Wayt turned back to the altar and held both arms out to the heavens. Throwing back his head he commenced to chant some kind of prayer or ritual. It was in no language known to me and it occurred to me that what I could hear was not even of human origin, so bizarre did it sound. I would not even attempt to reproduce those alien syllables. Each time that Wayt paused in his dirge, so there were echoing croaks from the sea, becoming louder as they went on.
Abruptly there was silence and Wayt’s arms fell to his sides. He lowered his head briefly, as if in obeisance, then raised his right arm once more. Now the moonlight flashed on a long, curved blade.
An involuntary cry was torn from me. “No-o-o-o!”
I was on my feet and running hard, covering the short distance between us more quickly than I would have believed myself capable of doing. With both hands I snatched at Wayt’s wrist to prevent that wicked knife from descending.
It may have been that the recent blow to my head had weakened me, but I found myself thwarted by what seemed to be an unnatural strength in that sinewy limb. We grappled for a few seconds and then the knife was flung to one side. Wayt twisted about in my grasp and the cowl flew back from his head, exposing his face to the mocking light of the full moon. I cried out in horror and my grip loosened.
It was Wayt’s face, right enough, but humanity was vestigial. The abhorrent visage into which I stared was bestial, a vile melding of man and amphibian and fish. Black eyes with horizontal yellow irises bulged from surrounding tissue which was covered with scales and warty excrescences; flattened and ridged nostrils flared; and a wide, lipless mouth slobbered at me. Little remained of his beautiful white hair save for a few ropy strands dangling from a scabrous scalp. With an almost casual backhanded cuff the thing knocked me to the rough turf.
“Hah! It’s the priest!” While the words were spat out in understandable English, the guttural voice was throaty and phlegm-filled as if straining to form impossible sounds. “Hardly a worthy opponent for one such as I. Come here, priest!” He reached down with hands which were showing signs of webbing and claw development, seized my collar and lifted me to my feet.
I am a solidly-built man, no lightweight, and yet the man-thing ran me to the cliff’s edge as if I had been a child. I could feel loose soil crumbling beneath my feet and I thought that his intention was to heave me over. Under my breath I muttered a final prayer, preparing to meet a shattering death on the boulders and shingle below.
Instead, Wayt held me firmly with one hand and pointed to the sea with the other. “Look, priest, look there!” he commanded. “See the future and marvel!”
There were now many dozens of those anomalous black shapes in the sea. Some had advanced as far as the shallows and were standing upright so that the water lapped at their knees and waists. Others wallowed in and out of the wavelets on their bellies, grisly travesties of porpoises. It was from all of them that the chanting and ghastly wailing was emanating.
As Wayt dragged me into sight, the cacophony died away until at last there was only an occasional croak from among their ranks. Mostly they just stood, staring in silence.
“My true brethren!” grunted the thing which held me. “Soon, when I have completed the requisite number of sacrifices, I will be fully changed, freed from the limitations of this pitifully short-lived human shell, and I will take my rightful place with them in the bosom of the eternal ocean.
“Imagine, priest, when you and that fat oaf Calloway and all those other pitiful... midgets... are ancient dust forgotten even by your impotent God, I will yet live. I will be here amongst the faithful when the stars are right for the final coming. I will witness the rising of the incomparable Green City from the blackest depths. I will be here to fall in worship when He... He!... emerges from durance in all of his terrible splendour to rule in glory for evermore! Oh mightiest of fathers, hear your servant’s cry!”
He pulled me back from the cliff and towards the altar stone, maintaining that immovable grip, and stared at me thoughtfully. “Yes...” he mused. “Yes, you may be of use to me. Perhaps the offering of a Christian priest will hasten the desired metamorphosis. But first, to finish what I had started with the female!” He cast me aside with ease and bent to retrieve the sacrificial knife.
I fumbled in the pocket of my windcheater to find my crucifix. Overcoming dread and holding the cross aloft, I advanced upon the hideous creature. “In the name of God almighty, stop!” I commanded.
