object:1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
I.
During the winter of 1927–28 officials of the Federal government made a
strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient
Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in
February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by
the deliberate burning and dynamiting—under suitable precautions—of an
enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses
along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence
pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor.
Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of
arrests, the abnormally large force of men used in making them, and the
secrecy surrounding the disposal of the prisoners. No trials, or even
definite charges, were reported; nor were any of the captives seen
thereafter in the regular gaols of the nation. There were vague
statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about
dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive
ever developed. Innsmouth itself was left almost depopulated, and is
even now only beginning to shew signs of a sluggishly revived
existence.
Complaints from many liberal organisations were met with long
confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to
certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became
surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage,
but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end. Only
one paper—a tabloid always discounted because of its wild
policy—mentioned the deep-diving submarine that discharged torpedoes
downward in the marine abyss just beyond Devil Reef. That item,
gathered by chance in a haunt of sailors, seemed indeed rather
far-fetched; since the low, black reef lies a full mile and a half out
from Innsmouth Harbour.
People around the country and in the nearby towns muttered a great deal
among themselves, but said very little to the outer world. They had
talked about dying and half-deserted Innsmouth for nearly a century,
and nothing new could be wilder or more hideous than what they had
whispered and hinted years before. Many things had taught them
secretiveness, and there was now no need to exert pressure on them.
Besides, they really knew very little; for wide salt marshes, desolate
and unpeopled, keep neighbours off from Innsmouth on the landward side.
But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing.
Results, I am certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock
of repulsion could ever accrue from a hinting of what was found by
those horrified raiders at Innsmouth. Besides, what was found might
possibly have more than one explanation. I do not know just how much of
the whole tale has been told even to me, and I have many reasons for
not wishing to probe deeper. For my contact with this affair has been
closer than that of any other layman, and I have carried away
impressions which are yet to drive me to drastic measures.
It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning
hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for government
inquiry and action brought on the whole reported episode. I was willing
enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain; but now
that it is an old story, with public interest and curiosity gone, I
have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that
ill-rumoured and evilly shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous
abnormality. The mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own
faculties; to reassure myself that I was not simply the first to
succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination. It helps me, too, in
making up my mind regarding a certain terrible step which lies ahead of
me.
I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first
and—so far—last time. I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour of
New England—sightseeing, antiquarian, and genealogical—and had planned
to go directly from ancient Newburyport to Arkham, whence my mother’s
family was derived. I had no car, but was travelling by train, trolley,
and motor-coach, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In
Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to
Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred
at the high fare, that I learned about Innsmouth. The stout,
shrewd-faced agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, seemed
sympathetic toward my efforts at economy, and made a suggestion that
none of my other informants had offered.
“You could take that old bus, I suppose,” he said with a certain
hesitation, “but it ain’t thought much of hereabouts. It goes through
Innsmouth—you may have heard about that—and so the people don’t like
it. Run by an Innsmouth fellow—Joe Sargent—but never gets any custom
from here, or Arkham either, I guess. Wonder it keeps running at all. I
s’pose it’s cheap enough, but I never see more’n two or three people in
it—nobody but those Innsmouth folks. Leaves the Square—front of
Hammond’s Drug Store—at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. unless they’ve changed
lately. Looks like a terrible rattletrap—I’ve never ben on it.”
That was the first I ever heard of shadowed Innsmouth. Any reference to
a town not shewn on common maps or listed in recent guide-books would
have interested me, and the agent’s odd manner of allusion roused
something like real curiosity. A town able to inspire such dislike in
its neighbours, I thought, must be at least rather unusual, and worthy
of a tourist’s attention. If it came before Arkham I would stop off
there—and so I asked the agent to tell me something about it. He was
very deliberate, and spoke with an air of feeling slightly superior to
what he said.
“Innsmouth? Well, it’s a queer kind of a town down at the mouth of the
Manuxet. Used to be almost a city—quite a port before the War of
1812—but all gone to pieces in the last hundred years or so. No
railroad now—B. & M. never went through, and the branch line from
Rowley was given up years ago.
“More empty houses than there are people, I guess, and no business to
speak of except fishing and lobstering. Everybody trades mostly here or
in Arkham or Ipswich. Once they had quite a few mills, but nothing’s
left now except one gold refinery running on the leanest kind of part
time.
“That refinery, though, used to be a big thing, and Old Man Marsh, who
owns it, must be richer’n Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks
mighty close in his home. He’s supposed to have developed some skin
disease or deformity late in life that makes him keep out of sight.
Grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother
seems to’ve ben some kind of foreigner—they say a South Sea islander—so
everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years ago.
They always do that about Innsmouth people, and folks here and
hereabouts always try to cover up any Innsmouth blood they have in ’em.
But Marsh’s children and grandchildren look just like anyone else so
far’s I can see. I’ve had ’em pointed out to me here—though, come to
think of it, the elder children don’t seem to be around lately. Never
saw the old man.
“And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well, young fellow, you
mustn’t take too much stock in what people around here say. They’re
hard to get started, but once they do get started they never let up.
They’ve ben telling things about Innsmouth—whispering ’em, mostly—for
the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they’re more scared than
anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh—about old
Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of
hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and
awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that people stumbled on
around 1845 or thereabouts—but I come from Panton, Vermont, and that
kind of story don’t go down with me.
“You ought to hear, though, what some of the old-timers tell about the
black reef off the coast—Devil Reef, they call it. It’s well above
water a good part of the time, and never much below it, but at that you
could hardly call it an island. The story is that there’s a whole
legion of devils seen sometimes on that reef—sprawled about, or darting
in and out of some kind of caves near the top. It’s a rugged, uneven
thing, a good bit over a mile out, and toward the end of shipping days
sailors used to make big detours just to avoid it.
“That is, sailors that didn’t hail from Innsmouth. One of the things
they had against old Captain Marsh was that he was supposed to land on
it sometimes at night when the tide was right. Maybe he did, for I dare
say the rock formation was interesting, and it’s just barely possible
he was looking for pirate loot and maybe finding it; but there was talk
of his dealing with daemons there. Fact is, I guess on the whole it was
really the Captain that gave the bad reputation to the reef.
“That was before the big epidemic of 1846, when over half the folks in
Innsmouth was carried off. They never did quite figure out what the
trouble was, but it was probably some foreign kind of disease brought
from China or somewhere by the shipping. It surely was bad enough—there
was riots over it, and all sorts of ghastly doings that I don’t believe
ever got outside of town—and it left the place in awful shape. Never
came back—there can’t be more’n 300 or 400 people living there now.
“But the real thing behind the way folks feel is simply race
prejudice—and I don’t say I’m blaming those that hold it. I hate those
Innsmouth folks myself, and I wouldn’t care to go to their town. I
s’pose you know—though I can see you’re a Westerner by your talk—what a
lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in
Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds
of people they sometimes brought back with ’em. You’ve probably heard
about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife, and maybe you
know there’s still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod.
“Well, there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people.
The place always was badly cut off from the rest of the country by
marshes and creeks, and we can’t be sure about the ins and outs of the
matter; but it’s pretty clear that old Captain Marsh must have brought
home some odd specimens when he had all three of his ships in
commission back in the twenties and thirties. There certainly is a
strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today—I don’t know how to
explain it, but it sort of makes you crawl. You’ll notice a little in
Sargent if you take his bus. Some of ’em have queer narrow heads with
flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their
skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of their necks
are all shrivelled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young. The older
fellows look the worst—fact is, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a very
old chap of that kind. Guess they must die of looking in the glass!
Animals hate ’em—they used to have lots of horse trouble before autos
came in.
“Nobody around here or in Arkham or Ipswich will have anything to do
with ’em, and they act kind of offish themselves when they come to town
or when anyone tries to fish on their grounds. Queer how fish are
always thick off Innsmouth Harbour when there ain’t any anywhere else
around—but just try to fish there yourself and see how the folks chase
you off! Those people used to come here on the railroad—walking and
taking the train at Rowley after the branch was dropped—but now they
use that bus.
“Yes, there’s a hotel in Innsmouth—called the Gilman House—but I don’t
believe it can amount to much. I wouldn’t advise you to try it. Better
stay over here and take the ten o’clock bus tomorrow morning; then you
can get an evening bus there for Arkham at eight o’clock. There was a
factory inspector who stopped at the Gilman a couple of years ago, and
he had a lot of unpleasant hints about the place. Seems they get a
queer crowd there, for this fellow heard voices in other rooms—though
most of ’em was empty—that gave him the shivers. It was foreign talk,
he thought, but he said the bad thing about it was the kind of voice
that sometimes spoke. It sounded so unnatural—slopping-like, he
said—that he didn’t dare undress and go to sleep. Just waited up and
lit out the first thing in the morning. The talk went on most all
night.
“This fellow—Casey, his name was—had a lot to say about how the
Innsmouth folks watched him and seemed kind of on guard. He found the
Marsh refinery a queer place—it’s in an old mill on the lower falls of
the Manuxet. What he said tallied up with what I’d heard. Books in bad
shape, and no clear account of any kind of dealings. You know it’s
always ben a kind of mystery where the Marshes get the gold they
refine. They’ve never seemed to do much buying in that line, but years
ago they shipped out an enormous lot of ingots.
“Used to be talk of a queer foreign kind of jewellery that the sailors
and refinery men sometimes sold on the sly, or that was seen once or
twice on some of the Marsh womenfolks. People allowed maybe old Captain
Obed traded for it in some heathen port, especially since he was always
ordering stacks of glass beads and trinkets such as seafaring men used
to get for native trade. Others thought and still think he’d found an
old pirate cache out on Devil Reef. But here’s a funny thing. The old
Captain’s ben dead these sixty years, and there ain’t ben a good-sized
ship out of the place since the Civil War; but just the same the
Marshes still keep on buying a few of those native trade things—mostly
glass and rubber gewgaws, they tell me. Maybe the Innsmouth folks like
’em to look at themselves—Gawd knows they’ve gotten to be about as bad
as South Sea cannibals and Guinea savages.
“That plague of ’46 must have taken off the best blood in the place.
Anyway, they’re a doubtful lot now, and the Marshes and the other rich
folks are as bad as any. As I told you, there probably ain’t more’n 400
people in the whole town in spite of all the streets they say there
are. I guess they’re what they call ‘white trash’ down South—lawless
and sly, and full of secret doings. They get a lot of fish and lobsters
and do exporting by truck. Queer how the fish swarm right there and
nowhere else.
“Nobody can ever keep track of these people, and state school officials
and census men have a devil of a time. You can bet that prying
strangers ain’t welcome around Innsmouth. I’ve heard personally of
more’n one business or government man that’s disappeared there, and
there’s loose talk of one who went crazy and is out at Danvers now.
They must have fixed up some awful scare for that fellow.
“That’s why I wouldn’t go at night if I was you. I’ve never ben there
and have no wish to go, but I guess a daytime trip couldn’t hurt
you—even though the people hereabouts will advise you not to make it.
If you’re just sightseeing, and looking for old-time stuff, Innsmouth
ought to be quite a place for you.”
And so I spent part of that evening at the Newburyport Public Library
looking up data about Innsmouth. When I had tried to question the
natives in the shops, the lunch room, the garages, and the fire
station, I had found them even harder to get started than the
ticket-agent had predicted; and realised that I could not spare the
time to overcome their first instinctive reticences. They had a kind of
obscure suspiciousness, as if there were something amiss with anyone
too much interested in Innsmouth. At the Y.M.C.A., where I was
stopping, the clerk merely discouraged my going to such a dismal,
decadent place; and the people at the library shewed much the same
attitude. Clearly, in the eyes of the educated, Innsmouth was merely an
exaggerated case of civic degeneration.
The Essex County histories on the library shelves had very little to
say, except that the town was founded in 1643, noted for shipbuilding
before the Revolution, a seat of great marine prosperity in the early
nineteenth century, and later a minor factory centre using the Manuxet
as power. The epidemic and riots of 1846 were very sparsely treated, as
if they formed a discredit to the county.
References to decline were few, though the significance of the later
record was unmistakable. After the Civil War all industrial life was
confined to the Marsh Refining Company, and the marketing of gold
ingots formed the only remaining bit of major commerce aside from the
eternal fishing. That fishing paid less and less as the price of the
commodity fell and large-scale corporations offered competition, but
there was never a dearth of fish around Innsmouth Harbour. Foreigners
seldom settled there, and there was some discreetly veiled evidence
that a number of Poles and Portuguese who had tried it had been
scattered in a peculiarly drastic fashion.
Most interesting of all was a glancing reference to the strange
jewellery vaguely associated with Innsmouth. It had evidently impressed
the whole countryside more than a little, for mention was made of
specimens in the museum of Miskatonic University at Arkham, and in the
display room of the Newburyport Historical Society. The fragmentary
descriptions of these things were bald and prosaic, but they hinted to
me an undercurrent of persistent strangeness. Something about them
seemed so odd and provocative that I could not put them out of my mind,
and despite the relative lateness of the hour I resolved to see the
local sample—said to be a large, queerly proportioned thing evidently
meant for a tiara—if it could possibly be arranged.
The librarian gave me a note of introduction to the curator of the
Society, a Miss Anna Tilton, who lived nearby, and after a brief
explanation that ancient gentlewoman was kind enough to pilot me into
the closed building, since the hour was not outrageously late. The
collection was a notable one indeed, but in my present mood I had eyes
for nothing but the bizarre object which glistened in a corner cupboard
under the electric lights.
It took no excessive sensitiveness to beauty to make me literally gasp
at the strange, unearthly splendour of the alien, opulent phantasy that
rested there on a purple velvet cushion. Even now I can hardly describe
what I saw, though it was clearly enough a sort of tiara, as the
description had said. It was tall in front, and with a very large and
curiously irregular periphery, as if designed for a head of almost
freakishly elliptical outline. The material seemed to be predominantly
gold, though a weird lighter lustrousness hinted at some strange alloy
with an equally beautiful and scarcely identifiable metal. Its
condition was almost perfect, and one could have spent hours in
studying the striking and puzzlingly untraditional designs—some simply
geometrical, and some plainly marine—chased or moulded in high relief
on its surface with a craftsmanship of incredible skill and grace.
The longer I looked, the more the thing fascinated me; and in this
fascination there was a curiously disturbing element hardly to be
classified or accounted for. At first I decided that it was the queer
other-worldly quality of the art which made me uneasy. All other art
objects I had ever seen either belonged to some known racial or
national stream, or else were consciously modernistic defiances of
every recognised stream. This tiara was neither. It clearly belonged to
some settled technique of infinite maturity and perfection, yet that
technique was utterly remote from any—Eastern or Western, ancient or
modern—which I had ever heard of or seen exemplified. It was as if the
workmanship were that of another planet.
However, I soon saw that my uneasiness had a second and perhaps equally
potent source residing in the pictorial and mathematical suggestions of
the strange designs. The patterns all hinted of remote secrets and
unimaginable abysses in time and space, and the monotonously aquatic
nature of the reliefs became almost sinister. Among these reliefs were
fabulous monsters of abhorrent grotesqueness and malignity—half
ichthyic and half batrachian in suggestion—which one could not
dissociate from a certain haunting and uncomfortable sense of
pseudo-memory, as if they called up some image from deep cells and
tissues whose retentive functions are wholly primal and awesomely
ancestral. At times I fancied that every contour of these blasphemous
fish-frogs was overflowing with the ultimate quintessence of unknown
and inhuman evil.
