by Byron Craft
In due course, I observed the faint outline of a harbor. It was dotted with a few decrepit cabins and moored dories. Moving deeper into the village, I could make out the ruins of wharves jutting out here and there from the shore to end in crumbling neglect. Farther south I glimpsed a long black line, scarcely rising above the waterline, made discernible by the lights from the coast. It was a reef and, as I looked, I noticed that the line appeared unbroken all the way to the tip of a promontory of land. I was to learn, later, that the narrow peninsula was called Ogre’s Tongue Cape.
***
The bus stopped in front of a dilapidated three story building. Under the headlights of the motor coach, I could tell that the clapboard siding on the structure hadn’t received a coat of paint in probably decades. Most of the paint had peeled away revealing gray weathered wood. Only a few flakes of its original green coating were left. Over the front entry was a large faded sign, wherein one of its letters had fallen off. It read, “Gilman House _otel.”
My scurvy looking chauffeur activated the lever next to his driver seat, and the folding doors opened, once again, letting in the damp evening air. There was the faint odor of rotting fish. I remained in my seat. The two other passengers filed past me. The curved form of the tentacle chomping old woman walked by. Her bug-eyes gawked. She smiled, I was stunned; she had no teeth, only darkness within the hollow of her mouth. The skinny female was next. She shuffled along on her big shoes, holding her wicker basket to her chest, never looking in my direction.
I waited until the pair had exited the vehicle and were several paces away. It was time to test out my evidence gathering idea. I drew the .45 from my shoulder holster, aimed it at the side of the driver’s head and cocked the hammer into the firing position. I already had a slug in the chamber. “Close the door, Baldy,” I ordered. He turned in his seat and gave me a glaring look of bored hostility. Eyeing my Roscoe, he pulled the lever and the door closed.
“What do you want, man?” he answered in a vocal sound that was a whisper partially lost in a gurgle. The way he voiced the word, “man,” I somehow knew, deep down inside, that it was his way of saying, “human.” I didn’t like that one bit.
“Just some info, Baldy,” trying to hide my disgust of the scurvy little bastard.”
“Go to the library,” he murmured.
“Haven’t got time for comedy. If you don’t make nice-nice and play twenty questions with me, my Roscoe here will put a tiny hole in your forehead making a grapefruit size exit out the back of your skull.”
“Ask,” he reluctantly replied.
“Two days ago, were you piloting this rattletrap between Arkham and Innsmouth?”
He nodded the affirmative.
“Good! Was there one of your locals, also carrying a little girl passenger?”
He stared at me for a bit probably weighing my .45 against ratting on one of his neighbors. He looked down at the floor of the bus. “Yes,” he croaked.
“Excellent,” I proclaimed. “Now for the sixty-four-dollar question. What’s his name, Baldy?”
“You won’t tell that I told you,” he pleaded.
“That’s how we play this game. I won’t tell on you, and you won’t tell your slimy friends about me.”
“Elam Muskeg.”
“That’s a helluva moniker. How can I find him?”
“He shares a room here, at the hotel, with his friend, Jacob Polder. Most of the time you can find them at the temple.”
“Now we’re going places. What temple, Pal?”
“The Esoteric Order of Dagon,” he grudgingly responded.
Eureka! I almost jumped out of my seat. I had put the unsolved case file that sat on my desk for over a year into my duffel before leaving Arkham in hopes of drumming up some clues to the whereabouts of the perpetrators. Their modus operandi was to slice a guy’s head off; we still didn’t know much else.
I walked out into the moonlight. Baldy and I made up. He promised not to tell on me, and I promised not to kill him.
***
Turning back, I realized that I hadn’t asked the driver where the temple was located. In a streak of red taillights, the bus was gone, and I was left standing at the curb. A stupid move. I was left not knowing which way to go.
