Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

by Stephen Jones

  Dick began breathing properly again. Violet let Ernest squirm a little, though she still held him under the trough.

  Then came a truly terrifying sound, worse even than the laughter of the fish-demon.

  Bolts being drawn. Three of them.

  They were trapped!

  VI

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  Now was the time to keep calm.

  Dick knew Violet would be all right, if only because she had to think about Ernest.

  For obvious reasons, the children had not told anyone where they were going, but they would be missed at tea-time. Uncle Davey and Aunt Maeve could easily overlook a skipped meal—both of them were liable to get so interested in something that they wouldn’t notice the house catching fire—but Cook kept track. And Mr. and Mrs. Borrodale were sticklers for being in by five o’clock with hands washed and presentable.

  It must be past five now.

  Of course, any search party wouldn’t get around to the Priory for days, maybe weeks. They’d look on the beaches first, and in the woods.

  Eventually, his uncle and aunt would find the folder marked Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm. Aunt Maeve, good at puzzles, had taught him how to cipher in the first place. She would eventually break the code and read Dick’s notes, and want to talk with Sellwood. By then, it would probably be too late.

  They gave the Brethren time enough to get beyond earshot before creeping out from under the trough. They unbent with much creaking and muffled moaning. Violet lit her candle.

  Dick paced around the cell, keeping away from the Hole.

  “I’m thirsty,” said Ernest.

  “Easily treated,” said Violet.

  She found the beaker and pumped water into it. Ernest drank, made a face, and asked for more. Violet worked the pump again.

  Water splashed over the brimful beaker, into the trough.

  A noise came out of the Hole.

  The children froze into mannequins. The noise came again.

  “Wah wah… wah wah…”

  There was a pleading tone to it.

  “Wah wah…”

  “‘Water’,” said Dick, snapping his fingers. “It’s saying ‘water’.”

  “Wah wah,” agreed the creature. “Uh, wah wah.”

  “‘Water. Yes, water.’”

  “Gosh, Dick, you are clever,” said Violet.

  “Wat war,” said the creature, insisting. “Gi’ mee wat war, i’ oo eese…”

  “‘Water’,” said Dick, “‘Give me—’”

  “‘—water, if you please’,” completed Violet, who caught on swiftly. “Very polite for a sea-ghost. Well brought-up in Atlantis or Lyonesse or R’lyeh, I imagine.”

  “Where?” asked Dick.

  “Sunken cities of old, where mer-people are supposed to live.”

  More left-overs from Violet’s myths and legends craze. Interesting, but not very helpful.

  Ernest had walked to the edge of the Hole.

  “This isn’t a soppy mer-person,” said Ernest. “This is a Monster of the Deep!”

  He emptied the beaker into the dark.

  A sigh of undoubted gratitude rose from the depths.

  “Wat war goo’, tanks. Eese, gi’ mee moh.”

  Ernest poured another beakerful. At this rate, they might as well be using an eye-dropper.

  Dick saw the solution.

  “Vile, help me shift the trough,” he said.

  They pulled one end away from the wall. It was heavy, but the bolts were old and rusted and the break came easily.

  “Careful not to move the other end too much. We need it under the pump.”

  Violet saw where this was going. Angled down away from the wall, the trough turned into a sluice. It didn’t quite stretch all the way to the oubliette, but pulling up a loose stone put a notch into the rim which served as a spout.

  “Wat war eese,” said the creature, mildly.

  Dick nodded to Violet. She worked the pump.

  Water splashed into the trough and flowed down, streaming through the notch and pouring into the pit.

  The creature gurgled with joy.

  Only now did Dick wonder whether watering it was a good idea. It might not be a French spy or even a maritime demon, but it was definitely one of Granny Ball’s sea-ghosts. If Dick had been treated as it had been, he would not be well disposed towards land-people.

  But the water kept flowing.

  Violet’s arm got tired, and she let up for a moment.

  “I’ oo eese,” insisted the creature, with a reproachful, nannyish tone. “Moh wat war.”

  Violet kept pumping.

  Dick took the candle and walked to the edge of the Hole. Ernest sat there, legs dangling over the edge, fingers playing in the cool cascade.

  The boys looked down.