In odd contrast to the tiara’s aspect was its brief and prosy history
as related by Miss Tilton. It had been pawned for a ridiculous sum at a
shop in State Street in 1873, by a drunken Innsmouth man shortly
afterward killed in a brawl. The Society had acquired it directly from
the pawnbroker, at once giving it a display worthy of its quality. It
was labelled as of probable East-Indian or Indo-Chinese provenance,
though the attribution was frankly tentative.
Miss Tilton, comparing all possible hypotheses regarding its origin and
its presence in New England, was inclined to believe that it formed
part of some exotic pirate hoard discovered by old Captain Obed Marsh.
This view was surely not weakened by the insistent offers of purchase
at a high price which the Marshes began to make as soon as they knew of
its presence, and which they repeated to this day despite the Society’s
unvarying determination not to sell.
As the good lady shewed me out of the building she made it clear that
the pirate theory of the Marsh fortune was a popular one among the
intelligent people of the region. Her own attitude toward shadowed
Innsmouth—which she had never seen—was one of disgust at a community
slipping far down the cultural scale, and she assured me that the
rumours of devil-worship were partly justified by a peculiar secret
cult which had gained force there and engulfed all the orthodox
churches.
It was called, she said, “The Esoteric Order of Dagon”, and was
undoubtedly a debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a
century before, at a time when the Innsmouth fisheries seemed to be
going barren. Its persistence among a simple people was quite natural
in view of the sudden and permanent return of abundantly fine fishing,
and it soon came to be the greatest influence on the town, replacing
Freemasonry altogether and taking up headquarters in the old Masonic
Hall on New Church Green.
All this, to the pious Miss Tilton, formed an excellent reason for
shunning the ancient town of decay and desolation; but to me it was
merely a fresh incentive. To my architectural and historical
anticipations was now added an acute anthropological zeal, and I could
scarcely sleep in my small room at the “Y” as the night wore away.
II.
Shortly before ten the next morning I stood with one small valise in
front of Hammond’s Drug Store in old Market Square waiting for the
Innsmouth bus. As the hour for its arrival drew near I noticed a
general drift of the loungers to other places up the street, or to the
Ideal Lunch across the square. Evidently the ticket-agent had not
exaggerated the dislike which local people bore toward Innsmouth and
its denizens. In a few moments a small motor-coach of extreme
decrepitude and dirty grey colour rattled down State Street, made a
turn, and drew up at the curb beside me. I felt immediately that it was
the right one; a guess which the half-illegible sign on the
windshield—“Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb’port”—soon verified.
There were only three passengers—dark, unkempt men of sullen visage and
somewhat youthful cast—and when the vehicle stopped they clumsily
shambled out and began walking up State Street in a silent, almost
furtive fashion. The driver also alighted, and I watched him as he went
into the drug store to make some purchase. This, I reflected, must be
the Joe Sargent mentioned by the ticket-agent; and even before I
noticed any details there spread over me a wave of spontaneous aversion
which could be neither checked nor explained. It suddenly struck me as
very natural that the local people should not wish to ride on a bus
owned and driven by this man, or to visit any oftener than possible the
habitat of such a man and his kinsfolk.
When the driver came out of the store I looked at him more carefully
and tried to determine the source of my evil impression. He was a thin,
stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall, dressed in shabby
blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed grey golf cap. His age was
perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck
made him seem older when one did not study his dull, expressionless
face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery blue eyes that seemed never
to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly
undeveloped ears. His long, thick lip and coarse-pored, greyish cheeks
seemed almost beardless except for some sparse yellow hairs that
straggled and curled in irregular patches; and in places the surface
seemed queerly irregular, as if peeling from some cutaneous disease.
His hands were large and heavily veined, and had a very unusual
greyish-blue tinge. The fingers were strikingly short in proportion to
the rest of the structure, and seemed to have a tendency to curl
closely into the huge palm. As he walked toward the bus I observed his
peculiarly shambling gait and saw that his feet were inordinately
immense. The more I studied them the more I wondered how he could buy
any shoes to fit them.
A certain greasiness about the fellow increased my dislike. He was
evidently given to working or lounging around the fish docks, and
carried with him much of their characteristic smell. Just what foreign
blood was in him I could not even guess. His oddities certainly did not
look Asiatic, Polynesian, Levantine, or negroid, yet I could see why
the people found him alien. I myself would have thought of biological
degeneration rather than alienage.
I was sorry when I saw that there would be no other passengers on the
bus. Somehow I did not like the idea of riding alone with this driver.
But as leaving time obviously approached I conquered my qualms and
followed the man aboard, extending him a dollar bill and murmuring the
single word “Innsmouth”. He looked curiously at me for a second as he
returned forty cents change without speaking. I took a seat far behind
him, but on the same side of the bus, since I wished to watch the shore
during the journey.
At length the decrepit vehicle started with a jerk, and rattled noisily
past the old brick buildings of State Street amidst a cloud of vapour
from the exhaust. Glancing at the people on the sidewalks, I thought I
detected in them a curious wish to avoid looking at the bus—or at least
a wish to avoid seeming to look at it. Then we turned to the left into
High Street, where the going was smoother; flying by stately old
mansions of the early republic and still older colonial farmhouses,
passing the Lower Green and Parker River, and finally emerging into a
long, monotonous stretch of open shore country.
The day was warm and sunny, but the landscape of sand, sedge-grass, and
stunted shrubbery became more and more desolate as we proceeded. Out
the window I could see the blue water and the sandy line of Plum
Island, and we presently drew very near the beach as our narrow road
veered off from the main highway to Rowley and Ipswich. There were no
visible houses, and I could tell by the state of the road that traffic
was very light hereabouts. The small, weather-worn telephone poles
carried only two wires. Now and then we crossed crude wooden bridges
over tidal creeks that wound far inland and promoted the general
isolation of the region.
Once in a while I noticed dead stumps and crumbling foundation-walls
above the drifting sand, and recalled the old tradition quoted in one
of the histories I had read, that this was once a fertile and thickly
settled countryside. The change, it was said, came simultaneously with
the Innsmouth epidemic of 1846, and was thought by simple folk to have
a dark connexion with hidden forces of evil. Actually, it was caused by
the unwise cutting of woodlands near the shore, which robbed the soil
of its best protection and opened the way for waves of wind-blown sand.
At last we lost sight of Plum Island and saw the vast expanse of the
open Atlantic on our left. Our narrow course began to climb steeply,
and I felt a singular sense of disquiet in looking at the lonely crest
ahead where the rutted roadway met the sky. It was as if the bus were
about to keep on in its ascent, leaving the sane earth altogether and
merging with the unknown arcana of upper air and cryptical sky. The
smell of the sea took on ominous implications, and the silent driver’s
bent, rigid back and narrow head became more and more hateful. As I
looked at him I saw that the back of his head was almost as hairless as
his face, having only a few straggling yellow strands upon a grey
scabrous surface.
Then we reached the crest and beheld the outspread valley beyond, where
the Manuxet joins the sea just north of the long line of cliffs that
culminate in Kingsport Head and veer off toward Cape Ann. On the far,
misty horizon I could just make out the dizzy profile of the Head,
topped by the queer ancient house of which so many legends are told;
but for the moment all my attention was captured by the nearer panorama
just below me. I had, I realised, come face to face with
rumour-shadowed Innsmouth.
It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a
portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots
scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark
and unpainted against the seaward horizon. One of them was crumbling
down at the top, and in that and another there were only black gaping
holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle of sagging
gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the
idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road
I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. There were some large
square Georgian houses, too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed
“widow’s walks”. These were mostly well back from the water, and one or
two seemed to be in moderately sound condition. Stretching inland from
among them I saw the rusted, grass-grown line of the abandoned railway,
with leaning telegraph-poles now devoid of wires, and the half-obscured
lines of the old carriage roads to Rowley and Ipswich.
The decay was worst close to the waterfront, though in its very midst I
could spy the white belfry of a fairly well-preserved brick structure
which looked like a small factory. The harbour, long clogged with sand,
was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater; on which I could begin to
discern the minute forms of a few seated fishermen, and at whose end
were what looked like the foundations of a bygone lighthouse. A sandy
tongue had formed inside this barrier, and upon it I saw a few decrepit
cabins, moored dories, and scattered lobster-pots. The only deep water
seemed to be where the river poured out past the belfried structure and
turned southward to join the ocean at the breakwater’s end.
Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in
indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most
decayed. And far out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long,
black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of
odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil Reef. As I looked, a
subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim
repulsion; and oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than
the primary impression.
We met no one on the road, but presently began to pass deserted farms
in varying stages of ruin. Then I noticed a few inhabited houses with
rags stuffed in the broken windows and shells and dead fish lying about
the littered yards. Once or twice I saw listless-looking people working
in barren gardens or digging clams on the fishy-smelling beach below,
and groups of dirty, simian-visaged children playing around weed-grown
doorsteps. Somehow these people seemed more disquieting than the dismal
buildings, for almost every one had certain peculiarities of face and
motions which I instinctively disliked without being able to define or
comprehend them. For a second I thought this typical physique suggested
some picture I had seen, perhaps in a book, under circumstances of
particular horror or melancholy; but this pseudo-recollection passed
very quickly.
As the bus reached a lower level I began to catch the steady note of a
waterfall through the unnatural stillness. The leaning, unpainted
houses grew thicker, lined both sides of the road, and displayed more
urban tendencies than did those we were leaving behind. The panorama
ahead had contracted to a street scene, and in spots I could see where
a cobblestone pavement and stretches of brick sidewalk had formerly
existed. All the houses were apparently deserted, and there were
occasional gaps where tumbledown chimneys and cellar walls told of
buildings that had collapsed. Pervading everything was the most
nauseous fishy odour imaginable.
Soon cross streets and junctions began to appear; those on the left
leading to shoreward realms of unpaved squalor and decay, while those
on the right shewed vistas of departed grandeur. So far I had seen no
people in the town, but there now came signs of a sparse
habitation—curtained windows here and there, and an occasional battered
motor-car at the curb. Pavement and sidewalks were increasingly well
defined, and though most of the houses were quite old—wood and brick
structures of the early nineteenth century—they were obviously kept fit
for habitation. As an amateur antiquarian I almost lost my olfactory
disgust and my feeling of menace and repulsion amidst this rich,
unaltered survival from the past.
But I was not to reach my destination without one very strong
impression of poignantly disagreeable quality. The bus had come to a
sort of open concourse or radial point with churches on two sides and
the bedraggled remains of a circular green in the centre, and I was
looking at a large pillared hall on the right-hand junction ahead. The
structure’s once white paint was now grey and peeling, and the black
and gold sign on the pediment was so faded that I could only with
difficulty make out the words “Esoteric Order of Dagon”. This, then,
was the former Masonic Hall now given over to a degraded cult. As I
strained to decipher this inscription my notice was distracted by the
raucous tones of a cracked bell across the street, and I quickly turned
to look out the window on my side of the coach.
The sound came from a squat-towered stone church of manifestly later
date than most of the houses, built in a clumsy Gothic fashion and
having a disproportionately high basement with shuttered windows.
Though the hands of its clock were missing on the side I glimpsed, I
knew that those hoarse strokes were telling the hour of eleven. Then
suddenly all thoughts of time were blotted out by an onrushing image of
sharp intensity and unaccountable horror which had seized me before I
knew what it really was. The door of the church basement was open,
revealing a rectangle of blackness inside. And as I looked, a certain
object crossed or seemed to cross that dark rectangle; burning into my
brain a momentary conception of nightmare which was all the more
maddening because analysis could not shew a single nightmarish quality
in it.
It was a living object—the first except the driver that I had seen
since entering the compact part of the town—and had I been in a
steadier mood I would have found nothing whatever of terror in it.
Clearly, as I realised a moment later, it was the pastor; clad in some
peculiar vestments doubtless introduced since the Order of Dagon had
modified the ritual of the local churches. The thing which had probably
caught my first subconscious glance and supplied the touch of bizarre
horror was the tall tiara he wore; an almost exact duplicate of the one
Miss Tilton had shewn me the previous evening. This, acting on my
imagination, had supplied namelessly sinister qualities to the
indeterminate face and robed, shambling form beneath it. There was not,
I soon decided, any reason why I should have felt that shuddering touch
of evil pseudo-memory. Was it not natural that a local mystery cult
should adopt among its regimentals an unique type of head-dress made
familiar to the community in some strange way—perhaps as
treasure-trove?
A very thin sprinkling of repellent-looking youngish people now became
visible on the sidewalks—lone individuals, and silent knots of two or
three. The lower floors of the crumbling houses sometimes harboured
small shops with dingy signs, and I noticed a parked truck or two as we
rattled along. The sound of waterfalls became more and more distinct,
and presently I saw a fairly deep river-gorge ahead, spanned by a wide,
iron-railed highway bridge beyond which a large square opened out. As
we clanked over the bridge I looked out on both sides and observed some
factory buildings on the edge of the grassy bluff or part way down. The
water far below was very abundant, and I could see two vigorous sets of
falls upstream on my right and at least one downstream on my left. From
this point the noise was quite deafening. Then we rolled into the large
semicircular square across the river and drew up on the right-hand side
in front of a tall, cupola-crowned building with remnants of yellow
paint and with a half-effaced sign proclaiming it to be the Gilman
House.
I was glad to get out of that bus, and at once proceeded to check my
valise in the shabby hotel lobby. There was only one person in sight—an
elderly man without what I had come to call the “Innsmouth look”—and I
decided not to ask him any of the questions which bothered me;
remembering that odd things had been noticed in this hotel. Instead, I
strolled out on the square, from which the bus had already gone, and
studied the scene minutely and appraisingly.
One side of the cobblestoned open space was the straight line of the
river; the other was a semicircle of slant-roofed brick buildings of
about the 1800 period, from which several streets radiated away to the
southeast, south, and southwest. Lamps were depressingly few and
small—all low-powered incandescents—and I was glad that my plans called
for departure before dark, even though I knew the moon would be bright.
The buildings were all in fair condition, and included perhaps a dozen
shops in current operation; of which one was a grocery of the First
National chain, others a dismal restaurant, a drug store, and a
wholesale fish-dealer’s office, and still another, at the eastern
extremity of the square near the river, an office of the town’s only
industry—the Marsh Refining Company. There were perhaps ten people
visible, and four or five automobiles and motor trucks stood scattered
about. I did not need to be told that this was the civic centre of
Innsmouth. Eastward I could catch blue glimpses of the harbour, against
which rose the decaying remains of three once beautiful Georgian
steeples. And toward the shore on the opposite bank of the river I saw
the white belfry surmounting what I took to be the Marsh refinery.
For some reason or other I chose to make my first inquiries at the
chain grocery, whose personnel was not likely to be native to
Innsmouth. I found a solitary boy of about seventeen in charge, and was
pleased to note the brightness and affability which promised cheerful
information. He seemed exceptionally eager to talk, and I soon gathered
that he did not like the place, its fishy smell, or its furtive people.
A word with any outsider was a relief to him. He hailed from Arkham,
boarded with a family who came from Ipswich, and went back home
whenever he got a moment off. His family did not like him to work in
Innsmouth, but the chain had transferred him there and he did not wish
to give up his job.
There was, he said, no public library or chamber of commerce in
Innsmouth, but I could probably find my way about. The street I had
come down was Federal. West of that were the fine old residence
streets—Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and Adams—and east of it were the
shoreward slums. It was in these slums—along Main Street—that I would
find the old Georgian churches, but they were all long abandoned. It
would be well not to make oneself too conspicuous in such
neighbourhoods—especially north of the river—since the people were
sullen and hostile. Some strangers had even disappeared.
