I found Brennan looking at me sympathetically.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hacket,” he said softly. “There is no joy in that. It does no good to question what cannot be understood.”
“When can I get a boat to the mainland?”
“After the feast is done.” He was apologetic but firm.
I turned and left the shebeen and began to walk towards the point.
Brennan followed me to the door for he called after me.
“There’s no fear in it. I’ll come along for you tonight. Tonight.”
I turned and strode through the village street and made my way to the north end of the island. I was determined to find the tinker child and demand some explanation. It was not a big place and eventually I came across a collection of dirty, rough-patched tents grouped in front of a smouldering turf fire at which a woman of indiscernible age was turning a large fish on a spit. There seemed no one else about.
I climbed down the rocks to get to the encampment which was sited on the beach; a fairly large strip of sand.
The woman, brown faced and weather beaten, clearly someone used to the outdoor life, watched me coming with narrowed eyes. There was suspicion on her features. She greeted me at first in Irish but when I returned the reply in English she smiled, her shoulders relaxed and she returned the greeting in kind.
“A grand day, sir. Are you staying on the island for the fishing then?”
“I am,” I replied.
“Ah. By your voice you would be American”
I confirmed that I was. I was looking about for some sign of the girl but there seemed no one but the woman, who, now I came to observe her more closely, resembled the child with her mass of red hair.
“My man is fishing,” the woman said, catching my wondering gaze.
“Ah,” I said in noncommittal tone. “And do you have a child?”
“My girl, Sheena, sir”
The suspicion was back in her eyes.
“I thought I saw her a while ago,” I said.
The woman shrugged.
“That you may.”
“Is it right that you have the gift of second sight?” I demanded abruptly.
The woman looked taken aback and studied me for several long seconds before replying.
“Some of us have. Is it a fortune that you are wanting?”
I nodded.
“I’ll be charging a shilling”
I reached in my pocket and handed over the coin which the woman took with alacrity.
“Is it your palm you wish read or shall I see what the tea-leaves say?”
I was about to reply when the flap of the tent moved and there stood the child. She regarded me with her large solemn, sad eyes and seemed to let out a sigh.
“He is the chosen one, mother. He has already been warned,” she said softly.
The woman stared from me to the child and back again. Her face was suddenly white and she threw the coin back at me as if it had suddenly burned her hands.
“Away from here, mister.” Her voice was sharp.
“But...”
“Have you no ears to hear with? Did you not hear what Sheena said? She is gifted with the second sight. She can see beyond the unseeable. If you value your soul, man, heed her warning. Now be away” She glanced about her, her face showing that she was badly frightened. “Sheena, find your father... we must leave this place now.”
Slowly I retreated, shaking my head in wonder. At least I had proved to myself that I was not hallucinating. The girl, Sheena, existed. A tinker girl with, supposedly, the gift of second sight, who gave me a warning...
I walked up to the point above my cottage and sat myself on a rock gazing out across the dark brooding sea towards camcarraig. What nightmare world had I landed in? Was I losing all sense of reason? Was I accepting shadows for reality? Did I really believe that the girl had some strange power to foresee evil and warn me about it? I was the chosen one. Chosen for what purpose? And what had really happened to Captain Pfeiffer nine years ago, nine years this very night?
I shivered slightly.
The sea was a mass of restless blackness and far away, as if from the direction of camcarraig, I heard the strange cry which had disturbed my slumber on the previous night; a soft, whistling wail of a soul in torment.
It was while I sat there listening that I recalled the words of the child.
“You have been chosen. Beware the feast of the Fires of Bile, god of death. The intermediary will come for you then and take you to them. They are waiting. Nine years will have passed at the next feast. They wait every nine years for reparation. So be warned. You are the next chosen.”
Abruptly I heard Brennan calling to me from the doorway of the shebeen.
“There’s no fear in it. I’ll come along for you tonight.”
Brennan O’Driscoll. O’Driscoll who had explained the meaning of the name O hEidersceoil—intermediary!
