The horde of fish-things came barreling at us through the corridor, snarling like mad dogs. Barnes and I crouched behind the dead behemoth, using its hunchback for cover.
I barely suppressed a smile, feeling almost content. Now there was something I could wrap my head around; charging madmen, a cocked Thompson in my hand with a full clip, and some solid cover.
I turned to Barnes. He was pulling out cartridges, piling them up high. I retrieved a box of cartridges that looked like they might fit my revolvers, in a pinch. The sight of the sticks of dynamite at the bottom of the sack almost had me drooling.
“Hey, Barnes,” I said, pointing at the sticks. “You think we can risk it?”
Barnes, all locked and loaded, shook his head. “We do that and we get trapped here for good,” he said. “I say we do this the tried and true way.”
I nodded, just before we unleashed a storm of red-hot lead down the tunnel.
The first half dozen came charging at us on all fours, like a bunch of slavering dogs. Our battery sent two of them flying, to crash into the fish-things coming up from the rear.
A trident came hurtling down towards us out of nowhere and stuck hilt-deep into the dead behemoth’s humped back. Its corpse shuddered from the force of the impact. Taking a step back, we kept firing away, taking a few more fish-beasts out for the count.
The air around us was thick with gun smoke and the screams of the dying.
I was going for a fresh clip, realizing that the fish-things were almost on us. The sons of bitches were faster than they looked.
I dropped my Tommy and pulled out my guns just as one of them cleared the behemoth’s back, planting a bullet in its eye.
Only two of the things were left standing now, looking shaken. We’d torn the bastards to ribbons and they had nothing to show for it.
I was about to let them go when Barnes stopped shooting and said through the ringing in my ears: “Trevor, I almost forgot—one of those things slashed your tires.”
The nearest fish-thing got both barrels to its crotch. In a fit of mercy, I let the other one skitter its way up into the dark, damp halls it called home, before we continued our descent.
If the carnage didn’t stop any more of those bastards from coming after us, then the terrified little straggler certainly would.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, growing colder every step of the way. Before long, we were sloshing through shallow pools of something that smelled a lot like seawater. We were heading into another intersection, when I heard the distant sound of rushing water.
Barnes stopped and rifled through his pockets for his map.
“Lost the trail, kemosabe?” I asked.
“No, not at all,” he said, tapping at the neatly folded piece of paper. “It’s just... I can’t really put my finger on it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, pushing back against the terror that was creeping in.
Halfway through the intersection he said, “It just couldn’t be drawn to scale. Could it?”
We took a right, moving along another corridor that began ascending after a few crooked, sloping yards. The sound of rushing water got louder by the second, until it was a roar so loud, it drowned everything else out.
The lights on the ceiling flickered, then went out for good.
We felt our way through the darkness, checking our guns as we went.
“You think we’re still under Innsmouth?” I asked as Barnes finally flicked his lighter to life and checked the map.
“We’re almost at the outskirts. If we turn left here,” he waved at the darkness. “We should be at the chamber before too long.”
I checked my watch: just twelve minutes to midnight. Let’s hope that Innsmouth folk were as punctual as they were ugly.
We slowed down to a creep as we reached the turn. Hunched in almost total darkness, we listened to the sound of waves rolling gently against a nearby shore.
I let my eyes get used to the dark and saw that the tunnel ahead was getting wider, its surface covered in sand. Twenty steps ahead, it ended abruptly before a rough-hewn stairway, rising up beyond our field of vision.
The sounds of familiar-sounding voices filtered down the steps, lilting in that Innsmouth gobbledygook. I turned to see Barnes’s eyes glitter in the dark, certain that we’d reached our goal.
A draft of cool, salty air rose up to greet us. Halfway up the steps, I stood on a loose stone and sent it clattering down to the tunnel floor.
I cussed at my clumsiness through clenched teeth. We waited for a while, but no one came. Maybe no one heard us or they just didn’t give a damn.
