The Horror In The Water Tower
& Five More Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos
by Mark McLaughlin & Michael Sheehan, Jr.
Table Of Contents
The Horror In The Water Tower
The Last Witch-House
The Hungry One Must Feed
The Slimy Ones
Uncle Caesar
Coins From Y’ha-nthlei
About The Authors
The Horror In The Water Tower
by Mark McLaughlin & Michael Sheehan, Jr.
The townspeople of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, don’t enjoy life. They crawl through it, like slugs. It’s an old, tired seaside town where the air is thick with the stench of rotting fish. Many of the buildings are heavily streaked with mold, while others are encrusted with salt from constant exposure to briny mists.
Efforts have been made over the years by various concerns to improve the conditions in Innsmouth. But in the end, no one is willing to support such a hopeless cause … least of all the town’s citizens. As I’ve said: they do not enjoy life. They simply survive … and wait. Some are waiting for the day when their exhausted bodies will give out and their wispy souls will detach and allegedly drift off to heaven. Their days on Earth will be at an end, and they will be happy.
Others are waiting for a very different sort of ending. They will end their days of walking on dry earth – but they won’t be going to heaven. They will instead dive into the ocean and head down into the dark and chilly depths. They won’t mind the darkness, and the chill will suit them just fine. They, too, will be happy.
There used to be one in Innsmouth who was different from all the rest. She did not walk on the land or swim in the ocean. She lived in the town’s water tower. She did not remember a time when she had lived anywhere else – but of course, her origins were elsewhere.
She lived in the water tower because a witch put her there. The witch, Miss Thorne, had captured her as a larva while visiting an ancient temple in Peru. This temple had been built by a sect that worshipped the insect-god Ghattambah, the Hungry One, and Miss Thorne had found the larva swimming in one of the sacred pools.
Miss Thorne carried the wee larva back to America in a perfume bottle filled with dark water. Upon her return to Innsmouth, she’d emptied the bottle into the water tower. She worked as head of the Innsmouth Water Department (no one in the community knew that she was a practitioner of ancient magicks). Since she was in charge of the tower, she never worried that her pet would be discovered.
As the years passed, the pet grew and grew, and so needed more and more to eat. Miss Thorne began luring homeless old men to her house to give them meals and showers. Once they were clean, she would stab them and chop them up for her pet. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, to keep her pet well-fed.
Sometimes, late at night, Miss Thorne would disrobe and climb into the water tower to swim with her pet. Perhaps you are thinking her pet was a mermaid. To call the pet a mermaid would have been an insult, for she was far more wonderful and complex than any woman/fish hybrid.
The pet had a lovely pale-green face with shining silver eyes and full iridescent lips. Instead of hair, she was graced with a long, lush mane of flowing golden tendrils, like those of a jellyfish. Her body resembled that of a lobster, except she had bones and was covered with a soft yellow-green hide, instead of a hard red shell. Her many legs sported small, three-toed feet with black nails. Her two uppermost limbs were well-muscled arms, each ending in three powerful, black-taloned fingers. The pet measured seventeen feet from the top of her head to the tip of her frilled tail.
The pet was quite bright, and Miss Thorne was able to teach her to speak English. One evening, during feeding time, the pet asked her, “Mother, what goes on in the world outside of my room? I often hear noises and I wonder what’s happening.”
Miss Thorne smiled gently. “It’s a big world, my pet, full of people who wouldn’t be as nice to you as I am. Those noises you hear – that’s traffic. Big metal machines filled with people, racing to various destinations.”
“I would like to have a destination,” the pet said.
“It’s too dry for you in the world of land-dwellers. Someday soon, my pet, you will be too big for this tank. I am trying to figure out a way to take you to the ocean without anyone seeing you. The ocean is far bigger than this tank. You could swim and swim without ever reaching the end. I suppose I should have taken you to the ocean when you were smaller, but I so enjoyed having you all to myself.”
“I would like to swim and swim,” the pet declared. “To my destination.”
A light rain pattered on the metal roof of the water tower. “I’d better go,” Miss Thorne said. “It’s starting to rain, and I want to get home before it turns into a storm.”
So saying, she left the inner chamber through a hatch. On a wide outside ledge, she dried herself with a towel she’d left there earlier, along with her clothes. But the ledge was slippery, and as she finished putting on her clothes, she slipped and fell against the protective rail encircling the tower. A rusty metal segment of rail gave away and she plunged with a scream to the earth below.
The pet heard the scream and moved toward the hatch, which the witch hadn’t closed yet. She thrust her head and top limbs out of the opening and looked around, amazed by the sights surrounding her. She’d never looked out of the hatch before, since Miss Thorne usually locked it after her visits. She pulled her body out onto the ledge and looked down. She then saw the body of her friend and keeper.
“Mother!” She screamed. “Are you hurt? Please answer me!”
It was a simple matter for the multi-limbed pet to climb down to the ground. She was surprisingly agile for a creature so huge. At the base of the tower, she sniffed at the witch’s body and felt the neck with the sensitive skin on her back of one of her feet. No pulse. It was clear that the witch was dead.
