by John Shirley
No one said a word, the silence broken by the thud of a woman who fainted in the back row. Chilton walked out the door, a black silhouette against the blinding daylight.
Outside the church, Chilton descended the steps slowly, pulling the war club from his breeches and twirling it with his free hand. Below him on the street a crowd waited, led by a core group of hard-bitten men and a few slatternly women who had followed him from the Broken Pony. They were arranged at the bottom of the stairs in a ragtag formation, pipe smoke dancing up into the icy sky. All of them regarded him squarely, ginned-up courage hardening their bloodshot eyes and tightening their grip on musket iron, daring him to raise the pistol. Even outside, over the breeze, he could smell their fear underneath the stink of alcohol and sweat. He knew that smell, and hated it. His senses were heightened after his last night at sea, and what he saw there. A survivor’s wisdom, he told himself, never believing it for a second.
Chilton stepped off the stairs and parted the crowd, heading toward the waiting Sea Hag.
“A pox on you, Captain Craven,” came a gravelly female voice from the crowd.
He turned to the woman, aged beyond her grief by strong drink and late nights in various alehouses around town, and no doubt a few swinging hammocks as well. Chilton’s eyes narrowed, drawing up the hollows underneath like two tiny curtains. His lips curled sideways. “A pox on all of us, Widow Embree.”
Invectives spewed out of the tavern patrons, while more shocked gasps issued from the church doorway that was emptying out the congregation, encircling Chilton on all sides. Hands fluttered hex signs, while men held their women close and covered the eyes of their children. A few of the more modest citizens of New London hurried on their way, sensing trouble. Most stayed, hoping for the same.
“You speak the language of witchcraft,” Samuel Ennis said from the crowd, swinging his musket down from his shoulder.
“O that witches were real, and their sorcery at our disposal,” Chilton said, casually scratching his growing beard. The crowd moved back several steps in each crescent, as if pushed by an invisible hand instead of the outrage of fear. “But alas, we are alone in this universe of monsters.”
Mrs. Embree conjured up a ball of phlegm from deep within her wasted being and spat on the ground as she staggered forward, dragging her gnarled left foot behind her. She groped inside her untied bodice, digging between flattened breasts, and produced a damp white hen feather, holding it out in front of her body as if poisonous. Stopping in front of Chilton, she reached up and buried the pointed quill into the loosening wool of his topcoat lapel. He looked down at it, the soft tendrils along the shaft dancing slowly by the cold breeze off the ocean.
“Only medal yer’ll ever wear.”
Chilton nodded once, turned on his heel, and left the crowd standing huddled together, the steam of their quick breathing twisting and disappearing into the whistle of the building gale.
It was thus that the citizens of New London sent off Captain Chilton, who boarded the Sea Hag alone, cut the mooring ropes short from the cleat, and headed off to sea.
***
The Sea Hag carved the waves with an almost perceptible eagerness as it headed north, just as it had done the last time, when the deck was crowded with singing mariners busying themselves with battle preparations. Today the ship held only one man, which was all it seemed to have room for now.
At the helm, Chilton listened to the creak of the rigging, the flap of the topsails, trying to find solace in the familiar sounds. He looked up at the crow’s-nest, where young Paul Wiggan once held vigil, day or night, only coming down to eat and often taking his meals high above the planks. He had wanted to be a captain someday, just like the brave Mark James Chilton, who assured him that without question he’d be Commodore in a free American republic before his twentieth year. All he had to do was keep his eyes sharp and his instincts whetted. Wiggan promised that he would, and meant it, yet when the time came, he never saw them come up from the sea, because he wasn’t at his post. No one was, and so no one did see them, as they moved from sea to air without a sound, parting the water as if it were a silken curtain and climbing up the side of the ship like bloated crickets. But the day before, the lad had been in the nest, keeping constant watch for the dread Nova Scotian Colonel Alexander Godfrey, who never materialized on the horizon as Chilton thought he would. He even had the night watch burn torches, in hopes of drawing out Godfrey from the blackness, but to no avail. The Colonel wasn’t in the area, or if he was, he chose not to engage. A disappointing turn of events for the crew, and no less to Chilton, who was itching for a fight, and a chance to hobble the Brits.
