“Jesus Christ!” Mike said, a chill coming over him. He knew he should run over to see what was happening, to help the sheriff if he was in trouble, but a dreadful, debilitating feeling of fear made it impossible for him to move. He knew it was too late to help whoever had screamed. It had ended with such an awful abruptness he knew for certain whoever made it was dead.
Jeb grabbed his forearm. “I think we’d better make for the car and get out of here. Whatever’s going on over there, there are too many of them for us to handle. And if they decide to come over here…”
“I’m with you,” Mike grunted, ashamed of his fear. He could feel his flesh crawl as he watched the crowd move around the patrol car, before some of them turned and looked their way.
“They’ve seen us,” Jeb said. Jolted into action, the men burst into a sprint, heading for the Mercedes.
“Damn it.” Mike swore, fumbling in his pockets as he ran. “I must’ve left the keys in the bedroom.” He looked back and knew there would not be time to go inside before the mob reached the SUV.
Abandoning any idea of using the car, the men continued up the street. No one else was in sight. Nor were there any other sounds, just their own footsteps and the louder, deeper steps of the mob, hidden by the fog behind them. Mike looked back, saw they had outpaced the mob, then pointed down an alleyway several blocks from the inn. “We could weave our way back to the inn. If I can get inside for the keys, we can still get away in the Merc.”
“A hell of a risk,” Jeb told him. “Who’s to say they’ll leave the car unguarded.”
“There’s a chance they might if they think we’ve decided to head through the fields.”
Jeb shook his head uncertainly, but went along with Mike’s idea. It would be easier getting somewhere safe using the SUV than trying to make it all the way on foot, especially if some of the mob took to their cars. They could cut them off on the roads out of here if they did.
Hidden by the fog from those behind them, the alleyway they chose was cluttered with crates and piles of lobster pots. They picked their way between them as carefully as they could, hoping to avoid letting their pursuers know where they had gone. Still hidden in thick swathes of fog that swirled around them, it was not long before the locals ran past the alley, continuing up the road.
“Mob mentality,” Jeb muttered. “Only as bright as the dumbest amongst them.” He grinned uneasily at Mike, as they set off down a gap between the buildings, one of which looked like a warehouse, towards the inn. Its walls emerged from the fog a few moments later as they approached the door to the kitchen. Beer barrels were lined up outside, alongside crates of empty bottles and sacks of refuse. Mike took hold of the door handle and gave it a push, but the door was locked. He looked back at Jeb. “We’ll have to try the front and hope all of ‘em have gone up the street after us.”
They approached the end of the alley. It was impossible to see very far in the fog, which was even denser here near the waterfront, which encouraged them to risk breaking for the front of the inn. Again, Mike pushed the door.
“Take care,” Jeb cautioned as he rushed inside.
In the short time that had elapsed since they fled up the street, some of the mob had attacked the inn. The signs of a struggle were everywhere in the overturned furniture and broken glass that cluttered the place. And, although he thought he was prepared for the worst, Mike was horrified when he saw the stocky figure of the barman, his face, chest and arms a mass of lacerations, sprawled across upturned stools and a large pool of blood at the end of the bar, a pool cue, its shaft broken, still clasped in one hand.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jeb asked. “What’s made them act like this? It’s madness. Madness.”
Mike shook his head, unable to voice what he felt. Instead he raced up the stairs to the bedrooms on the next floor. Though there was some disorder up here, too, it was less widespread. Perhaps because only the barman had been seen as a target. Had the rest of the people, the inn’s owner and his wife, got away? Or had they joined the mob?
“The barman came from Chicago,” Jeb said as they headed for their rooms. “He told me the other night. He’s a stranger to this place. Not like the others. Most are third or fourth generation locals. Their families have lived here for decades – perhaps longer. Perhaps a hell of a sight longer.”
“What are you getting at?” Mike asked as he rummaged through his stuff for the car keys, then hefted a broad bladed knife he used for fishing.
“Perhaps it’s only locals – locals who’ve lived here for generations – that have been gripped by this madness. Look at Ray. His folks were locals. And the professor: his great grandfather built the house he lives in.”
