by Edward Lee
“I’ve come here, Mary,” I asserted, “for you and your son.”
Her flushed face fell into her hands. “There’s so much you don’t know.”
“Calm yourself. I know everything now.”
Astonishment forced her gaze upward. “You’ve-you’ve seen the things?”
“Yes, earlier at the lake, during the regrettable ritual that your circumstances have forced upon you, and also minutes ago, at the Onderdonk’s. One of the fullbloods nearly killed me.”
“So… you know about the fullbloods?”
“I know everything. I know what’s going on at the second floor of the Hilman House, I know about the dual corpse repositories in the caverns beneath the waterfront. I know why your brother Paul is infirm, and I also know that your stepfather is a crossbreed between their race and ours and that he’s the only one of his kind allowed to live after the mandated genocide of years ago.” I took her hand. “And, Mary, I know why they’re forcing the collective’s women to remain perpetually pregnant. The newborns aren’t sacrificed, they’re utilized for research intended to lead to the demise of humankind. Several hours ago I witnessed Zalen handing over several such newborns to the fullbloods, out on the sandbar.”
She hitched on another sob. “Zalen? But, my God, you must think I’m a fiend for allowing my babies to be used like this.”
“I think nothing of the sort,” I snapped, “for I also know that you are forced into this perverse servitude. Should you refuse to comply, you and your family would all be slaughtered.” I quieted, and gripped her hand more tightly, to assure her. “Mary, I know also of the servile tasks you were pressured to perform in the past, out of desperation, under Cyrus Zalen’s pandering influence and pornographic endeavors.”
She nearly gagged, tears now literally plipping from her eyes onto the dirt floor. “Then how can a moral man like you even stand to be in the same room with me?”
My verity left no margin for hesitation. “I’m in love with you, Mary. It would wound my heart forever for you to not believe this.”
Her face went back to her hands. “That just makes it worse…”
“Why!” I demanded, perhaps too loudly. “I don’t expect you to love me in return, but I can pray and live in the hope that one day you will, and should that never happen, then I will still love you just as much.”
Now she hugged me quite suddenly, “Oh, Foster, but I do love you; I have since you came into the restaurant today—”
I could’ve collapsed in the rush ebullience that inundated my spirit. At that moment I knew that in my life of plenty I actually had nothing—until now.
Now, I had everything.
“Then why on earth do you say our love makes us worse?” I pleaded.
“Foster! Think about it! Lovecraft’s story is true, and I’m living right in the middle of it.”
“What Zalen didn’t tell me I found out for myself.”
“But, Foster—Zalen is the reason that the fullbloods are on the hunt. They’re on the hunt… for you.”
“When I was at the old Innswich Point tonight, I was forced to shoot one of their reanimants, a prostitute of Zalen’s,” I told her, then remembered the most disturbing point. “I didn’t really kill her, for she was already dead. But my shot detained her long enough to broker my escape. It’s quite possible that one or more of the fullbloods saw or heard this, and even more possible that Candace informed them directly after I’d fled.”
“That’s not the reason, Foster,” she went on, a hand to her belly as if discomfited. “It’s because of Zalen, much earlier today. Sentinels are everywhere. Every single townsperson reports back to them. And some of them, like Candace, are already physically dead. One of them overheard Zalen telling you about the tunnels beneath the waterfront of Innswich Point. No one can know about that, Foster. It’s one of their greatest secrets, so anyone who learns of it… is hunted down.”
This was moot, though I should’ve recalled Lovecraft’s story with more exploit. Even the most guarded whispers were overheard, if not by the degraded townsfolk, then by the Deep Ones themselves, whose auditory faculties were super-normal. But a paramount point collided with my deductive processes now that I’d gleaned this data. “I take it, then, we’re not safe in your house. We must leave at once.”
“They won’t come here, Foster,” she said with downcast eyes. “One of their leaders… has taken a fancy to me.”