Brennan was the one who would take me to the Deep Ones!
I rose then and began to scour the island in search of a boat, any boat, any form of floating transportation to get me away from this crazy nightmare. But there was none. I was alone, isolated and imprisoned. Even the tinkers had apparently departed. I was left alone with the islanders.
Left alone to my fate.
That was this afternoon, my darling Sheila. Now it is dusk and I am writing this by the light of the storm lantern on the table in the tiny cottage. Soon Brennan O’Driscoll will come for me. Soon I shall know if I am truly crazy or whether there is some reality in this nightmare. It is my intention to take these pages and wrap them in my old oilskin pouch and hide them behind a loose brick in the chimney-breast of this cottage. In the hope that, should anything happen to me this evening, then, God willing, this letter will eventually reach your beloved hands or those of young Johnny, who may one day grow to manhood and come seeking word of his unfortunate father. Soon it will be dark and soon Brennan will come... The intermediary; intermediary between me and what? What is it waiting out there in the deep? Why do they demand reparation every nine years and reparation for what? God help me in my futility.
—Daniel Hacket.
Thus was the writing on the browning pages ended as if hurriedly. I sat for a while staring at those strange words and shaking my head in disbelief. What madness had seized my grandfather to write such a curious fantasy?
The wind was getting up and I could hear the seas roaring and crashing at the foot of the point where our house stood, gazing eastward towards the brooding Atlantic. The weather was dark and bleak for a late April day and I turned to switch on the light.
That something had disarranged my grandfather’s mind was obvious. Had he remained living on the island? Surely not, for the US Navy’s enquiries at the time would have discovered him. But if he had disappeared, why hadn’t the natives of this island, Inishdriscol, reported he was missing? Had he thrown himself into the sea while his mind had been so unbalanced and drowned, or what had taken place...? The questions flooded my thoughts.
I suddenly realised that he had written the curious document, which so clearly demonstrated his warped mental condition, exactly sixty-three years ago this very night. It was April 30. A childish voice echoed in my mind, reciting the nine times table—seven nines are sixty-three!
I shivered slightly and went to the window to gaze out at the blackness of the Atlantic spread before me. I could see the winking light from the point further down the coast which marked the passage to Innsmouth, and far out to sea I could just make out the pulsating warning sweep of the lighthouse at Devil Reef beyond which was sited one of the great deeps of the Atlantic. Deeps. The Deep Ones. What nonsense was that?
As I stood there, my mind in a whirl, staring out in the darkness beyond the cliff edge, I heard soft whistling, like a curious wind. It rose and fell with regular resonance like the call of some lonely outcast animal. It whistled and echoed across the sea with an uncanniness which caused me to shiver.
I pull
ed the curtains to and turned back into the room.
Well, the old-world Irishman had surely brought me an intrigung story. No wonder my grandfather had never returned. For some weird reason he had gone insane on that far distant Irish island and perhaps no one now would know the reason why.
I would have much to ask Cichol O’Driscoll when I saw him. Perhaps he could set forth an investigation when he returned to Baltimore in order to find out how my grandfather had died and why no one had notified my grandmother of either his death or his disappearance.
I frowned at some hidden memory and turned back to my grandfather’s manuscript.
“They were a violent misshapen people who represented the evil gods in ancient Ireland. They were led by Balor of the Evil Eye and others of the race such as More and Cichol...”
Cichol! With his one eye and hump-shaped back!
I could not suppress the shiver which tingled against my spine.
I tried to force a smile of cynicism.
Cichol O’Driscoll. O’Driscoll—the intermediary. April 30—the eve of the Bealtaine, the feast of the Fires of Bile. Seven times nine is sixty-three...
Daoine Domhain. The Deep Ones. “They wait every nine years for reparation.”
Then I knew that I would be seeing Cichol O’Driscoll again. Very soon.
Outside the wind was rising from the mysterious restless Atlantic swell, keening like a soul in torment. And through the wind came the whistling call of some lonely outcast animal.
