by Gafford, Sam
He passed a piece of paper across the bar to Kelly and then walked away. The rest of the men had lost all interest in anything but the ball game. As Kelly and Perry walked out the door, Perry leaned back and said one word: “Buckner.”
The men yelled at him as if he had run over their dogs with a lawnmower.
“Why’d you do that?” Kelly asked as they climbed back into the van.
Perry shrugged. “I hate baseball.”
* * *
The next few hours were spent getting ‘local color.’ They interviewed the owners of the fancy, high-priced gift stores, the shoppers at the trendy clothing shops, and fashionably dressed couples in the town square. Perry made sure to get the shops and freshly restored buildings in the background. The people were almost universally the same: “Innsmouth’s such a wonderful place to live! Everyone’s so friendly! Great shopping! Beautiful shoreline! History! Everything you could ever want in a town!”
Of course, all the people interviewed were young, rich, and upbeat. That’s what the producers wanted. They were everywhere: coming off the whale watch cruises, cruising around the Innsmouth Yacht Club, walking along the shoreline, and filling the expensive, gourmet restaurants on the wharf. There were some local fishermen or clammers digging in the low surf, but these were few and far between. The feeling was that such ‘old-timers’ were indulged but only in small doses. When encountered on the street, they were avoided and ignored. There was a clear divide between these social groups. Although the ‘old town’ residents weren’t banned from the stores or new places, they were clearly not welcome and they knew it. There were few of them on the main streets, so the ‘local color’ was the young and wealthy newcomers, which was fine because that was exactly what the producers, and the viewing public, wanted to see. No one really wants to look at the man behind the curtain. They want the Wizard and they want him large and upbeat, not a hint of reality or anything depressing. That’s what morning news was all about. All flash.
The sun was beginning to set as Perry set up for the Gilman interview. The penthouse office at Marsh Landing was indeed impressive, with panoramic views on three sides. On the right and left were scores of rebuilt buildings showing their new prosperous faces to all, but it was the ocean view that was the most spectacular. Marsh Landing was tall enough to look over every inch of Innsmouth’s coast and beyond. There were clear views of the new wharfs and docks as well as the busy yacht club and pleasure boaters lazily drifting along. A dark line appeared on the horizon with a small monolith atop it. There were no boats near it, and it seemed as if every vessel gave it a wide berth.
“Lovely view, isn’t it?” said Richard Gilman as he walked into the room. He was an older man than Kelly had expected and painfully thin. His clothes were stylish and neat, but his face and neck were wrinkled like an orange left out in the sun too long. He walked toward Kelly, smiling carefully, and held out his hand.
Kelly nodded, put on her reporter’s smile (which was making her face ache by this point), and went into her well-rehearsed speech. “It certainly is, Mr. Gilman. I’m Kelly . . .”
Gilman smiled. “Oh, no need to introduce yourself, Ms. Shapiro, I’m a big fan. I watch your show all the time.”
Startled because no one ever admitted to watching “Massachusetts Morning” off camera, Kelly stumbled. “Um, this is my cameraman, Perry . . .”
Gilman shifted quickly and shook Perry’s hand vigorously. “Wonderful! Now I suggest we get to this quickly before we lose the light, yes?”
Without waiting for an answer, Gilman maneuvered Kelly over in front of the large window looking over the ocean and started the interview. It was the usual, typical morning news segment. Kelly asked simple questions (‘softballs’) and Gilman answered happily. He told stories about growing up as a child in Innsmouth during the ’50s and swimming out to the reef. Later he went to college, studied engineering, and returned to revitalize his hometown. It was the quintessential ‘local boy makes good’ story and smelled as bad as the ocean at low tide.
Soon they had more than enough footage for the segments, and Perry busied himself with packing up the equipment. The sun had set and the lights of the town were sparkling through the windows. Kelly walked over to the ocean view, now dark and indistinct, and asked, “What’s the name of that reef out there?”
Gilman came and joined her. “Ah, that’s ‘Howard’s Reef.’ There’s a sharp drop into the ocean just beyond that. We renamed it some time ago.”
