by Edward Lee
A miracle, I thought. It was as perfect as any babe I’d ever beheld. The moment it took notice of me, it quieted, and looked at me wide-eyed.
“See, he likes you, Foster. Just the sight of you calms him.” Mary rocked him as best she could.
“What a wonder,” I whispered. “I’m only sorry I wasn’t here to assist when the time came.”
“Each time it’s easier,” she informed. “There was barely any pain with this one.” She glanced hopefully to me, eyes aglint in the candlelight. “But we must name him right away, in case—”
In case we die trying to leave, I finished for her.
“I’m going to name him Foster,” she said.
I went speechless, a tear beading in my eye.
Then her hopeful glance turned hard as granite. “And they’re not going to get this one. Only over my dead body…”
The joy of this notice crested in my heart, but then crashed to the most stygian depths.
She still didn’t know that Walter was gone.
“Mary, I… I…”
“I love you so much, Foster,” she interrupted, teary-eyed herself. “I want you to marry me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and raise this child with you… and make love to you every single night…”
The words, greater than any gift I’d ever been given, only dragged my spirit deeper into the abyss of black verity.
“You, me, and Walter,” she mused on, breast-feeding now. “We’ll be such a happy family.”
Sorrow sealed my throat like a strangler’s gasp. I could barely hack out, “Mary, you don’t understand. It’s about—”
“I know what it’s about,” her placid voice came to me. “It’s about Walter.”
I stared.
“I never got the chance to explain earlier,” she went on, modestly covering enough of her bosom to forestall my view. “Earlier, you said that you’d witnessed Cyrus Zalen at the waterfront, delivering sacks of newborns to the fullbloods.”
“But-but… but Mary, what—”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You were simply mistaken.”
“Mistaken?” I asked but by now my mind was thoroughly disarranged. “No, no, Mary, I saw him, it was Zalen.”
“You saw a man in a black raincoat is what you saw, Foster. Right?”
“Why… yes.”
She looked right at me. “Foster, the man stalking you in the woods earlier today wasn’t Zalen.”
The comment took me aback. “But… I thought sure.”
“And the man you saw out on the sandbar tonight wasn’t Zalen, either.”
“Who, then?” I demanded.
Mary squirmed in her seat, candlelight pale on her face. “It was Walter’s father—”
“What!”
“Foster… turn around.”
The cryptic command reversed my position, and my eyes blossomed at the surreal sight.
It was a man tall and gaunt who stood in the opposite corner. The black raincoat seemed several sizes too large, and its hood draped most of his face. More important was the minor burden in his arms: it was Walter. At first I feared the boy was dead but then I noted the rise and fall of his young chest.
“This is Walter’s father,” Mary told me in the struggling light. “Those times you mistook him as Zalen stalking you, he was actually coming here, to catch a glimpse of his son.”
I suppose I already knew via some blackly ethereal portent, even before the figure retracted the hood to reveal the face of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
I stood, lax-jawed, dizzy—staring at the icon as if beholding a vision from the highest precipice of the earth…
The voice which issued from the thin lips sounded high but parched, an exerted whisper. He hefted the living weight. “My son is in no danger, sir; he’s merely fainted from the shock of his abduction by several of the town’s collective members. Please rest assured that these self-same abductors are no longer among the living.”
“You killed them?”
The thin face nodded. “Just as I killed the fullblood that was after you at the Onderdonk’s. And as Mary has informed you, I was the ferryman you glimpsed on the sandbar tonight.” The voice teetered now between cracking and high-pitchedness, hollow yet somehow exhibiting depth at the same time. “In the amalgam of my damnable onus. This nefarious deed has been my province alone, since the sixteenth of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven.”
The day after his death, I knew. The Master’s words sounded ruined, like thin-membraned things blown through fence-slats in the wind. The obscene circumvention of death left his narrow visage pallored as if old mortician’s wax had been applied to a skull. This semi-translucence caused me to shudder, as did his eye-whites which more resembled dirt-flecked snowcrust.
