Innsmouth Nightmares

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Ruth. The Marsh Care Facility is grossly understaffed. We need more nurses, and it is hard to lure them away from the bright lights of the big cities to work in a small town such as Innsmouth, where there is so little to do for recreation.”

  “I imagine that would be the case,” Ruth said.

  “You’re here because no one else will hire you, isn’t that the truth?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the other woman nodded.

  “Now we understand each other. We need nurses and you need a job. I’m willing to overlook the rumors surrounding your resignation from Arkham Hospital and give you a chance.”

  The other woman’s dour face flickered briefly into a shy smile.

  “Thank you, Miss Cork. You won’t regret this decision, I promise.”

  “I’ll be watching you closely for the first few weeks, so don’t screw up, or out you go. There’s no second chance for you.”

  “I understand.”

  Sarah stood up.

  “Come with me. I’ll give you a quick tour of the Facility.”

  She left the administration office and walked briskly down the hall on her short legs, with Ruth at her side and half a pace behind.

  “This Facility exists in its present form because of the generous bequest of Obed Marsh, who funded the construction of the original building on this very site in the mid-1800s. When the original building burned down after a lightning strike, the present structure was erected in the 1920s to replace it.”

  “It’s very impressive,” Ruth murmured.

  Sarah gave no sign that she had heard the other woman speak.

  “We have three wards. All our patients are funded by the yearly investment income from the Marsh endowment. Some have been abandoned by their families and are wards of the institution. Others have families too poor to pay for private medical care.”

  She stopped beside a double door, which stood open.

  “This is Ward One. The patients here all suffer from mental disabilities such as severe retardation. In almost every case the disability is congenital.”

  Ruth peered into the ward, and had to resist the urge to flinch back. Men and women of various ages sat on the beds or at small tables, rocking back and forth. A few stood leaning against the wall. There was a curious similarity in the appearance of their vacant faces, a flatness of the nose and a prominence of the eyes. Their mouths appeared unnaturally wide and their necks were short.

  “What you are observing is referred to as the Innsmouth Look. It’s been the subject of several articles in prominent medical journals.”

  “What causes it?” Ruth asked.

  “When Innsmouth was a fishing village, many generations ago, it was isolated from the rest of Massachusetts by the poor roads that served the community. There was a tendency for the inhabitants to intermarry, and eventually this produced the curious facial deformities that you will encounter throughout the Facility.” She laughed lightly. “You’ll even see it among some of the staff.”

  Now that she mentioned it, Ruth noticed that the head nurse had uncommonly protuberant eyes, round and heavy-lidded like those of a frog, and her thick neck was quite short.

  “I have some Innsmouth blood myself,” Sarah said.

  “I never would have known,” Ruth murmured.

  They continued down the hall and stopped again at the next doorway.

  “Ward Two is occupied by those with more severe physical deformities. Some of these patients also have mental problems, but they are not so limiting as those in the first ward. They can feed themselves, those that have the use of their hands, and some can even go to the toilet unattended.”

  The deformities seemed to consist of a general thickening of the neck and torso, and a distortion in the legs that prevented walking upright. Some of the patients were missing limbs or parts of limbs. Their facial disfigurements were more severe than those in the first ward.

  She hurried after the head nurse, who had started down the hall without waiting for her. They stopped at the third doorway and looked into the room beyond.

  “Ward Three contains the most severe cases of congenital deformity,” Sarah said calmly, pretending not to notice Ruth’s grimace of horror. “These poor people can’t walk. Some of them are able to crawl or hop along the floor on their stumps. We encourage them to be as active as their physical condition allows.”

  Ruth stared at the things that sat on the beds or crawled on the floor. She had cared for the severely disabled, but she had never looked after the needs of monsters. She wondered if she had made the right decision, coming to Innsmouth.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Sarah said. “I’ll show you the nurse’s cafeteria and lounge, and the apartments for residents. You’ll be living here at the facility, is that right?”

  “Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but I assumed I’d be taking a room somewhere in town.”

  The little head nurse laughed.

  “You don’t know Innsmouth, Ruth. The people here are wonderful, but they are suspicious of strangers. I doubt anyone would rent you a room. As for the Gilman House, stay away from that hotel. It’s in a terrible state of disrepair. You’re much better off living here with us, and the rent is very reasonable.”

  “There are no wards on the upper floor, are there?”

  “No, all the patients live down here. Our resident nurses and attendants live upstairs. It’s like night and day. You won’t even know you’re still in the building.”

  2.

  Ruth unpacked her suitcase in her apartment, which consisted of a kitchenette, a combined living room and bedroom, and a full bathroom. She was surprised how nice it was. The entire second level of the Marsh Facility was decorated in bright colors and lively patterns, as though in an attempt to deny what lurked below, and to a large extent it succeeded. True, there was still the smell of antiseptic in the air, and it was possible to hear the public address system echoing up through the floor when things were quiet, but overall she might as well have been in her own apartment building. It was much better than the single room she had imagined renting in the town.