“What did it use to be called?” Kelly asked.
“Devil’s Reef,” Gilman answered. “Of course we had to change that. Not good for the tourism, you know. Some of the old locals still call it that though. Old habits.”
“Yes, about that,” Kelly replied, “where are all the old locals? All I see are rich yuppies.”
Gilman nodded. “It may look that way, but I assure you that many of those ‘yuppies’ are descended from old Innsmouth families. They just haven’t lived here for a few generations.”
“So you don’t see yourself as creating a town just for the rich? Pushing out the locals?”
Gilman chuckled and nodded. “Sounds as if you’ve been talking to some of the old locals already? Look, no one forced them to sell and those who haven’t have been welcome all the same. No one can argue that real estate like this (on the coast and close to Boston) isn’t a valuable commodity. We saved this town. Others would have let if fall apart and rot. We brought it back to life and gave it purpose again.”
“And what purpose is that?” Kelly asked.
“To celebrate the past and prepare for the future.” Gilman smiled.
* * *
The WCGB news van was heading down Dock Street and out of Innsmouth back to Route 118. Kelly was looking at the piece of paper that the bartender had given her. There was a name and an address written in spidery script that said, “Robert Olmstead, 18 Water Street.” Still looking at the paper, she asked Perry, “Do you know where 18 Water Street is?”
He thought briefly. “Yeah, I think so. That’s in the old part of town. Why?”
“I think I might have one more interview to do.”
“What? What for? We’ve got plenty of footage. I’ve already uploaded it to the studio and they’re editing it now.”
“There’s just something ‘off’ here, Perry. This town: it’s too shiny and perfect, you know? And it’s not just that the rich people have taken it over. There’s something else here.”
“Yeah? So what? Don’t get all ‘reporter’ on me now, Kelly. You’re a morning news host. You’re not Diane Sawyer.”
“Fuck you, asshole! Didn’t you say you used to shoot footage in Afghanistan? Kuwait? What the fuck are you doing filming this crap?”
Perry looked at her and made a U-turn in the middle of the street. “Probably just some old fuck who’s pissed that he didn’t cash out when he had the chance,” he said as the van made for the ‘old town’ section.
Eyes behind expensive designer glasses watched the van drive away and passed that fact onto others.
* * *
Even by the standards of homeless people, 18 Water Street was a hovel. It was a one-level colonial of ‘salt-box’ design and looked as if it might fall over if someone sneezed on it hard enough. A slight rain had begun to fall, which made everything look slick and wet. There were no BMWs on this street. The few vehicles that were there were old, beaten-up Ford and Chevy trucks. No children played on Water Street, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t people who noticed the news truck with its garish sticker of smiling, happy, and rich newscasters come to a halt in front of the silent house.
There were heavy curtains in place behind every window. If there was a light inside the house, it wasn’t possible to see it from the street. “Let me go in and scope this out first,” said Kelly. “I’ll see if there’s anything here worth taping.”
Perry shrugged, pulled out his cell phone, and started playing a game.
The front door look
ed as if it might break apart if she knocked too hard, and there was no bell. Tentatively, Kelly knocked on the door. She could hear the sound of something shuffling inside toward the door when it started to open slowly. The bartender peeked out and looked around nervously.
“It’s late,” he said. “Figured you weren’t coming. Best get inside quick.”
He opened the door and rushed Kelly inside.
“I don’t get it. You gave me this note to come and talk to you? Are you Robert Olmstead?”
The bartender shook his head. “No, my name’s Sargent, Joe Sargent. My family’s been in Innsmouth for generations. My great-grandfather was friends with Olmstead. That’s how I know him.”
The inside of the house was dark and gloomy. A few low-level lamps were on, but their light barely extended beyond themselves. The furniture, such as it was, looked old and unused, as if it were an afterthought or attempt to provide ‘normality.’ The air was close and stale, but there was a sour taste to it lying just underneath the senses. They were in a living room, and a hallway led off to the left while the right had an empty doorway that opened onto an unused kitchen. For all the sense of abandonment, the place was exceptionally clean.