Mike shook his head, uncertain. “Why should that make a difference? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Perhaps not.” Jeb sighed. “Perhaps it doesn’t to us yet because whatever’s going on here is like nothing either of us have ever been involved in before, something no one has ever been involved in before.”
Mike grunted.
“If we don’t get to the car soon we might not have time to think about it much longer either. It won’t be long before that mob decides we’ve not gone up the road and head back here.”
Outside it was still silent, though. If anything, the fog seemed even denser than before, so that they could barely see more than a few yards ahead of them. Wary about stumbling across any of the locals, Mike held the knife ahead of him, ready to fend off any attack, while behind him Jeb wielded the remains of the pool cue he had prised from the barman’s grip.
They had not gone far when they came across a body on the cobblestones.
“Who’d they get this time?” Jeb asked as Mike knelt by the man’s head, before reaching and touching his chest. He peered at his hand. It was covered in blood.
“Look’s like this guy’s been shot.” Mike pushed the head over so he could see the face. It was Professor Collins.
“Must’ve been him Sheriff Harper or his deputy shot when the mob attacked them,” Jeb said.
“Probably because he was their ringleader,” Mike suggested, though he found it hard to believe. Yet the face he was looking at had barely a trace of the man they had seen before. His features looked debased, bestialised, his mouth wider, his open, staring, sightless eyes almost unnervingly inhuman, while his skin had a coarse bluish-grey cast like a long dead fish.
Mike let go of the man’s head with disgust and wiped his fingers. They had to get to the car and drive out of this hell hole. He felt close to panic at the utter senseless insanity of what had happened this morning, at the build up of violence and death over the past few days in this backwater village.
As they hastened towards the car they heard the footsteps and murmured mutterings of the mob that had pursued them heading downhill. Mike sprinted the last few yards and yanked the driver’s door open. Inserting the keys, he started the SUV’s engine with a ferocious burst of acceleration as Jeb plunged into the passenger seat beside him.
“Lock your door,” Jeb shouted as they saw the first of the mob emerge from the fog.
Mike gritted his teeth as he edged forward, even now, even after all the sickening violence he had seen, reluctant to ram his way through the mob, though one part of him kept urging him to do so.
Clenched fists and thick, yellowing finger nails beat against the windows, but Mike forced himself to ignore them, just as he made himself try to ignore the panic inside him. He had no illusions what would happen if the mob forced their way into the car – and he was glad, despite the grumbling of his wife, who saw the gas-guzzling monster as a waste of their hard-earned cash, he had stubbornly held onto the SUV. Its height and bulk gave them an advantage which anything smaller would have lacked.
An iron boat hook smashed against the window beside Jeb, fracturing it into a maze of splinters.
“Put your foot down, for Christ’s sake! One more blow like that and the window’ll be in!” Jeb shouted.
Mike pre
ssed down on the accelerator and the large vehicle speeded up, forcing its way through the crowd that tried to block it. For a moment it slowed when a group of locals tried to push it to one side. But the four-wheel drive was too much for them, and the Mercedes kept going with a relentless momentum that swept them aside.
Once they were free of the mob, Mike kept the car to a steady ten miles an hour. The fog was still too dense to risk going any faster. The road was narrow, with drainage ditches on either side, and too many unexpected twists and turns as it headed uphill, for him to risk any more speed. A slip could result in a broken axle at the least.
They had only been travelling a few more minutes when a beam of light appeared ahead of them, waving back and forth across the road. An amplified voice boomed out, ordering them to stop as a line of National Guardsmen emerged from the wisps of fog, automatic rifles levelled towards them.
Mike eased his foot off the accelerator and brought the SUV to a halt.
An officer appeared at his window and Mike opened his door to him.
The soldier held a cocked handgun in one fist and a megaphone in the other. “Have you just left St. Mottram?” the man asked.
It transpired Sheriff Harper’s remaining deputy, Pete Volk, had been in communication with his boss from his patrol car on the edge of town when the sheriff pulled up at the quay. His radio had still been on when shots were fired and someone screamed. When he failed to get any response from his chief, Volk contacted the State Capital. The Governor had ordered out the National Guard, while Federal agents were sent to investigate the violence in St. Mottram.
