As the October daylight began to fade, I arrived at the margins of the marsh. With it went my cheerfulness. Above, grey clouds merged with a condensed, cold mist over the distant flat landscape. Drowned spruces, gaunt, skeletal, rose up out of the water like thin, many-digited, bony limbs. Quite a number of New England’s lowland swamps have been filled in with garbage, destroying unique environments, so for me it should have been a real pleasure to see Innsmouth’s bog still in existence. However, a chill ran through my body and my light mood became dark. Night was fast approaching and I could go no further that day. Besides, the swamp impeded my progress, the water level was so high. I would have to backtrack into the woods and trace a circuitous route, testing the marsh every now and then to see if there was some semi-solid ground which would carry me to the branch line.
I pitched my tent on terra firma in a clearing nearby and quickly switched on the lamp inside to banish the thickening shadows that surrounded me. After eating a simply-cooked meal and drinking a welcome hot mug of coffee, I took to my sleeping bag. As I lay there, basked by the comforting yellow glow that gaudily lit up my tent, I heard animal sounds for the first time that day. They were the boomings of frogs lurking in the bog laurel and sedges at the water’s edge. Aside from the usual croaks, there were some less familiar gratings, almost like a subdued barking. These low frequency resonances continued for some time and began to get on my nerves. I found it incredible that I, a former great outdoors man, should feel uneasy over a few amphibians.
I shivered, cold air fitting me like a vest inside the sleeping bag. The lamp flickered tentatively and the fabric above me flapped in a breeze. I trembled again, trying to shrug off the sensation I had of being observed. The temptation to scramble clear of my temporary shelter began to gnaw at my thoughts. I waited, listening to the frogs’ guttural conversations. I was almost becoming inured to the croaks and clicks when a loud splash nearby startled me. For all the world it was as though a large rock had been thrown into the swamp. There were no alligators in this part of the country that could have accounted for such a disturbance and the only other creature I could think of was a beaver, but they didn’t inhabit this district either. And somehow I couldn’t envisage a bear jumping into a swamp.
I sat, shivering, the sleeping-bag around my waist, my ears attuned to the slightest auditory clue. I slowly reached out and switched off the lamp. Black night fell upon me and my eyes tried to compensate by sending flares and sparks across my retina. I held my jaw hard shut to stop my teeth from chattering. The frogs had ceased their barking and I didn’t want to be the first to break the silence. I could imagine the fog outside sliding through the forest, lying like a heavy gas over the waters of the nearby swamp, hiding whatever had made that splash.
I didn’t want my presence to be known. If I sat still long enough, whatever was out there would, I hoped, move on. At that moment I could not imagine what kind of animal was roaming the woods and it left my imagination to run wild. I had never been so scared in all my life. If I didn’t believe in intuitive fear before, I certainly believed it that night.
It’s funny how terror is easily dissipated. When I woke the next morning, I was surprised that I had actually been able to fall asleep. Like in a dream, my terror of the previous night had faded clean away. Even so, the bizarre fables of Innsmouth’s past and the mutant strain of humans said to inhabit the place filled my thoughts as I awoke. Those legends, which I had skimped over in my local history research, lingered only as wild inventions in my mind and I couldn’t really remember the precise details. There was something about hideous transformations taking place over time, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, but in this case it would have been from the beautiful to the ugly. And something about Innsmouth’s throat-gagging fishy smell. Thinking about ichthyic stenches, I noticed a lingering aroma when I left my tent that morning. The coast was not many miles off, so I guessed that a waft of the seashore was being driven inland from a low tide that had exposed strands of seaweed. Or maybe the reef had been unveiled with its raft of weed and putrefying fish? Either way, the smell was definitely there and not as pleasant as you’d expect from a sea breeze.