A QUARTER TO THREE
by KIM NEWMAN
SOMETIMES THE NIGHTS get to you, right? When there’s no one pushing coins into it, the juke plays Peggy Lee over and over again. ‘Fever’. The finger-click backing track gets into your skull. Like a heartbeat, you’ve got it in there for the rest of your life. And in the off-season, which when you’re talking about the ’Mouth is—let’s face it—all year round, sometimes you go from midnight ’til dawn with no takers at all. Who can blame them: we serve paint stripper au lait and reinforced concrete crullers. When I first took the graveyard shift at Cap’n Cod’s 24-Hour Diner, I actually liked the idea of being paid (just) to stay up all night with no hassles. Maybe I’d get to finish Moby Dick before Professor Whipple could flunk me. Anyway, that’s not the way it worked out.
Two o’clock and not a human face in sight. And in late November, the beachfront picture window rattles in the slightest breeze. The waves were shattered noisily on the damn useless shingles. The ’Mouth isn’t a tourist spot, it’s a town-sized morgue that smells of fish. All I’d got for company was a giant cardboard cutout of the Cap’n, giving a scaly salute and a salty smile. He hasn’t got much of a face left, because he used to stand outside and get a good sloshing whenever the surf was up. I don’t know who he was in the first place— the current owner is a pop-eyed lardo called Murray Something who pays in smelly cash—but now he’s just a cutout ghost. I’d talk to him only I’d be worried that some night he’d talk right back.
It’s a theme diner, just like all the others up and down the coast. Nets on the ceiling, framed dead fish on the walls, Formica on the tables, and more sand on the floor than along the seashore. And it’s got a gurgling coffee machine that spits out the foulest brew you’ve ever tasted, and an array of food under glass that you’d swear doesn’t change from one month to the next. I was stuck in a groove again, like Peggy if I forget to nudge the juke in the middle of that verse about Pocahontas. It’s that damn chapter ‘The Whiteness of the Whale’. I always trip over it, and it’s supposed to be the heart of the book.
I didn’t notice her until the music changed. Debbie Reynolds, singing ‘It Must Have Been Moonglow’. Jesus. She must have come in during one of my twenty-minute “blinks.” She was sitting up against the wall, by the juke, examining the counter. Young, maybe pretty, a few strands of blonde hair creeping out from under her scarf, and wearing a coat not designed for a pregnant woman. It had a belt that she probably couldn’t fasten. I’m in Eng. Lit. at MU, not pre-med, but I judged that she was just about ready to drop the kid. Maybe quints.
“Can I help you, Ma’am?” I asked. Murray likes me to call the mugs “sir” and “ma’am” not “buddy” and “doll” or “asshole” and “drudge.” It’s the only instruction he ever dished out.
She looked at me—big hazel eyes with too much red in them—but didn’t say anything. She looked tired, which isn’t surprising since it was the middle of the night and she was about to give birth to the Incredible Bulk.
“Coffee?” I suggested. “If you’re looking for a way to end it all, you could do worse. Cheaper than strychnine. Maybe you want ice cream and pickles?”
“That’s crap,” she said, and I realised that she really was young. If she weren’t pregnant, I’d have accused her of being up after her bedtime. Sixteen or seventeen, I guessed. Cheerleader-pretty, but with a few lines in there to show she had more to worry about than who’s dating Buddy-Bob Fullback these days or how she’ll get through the Home Ec. quiz next Friday. “About cravings, that’s crap. You don’t want to eat weird stuff. Me, I don’t want to eat at all, ever again. But you gotta, or you disintegrate. It’s like having a tapeworm. You eat as much as you can, but you still go hungry. The fo-etus gets all the goodies.”
Fo-etus. That was how she pronounced it. I kind of liked the sound of it.
“Well, what does your fo-etus fancy this morning?”
“A cheeseburger.”
“This is a fish place, Ma’am. No burgers. I can melt some cheese on a fishcake and give it to you in a bap.”
“Sounds like shit. I’ll have one, for the mutant...”