The town had been sealed off with units of the National Guard, while coast guard vessels were patrolling the bay.
Lieutenant Gravowitz, the officer in charge of the guardsmen, arranged for Mike and Jeb to be deputised by Volk, who had taken over as acting sheriff. Although he looked as if he felt out of his depth with what had happened, Pete Volk was a stolid, fair-haired man with a sombre personality who was obviously trying to cope with everything from a sense of duty. He handed Mike and Jeb rifles and told them to help him guide the guardsmen into the town. “You probably know its layout as well as me. Together we’ll coordinate the guardsmen and round up those bastards and try and figure out what’s going on.”
“Some kind of madness,” Jeb retorted, but he shook his head with incomprehension.
“Some kind of madness will do for now,” Volk said. “It’s the best suggestion we’ve had so far.”
As the guardsmen headed down the road into St. Mottram there was sporadic firing as some of the villagers attempted to attack them. But it was not long before they were driven back. What numbers there were retreated into Al Westmore’s garage. Mike was not surprised. Somehow he had expected it.
There was a monotonous droning from the garage as Mike, Jeb, Pete Volk and National Guardsmen closed in on it, rifles at the ready. How many villagers had joined the murderous rampage, no one yet knew. They had come across the slaughtered bodies of scores of villagers as they advanced through St. Mottram. Mike suspected most of the victims were wives or husbands who had married locals. A sick feeling told him their killers had probably been their own spouses or immediate neighbours. The strange physical decline of those villagers who had been taken over by the madness was even more disconcerting, as there seemed no reasonable explanation as to why they should have changed so much in such a short space of time; their faces had acquired a bestial appearance, coupled with a hideous coarsening of the skin and even a subtle change to their eyes, with hard, black, fish-like pupils.
Despite the armed men beside him, Mike felt apprehensive as they closed in on the garage. It was dark inside and the villagers milled about the statue that towered above them looked threatening. Their bodies slouched as they watched the soldiers square up to them. There did not appear to be any kind of defeat in their stances. There seemed to be a build up of aggression, instead, as if they were ready to launch themselves in a frenzied attack.
Mike tightened his finger on the trigger of his gun, made sure that the safety catch was off, and licked his lips.
The attack, when it came, was swift and brutal.
Sickened already by the torn bodies they had found on their way here, the troops cut their attackers down as soon as they moved. Again and again they fired in to them, then moved forward, beating down those they had only injured with the butts of their guns. They had been told by Lieutenant Gravowitz to take what prisoners they could once their own safety was assured, but in the heat of the moment some of the blows were deadly.
Mike nodded to Jeb. He had already recognised Ray Wetherell, even though, like the others, he had changed so much. He’d been shot in the shoulder and was slumped against a pile of tyres, his face contorted with anger and pain. Mike flinched as Ray swung his uninjured arm at him, grazing him with the talon-like nails on his fingers.
“Calm down,” Mike told him, though he was unsure if Ray could still comprehend his words. “You ain’t going anywhere, buddy, so you might as well give in without a fight or we’ll knock you out somehow.”
Jeb nodded beside him, gun butt raised. “Might be the only way to deal with this crazy bastard.”
There was a moan from the surviving locals as a chain was draped around the statue. Some of the guardsmen had commandeered a pick-up and were ready to hoist the statue off the ground and onto the back of the truck.
Mike saw Ray’s eyes smoulder with rage.
“Careful,” he shouted back at the troops. “Perhaps we should secure this lot first before we shift that thing. Moving it has got ‘em worked up.”
Lieutenant Gravowitz confirmed his suggestion. “Ease up on that till we’ve got ‘em secured.” He glanced at the wounded locals. There were less than a dozen of them left alive, though there was a dangerous lunacy in their hate-filled faces that warned him that, injured or not, they were still a danger.
When the prisoners had been fastened with lengths of rope, they were herded onto the street while a group of guardsmen continued loading the statue onto the truck.
“What d’you make of that thing?” Mike asked the lieutenant.
