Worlds of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

A man in sea-green robes took the lead. He possessed a very large globular head demarked by wide-set eyes and a complete absence of cranial hair. The lack of hair made his shell-like ears stand out like unfurled sails. I must admit, as strangely as many of the inhabitants of Innsmouth had struck me thus far, this man towered over them in sheer oddity of countenance. From the undershot jaw to the wattled throat, he might have been the patriarch of all I had thus far encountered.

  “Who is he?” I asked a fellow at my elbow.

  “Cenobite Jerathmeel Pike,” came the curt reply. “Silence!”

  The procession began. It was stately, to be sure. We proceeded to the water’s edge. The wind was very biting now. Winter’s clutch was still with us. I shivered.

  I half expected torch lights, but none were lit. None needed to be. For we were marching in the direction of the gaseous green beacon.

  Cenobite Pike led the way. We passed through a rocky moor that reminded me why the region was named by its first settlers, New England. Cellar holes yawned to snare the unwary, testifying to the many generations which had sprung up and died off in Innsmouth’s storied maritime history. I took this to be Curville, once the heart of pre-Revolutionary Innsmouth, but now fallen into an abandonment more complete than parts of the town proper.

  At length, we came to the sea’s edge, which was marked by a low granite breakwater wall. The unappetizing smell of raw clams predominated.

  It was an inhospitable spot for a ceremony, I realized. The water looked black, forbidding and utterly unforgiving of any unwary enough to fall in.

  I could spy the crumbled lighthouse not far away. But now it lay at the end of a narrow spit of land. The receding tide had exposed a path bordered by tidal flats and eel grass. This, I realized, must be Innsmouth Neck in truth. Its former flooded appearance had fooled me into thinking otherwise. Now it lay bathed in a gruesome glow akin to chlorophyll set aglow.

  We waited. For what I could not imagine.

  Time lapsed and the moon rose further. There was something strange about it, for a rising moon always shrank in apparent size to the eyes. This moon did not.

  I remembered that the full moon at this time of year was known to the native Indians as the Worm Moon. I do not know why that vagrant thought stirred my conscious mind. But it did.

  My earlier disquiet had receded now that I was among my fellow man. I looked forward to the proceedings. Imagine what the folks back home will think when I tell them of this nocturnal adventure!

  Presently, the blackish-looking water began to congeal with a greenish phosphorescence. I knew that some maritime sea life generated such a display. Algae, I imagined. Although it seemed to me that such was a phenomenon of the sub-tropics.

  The watery greenish swirlings grew and quickened.

  Around me, I sensed a tense expectancy.

  And one by one, small globular heads popped to the surface.

  Of course, I thought. The herald jellyfish! Odd that sea jellies would swarm at this dark hour. Or in such unseasonable waters.

  But swarm they did. Under the cold lunar light, they surfaced like great air bubbles. Only they did not pop like air bubbles.

  From the throats of those around me, as if on cue, a doleful chant began to issue.

  I knew not the words, spoke not their language. But it was strange to the ear. It seemed to smite the very jellyfish that floated before our assembled feet, setting them aquiver.

  And as if in resonance, the sea jellies responded with a low undulant sound of their own. It might have been a moan, yet it ascended the scale in a rising manner, like a choir.

  The gelatinous heads seemed to lift higher in the tide, as if desiring to join us in song.

  As I watched, the dirge filling my ears, my brain, my very senses, the jellyfish did rise higher.

  What I witnessed next struck my senses so slowly, formed so much a part of the bizarre tableau, that even after the uncanny portion presented itself, I did not fully realize how impossible it was.

  For the jellyfish, bathed in a combination of silvery moonlight and emerald lighthouse illumination, rose from the watery deep to float into the very air as if it was as natural an environment as the turbulent Atlantic!

  Tendrils twisting and plucking, they advanced as a group, giving forth an arresting ululation that seemed timed to the pulsating contractions that produced their unnerving locomotion.

  Every man about me bowed his head as if in reverence.

  Except me. My head remained unbowed. My eyes were fixated upon the impossible army advancing on us.

