrops gleaming silver, interfering with the picture. Her shadow, stretched out in front of her, began to shrink as their pursuers drew closer.
Gary had stopped - was waving at her – had grabbed her arm and pulled her off the road. A giant red pickup mounted the pavement right where she had been a split second before. Carla saw a flashgun image of its howling occupants, madness written in their features, like details from a Dore engraving. The truck careened off the harbour wall, its front crumple zone disintegrating, and skidded on the saturated tarmac spilling passengers as it went.
Gary had dragged her onto a small flight of steep, stone steps that led down to one of the piers. It was dark down there, away from the streetlamps and the headlights of the stalled truck, but Carla could hear the water lapping greedily at the pilings. Holding tightly to Gary’s hand, she clambered unsteadily down and immediately fell over on the greasy, wet wood.
Gary hissed at her. “We’ll take the Lexy, it’s the fastest boat here. End of the jetty. Come on!”
Bent double, he scampered away into the darkness. Carla pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled after him, gasping for breath.
Above and behind, she could hear the shouts and whooping of the mob as it hurried down the road towards the harbour. A gunshot startled her, and she reflexively threw herself flat against the slimy wood of the jetty – but it had just been an exuberant shot into the air. It was too dark for them to be seen down at water level. By normal eyes, at least.
She found Gary busily untying the lines that were mooring a derelict-looking launch, barely big enough for two. The windscreen had a large hole in it and approximately half the paint had flaked off the hull, which sat suspiciously low in the water.
“Get in. Get her started” gasped Gary, throwing the first line down and setting to work on the second.
The tiny vessel wobbled alarmingly as Carla stepped into it and she instinctively sat down, hard. Torch beams were scanning the piers like searchlights, looking for any sign of the escapees. She could see silhouettes loping down the steps from the street.
The launch had an outboard motor that at least looked newer than the rest of the craft. Carla ran her hands over it in the darkness, looking for the starter. Was that it? She pulled the little tab, experimentally, slowly drawing the ripcord a little way out. She could hear bare feet slapping against the pier now. `Please let it start first time’ she prayed. `Please let it have petrol.’
Screwing her eyes shut, she yanked the ripcord as hard as she could. The motor rattled, but did nothing. `Damn it!’
She tried again, with the same result. The searching torches zeroed in on the sound, suddenly bathing them in startlingly bright light, and a raucous ululation went up from the street. The boat rocked sickeningly as Gary dove in and began to wrestle with something under the seat behind her. “For fuck’s sake, get her going!” he shouted as scuttling shadows advanced on them down the pier.
“I’m – trying!” Carla cried, giving the motor another futile yank. “It won’t - start!” A sinister, animal growl made her look up as a figure lunged at them out of the night. She recoiled and prepared to defend herself as it set one foot on the boat. A dull thump and a blast of fire drove it straight back to the pier as Gary discharged the flare pistol into its chest.
The man’s bodywarme
r caught fire spectacularly, wreathing him in flames as the two thousand-degree fireball lodged against his skin. The other worshippers halted in their tracks as he flailed around helplessly, his agonised, inhuman keening filling the night. Staggering to the edge of the pier he threw himself into the water, the still-burning flare glowing below the surface as he sank.
Small caliber bullets fired from the street began to fizz into the water near the launch as Carla seized hold of the ripcord again. She tugged it in a blind frenzy, again and again while Gary hunted for another flare cartridge. Suddenly, with a fine rattle, the recalcitrant engine coughed into life. “Give it here” barked Gary immediately, pressing the flare pistol into Carla’s hands and crowding into the stern. “Shoot this at anyone who comes close.”
Their pursuers swarmed up the last few feet of the pier as the boat accelerated, jumping into the water without hesitation. Gary kept the outboard level, maximizing their speed and steering for the open sea. Some of the pursuing swimmers were moving astonishingly fast, but the twenty horsepower motor soon had the Lexy flying over the harbour swell, leaving them to fight through its wake. Cars were racing back down the seafront, seeking to cut them off at the harbour entrance but Carla could already tell that they wouldn’t be fast enough.
“Can we make it?” She had to shout to be heard above the buzzing of the outboard and the rush of water under the hull. Gary just grimaced at her. He did not look hopeful.
The transition to open water as they passed through the harbour entrance was sudden, and jarring. Roused to fury by the storm, the ocean drove implacably at the shoreline, and the Lexy was caught by an endless procession of relentlessly advancing waves.
Carla wedged herself in the nose of the boat as best she could, clinging on for dear life as the tiny launch crested each new roller and scudded down each retreating slope. Gary wrestled with the outboard, fighting cavitation, trying to keep the blades submerged and the nose of the boat pointed out to sea.
A loud, unearthly squeal reverberated across the water from the seafront, accompanied by the shattering of wood, glass and brick as the windows and doors of the Evangelical Order of David burst open from within. Carla gasped in dismay as half a dozen colossal, oily, black tentacles grew from the apertures and lunged into the air, each one shimmering with ghostly, green light. Neon eyes and mouths coalesced along them as they swayed, a hundred feet above the town, before plunging down into the sea.