The voices rose in pitch as we cleared the steps, making our way through a wide and rounded stone archway before us, fronted by a sand covered floor.
We split up in silence, so we could cover either side of it and saw...
Jesus Christ, where do I even begin?
The nearest, most inconspicuous-looking objects were a pair of tall stone pillars, set on either side of the entrance. They were covered in swirling engravings, coated with some darker, flaking stuff that seemed all too familiar, and wrapped in thick rusty chains.
Barnes dropped into a running crouch, and motioned for me to follow.
We entered the chamber.
The cavern was huge. Its tangy smell of ancient blood and peeling rust filled my nostrils. Ahead and above us, it faded into tar blackness, sloping down to reveal a small, round tunnel about fifty feet away to our right.
That’s where the waves and the chanting came from, amplified as they boomed inside the cavern.
We peered across the corridor, at the humpbacked fish-things that lay prostrate twenty feet away.
There were about a dozen all told, praying to the biggest bastard fish-things I’d seen yet. I sneaked a glance at Barnes. He hadn’t shifted an inch. Cocking my gun, I looked back at the slimy fish-thing mass.
The smallest of the three behemoths was a white, man-shaped thing that seemed to have been molded by some vicious, uncaring God. Featureless but for a black hole of a mouth, it jittered constantly, pulsing all over.
To its right was a King Cheese fish-man, sat on his stone-hewn throne and looking like the biggest daddy-o in the sea. His robe of threaded gold was weighed down under a metric ton of pure ritz.
And then there was the third one. If King Cheese and his palsy crony were bad, then this thing was a crime against nature itself. A mass of black, bloated pulsating filth, its flesh was covered in pink, shiny pustules. It moved like a cheap wind-up toy, all jerky and out of beat.
King Cheese addressed his subjects in gobbledygook. The pale creature beside him repeated the words, with the crowd following suit.
Just then, I noticed that the pale creature was a part of the bigger black thing to the right. Long tubes stretched out from its back and rear end to snake into the larger thing’s bloated form.
The ritual went on. Barnes shifted from his place and started rifling through my bag of goodies, raising one hell of a racket. My hands shook as I grabbed his hand, before they caught on to us.
“What the hell are you doing, Barnes?” I hissed.
He just shook me away and said, “Help me prep the dynamite.”
I checked my watch and saw that it was five minutes to midnight. “Did you see the girl?”
Bundle of dynamite in hand, Barnes said. “Girl’s gone already. Didn’t you hear?”
I blinked slowly and waved at the assemblage. “You mean you can actually understand that gobbledygook?”
“I guess,” he said. “Don’t ask me how I know, because I don’t.”
I struggled with the words, but couldn’t come up with anything. What was the point anyway? Jen Abernacky was dead and gone.
Barnes searched through his pockets with the dynamite tucked between his knees. He said, “Best we can hope for is getting the hell out of here.” Producing a lighter from his jacket pocket, he continued with, “... after we’ve blown these bastards right to kingdo
m come.”
I nodded. Barnes had a point.
“You get those boomsticks lit. I’ll lay down the suppressing fire,” I said, cocking my guns with a wink and a nod.
Barnes cracked a smile and passed the bag. “I sow the lightning, you bring the thunder.”
The bag was jam-packed with every last stick of dynamite in my stash. I lifted it one-handed and said, “Showtime!”
I charged around the pillar as Barnes broke cover, heading for the group, his fuse primed for Armageddon. Some ugly bastard in the fish-mass shot up on his feet and started barking orders.
I dropped him with two shots to the chest. From the corner of my eye, I caught Barnes letting his dynamite fly, so I flung my bag over into the baying crowd.
Not missing a beat, I hopped back to the tunnel behind us. I could hear Barnes keeping the pace as best as he could.
The dynamite blew just before I’d reached cover. Letting the old army instincts kick in, I made a leap of faith into the dark and landed on a bed of rubble and sand.
The next explosion rang like doomsday. The world around me shook like mad as I pulled myself around to check up on Barnes.