With a strong tailwind and favorable current, they made good time. On their port side passed Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Popham Colony country in upper Maine. The whole of the trip north, they encountered no resistance, allowing them unfettered and almost leisurely ravaging of the suspect fishing communities once they hit the islands of Nova Scotia, starting with Yarmouth and working their way up the northeastern coastline, jagged with inlets and the jut of peninsulas piled with massive boulders. While unarmed villagers watched helplessly from a distance, Chilton and his men sank suspicious ships at harbor, dumped a portion of the fish haul, and restocked their barely depleted supplies from larders as they worked their way to Halifax, where they knew a proper battle awaited, possibly with help from additional American privateers that constantly prowled the nearby waters. The triplet grouping of Halifax, Spryfield, and Burnside were always fattened by their British masters and begging to be plucked. Chilton was only too eager to do the plucking, and had cleared out space in the lower hold of the Sea Hag for pillaged goods. He felt like a proper pirate, a regular John Halsey on a divine mission, and wished there was a little more bend and heft to the saber at his side.
On the morning of the day they were to reach Halifax, Wiggan spied the thin, delicate steeple of a church peeking over the rise of a high cliff face walling off a hidden cove. As sure as an arrow stuck in the ground, the spire gave away the location of the beating heart of a community, tucked away from the sea, that wasn’t logged on any of their charts. This was indeed queer, as they were using smuggled British maps certified by the King’s royal cartographer. Chilton immediately took it for a secret British military base, hastily built to give the appearance of a bucolic fishing and herding community.
Chilton’s heart soared as he instructed his men to arm heavily, loading up extra powder and ball, as what they were about to find on shore would dwarf any domestic goods they burned or pillaged in Halifax, and wouldn’t come willingly. “We’ve found a nest of vipers, lads,” he said with a laugh. “So bring your biggest sticks.”
The raiding party arrived on shore in the late afternoon, just hours before sundown. After encountering some difficulty scaling the cliffs that led from the rocky beach, they moved quickly into the rundown village. The streets were empty, the houses timeworn and ramshackle, looking barely livable. Everything smelled heavily of rotted fish, although no catch lined the empty stalls in the cramped market square. As they crept from building to building, they found not a living soul, discovering instead several large smelters installed in various innocuous-looking warehouses. The town seemed deserted, although recent habitation was evident from the filthy conditions. All was quiet as a tomb. No birds sang in the trees, no dogs barked behind fences or sniffed the gutters. The trees had been cleared from every rutted sidewalk. Yards were only tamped-down mud. It was a depressing place, lorded over by the high steeple of the church that sat on the hill just above town, a small belfry window giving a clear view of the sea. The citizens must have seen the approach of the Sea Hag, and had fled.
The small scouting teams returned to the square and gave their reports, regrouping around their captain.
“There’s nothing here, sir,” reported Lt. Jeffrey Scott, Chilton’s first mate, who was the last to return. “No weapons, no supplies, no—”
“—No people,” Chilton fi
nished, his gaze resting on the church. He walked toward it, climbing the smoothed dirt pathway that lead to the plateau above town. Scott nodded and followed, checking the breech on his Brown Bess and affixing his bayonet. The men did the same, pulling out ramrods and falling in line behind the man in front of him.
The church was infinitely older than the rest of the town, and seemed to be built right into the granite—or out of it—with the wooden frame and shingles acting as more of a masking agent than necessary architecture. No windows lined the walls, giving the impression of a strong box instead of a house of worship. The twin doors were shut and no sound came from inside, but the structure had a weight to it, a populated heaviness that seemed to hum.
“There aren’t no cross up there,” Wiggan said, squinting at the shape topping the steeple point. “It’s a star.”
“Byzantines,” spat an old scarred sea dog named Boone. “In league with the Tommies.”
