FriendlyHorrorandOtherWeirdTales

by Burke, Jessica

  “Grandfather once told me what he couldn’t tell Kolff, about how Captain Billop won that boat race in 1668 and was awarded over 1100 acres land around the area today called Conference House Park. Little did the other contestants know, but Captain Billop in addition to being a terrible Loyalist, was also an ancestor of ours, hence Grandfather’s name Billop and my own. I suppose I can call Captain Billop my great great great great grand Uncle. He was a great sailor and knew the sea because he journeyed on both sides of the waves for much of his life. During that race, he had a bit of assistance from his more aquatically inclined relatives beneath the hull of his ship. Grandfather didn’t wish Mr. Kolff to know about these marine relatives, especially since Mr. Kolff intended to publish his gathered tales both privately for his Philosopher’s Club and publicly in the local newspaper. Oceanic ancestry aside, how could Grandfather Fern allow Kolff’s writers’ circle or the general public to make any connection between our family and Innsmouth? Resisting Kolff’s charms was a boon to our family particularly when, in the following years, Grandfather Fern discovered that the government camps rising from the Innsmouth disaster weren’t limited to New England.... much to the chagrin of several of his siblings who found out firsthand about the forced labor camps at Staten Island’s Seaview Farm Colony, a place we would all be acquainted with before the end. Most if not all of Innsmouth’s citizens who had been on land at the time of the raids either had died fighting or were detained and secreted away to government facilities, testing labs, and detention cells never to be heard from again.

  “Jolly, round, and verbose were words Grandfather used for Mr. Kolff, who in addition to selling us the Seguine mansion from one of Staten Island’s many financially ruined old families, also sold Grandfather—albeit more secretively—the remains of the Seguine Family’s oyster empire. Maxfield’s wasn’t about to branch from Ice Cream to oysters, but Grandfather knew how diminished the oyster beds had become, so he flattered Mr. Kolff’s sentimentalities towards preserving the natural world, and expressed dismay at how badly the Seguine Family had ruined the seabeds across the south shore. Owning a section of the sea, so to speak, would grant Maxfield’s greater freedom to gather their specialty ingredients, and granted Grandfather the personal freedom to begin journeying to the sea more often.

  “Soon enough, his expeditions became weekly, and by the summer of 1942, Staten Island was able to push some of the war woes aside thanks to Maxfield’s iced treats. Later that summer, after Maxfield’s donated almost 200 gallons of ice cream to Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a retirement home for sailors on the north shore of Staten Island, word of mouth flew about the charitable gesture along with articles in the local newspaper, The Staten Island Advance. Our trucks soon became fixtures in many Staten Island and Brooklyn neighborhoods. Despite the war effort and the rationing, Maxfield’s became a comfort, and years later, I recall one particular article Grandfather had saved. The Advance reporter said our trucks were an essential part to the Island’s identity, both during the war and the return to normalcy in the 1950s, equating their role with that of historical landmarks like the Conference House and Fort Wadsworth.

  “Not that any wars were actually fought with ice cream, but the reception during the war and after gave Grandfather the final lynchpin so to speak in our plans to recall Y’ha-nthlei from the depths and spread our kind across the upper earth, forcing the true primates to give way to our people. He wrote to Aunt Julia, requesting permission to take their experiments into full production. With the expansion of new franchises, there was a physical need for more of us. The surviving members of the clan were spawning, but not as often as they should be. Perhaps it was the after effects of the government testing. There were so many that proved incapable of spawning, much like Aunt Julia. Where her sterility was more natural, stemming from her birth trauma, theirs were created by our primate overlords. The oyster beds and the Farm Colony were the groundwork the family needed to begin the new wave of expansion and transformation. Old Obed Marsh’s tactics hadn’t worked. But, Grandfather Fern and Aunt Julia knew the key to a thorough changeover was much sweeter. The new clan members would help the old and soon Maxfield’s was expanding beyond the shores of the U.S.