Certain spots were almost forbidden territory, as he had learned at
considerable cost. One must not, for example, linger much around the
Marsh refinery, or around any of the still used churches, or around the
pillared Order of Dagon Hall at New Church Green. Those churches were
very odd—all violently disavowed by their respective denominations
elsewhere, and apparently using the queerest kind of ceremonials and
clerical vestments. Their creeds were heterodox and mysterious,
involving hints of certain marvellous transformations leading to bodily
immortality—of a sort—on this earth. The youth’s own pastor—Dr. Wallace
of Asbury M. E. Church in Arkham—had gravely urged him not to join any
church in Innsmouth.
As for the Innsmouth people—the youth hardly knew what to make of them.
They were as furtive and seldom seen as animals that live in burrows,
and one could hardly imagine how they passed the time apart from their
desultory fishing. Perhaps—judging from the quantities of bootleg
liquor they consumed—they lay for most of the daylight hours in an
alcoholic stupor. They seemed sullenly banded together in some sort of
fellowship and understanding—despising the world as if they had access
to other and preferable spheres of entity. Their appearance—especially
those staring, unwinking eyes which one never saw shut—was certainly
shocking enough; and their voices were disgusting. It was awful to hear
them chanting in their churches at night, and especially during their
main festivals or revivals, which fell twice a year on April 30th and
October 31st.
They were very fond of the water, and swam a great deal in both river
and harbour. Swimming races out to Devil Reef were very common, and
everyone in sight seemed well able to share in this arduous sport. When
one came to think of it, it was generally only rather young people who
were seen about in public, and of these the oldest were apt to be the
most tainted-looking. When exceptions did occur, they were mostly
persons with no trace of aberrancy, like the old clerk at the hotel.
One wondered what became of the bulk of the older folk, and whether the
“Innsmouth look” were not a strange and insidious disease-phenomenon
which increased its hold as years advanced.
Only a very rare affliction, of course, could bring about such vast and
radical anatomical changes in a single individual after
maturity—changes involving osseous factors as basic as the shape of the
skull—but then, even this aspect was no more baffling and unheard-of
than the visible features of the malady as a whole. It would be hard,
the youth implied, to form any real conclusions regarding such a
matter; since one never came to know the natives personally no matter
how long one might live in Innsmouth.
The youth was certain that many specimens even worse than the worst
visible ones were kept locked indoors in some places. People sometimes
heard the queerest kind of sounds. The tottering waterfront hovels
north of the river were reputedly connected by hidden tunnels, being
thus a veritable warren of unseen abnormalities. What kind of foreign
blood—if any—these beings had, it was impossible to tell. They
sometimes kept certain especially repulsive characters out of sight
when government agents and others from the outside world came to town.
It would be of no use, my informant said, to ask the natives anything
about the place. The only one who would talk was a very aged but
normal-looking man who lived at the poorhouse on the north rim of the
town and spent his time walking about or lounging around the fire
station. This hoary character, Zadok Allen, was ninety-six years old
and somewhat touched in the head, besides being the town drunkard. He
was a strange, furtive creature who constantly looked over his shoulder
as if afraid of something, and when sober could not be persuaded to
talk at all with strangers. He was, however, unable to resist any offer
of his favourite poison; and once drunk would furnish the most
astonishing fragments of whispered reminiscence.
After all, though, little useful data could be gained from him; since
his stories were all insane, incomplete hints of impossible marvels and
horrors which could have no source save in his own disordered fancy.
Nobody ever believed him, but the natives did not like him to drink and
talk with strangers; and it was not always safe to be seen questioning
him. It was probably from him that some of the wildest popular whispers
and delusions were derived.
Several non-native residents had reported monstrous glimpses from time
to time, but between old Zadok’s tales and the malformed denizens it
was no wonder such illusions were current. None of the non-natives ever
stayed out late at night, there being a widespread impression that it
was not wise to do so. Besides, the streets were loathsomely dark.
As for business—the abundance of fish was certainly almost uncanny, but
the natives were taking less and less advantage of it. Moreover, prices
were falling and competition was growing. Of course the town’s real
business was the refinery, whose commercial office was on the square
only a few doors east of where we stood. Old Man Marsh was never seen,
but sometimes went to the works in a closed, curtained car.
There were all sorts of rumours about how Marsh had come to look. He
had once been a great dandy, and people said he still wore the
frock-coated finery of the Edwardian age, curiously adapted to certain
deformities. His sons had formerly conducted the office in the square,
but latterly they had been keeping out of sight a good deal and leaving
the brunt of affairs to the younger generation. The sons and their
sisters had come to look very queer, especially the elder ones; and it
was said that their health was failing.
One of the Marsh daughters was a repellent, reptilian-looking woman who
wore an excess of weird jewellery clearly of the same exotic tradition
as that to which the strange tiara belonged. My informant had noticed
it many times, and had heard it spoken of as coming from some secret
hoard, either of pirates or of daemons. The clergymen—or priests, or
whatever they were called nowadays—also wore this kind of ornament as a
head-dress; but one seldom caught glimpses of them. Other specimens the
youth had not seen, though many were rumoured to exist around
Innsmouth.
The Marshes, together with the other three gently bred families of the
town—the Waites, the Gilmans, and the Eliots—were all very retiring.
They lived in immense houses along Washington Street, and several were
reputed to harbour in concealment certain living kinsfolk whose
personal aspect forbade public view, and whose deaths had been reported
and recorded.
Warning me that many of the street signs were down, the youth drew for
my benefit a rough but ample and painstaking sketch map of the town’s
salient features. After a moment’s study I felt sure that it would be
of great help, and pocketed it with profuse thanks. Disliking the
dinginess of the single restaurant I had seen, I bought a fair supply
of cheese crackers and ginger wafers to serve as a lunch later on. My
programme, I decided, would be to thread the principal streets, talk
with any non-natives I might encounter, and catch the eight o’clock
coach for Arkham. The town, I could see, formed a significant and
exaggerated example of communal decay; but being no sociologist I would
limit my serious observations to the field of architecture.
Thus I began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth’s
narrow, shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward
the roar of the lower falls, I passed close to the Marsh refinery,
which seemed oddly free from the noise of industry. This building stood
on the steep river bluff near a bridge and an open confluence of
streets which I took to be the earliest civic centre, displaced after
the Revolution by the present Town Square.
Re-crossing the gorge on the Main Street bridge, I struck a region of
utter desertion which somehow made me shudder. Collapsing huddles of
gambrel roofs formed a jagged and fantastic skyline, above which rose
the ghoulish, decapitated steeple of an ancient church. Some houses
along Main Street were tenanted, but most were tightly boarded up. Down
unpaved side streets I saw the black, gaping windows of deserted
hovels, many of which leaned at perilous and incredible angles through
the sinking of part of the foundations. Those windows stared so
spectrally that it took courage to turn eastward toward the waterfront.
Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather
than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of
stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of fishy-eyed
vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black,
brooding compartments given over to cobwebs and memories and the
conqueror worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even
the stoutest philosophy can disperse.
Fish Street was as deserted as Main, though it differed in having many
brick and stone warehouses still in excellent shape. Water Street was
almost its duplicate, save that there were great seaward gaps where
wharves had been. Not a living thing did I see, except for the
scattered fishermen on the distant breakwater, and not a sound did I
hear save the lapping of the harbour tides and the roar of the falls in
the Manuxet. The town was getting more and more on my nerves, and I
looked behind me furtively as I picked my way back over the tottering
Water Street bridge. The Fish Street bridge, according to the sketch,
was in ruins.
North of the river there were traces of squalid life—active
fish-packing houses in Water Street, smoking chimneys and patched roofs
here and there, occasional sounds from indeterminate sources, and
infrequent shambling forms in the dismal streets and unpaved lanes—but
I seemed to find this even more oppressive than the southerly
desertion. For one thing, the people were more hideous and abnormal
than those near the centre of the town; so that I was several times
evilly reminded of something utterly fantastic which I could not quite
place. Undoubtedly the alien strain in the Innsmouth folk was stronger
here than farther inland—unless, indeed, the “Innsmouth look” were a
disease rather than a blood strain, in which case this district might
be held to harbour the more advanced cases.
One detail that annoyed me was the distribution of the few faint sounds
I heard. They ought naturally to have come wholly from the visibly
inhabited houses, yet in reality were often strongest inside the most
rigidly boarded-up facades. There were creakings, scurryings, and
hoarse doubtful noises; and I thought uncomfortably about the hidden
tunnels suggested by the grocery boy. Suddenly I found myself wondering
what the voices of those denizens would be like. I had heard no speech
so far in this quarter, and was unaccountably anxious not to do so.
Pausing only long enough to look at two fine but ruinous old churches
at Main and Church Streets, I hastened out of that vile waterfront
slum. My next logical goal was New Church Green, but somehow or other I
could not bear to repass the church in whose basement I had glimpsed
the inexplicably frightening form of that strangely diademed priest or
pastor. Besides, the grocery youth had told me that the churches, as
well as the Order of Dagon Hall, were not advisable neighbourhoods for
strangers.
Accordingly I kept north along Main to Martin, then turning inland,
crossing Federal Street safely north of the Green, and entering the
decayed patrician neighbourhood of northern Broad, Washington,
Lafayette, and Adams Streets. Though these stately old avenues were
ill-surfaced and unkempt, their elm-shaded dignity had not entirely
departed. Mansion after mansion claimed my gaze, most of them decrepit
and boarded up amidst neglected grounds, but one or two in each street
shewing signs of occupancy. In Washington Street there was a row of
four or five in excellent repair and with finely tended lawns and
gardens. The most sumptuous of these—with wide terraced parterres
extending back the whole way to Lafayette Street—I took to be the home
of Old Man Marsh, the afflicted refinery owner.
In all these streets no living thing was visible, and I wondered at the
complete absense of cats and dogs from Innsmouth. Another thing which
puzzled and disturbed me, even in some of the best-preserved mansions,
was the tightly shuttered condition of many third-story and attic
windows. Furtiveness and secretiveness seemed universal in this hushed
city of alienage and death, and I could not escape the sensation of
being watched from ambush on every hand by sly, staring eyes that never
shut.
I shivered as the cracked stroke of three sounded from a belfry on my
left. Too well did I recall the squat church from which those notes
came. Following Washington Street toward the river, I now faced a new
zone of former industry and commerce; noting the ruins of a factory
ahead, and seeing others, with the traces of an old railway station and
covered railway bridge beyond, up the gorge on my right.
The uncertain bridge now before me was posted with a warning sign, but
I took the risk and crossed again to the south bank where traces of
life reappeared. Furtive, shambling creatures stared cryptically in my
direction, and more normal faces eyed me coldly and curiously.
Innsmouth was rapidly becoming intolerable, and I turned down Paine
Street toward the Square in the hope of getting some vehicle to take me
to Arkham before the still-distant starting-time of that sinister bus.
It was then that I saw the tumbledown fire station on my left, and
noticed the red-faced, bushy-bearded, watery-eyed old man in
nondescript rags who sat on a bench in front of it talking with a pair
of unkempt but not abnormal-looking firemen. This, of course, must be
Zadok Allen, the half-crazed, liquorish nonagenarian whose tales of old
Innsmouth and its shadow were so hideous and incredible.
III.
It must have been some imp of the perverse—or some sardonic pull from
dark, hidden sources—which made me change my plans as I did. I had long
before resolved to limit my observations to architecture alone, and I
was even then hurrying toward the Square in an effort to get quick
transportation out of this festering city of death and decay; but the
sight of old Zadok Allen set up new currents in my mind and made me
slacken my pace uncertainly.
I had been assured that the old man could do nothing but hint at wild,
disjointed, and incredible legends, and I had been warned that the
natives made it unsafe to be seen talking to him; yet the thought of
this aged witness to the town’s decay, with memories going back to the
early days of ships and factories, was a lure that no amount of reason
could make me resist. After all, the strangest and maddest of myths are
often merely symbols or allegories based upon truth—and old Zadok must
have seen everything which went on around Innsmouth for the last ninety
years. Curiosity flared up beyond sense and caution, and in my youthful
egotism I fancied I might be able to sift a nucleus of real history
from the confused, extravagant outpouring I would probably extract with
the aid of raw whiskey.
I knew that I could not accost him then and there, for the firemen
would surely notice and object. Instead, I reflected, I would prepare
by getting some bootleg liquor at a place where the grocery boy had
told me it was plentiful. Then I would loaf near the fire station in
apparent casualness, and fall in with old Zadok after he had started on
one of his frequent rambles. The youth said that he was very restless,
seldom sitting around the station for more than an hour or two at a
time.
A quart bottle of whiskey was easily, though not cheaply, obtained in
the rear of a dingy variety-store just off the Square in Eliot Street.
The dirty-looking fellow who waited on me had a touch of the staring
“Innsmouth look”, but was quite civil in his way; being perhaps used to
the custom of such convivial strangers—truckmen, gold-buyers, and the
like—as were occasionally in town.
Reëntering the Square I saw that luck was with me; for—shuffling out of
Paine Street around the corner of the Gilman House—I glimpsed nothing
less than the tall, lean, tattered form of old Zadok Allen himself. In
accordance with my plan, I attracted his attention by brandishing my
newly purchased bottle; and soon realised that he had begun to shuffle
wistfully after me as I turned into Waite Street on my way to the most
deserted region I could think of.
I was steering my course by the map the grocery boy had prepared, and
was aiming for the wholly abandoned stretch of southern waterfront
which I had previously visited. The only people in sight there had been
the fishermen on the distant breakwater; and by going a few squares
south I could get beyond the range of these, finding a pair of seats on
some abandoned wharf and being free to question old Zadok unobserved
for an indefinite time. Before I reached Main Street I could hear a
faint and wheezy “Hey, Mister!” behind me, and I presently allowed the
old man to catch up and take copious pulls from the quart bottle.
I began putting out feelers as we walked along to Water Street and
turned southward amidst the omnipresent desolation and crazily tilted
ruins, but found that the aged tongue did not loosen as quickly as I
had expected. At length I saw a grass-grown opening toward the sea
between crumbling brick walls, with the weedy length of an
earth-and-masonry wharf projecting beyond. Piles of moss-covered stones
near the water promised tolerable seats, and the scene was sheltered
from all possible view by a ruined warehouse on the north. Here, I
thought, was the ideal place for a long secret colloquy; so I guided my
companion down the lane and picked out spots to sit in among the mossy
stones. The air of death and desertion was ghoulish, and the smell of
fish almost insufferable; but I was resolved to let nothing deter me.
About four hours remained for conversation if I were to catch the eight
o’clock coach for Arkham, and I began to dole out more liquor to the
ancient tippler; meanwhile eating my own frugal lunch. In my donations
I was careful not to overshoot the mark, for I did not wish Zadok’s
vinous garrulousness to pass into a stupor. After an hour his furtive
taciturnity shewed signs of disappearing, but much to my disappointment
he still sidetracked my questions about Innsmouth and its
shadow-haunted past. He would babble of current topics, revealing a
wide acquaintance with newspapers and a great tendency to philosophise
in a sententious village fashion.