Julie London was on now, ‘Cry Me a River’. “Cryyyyy me a river, cuhry me a river, I cried a reever over you.” That has one of the best rhymes in the English language in it; “plebian” with “through with me an’... now you say you’re lonely...”
I slapped the frozen cake on the hotplate and dug out some not-too-senile cheese. We don’t stock the kind that’s better if it’s got mould on it.
“Have you got liquor?”
“Have you got ID?”
“Shit, how come you can get knocked up five years before you can have a drink in this state?”
The ice in the cake popped and hissed. Julie sounded brokenhearted in the background. It must be a tough life.
“I don’t make the rules.”
“I won’t get drunk. The fo-etus will.”
“He’s underage too, Ma’am.”
“It’s an it. They did tests.”
“Pardon?”
“Ginger ale...”
“Fine.”
“...and put a shot of something in it.”
I gave in and dug out the scotch. Not much call for it. The highlander on the label had faded, a yellowing dribble down his face turning him leprous. I splashed the bottom of a glass, then added a full measure of soft drink. She had it down quickly and ordered another. I saw to it and flipped the cake over. I wish I could say it smelled appetising.
“I’m not married,” she said. “I had to leave school. There goes my shot at college. Probably my only chance to get out of the ’Mouth. Oh well, that’s another life on the rocks. You must get a lot of that.”
“Not really. I don’t get much of anyone in here. I think the Cap’n will be dropping the 24-Hour service next year. All his old customers drowned or something. It’s entropy. Everything’s winding down. You have to expect it.”
I melted the cheese and handed her her cheesefish bap. She didn’t seem interested in it. I noticed she had a pile of quarters stacked in a little tower on the bar. She was feeding the juke regularly.
“This is my song,” she said. Rosemary Clooney, ‘You Took Advantage of Me’. “The bastard certainly did.”
She was a talker, I’d spotted that early. After midnight, you only get talkers and brooders. I didn’t really have to say anything, but there’d be pauses if I didn’t fill in the gaps.
“Your boyfriend?”
; “Yeah. Fuckin’ amphibian. He’s supposed to be here. I’m meeting him.”
“What’ll happen?”
“Who knows. Some folks ain’t human.”
She pushed her plate around and prodded the bap. I had to agree with her. I wouldn’t have eaten it, either. Murray never asked me if I could cook.
“Look, the lights...” She meant the sea lights. It’s a localised phenomenon in the ’Mouth. A greenish glow just out beyond the shallows. Everyone freaks first time they see it. “He’ll be here soon. Another ginger ale plus.”
I gave her one. She took it slower. Captain Ahab looked insanely up from the broken-spined paperback on the counter, obsessed with his white whale. Crazy bastard. I’d love to see him on a talk show with one of those Greenpeace activists.
There was someone coming up from the beach. She shifted on her stool, uncomfortably keeping her pregnancy away from the rim of the counter. She didn’t seem interested one way or the other. “It’s him.”
“He’ll be wet.”
“Yeah. That he will.”
“It don’t matter. I don’t do the mopping up. That’s the kid who gets the daytime haul.”
It was Sinatra now. The main man. “It’s a quarter to three...”
“No one in the place except you and me,” I said, over the Chairman of the Board. Her smile was cracked, lopsided, greenish. She had plaque.
The door was pushed inward, and in he waddled. As you might expect, he didn’t look like much. It took him a long time to get across the diner, and he wasn’t breathing easily. He moved a bit like Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, dragging wetly. It was easy to see what she had seen in him; it left a thin damp trail between his scuffed footprints. By the time he got to the counter, she had finished her drink.
He got up onto a stool with difficulty, his wet, leather-linked fingers scrabbling for a grip on the edge of the bar. The skin over his cheeks and neck puffed in and out as he tried to smile at her.
“...could tell you a lot,” sung Frankie, “but you’ve got to be true to your code...” She put her glass down, and looked me in the eye, smiling. “Make it one for my baby, and one more for the toad.”
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