Worlds of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  I blame it on the idiosyncratic local pronunciation. Asking a fellow motorist the way, he directed me to avoid the road leading to a lately-submerged hamlet he pronounced as “Dunnich.” Thus I failed to recognize the turnoff to Dunwich as the proper one to avoid.

  There, I proceeded to wend my way through a veritable maze of humped hills and wooded hollows, until I found my way back to what passed for civilization in Massachusetts. The turnpike took me straightaway to Innsmouth via Rowley.

  I arrived on Evacuation Day—although I knew it not.

  At an Ipswich filling station, I pulled over and asked the proprietor to top off the tank.

  “Do they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day over in Innsmouth?” I inquired.

  “They do not. Particularly.”

  “I thought it was a big day hereabouts,” I pressed.

  “Up here, it’s called Evacuation Day.”

  “I have not heretofore heard of that holiday,” I admitted frankly.

  The rustic launched into a declamation. “Started down in Boston. Back in ’01. Evacuation Day marks the date the infernal Redcoats were driven out of Boston during the Revolution. It’s only celebrated down in Suffolk County, not up here in Essex. But lately, they’ve adopted it over in Innsmouth. But fisher folk commemorate it in peculiar ways.” He eyed me pointedly.

  “Is there a parade?” I inquired.

  “More akin to a procession, I would say.”

  “Really? How quaint. Perhaps I might take in the festivities there instead.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said laconically.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Not sayin’. Just sayin’ don’t. Not healthy for outlanders such as yourself.”

  “Oh? Do they do queer things?”

  “Mighty queer. In fact, so queer most town landsmen leave Innsmouth for the day. Or longer.”

  I smiled, thinking now that he was jesting with me.

  “If they leave town,” I prompted, “who is left to enjoy the day?”

  “That,” he said as he returned his hose to its hook, “is the question no one wants to answer. Least of all me.”

  Now I was dead certain that the man was japing.

  “I suppose that I might take a jaunt up there,” I said after receiving my change.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said. And that was all he would offer no matter how much I attempted to jostle his tongue loose.

  I drove on regardless, for the name had struck a memory chord. Innsmouth had been a major maritime center in its heyday. No doubt much of its old charm still remained. I recalled that it had fallen on hard times in the late ‘20s, but commerce was now rebounding.

  I felt unaccustomedly rambunctious. My new Packard convertible was eating up the miles beautifully. The cream-colored body shone with the bright new gleam of the factory. I was tempted to take the top down, but it was a trifle windy.

  With one hand on the wheel and the other on the ivory ball of the stick shift, I tooled smartly up the approach road to Innsmouth, crossing the frozen Manuxet River via a rickety wooden bridge with the bracing tang of salt air coming in through the car’s vents.

  Fairly soon, I encountered a veritable stream of autos jouncing in my direction. Natives, no doubt. Off to do some marketing in the hinterlands.

  The stream soon swelled into a flood. I enumerated coupes and jalopies of every make and style, although none new. Model Ts were in the majority.

  A motorist waved at me with what I thought was excessive zeal. I returned the salute with a tip of my Mackinaw hat.

  “Are ye daft!” he hollered back. “Turn around!”

  I couldn’t imagine his meaning. The road ahead was perfectly sound—if in sore need of grading.

  I pressed onward.

  Still other departing Innsmouthers called out to me.

  “Back!” shouted one. “Go back!”

  “It’s Evacuation Day!” another proclaimed.

  “Hurrah!” I exulted, tooteling my horn, for that seemed to be the manner in which new arrivals were greeted.

  It was all very boisterous. But I couldn’t help but feel a tad weary after all the riot and racket. But finally the last of the line of careening automobiles fell behind me and the way ahead was entirely clear.

  Bumping along a cobbled road, I pulled into Innsmouth proper.