Wayt stared at me, astonished, and then emitted a coughing guffaw. Stepping forward, he again felled me with one of those careless slaps. Kneeling, he snatched the cross from my hand and buckled it in his fingers.
“You fool,” he croaked. “To imagine that your feeble symbol of holiness could deter me.”
“The crucifix won’t,” said a quiet, familiar voice. “But this certainly will.” A huge hand, holding a star-shaped object, thrust between my line of vision and Wayt’s frightening face. Wayt let out a yell of fear and fury and recoiled. He scrambled to his feet and made a dash for the hillside, only to cringe back and run to the precipice. Again, somehow, he was thwarted.
Calloway was helping me to my feet. “Sorry I’m late, Roderick,” he said. “It took a little time to assemble my army. We almost gave away our approach when some damned fool stumbled up on the hill.”
I looked around and saw that Calloway was not alone. There were men with him, ten or more, and all were holding the same starshaped artefact. They had formed a circle about the monstrous Wayt who was now cowering on the ground, whimpering. I recognised some of the men: there was the farm labourer who had directed us and the aggressive blacksmith. I saw the wrinkled shopkeeper and the surly publican. All the others were villagers from Lower Bedhoe.
“You know what to do with him, men,” said Calloway.
“Careful, Reuben, he’s very strong,” I warned.
“Not any more,” said my friend. “These star-stones will ensure that.”
I pulled Calloway to the precipice and pointed out at the sea where the grim multitude waited, now in menacing silence. “Look at those!”
“I’ve seen them,” said Calloway, his voice reassuring. “There’s not much that they can do against us. This cliff is too high and too frangible for them to scale with ease, and despite their numbers they would be powerless against our amulets.”
He gestured again to the now helpless Wayt.
Several men, including the blacksmith, moved to lay hands on him while the remainder concentrated the strange power of the stones. He was acquiescent as they seized him and then I saw what was intended for him.
With a shocked cry I lunged forward to stop the enormity about to take place, but was restrained by Calloway’s bulk.
“Stop it, Calloway, stop it!” I shouted. “You must stop it! It’s blasphemy!”
“No,” he growled, his powerful arms holding me immobile. “It’s a cleansing.”
Several more villagers had staggered slowly into view, hampered by the weight of their burden. It was a solid wooden beam with a six-foot crosspiece. They laid it on the ground in front of the tomb and then one man with a pick and a spade began to hack a deep, narrow slot in the sod.
Wayt’s captors spreadeagled him upon the cross and his upper arms were securely lashed to the horizontal beam. The blacksmith knelt by the supine Wayt and with several savage blows from a small sledge drove six-inch nails through the creature’s wrists.
Gasping with the effort, the men manoeuvred the foot of the cross into the prepared slot, struggling to lift it clear of the ground. As it rose by several inches, long ropes were passed beneath the bar for them to haul upon. At last the cross was heaved into position, its base dropping with a thud into the hole. The smith hammered in wedges until satisfied that the cross could stand alone, firm and unwavering.
Throughout this ordeal, Wayt had remained still and mute, his stoicism unfathomable. The pounding of those long nails, the bone-jerking haul to the perpendicular, the sickening lurch as t
he crucifix settled, all of these must have caused him shrieking agony. But now, with obvious difficulty, he lifted his head and strained to look at the sky. His breath rasped audibly in his throat and chest as he managed to find voice. His shouted appeal was a dreadful parody of another crucifixion.
“Father!” he cried. “Dread Father from the stars and from the depths! Punish them! Punish them for what they do to your disciple!” The effort proved too much and with his breath a long, whistling exhalation, the grotesque head collapsed, the maw open and slack.
My head throbbed with a dull pain from my earlier accident and I felt a sombre cloak of depression settle about me. I lowered my face into hands which shook. It was extraordinary, but I could feel something, compassion of a kind, I suppose, for the monster on the cross. In that last cry there had been a spiritual suffering which transcended the physical. Wayt had become evil, perhaps; aberrant and frightening, certainly; but all of these changes were by human criteria. He remained a sentient being, capable of needs and longings, alien to us though the standards of his emotions might be.