A slight tapping came from behind the doors. Muzzles rose. Boone moved to the door, and Chilton nodded. Boone turned the iron latch and pulled back the heavy wood.
A cold stink issued from the church like a punch, squeezing groans from the sailors. Chilton raised his kerchief over his nose and mouth and entered, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the near absence of light. As vision slowly returned, he found what must have been the entire village—close to a hundred people—peering back at him. Men wore hats low over their faces, women were veiled like brides, their features hidden under gray and green lace, but hinting at large, strangely colored eyes and wide lips. A man removed his hat and smoothed back wispy black hair over the smooth skin of his unnaturally streamlined head. A smile seemed to play on his toadish lips, but it might have been the curvature of the mouth high up the cheek. His hazel pupils were flecked with gold and appeared to push out from his skull with each quick, labored breath he took.
Chilton took a step back, shocked at the unnatural appearance of the faces, the waxen expressions, that stared back at them.
“What’s wrong with these people?” whispered Scott.
“Inborns,” someone said.
“Celestials,” Boone said.
“Innsmouth folk,” said a sailor named Burdoo, who had grown up in the woods north of Boston. His face was pale and his trigger hand shaking.
Chilton had heard of the secretive village of Innsmouth, tucked away in a narrow fold of the Massachusetts coast, although neither he, nor anyone he knew—save maybe Burdoo, by all accounts—had been there. It was a closed community of religious and cultural abnormalities, founded long before the rest of the colony. The crew must have stumbled upon another outpost of the Innsmouth clan, or perhaps the other way around. Either way, Chilton thought, there certainly weren’t any British sympathizers here.
“Look at the ceiling!” Wiggan said, his voice far too loud.
Above them, the vaulted ceiling was covered in images and pictograms set amid a heavenly scene of what first appeared to be aquatic life playing amongst stars and fanciful planets unlike anything Chilton had seen in the schoolhouse astronomy texts. The entire rendering glistened, made entirely of pale gold, studded with gemstones the size of a man’s fist.
“We’re rich!” Boone shouted. A few of the men cheered.
“Return to ship,” Chilton said, cutting through the excitement, trying to keep the creep of fear out of his voice. He had never been afraid before, but the gnawing chill in the pit of his stomach surely must be it. It felt as if the ceiling were watching them. “We have no business here.”
“But Cap—”
“Return to the goddamn ship!” Chilton ordered.
The men hesitantly turned to the door, one taking Boone by the arm, but the door was no longer behind them. Several of them turned back around, and discovered the way out was now across the room. The congregation just stood and silently watched.
“What is this?” Chilton whispered aloud, his voice rising in pitch.
No one in the room uttered a word. His men began to mutter, and Chilton felt as if he had to say something, and was about to blurt either a salutation or an order to fire—he didn’t know which—when a small robed figure emerged from the collection of villagers and shuffled toward the sailors. He or she was no larger than a child, but moved with the pained effort of extreme old age. When it reached the men, a hand emerged from the folds of heavy fabric and stretched out to the club at Chilton’s waist, revealing a spindly arm covered in flaky, desiccated skin.
“Leper!” Boone breathed.
Chilton knocked the hand away with the butt of his musket, and at that instant the congregation came alive with a sudden outburst of barks and croaks, surging forward like a swarm of locusts. A boom echoed off the high rafters, and then another, and a dozen more. Smoke choked the air and bodies slammed to the floor.
“Back to the ship!” Chilton shouted into the haze, burnt saltpeter stinging his nose. He charged through the confused mass of leaping and fallen bodies toward the last location of the door. Something snatched his musket from his hands while the man at his side was pulled to the ground. Chilton pulled his pistol and fired at the writhing figures in front of him, swinging his club at anything that didn’t fall.
He reached the door and kicked it open, pulling out each of his battling men to the last, before slamming the door shut and leaning into it with his full weight, soon joined by several of the larger crew members.