“And as you’ve already been partially apprized,” he grated on, “the detestable creatures which I fictionalized as ‘the Deep Ones’ are in possession of aggressive philtres which re-synthesize nucleotide activity within a certain helical infrastructure that exists in every human cell. This ingenious—and diabolic—process has the power to, among other things, reconstitute life in the dead. Hence, sir, my damnation and the recompense for my sins.”
“Your… sins?” I questioned. “But you’ve been known throughout your natural life as an atheist. The concept of sin is one you don’t believe in.”
“Not my conception,” the haunted man intoned, “but their conception.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I penned The Shadow Over Innsmouth close to a decade ago, but, lo, in its flaw, it was never published, and in its not being published, word never traced back to the fullbloods of its existence…”
“But that all changed,” I hazarded, “in late-1936, when the Visionary Publications copy became available to the public. And word got back—”
“—back to the eternal monstrosities who hold sway over this place, yes. But they didn’t endeavor to pursue me then—it was already known that I was suffering from a terminal affliction. Several months later, however, when I died, word of my decease riposted back to them as well. The night after I was buried, a troop of the accurst things came up out of Narragansett Bay, exhumed me, and re-enlivened my pitiable corpse. Since then I’ve been forced to serve them, in a number of abominable fashions whose details I’ll spare you. The nexus of my punishment, though, and I should think it quite perceptible now, is the delivery of all newborns to the fullbloods’ soul-dead machinations.”
My throat suddenly shriveled. “They brought you back for that. To be a servitor for them.”
“That and far, far worse, sir. But an unwilling traitor to my race, and the devil’s package boy. The only way to protect the life of my son was to perform as I’m commanded, and deliver the innocent newborns into their appalling clutches.” The dead eyes looked to Mary and her now-sleeping baby. “It is a task I shall never discharge again.” He placed Walter down alongside Mary, then returned his attention to me. “And of you, sir, I must beg a favor.”
“But I owe you my life,” I exclaimed. “The beast at Onderdonk’s was only moments away from killing me before you intervened—”
“Do as you have promised,” the ghost-voice quavered, “and deliver Mary and my son to safety.”
“I will. This I pledge—”
But in my own hesitation, I recalled something crucial while on the same hand Mary’s attitude seemed suddenly crestfallen.
“Your brother, Mary. And your stepfather,” I commenced with the dark implication.
“I know,” she acknowledged. “Paul’s not here. He sleeps in the backroom at the store.”
The looks we all shared told all.
“We’ll have no choice but to leave him. A rescue attempt would grossly reduce our chances of safe escape with Walter and the baby…”
“I’ll see to the task of relieving him of his misery myself,” Lovecraft offered. “The fullbloods will kill him once they learn that Mary has fled the collective, and they’ll do so in a ma
nner most grueling and torturous. I’ll be certain to get to him before they have occasion to. He’ll suffer not an iota of pain.”
“My stepfather, though,” Mary half-sobbed. “He’s in the next room, and I’m afraid…”
She needn’t finish. He would have to be euthanized, and since I was the one with the gun— “This room here?” I asked of the crude and slightly tilted wooden door to the side.
She gulped and nodded.
“All right then.” I withdrew my handgun, edged toward the door.
Mary struggled to her feet to come near me. “But, Foster, you must understand. My stepfather—he’s almost completely gone over by now.”
“Gone over?”
Lovecraft picked up the explanation, “The metamorphosis which afflicts the crossbreeds not only taints their physical features but, I regret to impart, also their mental faculties. It’s a certain eventuality that such hybrids in advanced age such as Mary’s stepfather become hostile with time and adopt aspects of the mentality, attitudes, and sentiments of the fullbloods.”
“It’s true, Foster,” Mary added. “He’s worse now than ever. If you go in there, he’ll attack you.”