Toward the end of the second hour I feared my quart of whiskey would
not be enough to produce results, and was wondering whether I had
better leave old Zadok and go back for more. Just then, however, chance
made the opening which my questions had been unable to make; and the
wheezing ancient’s rambling took a turn that caused me to lean forward
and listen alertly. My back was toward the fishy-smelling sea, but he
was facing it, and something or other had caused his wandering gaze to
light on the low, distant line of Devil Reef, then shewing plainly and
almost fascinatingly above the waves. The sight seemed to displease
him, for he began a series of weak curses which ended in a confidential
whisper and a knowing leer. He bent toward me, took hold of my coat
lapel, and hissed out some hints that could not be mistaken.
“Thar’s whar it all begun—that cursed place of all wickedness whar the
deep water starts. Gate o’ hell—sheer drop daown to a bottom no
saoundin’-line kin tech. Ol’ Cap’n Obed done it—him that faound aout
more’n was good fer him in the Saouth Sea islands.
“Everybody was in a bad way them days. Trade fallin’ off, mills losin’
business—even the new ones—an’ the best of our menfolks kilt
a-privateerin’ in the War of 1812 or lost with the Elizy brig an’ the
Ranger snow—both of ’em Gilman venters. Obed Marsh he had three ships
afloat—brigantine Columby, brig Hetty, an’ barque Sumatry Queen. He was
the only one as kep’ on with the East-Injy an’ Pacific trade, though
Esdras Martin’s barkentine Malay Pride made a venter as late as
’twenty-eight.
“Never was nobody like Cap’n Obed—old limb o’ Satan! Heh, heh! I kin
mind him a-tellin’ abaout furren parts, an’ callin’ all the folks
stupid fer goin’ to Christian meetin’ an’ bearin’ their burdens meek
an’ lowly. Says they’d orter git better gods like some o’ the folks in
the Injies—gods as ud bring ’em good fishin’ in return for their
sacrifices, an’ ud reely answer folks’s prayers.
“Matt Eliot, his fust mate, talked a lot, too, only he was agin’
folks’s doin’ any heathen things. Told abaout an island east of
Otaheité whar they was a lot o’ stone ruins older’n anybody knew
anything abaout, kind o’ like them on Ponape, in the Carolines, but
with carvin’s of faces that looked like the big statues on Easter
Island. They was a little volcanic island near thar, too, whar they was
other ruins with diff’rent carvin’s—ruins all wore away like they’d ben
under the sea onct, an’ with picters of awful monsters all over ’em.
“Wal, Sir, Matt he says the natives araound thar had all the fish they
cud ketch, an’ sported bracelets an’ armlets an’ head rigs made aout of
a queer kind o’ gold an’ covered with picters o’ monsters jest like the
ones carved over the ruins on the little island—sorter fish-like frogs
or frog-like fishes that was drawed in all kinds o’ positions like they
was human bein’s. Nobody cud git aout o’ them whar they got all the
stuff, an’ all the other natives wondered haow they managed to find
fish in plenty even when the very next islands had lean pickin’s. Matt
he got to wonderin’ too, an’ so did Cap’n Obed. Obed he notices,
besides, that lots of the han’some young folks ud drop aout o’ sight
fer good from year to year, an’ that they wa’n’t many old folks
araound. Also, he thinks some of the folks looks durned queer even fer
Kanakys.
“It took Obed to git the truth aout o’ them heathen. I dun’t know haow
he done it, but he begun by tradin’ fer the gold-like things they wore.
Ast ’em whar they come from, an’ ef they cud git more, an’ finally
wormed the story aout o’ the old chief—Walakea, they called him. Nobody
but Obed ud ever a believed the old yeller devil, but the Cap’n cud
read folks like they was books. Heh, heh! Nobody never believes me naow
when I tell ’em, an’ I dun’t s’pose you will, young feller—though come
to look at ye, ye hev kind o’ got them sharp-readin’ eyes like Obed
had.”
The old man’s whisper grew fainter, and I found myself shuddering at
the terrible and sincere portentousness of his intonation, even though
I knew his tale could be nothing but drunken phantasy.
“Wal, Sir, Obed he larnt that they’s things on this arth as most folks
never heerd abaout—an’ wouldn’t believe ef they did hear. It seems
these Kanakys was sacrificin’ heaps o’ their young men an’ maidens to
some kind o’ god-things that lived under the sea, an’ gittin’ all kinds
o’ favour in return. They met the things on the little islet with the
queer ruins, an’ it seems them awful picters o’ frog-fish monsters was
supposed to be picters o’ these things. Mebbe they was the kind o’
critters as got all the mermaid stories an’ sech started. They had all
kinds o’ cities on the sea-bottom, an’ this island was heaved up from
thar. Seems they was some of the things alive in the stone buildin’s
when the island come up sudden to the surface. That’s haow the Kanakys
got wind they was daown thar. Made sign-talk as soon as they got over
bein’ skeert, an’ pieced up a bargain afore long.
“Them things liked human sacrifices. Had had ’em ages afore, but lost
track o’ the upper world arter a time. What they done to the victims it
ain’t fer me to say, an’ I guess Obed wa’n’t none too sharp abaout
askin’. But it was all right with the heathens, because they’d ben
havin’ a hard time an’ was desp’rate abaout everything. They give a
sarten number o’ young folks to the sea-things twict every year—May-Eve
an’ Hallowe’en—reg’lar as cud be. Also give some o’ the carved
knick-knacks they made. What the things agreed to give in return was
plenty o’ fish—they druv ’em in from all over the sea—an’ a few
gold-like things naow an’ then.
“Wal, as I says, the natives met the things on the little volcanic
islet—goin’ thar in canoes with the sacrifices et cet’ry, and bringin’
back any of the gold-like jools as was comin’ to ’em. At fust the
things didn’t never go onto the main island, but arter a time they come
to want to. Seems they hankered arter mixin’ with the folks, an’ havin’
j’int ceremonies on the big days—May-Eve an’ Hallowe’en. Ye see, they
was able to live both in an’ aout o’ water—what they call amphibians, I
guess. The Kanakys told ’em as haow folks from the other islands might
wanta wipe ’em aout ef they got wind o’ their bein’ thar, but they says
they dun’t keer much, because they cud wipe aout the hull brood o’
humans ef they was willin’ to bother—that is, any as didn’t hev sarten
signs sech as was used onct by the lost Old Ones, whoever they was. But
not wantin’ to bother, they’d lay low when anybody visited the island.
“When it come to matin’ with them toad-lookin’ fishes, the Kanakys kind
o’ balked, but finally they larnt something as put a new face on the
matter. Seems that human folks has got a kind o’ relation to sech
water-beasts—that everything alive come aout o’ the water onct, an’
only needs a little change to go back agin. Them things told the
Kanakys that ef they mixed bloods there’d be children as ud look human
at fust, but later turn more’n more like the things, till finally
they’d take to the water an’ jine the main lot o’ things daown thar.
An’ this is the important part, young feller—them as turned into fish
things an’ went into the water wouldn’t never die. Them things never
died excep’ they was kilt violent.
“Wal, Sir, it seems by the time Obed knowed them islanders they was all
full o’ fish blood from them deep-water things. When they got old an’
begun to shew it, they was kep’ hid until they felt like takin’ to the
water an’ quittin’ the place. Some was more teched than others, an’
some never did change quite enough to take to the water; but mostly
they turned aout jest the way them things said. Them as was born more
like the things changed arly, but them as was nearly human sometimes
stayed on the island till they was past seventy, though they’d usually
go daown under fer trial trips afore that. Folks as had took to the
water gen’rally come back a good deal to visit, so’s a man ud often be
a-talkin’ to his own five-times-great-grandfather, who’d left the dry
land a couple o’ hundred years or so afore.
“Everybody got aout o’ the idee o’ dyin’—excep’ in canoe wars with the
other islanders, or as sacrifices to the sea-gods daown below, or from
snake-bite or plague or sharp gallopin’ ailments or somethin’ afore
they cud take to the water—but simply looked forrad to a kind o’ change
that wa’n’t a bit horrible arter a while. They thought what they’d got
was well wuth all they’d had to give up—an’ I guess Obed kind o’ come
to think the same hisself when he’d chewed over old Walakea’s story a
bit. Walakea, though, was one of the few as hadn’t got none of the fish
blood—bein’ of a royal line that intermarried with royal lines on other
islands.
“Walakea he shewed Obed a lot o’ rites an’ incantations as had to do
with the sea-things, an’ let him see some o’ the folks in the village
as had changed a lot from human shape. Somehaow or other, though, he
never would let him see one of the reg’lar things from right aout o’
the water. In the end he give him a funny kind o’ thingumajig made aout
o’ lead or something, that he said ud bring up the fish things from any
place in the water whar they might be a nest of ’em. The idee was to
drop it daown with the right kind o’ prayers an’ sech. Walakea allaowed
as the things was scattered all over the world, so’s anybody that
looked abaout cud find a nest an’ bring ’em up ef they was wanted.
“Matt he didn’t like this business at all, an’ wanted Obed shud keep
away from the island; but the Cap’n was sharp fer gain, an’ faound he
cud git them gold-like things so cheap it ud pay him to make a
specialty of ’em. Things went on that way fer years, an’ Obed got
enough o’ that gold-like stuff to make him start the refinery in
Waite’s old run-daown fullin’ mill. He didn’t dass sell the pieces like
they was, fer folks ud be all the time askin’ questions. All the same
his crews ud git a piece an’ dispose of it naow and then, even though
they was swore to keep quiet; an’ he let his women-folks wear some o’
the pieces as was more human-like than most.
“Wal, come abaout ’thutty-eight—when I was seven year’ old—Obed he
faound the island people all wiped aout between v’yages. Seems the
other islanders had got wind o’ what was goin’ on, an’ had took matters
into their own hands. S’pose they musta had, arter all, them old magic
signs as the sea-things says was the only things they was afeard of. No
tellin’ what any o’ them Kanakys will chance to git a holt of when the
sea-bottom throws up some island with ruins older’n the deluge. Pious
cusses, these was—they didn’t leave nothin’ standin’ on either the main
island or the little volcanic islet excep’ what parts of the ruins was
too big to knock daown. In some places they was little stones strewed
abaout—like charms—with somethin’ on ’em like what ye call a swastika
naowadays. Prob’ly them was the Old Ones’ signs. Folks all wiped aout,
no trace o’ no gold-like things, an’ none o’ the nearby Kanakys ud
breathe a word abaout the matter. Wouldn’t even admit they’d ever ben
any people on that island.
“That naturally hit Obed pretty hard, seein’ as his normal trade was
doin’ very poor. It hit the whole of Innsmouth, too, because in
seafarin’ days what profited the master of a ship gen’lly profited the
crew proportionate. Most o’ the folks araound the taown took the hard
times kind o’ sheep-like an’ resigned, but they was in bad shape
because the fishin’ was peterin’ aout an’ the mills wa’n’t doin’ none
too well.
“Then’s the time Obed he begun a-cursin’ at the folks fer bein’ dull
sheep an’ prayin’ to a Christian heaven as didn’t help ’em none. He
told ’em he’d knowed of folks as prayed to gods that give somethin’ ye
reely need, an’ says ef a good bunch o’ men ud stand by him, he cud
mebbe git a holt o’ sarten paowers as ud bring plenty o’ fish an’ quite
a bit o’ gold. O’ course them as sarved on the Sumatry Queen an’ seed
the island knowed what he meant, an’ wa’n’t none too anxious to git
clost to sea-things like they’d heerd tell on, but them as didn’t know
what ’twas all abaout got kind o’ swayed by what Obed had to say, an’
begun to ast him what he cud do to set ’em on the way to the faith as
ud bring ’em results.”
Here the old man faltered, mumbled, and lapsed into a moody and
apprehensive silence; glancing nervously over his shoulder and then
turning back to stare fascinatedly at the distant black reef. When I
spoke to him he did not answer, so I knew I would have to let him
finish the bottle. The insane yarn I was hearing interested me
profoundly, for I fancied there was contained within it a sort of crude
allegory based upon the strangenesses of Innsmouth and elaborated by an
imagination at once creative and full of scraps of exotic legend. Not
for a moment did I believe that the tale had any really substantial
foundation; but none the less the account held a hint of genuine
terror, if only because it brought in references to strange jewels
clearly akin to the malign tiara I had seen at Newburyport. Perhaps the
ornaments had, after all, come from some strange island; and possibly
the wild stories were lies of the bygone Obed himself rather than of
this antique toper.
I handed Zadok the bottle, and he drained it to the last drop. It was
curious how he could stand so much whiskey, for not even a trace of
thickness had come into his high, wheezy voice. He licked the nose of
the bottle and slipped it into his pocket, then beginning to nod and
whisper softly to himself. I bent close to catch any articulate words
he might utter, and thought I saw a sardonic smile behind the stained,
bushy whiskers. Yes—he was really forming words, and I could grasp a
fair proportion of them.
“Poor Matt—Matt he allus was agin’ it—tried to line up the folks on his
side, an’ had long talks with the preachers—no use—they run the
Congregational parson aout o’ taown, an’ the Methodist feller
quit—never did see Resolved Babcock, the Baptist parson, agin—Wrath o’
Jehovy—I was a mighty little critter, but I heerd what I heerd an’ seen
what I seen—Dagon an’ Ashtoreth—Belial an’ Beëlzebub—Golden Caff an’
the idols o’ Canaan an’ the Philistines—Babylonish abominations—Mene,
mene, tekel, upharsin—”
He stopped again, and from the look in his watery blue eyes I feared he
was close to a stupor after all. But when I gently shook his shoulder
he turned on me with astonishing alertness and snapped out some more
obscure phrases.
“Dun’t believe me, hey? Heh, heh, heh—then jest tell me, young feller,
why Cap’n Obed an’ twenty odd other folks used to row aout to Devil
Reef in the dead o’ night an’ chant things so laoud ye cud hear ’em all
over taown when the wind was right? Tell me that, hey? An’ tell me why
Obed was allus droppin’ heavy things daown into the deep water t’other
side o’ the reef whar the bottom shoots daown like a cliff lower’n ye
kin saound? Tell me what he done with that funny-shaped lead
thingumajig as Walakea give him? Hey, boy? An’ what did they all haowl
on May-Eve, an’ agin the next Hallowe’en? An’ why’d the new church
parsons—fellers as used to be sailors—wear them queer robes an’ cover
theirselves with them gold-like things Obed brung? Hey?”
The watery blue eyes were almost savage and maniacal now, and the dirty
white beard bristled electrically. Old Zadok probably saw me shrink
back, for he had begun to cackle evilly.
“Heh, heh, heh, heh! Beginnin’ to see, hey? Mebbe ye’d like to a ben me
in them days, when I seed things at night aout to sea from the cupalo
top o’ my haouse. Oh, I kin tell ye, little pitchers hev big ears, an’
I wa’n’t missin’ nothin’ o’ what was gossiped abaout Cap’n Obed an’ the
folks aout to the reef! Heh, heh, heh! Haow abaout the night I took my
pa’s ship’s glass up to the cupalo an’ seed the reef a-bristlin’ thick
with shapes that dove off quick soon’s the moon riz? Obed an’ the folks
was in a dory, but them shapes dove off the far side into the deep
water an’ never come up. . . . Haow’d ye like to be a little shaver
alone up in a cupalo a-watchin’ shapes as wa’n’t human shapes? . . .
Hey? . . . Heh, heh, heh, heh. . . .”
The old man was getting hysterical, and I began to shiver with a
nameless alarm. He laid a gnarled claw on my shoulder, and it seemed to
me that its shaking was not altogether that of mirth.