  Where water fell, the man-fish was changed—vivid greens and reds and purples and oranges glistened. Its spines and frills and gills and webs were sleek. Even its eyes shone more brightly.

  It turned, mouth open under the spray, letting water wash around it, wrenching against its chains.

  “Water makes the Monster strong,” said Ernest.

  The creature looked up at them. The edges of its mouth curved into something like a smile. There was cunning there, and a bottomless well of malice, but also an exultation. Dick understood: when it was wet, the thing felt as he did when he saw through a mystery.

  It took a grip on one of its manacles and squeezed, cracking the old iron and casting it away.

  “Can I stop now?” asked Violet. “My arm’s out of puff.”

  “I think so.”

  The creature nodded, a human gesture awkward on the gilled, neckless being.

  It stood up unshackled, and stretched as if waking after a long sleep in an awkward position. The chains dangled freely. A clear, thick, milky-veined fluid seeped from the weals on its chest. The man-fish carefully smoothed this secretion like an ointment.

  There were pools of water around its feet. It got down on its knees—did it have spare brains in them?—and sucked the pools dry. Then it raised its head and let water dribble through its gills and down over its chest and back.

  “Tanks,” it said.

  Now it wasn’t parched, its speech was easier to understand.

  It took hold of the dangling chains, and tugged, testing them.

  Watering the thing in the Hole was all very well, but Dick wasn’t sure how he’d feel if it were up here with them. If he were the creature, he would be very annoyed. He ought to be grateful to the children, but what did anyone know about the feelings of sea-ghosts? Violet had told them the legend of the genie in the bottle: at first, he swore to bestow untold riches upon the man who set him free, but after thousands of years burned to make his rescuer suffer horribly for waiting so long.

  It was too late to think about that.

  Slick and wet, the man-fish moved faster than anything its size should. No sooner had it grasped the chains than it had climbed them, deft as a sailor on the rigging, quick as a lizard on the flat or a salmon in the swim.

  It held on, hanging just under the ring in the ceiling, head swiveling around, eyes taking in the room.

  Dick and Ernest were backed against the door, taking Violet with them.

  She was less spooked than the boys.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le Fantôme de la Mer,” she said, slowly and clearly in the manner approved by her tutor, M. Duroc. “Je m’appelle Violette Borrodale… permettez-moi de presente a vous mon petit cousin Ernest… et Rishard Riddle, le detective juvenile celebré.”

  This seemed to puzzle the sea-ghost.

  “Vile, I don’t think it’s really French,” whispered Dick.

  Violet shrugged.

  The creature let go and leaped, landing frog-like, knees stuck out and shoulders hunched, inches away from them. This close, it stank of the sea.

  Dick saw their reflections in its huge eyes.

  Its mouth opened. He saw row upon row o
f shark-like teeth, all pointed and shining. It might not have had a proper meal in a century.

  “Scuze mee,” it said, extending a hand, folding its frill-connected fingers up but pointing with a single barb.

  The wet thorn touched Richard’s cheek.

  Then it eased the children aside, and considered the bolted door.

  “Huff… puff… blow,” it said, hammering with fish-fists. The door came off its hinges and the bolts wrenched out of their sockets. The broken door crashed against the opposite wall of the passage.

  “How do you know the ‘Three Little Pigs’?” asked Violet.

  “Gur’ nam ’Ooth,” it said, “ree’ to mee…”

  “A girl read to him,” Dick explained.

  So not all his captors had been tormentors. Who was ’Ooth? Ruth? Someone called Ruth fit into the story. The little girl lost with the Sophy Briggs. Sellwood’s niece.

  The sea-ghost looked at Violet. Dick deduced all little girls must look alike to it. If you’ve seen one pinafore, you’ve seen them all.

  “ ’Ooth,” it said, with something like fondness. “’Ooth kin’ to mee. Ree’ mee story-boos. Liss in Wonlan… Tripella Liplik Pik… Taes o Eh Ah Po…”

  “What happened to Ruth?” Violet asked.

  “Sellwoo’ ki’ ’Ooth, an’ hi’ bro tah Joh-jee,” said the creature, cold anger in its voice. “Tey wan let mee go sea, let mee go hom. Sellwoo’ mak shi’ wreck, tak ever ting, tak mee.”