“Looks like some kind of idol to me, though what or where it originated is anybody’s guess. Ugly looking brute, isn’t it?” The lieutenant grinned, his relief at having killed or captured the locals obvious.
Mike reached out and touched the statue. For a moment he felt nothing but the rough surface. It was a strange looking metal. Coppery, yet somehow there was something different about it, swirls of dim colours that looked as if they were just beneath the surface.
“Damnedest thing,” he muttered, sure he could feel a faint tingling in the tips of his fingers.
When the troops had taken their prisoners and the statue away, Mike and Jeb headed back up the road to the SUV. The fog was thinning and the day was beginning to heat up as they walked. When they reached the Mercedes, Jeb said: “What do you think about taking a look at the professor’s house? Out of curiosity?”
“Only if the place hasn’t been cordoned off by the sheriff.”
“Naw, Pete Volk’ll be too busy helping to process those prisoners with the National Guard to be bothered about that place yet.”
A few minutes later they were parked on the gravel drive at Bluff Heights. The house looked deserted, its front door open, leaves blowing into the hallway. The upended chair was still there, as was the picture, hung at an angle on the wall where it had been bumped. There was also the same clammy smell of raw fish.
Still feeling unsure about trespassing, even though he knew the professor was dead, Mike paused in the hallway.
“The smell’s got worse.”
Jeb wrinkled his nose. “There’s something added to it. Something rank.”
Still holding their rifles, they glanced into the study, which looked much as it had before, except that a large, age-darkened manuscript lay across the desk, covering most of the dried-up ink that had been spilled earlier. Mike picked the manusc
ript up and scanned the lines of closely written letters, most of it so old fashioned in style he could barely decipher it.
“Is this a transcript?” Jeb asked, indicating a newer sheet of A4-sized paper. They compared the opening lines, which appeared to be the same.
“Much unrest in the township today,” Mike read. “The Reverend Phillips accused many of falling into the grievous error of Devil worship when it was discovered that Martha Craik had erected up a statue, which had been brought here by her husband from his last SouthSea voyage. She had had it placed in a barn that lies on their land, and had secretly had the inside of the barn made into the likeness of a temple. The Reverend Phillips announced the ill-featured statue was of a heathen idol, a Devil worshipped by ignorant and illiterate islanders, who had attacked the captain’s ship and been cut down and killed by his crew in revenge. The Reverend Phillips stated the Captain and his wife had, through their unhealthy close contact with this wicked object, succumbed to the worship of this vile thing. Much was said of the Captain’s illness and the strange and sinister changes which all have observed in him since he returned with it. So grievous were these changes that it has been noted he had stayed indoors these last three months. Some spoke of him staring at them, before he avoided public places, with eyes like those of a fish.”
Mike turned to his friend. “There’s a break in the transcript, then it picks up again some days later: The army restored order after the Reverend Phillips and Councilman Able Cartwright rode overnight for help from Bridgetown when rioting broke out in the town. Many casualties, including violent deaths, were reported. Captain Craik was captured and taken to Bridgetown for trial. His wife, Martha, was killed by musket fire, though not before she attacked the soldiers and inflicted death on one of them, he not expecting such wicked violence from a woman of her years. Under orders from the Reverend Phillips, the hideous idol was despatched to a brig and taken out to sea, where it was disposed of in its watery depths.” After a pause, Mike went on: “There’s a postscript, which I think the professor wrote himself: St. Mottram has been noted over the years as a place of high incidence of premature senility amongst its residents, including some as young as thirty, particularly amongst those who have rarely, if ever, left the village for prolonged periods of time. The peculiar form of Alzheimer’s found here (if it is indeed Alzheimer’s at all, which I personally doubt!) tends to be of a form that makes the subject prone to outbreaks of extreme violence, accompanied by a morbid physical deterioration in the subject’s body, as if there was a malign influence at work on them. I suspect that closer contact with the source of this ‘ailment’ would bring about these mental and physical changes much more quickly. Is this what we are experiencing here, even as I write, now that the cause of these symptoms has been brought into the village itself? Are we becoming victims of it?”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 42