“You needn’t be ashamed,” I assured her. “Zalen mentioned this. He called them ‘sovereigns’; but he also mentioned that sexual intercourse, even among these hierarchs, is banned via their new laws. I also know that the reason your brother and stepfather have been spared is due to this same sovereign’s fondness for you. ”
She began to speak, but then bowed forward with a grimace.
“Mary! You’re in pain.”
“No, no, I’m all right. I just need a short rest”—she reached up. “Help me, Foster, to the bed.”
I took great caution assisting her; she appeared exhausted, worn, and aching all at once. A glance to the “bed” forced a grimace on my part, for it existed as no more than the most primitive of straw mattresses. With a little luck, she’ll be sleeping in a REAL bed tomorrow, likely for the first time in her horrendously burdened life.
A happy sigh escaped her lips. “That’s much better, Foster. Thank you. Dr. Anstruther says I’ll be due in another week or so.”
“Anstruther,” I sputtered the name with venom. “I’ve seen his handiwork. I take it he’s a senior member of Olmstead’s collective.”
She nodded. “He’s the one who runs everything here—for them.”
“I should’ve known.”
She lay back, sedate now, and—I pray God—banishing the profane foray at the lake from her tired mind. “Here, Foster,” she murmured; she took my hand and placed it at the center of her swollen belly. “Feel the life inside.”
It did so with great wonder. A blessing, I mused. Each and every life is a blessing…
“I’d like so much to keep it,” came her next murmuration. Tears welled. “I’d give anything…”
“You will keep it, Mary—this I vow.” The great bolus of flesh beneath the occult robe seemed to beat with heat. “You stay here and rest while I return to the Onderdonk’s to retrieve their motor. In less than an hour’s time, I’ll be transporting you and Walter away from here, to the security of my estate in Providence—”
“You just don’t understand,” she moaned in frustration. “If I try to leave, they’ll come after me. No one in the collective can ever leave.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied but still mindful of what Zalen had implied of the fates of those who had tried. “Leave it to me. I will drive you to safety or die trying.”
When she looked at me, I noted something behind her eyes that could only be the desperate joy of hope.
“It just makes me love you more for wanting to do this for us. But I can’t let you. We would never make it out; we’d all die.”
“I’m willing to take that chance,” I told her with no hesitancy whatsoever. “Are you? Would you take that chance, for Walter to finally have a good life and attend good schools like other boys? Would you take that chance”—I gave the gravid belly a momentary caress—“to give this unborn child the chance to live and to behold the beauty of the world, and to save it from the blasphemous death that awaits it otherwise?”
She sobbed, gulped, and nodded. “Yes! I will take the chance! Even if we all die, then at least I’ll get to die with you…”
“Wait here,” I told her, choking up. “I’ll return presently,” and next I was out of the house and back out into the moon-spattered night.
I did not allow myself to entertain thoughts which might divert my focus, but what a luxury that would have been. I wended back toward the Onderdonk’s, eyes proverbially peeled, my Colt pistol slippery in my sweating hand. The woods were profuse with night-sounds now, where they hadn’t been before. It
made me wonder. If these fullblooded monstrosities were indeed on the hunt for me, I saw no hint of them all the way back to Onderdonk’s ramshackle compound.
The smokers were gusting; I ignored the rich, savory—and unmentionable—aroma. Only from the corner of my eye did I allow myself a glance at the dead creature staked to the tree. The prospect of seeing one of these abominations in detail did not incite my curiosity. Closer to the truck, I had to step around Zalen’s innards and body parts, a fairly daunting task in itself, though I did spare myself one mental levity: It couldn’t have happened to a finer and more forthright gentleman.
