by Byron Craft
“There is one more thing you should know,” the Captain added. “Our sonar, has since, picked up a large mass beneath the ship. The acoustic locator can determine the distance and direction of an object under water. We could tell by the pings we received back that it is not a sub. It is similar to the readings we would get when detecting a whale in the ocean. Only this one is massive by comparison, and it is slowly rising.”
“Quimby here said that you have your frigate's guns trained on the town. What’s your plan?”
“We are going to blow the hell out of the place before they have a chance to raise their devil god,” responded Woodhead, I thought a little too gleefully.
“You’re going to kill hundreds of innocent people as well?”
“Not at all,” he snapped back. Most of the ‘normal’ people of Innsmouth left a long time ago. Innsmouth never became a melting pot like the rest of the country. They just kept interbreeding with themselves. These amphibians on two legs are not human. They are some kind of alien life form. Their blood is not even the same as ours. The world will be a better place without them.”
“Extermination is not my style pal,” I countered with disgust.
“Oh, it is absolutely beneficial to your cause Detective. When it is all over with, your Elam Muskeg will be blown to bits. Case closed as they say.”
I stuck the snub nose .22 in my pocket, holstered the Colt and sat down hard in the chair that was once fastened to me. "Look,” I said, “I know this Muskeg fella is a no good bum and it would be all right by me if you guys dropped bombs on him all day long but there's this kid see."
"Kid?" they all said at once.
"Yeah, a little girl, seven years old. The mug kidnapped her, and I gotta get her back before you blow the hell out of the place."
They all looked forlorn. “Good Lord!” The Captain of the Alliance said in a hushed voice, “we didn’t know. Your Chief didn’t mention it on the phone.”
“Yeah,” I answered, “some things are best left unsaid.”
“There are only a few hours left before we start shelling the town,” Declared the Captain.
“What’s the rush?” I countered.
“Tonight is the night,” offered Quimby. “It has something to do with the alignment of the planets. It happens every fifty-years or so. Before sun up the remaining population of Innsmouth will, in unison, deliver the chant from their rooftops.”
“The chant?”
“The final ritual. The words from that old book. Everyone in town has committed the mantra to memory.”
“Then what?’ I raised the question recognizing that the answer would probably not be all sunshine and roses.
“All hell will break loose,” answered Captain Bartholomew Asmoday.
“Unless we shut them up first,” interjected Chief Petty Officer Max Quimby with the dissolution of a death sentence.
“Look we have a few more people to evacuate out of here before all hell breaks loose,” replied Woodhaven. “Come with me; maybe we can pick up a few clues along the way on the whereabouts of Muskeg.”
“I thought you said that all the normal people had left town,” I countered.
“I said ‘most.’ There is an elderly priest and what’s left of his congregation that still need to leave. The stubborn old Pontiff has lived here for over forty-years. Maybe he can help you to find your little girl.”
***
A pinched face stared back at us through a narrow crack in the doorway. Woodhead and I had made a shoe-leather commute from the timeworn retired saloon to the Catholic Church’s rectory. Since Ian Woodhead no longer looked like a fish man I decided not to look like a fisherman. I had ditched the ball cap and jacket and donned my trench coat and fedora. I flashed my badge and said, "Arkham Constabulary.”
The man opened the door wider. He wore his white shirt collar on backward. This had to be our priest. There was a hole in his throat where his Adam's Apple used to be. He held a sonic device, the size of an electric shaver, to the opening when he spoke. The voice that came out of the gizmo sounded like the bad reception on a radio. “People, normal people, how delightful,” he said in a joyful electronic warble. “Come in gentlemen,” he welcomed us. “How can I serve you.”
He sat down in an overstuffed chair and bid us do the same, directing us to a battered settee. Eyeing Ian the old priest queried, "What happened to his nose?"
"He ran into a door," I said, cutting him short. Ian Woodhead didn’t smile.