The pet promptly tore up the body with her talons and and ate it on the spot. MIss Thorne would have wanted it that way.
By this time, the rain was coming down heavily, so keeping wet was not a problem. The pet moved through the dark night, not knowing where she was going, but not really caring. It was the first adventure of her life, and it was thrilling to take in so many new sights and sensations.
At one point, she saw a huge, loud shadow bearing down on her. The pet knew nothing of cars. In her mind, this was a roaring creature with shining eyes at the far ends of its wide face. The pet squealed as she lunged between some thick bushes, right into the backyard of a large two-story house. A flash of lightning revealed to the pet a welcome sight – a body of water. It was, in fact, a large concrete swimming pool.
The pet shambled up to the edge of the pool and looked in. The water was dark and littered with leaves, but that was fine with the pet. Exhausted by her adventure – she wasn’t used to such a high level of excitement – she slid into the water, curled up at the bottom and promptly fell asleep.
- - -
The next morning, the pet was roused from her slumber by sunlight shining between the floating leaves above. She rose through the water until her face breached the surface. She enjoyed the new feeling of sunshine on her face.
Suddenly a shadow fell upon her. A young man had walked up to the edge of the pool.
“You!” the man cried. “You there, in the water! Who are you?”
“I am called My Pet,” said the creature in the pool. “Who are you?”
“I’m Kaleb Gilman,” said the man. “I just g
ot here. I own this house, Gilman Place. My grandfather used to live here, but he died.”
“I’m sorry he died,” the pet said sadly, thinking of Miss Thorne.
Kaleb knelt by the side of the pool. “Are you … not human? I’ve never seen a face like yours before.” He gazed into her eyes with rapt interest. “You said you were called My Pet. Were you my grandfather’s pet?”
“No. I had a mother, but she died,” said the pet. “How did your grandfather die?”
“He killed himself,” Kaleb said matter-of-factly. “About a year ago. I was his only relative, so the place is mine now.” He smiled and added, “It took me a while to get here.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m a medical researcher,” Kaleb said, still studying her face. “I was working in the jungles of Southeast Asia, looking for a cure for cancer.” He reached out and touched the pet’s greenish face. “You look like you came from a jungle.”
“I came from the water tower,” said the pet. “That’s where my Mother raised me.”
“How fascinating…” The young man reached into the water and caressed the tendrils that served as the pet’s tresses. “You grew up in a tower? I want to give you a real name, besides this ‘My Pet’ business. I want to call you Rapunzel.”
“If you like,” said Rapunzel. “It’s a pretty name.”
- - -
Within the next year, Kaleb restored Gilman Place to its former glory. He cleaned the pool himself, taking care not to use any chemicals in the process. He also single-handedly built a privacy fence around the property.
While Miss Thorne had chosen a diet of human flesh for her pet, Kaleb instead provided Rapunzel with a steady supply of lightly cooked beef, supplemented with cheese, greens, fresh bread and occasional sweets. He spent many enjoyable hours poolside, educating Rapunzel. He taught her to read and write, and also gave her lessons in English, mathematics, history, and biology, among other courses. A laptop and the Internet made it easy to teach Rapunzel, though he had to do all the typing for her.
One day, in the middle of a lesson on evolution, Rapunzel experienced an epiphany. “I’m not like other living things, am I, Kaleb? I’m not a human or an insect … or a fish or myriapod or crustacean … and yet I have qualities from all those life-forms. How is it that I exist? What am I?”
“You are very charming and certainly unique,” Kaleb said. “But to answer your question, I have been doing some research and I believe I’ve figured out your origins. It turns out, the woman you called Mother, Miss Thorne, once traveled to Peru and that’s where she found you. She once wrote about her trip for an amateur anthropology society, and I managed to find a copy of her article online.”
“Mother was an author?” Rapunzel said with delight. “I would like to read her article someday.”
“It’s pretty long. I can print it out for you later. Basically, the article covers her trip to an ancient temple dedicated to the insect-god Ghattambah. Ghattambah was worshiped, and may still be worshiped, in tropical countries worldwide.”
“What does Ghattambah look like?” Rapunzel asked, her eyes wide with excitement. “Does he look like me?”
“Not at all,” Kaleb said. “I’ve looked at some scans of pages from The Seven Blasphemies Of Ghattambah, the Bible of his cult, and he can appear as a variety of predatory creatures – usually insectile, but not always. He sometimes visits people in their dreams. He lives outside of time and space, and can manifest in various insect stages concurrently. He can appear as an insect egg in one dimension and as a larva in another. Many of his worshipers also worship the beast-god Cthulhu, since both deities draw energy from human lust and violence.”
“Ghattambah sounds evil!” Rapunzel wailed. “What do I have to do with Ghattambah? Am I evil, too?”
“Certainly not!” Kaleb stroked her tendrils to calm her. “According to Miss Thorne’s article, legends refer to that temple as the House Where the Night’s Children Dwell. Based on that and other facts from her article, I believe that inside the temple, there are gateways to other dimensions favored by Ghattambah. I think your kind originally came from one of those worlds.”