  Fortunately I stood far to the rear.

  Cenobite Pike was first contacted.

  Standing with lowered head, he awaited his fate.

  A jellyfish, larger than the others and as clear as a soap bubble, floated up to his face and then with a mad hop, enveloped his head entirely!

  Next, the pendant stinging tentacles wound themselves around his unresisting neck with a grisly finality.

  I thought the cenobite should fight for his life. Instead, his entire body gave a reverberant shudder. Then awkwardly, as if impelled by a volition alien to his own, he turned and regarded us from behind the filmy body of the sea jelly that had seized his head entirely. Iridescent colors—predominantly green and blue—shimmered across that gelatinous skin as if in the throes of some electrical transformation.

  No sooner had that spectacle concluded than an eerie purplish phosphorescence overtook the slimy skin of the thing.

  Out from behind this ghastly envelope, a strange half-muffled voice issued forth.

  I understood not the words. But I recognized deep in my soul that the utterances coming from Cenobite Pike were not that of the man’s human larynx, but belonged to another, alien gullet.

  With a leaping, hopping flurry, other jellies took possession— Iuse that word advisedly—of other human hosts.

  None refused. All were willing. Heads were seized, throats entwined. Vassals they became.

  Via wavering pulsations, a jellyfish floated in my direction. Another came wheeling from a different direction, as if I were a prize to be contested over.

  Throwing up my hands, I ducked wildly. With high elbows and hands, I fended off one after another of the eerie aerial things.

  Unexpectedly, one dropped down from high over my head.

  I felt a squishy half-liquid carapace plop onto my Mackinaw hat.

  Tendrils like live electric wires sought my throat, hampered only by the high collar of my Ulster coat.

  Flinging off my cap, I dashed it to the ground, where I hastily pulped the gasping thing beneath a hard Brogan heel.

  This brought forth a wailing cry from the aerial army and suddenly I was the unwelcome center of attention.

  There was no retreat. The path was blocked. I couldn’t advance. Not into the brine.

  Having no other choice, I broke for Innsmouth Neck. I ran toward that lighthouse with its wavering gaseous light. In my near-panic I understood that only from a commanding height could I seek protection from the unhuman beings who pursued me like a school of voracious fish.

  The Neck was a scrawny thing of eel grass and marshy malodorous muck. I fought to keep my feet from sinking into the cold mire. Lapping waters confined the available walkway, like the hands of the Atlantic’s drowned dead.

  This proved fortunate, because the hybrid things at my heels bunched up and became entangled in the mire, requiring the assistance of their Medusa-headed fellows in order to extricate themselves.

  Eventually, I fought my way to the lighthouse unhampered.

  But too late I saw my error. For this was no coastal lighthouse, but something else. There was a light at the top, yes. But it was not produced by a lighthouse beacon. I could not see the illumination’s source, but it was a cold glare having nothing in common with modern electrical light.

 
; The circular tower seemed composed of stones covered in barnacles, and at its base clung dull-colored rockweed. It exuded a foul, crabby odor. Suddenly I feared it.

  For the construction blocks seemed not to be native stone. They were too black, far too cunningly dressed. I discerned decorative carvings, washed by moonlight, and a script not known to me. The carvings showed men. But what men! More dolphin than man from the look of their webbed hands and finny feet. I did not like the shapes of their Hydra heads, nor the now-familiar configurations of their ears.

  A wild thought overtook me: If the dressed stones of fabled Atlantis could be salvaged, they might have been employed to build such a tower as this.

  I sought to remove myself from the vicinity, but there was no other path capable of bearing a human weight. This was the terminus of Innsmouth Neck. Around it lay wave-gnashed breakers too tumbled and slimy to countenance climbing down. And below those bleak boulders lay only the unwelcome Atlantic Ocean. What could I do? Swim out to the black remnant of Devil’s Reef? It was more than a mile.

  Glancing back, I saw that the pack was fast approaching.

  Their hybrid heads were hideous to behold. Fishy faces seemed perfectly attuned to the gelatinous helmets that they now wore.