  My first impression, as I tooled along Dock Street, was of disrepair. The fishmonger shops were frankly decrepit. The docks seemed to be coming back from what I imagined were Roosevelt Recession woes. The black-tarred roof of the covered wharf proclaimed in white letters the proud name of DUGAN. Lobster boats and fishing smacks—if they called them that—were muttering about the harbor.

  The smell of fish was heady. I happen to love fish. But then I hail from a landlocked upstate hamlet. Fresh fish is a novelty. So the more overpowering the aroma, the better.

  I pulled over to accost a citizen. He was a ruddy specimen, loading wooden lobster traps into the rumble seat of his rusting machine.

  “I passed quite a procession I encountered on the approach road,” I said by way of opening our conversation.

  Dropping his burden, he straightened. He was as sun- and wind-burned as his wares. A wide square face framed distinctive features. His watery blue eyes were set well apart. Too well, for average tastes, I had to admit. His ears were remarkable. Thin as parchment, their ornate design was singular. I half expected them to wave in the brisk sea breeze.

  “Procession?” he burbled. I noticed that his working lips were on the rubbery side and I wondered if a faint Negroid strain might have tinged his hardy blood.

  “More like an evacuation, I would say.”

  He regarded me queerly. “The procession is tonight. What name do you go by?”

  “Sammon. Of the Albany Sammons.”

  “Never heard of that strain,” he remarked. “I be a Briney.”

  “I am unfamiliar with the Briney clan,” I admitted cheerfully so as not to offend.

  “My mother’s folks were Herrings.”

  “I’m sure they are all good seagoing stock. Now, my good man, where is the nearest good hotel?”

  “Gilman House. In the town square over yonder.”

  “Wonderful. And are there any celebratory events planned before the evening procession?”

  “None that I know of. Mostly, we prepare ourselves while the others skedaddle.”

  “Others?” I asked.

  “Them that you saw a’leavin.”

  “They did seem to be in an all-fired hurry,” I admitted.

  He grunted explosively, “What do you expect of landsmen? It’s Evacuation Day.”

  “Are there no Saint Patrick’s Day activities, my good fellow? Or have I arrived too late in the day?”

  Goodman Briney frowned lugubriously. “Not many Irish in Innsmouth. Maybe a few fled with the others.”

  I thought Mr. Briney’s choice of verbs noteworthy, but declined to correct his delightfully colorful speech.

  Thanking the man, I returned to my juggernaut and wended my way to the picturesque Gilman House with its fresh yellow paint and proud roof cupola.

  The innkeeper must have been a distant relative of Mr. Briney, for there was a general resemblance about the aural appendages. This worthy’s ears possessed that same delicate translucent quality, only in this case instead of earlobes, there appeared to a fleshy web joining ear to jaw. As with Mr. Briney, they called to mind something other than ears, but my brain cells failed to summon up the elusive original article.

  “I will need a room for a day or two,” I told the man.

  “Clan?”

  “Sammon,” I returned proudly.

  “You don’t look much like any Salmons from hereabouts,” he muttered as I signed his guest book. Eyeing my signature, he added, “Nor do you spell it in th
e usual manner.”

  I declined comment, suspecting that any Sammons native to Innsmouth belonged to a retrograde branch of the family, as it were.

  My room was decorated in the quaintest manner imaginable and appealed to my abiding interest in New England sea ports.

  The walls bespoke knotty pine. The curtains were fishing nets rededicated to the purpose of window coverings. They were suspended on what looked for all the world like bamboo fishing poles.

  The bed was substantial, its headboard and posters carved to suggest seahorses and mermaids. But I found the quilt a trifle damp. Freshly laundered no doubt, but not properly aired. I shut the door in hopes that the stream radiator would dry it out.

  After freshening up, I went down to the lobby in search of lunch.

  “Best place to eat on this lane is Sargeant’s Chowderhouse,” the proprietor assured me.

  I chose to walk it. The bracing air, redolent of harvested oysters and what I imagined was a nearby salt marsh, revived my spirits after the long drive.