On the street where I stood, I could see row after row of two and three story abandoned houses dripping shadows. Fingers of sooty fog twined across the road and the sky. Innsmouth is on the coast of Essex County, Massachusetts, south of Plum Island and north of Cape Ann. The place is badly cut off from the rest of the country by marshes and creeks; thus the murkiness that wreathed the town.
Standing beneath a solitary street light, I lit up a Lucky. Moths and mosquitos swirled around the light above that hissed and crackled. A lone dragonfly darted in and out of the brightness, gathering mosquito morsels for its evening meal.
***
The guys on the force call me “hard ass.” They couldn’t have painted a prettier picture, I guess. It is my method of extracting evidence from perps that eventually awarded me the title. The world is full of barbarism and darkness, and the finality of the cemetery is a very good persuader when dealing with the scum that occupies it. In my experience, either the threat of a hollow-point bullet between the eyes or the sweet invitation to a Louisville Slugger is unsurpassed for intelligence gathering. The Chief, at our station house, quietly approves of my methods and once told me that I had a heart of stone. That was an off-handed compliment. I’m not crazy about what I do, but there are few other recourses. My conscience doesn't keep me from sinning, but it does keep me from enjoying it.
My ex-wife said I was hard boiled. She was right. I spent more time on the job and very little with her, at home. She left me several years ago and took the kid, never heard from them again. I could track them down, of course, I’m a good detective, but why bother. I’d only make their lives miserable again. My old man kicked the bucket shortly after the wife vamoosed; I’ve lost two partners in the past year, and I have been alone ever since. And now I was going it alone in this town of dense construction, but with a gloomy lack of visible life.
Arkham was where many of the Innsmouth residents did their shopping, and I was familiar with the strange kind of streak in those folks. It is not hard to explain; they make your stomach crawl. Some of them have unusually narrow heads with flat, almost non-existent noses. Their skin isn’t quite right either; rough and scabby, and the sides of the necks, of various older ones, are shriveled. Maybe the results of intermarrying. I had heard that animals hate them and that they used to have lots of trouble with horses before automobiles came into vogue. Standing there and looking at the skeletal vestiges of Innsmouth I realized that I was probably going to be forced to play patty cake with some of these malformed mugs.
***
The Esoteric Order of Dagon became an integral part of my quest when I discovered the relationship between it and Elam Muskeg, the man I was after. The fella this Dagon bunch bumped off, a year ago, was a cop. A uniform officer that was off-duty caught unawares and had his head separated from his body by a huge knife. I knew that this Muskeg creep carried a big knife because he used it on that broad in the flophouse back in Arkham. I couldn’t help wondering if the two murders were connected.
I didn’t have a map of the burg, and I didn’t have a clue as to where their temple was located. I decided to do the man on the street bit. Glancing up and down the cracked and bumpy sidewalks I looked for citizens to question. The people there were few and far between, infrequent shambling forms along the dismal streets and unpaved lanes. There was a small number that gathered in a huddle on the broken sidewalk, a short distance away, and I thought I detected in them a curious desire to avoid looking at me.
Nevertheless, I marshaled up my cop courage and sauntered over to the group. They were four in number, but two of them scurried off at the sight of my approach. “Hi,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet a buddy of mine at the temple, but I seemed to have lost my way. Can you di
rect me to the Esoteric Order of Dagon?”
Number three ran away right then. I thought I heard a faint squeal, like what an animal might make, as he hurried off. One remained standing; his feet planted firmly on the concrete. A reproachful glare eyeballed me from top to bottom. He was thin, not stoop shouldered, a little under six feet tall, dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed gray golf cap. His age was, perhaps, thirty-five, but the deep characteristic creases in the sides of his neck made him appear older. He did not have that typical dull, expressionless face that I had come to associate with many of the Innsmouth populace. He appeared to be keenly aware of not only me but his surroundings. “Why do you want to go to the Dagon temple,” he asked. Like the bus driver, his voice was not right. There was something else about his voice that didn’t seem kosher, but I couldn’t lay my hands on it.