  I knew then that these were the true inhabitants of Innsmouth. I understood why Evacuation Day had spread this far north of staid old Boston.

  For here in Innsmouth by the bay, the sea port was subject to forced evacuation on this one terrible day each year.

  Resolving not to fall victim to whatever fell fate these fin-eared vermin had in store for me, I clutched the stone carvings and barnacles and began my painful ascent.

  A voice—I recognized it as belonging to Cenobite Pike—boomed out, “He is desecrating the Cenotaph!”

  Cenotaph! I knew that word. A memorial tomb to the dead. What did it mean? What dead?

  I do not know how I attained the top of the Cenotaph, but I did. My nails were broken and bleeding frightfully before I was done.

  There I saw that the source of the eerie green light was a ghastly pool of phosphorescent liquid. It lay cupped in a crude stone well of some kind. I spied minute things swimming in the matrix. They were the source of the fitful luminance. They were an unfamiliar form of marine life that suggested greenish tadpoles, each with a single cold eye, like spawning Cyclopes.

  I remained safely on the rim.

  Below me, my antagonists began to climb up after me.

  The stones forming the rim were loose and crumbling. Action of salt water had wasted away the loose mortar. I wrenched a block loose. It felt like onyx—an impossible thought.

  Sighting carefully, I dropped it square on the head of Cenobite Pike.

  It split the purplish jellyfish enveloping his cranium, knocking him insensate. He fell, the foul envelope skidding off in two mismatched sections. All three quivered there on the ground in the moonlight.

  A howl went up, low and unearthly. No human throat had given vent to it, I knew.

  I had only to repeat my simple feat to discourage any further assault on my defensive perch. This time, I distinctly heard the cracking of skull bone.

  Peering downward, I noted attempts to salvage the jellyfish, suggesting that its human vehicle was deemed less important. The jelly was removed and conveyed to the sea, where it was carefully released.

  Below, the others formed a circle about me. Again they raised their half-muffled liquid voices in a dirge.

  Out from the harbor there commenced the levitation of more of the rancid jellyfish. Moaning, they advanced, the weird electrical display shimmering along their translucent bodies. The filament-like tendrils that hung down like so much Spanish moss lifted and reached out in my direction…

  Removing my shoes, I beat and flailed away at them for the better part of an hour, tears of frustration streaming down my features.

  Reasoning that they must possess some kind of inner bladder containing a lighter-than-air gas like hydrogen, I endeavored to burst them open. It was not easy. But twice I was rewarded in my efforts by a satisfying pop! After which, the wounded thing plummeted to a pitiful, helpless demise.

  This only served to energize the survivors. Time after time, stinging whips crossed my hands, my face, raising painful welts. They were like licking tongues of acid.

  In my zeal, I lost first one shoe, then the other.

  Undaunted, I used my heavy coat the way a matador employs his cape. I flung its tails about, confounding these aerial attackers. Buoyant as they were, they lacked the ability to hold their own against brute force. Many I dashed to their doom.

  These creatures, accustomed to compliant hosts, knew not how to conquer me. I piled their despicable carcasses all about me, flung them to the howling of the mob below, laughing as I did so.

  More than once, one plopped into the greenish pool. Each time, the one-eyed spawn fell upon the hapless thing, tearing it to gelatinous rags, battling to wolf down every last digestible morsel. I needed no more encouragement than that to avoid falling in with them.

  I know not where I found the primordial strength, but I beat back every last pulsing sea jelly. But one.

  Over my head it hovered, watching.

  This specimen was very large. Its color was opalescent. Hanging down from this translucent polyp was a veritable forest of lazily waving tendrils.

  Slowly, inexorably, these descended for my bare head, much like a spider slipping down its strand of web, pulsing hungrily.

  In my brain, I thought I heard thoughts not my own. The syllables were at first unfamiliar. Then they resolved into words I could comprehend.

  “Mother Hydra. Father Dagon. Great Cthulhu. Mother Hydra…”

  It was a chant, identical in its cadences to the dirge of the denizens of Innsmouth. It was a call to worship. More, it was a summoning of the soul, a singing in the blood, calling its brethren back to the sea.