“You don’t really know about Innsmouth,” Sargent said. It was a statement, not a question. “You don’t know how it used to be or what went on here. There was a reason the Feds raided the town in ’28 and bombed the reef. Olmstead was that reason.”
Sargent walked down the hall to the last door on the right. He knocked lightly, and some type of noise answered him. “Stay here a moment,” Sargent said. “I’ll see if he’s up for talking to you.”
He entered the room and closed the door behind him. After a moment, the door opened again and Sargent motioned Kelly inside.
It was a small bedroom, of sorts. Or, at any rate, it had a bed in it. There was a weak-looking wooden chair next to the bed and a small bureau off to the side. The bed was on the right, against the wall, and unreachable by the hall light. There was a figure moving slowly on the bed. No other lights were in the room, not even a candle. An unpleasant odor filled the room, but Kelly couldn’t place it. Sargent turned to the figure. “This is the reporter I told you about.”
Something on the bed wheezed as if breathing were too difficult to attempt. “This is Robert Olmstead,” Sargent said, “the man who brought the Feds to Innsmouth in ’28.”
Kelly looked at Sargent and suddenly became very frightened for her safety. Sargent was old, she reasoned, and she’d not seen anyone else in the house. She could probably knock him out of the way and run for the door if she had to, because the man was obviously crazy. He’d as much as said that Olmstead was more than a hundred years old.
“Please . . . sit . . .” the voice said.
“Mr. Olmstead,” Kelly said as she slowly sat down on the wooden chair, “my name is Kelly Shapiro and I’m from ‘Massachusetts Morning.’”
“He doesn’t know what that means, Miss,” said Sargent behind her.
“You’re . . . a reporter, yes?” the voice wheezed. Kelly peered into the black spot, trying to get more of a definition of the person before her, but it was as if the light refused to enter that corner.
“Yes, I am. Mr. Sargent says you have something to tell me? About the town?”
“It’s all my . . . fault,” the voice in the night said. “I was the one that brought . . . them here. When I came here, I . . . didn’t understand. How could I? At first, all I saw was the . . . terror. Then it was the joy, but that didn’t . . . last long. The Feds came with their . . . soldiers and their . . . submarine and bombed the trench beyond Devil’s Reef. Even the . . . Deep Ones hadn’t known what lay there, sleeping in the deep beneath Y’ha-nthlei. The torpedoes . . . woke it up and it came up out of the deep rift in-between the realms.”
“What came up? What are you talking about, Mr. Olmstead?”
The wheezing became faster-paced now, as if the speaker were gasping for breath because he had too much to say.
“Old . . . Obed Marsh should’ve known. There’s always a bigger fish in the sea. Breeding with . . . Deep Ones was bad enough, but it wasn’t that bad. Once the change came, you were almost . . . glad. The sea. It’s so . . . peaceful. Then it’s the time on land you dread. I came back here with my cousin, and he was one of the . . . first to die.”
“From the police raids?”
The shadow shaked a furious ‘no.’ “From what came after.”
A noise came from outside, but Kelly didn’t notice. Sargent had and became nervous.
“There were . . . others, those who welcomed it and made a pact. Same way that ol’ Obed did and for the . . . same reason. Nothing . . . ever . . . changes. Time is a noose around our necks. Everything that happens has happened . . . before and will again. Y’ha-nthlei fell, but another rose in its place—this time more terrifying and dark. And behind that will be another.”
Sargent left the room and did not return.
Kelly could just barely make out Olmstead’s face as her vision began to adjust to the blackness. His eyes were large and bulging, and his lips were thick and misshapen. He had no hair and his skin was rough and scaly. His head seemed unnaturally flat.
“Then they started to come . . . back. We thought that they were returning to . . . help us, save us, but we were . . . wrong. They had another use for us. All for gold. Always for gold. We . . . sell our past and ransom our futures for nothing more than . . . pennies.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s using you? For what?”