Good Lord! came my next distasteful thought, for when I slipped into the time-weathered vehicle, my buttocks grew immediately sopped from the deposit of Zalen’s blood which had been let during his evisceration and dismemberment. I sat still a moment, to slowly survey my immediate surroundings through the windscreen, and saw nothing—absolutely nothing—out of the ordinary. If these fullbloods are hunting me, they’re exhibiting a less-than-fair effort thus far. A grim reminder assailed me next, however: Zalen’s earlier concern about the truck’s starting mechanism. I was an antiquarian and philanthropist, not a car thief. If it’s a keyed ignition, then I’ll have no choice but to drag Onderdonk’s half-cooked corpse from the smoker and search his pockets for the key… I withdrew my pocket-flash, closed my shooting eye to preserve its night-vision, then, for just a split-second, turned on the flash before the dashboard.
My heart fell like a stone.
What my flash illumined was a cylindrical keyway mounted in the dash.
“Here’s the key, Mr. Morley,” the small but sudden voice whispered just outside the open truck window. Where my heart had just sunk in the worst despair it nearly jettisoned from my mouth in the coming shock.
It was young Walter who stood beside the vehicle.
“In Heaven’s name, son!” I snapped a whisper back to him. “You nearly stopped my heart!” but then my eyes flicked to his adolescent hand and proved what he claimed was true. “How… How on earth did you—”
A modest smile of pride touched his face. “Mr. Onderdonk would always keep the key beneath his door mat; I’ve seen him put it there a lot, sir, during my hikes through the woods.”
“Not only a lad of proper manners,” I gushed, “but one of industriousness.” I blinked. “But you were asleep only a short time ago.”
“I woke up and heard you and my mom talking, so I came out on my own, to get the key for you.”
This was certainly a gift I could never have anticipated. “You’re a fine boy, Walter, and a very brave one. But it’s unduly dangerous out here. Do you know about… ,” but then the sentence deteriorated.
“I know all about the fullbloods, sir. I’ve seen them a few times, but tonight, I’ve seen a whole lot of them.”
And it’s my fault, I reminded myself. Walter’s courage was commendable but it did indeed put him in great danger. “Get in next to me, Walter. We’re going to pick up your mother so I can take you both to live with me.”
“But you’ll need help, sir,” he added. “It would be best if I position myself in the back of the truck. I can’t get a good aim if I’m inside with you.”
“A good aim? Walter, whatever are you talking about?”
He raised his handmade bow. “They may try to block the road back to the house, but I’m a pretty good shot.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Lad, you’re surely the bravest boy to ever walk these parts but I’m afraid that suction-cup arrows will do little good against the fullbloods.”
Then he showed me a handful of real arrows.
“See, Mr. Morley? We better go, before they come.”
What could I say to such youthful ingenuity and unhesitant bravado? “All right, Walter. Get in back and be vigilant… And keep your fingers crossed that this old vehicle starts.”
The boy hopped in back. With wide eyes, then, and a trembling lip, I inserted the key into the cylinder, uttered a prayer that seemed dismally anemic, and turned the key.
The rusted hulk hitched, gave off a loud metallic whine that made the tendons in my neck stand out, then rumbled to a start. I ground gears in my attempt to get it in first, gritted my teeth at a long grind, then we were finally moving. The vehicle was indeed roadworthy, but in that evidence, the noise its starting had made could surely be heard from here to town.
I pulled out and turned posthaste, gravel and oyster shells popping beneath worn tires. “Keep a sharp eye!” I called to Walter when I considered the necessity to leave the headlamps off. “Yes, Mr. Morley!” he replied, and when I glanced back through the hole which had once housed glass, I saw the lad positioned in back, his crude bow at the ready. I knew that at an identical age, I’d have been in possession of not one-tenth of the boy’s courage. I’ll raise him as though he were my own, I vowed, and be the father he’d never had, and the same for Mary’s baby… Rusted springs ground when I throttled the archaic vehicle across the rutted road to town. The moon seemed to spray its light upon us for the few seconds that the road exposed us, such that the road itself and the trees and vegetation lining it seemed iridescent, and this made me think of Lovecraft’s masterpiece, “The Color Out of Space,” said to be his personal favorite. Though my fear levels jumped from this brief exposure, it enabled me to view the road both ways. Where I expected to glimpse enemies, I saw, again, virtually nothing in the way of detractors.
