by Khurt Khave
“Nothing,” he grunted. “Just my lucky charm.”
“Can I see it?”
“No,” he said, scowling. “It’s mine.”
Is it your precious? Was it a birthday present? I didn’t ask him that, instead I extracted two dollar bills from the little pile he’d let drop on the table in front of him. “Two dollars gets you unlimited refills,” I told him, hoping he’d drink enough coffee to sober up.
It was a Sisyphean task, sobering Donny Allen up, as he poured a generous slug from a flash he carried in an inside pocket of his jacket into each of the four cups that I served him. It eventually worked, to the extent that the caffeine started to win the race over the alcohol in his bloodstream. He became more alert to his surroundings, taking in the shiny, new, black-andwhite tiled floor and the mural of buxom mermaids frolicking with dolphins and whales that Aubs had painted on one wall. One of the mermaids had flowing black hair and looked a lot like me, if you discounted her flippy fish tail with its silver and turquoise scales. Donny looked at me quizzically.
“What’s this coffee you’re giving me?”
I told him it was Sumatra dark roast.
“Sumatra? Old Obed Marsh sailed there. Old Captain Marsh sailed all around that part of the world,” he told me. He leaned forward, bloodshot eyes glittering, like those of the Ancient Mariner. “The captain had three ships: the Hetty, the Columbia and the Sumatra Queen.” He held up three grimy fingers to represent the three ships.
I’d been in Innsmouth long enough to have heard of Obed Marsh. He was something of a local hero. He founded the gold refinery at the lower falls of the Manuxet River. The refinery made the town prosperous around the time of the Civil War, but like the rest of Innsmouth it was now neglected, although there were usually a few cars to be seen in the parking lot. Marsh also founded the fish cannery that was still in business on Water Street, down in the harbor.
Donny Allen squinted at me. “How about you? You from Sumatra like your coffee?”
He refused to believe me when I said that I was originally from New Jersey. “No you’re not. You’re not American. What are you?”
This was tiresome. I told him, yes, I was an American. I was born in Princeton, to parents who were naturalized citizens who came to this country from India.
“And what about that?” he asked, pointing to something on the shelf above the cash register. “That heathen idol you got there.”
It was a cat sitting on its haunches, made of gold-colored plastic. Its slow-moving, battery-operated paw waved, beckoning customers and (theoretically) prosperity into the shop. I told him, “That’s not an idol. It’s a lucky cat, from Japan.”
“No, that,” he said, insistently, pointing.
“Ah,” I said, realizing what he was pointing at. “That’s Kali, a Hindu goddess.”
His eyes widened, taking in the little black-skinned statue’s necklace of skulls, her skirt made of severed arms, and the fact that she was standing on the prostrate figure of a man, her consort, the god Shiva. “Jeezly crow! She’s got four arms!”
Without another word, he got up and left.
His reaction was natural, I suppose. It was the same kind of Whoa! WTF? feeling I’d had upon encountering an unusually graphic depiction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the home of a Catholic classmate. In the picture, Jesus was looking mournfully out at the viewer, shoulder-length hair parted in the middle like a member of a seventies rock band, one hand parting his robe to disclose a very realistic-looking heart.
That’s the thing about religious art – its symbolism tends to bewilder the uninitiated. Kali, with her numerous arms, is probably the most misunderstood of the Hindu goddesses. People think she represents death, and in a way she does, but it’s the death of the ego, that and the liberation of the soul from the bondage of the flesh. That’s how my mother described it when she gave me the little statue that had been her mother’s.
“Kali is the mighty aspect of the goddess Durga, the loving mother,” she said. “They’re two sides to the same coin.” She smiled. “Remember, there is nothing stronger than a mother’s love.”
I happened to like having the little goddess on the shelf, watching over the doings at Bean Me Up, but I could see why Donny Allen was freaked out by her. I thought I’d seen the last of him after his hasty departure but he returned about six weeks later.
It was late October and the storefront was decorated with pumpkins and cornstalks tied with orange raffia bows. The chalkboard out front advertised pumpkin spice lattes when Allen reappeared. He’d shaved and was sober this time. I was alone, as Aubs was in Peabody doing some shopping.
“Gimme some of that Sumatra coffee,” he said, seating himself at the counter.
“Would you like to try our pumpkin spice latte?”
“No,” he said, making a disgusted face. “That’s for women and fellows who are light in the loafers. I want real coffee.”
I poured him a cup of real coffee and watched him drink it down. He fished two wrinkled dollar bills from his pocket, considered a moment, and extracted another, pushing them toward me.
“Unlimited refills, right? Like before?”
I nodded my head, surprised that he remembered.
“The other dollar’s your tip,” he said grandly. I thanked him and put it in the tip jar, on which Aubs had affixed a smiley-face label that read: KARAOKE FUND! The jar was otherwise empty. We’d accumulated enough to purchase a karaoke machine. That’s one of the items she was buying at the Northshore Mall. We planned to have karaoke nights, not that we ever did. We didn’t realize it then, but our time at Bean Me Up was rapidly drawing to a close.