“S’pose one night ye seed somethin’ heavy heaved offen Obed’s dory
beyond the reef, an’ then larned nex’ day a young feller was missin’
from home? Hey? Did anybody ever see hide or hair o’ Hiram Gilman agin?
Did they? An’ Nick Pierce, an’ Luelly Waite, an’ Adoniram Saouthwick,
an’ Henry Garrison? Hey? Heh, heh, heh, heh. . . . Shapes talkin’ sign
language with their hands . . . them as had reel hands. . . .
“Wal, Sir, that was the time Obed begun to git on his feet agin. Folks
see his three darters a-wearin’ gold-like things as nobody’d never see
on ’em afore, an’ smoke started comin’ aout o’ the refin’ry chimbly.
Other folks were prosp’rin’, too—fish begun to swarm into the harbour
fit to kill, an’ heaven knows what sized cargoes we begun to ship aout
to Newb’ryport, Arkham, an’ Boston. ’Twas then Obed got the ol’ branch
railrud put through. Some Kingsport fishermen heerd abaout the ketch
an’ come up in sloops, but they was all lost. Nobody never see ’em
agin. An’ jest then our folks organised the Esoteric Order o’ Dagon,
an’ bought Masonic Hall offen Calvary Commandery for it . . . heh, heh,
heh! Matt Eliot was a Mason an’ agin’ the sellin’, but he dropped aout
o’ sight jest then.
“Remember, I ain’t sayin’ Obed was set on hevin’ things jest like they
was on that Kanaky isle. I dun’t think he aimed at fust to do no
mixin’, nor raise no younguns to take to the water an’ turn into fishes
with eternal life. He wanted them gold things, an’ was willin’ to pay
heavy, an’ I guess the others was satisfied fer a while. . . .
“Come in ’forty-six the taown done some lookin’ an’ thinkin’ fer
itself. Too many folks missin’—too much wild preachin’ at meetin’ of a
Sunday—too much talk abaout that reef. I guess I done a bit by tellin’
Selectman Mowry what I see from the cupalo. They was a party one night
as follered Obed’s craowd aout to the reef, an’ I heerd shots betwixt
the dories. Nex’ day Obed an’ thutty-two others was in gaol, with
everbody a-wonderin’ jest what was afoot an’ jest what charge agin’ ’em
cud be got to holt. God, ef anybody’d look’d ahead . . . a couple o’
weeks later, when nothin’ had ben throwed into the sea fer that
long. . . .”
Zadok was shewing signs of fright and exhaustion, and I let him keep
silence for a while, though glancing apprehensively at my watch. The
tide had turned and was coming in now, and the sound of the waves
seemed to arouse him. I was glad of that tide, for at high water the
fishy smell might not be so bad. Again I strained to catch his
whispers.
“That awful night . . . I seed ’em . . . I was up in the cupalo . . .
hordes of ’em . . . swarms of ’em . . . all over the reef an’ swimmin’
up the harbour into the Manuxet. . . . God, what happened in the
streets of Innsmouth that night . . . they rattled our door, but pa
wouldn’t open . . . then he clumb aout the kitchen winder with his
musket to find Selectman Mowry an’ see what he cud do. . . . Maounds o’
the dead an’ the dyin’ . . . shots an’ screams . . . shaoutin’ in Ol’
Squar an’ Taown Squar an’ New Church Green . . . gaol throwed
open . . . proclamation . . . treason . . . called it the plague when
folks come in an’ faound haff our people missin’ . . . nobody left but
them as ud jine in with Obed an’ them things or else keep quiet . . .
never heerd o’ my pa no more. . . .”
The old man was panting, and perspiring profusely. His grip on my
shoulder tightened.
“Everything cleaned up in the mornin’—but they was traces. . . . Obed
he kinder takes charge an’ says things is goin’ to be changed . . .
others’ll worship with us at meetin’-time, an’ sarten haouses hez got
to entertain guests . . . they wanted to mix like they done with the
Kanakys, an’ he fer one didn’t feel baound to stop ’em. Far gone, was
Obed . . . jest like a crazy man on the subjeck. He says they brung us
fish an’ treasure, an’ shud hev what they hankered arter. . . .
“Nothin’ was to be diff’runt on the aoutside, only we was to keep shy
o’ strangers ef we knowed what was good fer us. We all hed to take the
Oath o’ Dagon, an’ later on they was secon’ an’ third Oaths that some
on us took. Them as ud help special, ud git special rewards—gold an’
sech— No use balkin’, fer they was millions of ’em daown thar. They’d
ruther not start risin’ an’ wipin’ aout humankind, but ef they was gave
away an’ forced to, they cud do a lot toward jest that. We didn’t hev
them old charms to cut ’em off like folks in the Saouth Sea did, an’
them Kanakys wudn’t never give away their secrets.
“Yield up enough sacrifices an’ savage knick-knacks an’ harbourage in
the taown when they wanted it, an’ they’d let well enough alone. Wudn’t
bother no strangers as might bear tales aoutside—that is, withaout they
got pryin’. All in the band of the faithful—Order o’ Dagon—an’ the
children shud never die, but go back to the Mother Hydra an’ Father
Dagon what we all come from onct—Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui
mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn—”
Old Zadok was fast lapsing into stark raving, and I held my breath.
Poor old soul—to what pitiful depths of hallucination had his liquor,
plus his hatred of the decay, alienage, and disease around him, brought
that fertile, imaginative brain! He began to moan now, and tears were
coursing down his channelled cheeks into the depths of his beard.
“God, what I seen senct I was fifteen year’ old—Mene, mene, tekel,
upharsin!—the folks as was missin’, an’ them as kilt theirselves—them
as told things in Arkham or Ipswich or sech places was all called
crazy, like you’re a-callin’ me right naow—but God, what I seen— They’d
a kilt me long ago fer what I know, only I’d took the fust an’ secon’
Oaths o’ Dagon offen Obed, so was pertected unlessen a jury of ’em
proved I told things knowin’ an’ delib’rit . . . but I wudn’t take the
third Oath—I’d a died ruther’n take that—
“It got wuss araound Civil War time, when children born senct
’forty-six begun to grow up—some of ’em, that is. I was afeard—never
did no pryin’ arter that awful night, an’ never see one of—them—clost
to in all my life. That is, never no full-blooded one. I went to the
war, an’ ef I’d a had any guts or sense I’d a never come back, but
settled away from here. But folks wrote me things wa’n’t so bad. That,
I s’pose, was because gov’munt draft men was in taown arter
’sixty-three. Arter the war it was jest as bad agin. People begun to
fall off—mills an’ shops shet daown—shippin’ stopped an’ the harbour
choked up—railrud give up—but they . . . they never stopped swimmin’ in
an’ aout o’ the river from that cursed reef o’ Satan—an’ more an’ more
attic winders got a-boarded up, an’ more an’ more noises was heerd in
haouses as wa’n’t s’posed to hev nobody in ’em. . . .
“Folks aoutside hev their stories abaout us—s’pose you’ve heerd a
plenty on ’em, seein’ what questions ye ast—stories abaout things
they’ve seed naow an’ then, an’ abaout that queer joolry as still comes
in from somewhars an’ ain’t quite all melted up—but nothin’ never gits
def’nite. Nobody’ll believe nothin’. They call them gold-like things
pirate loot, an’ allaow the Innsmouth folks hez furren blood or is
distempered or somethin’. Besides, them that lives here shoo off as
many strangers as they kin, an’ encourage the rest not to git very
cur’ous, specially raound night time. Beasts balk at the
critters—hosses wuss’n mules—but when they got autos that was all
right.
“In ’forty-six Cap’n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown
never see—some says he didn’t want to, but was made to by them as he’d
called in—had three children by her—two as disappeared young, but one
gal as looked like anybody else an’ was eddicated in Europe. Obed
finally got her married off by a trick to an Arkham feller as didn’t
suspect nothin’. But nobody aoutside’ll hev nothin’ to do with
Innsmouth folks naow. Barnabas Marsh that runs the refin’ry naow is
Obed’s grandson by his fust wife—son of Onesiphorus, his eldest son,
but his mother was another o’ them as wa’n’t never seed aoutdoors.
“Right naow Barnabas is abaout changed. Can’t shet his eyes no more,
an’ is all aout o’ shape. They say he still wears clothes, but he’ll
take to the water soon. Mebbe he’s tried it already—they do sometimes
go daown fer little spells afore they go fer good. Ain’t ben seed
abaout in public fer nigh on ten year’. Dun’t know haow his poor wife
kin feel—she come from Ipswich, an’ they nigh lynched Barnabas when he
courted her fifty odd year’ ago. Obed he died in ’seventy-eight, an’
all the next gen’ration is gone naow—the fust wife’s children dead, an’
the rest . . . God knows. . . .”
The sound of the incoming tide was now very insistent, and little by
little it seemed to change the old man’s mood from maudlin tearfulness
to watchful fear. He would pause now and then to renew those nervous
glances over his shoulder or out toward the reef, and despite the wild
absurdity of his tale, I could not help beginning to share his vague
apprehensiveness. Zadok now grew shriller, and seemed to be trying to
whip up his courage with louder speech.
“Hey, yew, why dun’t ye say somethin’? Haow’d ye like to be livin’ in a
taown like this, with everything a-rottin’ an’ a-dyin’, an’ boarded-up
monsters crawlin’ an’ bleatin’ an’ barkin’ an’ hoppin’ araoun’ black
cellars an’ attics every way ye turn? Hey? Haow’d ye like to hear the
haowlin’ night arter night from the churches an’ Order o’ Dagon Hall,
an’ know what’s doin’ part o’ the haowlin’? Haow’d ye like to hear what
comes from that awful reef every May-Eve an’ Hallowmass? Hey? Think the
old man’s crazy, eh? Wal, Sir, let me tell ye that ain’t the wust!”
Zadok was really screaming now, and the mad frenzy of his voice
disturbed me more than I care to own.
“Curse ye, dun’t set thar a-starin’ at me with them eyes—I tell Obed
Marsh he’s in hell, an’ hez got to stay thar! Heh, heh . . . in hell, I
says! Can’t git me—I hain’t done nothin’ nor told nobody nothin’—
“Oh, you, young feller? Wal, even ef I hain’t told nobody nothin’ yet,
I’m a-goin’ to naow! You jest set still an’ listen to me, boy—this is
what I ain’t never told nobody. . . . I says I didn’t do no pryin’
arter that night—but I faound things aout jest the same!
“Yew want to know what the reel horror is, hey? Wal, it’s this—it ain’t
what them fish devils hez done, but what they’re a-goin’ to do! They’re
a-bringin’ things up aout o’ whar they come from into the taown—ben
doin’ it fer years, an’ slackenin’ up lately. Them haouses north o’ the
river betwixt Water an’ Main Streets is full of ’em—them devils an’
what they brung—an’ when they git ready. . . . I say, when they git
ready . . . ever hear tell of a shoggoth? . . .
“Hey, d’ye hear me? I tell ye I know what them things be—I seen ’em one
night when . . . EH—AHHHH—AH! E’YAAHHHH. . . .”
The hideous suddenness and inhuman frightfulness of the old man’s
shriek almost made me faint. His eyes, looking past me toward the
malodorous sea, were positively starting from his head; while his face
was a mask of fear worthy of Greek tragedy. His bony claw dug
monstrously into my shoulder, and he made no motion as I turned my head
to look at whatever he had glimpsed.
There was nothing that I could see. Only the incoming tide, with
perhaps one set of ripples more local than the long-flung line of
breakers. But now Zadok was shaking me, and I turned back to watch the
melting of that fear-frozen face into a chaos of twitching eyelids and
mumbling gums. Presently his voice came back—albeit as a trembling
whisper.
“Git aout o’ here! Git aout o’ here! They seen us—git aout fer your
life! Dun’t wait fer nothin’—they know naow— Run fer it—quick—aout o’
this taown—”
Another heavy wave dashed against the loosening masonry of the bygone
wharf, and changed the mad ancient’s whisper to another inhuman and
blood-curdling scream.
“E—YAAHHHH! . . . YHAAAAAAA! . . .”
Before I could recover my scattered wits he had relaxed his clutch on
my shoulder and dashed wildly inland toward the street, reeling
northward around the ruined warehouse wall.
I glanced back at the sea, but there was nothing there. And when I
reached Water Street and looked along it toward the north there was no
remaining trace of Zadok Allen.
IV.
I can hardly describe the mood in which I was left by this harrowing
episode—an episode at once mad and pitiful, grotesque and terrifying.
The grocery boy had prepared me for it, yet the reality left me none
the less bewildered and disturbed. Puerile though the story was, old
Zadok’s insane earnestness and horror had communicated to me a mounting
unrest which joined with my earlier sense of loathing for the town and
its blight of intangible shadow.
Later I might sift the tale and extract some nucleus of historic
allegory; just now I wished to put it out of my head. The hour had
grown perilously late—my watch said 7:15, and the Arkham bus left Town
Square at eight—so I tried to give my thoughts as neutral and practical
a cast as possible, meanwhile walking rapidly through the deserted
streets of gaping roofs and leaning houses toward the hotel where I had
checked my valise and would find my bus.
Though the golden light of late afternoon gave the ancient roofs and
decrepit chimneys an air of mystic loveliness and peace, I could not
help glancing over my shoulder now and then. I would surely be very
glad to get out of malodorous and fear-shadowed Innsmouth, and wished
there were some other vehicle than the bus driven by that
sinister-looking fellow Sargent. Yet I did not hurry too precipitately,
for there were architectural details worth viewing at every silent
corner; and I could easily, I calculated, cover the necessary distance
in a half-hour.
Studying the grocery youth’s map and seeking a route I had not
traversed before, I chose Marsh Street instead of State for my approach
to Town Square. Near the corner of Fall Street I began to see scattered
groups of furtive whisperers, and when I finally reached the Square I
saw that almost all the loiterers were congregated around the door of
the Gilman House. It seemed as if many bulging, watery, unwinking eyes
looked oddly at me as I claimed my valise in the lobby, and I hoped
that none of these unpleasant creatures would be my fellow-passengers
on the coach.
The bus, rather early, rattled in with three passengers somewhat before
eight, and an evil-looking fellow on the sidewalk muttered a few
indistinguishable words to the driver. Sargent threw out a mail-bag and
a roll of newspapers, and entered the hotel; while the passengers—the
same men whom I had seen arriving in Newburyport that morning—shambled
to the sidewalk and exchanged some faint guttural words with a loafer
in a language I could have sworn was not English. I boarded the empty
coach and took the same seat I had taken before, but was hardly settled
before Sargent reappeared and began mumbling in a throaty voice of
peculiar repulsiveness.
I was, it appeared, in very bad luck. There had been something wrong
with the engine, despite the excellent time made from Newburyport, and
the bus could not complete the journey to Arkham. No, it could not
possibly be repaired that night, nor was there any other way of getting
transportation out of Innsmouth, either to Arkham or elsewhere. Sargent
was sorry, but I would have to stop over at the Gilman. Probably the
clerk would make the price easy for me, but there was nothing else to
do. Almost dazed by this sudden obstacle, and violently dreading the
fall of night in this decaying and half-unlighted town, I left the bus
and reëntered the hotel lobby; where the sullen, queer-looking night
clerk told me I could have Room 428 on next the top floor—large, but
without running water—for a dollar.