Footsteps came down the hall. Kelly ignored them, thinking that it was just Sargent returning to the room.
The shadow wheezed out one word: “Sacrifices.”
“Well, Miss Shapiro, I think you’ve seen enough ‘local color’ for today, don’t you?” came the voice of Richard Gilman.
Kelly jumped from her seat, but Gilman’s hands clamped onto her arms and held her firmly.
“Let me go, you fucking asshole!” Kelly yelled, but Gilman just smiled.
“Not quite ‘morning TV’ language, is it?” He let go and quickly punched her hard in the stomach. Kelly bent over and began to vomit on the floor.
Two other men stood in the hallway, waiting for instructions. They were thick, strong men who were used to following orders.
“Throw her in the back of the van and take her over to the center below the Landing.”
They picked Kelly off the floor, and she immediately bolted and attempted to run for the door. One of the men slammed her into the wall, and she slumped unconsciously into the hall.
“What about him, sir?” The other man motioned to Olmstead.
Gilman shone his light on the terrified figure on the bed. There was little left of what had once been human in Olmstead. He was mostly a Deep One, with all the signs of the sea about him. Skin had become scales, nose flattened into slits, gills working desperately in the air, and a skeletal frame that bore little resemblance to a hominid.
“Oh, Bob and I are going to have a little chat, he and I, about the price of freedom.”
* * *
When Kelly woke, she could not tell where she was. There was no light, and her side pulsed with pain from where she had been shoved into the wall. She was lying on a rough wooden floor that felt old and unsanded. Her hands were tied in front of her with a thick rope that was, in turn, tied to something else. She felt her way backward and found that the rope had been tied to a cold, iron ring set in the floor. She pulled on the ring as hard as she could, but it did not move. Crying, she started to scream for help.
After about fifteen minutes of sustained yelling, her voice started to give out. Then she heard the sound of a door unlocking and opening.
Bright light poured in from outside. A figure stood framed in the doorway. Kelly was blinded by the sudden light and couldn’t see it properly. The figure flicked a light switch beside the door, and the rest of the room was illuminated by lights in a ceiling that was at least fifteen feet
high.
There was nothing in the room. No furniture, no trash, no bones, nothing. On the side opposite the door, there were two large openings that were framed in bricks. They could have been the openings to old sewers from colonial times. A soft sound of water drifted up from them.
Richard Gilman stood in the doorway. Silently, he came inside and closed the door behind him.
“Please,” Kelly said, “you have to let me go. I won’t say anything, I promise.”
Gilman grinned and nodded his head.
“You were only supposed to film some ‘fluff’ pieces. ‘Come visit beautiful Innsmouth by the sea.’ That’s all. No Woodward & Bernstein theatrics. But I can’t really blame you, can I? Its Sargent’s fault . . . and Olmstead’s as well. They’ll be dealt with presently.” Gilman sighed. “It’s always the old ones that are the hardest to convince.”
Kelly cried. “Please, let me go. People will notice if I’m missing.”
Gilman laughed. “You overestimate your importance, my dear. You’re just a minor reporter on a regional morning news program. You won’t be missed by many.”
“People will know. I’ve got family. I . . . I have followers. On Twitter. And Facebook!”
Reaching into his pocket, Gilman pulled out her cell phone. “Oh, we’ve got that covered. My secretary is already posting on your behalf. See?” He held up the phone, which showed a large seafood dinner. “On Facebook: ‘Having a marvelous dinner at Almeda’s on the Innsmouth shore.’ Lovely what technology can do, isn’t it? And later you’re going to be posting on Instagram all the great things you’re buying at the shops on State Street.”
“That won’t work! People know me!”
Gilman looked disapprovingly at her phone. “It’s already done. Tomorrow you’ll announce how you’ve just been offered a co-host job out in Montana somewhere. The details will come later, but they’re not that important anyway. A few posts, some videos and then you’ll just fade away. We’ve done it before.”
Kelly pulled on the rope.