  Dick understood. And was not surprised.

  This was the nature of Sellwood’s villainy. Charges of smuggling and espionage remained unproven, but he was guilty of the worst crime of all—murder!

  People were coming now, alerted by the noise.

  The sea-ghost stepped into the passage, holding up a hand—fingers spread and webs unfurled—to indicate that the children should stay behind.

  They kept in the dark, where they couldn’t see what was happening in the passage.

  The man-fish leaped, and landed on someone.

  Cries of terror and triumph! An unpleasant, wet crunching… followed by unmistakable chewing.

  More people came on the scene.

  “The craytur’s out o’ thic Hole,” shrieked someone.

  A very loud bang! A firework stink.

  The man-fish staggered back past the doorway, red blossoming on its shoulder. It had more red stuff around its mouth, and scraps of cloth caught in its teeth.

  It roared in rage and threw itself at whoever had shot it.

  Something detached from something else and rolled past the doorway, leaving a trail of sticky splashes.

  Violet kept her hand over Ernest’s eyes, though he tried to pick at her fingers.

  “Spawn of Satan, you show your true colours at last!”

  It was Sellwood.

  “Milder, Fessel, take him down.”

  The Brethren grunted. The doorway was filled with struggling bodies, driving the children back into the cell. They pressed flat against the wet cold walls.

  Brother Milder and Brother Fessel held the creature’s arms and wrestled it back, towards the Hole.

  Sellwood appeared, hefting one of his fossil-breaking hammers.

  He thumped the sea-ghost’s breast-bone with all his might, and it fell, sprawling on the flagstones. Milder and Fessel shifted their weight to pin the creature down.

  Still, no one noticed the children.

  The creature’s shoulder-wound closed like a sea anemone. The bruise in the middle of its chest faded at once. It looked hate up at the Reverend.

  Sellwood stood over the wriggling man-fish. He weighed his hammer.

  “You’re devilish hard to kill, demon! But how would you like your skull pounded to paste? It might take a considerable while to recover, eh?”

  He raised the hammer above his head.

  “You there,” said Violet, voice clear and shrill and loud, “stop!”

  Sellwood swivelled to look.

  “This is an important scientific discovery, and must not be harmed. Why, it is practically a living dinosaur.”

  Violet stood between Sellwood and the pinned man-fish. Dick was by her side, arm linked with hers. Ernest was in front of them, fists up like a pugilist.

  “Don’t you hurt my friend the Monster,” said Ernest.

  Sellwood’s red rage showed.

  “You see,” he yelled, “how the foulness spreads! How the lies take hold! You see!”

  Something snapped inside Milder. He rolled off the creature, limbs loose, neck flopping.

  The sea-ghost stood up, a two-handed grip on the last of Sellwood’s Brethren, Fessel.

  “Help,” he gasped. “Children, help…”

  Dick had a pang of guilt.

  Then Fessel was falling into the oubliette. He rattled against chains, and landed with a final-sounding crash.

  The sea-ghost stepped around the children and took away Sellwood’s hammer, which it threw across the room. It clanged against the far wall.

  “I am not afraid of you,” announced the Reverend.

  The creature tucked Sellwood under its arm. The Reverend was too surprised to protest.

  “Shouldn’ a’ ki’ ’Ooth a’ Joh-jee, Sellwoo’. Shouldn’ a’ ki’.”

  “How do you know?” Sellwood was indignant, but didn’t deny the crime.

  “Sea tol’ mee, sea tel’ mee all ting.”

  “I serve a greater purpose,” shouted Sellwood.

  The sea-ghost carried the Reverend out of the room. The children followed.

  The man-fish strode down the passage, towards the book-room. Two dead men—Maulder and Fose—lay about.

  “Their heads are gone,” exclaimed Ernest, with a glee Dick found a little disturbing. At least Ernest wasn’t picking up one of the heads for the office wall.

  Sellwood thumped the creature’s back. Its old whip-stripes and poker-brands were healing.

  Dick, Violet and Ernest followed the escapee and its former gaoler.

  In the book-room, Sellwood looked with hurried regret at the crates of unsold volumes and struggled less. The sea-ghost found the steps leading down and seemed to contract its body to squeeze into the tunnel. Sellwood was dragged bloody against the rock ceiling.