On a small table between us were a cut glass decanter and several china tea cups. “Sherry?” he inquired. “Don’t say no. Visitors are very infrequent in these parts. It is an inferior vintage, but it is all that is left of our stock.”
“Thank you Padre, but who are these folks?” I answered pointing to a corner while he poured. Staring at us were four poor souls. They were a man and a woman, probably in their thirties, a little boy and an extremely old woman. They were malnourished but human.
“They are two-thirds of my congregation. All that is left of my flock that used to attend our beloved church.”
“Two-thirds?” I asked as he handed Ian and me our drinks.
“Yes, the other two parishioners have stayed at home. They are afraid to travel the streets after sunset. When we do meet for service, it is here in my residence. The abandoned churches, as well as the Order of Dagon Hall, are not advisable neighborhoods for strangers and normal humans.”
“I was in that Dagon Temple earlier this evening and got a lump on my head to prove it,” I interjected. Ian Woodhead smiled at that one. “There was this big old book there with the words 'Al Azif,' engraved on the cover.”
“Oh yes, I am very familiar with that horrible book. It is centuries old, perhaps thousands of years. It goes by many names. Originally it was called 'Al Azif,' an Arabic word taken to mean the nocturnal sound, made by insects droning to demons.”
He rattled along articulating his story. The electronic thingamajig made the priest’s story very eerie. I could feel my skin crawl. I noticed a cord trailing from the device to a small black box clipped to his belt . . . Batteries?
“Mainly,” he continued, “the worshippers today refer to it as the 'Necronomicon.' It is a textbook of magic and an apocalyptic vision of humanity's destruction at the hands of ancient non-human intelligences. The author was an insane Arab by the name of Abdul Alhazred. The work contains an account of beings he referred to as the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them. Alhazred is said to have been half-crazed and that he worshipped these entities.
“It is whispered, by some, that the Innsmouth dwellers may be mistaken as to the identity of the Dagon that they worship. In contrast to the Old Ones' alien-sounding names, that Alhazred wrote about, the name 'Dagon' was a direct borrowing from familiar sources. The theory implies that Obed Marsh back in the 1800's was the founder of the religion or the appropriator of it, and along with his confederates had chosen the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the Deep Ones, namely Cthulhu.”
I didn't recall the first time I heard someone speak of Cthulhu and the strange cults that worshipped it. It was just one of those things you grew up with in Arkham, like the Headless Horseman and the Troll under the bridge. Except, now I was being fully indoctrinated, and this was no fairytale. Not that the story wasn't necessarily trustworthy. People were liars, even if they didn’t mean to be. But, by now, I had seen and heard so much that there was little left to conjecture.
“So this is the true God of these Innsmouth people?” asked Woodhead.
“No my son,” he countered. “They are not gods by any sense of the word. The Old Ones are beings from another time and space. These Innsmouth folk were fools. They sold their souls to achieve a longer life. A couple of hundred years ago, in the age of ‘five-times their great-grandfathers’ as they voice it, they left the dry land to mate with the Deep Ones, all for the promise of an extended lifespan. The Deep Ones, minions of Cthulhu, had achieved the f
irst step in freeing their Great Cthulhu and his hordes into our world by way of their half-brothers and sisters that could function both on land and sea. Thus they have learned specific geometric spells and incantations to open a floodgate to a place beyond our known universe, a place beyond the stars, even.”
“I have waged war against some of these cults,” Woodhaven challenged. “How come we don’t see any of these Old Ones that they pray to and how can our earthbound brothers be so stupid to call them up?”
“For now, and I hope for the foreseeable future, they reside behind a thin veil you cannot see through. Their sphere of influence can be very small at times. A crack, even a pinhole in the fabric of space and time might be enough to allow them to exert control over a select few,” he responded, once again, in a static crackle. “Mankind will go to great lengths to avoid worshipping his creator. He will even bow down before Mother Earth.”
“Innsmouth is a bizarre kind of a town.” We all turned to listen to the man sitting in the corner talk for the first time.