“Put him out of his misery,” ordered Calloway. “Then finish it the way I told you.”
The blacksmith nodded, swung his hammer and cracked the man-thing’s skull. Wayt shuddered once and was still. I saw that there were more people coming down from the hill and onto the plateau. I wondered if the whole of Lower Bedhoe was somehow involved.
Most of the newcomers were bearing bundles of dead branches, gleaned from the woods, which they piled about the foot of the cross. Someone splashed liquid onto the kindling and I caught the strong smell of petrol. A rag was ignited and tossed onto the pyre which exploded into fiery life, filling the air with a furnace wind and the crackling sound of burning wood. Villagers hurried to fuel the conflagration and whitening flames reached higher and higher to conceal and consume the remains of Alaric Wayt.
There were women there, too, covering the comatose girl with blankets and carrying her from the scene.
I sighed and Calloway gripped my shoulders, shaking me gently. “It was a cleansing, Roderick,” he repeated softly. He took a hip-flask from his jacket and offered it to me. I sipped the brandy and then I took another, longer, swallow. It didn’t help much. I returned the flask to my friend.
“What happened?” I asked. “What caused this?”
It was Calloway’s turn to sigh. “Ken Porter’s story, and what we ourselves witnessed, made me suspect that Wayt was undergoing something like an Innsmouth change. I was sure that nothing would happen until tonight, I just wasn’t able to get back as soon as I had hoped. Al Azif instructs that a sacrifice must take place at each important phase of the moon. That must have been the fate of those three foreign students, last full moon, new moon and half moon. Tonight was the next full moon in the cycle.
“While I left you here to keep watch, I went to see a fellow who has had a lot to do with fighting the Ancient Ones and their acolytes. I knew that Titus had a supply of the star-stones and I begged their use for tonight. I also stopped off to make certain enquiries which gave me half-expected answers.
“There were four leading families in Innsmouth, all of them associating with the Deep Ones: the Marshes, Gilmans, Eliots and Waites, the last name being spelt in the common way. I told you all those months ago that some Innsmouth dwellers probably escaped the federal dragnet. There were quite a few children unaccounted for. He—” nodding at the burning cross from which there was now an abominable stench “—he was the offspring of a Waite. He was brought to this country, a babe in arms, by a distant cousin, a member of the British branch of the family. Wayt was legally adopted and his surname altered to an archaic spelling.
“We’ll never know whether it was the Romans or Britons or both that destroyed Vitellius Priscus. Whoever, I think they failed to put the body to the flames and an essence—Porter’s black shadow—was therefore able to survive in that sepulchre, waiting through long centuries for a new host.
“But the tradition of keeping outsiders away from this place survived from generation to generation. The reason may have been forgotten but the various landowners remained steadfast to the custom, despite all the turbulence of history, until Sir Peter died and the title passed to someone born and resident in a far land.
“I don’t know what would have happened had any person other than Alaric Wayt opened the tomb. Much the same, I expect, although I think that his antecedents made him uncommonly susceptible. It’s even possible that his ancestry was the reason for his determination to excavate the site—a racial memory. The tomb shadow must have triggered the instinct to make contact with his hideous kin, very likely in dreams, which is the way the Innsmouth dwellers did it. They goaded him to make the sacrifices necessary to speed his transformation and he researched the Al Azif for the essential rites. He chose the students who remained for two reasons: all were small and would minimise effort until his strength grew, and all were from lands where they were unlikely to be missed for a long time if at all. The rest you know.”
“How do we explain Wayt’s disappearance?” I asked.
“An accident,” said Calloway. “His tent will catch fire and will be so thoroughly incinerated as to leave little to investigate. Witnesses will testify to his growing eccentricities, his insistence on staying alone in his tent with only an oil-lamp and the fuel supplies. The local coroner is a Bedhoe man and a verdict of accidental death will be returned.”