“My buddy talked me into joining. As they say, ‘To be one, ask one.’” That lingo came out of my brief stint with Freemasonry. I hoped that it would work.
My new fish necked friend smiled and pointed up the street. “A mile that way you’ll see an old Catholic Church on your left. Turn there, and you can’t miss it, a large pillared building at the far end of a cul-de-sac.”
“Thanks, mate,” I replied, doffed my hat, and walked away. Half way down the block I turned and looked back. Fish Neck was still staring at me.
***
Once my observer was out of sight, no other living thing was visible. The complete absence of cats and dogs in the neighborhood didn’t surprise me because of the rumors about animals not liking the inhabitants of Innsmouth. One thing that did puzzle me though was that in the better-preserved houses, ones that had a lived-in quality, all displayed a tightly shuttered condition of their third-story and attic windows. Conspiracy and caution seemed widespread in this hushed city of alien aspect and death because I could not escape the sensation of being watched. I imagined an ambush at every step by sly, staring eyes that never shut. I jumped as the stroke of midnight sounded from a belfry on my left. I had been following Paine Street as my new found friend had suggested and on my left was the Catholic Church. Weeds and grass had grown up between the cracks in the front walk, and where probably stained glass windows were once abounded, they had been covered over with heavy planking. There were rumors that the membership of the Esoteric Order of Dagon was comprised of devil-worshipers, a peculiar secret cult which had gained force over the decades in Innsmouth and engulfed all the orthodox churches.
Following my guides directions, I turned left on to Federal Street. I faced the ruins of a factory ahead and the traces of an old railway station. Farther on I could see that the street terminated in a cul-de-sac. To get there, I had to cross the Manuxet River. The smell of fish assailed my senses, not the scent of freshly caught fish, more the odor of sea life left to decay on a shoreline. A bridge of uncertain construction before me was posted with a warning sign, but I took the risk and crossed it to the north bank where smatterings of life reappeared.
Furtive, shambling creatures stared critically in my direction; their fish faces eyed me coldly. These people, if you could call them that, were more hideous and abnormal than those near the center of the town. Several times I was eerily reminded of something utterly fantastic about them which I could not quite place. Were they the results of inbreeding with an unknown and mysterious aquatic race? Were they men and women of another age and another order of being? The likeness gnawed at my nerves. Their heads were far more narrow than what I had previously observed of the native inhabitants. All of them had bulging, watery blue eyes that seemed never to blink, non-existent noses, receding foreheads, and chins, with extremely thin lips. In places, the surface of their flesh seemed irregular, as if peeling from a cutaneous disease. Undoubtedly the alien strain in the local folk was stronger here unless, the “Innsmouth look” was a disease, in which case, this area might be used to hold the more advanced cases. Innsmouth was rapidly becoming intolerable.
I walked up Federal Street toward the dead end in the hopes of getting some answers. It was a short jaunt to the cul-de-sac which, while getting closer, I realized that it was so large that it became less of a roundabout and more like a town square. Several buildings lined the curb. Farther down, and being the most prominent of all of the structures, stood what I guessed to be the Order of Dagon Hall. I ran quickly towards it as if I was chasing a mugger. I was looking at a large building with pillars in front. The edifice’s once white paint was gray and peeling. A black and gold sign on the pediment, over the front entry, was so badly faded that I could barely make out the words “Esoteric Order of Dagon.” The massive front door had been painted black, and it was locked.
The moon was high, and under the silvery light, I could tell that a mortise lock barred my entry. Any good detective, or a bad one for that matter, will carry the proper tools to allow him passage beyond a secured door. I removed a ring of skeleton keys from my jacket pocket. The moonlight was not sufficient enough for me see what type of keyhole was in the locking mechanism’s escutcheon plate and I cursed myself for not bringing a flashlight. Fiddling with each key on the ring, one by one, endeavoring to locate the correct pattern to fit the aperture, I would glance over my shoulder after each attempt to make sure that no one was watching. The street was empty. On the fifth try, the key fit and the lock turned. The door swung inward.