Then so be it, I thought, but as I approached the door Lovecraft stopped me with a hand to my shoulder. “You are not expendable, sir, but I am. It’s a much more difficult event to kill a dead man than one who’s still living.”
“But I feel it’s my responsibility,” I uttered.
“You mustn’t take the chance,” he insisted. “You’re Mary and Walter’s only hope. Save your ammunition.” He took the gun and returned it to my pocket, then from his own extracted a razor-sharp fileting knife. “When I’m not detained for other, more monstrous duties, the fullbloods force me to filet fish in the workhouses, and it just so happens”—he shuddered at the thought—“I hate fish.” His ruined eyes addressed me more directly. “Go now. Take them out of here now… and fulfill your pledge to me.”
“But-but,” I stammered, still not quite reckoning the fact that it was Lovecraft in my actual midst, maloccluded jaw and all. “You could come with us.”
“No, it’s time for nature to take its true course,” his voice wisped. “My existence has perverted death for too long. Tonight—I’ll see to it—I shall be dead for good,” and then he picked up the still-unconscious Walter, placed him in my arms, then assisted Mary and the baby toward the door.
Mary tried all she could to stifle her sobs as we stepped back out into the teeming night. Lovecraft bid nothing more as an adieu; he merely cast a final glance at the boy in my arms, then quietly closed the door.
I stowed my passengers all in the front of the vehicle but was stalled by a sudden and very grotesque coercion. “Foster!” shot Mary’s diminutive whisper. “Where are you going?”
“Just… one moment,” I told her, and then it was this coercion that prompted me back to the hovel of a house.
To the back window…
I had to look in, for earlier in the afternoon I’d only glimpsed the fringes of Mary’s stepfather as it sat back in shadow. My eyes, now, held wide on the drab glass pane when the room’s utter darkness was broken by the inner door opening, and Lovecraft undiscouragedly entered the room, candlestick in hand. That is when I saw Mary’s stepfather in detail…
The thing lay sidled over on the floor, breathing with a sound like bubbles being blown under water. When it noticed Lovecraft’s presence, a head that looked squashed down flinched. Mary had said that her stepfather had now fully “gone over,” but I could see that the metamorphosis was not yet totally complete. One eye was indeed froglike in that it existed half out of its socket, with a glistening green-black lid. A gold iris glittered amid the great, peach-sized orb; however its other eye appeared far more human, and the amalgamation of these opposites only heightened the grotesquerie of this living result of breeding between two separate species. Two mere holes functioned as the nose; fissures that could only be gills pulsed at its throat, and overall the skin seemed a queer combination of toad and man.
Then the wide rim of the creature’s mouth snapped open and—
ssssssssssnap!
—out shot a sickly pink cord which could only suffice for its tongue. Immediately I recalled the details of my glimpse through this window earlier in the day, where the same deformed and disjointed figure that Walter referred to as his “gramps” vollied the same cord that I’d then mistaken for a whip. But now I saw that it was no whip; it was a narrow yet heavily veined tentacle, rife with minute suckers which pulsed beneath a repugnant glisten. The appalling, boneless appendage was deftly forestalled by Lovecraft’s wrist, whereupon he sliced the tentacle off with his knife.
Its pain was readily apparent as arms only vaguely human sprang up in protest. The lopsided head shuddered, the great rimmed mouth locked open in order to release a vociferation that could only have been born in hell: a whistle like a tea kettle interlaced by the slopping, wet spattery scream I’d heard a facsimile of earlier. When it tried to rise on joints that flexed backwards, Lovecraft came more definitely forward with his fileting knife…
I trotted away, unable to bear any more of this dismal execution. When the tenor and volume of the crossbreed’s scream quadrupled, I knew the grim task had been done.
With a blank mind, then, I started the rickety vehicle and pulled off. Smoke gusted and springs creaked, but now the truck was barreling down the road away from the awful house that Mary would never again have to enter.
The road south seemed the most direct shot, and its first quarter mile stood miraculously clear. Around a bend, though—
Mary and I screamed in unison.