  “Come on, detectives,” said Dick, “after them!”

  VII

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  They came out under Ware Cleeve. Waves scraped shingle in an eternal rhythm. It was twilight, and chilly. Well past tea-time.

  The man-fish, burden limp, tasted the sea in the air.

  “Tanks,” it said to the children, “tanks very mu’.”

  It walked into the waves. As sea soaked through his coat, Sellwood was shocked into consciousness and began to struggle again, shouting and cursing and praying.

  The sea-ghost was waist-deep in its element.

  It turned to wave at the children. Sellwood got free, madly striking away from the shore, not towards dry land. The creature leaped completely out of the water, dark rainbows rippling on its flanks, and landed heavily on Sellwood, claws hooking into meat, pressing the Reverend under the waves.

  They saw the swimming shape, darting impossibly fast, zigzagging out into the bay. Finned feet showed above the water for an instant and the man-fish—the sea-ghost, the French spy, the living fossil, the snare of Satan, the Monster of the Deep—was gone for good, dragging the Reverend Mr. Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood with him.

  “…to Davey Jones’s locker,” said Ernest.

  Dick realized Violet was holding his hand, and tactfully got his fingers free.

  Their shoes were covered with other people’s blood.

  “Anthropos Icthyos Biolletta,” said Violet. “Violet’s Man-Fish, a whole new phylum.

  “I pronounce this case closed,” said Dick.

  “Can I borrow your matches?” asked Violet. “I’ll just nip back up the tunnel and set fire to Sellwood’s books. If the Priory burns down, we won’t have to answer questions about dead people.” />
  Dick handed over the box.

  He agreed with Violet. This was one of those stories for which the world was not yet ready. Writing it up, he would use a double cipher.

  “Besides,” said Violet, “some books deserve to be burned.”

  While Violet was gone, Dick and Ernest passed time skipping stones on the waves. Rooting for ammunition, they found an ammonite, not quite as big and nice as the one that was smashed, but sure to delight Violet and much easier to carry home.

  INNSMOUTH CLAY

  by H. P. LOVECRAFT AND AUGUST DERLETH

  THE FACTS RELATING to the fate of my friend, the late sculptor, Jeffrey Corey—if indeed ‘late’ is the correct reference—must begin with his return from Paris and his decision to rent a cottage on the coast south of Innsmouth in the autumn of 1927. Corey came from an armigerous family with some distant relationship to the Marsh clan of Innsmouth—not, however, such a one as would impose upon him any obligation to consort with his distant relatives. There were, in any case, rumours abroad about the reclusive Marshes who still lived in that Massachusetts seaport town, and these were hardly calculated to inspire Corey with any desire to announce his presence in the vicinity.

  I visited him a month after his arrival in December of that year. Corey was a comparatively young man, not yet forty, six feet in height, with a fine, fresh skin, which was free of any hirsute adornment, though his hair was worn rather long, as was then the custom among artists in the Latin quarter of Paris. He had very strong blue eyes, and his lantern-jawed face would have stood out in any assemblage of people, not alone for the piercing quality of his gaze, but as much for the rather strange, wattled appearance of the skin back from his jaws, under his ears and down his neck a little way below his ears. He was not ill-favoured in looks, and a queer quality, almost hypnotic, that informed his fine-featured face had a kind of fascination for most people who met him. He was well settled in when I visited him, and had begun work on a statue of Rima, the Bird-Girl, which promised to become one his finest works.

  He had laid in supplies to keep him for a month, having gone into Innsmouth for them, and he seemed to me more than usually loquacious, principally about his distant relatives, about whom there was a considerable amount of talk, however guarded, in the shops of Innsmouth. Being reclusive, the Marshes were quite naturally the object of some curiosity; and since that curiosity was not satisfied, an impressive lore and legendry had grown up about them, reaching all the way back to an earlier generation which had been in the South Pacific trade. There was little definite enough to hold meaning for Corey, but what there was suggested all manner of arcane horror, of which he expected at some nebulous future time to learn more, though he had no compulsion to do so. It was just, he explained, that the subject was so prevalent in the village that it was almost impossible to escape it.