  About two dozen nurses and orderlies lived on the second level with her. They were standoffish, but that was to be expected in so small a place as Innsmouth. Many of them had the Look, but not in its advanced stages. They would probably warm up to her after she worked with them for a few weeks, she decided.

  She took out her Bible and placed it on the bureau, then took her crucifix and hung it over her bed, where the previous occupant had hung a dreary painting of a storm at sea. She slid the small painting behind the bureau to get it out of the way. The Facility was located not far from the coastline, but she didn’t need to be reminded of that every minute. It seemed that the halls of the Facility, both lower and upper floors, were filled with pictures and carvings related to sailing ships and fishing boats and the ocean. It was almost obsessive. She had always hated the ocean. Fortunately, her windows faced the hills. At least in her own apartment she could avoid looking at the Atlantic.

  Kneeling at the side of her bed, she folded her hands together and began to pray.

  “O Lord, watch over me, your foolish daughter in faith, and keep me from harm. Strengthen my resolve to do your work so that I remain steadfast when the moment of crisis comes. Inform me of your will, O Lord, that I may be your instrument of mercy on this earth. Amen.”

  The prayer was her own composition, and she recited it three times a day—on waking, at noon, and before going to bed. She had evolved past the need to use more conventional forms of prayer. The guiding hand of Jesus was upon her, and she felt it as a physical touch upon the top of her head.

  Since she had not been assigned any work on her first day at the Marsh Facility, she decided to take a walking tour of Innsmouth and acquaint herself with its streets. She put on her good pair of hiking shoes. They were the most expensive article of clothing she owned, but nurses were always careful about protecting
their feet. On the average nursing shift, they walked for miles and spent hours standing. She couldn’t afford feet that hurt.

  The Facility was no great distance beyond the outskirts of Innsmouth. She followed its tree-lined drive and found herself in the town. What a shocking experience it was. She had heard that Innsmouth was one of the more depressed communities of Massachusetts, but she had not imagined such advanced decay. It might as well have been a suburb of Detroit. The houses constructed in the grand Victorian style looked ready to collapse under their own weight. There were holes in the roofs, tumbled chimneys, broken and boarded up windows. None of those she passed had seen a new coat of paint in decades.

  It was a singular feature of Innsmouth that a small river ran through the town, crossed at intervals by quaint wooden bridges. In between these bridges, the water fell over a series of geological faults in the landscape that produced cascades. She traced the river down toward the harbor, enjoying the sound of the rushing water. Now and then, she saw a curtain move in the window of a house as she passed. Innsmouth was not uninhabited, it only appeared so. When she stopped and looked across the town, she could see only three figures on the streets. One of them appeared hardly human, it was so bent over, and it moved with a kind of hopping motion, but it was too far away to see clearly. She squinted at it, shading her eyes from glare of the sun, until the curious figure moved behind the corner of a building and was lost from view.

  As she drew nearer the waterfront of the town, the houses became smaller and meaner in appearance. The smells of salt and fish grew stronger. A flock of seagulls filled the air, their frantic screams sounding almost human. They hovered over a dirty fishing trawler that made its tortuous way into the harbor along the narrow dredged channel. It seemed to be the only active fishing boat on the wharf, although several other rundown vessels were tied up there.

  She passed a large, brooding building that was shuttered up. Weathered lettering on the front above the doors read Marsh Refinery. There was no activity around the building, which did not appear to have been used for years, or even decades. This must be where the Marshes had smelted down the gold the family was reputed to have brought to Innsmouth in trading schooners from the South Seas, or some folklore asserted, from the depths of the sea itself. But that was long ago.

  As she stood in front of the refinery, the sound of a conversation drifted up the alley at its side. It was in some guttural foreign language she did not recognize. Listening to it, she wondered how such gulping, slopping sounds could issue from a normal human throat. Curiosity drew her toward the mouth of the alley. As she reached it, something large and close to the ground at the far end flopped its way around the corner of the old brickwork. She caught no more than a glimpse of its shadow, and wasn’t sure whether it was a man with his back hunched or a large dog with a bad leg.

  She started to go down the alley to investigate, but caution got the better of her curiosity. This was a rough section of town, even for so rough a town as this. She had no wish to be trapped in some enclosed courtyard by tramps or criminals. She decided that she had seen enough of Innsmouth for one day, and backed out of the alley.

  3.

  Ruth’s life soon fell into a predictable routine. She was assigned to work in Ward Two under the oversight of Nurse Eunice Waite, a large and very loud woman who made her dislike of Ruth clear on their first shift together. Sarah Cork appeared to derive some sort of amusement from ordering Eunice to teach Ruth the routine. The corners of her broad slit of a mouth twitched and her froggy eyes sparkled as she spoke to the other nurse. Eunice was sullen to work beside, but to her credit she did not neglect her duties and was an excellent nurse. She had the muscle mass to lift and roll over the heavier patients who could not help themselves in their beds.