  As I entered, the owner of the chowderhouse was placing a fresh card in the window. It proclaimed a new local delicacy: Succulent Long Pig.

  As the establishment appeared to be informal, I seated myself, ordering tea with lemon and asked about the Long Pig.

  “It’s a Polynesian dish,” I was told. “We only serve it on Evacuation Day. It is not much favored by the landsmen class.”

  “Really? I am sorely tempted to try it, but I am really here for the authentic local seafood. What would you recommend, sirrah?”

  “The scrod.”

  “And what is that, pray tell?”

  “It is whatever comes off the morning boat. Sometimes it’s cod, or hake or haddock.”

  “What is it today?”

  “Smells like dogfish. Cod’s been running slow of late.”

  “I will have the dogfish and a bowl of your best clam chowder.”

  The food came straightaway and while I found the dogfish a trifle—dare I say?—fishy, the chowder was scrumptious.

  I was still hungry, so I ordered seconds on the chowder and had some mussels and littleneck clams steamed up for a fishy desert.

  All was served perfectly promptly and my belly was well filled by the time my repast was over. Life was good. I felt glad that I came.

  As I was paying for my wonderful meal, I made conversation with the owner, a Mr. Crabbe.

  “What noteworthy landmarks lie hereabouts?”

  The man’s grayish features gathered and smoothed out several times in careful rumination. He touched the mechanism of his receding jawline before speaking. “Devil’s Reef used to be the top one. But the Federals blew it to smithereens back in ‘28.”

  “You don’t say! Whatever for?”

  “They never explained; they just done it. Just a tusk of an outcropping left of it now.” His face seemed pained at the thought. No doubt it had been quite a feature of the harbor.

  Inwardly, I speculated that it might have had something to do with the late noble experiment called Prohibition. During the early phase of the Depression, many a struggling waterman turned to rum running as a way to eke out a living, the price of edible fish having plummeted.

  “What else?” I persisted.

  The fellow thought some more and seemed to put a good deal of brainwork into it. Finally, he said, “That’s about it.”

  “Very well. What time does the procession start?”

  “That will be up to the jellies.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Jellyfish. When they commence to arriving in the harbor, the procession will begin. That’s the tradition. Is this your first time?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Be ready about sundown. Folks form up below the Neck.”

  “The neck of what, pray tell?”

  “Why, Innsmouth Neck. Over near Curville.”

  “What a perfectly charming name. And so nautical. Do clams not have necks?”

  “They do. But I am speaking of a neck of land. Not a part of common clam anatomy.”

  The man’s tone had coarsened until I began to suspect I was being seen as an utter ignoramus. I took my change and left in silence.

  I wandered about for a time. I was surprised at the number of seemingly abandoned houses. One in particular offended me.

  It consisted of a colorless hovel, whose clapboard siding was nearly gone. Bare barn board alone remained. Tarpaper pennants flapped in the wind. The name on the mailbox was “ROE.”

  Most remarkable of all was the fact that although it was well into the month of March, out from the dirty windows peeped painted porcelain Jack O’Lanterns, forlorn construction-paper skulls, and similar remnants of the previous Halloween.

  I was sure that behind that skinned and tattered house lay a story. But I was unable to find anyone to tell it to me. In my perambulations, I came again to the waterfront. Far to the south, in the direction of Ipswich, I spied a tall dark feature of the coastline which I took to be a lonely lighthouse. I wondered why no one had mentioned it to me.

  I wandered in that direction, only to find that it was perched on a spit of water-bound land disconnected from Innsmouth proper by virtue of a pungent marsh consisting of tough eel grass. I wondered if this could be the famous Neck, but swiftly realized that it was no spot for a procession of anything that walked on two legs. So I abandoned the conjecture, as well as my curiosity. For the lighthouse proved to be too far away to be discerned with clarity. I could make out no distinguishing features, except that it seemed to have a forlorn decapitated look, as if reduced to a crumbling ruin.