“What about the girl?”
“She’s in a simple trance. Wayt’s first sacrifices were carried out the hard way but he soon discovered the secrets of hypnosis. I have enough knowledge to right matters. She’ll be told that she was found on the road, sleepwalking.”
I searched for other objections. “How do you know this won’t recur?” I said. “Others may be given permission to dig here. Some residue of the horror may remain to infect them.”
Calloway lit a cigarette. “I think not,” he answered. “I have been calling in some favours. I’m sure the land will be found to be contaminated with anthrax and the Ministry of Agriculture will seal the area off in perpetuity.”
The moon was high by now and the surface of the Channel was silvered to the horizon. It was clear save for the harlequin dappling of small waves.
“They’ve gone,” I said.
“For now,” said Calloway. “They’ll be back, sometime, somewhere. We haven’t won a war or even a battle here tonight. We’ve won a skirmish, a skirmish so insignificant as to be meaningless.”
I could not help feeling bitter as I glanced at the consuming flames behind us. “Then why was this necessary?”
“Stop thinking like a priest for a moment,” said Calloway. “If he hadn’t been stopped, how many innocents would have died to achieve his purpose? Agreed that he had gone a long way into his transfiguration, but he was nowhere near changed enough to take his place in the sea.”
Calloway tossed the stub of his cigarette over the cliff and I watched its glimmer trailing down to diminish in an effervescent cascade of sparks on the rocks below.
“You know,” he went on. “It’s my opinion that we will never win this hidden war. It has been said, time and again, that the Ancient Ones will return ‘when the stars are right’. Think about it, Roderick, when will the stars be right and from whose vantage point?”
He stared at the night sky. “The universe is infinite, and at every point in that infinity the pattern of stars will be different. And from every point in that infinity the patterns will appear to change every few millennia. Given the present limits of human mind and thought, the scales of distance and time are so vast as to be inconceivable, unacceptable even.
“In astronomical terms, however, those scales are nothing but a step, but an instant. From somewhere out there, the stars could be right for the Ancient Ones tomorrow; or the due time could be so remote as for mankind to have become extinct. I hope the latter. For all our sakes, I hope the latter.
“No, we’ll never conquer the A
ncient Ones or their multitudinous servants. You see, they have time on their side.”
THE INNSMOUTH HERITAGE
by BRIAN STABLEFORD
THE DIRECTIONS WHICH Ann had dictated over the phone allowed me to reach Innsmouth without too much difficulty; I doubt that I would have fared so well had I been forced to rely upon the map printed on the end-papers of her book or had I been forced to seek assistance along the way.
While descending from the precipitous ridge east of the town I was able to compare my own impressions of Innsmouth’s appearance with the account given by Ann in her opening chapter. When she spoke to me on the phone she had told me that the book’s description was “optimistic” and I could easily see why she had felt compelled to offer such a warning. Even the book had not dared to use the word “unspoiled,” but Ann had done her best to imply that Innsmouth was full of what we in England would call “old-world charm.” Old the buildings certainly were, but charming they were not. The present inhabitants—mostly “incomers” or “part-timers,” according to Ann—had apparently made what efforts they could to redeem the houses from dereliction and decay, but the renovated façades and the new paint only succeeded in making the village look garish as well as neglected.
It proved, mercifully, that one of the principal exceptions to this rule was the New Gilman House, where a room had been reserved for me. It was one of the few recent buildings in the village, dating back no further than the sixties. The lobby was tastefully decorated and furnished, and the desk-clerk was as attentive as one expects American desk-clerks to be.
“My name’s Stevenson,” I told him. “I believe Miss Eliot reserved a room for me.”
“Best in the house, sir,” he assured me. I was prepared to believe it— Ann owned the place. “You sound English, sir,” he added, as he handed me a reservation card. “Is that where you know the boss from?”
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