  “The Seguine mansion and the oyster beds granted Grandfather and the family some beach rights and water rights just inside shipping channels in the bay. Grandfather’s siblings, an assortment of cousins and dispossessed family began coming to Staten Island after the dissolution of the camps in Miskatonic and Stanford. The survivors had nothing but the clothes on their backs, much like Grandfather himself back in the winter of 1928. After the war, the United States had other bigger plans than studying a few hundred fish-frogs. The nuclear age was a windfall for our people. For my disseminated family, Maxfield’s promised steady work, and ultimately a reunion with our kin in Y’ha-nthlei. Grandfather’s additional land purchases along Lemon Creek and dotting areas down the Staten Island shore to an area just outside the Conference House called Burial Ridge, granted many members of our family something they hadn’t known in many years: safe, solid homes that were their own. Some opted for house boats along Lemon Creek or just off shore wishing as much distance between them and their primate neighbors. Others took up residence in the myriad of brightly painted bungalows peppering the coast.

  “Unlike Innsmouth, our family wasn’t forced into work, nor into living in this particular place or that. But none refused the offer. The idea of living in peace with our family’s aquatic goals to offer cohesion was more than any of them had ever had before. Grandfather Fern was a kindly Grandfather to them all, and Aunt Julia was an Aunt. Not all our family worked for the company. Some helped Grandfather with the oyster beds and deep-sea retrieval efforts. As the business and the family expanded, covert private schools were opened for our family, so we wouldn’t need to rely solely on mainstream primate public education. Some younglings that had more spiritual inclinations went into our clergy, our women in particular since they are the only ones who can rightly whisper the words left us by Lilith and the Great Mother. After Innsmouth, the Esoteric Order itself underwent a reordering, if you will. Others without the innate inclination toward spiritual practice themselves became teachers and builders, or rather tunnelers. Still more, became our medical leaders with training from within the human medical and scientific fields, of course. The great majority, however, remained within the Maxfield’s company, and more of those took up martial training to create our first unified, defense teams.

  “Grandfather wasn’t opposed to shipping our ice cream into Redhook via trucks, but with our establishment along the waterfront of Staten Island, he preferred the use of shipping ports and harbors located throughout the island. When Grandfather felt it was time to go to sea, for the first time with Aunt Julia and again, some years later, he left my brothers, sisters and I responsible for all aspects of the business. While my brothers kept in charge of shipments from our facilities on Richmond Terrace, my sisters who didn’t minister to our schools kept their feelers on the more administrative aspect of the business; while I tended to follow in Grandfather Fern’s footsteps—manufacture and distribution. I wasn’t beyond the use of modern propaganda techniques, more appropriately called advertising, either.”

  *********

  Putting the recorder down, Silas paused to wet his drying lips with more of the salt water solution, when another coughing fit wracked his body in great, shuddering, tearing bursts. The pain was extreme and for a moment he forgot where he was and why he was there. It’s worse than he told me it would be, worse than it was yesterday, he thought. I’m a different thing. Grandfather told me how he had felt. Maybe, had mother stayed longer or even Father, they might’ve told a truer version of events. Silas had forgotten to make another cup of that tea to push the pain away.

  Silas stood on shaky feet. The toes on his left foot had completely fused; the right still had two left stubbornly sticking out at an odd angle that were painful to walk on. He shambled into the kitche
n, the next room over from where he had been sitting at his window, and carefully set the tea kettle on to boil. Grateful for the technology of the Swedes, Silas patted his plug-in, electric kettle, happy he didn’t have to fumble with lighting the gas burners with his elongated, rapidly fusing fingers. While the water boiled, he prepared the herbal decoction his sister Jyssamin gave him to help with the pain—both from his enlarged sinuses and from the reconfiguration of his internal organs. She warned him the taste would be repulsive and it might give him vivid waking dreams for the first 24 hours, but it was a necessity in the final day or so before the Great Rise and his final change. She had said the dream-like episodes should taper off as just before the ceremony so as not to leave him in a complete stupor. However, in order to guarantee total cognizance for the rituals, she told him not to drink any more after their Father’s men arrived to take him to the Nest.