Thankfully, he didn’t look too worse for wear. He was shouting something at me, but I couldn’t make it out over the din of the explosion.
Barnes was helping me to my feet when my hearing returned. A chorus of awful wails reached my ears. My hairs stood on end at the sound.
“I guess we’ve still got it,” Barnes said, as he turned to face the carnage. I joined him with my guns cocked.
Going by the pitch of the screams and their intensity, I judged that there ought to be a few stragglers still kicking. I counted fishmen: the dead, the dying, the broken and the burning ones that pulled themselves toward the lake, like wounded soldiers crawling across no man’s land.
The Big Cheese’s throne was smashed to pieces, scattered across the sand along with pieces of his steaming flesh.
That’s when I noticed the bloated black thing, writhing in flames, its skin peeling apart as the fire consumed it.
Barnes and I flinched in unison as it popped like a huge zit, sending chunks of foul meat flying across the cavern floor.
Checking my guns, I found that I was down to just two bullets.
One of the monster-chunks started to crawl around, inching toward us. I gave it a wide berth. I watched it shed a dozen pink eyes, sloughing off tendrils as it went.
I cocked my gun and hoped I could get a clear shot.
Barnes pushed me out of the way just as I pulled the trigger. My shot went wild.
I watched as Barnes ran to the pile of meat and started peeling away at it, revealing a naked, human girl underneath. She looked a little worse for wear, covered in monster-guts and some writhing tendrils, but she was human all right.
As I moved in to help Barnes, I snuck a glance at the remains of the broken giant to discover its pale, semi-human extension, raised up on a writhing tentacle, staring at us.
It started to howl, so I shot its head off before it could get any further.
We were rushing the girl back towards the tunnel when Barnes said, “You’re Jennifer Abernacky, right?”
The girl nodded, only half-awake, stumbling around like a zombie. She spat out a white, chunky substance and said, “Where the heck am I?”
We chuckled, despite ourselves. Jennifer Abernacky was one tough customer. We led her through the tunnel, with the screams of the dying monsters still echoing behind us.
We didn’t bother to check if we were being followed. Who’d dare, anyway? Instead, I helped Barnes get the girl out of Hell and into the open air.
We stepped out onto a wide sloping beach, the black sky about filled with glistening stars.
Beyond the beach and a narrow stretch of sea lay a long, dark shape that had to be Plum Island. That meant Innsmouth was off to our right, laid along the top of the cliffs behind us. We’d come one hell of a long way.
The girl started to struggle. Barnes let her go, draping his jacket around her small shoulders. It covered her right down to her knees.
Teeth still chattering, she looked up at me and said, “I know you, don’t I?”
Barnes caught her by the armpits just as she collapsed. He grinned at me wryly and said, “Still the lady killer, aren’t you, Trevor!” Pulling her into his arms, Barnes started heading down the beach.
I said, “Now wait a minute.”
He turned to look at me. “That thing in the cave’s still kicking,” he said. “I think we should get while the going’s good.”
“What about my car? I can’t just leave her back there!”
Barnes scowled at me and said, “You’d really go up against those things now that they’re ready for you?”
“Point taken,” I said, before following him glumly. Sure we’d killed a couple of fish-gods and we’d blown Innsmouth a new asshole, but who was going to pay for my beautiful car?
Catching up to Barnes, I said, “You know, if we keep on the left we’ll eventually reach the Merrimac River. Follow that and we should reach some podunk town before long.”
Barnes nodded. “I think the closest place is Rowley. We can rent a jitney from there.” He paused, looking down at the girl in his arms. “We should stay out of Innsmouth from now on, okay? I sure as hell don’t want to go through whatever happened to her.”
I nodded. Being swallowed and almost digested by a monster was not an ambition of mine.
The coastline veered to the left to reveal a distant village, its windows lit despite the late hour.
“Don’t get me wrong or anything, but if I never see another fishing village, it will be too soon. Also, I’m done with beaches. Zip, kaput, no thank you.”