Allen studied me as he drank his second cup of coffee. Something was clearly on his mind. Finally he asked, “You’re not planning to be open on Halloween night, are you?
When I said that we were, he said it wouldn’t be a good idea.
“Maybe you noticed folks around here are clannish. They don’t take to outsiders.”
I said I’d noticed.
He drew down his brows, seeming to ponder what to say next. “All I’m saying is it would be better if you and your friend aren’t here after dark on Halloween. Stay over in Ipswich, or Newburyport. Come back the day after, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Why? What’s going to happen?”
“Same thing as always happens,” he said wearily. “May Eve and Halloween. Same damn thing that’s been happening around here since Hector was a pup.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and what he did next didn’t enlighten me. Reaching into the pocket of his plaid wool jacket he withdrew a flat, round, bronze-colored object, placing it on the counter.
“My one-month medallion,” he said. “I been going to AA over at the Congregational Church in Ipswich. I been trying to do what’s right.”
“Good for you,” I said.
He gave me a sideways look. “See, I took the first and second oaths when I was a young man. You have to if you want to survive in this town, but I never did take the third oath. I couldn’t make myself do that.”
I wondered what he was talking about. My confusion must have showed because he sighed and shook his head. “The oaths are only part of it. What they got going, what old Obed Marsh started all those years ago, it’s secret, see?”
I didn’t see, but I nodded reassuringly. A good barista, like a good bartender, has the knack of nodding reassuringly and letting the customer talk.
“AA’s anonymous, but it’s not secret. Anybody’s welcome who has the desire to quit. What they do next door at the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and out at Devil Reef, that’s secret. They’re messing with something every bit as dangerous as what they were fooling around with in the New Mexico desert back in the nineteen-forties, maybe even more dangerous.”
That was a lot to take in. I couldn’t wait to tell Aubs that EOD stood for the extravagantly strange-sounding Esoteric Order of Dagon. Devil Reef was just a sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean, about a mile out
from Innsmouth Harbor. It was occasionally submerged and completely bare, as far as I could tell from having looked at it once on a clear afternoon through binoculars. I couldn’t see how whatever it was they did next door could possibly be dangerous, certainly not like what the scientists and engineers working on the Manhattan Project were doing when they made the atomic bomb.
No doubt whatever it was they were up to in the Esoteric Order of Dagon involved the same kind of solemn oaths of secrecy that were taken by the Freemasons and the boys at Yale when they join Skull and Bones. They may have convinced themselves that they were privy to the vast and powerful secrets of the universe, but it was probably no more than a bunch of men getting together, putting on robes and chanting a lot of nonsense that they pretended was ancient Egyptian, or Phoenician.
Boys only. The He-Man Woman Haters Club, I thought to myself. Just the same old same old. I wouldn’t be surprised if Neanderthal men had secret societies in which Neanderthal woman weren’t allowed. Women don’t have the same urge to form secret clubs as men do, although we have sororities and Junior League and the Amish have their quilting bees. Maybe it’s because we are powerful secrets, something men have found disturbing since the dawn of time, hence the story of a certain serpent and a nosy lady named Eve.
I was jolted out of my reverie by Donnie grasping my wrist with a callused hand. “Don’t be here Halloween Night, that’s all I’m saying. They got something planned. I can’t say anymore. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
Then he turned and was gone, leaving his coffee unfinished.
I thought I knew what he was hinting at. Our shop was going to be vandalized. The people of Innsmouth were planning on driving us away by throwing a brick through the front window and going to work with spray paint on Aub’s mermaid mural. I wasn’t about to let that happen. We’d stay right here and confront them. If need be we’d call the town constable. At that point, I even suspected Donny of being in league with the rest of them who didn’t want us in town, thinking he’d frighten us into leaving with ominous hints of evil doings next door. Stupid me.
Halloween arrived on a Saturday. We had a grinning plastic pumpkin filled with candy for any kids who came in: full-size Almond Joys and Kit Kats and Snickers, what Aubs called “the good kind, not the chintzy miniatures.”
No kids came, not that there were many children in town, but still, it seemed strange not to see any of them dressed up and going trick or treating. I loved Halloween when I was a kid. It was still my favorite holiday. Aubs and I got into the spirit by dressing up, she dispensing coffee dressed as Princess Leia and I as the pirate Anne Bonny, in a wide-brimmed hat, velvet jacket and bell-bottom canvas trousers, a plastic cutlass strapped to one hip.
We ended up distributing the candy to our regulars, and at 7 p.m. we turned the OPEN sign in the front window around to CLOSED. We set up the karaoke machine and proceeded to entertain ourselves. I turned the mic over to Aubs after high-stepping to “Disco Inferno.” (Burn that mother down, y’all!) Aubs was belting out “I Will Survive,” accompanied by dramatic gestures, when the front door flew open with a crash.
It was Vernal Eliot, the town constable. He had a key, one that I certainly hadn’t given him. We’d had new locks put on when we moved in, and as far as I knew only Aubs and I had keys. Then I thought of the locksmith, a sullen fellow who spoke in croaking monosyllables and realized where he’d gotten it.
