These were the most repulsive creatures I had ever set eyes on. Apart from some curious deformity of their bodies, their bulging eyes and oddly shaped heads held something of the aquatic physiognomy of fishes, and I could swear that some of them had hands and feet which seemed to be webbed!
Sickened by the sight and smell, I turned away, and it was then I noticed the hastily boarded-up doorway in the far wall where the shadows were thickest. Drawing Corder’s attention to it, we soon ripped away the boards and shone the light of one of the lanterns into the gaping aperture that lay behind them. There was no doubting what it was; the opening into one of the old smugglers’ tunnels leading down towards the sea.
“So that’s how he brought them here.” Corder muttered grimly. “God alone knows how many more of these creatures are in the town, probably concealed in cellars like this.”
Charged the next day with illegally importing unidentified aliens, Obed Marsh and several of his crew were thrown into jail to await trial, and for two days thereafter an uneasy quiet reigned in Innsmouth.
It was not to last, however. For then came the day which was to change Innsmouth forever.
As far as I was concerned, my suspicions were aroused when I noticed several groups of men in the streets adjoining the jail. All of them were either men who had sailed with Marsh in the past, or those who had joined him later when he had spoken out against the various religious denominations.
It was clear their intention was to secure Obed’s release by force, and this seemed confirmed when they began moving in the direction of Main Street. Hurriedly alerting several of my neighbors and telling them to spread the word, we succeeded in gathering more than fifty men armed with muskets, pikes, knives, and any other weapons they could lay their hands on.
By the time we reached the jail, we found it had already come under attack. Some of the raiders had forced their way inside, and the unmistakable sound of shots came from somewhere within the building. Moments later, we were set upon by the yelling mob and I was fighting for my life against men I had known for years who now acted like crazed madmen.
For a time, since we outnumbered them by almost two to one, we succeeded in driving them back from their objective. But as they retreated along Main Street, a great horde of natives burst out of Waite Street, forcing us back towards the bridge over the Manuxet.
In the distance, I could clearly pick out more gunfire coming from all directions, but concentrated mainly near the center of the town and along the waterfront, and guessed that fighting had broken out in several places. Already, we had suffered a number of casualties; seven men had been killed, and almost twice that number wounded.
Luckily, the majority of the natives were unarmed, relying on sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm us. Several were killed within the first few minutes, but the rest came on, heedless of their casualties.
It was the bridge that temporarily saved us. On either side, the riverbank as far as the falls was far too steep and treacherous to be readily scaled, and the Manuxet was in full flood after the recent rains, thereby preventing the creatures from crossing the river and assaulting us from the rear.
For almost an hour we managed to hold off the attackers, inflicting terrible carnage among their ranks. When they began to pull back, we believed we had beaten them off, and although firing could still be heard around the town center, it was sporadic, and it appeared the situation was slowly being brought under control.
After what several of us had witnessed in the cellar below the Marsh mansion, I think we believed we were prepared for anything. But nothing could have prepared us for what came next.
It was Silas Benson who suddenly called our attention to the river below us. As I have said, the Manuxet was in full flood, but now it teemed with black shapes, swimming upstream against the racing current. That they had come from the sea was immediately obvious. Literally hundreds of them came swarming onto the bank, and one horrified glance was enough to show that these creatures were even less human than those we had stumbled upon earlier.
Hopping in a manner hideously suggestive of frogs, they clambered up the steep sides with ease. There was no chance of defeating such a multitude, and our only hope of survival was to flee across the bridge and along Main Street. Another bank of natives, surging out of Dock Street, attempted to halt us, and our ammunition was almost spent by the time we broke through them. Four more of our number were killed before we reached the relative safety of my house, where we barricaded ourselves in.
By now it was abundantly clear that those monsters from the sea had taken over the whole of the town. Sporadic firing could still be heard in the distance, but we all knew that further resistance was futile.
By the morning of the next day, after spending the night confined to the house, we finally pieced together the full story of what had happened. Obed Marsh and those imprisoned with him had been released. Both of the Federal investigators who had accompanied us to the Marsh mansion had been slaughtered. John Lawrence, editor of the Innsmouth Courier on Dock Street, who had often spoken out against Marsh, had been dragged into the street and murdered. The presses and printing equipment had been smashed and the office set on fire.
Thus it was that Obed Marsh now controlled the whole of Innsmouth. His word was law. Within weeks, the old Masonic Temple on Federal Street had been taken over and replaced by the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
Only a handful of the townsfolk were allowed to leave Innsmouth. These were mostly Lithuanians and Poles. Whether Marsh considered that no one outside Innsmouth would believe anything of what they said about the town, or whether, not being descendants of the original settlers, he adjudged them to be of no importance, no one knew. After they had gone, those who remained were allowed to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon. There were few who declined.
It was not only the gold which made people join this new religion Marsh had brought back with him, nor the fact that, by now, most folk were mortally afraid of him. What persuaded the majority to join was that Marsh promised all who joined that, if they took his five oaths and obeyed him implicitly, they would never die.