Barnes chuckled. “Picking vacation spots with you is gonna be a whoopie.”
“I bet Jen’s gonna agree with me, soon as she’s up and about,” I replied.
The Kingsport Desk
I was way past bored as I made greasy finger patterns on my polished desktop to pass the time. Our detective agency, Barnes and Towers Investigations, was going through a dry spell. I didn’t even know where Barnes was and our cute secretary had either taken the day off of her own accord or was taking her sweet time getting here, as usual.
I wondered briefly if the dicks over at Pinkerton had to share desks, like Barnes and I did, or if they had to suffer a bunch of snooty secretaries like we did. This desk had come all the way from far Kingsport, and it was an absolute travesty of carpentry. Big and all grungy-looking (kinda like me, I suppose), it had about a dozen drawers, most of which wouldn’t open; to pass the time, I’d poke at them every now and again with a nail file and a bobby pin, as I was about to do at that moment.
I’d been borrowing both objects for about a week now from my current girlfriend, a waitress working at a nearby café. I’d left her in bed on the off chance that there’d be something doing at work.
The drawer on the top left had been a major pain in my neck and I spent every spare moment trying to break into the bastard.
Seeing how I’d only ever seen lock picking done in third-rate flicks, I was secretly hoping I’d screw the lock so bad that I’d just have to resort to brute force.
I was good at brute force, but I’d decided that just this once, I’d look for a workaround. The old Trevor might have taken a hammer and chisel to the drawer, but not me, no siree.
I had the nail file rammed right into the keyhole and was twisting the bobby pin left and right when God above, the damn thing finally clicked open.
I looked at my work, pleased as punch. If Barnes had been here to see it, I’d have bragged till I was blue in the face. No such luck.
Behind me, the sun peeked out to greet me through the cloud cover, like a proud dad. I grinned before turning back to savor the spoils of my victory.
I grasped its brass knob, all tarnished around its well-worn rim and gave it a good tug. The drawer came open with a scraping creak. Must wafted up from a sheet of old new
spaper that lined its bottom, almost causing me to sneeze.
The newspaper was about the only thing in it.
“Talk about let-down,” I muttered, looking over what seemed to be an old sheet from a French newspaper.
I’d been to France during the war and had learned to hate the place. Shifting through the drawer, I found some more trinkets rattling around in the dust.
Poking around, I retrieved a thumb-sized orange pencil eraser, half a dozen pencils of odd lengths bundled up in a rubber band, and what looked like a pawn ticket.
The receipt was for a local shop—Arkham Pawn and Jewelry—hand-written in a chicken-scratch scrawl. The place was just over the other side of the river. I checked the date and grinned.
Maybe the day wasn’t wasted, after all.
Leaving a note for Barnes, I locked up and left the office with a spring in my step and a happy little bee in my bonnet.
Apparently, the gaudy little receipt had been written just last week, which piqued my interest. After all, we’d had this desk for months now and this was brand new by comparison.
Unless Barnes had gotten the drawer open without telling me and snuck the receipt in, I had quite the mystery on my hands.
And mystery was my specialty.
The day was a sluggish, misty thing, an early sign of New England creeping into winter’s cold little turf. I took deep gulps of fresh air and sped across the river onto Garrison Street.
Garrison’s tail end sank into the mist, giving the town an almost fairy-tale look. Church and Main seemed just as enchanted as I passed them by on my way to the university.
I walked past wrought-iron fences and mist-tinged lawns into a section built out of sandy walls and Romanesque windows that made Miskatonic U look more like something out of Ivanhoe than a place of learning. A gaggle of girls in knee-high skirts were hanging ’round the entrance, adding their own beauty to the freshness of the day.
I tipped my hat at them and sprang past the gates and into the side streets leading up to Miskatonic Avenue, where the mystery pawnshop was to be found.
I passed by shuttered shops and scruffy tenements, fronted by scruffier people. The air turned cold and my good mood soured at the sight of this decaying street and its pathetic tenants.
Arkham Nights Page 15