***
Inconceivably, the smell of dead fish was considerably stronger inside. Entering, I tread softly over a tiled foyer on to a heavily worn Persian carpet that overlaid the floor of a vast hallway. The moonlight only illuminated to within a short distance of the interior. No electric light switches were apparent. Striking the flint on my Zippo, I produced a good size flame. The smell of the burning lighter fluid was a welcome relief from the pungent rotting fish smell. Several cast iron wall sconces, bearing unlit wooden torches, lined the walls on both sides. I reached up and touched the ash on the end of one. It was cold. Probably no one had been there for a while. Maybe a good sign.
Lowering my lighter I could plainly see that in some areas the carpet was almost threadbare from years of substantial foot traffic. Upon closer examination, I noticed a strange set of footprints leading down the hallway, if they were truly footmarks left by someone. It looked as if an individual had tracked through spilled water, or a puddle or along the bank of the Manuxet River and left a trail upon the woven rug. Only these imprints did not appear to have been made by a human being. They were not boot marks or marks made by a normal person’s bare feet. They were fan shaped wherein all of the sizable toes of our mystery walker had been webbed together. I got down on one knee and touched a print. It was still wet. Maybe not a good sign.
Treading even lighter I ambled towards the opposite end of the hallway to a pair of substantial doors. They were a good eight-feet in height, and upon testing them, with a light shove, I realized that they were hanging on double action hinges causing them to swing in either direction. Slowly opening the one on the right, ever so slightly, only part way, I peered in. The Zippo in my left hand was becoming too hot to handle. I closed the lid on the lighter and extinguished the flame. To my surprise, the interior of the room that I was examining was illuminated by a pale blue light filtering down from above.
Pushing the door wider open, I slipped in. I could easily make out a convex ceiling. I was standing inside a massive dome. Half a dozen skylights in the rounded ceiling magnified the moonlight and starlight from the night sky. Taking another step into the interior, I felt something crunch underfoot, producing my warm Zippo, once again, the yellow radiance it gave off was enough to see what I stepped on when I squatted down for a closer look. It was sand and bits of seashell.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the silvery murk I could tell that the entire room was littered with sand. Here and there were the scattered remains of oyster shells, clam shells and the occasional conch. There were hundreds of them lying about. The ones that I examined had been stripped clean of
their innards, possibly the results of a community Sunday brunch, I thought attempting to make light of my surroundings. All along the walls of the great rotunda were the images of fish-like frogs, or frog-like fishes, that were drawn in a variety of positions as if they were human beings. Maybe these frog people were the kind of critters that were responsible for all those mermaid stories.
If this was, indeed, their temple it was the strangest one I had ever seen. There were no pews, benches or chairs. Rocks, actually boulders, the size of easy chairs had been strategically placed encircling a much larger stone that must have weighed several tons. Nearer, and by the light of my Zippo, I saw that the top of that really big rock had been chiseled flat and smeared across its surface, which had also run down its craggy sides, was what looked like blood. I hoped it wasn’t human.
What crazy, insane ceremonies were conducted in this temple from hell, I questioned. Did they make human sacrifices here or did they just slaughter the occasional lamb as they did in the Old Testament? Crunching along through more sand and shellfish remains, I crossed to the other side of the enormous room. Wherever I stood, the view was unchanged as if to keep one’s attention on the big rock in the middle. If it weren’t for the pair of massive doors that I entered by, the sameness of the surrounding architecture would confuse the average parishioner, of this warped and twisted congregation, as to which way was north and south.
Then I discovered a rent in their fabric of deception. It was another door. This one was of average width and height. It was concealed behind a solitary boulder that did not coincide with the pattern set by the others. Turning its knob, I discovered that it too was unlocked. So much for Innsmouth security. Light from the starry night did not penetrate the area. Striking the flint on my Zippo again I perceived a round table in the middle of the room, and there was a candelabra resting on it. There were five candles in the holder, and I lit them all.