***
I was making good progress and by midday found myself able to walk the boggy sphagnum and mud of the swamp. The locality I was tramping inclined gently upwards, rising out of the lying waters, and my boots gripped firmer ground every few hundred yards. Heading north-east now, I expected to see the railroad any time. Then, through a single file of bristling birches, I found the low embankment designating a straight line across country. My plan was to walk the track, right into Innsmouth if need be, taking it as slowly as necessary, searching for anything that might give a clue to the whereabouts of the stockpile of gold. My guess was, because of the wetland, the FBI men would have had to hide or bury their ill-gotten gains somewhere on solid ground, and the rampart before me was the only safe place that was well above the tidal sweep of the waters.
I started to plod along the weed-choked ties. Old bits of track iron, the clinker of fused ash, and other detritus littered the route. It had been exposed here for many years. There were no Coca-Cola cans or polystyrene fast-food containers like you’d expect. Nobody had walked this way in a long, long time. On either side of me the marshland swept away into methane mists, concealing all distant tracts of land.
A fine rain washed out of featureless grey skies, dampening my spirits, which had lightened for a short time after I’d stumbled across the railroad. I shrugged my rucksack higher on my shoulders, hunching beneath its weight, my eyes forever gazing towards the gravel, gleaming wetly under my boots. The tracks were shedding flakes of corroded metal and here and there brambles clawed across as though determined to hide forever its desolation.
For a time I imagined myself a hobo, one of a few individuals privy to the secret world of disused railroads, time-forgotten highways of steel, branching across country to distant ghost towns where loose-shuttered windows banged a tune to the shivering winds.
Permeating with the low-lying fog across the marshland, the film of rain brought sky down to meet tenuous earth as the swamp and the distant trees were swallowed up behind an opaque canescent shroud. I stopped for a time, and decided it might be useful to erect the tent here and use the location as a base from which to search the area. I could also rest with some shelter over my head until the rain eased a little. By 4:30 the light was fading and the drizzle had not let up. I called it a day and promised myself that tomorrow would see me intent on making significant distance towards the coast. By leaving the rucksack and provisions, I would be able to make better progress, with the knowledge that there would be dry shelter to crawl back into.
***
The next day I was up at dawn and felt refreshed. There’d been no disturbances in the night to unnerve me. As the sun slid slowly up behind veils of cloud on the eastern horizon, the distant lowlands of the marsh became more visible. The trees were sparser in the distance, giving way to coarse grasses and reeds, and clear, sunlit waterways cut sinuous routes through them. Here and there small islands rose out of the water, hummocks from which a few birches clung. And as the day became brighter, far off I thought I could see darkened buildings—the outskirts of Innsmouth. The railroad ahead of me turned a wide arc towards the right, and east, while on the left, away off, the land began to rise to a craggy headland. I could smell the distant sea, at least I thought it was that brine tang, but it was a strong, decaying odour, like rotting seaweed. Before long I realised the effluvium actually came from the salt marsh surrounding me. The water, where it could be seen between the reeds, was gummy and weed-choked, almost stagnant. I knew this would be an ideal place to observe waders and other birds whose habitat this was, but I could not concentrate on ornithology and didn’t even bother to take the camera with me.
I walked about six miles in bright sunshine, a cool breeze softening its warmth. Even so, the trek was making me sweat. I found no sign of where the gold might be hid
den, no soil that looked as though it had been dug up, no markers to indicate a hiding place. I explored the whole area of the ridge on which the rail tracks were built, moving underbrush aside, poking into every hole. It was exhausting work. About two miles distant I saw where the track breached the town. Innsmouth’s buildings, those that were visible to me, reminded me of bones, their rotten timber roofs poking skywards like ribs. They looked like warehouses, old wooden structures. It appeared that I was destined to visit the town after all, when unexpectedly I came across a deep pit hollowed out of the side of the ridge. Funny thing was, the soil looked freshly excavated, the way you can tell if an animal’s den is still inhabited. I put it down to a washout caused by the recent downpour. Scrambling beneath the slope, mud and stones tumbling with me, I saw that the pit was even larger than it looked from above, and I should have realised that this could not have been the place where the gold was hidden. At the time though, everything else was forgotten. I had found the entrance to a cave which sloped under the railway above, deep into the earth.