Strange, I thought. Unless they’re lying in wait…
The enfeebled truck rocked when I traversed the wheel and navigated into the long, heavily wooded dirt-scratch lane which would lead us to the house. Suddenly darkness swallowed us, only minutely dappled by the moon, for the boughs of overhead trees nearly connected with one another from either side, transposing our route into that of a tunnel. I had to retard speed considerably now, for the reduced visibility.
Walter’s wan face peered in to the rear hole. “Mr. Morley? Maybe you should turn on the headlamps. I can’t see a thing!”
The light-discipline of a soldier surely had tactical exceptions, not to mention that I was nothing remotely similar to a soldier. Just a rich pud, I recalled Zalen’s slight, but he was right. I fancied I could hear him laughing at me now, even as his odious head continued to cook. But now I would have to be a soldier, and I would have to take chances in order to achieve success. I took the lad’s advice, and switched on the headlamps.
The boy shrieked, and so did I.
Figures rushed forward out of the bramble-carpeted woods. Before I could even make transitive reaction, I saw a queerly robed figure—but one with a clearly human face—lunge forward but then buckle back, his hand shooting to his face as an arrow caught him right in his opened mouth.
“Good shot, Walter!”
When a hand—a human hand, not the webbed extremity I expected—shot into the passenger window, I thrust my pistol-filled fist toward it, then—
BAM!
The lucky shot caught the marauder right in the adam’s apple. Bubbly blood shot from the wound as the robed predator screamed.
And it was a man I recognized. Mr. Wraxall, the restaurant owner…
These were not the monstrous fullbloods I anticipated to be set for ambush, but townsmen, all dressed in those same robes with esoteric fringe. More snatches of faces were revealed: the hotel clerk, the maintenance man, the diner who’d been lunching with his paramour at the restaurant, and others. When two more shot out from left and right, Walter struck one in the shoulder; the aggressor unwisely hesitated where he stood, then was bellowing as the vehicle’s wheels drubbed him beneath the chassis. The second assailant tried to climb into my open window where I easily fired a shot directly into the top of his head. He fell away, but not before I could recognize the face in the hood’s oval: Dr. Anstruther.
Sin or not, I chuckled at the cad’s death, and considered the splotches of his grey matter upon my shirt a unique badge of honor.
The rest of the road to the house was
clear.
Where I’d expected the opposition to be formidable, I found only sheepshank weakness in its place. The squat house now came into view at the end of the headlamps’ beams.
“This was almost too easy, Walter,” I called out behind me. “And that troubles me quite a bit.” I killed the motor, hopped out. “We must hurry now and fetch your mother. Between the engine-noise and my pistol, there’ll be more after us…”
I sprang to the vehicle’s rear bed to lift Walter out, but—
Oh, my God in Heaven, no…
The only objects occupying this space were the boy’s meager bow and the final can of petrol.
I glanced out into the woods but saw and heard nothing.
How could I have let this happen? I condemned myself. The town collective snatched Walter out of the back… and have taken him away…
4.
A half-hour’s desperate search in the woods yielded no positive result, and to search longer would only jeopardize the possibility of getting Mary and her unborn out alive. Hence, I trudged back to the brick-and-ivy-netted hovel like a man on his way to the gallows. What could I tell Mary? Her son had been abducted and most likely was dead already—all under my charge…
The very normal sound of crickets followed me back inside, but then came another sound, one which actually deflected my all-pervading muse of despair:
The sound of a baby crying.
I plunged out of the foyer’s ink-like murk into the candle-lit room, where the sound of infantile crying hijacked my gaze toward the heap of a mattress. “Mary!”
There she sat, bearing an exhausted smile as she sat upright among makeshift pillows. In her arms, pressed to her swelling bosom, was a newly born babe, swaddled in linens.
“I went into labor just after you left,” she said, rosy-cheeked. “And then it happened only minutes later.” She turned the infant for me to see.