  But I was not of the sea. I lifted my voice in protest, crying, “I am a landsman! Do you hear? A landsman, and proud of it!”

  The tips of those stinging tendrils began touching the hair on my head. I felt my hackles rise.

  I gripped my Ulster coat tightly in my raw, wind-burned hands. I gathered it up, waiting, heart pounding high in my raw throat.

  When the tips reached my shoulders, I struck. Whipping my coat upward, I feinted away.

  The flung coat sailed high.

  The gulping thing slithered after me. Gravity did the rest.

  The coat dropped over it smartly.

  For a moment, the gaseous bladder was sufficient to support the creature, weight of the coat and all.

  Reaching out, I grabbed for the coattails with both hands, careful of the eerie pool at my feet. I yanked downward once, very hard. My 160 pounds was enough for the task.

  The opalescent thing screamed at my brain as I spilled it into the pool where swam things fully as terrible as it was.

  A feeding frenzy resulted. It went on for five fearsome minutes in which, upside down, the thing flung its tendrils at me as if to drag me into the churning maelstrom of its destruction.

  I happily stamped each groping, lashing whip into submission, cackling with a mad glee.

  After it had at last subsided, I detected a slow sound like a leaking tire inner tube. The bladder was apparently inedible. Breached during the convulsing death throes, it was giving up its buoyancy.

  Then all was still. I looked out into Innsmouth harbor.

  Those sea jellies which had survived were now dividing into two groups. One returned to the sea to sink from sight. The others formed a wavering line like pale bubbles, and floated out into the harbor.

  I watched them retreat. They were making for the solitary black fang that I knew to be all that remained above water of Devil’s Reef. I had no doubt that the submerged group, perhaps more depleted than these,
was doing likewise.

  The moon soon rose to its awful apex. And the procession of jellyfish-bearing acolytes continued to congregate about my lonely outpost, moaning and chanting futilely.

  They gazed up at me. Unflinchingly, I returned their regard. I might as well have been looking down into a grotto pool where dwelt denizens of some subterranean deep. Their eyes were too cold, their grayish features too much alike. Seen as a group, they were as individual as codfish.

  Shoulders slumping in defeat, the procession turned and walked back toward dry land, single file so as to avoid the sucking mire.

  Exhausted, I hunkered down in my impossible perch and fought to remain awake. It was a long time before my lungs ceased convulsing and my pulse settled down.

  The dawn came. The tide returned. Innsmouth Neck was soon swallowed by the Atlantic’s cold embrace. The Cenotaph and I were cut off from dry land.

  For a time, I paced the rim wondering if it was better to throw myself off onto the breakers below than risk a run inland, when I spied a solitary row boat lying in said rocks. Thick moon shadow had concealed it from my sight before this.

  Scampering down, I claimed it.

  There was only one oar. It was enough.

  Sculling out into the harbor, I pushed south, south to Ipswich, south to a normal New England sea port with normal New Englanders possessing eyes and ears that did not speak of the unfathomable deep. Landsmen. Landsmen like me.

  I never went back to reclaim my pride-and-joy Packard. I never told anyone what had transpired the night of Evacuation Day in the horrid craw of Innsmouth Neck. For at Ipswich, I learned the story of what had happened in Innsmouth that terrible night more than ten years ago. Heard why Devil’s Reef had been dynamited. Understood what a foul place Innsmouth had been. And was again becoming.

  I can only conclude that the fishy strain that had been driven out was once again regaining a finhold in the recovering coastal stronghold of Innsmouth. And what I witnessed was a ritual in which the lingering survivors of that strain were attempting to revitalize their abhorrently piscatorial bloodline.

  As for the jellyfish that were as much at home in the air as in salt water, to this day I sleep with my bedroom windows closed no matter what the weather. And when I see a full moon rise, white and terrible, I am flung back shuddering to that awful night in Innsmouth Neck… but most importantly I daily pray that the local holiday known as Evacuation Day does not spread further than it already has.