The cultists gathered along the shore cheered and fired into the air. “Gary!” screamed Carla, above the roaring wind.
“I know, I know!”
“Faster! Come on, faster!”
“I know!”
The shoggoth’s arms pulsed as the creature extended itself through the water, looking for them. How big was it? They were some two hundred yards from the shore already, and travelling quickly despite the surge. Would it just free itself and swim after them?
Away to her left, one of the luciferous tentacles broke the surface, contorting itself and forming an eye, the size of a fist, that scanned the water like a periscope before fixing itself on the Lexy. It fell back into the water. Carla could visualise it, squirming towards them through the murk beneath the hull, dragging the Lexy down to her doom. Terrified, she scoured the water around them for any sign of its approach.
In the stern, Gary cursed as the water around them began to take on the vile, green glow of the approaching shoggoth. Loops of protoplasm broke the surface and began to congeal into an unholy mockery of a head.
Gary fought to unclamp the portable outboard motor as the head burst open, becoming a gigantic, snarling mouth, studded with eyes. Carla tried to stand but the cold glare of the shoggoth rooted her to the spot, irresistably pinned before the staring, malignant eyes. The shoggoth thrust forward, hungrily.
Gary stood, and swung the outboard in a wide arc, shearing off a questing tentacle and burying the whirling propeller deep in the beast’s slavering maw.
Inky gobbets of gelatinous flesh pelted the boat, and a rancid, urinal stench filled the air as the whining blades sliced through everything they touched. The shoggoth bellowed and a cluster of pseudopods burst from the water, tearing the outboard from Gary’s grasp. Carla was just in time to grab the waistband of his jeans and save him from following it.
She caught a glimpse of the outboard coming to pieces as the shoggoth angrily engulfed it. Hissing furiously, the beast contracted and plunged, almost capsizing the Lexy, and throwing up a huge plume of water that hung over them like an exclamation mark.
Gary and Carla lay still in the bottom of the boat as it pitched and wallowed, waiting for glowing tentacles to drag them down too. One minute went by, then two, and Carla dared to think that maybe, just maybe, it had gone away. She looked at Gary. “Has it … has it gone?”
Gary sighed and raised himself to his knees. “Yeah. I think so. For now.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Carla, the adrenalin suddenly draining from her system. She was so tired. She couldn’t remember feeling this exhausted. Or cold. Her clothes were saturated.
“Yeah, well, don’t be too happy about it. We lost the engine. Tide’s taking us back in. Ten more minutes, we’ll be back among that lot.” He pointed back towards the shore. Carla sat up, pulling straggling, wet hair away from her face to see what he was looking at.
The waterfront was lined with Dagon worshippers, standing solemnly, waiting for the sea to carry the Lexy back to them. Each surging wave was taking them closer. Gary was right. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and they’d be back amongst the mob.
“Oars!” cried Carla, wringing her hands. “There must be oars or something!”
“There’s no oars.”
“Well, why the fuck not? Jesus Christ!”
Gary was fiddling with the flare pistol again. “We’ve got one flare left. You want it?”
“What am I going to do with it?” snapped Carla. “One flare?”
He looked at her, levelly. “To kill yourself with.”
Carla gaped at him. He wasn’t joking. Unable to help herself, she started to laugh. “Kill myself?” she giggled, weakly. “I don’t want to kill myself! What about a radio? Has this boat got a radio? We can call the coastguard.”
“There’s no radio” answered Gary, evenly. “Look, if you don’t want it, great. I’m going to use it. I’m not letting them give me to that … thing. I’m not going to be turned into one of them. You can do what you want.” He stood up.
“Don’t be stupid! We’ll – we’ll have a chance to escape! Get to a car, maybe!” Carla stood up too. Gary gave her his small, sad smile and shook his head. “I’m sorry. Sorry you got dragged into all this.” He exhaled deeply. “Fuck it.”
In one smooth movement he wedged the stubby barrel of the flare pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Carla screamed and fell to the deck.
Gary fell down with her; the little calcium meteor burying itself somewhere near the center of his head, scouring neurons and annihilating synapses in his basal brain. Purifying cortices. Incinerating memories. Red fire burned in his mouth and his eyes, and a cloud of dank, greasy smoke gushed into the air like a departing soul.
Carla wept, adding to the brine pooled in the bottom of the boat. The flare didn’t last long, maybe ten or twelve seconds before it began to fizzle and subside. Eventually the smoke and steam ebbed away too. The storm was dying now, the wind less intense. The tide less frenzied, but still insistent, pushing the Lexy towards the shore.
Carla raised her eyes. Through her tears she could see the grinning townsfolk lining the seafront, waving torches, knives and guns. Esgrith was reading something aloud, the jubilant crowd punctuating his speech with cries of “Ia, Dagon!” and “Ia, Cthulhu!”
As the Atlantic coaxed her the last few dozen yards to the seawall, Carla could make out the depraved priest’s words - and she found herself reciting them along with him.
And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the
book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
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The Innsmouth Syndrome Page 9