“Used to be almost a city,” he continued, “but all gone to pieces in the last hundred years or so. No railroad now, the branch line from Rowley was given up years ago. That Innsmouth look scared em' all off. As they get older they start to change, more and more they begin to have them fish-frog features. Some of them, I hear tell, after a while, just disappear into the sea. My great grandfather use to say that old Obed Marsh and twenty odd other folks used to row out to Devil's Reef in the dead of night and chant things so loud you could hear them all over town when the wind was right. I have seen things myself, at night out to sea, from the cupola atop of my house. Toad-lookin’ folks in a dory, they dove off into the deep water and never came up."
“Thank you,” I said and turned to the priest. “What happened to all of your parishioners’ father?”
“Little by little, over the years, they all moved away. Some just disappeared. Especially the young ones, mostly children,” he answered with a saddened face. Then he laid the really bad part on me.
“I have lived here forty-three years. It wasn’t so depraved back then, what was thought of as foolish speculation, but as the years went by, we realized that it was not, so it became the root cause of the children’s disappearances. You see Detective there are horrible things that take place in that temple of theirs. They sacrifice people, normal people, to their dreadful deity. They prefer the younger humans.”
I downed my drink in a single gulp. The memory of that big rock in the middle of that fanatical rotunda caused me to add two and two together to come up with a speedy but gruesome conclusion. “Are there other children, I mean normal ones, living in Innsmouth?” I asked without delay.
“Only young David here,” he replied pointing to the lad sitting with his family. The little fella acknowledged us with a weak smile. “David and his family live in the rectory with me, where it is safe.”
My math problem was solved. The old priest’s tale had a substantial foundation, and the account held a hint of genuine terror. Terror be damned, I was scared witless. The perp didn’t want the little girl for his own perverted desires. He needed her for a sacrifice. There were no other kids in town to snatch for his loathsome purpose. She would be the ultimate sacrifice so that he and his demented buddies could unlock their dimensional doorway fantasy.
“Padre,” I almost shouted. “The reasons Ian and I are here, are two-fold. Number one, the US Navy, in a couple of hours, will be shelling this little burg with everything they’ve got.”
“The time of the coming is tonight, Father. They must be stopped,” interrupted Woodhead.
“You mean it is now?” he answered looking truly surprised.
“You betcha,” I exclaimed taking back the narrative. “You have to gather up your flock and vamoose before the roof falls in.”
Pointing at the little boy he implored, “David go get Mr. and Mrs. Gregory and tell them to hurry . . . No, tell them I said to forget their concerns about traveling the streets at night, to drop everything, and come here right away. Their lives depend upon it!”
Young David ran to the door. “Wait!” I hollered. “It’s not safe for him to go out there.”
“I’ll be all right Mister,” he yelled back while turning to stop at the doorway. “They’ve already got their sacrifice.” He was gone in a flash.
Kids can sometimes be cruel, but he was dead-on, life likewise is cruel.
***
In the short time, before David returned, I brought the priest up to speed on the murder in Arkham and the kidnapping of the little girl, leaving out some of the gory bits. Less than ten-minutes had slipped by when David came back dashing into the rectory. He was immediately followed by a man and woman about the same age as the other couple in the room. They were winded. The kid was probably not easy to keep up with. They all turned and gaped at one another. The woman opened her yap and started in with, “Father . . . “
“Not now child,” the father implored. “I will explain all of this later when we are safely on our way.” Changing his point of view back to me he asked, “So you took your life in your own hands to come here and rescue the youngster and catch your murderer?”
“I ain’t complaining.” It was my third day without a drink, and the cup of wine I swilled down was making me lightheaded. “I’ll put my cards on the table Padre. I wanted that perp really bad. In addition to killing the woman, I strongly suspect that he was responsible for the butchery of one of our police officers a year ago.”
"What was the officer's name Detective?" his trilling tone inquired.
"Marco Tremblay."