  Jyssamin was closest to Silas from all his siblings, and she teased him that their relationship was as close as Grandfather Fern’s and Aunt Julia’s. Jyssamin’s middle name was Julia after all, Jyssamin Julia Lilith Maxfield to be precise and after tomorrow’s ceremony, she would be moving her own expanding brood to set up shops in New Orleans. Jyss would have preferred Paris, but Silas thought it was just too ironic. France was just too bizarre. Britain had been one of their first strongholds beyond New England; it was only fair to conquer the old after surmounting the new, but the French were something entirely different and not worth the effort. The family already had Nests off Italy, Greece, and Morocco, off Siberia, Denmark, and Norway, not to mention all those hidden nooks and crannies in the South Pacific.

  The storm had retreated completely leaving the day soggy but still. Silas would miss the late spring thunderstorms that he loved so desperately, but it was just another piece to the puzzle. Even though it was only the end of April, the last few days had been uncannily hot, resulting in thunderstorms, and some, like the one that greeted him after his return home the day before, lasted off and on throughout the night, only to start again the next morning.

  Silas’ stomach lurched and rumbled. Realizing that he hadn’t eaten since lunch from the day before, he waddled to the refrigerator and found the remains of his smoked whiting. Once the changes became more pronounced, part of the purge was to eat only from the sea. Land flesh was no longer sufficient. He knew some rules were being broken with his sister’s decoction, but her roots and barks did help the pain. He couldn’t finish his record, nor could he stand alongside his Father’s men, his Mother’s priestesses, nor the face of their Gods if he was a squelching, howling, writhing mess, could he? Besides, Jyssamin always added to her brews healthy doses of bladderwrack, kelp, and Irish moss, along with handfuls of those little dried shrimps she had delivered special from Chinatown. So, technically, it was a medicine not completely of ‘land flesh.’ And what about those little kiddie snacks picked up along his route that Father was fattening below land in their pens and tanks? What were they actually but land flesh, despite their newly acquired tentacles and protuberances?

  While Silas steeped his sister’s medicinal tea, which she had conveniently pre-packaged for him in simple drawstring teabags, he sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen with his smoked fish, wishing it was a plate piled high with his most adored food, even before the change: a Super Hebster special bagel sandwich with a side of peppered herring from Russ and Daughters. The things those people cold do with smoked fish would make you cry, he thought wistfully. It was truly a shame neither he, nor his Grandfather, nor any member of his nautical family could claim Russ nor his daughters as kin. But, adding wasabi tobiko to the smoked whiting salad sandwich did come to one of the girls in a dream, sung on a song to her by none other than Dagon himself.

  Silas, instead, had to make do with some insipid smoked whitefish from the local supermarket. Yesterday’s piece had gone pretty much wasted after that coughing fit. He had been sitting on the back bumper of his delivery truck with the rear doors open wide to catch the midday breeze off the water at the end of the road. Silas’ meal breaks were usually spent staring out at the Arthur Kill and New Jersey beyond, at the end of Bentley Avenue. Bentley was the name of old grand uncle Billop’s ship, but Silas couldn’t remember if it was the same ship that had won that race. At the end of the partially wooded road was a rather pathetic beach with century old wooden pylons that once held a majestic ferry and tugboat pier, now jutting out of the water like rotten hideous teeth. Grandfather Fern would bounce Silas as a toddler on his knee telling stories of their family ancestry, and how the Staten Island shores closely resembled those of Innsmouth. Adjacent to the pylons and the beach was the end-of-the-line for the Staten Island Rapid Transit, the Tottenville train-station and its station house.