Luckily, I had my flashlight with me and so without delay I stooped down and entered the cavern. It was like a burrow and very steep at first as it traced a route below the level of the bog. I marvelled that very little moisture was seeping through, although the stench of dead fish filled the air. The foetor was overpowering and I found it necessary to tie my handkerchief around my nose and mouth, but it hardly helped at all. The reek was so bad that the tunnel had to lead to Innsmouth’s beach. I wondered idly whether it filled up at high tide.
I felt the walls surrounding me and was surprised to find them solid, like petrified earth, and that no doubt accounted for the lack of swamp water leaching in. My immediate thoughts were of an undiscovered smuggler’s hideaway, but the cavern was too extensive for that and too far from the coast. Nothing about the place gave me a real clue as to its use or its construction. Further thoughts were interrupted when the beam from my flashlight bounced back from a dead end, a blockage of old, rotten-looking timbers. It appeared to be a very temporary and hastily erected structure, an impression that was reinforced by the water trickling between the cracks. Almost before I could consider my next move, a great wash of debris burst through the wooden wall.
I blinked in sudden shock for brief seconds before turning to flee the wall of dirt and water that plunged into the tunnel as if it consciously intended to engulf me. I ran for my life, my legs stretching as far and as fast as they could in the cramped space. I could hear the deadly slosh of water sluicing behind me, still coming at me despite the rising angle of the cave. I turned my head to see what chance I’d have of not drowning and thought I saw something swimming in that torrent, something big, with scaly skin. I screamed, believing a dead body was being washed along behind me. The notion that I was going to be buried with the rotting flesh of a human cadaver was a shock so powerful that it spurred me on; that and the dead white eyes, like bulging, unblinking frog eyes forced unnaturally into human sockets which glared at me out of the rush of water!
By the time I fell out of the entrance, my chest felt like a steam-engine ready to blow, but I didn’t stop there; I clawed with my hands and feet for higher ground, tearing at the stumps of grass for purchase. Behind me the noisome flood suddenly gushed out of the opening, swilling rapidly down the lower slope to join the no less rancid waters of the swamp. I looked back, but in all that debris, black water and stench, no dead body came floating out; it must have been lodged in the narrow confines of the cave. Finally the flow stopped. I was sitting, trying to gather my breath with raw gulps of air, my heart tripping, my eyes flooding their own stream down my cheeks as if to imitate the cataract. My hands were raw, ribboned with blood from the wicked barbs of the brambles I had grabbed in my flight. I had to return to my camp as fast as possible to treat the wounds, to dry off, and to let my terror subside.
It was quicker walking back since I plied a straight line. My ardour for the lost gold was unabated, but at that moment I doubted very much whether I would enter any other underground chamber ever again. The shock of seeing that bloated thing—I can only imagine it was a corpse long-pickled in the vile swamp water—was too much. Bad enough merely coming across a dead body, but to have one chasing you through underground floodwaters, that was something far, far more frightening.
I arrived exhausted at the camp as the third day was beginning to fade. Maybe I was too old for this sort of thing now. It was at that moment my heart received another thunderbolt—my tent had been half torn down. There was a series of long gashes in the side which flapped like a canvas claw. When I struggled inside of what was left I found that the lamp was smashed and that the food had been ransacked. As I gathered what equipment was salvageable, I began to feel cold. A flurry of snow was starting to blow across the landscape and with it an icy breeze. The sleeping bag was shredded and unusable. The tent offered no shelter. I only had some food in tins and fresh water that had survived in the backpack. I decided my best option was to make for Innsmouth. Besides the walk keeping me warm, I was bound to find shelter of some sort in one of the old buildings. Tomorrow I would have to retrace my steps to the car if only to re-supply myself with provisions.