All of his flock were reduced to stunned silence. The Padre made the sign of the cross and whispered a short blessing. "We knew Marco,” he said after a long pause. “He was a good Catholic, a good boy. He sought sanctuary here because he had evidence of the human sacrifices at the temple and needed to hide until he could return to Arkham and later to the state police."
“What kind of evidence?”
“Blood samples, fingerprints, and photographs he took while hiding in the temple,” said the fella that spoke earlier.
"What happened to him," I pressed.
"He broke bread with our little congregation for two days,” answered the Padre. “Then a car came for him. We have never heard from him since. We hoped, prayed that he returned home safely."
“I am sorry, Father for being the bearer of bad tidings.” At least now I had the motive for killing Marco Tremblay. He was probably followed, hunted down and executed before he could produce the goods on the Dagon creeps. A big knife would be an effective decapitation tool. The entire affair was growing heavy on my heart. “This gruesome business should cause me to be more thick-skinned, but I guess I’ve become a bit of a softy Father,” I confessed. “For this reason, I hope to save that little girl even more than apprehending the perp. Especially since I now know that they are going to make her their sacrificial victim. They’re going to carve her up tonight as Elam Muskeg did to her mother unless I stop them.”
“Is that the girl that came off the bus yesterday?” David had jumped into the conversation from his corner. “Blond hair, blue eyes,” he added.
“I stood up in a hurry, turned to that part of the room and stared down at him. “So I’ve been told.”
“That wasn’t her mother. Her mother died in a hospital someplace. The cleaning lady that worked there snatched her up, after her mom died, told everyone that she was her daughter. Allison said she was awfully ugly.”
“Who put that bright idea in your head and who’s Allison?”
“She told me, the girl, her name is Allison.”
“How in the . . .” I started to cuss.
“No horse feathers Mister!” he exclaimed. “I know Elam; he’s one of the top dogs at the Dagon Temple. I saw him, and the girl get off the bus. I followed them.”
"Young David is very adept at eluding the Innsmouth crowd,” offered the Padre. “He can run like the wind,
and it is very difficult for them to keep up, because of that shambling gait of theirs."
You could have bowled me over. I was flabbergasted to obtain evidence from a pint-sized Shamus. I was also overjoyed to have a new lead to the whereabouts of my quarry and his captive. “Where did they go,” I almost got down on one knee to beg.
“Down by the docks. He’s got her chained up in Obed Marsh’s old boat house. I took her an apple and some of my comic books. She’s real scared, Mister.”
“How do I get there?”
“I can take you,” he answered enthusiastically.
“No David,” insisted the priest. “Draw the Detective a map.”
***
“It didn’t take long for the Padre and his tiny congregation to prepare for their exodus. They hastily threw together their meager worldly possessions, two thermoses of coffee, a loaf of bread and a burlap bag half-filled with can goods. David handed me the map he drew. I was jealous; his handwriting was a lot better than mine. The old priest removed a ring of keys that hung on a nail on the wall and unlocked the side door to his residence.
It opened into an attached garage that exited onto a back alley. The automobile that was parked there sent me for a loop. It was a hearse. A beautiful black vintage Cadillac mourner’s car. The hood and fenders gleamed with the brilliance of polished marble. By the light from the adjacent room, I could tell that it was very well maintained. Every bit of the vehicle was exceptionally clean. The leather upholstery shined from being recently oiled. The six, plus the Padre, got in the Caddy lugging their supplies and belongings. The priest took the driver’s seat, and young David assumed shotgun. The roomy back seats accommodated the rest comfortably. Inserting the car key, the Padre pushed the starter button. The engine started with a low, powerful rumble. Ian pulled a pair of out-swinging wood garage doors wide open.
My snub-nosed .22 was still in my pocket. Drawing it out, I handed to the priest. "Be careful Padre," I said, "we are the most vulnerable when we are running away." He smiled, and we shook on it. "God bless you, Father," I whispered.