Despite what I had heard of this hotel in Newburyport, I signed the
register, paid my dollar, let the clerk take my valise, and followed
that sour, solitary attendant up three creaking flights of stairs past
dusty corridors which seemed wholly devoid of life. My room, a dismal
rear one with two windows and bare, cheap furnishings, overlooked a
dingy courtyard otherwise hemmed in by low, deserted brick blocks, and
commanded a view of decrepit westward-stretching roofs with a marshy
countryside beyond. At the end of the corridor was a bathroom—a
discouraging relique with ancient marble bowl, tin tub, faint electric
light, and musty wooden panelling around all the plumbing fixtures.
It being still daylight, I descended to the Square and looked around
for a dinner of some sort; noticing as I did so the strange glances I
received from the unwholesome loafers. Since the grocery was closed, I
was forced to patronise the restaurant I had shunned before; a stooped,
narrow-headed man with staring, unwinking eyes, and a flat-nosed wench
with unbelievably thick, clumsy hands being in attendance. The service
was of the counter type, and it relieved me to find that much was
evidently served from cans and packages. A bowl of vegetable soup with
crackers was enough for me, and I soon headed back for my cheerless
room at the Gilman; getting an evening paper and a flyspecked magazine
from the evil-visaged clerk at the rickety stand beside his desk.
As twilight deepened I turned on the one feeble electric bulb over the
cheap, iron-framed bed, and tried as best I could to continue the
reading I had begun. I felt it advisable to keep my mind wholesomely
occupied, for it would not do to brood over the abnormalities of this
ancient, blight-shadowed town while I was still within its borders. The
insane yarn I had heard from the aged drunkard did not promise very
pleasant dreams, and I felt I must keep the image of his wild, watery
eyes as far as possible from my imagination.
Also, I must not dwell on what that factory inspector had told the
Newburyport ticket-agent about the Gilman House and the voices of its
nocturnal tenants—not on that, nor on the face beneath the tiara in the
black church doorway; the face for whose horror my conscious mind could
not account. It would perhaps have been easier to keep my thoughts from
disturbing topics had the room not been so gruesomely musty. As it was,
the lethal mustiness blended hideously with the town’s general fishy
odour and persistently focussed one’s fancy on death and decay.
Another thing that disturbed me was the absence of a bolt on the door
of my room. One had been there, as marks clearly shewed, but there were
signs of recent removal. No doubt it had become out of order, like so
many other things in this decrepit edifice. In my nervousness I looked
around and discovered a bolt on the clothes-press which seemed to be of
the same size, judging from the marks, as the one formerly on the door.
To gain a partial relief from the general tension I busied myself by
transferring this hardware to the vacant place with the aid of a handy
three-in-one device including a screw-driver which I kept on my
key-ring. The bolt fitted perfectly, and I was somewhat relieved when I
knew that I could shoot it firmly upon retiring. Not that I had any
real apprehension of its need, but that any symbol of security was
welcome in an environment of this kind. There were adequate bolts on
the two lateral doors to connecting rooms, and these I proceeded to
fasten.
I did not undress, but decided to read till I was sleepy and then lie
down with only my coat, collar, and shoes off. Taking a pocket
flashlight from my valise, I placed it in my trousers, so that I could
read my watch if I woke up later in the dark. Drowsiness, however, did
not come; and when I stopped to analyse my thoughts I found to my
disquiet that I was really unconsciously listening for
something—listening for something which I dreaded but could not name.
That inspector’s story must have worked on my imagination more deeply
than I had suspected. Again I tried to read, but found that I made no
progress.
After a time I seemed to hear the stairs and corridors creak at
intervals as if with footsteps, and wondered if the other rooms were
beginning to fill up. There were no voices, however, and it struck me
that there was something subtly furtive about the creaking. I did not
like it, and debated whether I had better try to sleep at all. This
town had some queer people, and there had undoubtedly been several
disappearances. Was this one of those inns where travellers were slain
for their money? Surely I had no look of excessive prosperity. Or were
the townsfolk really so resentful about curious visitors? Had my
obvious sightseeing, with its frequent map-consultations, aroused
unfavourable notice? It occurred to me that I must be in a highly
nervous state to let a few random creakings set me off speculating in
this fashion—but I regretted none the less that I was unarmed.
At length, feeling a fatigue which had nothing of drowsiness in it, I
bolted the newly outfitted hall door, turned off the light, and threw
myself down on the hard, uneven bed—coat, collar, shoes, and all. In
the darkness every faint noise of the night seemed magnified, and a
flood of doubly unpleasant thoughts swept over me. I was sorry I had
put out the light, yet was too tired to rise and turn it on again.
Then, after a long, dreary interval, and prefaced by a fresh creaking
of stairs and corridor, there came that soft, damnably unmistakable
sound which seemed like a malign fulfilment of all my apprehensions.
Without the least shadow of a doubt, the lock on my hall door was being
tried—cautiously, furtively, tentatively—with a key.
My sensations upon recognising this sign of actual peril were perhaps
less rather than more tumultuous because of my previous vague fears. I
had been, albeit without definite reason, instinctively on my guard—and
that was to my advantage in the new and real crisis, whatever it might
turn out to be. Nevertheless the change in the menace from vague
premonition to immediate reality was a profound shock, and fell upon me
with the force of a genuine blow. It never once occurred to me that the
fumbling might be a mere mistake. Malign purpose was all I could think
of, and I kept deathly quiet, awaiting the would-be intruder’s next
move.
After a time the cautious rattling ceased, and I heard the room to the
north entered with a pass-key. Then the lock of the connecting door to
my room was softly tried. The bolt held, of course, and I heard the
floor creak as the prowler left the room. After a moment there came
another soft rattling, and I knew that the room to the south of me was
being entered. Again a furtive trying of a bolted connecting door, and
again a receding creaking. This time the creaking went along the hall
and down the stairs, so I knew that the prowler had realised the bolted
condition of my doors and was giving up his attempt for a greater or
lesser time, as the future would shew.
The readiness with which I fell into a plan of action proves that I
must have been subconsciously fearing some menace and considering
possible avenues of escape for hours. From the first I felt that the
unseen fumbler meant a danger not to be met or dealt with, but only to
be fled from as precipitately as possible. The one thing to do was to
get out of that hotel alive as quickly as I could, and through some
channel other than the front stairs and lobby.
Rising softly and throwing my flashlight on the switch, I sought to
light the bulb over my bed in order to choose and pocket some
belongings for a swift, valiseless flight. Nothing, however, happened;
and I saw that the power had been cut off. Clearly, some cryptic, evil
movement was afoot on a large scale—just what, I could not say. As I
stood pondering with my hand on the now useless switch I heard a
muffled creaking on the floor below, and thought I could barely
distinguish voices in conversation. A moment later I felt less sure
that the deeper sounds were voices, since the apparent hoarse barkings
and loose-syllabled croakings bore so little resemblance to recognised
human speech. Then I thought with renewed force of what the factory
inspector had heard in the night in this mouldering and pestilential
building.
Having filled my pockets with the flashlight’s aid, I put on my hat and
tiptoed to the windows to consider chances of descent. Despite the
state’s safety regulations there was no fire escape on this side of the
hotel, and I saw that my windows commanded only a sheer three-story
drop to the cobbled courtyard. On the right and left, however, some
ancient brick business blocks abutted on the hotel; their slant roofs
coming up to a reasonable jumping distance from my fourth-story level.
To reach either of these lines of buildings I would have to be in a
room two doors from my own—in one case on the north and in the other
case on the south—and my mind instantly set to work calculating what
chances I had of making the transfer.
I could not, I decided, risk an emergence into the corridor; where my
footsteps would surely be heard, and where the difficulties of entering
the desired room would be insuperable. My progress, if it was to be
made at all, would have to be through the less solidly built connecting
doors of the rooms; the locks and bolts of which I would have to force
violently, using my shoulder as a battering-ram whenever they were set
against me. This, I thought, would be possible owing to the rickety
nature of the house and its fixtures; but I realised I could not do it
noiselessly. I would have to count on sheer speed, and the chance of
getting to a window before any hostile forces became coördinated enough
to open the right door toward me with a pass-key. My own outer door I
reinforced by pushing the bureau against it—little by little, in order
to make a minimum of sound.
I perceived that my chances were very slender, and was fully prepared
for any calamity. Even getting to another roof would not solve the
problem, for there would then remain the task of reaching the ground
and escaping from the town. One thing in my favour was the deserted and
ruinous state of the abutting buildings, and the number of skylights
gaping blackly open in each row.
Gathering from the grocery boy’s map that the best route out of town
was southward, I glanced first at the connecting door on the south side
of the room. It was designed to open in my direction, hence I saw—after
drawing the bolt and finding other fastenings in place—it was not a
favourable one for forcing. Accordingly abandoning it as a route, I
cautiously moved the bedstead against it to hamper any attack which
might be made on it later from the next room. The door on the north was
hung to open away from me, and this—though a test proved it to be
locked or bolted from the other side—I knew must be my route. If I
could gain the roofs of the buildings in Paine Street and descend
successfully to the ground level, I might perhaps dart through the
courtyard and the adjacent or opposite buildings to Washington or
Bates—or else emerge in Paine and edge around southward into
Washington. In any case, I would aim to strike Washington somehow and
get quickly out of the Town Square region. My preference would be to
avoid Paine, since the fire station there might be open all night.
As I thought of these things I looked out over the squalid sea of
decaying roofs below me, now brightened by the beams of a moon not much
past full. On the right the black gash of the river-gorge clove the
panorama; abandoned factories and railway station clinging
barnacle-like to its sides. Beyond it the rusted railway and the Rowley
road led off through a flat, marshy terrain dotted with islets of
higher and dryer scrub-grown land. On the left the creek-threaded
countryside was nearer, the narrow road to Ipswich gleaming white in
the moonlight. I could not see from my side of the hotel the southward
route toward Arkham which I had determined to take.
I was irresolutely speculating on when I had better attack the
northward door, and on how I could least audibly manage it, when I
noticed that the vague noises underfoot had given place to a fresh and
heavier creaking of the stairs. A wavering flicker of light shewed
through my transom, and the boards of the corridor began to groan with
a ponderous load. Muffled sounds of possible vocal origin approached,
and at length a firm knock came at my outer door.
For a moment I simply held my breath and waited. Eternities seemed to
elapse, and the nauseous fishy odour of my environment seemed to mount
suddenly and spectacularly. Then the knocking was
repeated—continuously, and with growing insistence. I knew that the
time for action had come, and forthwith drew the bolt of the northward
connecting door, bracing myself for the task of battering it open. The
knocking waxed louder, and I hoped that its volume would cover the
sound of my efforts. At last beginning my attempt, I lunged again and
again at the thin panelling with my left shoulder, heedless of shock or
pain. The door resisted even more than I had expected, but I did not
give in. And all the while the clamour at the outer door increased.
Finally the connecting door gave, but with such a crash that I knew
those outside must have heard. Instantly the outside knocking became a
violent battering, while keys sounded ominously in the hall doors of
the rooms on both sides of me. Rushing through the newly opened
connexion, I succeeded in bolting the northerly hall door before the
lock could be turned; but even as I did so I heard the hall door of the
third room—the one from whose window I had hoped to reach the roof
below—being tried with a pass-key.
For an instant I felt absolute despair, since my trapping in a chamber
with no window egress seemed complete. A wave of almost abnormal horror
swept over me, and invested with a terrible but unexplainable
singularity the flashlight-glimpsed dust prints made by the intruder
who had lately tried my door from this room. Then, with a dazed
automatism which persisted despite hopelessness, I made for the next
connecting door and performed the blind motion of pushing at it in an
effort to get through and—granting that fastenings might be as
providentially intact as in this second room—bolt the hall door beyond
before the lock could be turned from outside.
Sheer fortunate chance gave me my reprieve—for the connecting door
before me was not only unlocked but actually ajar. In a second I was
through, and had my right knee and shoulder against a hall door which
was visibly opening inward. My pressure took the opener off guard, for
the thing shut as I pushed, so that I could slip the well-conditioned
bolt as I had done with the other door. As I gained this respite I
heard the battering at the two other doors abate, while a confused
clatter came from the connecting door I had shielded with the bedstead.
Evidently the bulk of my assailants had entered the southerly room and
were massing in a lateral attack. But at the same moment a pass-key
sounded in the next door to the north, and I knew that a nearer peril
was at hand.
The northward connecting door was wide open, but there was no time to
think about checking the already turning lock in the hall. All I could
do was to shut and bolt the open connecting door, as well as its mate
on the opposite side—pushing a bedstead against the one and a bureau
against the other, and moving a washstand in front of the hall door. I
must, I saw, trust to such makeshift barriers to shield me till I could
get out the window and on the roof of the Paine Street block. But even
in this acute moment my chief horror was something apart from the
immediate weakness of my defences. I was shuddering because not one of
my pursuers, despite some hideous pantings, gruntings, and subdued
barkings at odd intervals, was uttering an unmuffled or intelligible
vocal sound.
As I moved the furniture and rushed toward the windows I heard a
frightful scurrying along the corridor toward the room north of me, and
perceived that the southward battering had ceased. Plainly, most of my
opponents were about to concentrate against the feeble connecting door
which they knew must open directly on me. Outside, the moon played on
the ridgepole of the block below, and I saw that the jump would be
desperately hazardous because of the steep surface on which I must
land.
Surveying the conditions, I chose the more southerly of the two windows
as my avenue of escape; planning to land on the inner slope of the roof
and make for the nearest skylight. Once inside one of the decrepit
brick structures I would have to reckon with pursuit; but I hoped to
descend and dodge in and out of yawning doorways along the shadowed
courtyard, eventually getting to Washington Street and slipping out of
town toward the south.
The clatter at the northerly connecting door was now terrific, and I
saw that the weak panelling was beginning to splinter. Obviously, the
besiegers had brought some ponderous object into play as a
battering-ram. The bedstead, however, still held firm; so that I had at
least a faint chance of making good my escape. As I opened the window I
noticed that it was flanked by heavy velour draperies suspended from a
pole by brass rings, and also that there was a large projecting catch
for the shutters on the exterior. Seeing a possible means of avoiding
the dangerous jump, I yanked at the hangings and brought them down,
pole and all; then quickly hooking two of the rings in the shutter
catch and flinging the drapery outside. The heavy folds reached fully
to the abutting roof, and I saw that the rings and catch would be
likely to bear my weight. So, climbing out of the window and down the
improvised rope ladder, I left behind me forever the morbid and
horror-infested fabric of the Gilman House.
I landed safely on the loose slates of the steep roof, and succeeded in
gaining the gaping black skylight without a slip. Glancing up at the
window I had left, I observed it was still dark, though far across the
crumbling chimneys to the north I could see lights ominously blazing in
the Order of Dagon Hall, the Baptist church, and the Congregational
church which I recalled so shiveringly. There had seemed to be no one
in the courtyard below, and I hoped there would be a chance to get away
before the spreading of a general alarm. Flashing my pocket lamp into
the skylight, I saw that there were no steps down. The distance was
slight, however, so I clambered over the brink and dropped; striking a
dusty floor littered with crumbling boxes and barrels.
The place was ghoulish-looking, but I was past minding such impressions
and made at once for the staircase revealed by my flashlight—after a
hasty glance at my watch, which shewed the hour to be 2 a.m. The steps
creaked, but seemed tolerably sound; and I raced down past a barn-like
second story to the ground floor. The desolation was complete, and only
echoes answered my footfalls. At length I reached the lower hall, at
one end of which I saw a faint luminous rectangle marking the ruined
Paine Street doorway. Heading the other way, I found the back door also
open; and darted out and down five stone steps to the grass-grown
cobblestones of the courtyard.