When I was asked to join, I refused, as did my son. I had read sufficient concerning the rites that had been practiced in nearby Arkham during the witch trials to know that similar inducements had been made then, that all who worshipped Satan would be granted eternal life. At the time, I knew it to be nothing more than myth and superstition, merely an enticement to get people to join in their unholy rites.
Now, however, I know differently. It soon became apparent that Marsh was involved with those deep ones much more deeply than was first thought. In return for their continued aid, he declared that the townspeople must mate with these creatures. He himself was forced to take a wife from among them, although she was never seen abroad and no one was able to tell who—or what—she was.
All of that happened almost twenty years ago. More and more of the folk, particularly the younger ones, acquired the same look as many of those natives we had found in Marsh’s cellar, and some, as the years passed, were even worse, being little different from those creatures which had come from the sea to take over the town. Almost all of the Marsh, Gilman, Hogg and Brewster families were affected by this Innsmouth look. Curiously, Ephraim Waite’s family remained untainted, even though he was one of Marsh’s closest acquaintances.
Rumor had it, however, that Waite had once resided in Arkham and had a reputation as a wizard, some even suggesting that he was the same warlock as was present before and during the witch trials there, two centuries earlier. That this was nothing more than idle gossip, spread by those who were more afraid of him than of Obed Marsh, seemed undeniable.
It was now becoming more difficult and dangerous for me to keep watch on Marsh’s activities. Even though the deep ones had returned to the sea shortly after Marsh’s release from jail, a score of years before, those who bore the Innsmouth look were in the majority, and any of the population untouched by it were kept under clos
e scrutiny.
Only those who belonged to the Order were allowed in the vicinity of the Esoteric Order of Dagon Hall. Nevertheless, on a number of occasions I managed to approach within fifty yards of it under cover of darkness. Even on those nights when there was no service taking place, the building was never silent. Strange echoes seemed to come from somewhere deep beneath the foundations; weird sounds like nothing I had heard before.
But things were worse whenever a service was being held. Just to see some of those who attended made me want to turn and run. Scaled things that wore voluminous clothing to conceal the true shapes of what lay beneath, walking upright like men, but with a horrible hopping gait that set my teeth on edge. And the chanting which came from within was something born out of nightmare. Harsh gutturals such as could never have been uttered by normal human throats; croaks and piping whistles, more reminiscent of the frogs and whippoorwills in the hills around Arkham than anything remotely approaching human speech.
Dear Lord—that such blasphemies as those could exist in this sane, everyday world! I found myself on the point of believing some of the tales spread abroad in Innsmouth concerning some deep undersea city, millions of years old, lying on the ocean floor just beyond Devil Reef. When I had first heard them from Elijah Winton, I had immediately dismissed them as the ravings of a madman. But hearing those hideous sounds emanating from the Temple of Dagon made me think again.
Something unutterably evil and terrible lay out there where the seabed reputedly fell sheer for more than two thousand feet into the abyssal depths. Whatever it was, from whatever internal regions it had come, it now held Obed Marsh and his followers in its unbreakable grip.
Then, two days ago, I found myself wandering along Water Street alongside the harbor. What insane compulsion led me in that direction I could not guess. I knew I was being kept under close surveillance all of the way; that eyes were marking my every move.
Where the sense of imminent danger came from, it was impossible to tell, nor was it any actual sound. Rather, it was a disturbing impression of movement in the vicinity of Marsh Street and Fish Street. I could see nothing to substantiate this, but the sensation grew more pronounced as I halted at a spot where it was possible to look out over the breakwater to where Devil Reef thrust its sinister outline above the water.
It was several minutes before I realized there was something different about the contours of that black reef. I had seen it hundreds of times in the past; I knew its outlines like the back of my hand. But now it seemed far higher than normal, almost as if the sea level around it had fallen substantially.
And then I recognized the full, soul-destroying horror of what I was seeing. That great mass of rock was unchanged. What distorted it was something huge and equally black which was rising from the sea behind it.
Shuddering convulsively, unable to move a single muscle, I could only stand there, my gaze fixed immutably upon that—thing—which rose out of the water until it loomed high above Devil Reef. Mercifully, much of its tremendous bulk lay concealed by the rock and the ocean. Had it all been visible, I am certain I would have lost what remained of my sanity in that horror-crazed instant.
There was the impression of a mass of writhing tentacles surrounding a vast, bulbous head, of what looked like great wings outspread behind the shoulders, and a mountainous bulk hidden by the reef. It dripped with great strands of obnoxious seaweed. I knew that, even from that distance, it was aware of me with a malevolent intensity. And there was something more—an aura of utter malignancy which vibrated in the air, filling my mind with images of nightmarish horror.
This, then, was the quintessence of all the evil which had come to Innsmouth; the embodiment of the abomination which Captain Obed Marsh had wittingly, or inadvertently, brought to the town in exchange for gold.