  In time, I found my way back to the Gilman House. The proprietor was busily brooming the lobby of dust and detritus, of which Innsmouth seemed to have more than its share.

  I asked of him, “What is the history of that lighthouse out in the harbor?”

  “There is no such,” he said curtly.

  “I beg your pardon,” I replied, thinking it a rebuff.

  “Last lighthouse was dragged into the sea back in the hurricane of ’38,” he said with finality. “Federals demolished the other as a menace to public safety.”

  Without further ado, I went up to my room to sleep off my maritime meal.

  I must have dozed long past my usual nap hour, for when I awoke, it was dark. Quite dark.

  I was utterly dumbfounded. But there it was.

  Putting on my Brogans, and bundling up in a warm sweater before donning my Ulster coat and Mackinaw cap, I flung myself down to the lobby.

  It was empty. Utterly barren. I was momentarily nonplussed.

  Out in the street, I discovered an eerie vacuum, as if Evacuation Day had turned into a literal Evacuation Night, as might happen ahead of the approach of a threatening Nor’easter. I saw no one, heard no one. Not a soul could be discerned. Innsmouth appeared to be deserted.

  I will confess now to my first sense of disquiet, even foreboding. I walked up Federal Street first one way, and finding nothing and no one, reversed my course and traversed it to its opposite terminus.

  It was so deathly quiet I could hear the gelid murmuring of the half-frozen Manuxet River hard by, but well out of sight.

  Anxiously, I ranged the waterfront. The moon was scaling the sky like an icy sphere lifting out of the Atlantic. A ghost of Atlantis rising, I thought fancifully.

  The fishing trawlers were all tied up, the docks closed and abandoned. I spied the covered wharf with its long black roof which marked my first glimpse of the docks. The white letters shone in the moonlight more clearly than before. But instead of the hearty Hibernian name of DUGAN, it now seemed to read DAGON. The unlovely word brought me back to my Bible. Had I misread the stark letters earlier? Or had they somehow changed…

  Shivering, I shook off the spectral thought.

  Where was everyone?<
br />
  Then I saw the light.

  It lay to the south. I went toward it, pushing through crooked ways and cracked streets filled with a rushing cold.

  Soon enough, I had sight of its origin. The ruined lighthouse! Its lamp was an unhealthy green, guttering like a mammoth candle. I knew not why. But where there was light, there must be men. I pressed on.

  Presently I came upon a throng congregating in front of a building that was all white pillars framing a rail-less portico.

  Faded gilt letters read simply: E. O. O. D.

  A local fraternal organization, no doubt. Perhaps a branch of the formidable Masons. Or an American Legion Hall.

  Men were assembling before it. They were donning white robes and similar garments. I for a moment thought that I had stumbled on a not-uncommon gathering of a village Ku-Klux-Klan, when I noticed the absence of conical hoods and cruciform appurtenances. They were putting some type of ceremonial jewelry about their wrists and throats, suggestive of some unfamiliar-to-me costumes of old.

  These men were bare-headed and among their number I spied red-faced Mr. Briney and the Gilman House proprietor, whose name I understood to be Fischer.

  I strode up to the nearest men, asking, “Is this the procession I have heard so much talk about?”

  Two unfamiliar faces turned to regard me with watery unwelcoming gaze. Their eyes were a piercing tropical blue. Their ears were after the indigenous pattern, which I suddenly realized were suggestive of decorative bivalve sea shells.

  One demanded: “And you be?”

  “Mr. Sammon. From Rochester.”

  My name seemed to please them and one asked, “Where is your robe?”

  “I fear I am unaccustomed to your local ceremonial garb. Might I borrow one for the evening?”

  One was flung unceremoniously in my direction, rather in an unfriendly manner, I thought. But these were fisher folk—hard living and unsentimental. I resolved to do as they did.

  Donning my robe, I joined the gathering throng.

  Soon, we were lining up in two ranks beneath an ascending moon.