The moonbeams did not reach down here, but I could just see my way
about without using the flashlight. Some of the windows on the Gilman
House side were faintly glowing, and I thought I heard confused sounds
within. Walking softly over to the Washington Street side I perceived
several open doorways, and chose the nearest as my route out. The
hallway inside was black, and when I reached the opposite end I saw
that the street door was wedged immovably shut. Resolved to try another
building, I groped my way back toward the courtyard, but stopped short
when close to the doorway.
For out of an opened door in the Gilman House a large crowd of doubtful
shapes was pouring—lanterns bobbing in the darkness, and horrible
croaking voices exchanging low cries in what was certainly not English.
The figures moved uncertainly, and I realised to my relief that they
did not know where I had gone; but for all that they sent a shiver of
horror through my frame. Their features were indistinguishable, but
their crouching, shambling gait was abominably repellent. And worst of
all, I perceived that one figure was strangely robed, and unmistakably
surmounted by a tall tiara of a design altogether too familiar. As the
figures spread throughout the courtyard, I felt my fears increase.
Suppose I could find no egress from this building on the street side?
The fishy odour was detestable, and I wondered I could stand it without
fainting. Again groping toward the street, I opened a door off the hall
and came upon an empty room with closely shuttered but sashless
windows. Fumbling in the rays of my flashlight, I found I could open
the shutters; and in another moment had climbed outside and was
carefully closing the aperture in its original manner.
I was now in Washington Street, and for the moment saw no living thing
nor any light save that of the moon. From several directions in the
distance, however, I could hear the sound of hoarse voices, of
footsteps, and of a curious kind of pattering which did not sound quite
like footsteps. Plainly I had no time to lose. The points of the
compass were clear to me, and I was glad that all the street-lights
were turned off, as is often the custom on strongly moonlit nights in
unprosperous rural regions. Some of the sounds came from the south, yet
I retained my design of escaping in that direction. There would, I
knew, be plenty of deserted doorways to shelter me in case I met any
person or group who looked like pursuers.
I walked rapidly, softly, and close to the ruined houses. While hatless
and dishevelled after my arduous climb, I did not look especially
noticeable; and stood a good chance of passing unheeded if forced to
encounter any casual wayfarer. At Bates Street I drew into a yawning
vestibule while two shambling figures crossed in front of me, but was
soon on my way again and approaching the open space where Eliot Street
obliquely crosses Washington at the intersection of South. Though I had
never seen this space, it had looked dangerous to me on the grocery
youth’s map; since the moonlight would have free play there. There was
no use trying to evade it, for any alternative course would involve
detours of possibly disastrous visibility and delaying effect. The only
thing to do was to cross it boldly and openly; imitating the typical
shamble of the Innsmouth folk as best I could, and trusting that no
one—or at least no pursuer of mine—would be there.
Just how fully the pursuit was organised—and indeed, just what its
purpose might be—I could form no idea. There seemed to be unusual
activity in the town, but I judged that the news of my escape from the
Gilman had not yet spread. I would, of course, soon have to shift from
Washington to some other southward street; for that party from the
hotel would doubtless be after me. I must have left dust prints in that
last old building, revealing how I had gained the street.
The open space was, as I had expected, strongly moonlit; and I saw the
remains of a park-like, iron-railed green in its centre. Fortunately no
one was about, though a curious sort of buzz or roar seemed to be
increasing in the direction of Town Square. South Street was very wide,
leading directly down a slight declivity to the waterfront and
commanding a long view out at sea; and I hoped that no one would be
glancing up it from afar as I crossed in the bright moonlight.
My progress was unimpeded, and no fresh sound arose to hint that I had
been spied. Glancing about me, I involuntarily let my pace slacken for
a second to take in the sight of the sea, gorgeous in the burning
moonlight at the street’s end. Far out beyond the breakwater was the
dim, dark line of Devil Reef, and as I glimpsed it I could not help
thinking of all the hideous legends I had heard in the last thirty-four
hours—legends which portrayed this ragged rock as a veritable gateway
to realms of unfathomed horror and inconceivable abnormality.
Then, without warning, I saw the intermittent flashes of light on the
distant reef. They were definite and unmistakable, and awaked in my
mind a blind horror beyond all rational proportion. My muscles
tightened for panic flight, held in only by a certain unconscious
caution and half-hypnotic fascination. And to make matters worse, there
now flashed forth from the lofty cupola of the Gilman House, which
loomed up to the northeast behind me, a series of analogous though
differently spaced gleams which could be nothing less than an answering
signal.
Controlling my muscles, and realising afresh how plainly visible I was,
I resumed my brisker and feignedly shambling pace; though keeping my
eyes on that hellish and ominous reef as long as the opening of South
Street gave me a seaward view. What the whole proceeding meant, I could
not imagine; unless it involved some strange rite connected with Devil
Reef, or unless some party had landed from a ship on that sinister
rock. I now bent to the left around the ruinous green; still gazing
toward the ocean as it blazed in the spectral summer moonlight, and
watching the cryptical flashing of those nameless, unexplainable
beacons.
It was then that the most horrible impression of all was borne in upon
me—the impression which destroyed my last vestige of self-control and
set me running frantically southward past the yawning black doorways
and fishily staring windows of that deserted nightmare street. For at a
closer glance I saw that the moonlit waters between the reef and the
shore were far from empty. They were alive with a teeming horde of
shapes swimming inward toward the town; and even at my vast distance
and in my single moment of perception I could tell that the bobbing
heads and flailing arms were alien and aberrant in a way scarcely to be
expressed or consciously formulated.
My frantic running ceased before I had covered a block, for at my left
I began to hear something like the hue and cry of organised pursuit.
There were footsteps and guttural sounds, and a rattling motor wheezed
south along Federal Street. In a second all my plans were utterly
changed—for if the southward highway were blocked ahead of me, I must
clearly find another egress from Innsmouth. I paused and drew into a
gaping doorway, reflecting how lucky I was to have left the moonlit
open space before these pursuers came down the parallel street.
A second reflection was less comforting. Since the pursuit was down
another street, it was plain that the party was not following me
directly. It had not seen me, but was simply obeying a general plan of
cutting off my escape. This, however, implied that all roads leading
out of Innsmouth were similarly patrolled; for the denizens could not
have known what route I intended to take. If this were so, I would have
to make my retreat across country away from any road; but how could I
do that in view of the marshy and creek-riddled nature of all the
surrounding region? For a moment my brain reeled—both from sheer
hopelessness and from a rapid increase in the omnipresent fishy odour.
Then I thought of the abandoned railway to Rowley, whose solid line of
ballasted, weed-grown earth still stretched off to the northwest from
the crumbling station on the edge of the river-gorge. There was just a
chance that the townsfolk would not think of that; since its
brier-choked desertion made it half-impassable, and the unlikeliest of
all avenues for a fugitive to choose. I had seen it clearly from my
hotel window, and knew about how it lay. Most of its earlier length was
uncomfortably visible from the Rowley road, and from high places in the
town itself; but one could perhaps crawl inconspicuously through the
undergrowth. At any rate, it would form my only chance of deliverance,
and there was nothing to do but try it.
Drawing inside the hall of my deserted shelter, I once more consulted
the grocery boy’s map with the aid of the flashlight. The immediate
problem was how to reach the ancient railway; and I now saw that the
safest course was ahead to Babson Street, then west to Lafayette—there
edging around but not crossing an open space homologous to the one I
had traversed—and subsequently back northward and westward in a
zigzagging line through Lafayette, Bates, Adams, and Bank Streets—the
latter skirting the river-gorge—to the abandoned and dilapidated
station I had seen from my window. My reason for going ahead to Babson
was that I wished neither to re-cross the earlier open space nor to
begin my westward course along a cross street as broad as South.
Starting once more, I crossed the street to the right-hand side in
order to edge around into Babson as inconspicuously as possible. Noises
still continued in Federal Street, and as I glanced behind me I thought
I saw a gleam of light near the building through which I had escaped.
Anxious to leave Washington Street, I broke into a quiet dog-trot,
trusting to luck not to encounter any observing eye. Next the corner of
Babson Street I saw to my alarm that one of the houses was still
inhabited, as attested by curtains at the window; but there were no
lights within, and I passed it without disaster.
In Babson Street, which crossed Federal and might thus reveal me to the
searchers, I clung as closely as possible to the sagging, uneven
buildings; twice pausing in a doorway as the noises behind me
momentarily increased. The open space ahead shone wide and desolate
under the moon, but my route would not force me to cross it. During my
second pause I began to detect a fresh distribution of the vague
sounds; and upon looking cautiously out from cover beheld a motor-car
darting across the open space, bound outward along Eliot Street, which
there intersects both Babson and Lafayette.
As I watched—choked by a sudden rise in the fishy odour after a short
abatement—I saw a band of uncouth, crouching shapes loping and
shambling in the same direction; and knew that this must be the party
guarding the Ipswich road, since that highway forms an extension of
Eliot Street. Two of the figures I glimpsed were in voluminous robes,
and one wore a peaked diadem which glistened whitely in the moonlight.
The gait of this figure was so odd that it sent a chill through me—for
it seemed to me the creature was almost hopping.
When the last of the band was out of sight I resumed my progress;
darting around the corner into Lafayette Street, and crossing Eliot
very hurriedly lest stragglers of the party be still advancing along
that thoroughfare. I did hear some croaking and clattering sounds far
off toward Town Square, but accomplished the passage without disaster.
My greatest dread was in re-crossing broad and moonlit South
Street—with its seaward view—and I had to nerve myself for the ordeal.
Someone might easily be looking, and possible Eliot Street stragglers
could not fail to glimpse me from either of two points. At the last
moment I decided I had better slacken my trot and make the crossing as
before in the shambling gait of an average Innsmouth native.
When the view of the water again opened out—this time on my right—I was
half-determined not to look at it at all. I could not, however, resist;
but cast a sidelong glance as I carefully and imitatively shambled
toward the protecting shadows ahead. There was no ship visible, as I
had half expected there would be. Instead, the first thing which caught
my eye was a small rowboat pulling in toward the abandoned wharves and
laden with some bulky, tarpaulin-covered object. Its rowers, though
distantly and indistinctly seen, were of an especially repellent
aspect. Several swimmers were still discernible; while on the far black
reef I could see a faint, steady glow unlike the winking beacon visible
before, and of a curious colour which I could not precisely identify.
Above the slant roofs ahead and to the right there loomed the tall
cupola of the Gilman House, but it was completely dark. The fishy
odour, dispelled for a moment by some merciful breeze, now closed in
again with maddening intensity.
I had not quite crossed the street when I heard a muttering band
advancing along Washington from the north. As they reached the broad
open space where I had had my first disquieting glimpse of the moonlit
water I could see them plainly only a block away—and was horrified by
the bestial abnormality of their faces and the dog-like sub-humanness
of their crouching gait. One man moved in a positively simian way, with
long arms frequently touching the ground; while another figure—robed
and tiaraed—seemed to progress in an almost hopping fashion. I judged
this party to be the one I had seen in the Gilman’s courtyard—the one,
therefore, most closely on my trail. As some of the figures turned to
look in my direction I was transfixed with fright, yet managed to
preserve the casual, shambling gait I had assumed. To this day I do not
know whether they saw me or not. If they did, my stratagem must have
deceived them, for they passed on across the moonlit space without
varying their course—meanwhile croaking and jabbering in some hateful
guttural patois I could not identify.
Once more in shadow, I resumed my former dog-trot past the leaning and
decrepit houses that stared blankly into the night. Having crossed to
the western sidewalk I rounded the nearest corner into Bates Street,
where I kept close to the buildings on the southern side. I passed two
houses shewing signs of habitation, one of which had faint lights in
upper rooms, yet met with no obstacle. As I turned into Adams Street I
felt measurably safer, but received a shock when a man reeled out of a
black doorway directly in front of me. He proved, however, too
hopelessly drunk to be a menace; so that I reached the dismal ruins of
the Bank Street warehouses in safety.
No one was stirring in that dead street beside the river-gorge, and the
roar of the waterfalls quite drowned my footsteps. It was a long
dog-trot to the ruined station, and the great brick warehouse walls
around me seemed somehow more terrifying than the fronts of private
houses. At last I saw the ancient arcaded station—or what was left of
it—and made directly for the tracks that started from its farther end.
The rails were rusty but mainly intact, and not more than half the ties
had rotted away. Walking or running on such a surface was very
difficult; but I did my best, and on the whole made very fair time. For
some distance the line kept on along the gorge’s brink, but at length I
reached the long covered bridge where it crossed the chasm at a dizzy
height. The condition of this bridge would determine my next step. If
humanly possible, I would use it; if not, I would have to risk more
street wandering and take the nearest intact highway bridge.
The vast, barn-like length of the old bridge gleamed spectrally in the
moonlight, and I saw that the ties were safe for at least a few feet
within. Entering, I began to use my flashlight, and was almost knocked
down by the cloud of bats that flapped past me. About half way across
there was a perilous gap in the ties which I feared for a moment would
halt me; but in the end I risked a desperate jump which fortunately
succeeded.
I was glad to see the moonlight again when I emerged from that macabre
tunnel. The old tracks crossed River Street at grade, and at once
veered off into a region increasingly rural and with less and less of
Innsmouth’s abhorrent fishy odour. Here the dense growth of weeds and
briers hindered me and cruelly tore my clothes, but I was none the less
glad that they were there to give me concealment in case of peril. I
knew that much of my route must be visible from the Rowley road.
The marshy region began very shortly, with the single track on a low,
grassy embankment where the weedy growth was somewhat thinner. Then
came a sort of island of higher ground, where the line passed through a
shallow open cut choked with bushes and brambles. I was very glad of
this partial shelter, since at this point the Rowley road was
uncomfortably near according to my window view. At the end of the cut
it would cross the track and swerve off to a safer distance; but
meanwhile I must be exceedingly careful. I was by this time thankfully
certain that the railway itself was not patrolled.
Just before entering the cut I glanced behind me, but saw no pursuer.
The ancient spires and roofs of decaying Innsmouth gleamed lovely and
ethereal in the magic yellow moonlight, and I thought of how they must
have looked in the old days before the shadow fell. Then, as my gaze
circled inland from the town, something less tranquil arrested my
notice and held me immobile for a second.
What I saw—or fancied I saw—was a disturbing suggestion of undulant
motion far to the south; a suggestion which made me conclude that a
very large horde must be pouring out of the city along the level
Ipswich road. The distance was great, and I could distinguish nothing
in detail; but I did not at all like the look of that moving column. It
undulated too much, and glistened too brightly in the rays of the now
westering moon. There was a suggestion of sound, too, though the wind
was blowing the other way—a suggestion of bestial scraping and
bellowing even worse than the muttering of the parties I had lately
overheard.
All sorts of unpleasant conjectures crossed my mind. I thought of those
very extreme Innsmouth types said to be hidden in crumbling, centuried
warrens near the waterfront. I thought, too, of those nameless swimmers
I had seen. Counting the parties so far glimpsed, as well as those
presumably covering other roads, the number of my pursuers must be
strangely large for a town as depopulated as Innsmouth.
Whence could come the dense personnel of such a column as I now beheld?
Did those ancient, unplumbed warrens teem with a twisted, uncatalogued,
and unsuspected life? Or had some unseen ship indeed landed a legion of
unknown outsiders on that hellish reef? Who were they? Why were they
there? And if such a column of them was scouring the Ipswich road,
would the patrols on the other roads be likewise augmented?