It was a veritable barricade of monsters which occluded the pass. Fifty of them? A hundred? The logistics scarcely mattered. The sweep of our headlights compounded the sight to an utter vision of chaos: green-glistening skin pocked by brown, toadlike bumps, eyes jutting from compressed, earless heads like balls of black glass. Though they all stood upright, they showed white, runneled underbellies and legs corded with strange muscles. Dangling, horrific genitals told me they were predominantly male. Their height fluctuated between five to seven feet, though even in their upright stances, most were half-hunched over, so God knew their true height. Dare I barrel forward in an attempt to mow them down? Were I alone I may have risked this, but with Mary and her children in my charge, I knew I couldn’t.
The sight froze, maximizing the horror of what we beheld. The mass of abominations stood there, flexed on corded muscles, and as the headlamps blared, they all leaned back, tilted their heads upward, and then, as if on psychic command, their hideous rimmed mouths all opened at once and they began to shriek.
The sound caused the very woods to vibrate: a phlegmatic keening blended with the sound of a thousand men marching quickly through muck. If sound could cause physical impact, this was surely the case for the cacophony, now, made the truck visibly rock. I’m sure I was screaming myself as I threw the decrepit vehicle into reverse, but even at the top of my lungs my own utterance of fear could not be heard over the unearthly mudslide of sound which was being vaulted at us. Mary had already passed out so she did not have to see what I glimpsed in that last half-second before I could turn fully around…
With the fullbloods’ screams of objection, the tongue of each and every one of them jettisoned from their mouths. Unlike Mary’s stepfather, whose hybrid tongue was but a single pink tentacle, each of these monsters possessed a tongue comprised of at least a dozen of the same, glistening and sucker-pocked appendages. Each clump of deranged tongues seemed to twist into a single, fat pulsing column and shivered there in mid-air throughout the entirety of their vocal display. These columns of detestable flesh had to extend at least five feet.
I fully depressed the accelerator pedal when I’d managed to turn around to a northward heading. Did my eyes deceive me when I dared to take one glance in the rearward mirror? I could’ve sworn they were pursuing me now—the entire mass of the things—and some seem
ed to be leaping forward at bounds of twenty feet, which barely afforded the speeding vehicle any distance ahead of them. It took me a half mile, in fact, to gain any comfortable ground, but just as I’d realized this—
I screamed again and slammed on the truck’s brakes.
At least twice as many fullbloods blocked the northward way out. My God, what can I do now? When I looked over my shoulder through the truck’s former rear window, I could see the first of the southern detachment coming round the bend, bringing their vocal storm with them, but I noticed something else as well…
The can of gasoline that had been in back previously was no longer there.
Where it had gone to, I hardly had time to consider. Now, it seemed, I had no choice but to try to plow through this mass to the north. The baby was wailing now, and Walter finally roused, too, only to glimpse the horrific sight before us.
“Say your prayers, Walter,” I urged, and then the fullbloods ahead of us began to shamble forward. In less then a minute, I knew, we’d be converged upon from north and south.
As I would utter my own last prayer and plunged the accelerator in a feeble attempt to plow through the monstrous blockade, young Walter pointed left and cried out, “Mr. Morley! Who’s that man there?”
Man? my shattered faculties managed, but when I looked I saw the black-raincoated form of Lovecraft waving assertively at us. He was urging me to veer the truck left, into a narrow trail that looked barely able admit the vehicle’s width.
I saw, too, that it was he who’d taken the fuel can from the truck’s rear bed. The can hung from his hand.
When I pulled into the trail, I saw the northward mass of beasts shift into the woods themselves, as if to try to cut me off before I could drive to wherever the road would take us. Shortly thereafter the southern mass poured into the trail behind us. The sound they made caused the forest to tremor: the wet, slopping gush detailed by wave after wave of inhuman caterwauls. At this point, the forest was verminous with the shambling, bump-skinned things.
Then the woods began to shift with crackling light…