Hands slapped at the door from inside; the slaps quickly became heavy lunges. The door bowed and the thick rusted hinges creaked, but held. Scott and three other men pushed a weathered buckboard in front of the entrance, and the men stood back, breathing heavily while reloading their muskets.
“What do we do, Captain?” Wiggan said, face pale.
Chilton listened to the inhuman sounds coming from inside the church, terror shriveling his insides, stealing his voice, melting the iron of his past.
“Captain?” Scott said.
“Burn it,” Chilton finally managed. “Burn it all.”
***
The Sea Hag raised anchor and crept back out to sea. Chilton stood on the quarterdeck and watched the last rays of daylight frame a dozen funnels of black smoke that joined together into a growing cloud above the burning town. He didn’t move until the sun was gone, and the sea and the sky became one.
The crew was silent on the voyage home. No hoots and hollers and drunken brags about feats of barter and sexual conquest once they reached New London. Boone even stopped talking about the pool of melted gold collecting in the burning ruins behind them, never mentioning a return plan to collect it. The ship was full of plunder, but this was forgotten. The mugs hung empty and the grog stayed in the barrel. Everyone to a man seemed drawn inside themselves, contemplating what they had just seen. Hands made the sign of the cross, or clenched together in rusty prayer. Even after all duties were complete, no one slept. Wiggan didn’t climb the crow’s nest that night, huddling instead down in the hold. He didn’t want to see anymore. Chilton walked the deck, trying to conjure up the right words to share with his men, to reassure them, but he had nothing to say. Instead, he retreated to his cabin while Scott took the helm.
***
It was hours into the silent journey home, and just before dawn, when the Sea Hag suddenly stopped in the water, pitching man and cargo headlong across the ship.
Ships on open sea, miles from shore and nowhere near pack ice, never just stop, but the Sea Hag did, freezing on the main as if grabbed by a giant hand below the waves. Sails billowed and the masts groaned angrily, but the craft held fast while everything simply stopped. No waves lashed at the waterline. Scott regained his feet, ran to the railing and looked down, finding the sea smooth as glass, like a frog pond. The texture of the water mesmerized him. He could see down deep into the ocean, spying a light that filtered up from the murky depths. A pale golden glimmer of something very deep, but quite vast.
Chilton had been thrown into his dressing closet, and was frantically fighting thr
ough the maps that covered him when he heard the first shout. By the time he reached the door to his quarters, the shouts had turned to screams.
He dashed out on deck just as the ship was overrun with lightening speed. Shadows leaping out of shadows, hopping and scuttling, extinguishing torches that reflected off bulging white eyes, slick mottled skin. Musket fire flashed in the darkness, etching scenes of dismemberment in stark relief. This was something that should not be. An impossible sight, ripped from fever dreams buried deep within the brain and deeper in the human race, clotting men’s marrow with dark truths that retreated from evolution outside the caves, waiting in forest glades and beachside caves for those who remembered the old ways guided by the Elder Knowledge.
Chilton staggered from the inside out, feeling his grip on sanity loosening by the moment, helped in large measure by the fact that the things grabbing his men and pulling them into the water made no sound at all. They slaughtered in silence and with a cruel efficiency. All he could hear was the one-sided screams of horror ripped from the throats of his crew, and the splashes as they hit the water, carried down by the things that had boiled up from the deep. His men called out to him for help, pleading, but Chilton stood frozen in place, his courage rendered down to a glue that fastened his boots to the deck timber. He just stood and watched as the ship was cleared, one shrieking man at a time, until all were gone.
After several tortured moments, a lone creature leapt down from the yardarm, landing heavily. It rose partially erect and looked in Chilton’s direction, then brought itself to its full height, thin muscles rippling strangely under its glistening skin. As if showing the man it could do so. It could stand like him, taller than him. It could beat him—and had. The face born at the bottom of the sea seemed vaguely human, in some respects. More than the faces of the other ones that had taken his men. Walking in a loping manner, it approached Chilton, carrying something small and glittery in its webbed hand. He set it down in front of the captain, turned, and leapt over the rails, disappearing under the water without so much as a splash.