I had entered the brush-grown cut and was struggling along at a very
slow pace when that damnable fishy odour again waxed dominant. Had the
wind suddenly changed eastward, so that it blew in from the sea and
over the town? It must have, I concluded, since I now began to hear
shocking guttural murmurs from that hitherto silent direction. There
was another sound, too—a kind of wholesale, colossal flopping or
pattering which somehow called up images of the most detestable sort.
It made me think illogically of that unpleasantly undulating column on
the far-off Ipswich road.
And then both stench and sounds grew stronger, so that I paused
shivering and grateful for the cut’s protection. It was here, I
recalled, that the Rowley road drew so close to the old railway before
crossing westward and diverging. Something was coming along that road,
and I must lie low till its passage and vanishment in the distance.
Thank heaven these creatures employed no dogs for tracking—though
perhaps that would have been impossible amidst the omnipresent regional
odour. Crouched in the bushes of that sandy cleft I felt reasonably
safe, even though I knew the searchers would have to cross the track in
front of me not much more than a hundred yards away. I would be able to
see them, but they could not, except by a malign miracle, see me.
All at once I began dreading to look at them as they passed. I saw the
close moonlit space where they would surge by, and had curious thoughts
about the irredeemable pollution of that space. They would perhaps be
the worst of all Innsmouth types—something one would not care to
remember.
The stench waxed overpowering, and the noises swelled to a bestial
babel of croaking, baying, and barking without the least suggestion of
human speech. Were these indeed the voices of my pursuers? Did they
have dogs after all? So far I had seen none of the lower animals in
Innsmouth. That flopping or pattering was monstrous—I could not look
upon the degenerate creatures responsible for it. I would keep my eyes
shut till the sounds receded toward the west. The horde was very close
now—the air foul with their hoarse snarlings, and the ground almost
shaking with their alien-rhythmed footfalls. My breath nearly ceased to
come, and I put every ounce of will power into the task of holding my
eyelids down.
I am not even yet willing to say whether what followed was a hideous
actuality or only a nightmare hallucination. The later action of the
government, after my frantic appeals, would tend to confirm it as a
monstrous truth; but could not an hallucination have been repeated
under the quasi-hypnotic spell of that ancient, haunted, and shadowed
town? Such places have strange properties, and the legacy of insane
legend might well have acted on more than one human imagination amidst
those dead, stench-cursed streets and huddles of rotting roofs and
crumbling steeples. Is it not possible that the germ of an actual
contagious madness lurks in the depths of that shadow over Innsmouth?
Who can be sure of reality after hearing things like the tale of old
Zadok Allen? The government men never found poor Zadok, and have no
conjectures to make as to what became of him. Where does madness leave
off and reality begin? Is it possible that even my latest fear is sheer
delusion?
But I must try to tell what I thought I saw that night under the
mocking yellow moon—saw surging and hopping down the Rowley road in
plain sight in front of me as I crouched among the wild brambles of
that desolate railway cut. Of course my resolution to keep my eyes shut
had failed. It was foredoomed to failure—for who could crouch blindly
while a legion of croaking, baying entities of unknown source flopped
noisomely past, scarcely more than a hundred yards away?
I thought I was prepared for the worst, and I really ought to have been
prepared considering what I had seen before. My other pursuers had been
accursedly abnormal—so should I not have been ready to face a
strengthening of the abnormal element; to look upon forms in which
there was no mixture of the normal at all? I did not open my eyes until
the raucous clamour came loudly from a point obviously straight ahead.
Then I knew that a long section of them must be plainly in sight where
the sides of the cut flattened out and the road crossed the track—and I
could no longer keep myself from sampling whatever horror that leering
yellow moon might have to shew.
It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of
this earth, of every vestige of mental peace and confidence in the
integrity of Nature and of the human mind. Nothing that I could have
imagined—nothing, even, that I could have gathered had I credited old
Zadok’s crazy tale in the most literal way—would be in any way
comparable to the daemoniac, blasphemous reality that I saw—or believe
I saw. I have tried to hint what it was in order to postpone the horror
of writing it down baldly. Can it be possible that this planet has
actually spawned such things; that human eyes have truly seen, as
objective flesh, what man has hitherto known only in febrile phantasy
and tenuous legend?
And yet I saw them in a limitless stream—flopping, hopping, croaking,
bleating—surging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a
grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them
had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal . . . and some were
strangely robed . . . and one, who led the way, was clad in a
ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man’s felt
hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head. . . .
I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had
white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of
their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid,
while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes
that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills,
and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on
two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no
more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for
articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their
staring faces lacked.
But for all of their monstrousness they were not unfamiliar to me. I
knew too well what they must be—for was not the memory of that evil
tiara at Newburyport still fresh? They were the blasphemous fish-frogs
of the nameless design—living and horrible—and as I saw them I knew
also of what that humped, tiaraed priest in the black church basement
had so fearsomely reminded me. Their number was past guessing. It
seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them—and certainly my
momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction. In another
instant everything was blotted out by a merciful fit of fainting; the
first I had ever had.
V.
It was a gentle daylight rain that awaked me from my stupor in the
brush-grown railway cut, and when I staggered out to the roadway ahead
I saw no trace of any prints in the fresh mud. The fishy odour, too,
was gone. Innsmouth’s ruined roofs and toppling steeples loomed up
greyly toward the southeast, but not a living creature did I spy in all
the desolate salt marshes around. My watch was still going, and told me
that the hour was past noon.
The reality of what I had been through was highly uncertain in my mind,
but I felt that something hideous lay in the background. I must get
away from evil-shadowed Innsmouth—and accordingly I began to test my
cramped, wearied powers of locomotion. Despite weakness, hunger,
horror, and bewilderment I found myself after a long time able to walk;
so started slowly along the muddy road to Rowley. Before evening I was
in the village, getting a meal and providing myself with presentable
clothes. I caught the night train to Arkham, and the next day talked
long and earnestly with government officials there; a process I later
repeated in Boston. With the main result of these colloquies the public
is now familiar—and I wish, for normality’s sake, there were nothing
more to tell. Perhaps it is madness that is overtaking me—yet perhaps a
greater horror—or a greater marvel—is reaching out.
As may well be imagined, I gave up most of the foreplanned features of
the rest of my tour—the scenic, architectural, and antiquarian
diversions on which I had counted so heavily. Nor did I dare look for
that piece of strange jewellery said to be in the Miskatonic University
Museum. I did, however, improve my stay in Arkham by collecting some
genealogical notes I had long wished to possess; very rough and hasty
data, it is true, but capable of good use later on when I might have
time to collate and codify them. The curator of the historical society
there—Mr. E. Lapham Peabody—was very courteous about assisting me, and
expressed unusual interest when I told him I was a grandson of Eliza
Orne of Arkham, who was born in 1867 and had married James Williamson
of Ohio at the age of seventeen.
It seemed that a maternal uncle of mine had been there many years
before on a quest much like my own; and that my grandmother’s family
was a topic of some local curiosity. There had, Mr. Peabody said, been
considerable discussion about the marriage of her father, Benjamin
Orne, just after the Civil War; since the ancestry of the bride was
peculiarly puzzling. That bride was understood to have been an orphaned
Marsh of New Hampshire—a cousin of the Essex County Marshes—but her
education had been in France and she knew very little of her family. A
guardian had deposited funds in a Boston bank to maintain her and her
French governess; but that guardian’s name was unfamiliar to Arkham
people, and in time he dropped out of sight, so that the governess
assumed his role by court appointment. The Frenchwoman—now long
dead—was very taciturn, and there were those who said she could have
told more than she did.
But the most baffling thing was the inability of anyone to place the
recorded parents of the young woman—Enoch and Lydia (Meserve)
Marsh—among the known families of New Hampshire. Possibly, many
suggested, she was the natural daughter of some Marsh of prominence—she
certainly had the true Marsh eyes. Most of the puzzling was done after
her early death, which took place at the birth of my grandmother—her
only child. Having formed some disagreeable impressions connected with
the name of Marsh, I did not welcome the news that it belonged on my
own ancestral tree; nor was I pleased by Mr. Peabody’s suggestion that
I had the true Marsh eyes myself. However, I was grateful for data
which I knew would prove valuable; and took copious notes and lists of
book references regarding the well-documented Orne family.
I went directly home to Toledo from Boston, and later spent a month at
Maumee recuperating from my ordeal. In September I entered Oberlin for
my final year, and from then till the next June was busy with studies
and other wholesome activities—reminded of the bygone terror only by
occasional official visits from government men in connexion with the
campaign which my pleas and evidence had started. Around the middle of
July—just a year after the Innsmouth experience—I spent a week with my
late mother’s family in Cleveland; checking some of my new genealogical
data with the various notes, traditions, and bits of heirloom material
in existence there, and seeing what kind of connected chart I could
construct.
I did not exactly relish the task, for the atmosphere of the Williamson
home had always depressed me. There was a strain of morbidity there,
and my mother had never encouraged my visiting her parents as a child,
although she always welcomed her father when he came to Toledo. My
Arkham-born grandmother had seemed strange and almost terrifying to me,
and I do not think I grieved when she disappeared. I was eight years
old then, and it was said that she had wandered off in grief after the
suicide of my uncle Douglas, her eldest son. He had shot himself after
a trip to New England—the same trip, no doubt, which had caused him to
be recalled at the Arkham Historical Society.
This uncle had resembled her, and I had never liked him either.
Something about the staring, unwinking expression of both of them had
given me a vague, unaccountable uneasiness. My mother and uncle Walter
had not looked like that. They were like their father, though poor
little cousin Lawrence—Walter’s son—had been an almost perfect
duplicate of his grandmother before his condition took him to the
permanent seclusion of a sanitarium at Canton. I had not seen him in
four years, but my uncle once implied that his state, both mental and
physical, was very bad. This worry had probably been a major cause of
his mother’s death two years before.
My grandfather and his widowed son Walter now comprised the Cleveland
household, but the memory of older times hung thickly over it. I still
disliked the place, and tried to get my researches done as quickly as
possible. Williamson records and traditions were supplied in abundance
by my grandfather; though for Orne material I had to depend on my uncle
Walter, who put at my disposal the contents of all his files, including
notes, letters, cuttings, heirlooms, photographs, and miniatures.
It was in going over the letters and pictures on the Orne side that I
began to acquire a kind of terror of my own ancestry. As I have said,
my grandmother and uncle Douglas had always disturbed me. Now, years
after their passing, I gazed at their pictured faces with a measurably
heightened feeling of repulsion and alienation. I could not at first
understand the change, but gradually a horrible sort of comparison
began to obtrude itself on my unconscious mind despite the steady
refusal of my consciousness to admit even the least suspicion of it. It
was clear that the typical expression of these faces now suggested
something it had not suggested before—something which would bring stark
panic if too openly thought of.
But the worst shock came when my uncle shewed me the Orne jewellery in
a downtown safe-deposit vault. Some of the items were delicate and
inspiring enough, but there was one box of strange old pieces descended
from my mysterious great-grandmother which my uncle was almost
reluctant to produce. They were, he said, of very grotesque and almost
repulsive design, and had never to his knowledge been publicly worn;
though my grandmother used to enjoy looking at them. Vague legends of
bad luck clustered around them, and my great-grandmother’s French
governess had said they ought not to be worn in New England, though it
would be quite safe to wear them in Europe.
As my uncle began slowly and grudgingly to unwrap the things he urged
me not to be shocked by the strangeness and frequent hideousness of the
designs. Artists and archaeologists who had seen them pronounced the
workmanship superlatively and exotically exquisite, though no one
seemed able to define their exact material or assign them to any
specific art tradition. There were two armlets, a tiara, and a kind of
pectoral; the latter having in high relief certain figures of almost
unbearable extravagance.
During this description I had kept a tight rein on my emotions, but my
face must have betrayed my mounting fears. My uncle looked concerned,
and paused in his unwrapping to study my countenance. I motioned to him
to continue, which he did with renewed signs of reluctance. He seemed
to expect some demonstration when the first piece—the tiara—became
visible, but I doubt if he expected quite what actually happened. I did
not expect it, either, for I thought I was thoroughly forewarned
regarding what the jewellery would turn out to be. What I did was to
faint silently away, just as I had done in that brier-choked railway
cut a year before.
From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and
apprehension, nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much
madness. My great-grandmother had been a Marsh of unknown source whose
husband lived in Arkham—and did not old Zadok say that the daughter of
Obed Marsh by a monstrous mother was married to an Arkham man through a
trick? What was it the ancient toper had muttered about the likeness of
my eyes to Captain Obed’s? In Arkham, too, the curator had told me I
had the true Marsh eyes. Was Obed Marsh my own great-great-grandfather?
Who—or what—then, was my great-great-grandmother? But perhaps this was
all madness. Those whitish-gold ornaments might easily have been bought
from some Innsmouth sailor by the father of my great-grandmother,
whoever he was. And that look in the staring-eyed faces of my
grandmother and self-slain uncle might be sheer fancy on my part—sheer
fancy, bolstered up by the Innsmouth shadow which had so darkly
coloured my imagination. But why had my uncle killed himself after an
ancestral quest in New England?
For more than two years I fought off these reflections with partial
success. My father secured me a place in an insurance office, and I
buried myself in routine as deeply as possible. In the winter of
1930–31, however, the dreams began. They were very sparse and insidious
at first, but increased in frequency and vividness as the weeks went
by. Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander
through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy Cyclopean walls
with grotesque fishes as my companions. Then the other shapes began to
appear, filling me with nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during
the dreams they did not horrify me at all—I was one with them; wearing
their unhuman trappings, treading their aqueous ways, and praying
monstrously at their evil sea-bottom temples.
There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember
each morning would be enough to stamp me as a madman or a genius if
ever I dared write it down. Some frightful influence, I felt, was
seeking gradually to drag me out of the sane world of wholesome life
into unnamable abysses of blackness and alienage; and the process told
heavily on me. My health and appearance grew steadily worse, till
finally I was forced to give up my position and adopt the static,
secluded life of an invalid. Some odd nervous affliction had me in its
grip, and I found myself at times almost unable to shut my eyes.
It was then that I began to study the mirror with mounting alarm. The
slow ravages of disease are not pleasant to watch, but in my case there
was something subtler and more puzzling in the background. My father
seemed to notice it, too, for he began looking at me curiously and
almost affrightedly. What was taking place in me? Could it be that I
was coming to resemble my grandmother and uncle Douglas?
One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under
the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with
gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate
efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may have been
sardonic. She had changed—as those who take to the water change—and
told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead
son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders—destined
for him as well—he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was to be my
realm, too—I could not escape it. I would never die, but would live
with those who had lived since before man ever walked the earth.
I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand
years Pth’thya-l’yi had lived in Y’ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone
back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y’ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the
upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not
destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the
palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them.
For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they
would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a
city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and
had brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once
more. For bringing the upper-earth men’s death I must do a penance, but
that would not be heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a shoggoth
for the first time, and the sight set me awake in a frenzy of
screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I had acquired
the Innsmouth look.
So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an
automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The
tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward
the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange
things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.
I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have
waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium
as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of
splendours await me below, and I shall seek them soon. Iä-R’lyeh!
Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! No, I shall not shoot myself—I cannot be made
to shoot myself!
I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse, and together
we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that
brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to
Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep
Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.
Return to “The Shadow over Innsmouth”
questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below
or join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers