The Book of Cthulhu 2

by Ross Lockhart

  * * *

  “You Marines better get used to that face; you’re going to be seeing a lot of that the next couple of days,” roared the Captain from Naval Intelligence. “The federal agents who’ve been conducting surveillance of the town have reported a high incidence of …inbreeding.” The Captain said the word “inbreeding” like he could taste it. “This town has been isolated from the rest of Massachusetts for nearly eighty years. The people up there have been marrying their second and first cousins for three or four generations. During the Civil War federal draft agents determined that over half the males of combat age in Innsmouth were unfit for military service.” The Captain paused to let that sink in. “Do not be surprised by anything you see. Appearances to the contrary, they’re not congenital idiots. They’ve used their appearance as part of their propaganda campaign to keep the uninvolved locals quiet and outsiders away.”

  Private First Class Robert Hennessey sat there in that drafty warehouse, on those polished benches and listened aghast to that Navy prick spin a yarn about rum-running, drug smuggling, white slavery, murder, piracy and an elaborate scare-story crafted to frighten away the curious. The captain pointed out the objectives with a collapsible metal pointer. As he ticked off the objectives, he struck the map like he was disciplining it for getting caught in the liquor cabinet.

  “First Company will deploy along the docks on both sides of the Manuxet. Your mission will be to prevent anyone from fleeing the city by sea. First Company’s Second Platoon will move with a detachment of Treasury agents and secure the Marsh Refinery and the company offices. Second Company will be assigned to hold a perimeter along Southwick Street in the north while its Third Platoon will move to the Marsh estate and secure the Mansion and assist the Treasury agents in serving the arrest and search warrants. Second Company, Second Platoon will move to secure the former Masonic Hall on Federal Street, which now serves as the headquarters of a quasi-spiritualist group calling itself The Esoteric Order of Dagon. There are three churches—here!—” cracking the map again—“along Church Street. Current intelligence indicates that all three have lost their original congregations and are now used by the Esoteric Order of Dagon.”

  Hennessey hung on every unbelievable word. He’d done sweeps of hostile pueblos down in Bananaland, but this was Massachusetts, for Christ’s sake. Hennessey turned to Lance Corporal Charlie Paskow, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees. A Camel hung limply from his mouth, slowly dripping ash. “Hey, Charlie?” Charlie turned and pushed a lazy cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. He raised an eyebrow to invite the question. “Are they serious? Are we really going to attack a town here in America?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Charlie hissed. His thin mouth was wrinkled into something akin to wry amusement. Once, outside Bluefields on the Mosquito Coast, Hennessey had seen Charlie shoot a ten-year-old kid out of the saddle from two hundred and fifty yards. Charlie’s only comment, as he ejected the spent round from his Springfield, was, “Spics oughtn’t give rifles to kids.” Charlie was as cold-blooded a fish as Hennessey had seen in the Corps. It should have come as no surprise that Paskow was getting a chuckle out of doing to an American town what they’d been doing to Nicaraguan pueblos.

  The Captain had already run through the information on the “Esoteric Order of Dagon.” Some kind of creepy South-Seas religion as far as Hennessey could follow the Captain’s lecture. Like something out of a Fu Manchu pulp. Idolatry. Secret initiations. Murder and human sacrifice. It was all too much. Maybe this kinda thing could happen in Borneo or the Amazon, but this was America, less than thirty miles from Boston Common.

  Hennessey’s head was spinning by the time the lecture was done. His company, the Third, was to cross the Manuxet to the north side of town, then cut west along Martin Street to Phillips Place. There they would break into four platoons and begin “internment operations.” They were to round up everyone in a four-block area and march them to the old railway station, where battalion HQ would have a processing center set up with the Bureau of Investigation to sort out the “criminal aliens” from the rest of the townsfolk. When their blocks were cleared, the company would work its way eastward, clearing the next four blocks and so on until they reached the harbor. To the north, Second Company would be doing the same, while on the south side of town, Fourth Company would be spread out along Garrison Street clearing blocks and moving north. The noose would be drawn tighter and tighter until everyone in town was accounted for and “sorted out.” A couple platoons of Marine sappers were standing by to begin “excavating certain structures” once the population was clear. Hennessey figured that when the Captain said “excavate,” he probably meant “blow up.”

  After the briefing, the battalion was marched out by platoons to a staging area. Cold-weather gear, helmets, and winter camouflage was passed out. Then came the weapons. It looked like jungle warfare all over again. Most Marines were issued a pump-action Winchester trench gun or a Thompson submachine gun, with only a few bolt-action Springfields and Browning Automatic Rifles thrown in. After all, if they were going to be operating in a town, there wasn’t going to be much call to shoot anyone two or three hundred yards away. Everyone was also issued four grenades, and a Colt .45 sidearm, too. Clearing blocks of teetering old tenements room by room would be claustrophobic work, often without the luxury of enough space to maneuver a rifle or shotgun. It looked to Hennessey like the Brass had put some thought into the weapons mix.

  Which is why the flamethrowers really scared him. Hennessey counted at least six flamethrower teams. Plus the quartermaster was handing out white-phosphorous grenades and satchel charges like it was the Battle of Beallue Wood all over again. “They wouldn’t be handing those out unless they were expecting us to have to burn the locals out their houses.”

  Hearing Hennessey’s comment, Charlie Paskow looked over at the Marine sappers strapping the tanks of jellied gasoline onto their backs. Paskow’s bayonet-thin figure was practically swallowed by the heavy winter greatcoat and steel helmet. He shrugged noncommittally as he shouldered his trench gun. “I s’pect so.” Paskow turned away to join the rest of Third Company, Third Platoon by the four military trucks that would soon be bearing them north up the Ippswich road to the doomed town of Innsmouth.

  The drive north was bitterly cold. Snow was fresh on the ground and shone pale in the moonlight. The sea winds blowing in along the shore cut right through the canvas-covered truck. It froze the Marines’ helmets to the tops of their ears. The draft tugged at their clothes and swept their steaming breath away like the exhaust from the rattling tailpipe. A few silently cursed the T-men, who were making the trip in a long train of big, black Packards. The others gripped their weapons upright between their knees, curled up inside their fear and adrenaline, and tried to focus. Focus on not getting killed.

  As their truck crested the top of yet another hill, Lieutenant Cobb shouted a warning from the cab to the men bundled in the rear. “We just topped the last hill. We’ll hit town in three minutes! Nobody does nothing until we deploy.” The driver ground the gears as he down-shifted for the descent into town. That’s when the stench hit them.

  At first Hennessey thought they’d passed some road kill, some dog or farm animal on the side of the road. But the smell was more like rotten fish than any other smell he could think of.

  “Jeezus,” choked Deerborn. “What the hell is that?”

  “Smells like the crack on a two-pesos whore!” Lyman gasped, holding his nose.

  “Shut the hell up, Marine,” barked Sergeant Miles. The Sergeant preferred to dispense discipline with the butt of his Thompson. No one said a word after that, even though the eye-watering stink just kept getting worse.

  Hennessey’s first glimpse of the town was lost in the glare of the headlights of the trucks behind his. Now and again he could see windows staring back, like the empty sockets of a skull. It just seemed incredible that any of the buildings could possibly be inhabited. They were crumbling heaps.
Regardless, they were going to have to clear those heaps room by room. Clearing an intact building is hard enough, but when the walls look like Swiss cheese and you can see the attic while standing in the basement, there’s just no way to know where that next shot is coming from. No way to know if that wall to your back is going to give way to a sniper’s killing zone. It made Hennessey’s guts twist just thinking about it.

  Suddenly they were crossing a large square. The Gilman Hotel leaned drunkenly to the right, on the left the First National Grocery. In the blink of an eye, the trucks were rattling across the Federal Street Bridge and into the north side of town. Just across Dock Street they sped past the columned facade of a Romanesque building. Its granite pillars and steps were fleetingly illuminated as one of the trucks from the convoy peeled off and began disgorging troops. Hennessey could just make out the building’s graven title above the door: “The Esoteric Order of Dagon.” The building was out of Hennessey’s sight even before the Marines began vaulting up the front steps, their bayonets flashing in the passing headlights.

  As their trucks drove deeper into Innsmouth, the buildings along Federal Street grew even more dilapidated; some were little more than four hollow walls cradling collapsed roofs and floors. Crossing Church and Martin Streets, more trucks veered off to their targets. Hennessey’s truck and three others made a hard left onto Martin and gunned their engines. “First squad!” barked Lieutenant Cobb from the front cab. “You will move south and secure the southwest block. Round everyone up and get them ready to move to the train station. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, Sir!” came the chorus. Hennessey looked across the truck to Charlie Paskow. Hennessey knew that faraway look meant that Paskow was winding his clock springs. Hennessey loved having Charlie with him in a firefight: the guy moved like a wind-up soldier. No hesitation, no frenzy, just one fluid action after another.

  The truck turned right again, shot forward maybe thirty yards, and jammed on the brake, skidding slightly as snow chains bit into the icy cobblestones. “Go! Go! Go!” barked Sergeant Miles as he jumped down from the truck, hoisting his Thompson in one hand while waving the men forward with the other. Hennessey jumped down, holding the barrel of the Thompson skyward, slipping slightly in the ice. “Corporal Paskow! Take Hennessey, Lyman, and Boyle and clear that house there!” Miles indicated a sagging heap that had once been a quaint, gambrel-roofed Georgian home. In any small town in America, it might have passed as a haunted house. Here in Innsmouth, a city of haunted houses, its intact windowpanes made it look upscale.

  Paskow got to the door first and began pounding with his gloved fist. “Open the door! This is the U.S. Marine Corps! Open up!” Hennessey hung back with Lyman and Boyle at the foot of the steps, keeping an eye on the windows. Boyle, a steady Tennessee farmboy, had been in Hennessey’s company for six months in Nicaragua. Hennessey had no worries about him. Lyman, on the other hand, had just gotten off the boat from Camp LeJune when the battalion was turned around and sent back to the States. He was nervous as a cat and kept dancing around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like he had to pee.

  The owner was fairly slow to come to the door, but that was to be expected. It was 2:00 A.M., after all, and his reactions were dulled from having to wrench himself out of a warm winter slumber. For a half awake fella, dressed only in his nightshirt and facing four Marines armed with bayonet-tipped shotguns and Thompson machine-guns, the man took it fairly well.

  “What th’sweet Jay-sus is gowin’ ahn!” he shouted. Hennessey sincerely hoped the ol’ fella didn’t give Paskow too much trouble. Last fella who did, Paskow put out most of his teeth with the butt of his Springfield.

  “Town’s being evacuated. You and anyone else you’ve got in there are going to have to go with us. Right now,” Paskow said flatly. It wasn’t much of an explanation. For a second Hennessey thought the old man was going to give Paskow an opportunity to do a little more dental work. Instead he smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, what with more than a few teeth missing or gone gray with rot, but his face lit up like they’d just reported the end of Prohibition.

  “Y’all are Marines? Yav come t’clear the town?” he beamed.

  “Yes we are and yes we have,” Paskow answered.

  “Thank th’ Lawd! Ah just need t’get dressed!” Without closing the door the man turned and ran back into his bedroom leaving the four slightly puzzled Marines on his doorstep.

  “Maybe we won’t need to burn ’em out after all,” Hennessey said hopefully.

  In less than four minutes the old man had himself, his wife, and his two sons dressed and out the door. Then it was on to the next house. This time when Paskow pounded on the door, the only answer he got was a curt “Go ahway!”

  “We are authorized to use whatever force is necessary to evacuate the inhabitants of this town, sir!” Paskow bellowed back through the door. “If you don’t open up right now, we’re kicking the door in!”

  “Dammit t’Hell, Jawsef!” the old man cried from the street behind the Marines. “They’ah from th’government! They’ah here t’help!”

  Paskow was just about to tell the old man to keep quiet when the front door unbolted. “Ah can’t believe it,” said the weathered face that peered out. “Afta all this time. Yav come t’put it right then?”

  Paskow gripped his trench gun a little tighter in frustration. “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that. My orders are to move everyone to the train station for evacuation.”

  “Ever’one? Even th’ others?” the man asked tentatively.

  “I don’t know anything about any others, but if you don’t open the door this second, my men will smash it in.”

  The man looked resigned and cast his eyes to the floor. “What’ll Ah need t’bring?”

  “Warm clothes is all,” Paskow urged. “And make it fast.” Once the weathered face disappeared back into the house, Paskow turned to Hennessey. “It’ll be a damn shame if we don’t get to use the flamethrowers.” Hennessey was fairly sure this wasn’t meant in jest.

  As the weathered man bundled his wife and daughter down to the sidewalk, he turned to Hennessey and hissed, “Be careful of th’ Sahgents. Ah ain’t seen his waaf for better-on four months. Ah think she’s beginnin’ t’turn.” Hennessey hadn’t the slightest clue what the fella was talking about, but he could still see the genuine fear in the man’s watery gray eyes.

  “Thanks, sir. We’ll watch out for that.”

  By 2:30 A.M., Third Company had cleared all the blocks north of Pierce Street and west of Phillips and was ready to move south towards the river and east towards the bay. Now the situation was beginning to rapidly change. Lights were on in many of the windows on Hancock Street. It made it a lot easier for the Marines to pick out which doors to knock on, only now the inhabitants were beginning to resist. Up and down Hancock Street Marines were kicking in doors and smashing open windows with their buttstocks. Despite the quality and state of repair of the houses on this street, the attitude of the locals was one of defiance and loathing. At one house, Hennessey saw a woman standing at her front door brandishing a frying pan and screaming, “Ah won’t stand far it!”

  “Get off mah yaad,” was the reply from the first house they came to.

  “Open this door or we’ll smash it in!” Paskow said loudly, but without a hint of anger.

  “Yav got no right t’be turnin’ us outta our homes in th’dead o’night!”

  “I’ve all the rights I need right here.” Paskow worked the action on his trench gun with a resounding “cha-chak!” The door opened without much more to-do about “rights.” The man who greeted them was stooped and bowlegged. His age was hard to determine, being somewhere between thirty and fifty. He had big bulging eyes and a wide, thick-lipped mouth that probably turned down at the corners even when he wasn’t being rounded up in the middle of the night. His fat eyes were filled to the brim with fear and loathing for the men outside. Hennessey could not help but think that the hate wasn’t because h
e and his fellow Marines represented the unbridled power of the government. Instead this parody of a man hated them for being straight-backed and clear-skinned. He hated them for being normal. His wife and children showed many of the same signs as their father: over-large eyes, rough, scaly skin, too-wide mouths. Even his fat wife was showing signs of encroaching baldness. As she called the children together, the woman’s voice sounded badly scarred. Maybe it had something to do with the thick wrinkles on her neck? The family had to be prodded and pushed down to the street where a crowd of equally repugnant locals was being gathered together.

  The name on the mailbox of the next house read “Sergeant.” A rickety-looking motor coach, dirty gray in color, was parked at the curb. The half-illegible sign in the windshield read “Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb’port.” Whoever was inside the house was awake with a light on. He croaked at the four Marines before they even got to the first step. “Ah can’t leave th’house! Mah wife’s very sick. She can’t be moved.”

  “We’ll have a doctor look her over,” Paskow called back.

  “She can’t walk. She’s an invalid.”

  “We’ll get a couple of medics to carry her on a stretcher.”

  “No, she’s too sick. Go away, d’ya hear? Ah’ve got a shotgun and ah’ll use it!”

  Paskow stepped to the right side of the door and motioned Hennessey and Lyman to take the left and Boyle to join him on the right. “You shoot at us and we’ll damn well toss a grenade in there with you. You want to be blown to Kingdom Come?” Paskow took the silence to mean that Mr. Sergeant was thinking about it. “Now open the door and toss the shotgun out!” The four held their breaths as they listened to the bolts turn in the door. The hand that held the shotgun barrel and placed it on the doormat was as dry and scaly-looking as any from the last house full of inbreds, only this one was webbed up to the second knuckle.