“I want to go to that world,” Rapunzel said. “And I want you to come with me. We will be happy there. You wouldn’t have to hide me from others.”
“Yes, but you might have to hide me.”
Head tilted to one side, Rapunzel stared off into the distance.
“You look lost in thought,” Kaleb said. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“The gateways…” she said slowly. “Tell me about about the gateways.”
“I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know if they exist, really. It’s just a theory of mine, based on that article. I’ll print it out so you can read it.”
Rapunzel nodded. “I would like that.”
- - -
In the weeks that followed, Kaleb noticed that Rapunzel seemed unusually distant. He often found her propped up in a far corner of the pool, rereading the article written by Miss Thorne. He provided her with the usual lessons, but she no longer seemed especially interested.
One day she said to Kaleb, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask. Why did you decide to call me Rapunzel? Does the name mean anything?”
Kaleb smiled. “It’s a name from fairy tales. Rapunzel is the name of a girl raised by a witch. The witch hid the girl in a high tower, just like Ms. Thorne kept you hidden in a water tower. The girl had long, flowing hair, just like you with your beautiful tendrils.”
“Thank you for saying my tendrils are beautiful,” Rapunzel said.
“You’re welcome. The witch used to climb up to the high room in the tower by climbing the girl’s hair. She would cry to the girl, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair.’ The girl would then toss the braids of her hair out the window, and the witch would shinny up. A dashing prince happened to see this one day, and he used the same lines to climb up and get to know the princess, with a happy ending just around the corner. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been studying Mother’s article,” Rapunzel said. “The cult of Ghattambah placed great emphasis on the importance of names. The name provides the key to one’s fate. I used to be just a pet. Now I am Rapunzel. That’s important. Yes, I am sure it is important.”
At that moment, the sound of a loud motor blared from out the sky. Kaleb and Rapunzel looked up as a red and blue helicopter passed overhead.
“Go under water!” Kaleb cried. “The deep end, quick!”
Rapunzel immediately did as she was told. After the helicopter had passed, Rapunzel returned to Kaleb’s side.
“What happened?” She said. “Why did I need to hide?”
“That was a Boston news helicopter,” Kaleb said. “They must be covering a traffic accident in town. They passed right over the pool – I hope they didn’t see you! The water’s so clear, even being in the deep end probably didn’t do much to hide you.”
“I hate having to hide,” Rapunzel said sadly. “Will you be in trouble if people find me? I don’t want to make problems for you. I may have to put the idea in action.”
“The idea? What are you talking about?”
Rapunzel’s silver eyes glistened with exuberance. “Mother’s article … along with your insights … have given me a magnificent idea. It hasn’t come together yet in a way that I can explain, but I feel that a door is beginning to open in my mind. I am close, Kaleb … so very close!”
- - -
That night, Kaleb dreamed he was feeding a huge yellow cat with one black ear. Its eyes were different colors: one was green and the other was blue. Around its thick throat, it wore a silver tag that read GAT.
“You’re a weird one, fat Gat,” Kaleb said. “Do you have anything to do with Ghattambah?”
The cat blinked at him, once, twice. Kaleb suddenly noticed, with a queasy flinch of horror, that he was feeding the cat from a tin containing bits of chopped
-up human ears and noses. Then the sound of a motor’s roar poured from the cat’s lips and Kaleb woke up …
… woke up to find that the motor was still blaring.
The unmistakable blare of a helicopter.
He looked out the window and saw the helicopter hovering overhead, shining lights down into the pool. So they’d seen Rapunzel after all. They’d probably decided to zip back under cover of darkness. No doubt their cameras were capturing every second of Rapunzel’s confusion and torment. He put on a t-shirt, jeans and shoes and hurried outside.
“Get out of here!” He screamed up at the helicopter. “This is private property! An invasion of privacy! Go away!”
He ran right up to the edge of the pool. And stopped.
The brilliantly lit pool was filled with … gold. The breathtaking, luxurious gold of Rapunzel’s tendrils, vast lengths of it, swirling and swirling, slowly, majestically. Every now and then he caught the silver glimmer of her eyes and the iridescent sheen of her full lips.
In the depths of his mind, a voice as clear as crystal and as sweet as honey spoke to him.
I figured it out, Kaleb. I figured it out and everything is fine. This is what I am meant to do. My people … we are the gateway between the worlds. I am the gateway to our happiness. You named me so well, Kaleb, my teacher, my protector, my prince. I am Rapunzel and it is time for you to climb the golden stair. I can take us anywhere in the universe. I love you and know now that you love me. Your love for me shines in your mind like a supernova. No more hiding, ever again.
Kaleb took a single step forward.
A moment later, the news helicopter landed beside a pool filled with calm, clear, perfectly boring water.
The Last Witch-House
by Mark McLaughlin
Timothy walked down the hall for the first? tenth? one-thousandth? time. It was impossible to tell: there were so many halls and they all looked so much alike.
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