  Most of the work was boring and repetitive, but Ruth had never minded repetition. Her father had been a strict disciplinarian and had used his belt to teach her the virtue of honest toil. She washed her patients, helped them to the bathroom when they could walk or gave them bedpans when they could not, and tended to their bedsores, which were a chronic problem throughout the second and third wards.

  It was surprising how quickly she became accustomed to their deformities. Some of them had strange flaps of skin in rows on the sides of their necks, and the texture of their skin was moist and almost scaly. The skin flaked off in patches, as though shedding, when she scrubbed them with the wash cloth. Between the fingers and toes of many of them there was a kind of webbing, and the toes were oddly elongated, making normal walking very difficult when coupled with their bent backs.

  On Friday afternoon, she was summoned into the administration office. Head Nurse Sarah Cork flashed her a momentary smile of greeting across the desk and motioned for her to sit.

  “How has your first week with us been going, Ruth?”

  “Very well. Eunice has been teaching me the way things are done at the Marsh Facility.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it.” She folded her chubby fingers together on the desk and her face became more serious. “The reason I called you in here today was to inform you that the family members of our patients will be visiting this evening. Friday is visiting night.”

  As yet, Ruth had not encountered a single family member visiting a patent.

  “Only Friday night?”

  “That’s right. It may seem unduly restrictive, but we find that the patients accept the routine of the Facility better when not disrupted by frequent visitors.”

  “They come in the evening?”

  “After dark, yes.”

  “My shift will be over by then.”

  “I know, but there is something you need to know. It’s our policy to allow the family members complete privacy with the patients. Under no circumstances are you to go down to the first floor after dark. Do you understand?”

  Ruth blinked at the emphatic tone in the other woman’s voice.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “What are you to do?”

  “I’m not to go down to the first floor after dark.”

  “For any reason.”

  “For any reason,” Ruth repeated.

  Sarah Cork sat back in her chair and relaxed. She smiled again, and Ruth could not help thinking of a bullfrog that had just swallowed a fly.

  “That will be all.”

  Ruth returned to Ward Two. Eunice eyed her up and down.

  “Did Cork tell you about visitors’ night?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you?” she asked the big woman. Eunice shook her head.

  “Only one visiting night a week, after dark, and we’re not even allowed to be there in case anyone needs anything?”

  “The families have been coming here for years. They know what to do if one of the patients needs anything.”

  “What if there’s an emergency, like a Code Red?”

  Eunice shrugged.

  “The night doctor would take care of it, I expect. It’s never happened since I’ve been here.”

  “It just seems really weird, that’s all.”

  “My girl, if weird bothers you, then you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  Ruth didn’t argue. As the shift wore on she forgot about the words of Sarah Cork. The shift ended and she went upstairs to relax and pray while the meatloaf that was to be her dinner baked in the oven.

  As dusk began to darken outside her window, her curiosity returned. She wondered what the visitors would look like. Would they have the Innsmouth Look, as well? Every so often she peeked out her window, but they weren’t arriving by the back door.

  Below the sound of the television from the nurse’s lounge, she heard muffled, deep voices. The visitors must be here already, she realized. She went to the cast-iron radiator and sat on the floor beside it, then put her ear to the pipe. The weather was still mild enough in the evenings that the furnace had not been turned on. The chill iron pipe against her ear channelled the voices from below, but she c
ould not quite make out what they were saying. It was as though they spoke in some foreign language. She remembered the voices behind the Marsh Refinery. These were similar, but there were both male and female voices.

  She wanted to sneak down the stairs and have a look at the visitors, but knew that if she were caught, it would mean dismissal. Nurse Cork would probably be watching for her. Instead, she contented herself with crossing the hall to the cafeteria, which was empty. Its windows overlooked the front of the building.

  It was almost an hour before someone came out of the doors below the window where she sat. From the back it looked like an elderly woman. She was fat and walked with the aid of two white canes. Her long black dress trailed on the gravel of the walkway and she seemed to be wearing a hat with a veil, although Ruth could not be sure of this because the old woman kept her back turned. She must be crippled with arthritis, Ruth thought as she watched the woman, who did not so much walk as hop by means of the two canes.

  The overhead light snapped on.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Sarah Cork stood in the doorway, her hand on the light switch.

  “I ran out of milk. I thought there might be some left over in the fridge.”

  “Was there?”

  “No.”

  The little fat nurse studied her for several seconds.

  “Go back to your rooms.”

  Ruth left the cafeteria without speaking another word and returned to her apartment. She had not actually violated any of Nurse Cork’s instructions, but it was clear that Sarah knew why she had been sitting in the lunch room and didn’t like it.

  4.

  It was a little more than two weeks after Ruth started work at the Marsh Facility that Eunice came into her apartment in the wee hours of the morning and shook her shoulder. The nurses living there never bothered to lock their doors at night. She opened dry eyelids and squinted against the light from the bedside lamp that the other nurse had switched on.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’ve got to get up and get dressed, my girl. You’re needed outside.”