***
As I set out, the snow was easing off, but the wind had picked up and was making an eerie whispering sound as it sighed through the bulrushes in the surrounding darkness. I was grateful that my flashlight was holding out as it allowed me to move fairly briskly along without stumbling. My head down against the wind, I jogged, following the monotony of the rail ties as they appeared one after another in the light’s beam. I almost failed to notice the buildings designating the outskirts of Innsmouth. In the near distance were those skeletal warehouses I’d seen earlier in the day, the wooden rafters poking at the sky, blackened, salt-weathered timbers like charred bones.
But it wasn’t the sight of the decrepit edifices I noticed so much as the lights which moved inside, stray shafts penetrating cracks in the walls and glowing strangely behind dirt-dark windows. My precipitate pace had slowed almost to a stop as I contemplated the scene before me. The gnarly bookshop man’s words, about there being people here, returned to haunt me and I shivered. My watch told me it was near midnight and the air felt very cold, but my gooseflesh was not altogether due to the temperature. It was the bizarre patterns of the lights that unnerved me, as though several people moved about within the otherwise darkened structure, in stealth and silence for some otherworldly reason.
I wiped snow flecks from my face and stood still, finally remembering to switch off the flashlight. In the intervening dark I heard odd sounds wafting up out of the wind’s rustling amongst the undergrowth. It was those damned frogs again, and their amphibious croakings and barkings. As my eyes became accustomed to the night, I could see that the nearest building squatted in the margins of the marsh, or maybe the water level had risen to half-drown it. Either way, it sagged into the viscous water as though it were being reclaimed by a slow but omniscient liquid deity. I crouched low, feeling very exposed on the high ground and with those feverish yellow beams of light pointing in my direction. I heard my breathing as a loud rasp, a counterpoint to the incredible croaking of the frogs. The muscle of my heart was crushing, pounding the blood through seemingly inoperable valves and my ears rang with this inner cacophony. My hands were trembling as the two great doors of the warehouse opened slowly outwards, their lower halves submerged, making the movement ponderous.
Within were the waving streams of light, though I was unable to make out their source or their reason, except that they emanated from beneath the water that formed an undulating floor within the building. This I noted in one brief moment, before all my attention was focused on the forms which emerged through the water, some of them swimming, some wading in the shallows towards me. I think I screamed then, and I turned to make desperate flight from that unholy spot. But God, those awful moments were like an eon, a time in which my eyes could not block out the sight of the shapes, flo
pping, wading, barking as they inexorably massed in my direction. I realised that the body in the cave had been neither dead nor human, at least not altogether Homo sapiens.
These monsters were some kind of batrachian animal or human deformities of the most terrible kind. Their skin the colour of slate or dead seaweed, mottled and coarse; their eyes bulging, dead fish orbs; their stink the most obnoxious, sickening pall of saline decay, which grew more overpowering as the creatures came closer. By the beams of light, my final clear view of them left me with one lasting impression: that these abortions from Hell were an insane remnant of the mutants that I had read about and so foolishly disbelieved in. A grim race of Deep Ones, sea beings who had mated with the inhabitants of Innsmouth. As I screamed and ran, the slapping of the demons’ feet behind me, and their hideous croaking, kept pace. If I tripped and fell, I’d surely be done for.
Those slimy, crested, amphibious abominations who chased me, they were old, past their time. Their breath at my back smelled of it and the texture of their skins bore the suggestion of the final stages of gangrenous flesh. I shattered the night with the torment of terror from my tortured larynx. But death was not the final revolting consummation I rushed from, trying to find power in the railroad; feeling the stones bite beneath my pounding feet, my torso leaning into the wind, leaning out of arms’ reach of the horde at my back.
No, death wasn’t the ultimate horror. For, while I had crouched and watched the last living remnants of Innsmouth’s abysmal evolution stream out of that shattered portal, I realised with a shock that all of the slippery, sub-human lifeforms—all of them—were female... If I hadn’t escaped that God-forsaken swamp... oh, Jesus, if those mephitic-ridden hags had ever taken me alive!
Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 26