I remember little of my nightmare flight along Marsh Street and South Street. My earliest coherent memory is of slamming and bolting my door and standing, shivering violently, in the hallway. I had thought those creatures which now shambled along the streets of Innsmouth were the final symbolism of evil in this town, but that monstrosity I had witnessed out in the bay was infinitely worse.
What mad perversity of nature had produced it, where it had originated, and what its terrible purpose might be, I dreaded to think. I knew it could be none other than Dagon, that pagan god these people now worshipped. I also recognized that I now knew too much, that neither Obed Marsh, nor the deep ones which infested the waters around Innsmouth, could ever allow me to leave and tell of what I had witnessed.
There is only one course open to me. I have set down everything in this narrative and I intend to conceal it where only my son, now serving with the North in the war which has torn our country apart, can find it.
Through my window I can see the dark, misshapen figures now massing outside, and it is not difficult to guess at their intentions. Very soon, they will come to break down the door.
I have to be silenced and possibly sacrificed, so that the Esoteric Order of Dagon may continue to flourish and the worship of Dagon may go on unhindered.
But I shall thwart whatever plans they have for me. My revolver lies in front of me on the table, and there is a single bullet still remaining in the chamber!
HELEN’S LAST WILL
by James C. Glass
The lobby of Advanced Technologies was steel struts and white polymer panels reaching towards a high vaulted ceiling of clear glass. The receptionist and an armed guard sat in a glass-enclosed booth on an otherwise vast but empty floor of black marble. Both looked up as Blanche approached the booth.
“May I help you, Madam?” asked the receptionist, a blond, pretty man in his twenties.
“I wish to see the body of my sister,” said Blanche. “She was interred here last Thursday.”
The young man smiled, fingers poised over a keyboard. “Name?”
“Helen Charlston Winslow. Age eighty-four. I believe the arrangements were made by Arthur Winslow, her son. It was all quite sudden, and I wasn’t notified.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Her sister, Blanche Charlston Packard.” Blanche sniffed, and slid her national identity card under a partially opened window in the booth. The man looked at it, then at something on his computer screen.
“Helen Winslow, yes. She was brought here directly from her home. Arthur Winslow attended her admission to verify identity.”
Blanche managed a sob. “I talked to her personal physician, and he didn’t even know she’d been ill. I’m wondering why he wasn’t called in or at least notified when she died.”
The man gave her a sympathetic smile. “We have a staff of twenty physicians, Madam. Three attended your sister, and pronounced her dead at twenty forty-five. Cause of death was a massive cerebral hemorrhage.” He turned back to his computer screen, and studied it.
“Your sister had a long-term contract with us. Everything was done according to her specifications.”
“Yes, of course. I knew she was an investor in your firm. When may I view her body?”
The young man’s eyes wandered from hers. “Ah—that won’t be possible. There are no viewings here. The clients are placed in sealed tanks. Decanting them for viewing would involve considerable expense. The tissue cannot be allowed to warm above liquid nitrogen temperature once it’s quick-frozen.”
Blanche’s manner changed abruptly. “Save that for the believers, young man. I want to see my sister’s remains, and I want to see them now.”
The guard in the booth shifted his feet uneasily, and the receptionist forced a smile.
“I understand, Ms. Packard, I really do, but it isn’t possible, and there are no exceptions. It’s in the contract. The remains can be removed only for advanced medical treatment when there is a high probability for success, as determined by our physicians. There’s so little to see, anyway. Your sister’s contract allowed only her head to be preserved. The rest of her body has been designated for research purposes.”
/>
Blanche put a hand on the window, as if to ward off an evil spirit. “You decapitated my sister?” she asked softly.
“It’s quite common, Ms. Packard. The expense for preserving the head is a fifth of that for the entire body. Over half our clients choose this option. The others have specific medical problems they wish to have solved when the technology is available in the future. It would seem your sister didn’t have such a problem.”
“Only a massive cerebral hemorrhage,” said Blanche. “All right, I want to speak to one or more of the physicians who attended my sister, and find out what’s going on here. This entire thing smells foul to me.”
“If you leave your number, someone will call you and hopefully explain things better than I have.”
Blanche gave him her card. “It had better be tonight, or we’ll be talking about this in a court of law.”
“I’ll forward this card right away, and tell them your concerns,” said the receptionist.
Blanche turned her back on him and marched away fuming, swinging her arms. She was dressed expensively in white pants suit and black tie, and looked important. She was a handsome woman, looking perhaps fifty, even forty, yet she had recently turned seventy-six. She pulled out her cell phone, and spoke a number. Waited, one foot tapping the floor.
“Arthur Winslow, please,” she said, and waited again, then, “Arthur, this is Blanche. I’m here at Advanced Technologies, and I’ve just been told I can’t see my sister because you’ve had her decapitated. Now what are you up to, you miserable little worm?”
She waited a moment, then punched the phone off in a fury.
Arthur had hung up on her.
* * * *
“There’s a conspiracy here, Randal, and I expect you to unravel it.”
To the Stars -- And Beyond Page 3