  For several months out of the year, especially in late spring and summer, Silas and his siblings took turns working routes along the neighborhoods of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the other cities across the Northeast where Maxfield’s had set up franchises. Keeping such a close, visceral link to their product, their customers, and ultimately the great expansion of their people, helped to keep them focused. It was part of Grandfather Fern’s objective and, technically as adolescents still, it was in the family tradition to keep some form of manual, grunt-work labor. Maybe it was a throwback to Obed Marsh’s refinery, but Grandfather Fern always returned during a summer to check up on them. Truth be told, for Silas and his siblings, working an ice cream truck during the height of summer in the wilder lands of Staten Island wasn’t on a scale comparable to the terrible work from Marsh’s smelting factory. Since their coming of age didn’t happen until they were 40 or even older, when other cultures suffered their own children’s ceremonies between the ages of 10 and 14, Silas’ siblings spent many summers on their collective routes, getting to know how Maxfield’s touched New York in ways not spoken about in the local papers. Silas’ people entered adolescence at 16 and stayed there until their ceremony usually around the 40th anniversary of their own spawning. Since he was 32 this past April, it was early for Silas—but then, Grandfather Fern told him he was something special, something so old it was new again, something foretold. Mother’s own ceremony happened only 6 or 7 years after her children were spawned, so she was only 34. But, she was herself also a kind of homecoming or resurrection if you will.

  Silas had been on his meal break, enjoying the sun, salt air, and his mediocre whiting when he was hit with a sudden burst of coughing. At first Silas thought it may have been one of those pesky little bones getting caught in his throat. No, this was something else entirely. He could hear above the truck the Pappinjyn croaking from the trees telling him to try to relax, to breathe despite the pain. The cough was deep in his chest, a congested thick cough. It was his first sign that the changes were more pronounced than he had previously suspected.

  His lunch dropped from his lap as he stood, turned into the truck abruptly, and was hit with another body shaking round of coughing. His throat bulged, liquidly heaving. Falling to his knees outside the vehicle, grasping at the scarf about his neck with one hand and feeling the broad scars on either side with his other hand, he was more than a little alarmed, even terrified by what he felt, internally and externally. Not now! Not Now! Let me finish my route at the very least! Silas managed to stand on shaky feet by pulling himself up on the bumper and then on the open door. Several of the Rapid Transit service workers and conductors were slowly lumbering out of the station house. Silas’ coughing undoubtedly disturbed their own midday meals, unless it was the warning cries of the Pappinjyn.

  Silas hauled his bulk into the back of the vehicle and managed to close the door just before another fit clutched him. As he spewed a yellowish green ichor into the waste-bucket on the floor of the truck, his heaving slowed and settled down. He grabbed his water bottle from a shelf behind the door, only mildly spiked with ocean water in preparation for the change, and drained it to clear his throat and gills. They were there when he felt under his scarf, and in
vivid color . Tearing the grey-green silk completely from his neck, Silas turned to the glossy chrome raised freezer unit lining the interior wall of the truck. His suspicions were confirmed when his distorted reflection met his eyes: beneath his jaw, the top of his neck had started to sag in a strange way. It was inflamed a bright pink. What had been mere edges that morning, the suggestion of scars circling his neck, were now lines as wide as his index finger, deep red, like a bloody scab that had been torn open. Inside of his neck and chest was a burbling, thickening, rattling sound that was disturbing to hear. His head thrummed and his ears blazed. Every inch of him felt as though he had been battered, broken, and burned. Grandfather Fern hadn’t told Silas the changes would come so quick. Or be so painful…

  Cousins and siblings to turn were gradual. Those expansions brought on by the ice cream were different cases altogether and not strictly natural. Sister Jyssamin may have known something, after their sister Lispeth had changed 13-moons ago. But, because the women’s changes were different, more radical in some ways, it went without saying that there would be pain. Jyssamin had tried some of ancient folk remedies handed down from their women-folk to help alleviate some of Lispeth’s pain. It may have been Silas’ sister’s intuition, but she had handed him a small brown bag of her tea blends and told him to make sure he started drinking it just before the full moon— a full day before the ceremony. He hadn’t wanted to try anything new before his last day on the route, so he didn’t make any of the concoction that morning, much to his chagrin.