Eliot was wearing a gray hooded robe, the hood thrown back. He was accompanied by five or six other robed men, members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, judging by their getup.
There goes my idea of calling the constable for help, I thought. “Turn that shit off,” he said, jerking his chin at the karaoke machine.
One of the men went and turned it off as Aubs and I stood there, stunned. Eliot looked at me, his eyes an eerie pale blue, like a husky dog’s.
“Disco sucks,” he said conversationally.
“Hey, look out! She’s got a sword,” one of the men said, noticing the
cutlass on my hip.
“It’s plastic, you idiot,” Eliot told him. He rolled his eyes and shook
his head, as if to say see what I have to put up with?
He clapped his hands together. “Okay, time’s a-wasting. Let’s get this
show on the road,” he said. “Seize them!”
Astonishingly, he gave us a happy smile. “I always wanted to say
that,” he said. A man moved to grab Aubs. She kicked at him, hard. He
twisted away at the last moment so she didn’t get him in the groin but in the
thigh. He retaliated by shoving her, sending her staggering backwards. Her
head struck the corner of the marble countertop with a loud crack. She fell to
the floor, blood pouring from her head, not moving.
“Oh, shit!” Eliot said. He turned to the man who’d pushed her. He
was down on his knees, frantically feeling her neck for a pulse. “Chuck, if she’s
dead, I swear I’m gonna feed you to them.”
“She’s alive, just knocked unconscious,” the guy named Chuck
reported.
“That may be for the best, all things considered,” Eliot said. “Get the other one. Try not to knock her out, too. And take that sword away from her. We don’t want anybody getting an eye poked out.”
I’d like to say that I wielded my plastic sword like a katana, routing them the way Uma Thurman dispatched the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill, but that would be a lie. I managed to elbow one them in the throat, momentarily putting him out of action as he wheezed and gasped for breath, but all the fight drained out of me when one of them – a squat redheaded guy whom I’d seen hanging around on the bench outside the firehouse – punched me in the stomach.
“That’s enough,” Eliot ordered him. To me, he said, “Are you going to behave?”
I nodded my head, unable to speak. Tears were rolling down my face and my nose was running like a faucet. They’re going to rape us now, I thought with an icy stab of terror. But no. Instead they hustled me outside to the curb, where an ancient black Cadillac with tinted windows was waiting. It looked like the same car that drove to the Esoteric Order of Dagon Hall every Saturday night. To my surprise, Thaddeus Marsh from the Gilman House got out from behind the wheel. He held the back door open for me, courteously as a chauffeur.
“Hello, Lakshmi,” he said. “Get in.”
I got in.
They brought Aubs out next. She was awake but dazed. She slid in next to me and raised a hand to her head. She looked at the bright red blood on her fingers, puzzled. “What’s happening?” she asked.
The person in the passenger seat turned around at that point. “You’re going for a boat ride to meet some of our friends,” he said.
When I say it was a person who spoke those words, it wasn’t, not exactly. It looked more like a toad, and not a jolly, tweed cap-wearing toad like Toad of Toad Hall from The Wind in the Willows. This thing had mottled gray-green skin. Its head came to a point and its eyes – much farther apart than human eyes -- bulged repulsively. It had gills on either side of its neck, I saw with wonder. They were pale pink and ridged, shading to dark red in the middle. They expanded and contracted, like the sides of an accordion.
“Meet Orrin Gilman, owner of the Gilman House,” Marsh said.
He’d said the owner of the hotel was indisposed. I could see now what he meant. There was no way he could go out in public looking like that, not without raising a lot of questions.
Marsh started the car. He rolled down the window and spoke to the men standing on the sidewalk. “One of you come along in case they get feisty. I’ll meet the rest of you in the harbor or out on the reef.”
The red-haired guy who’d punched me climbed in next to Aubs. As we pulled away from the curb I looked back at the lighted windows of Bean Me Up. The lucky cat’s paw waved from its perch above the cash register. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be going back there again. As
it turned out, I was right.
We drove around the oval that enclosed New Church Green and onto Washington Street. The few houses that showed signs of occupation were dark and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Marsh glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “I bet you’re wondering what’s going on,” he said.
I didn’t reply. I was hoping somebody would be outside the convenience store, somebody who wasn’t from Innsmouth. I’d pound on the window and yell for help. The bank would have closed hours ago, as would the True Value. The Grabbit ‘N Go would be our only hope, unless I could jump out and outrun them when we got to the harbor, not that there was any place to run to down there.
“Orrin has gone through the change,” Marsh said. He looked in the rear view again. “One that ordinary people don’t go through, just us special ones.”
Gilman nodded his big, misshapen head. Turning with a grin, he croaked, “I’m gonna live forever under the ocean, just like my daddy and his daddy. I can come back and visit with my great-great-grandkids. All thanks to Obed Marsh and what he discovered out there in the South Pacific.”
“Obed Marsh was my ancestor,” Marsh said proudly.
“Mine too,” said the red-haired guy.
“But I’m a direct descendant. Your mother was just his seventh cousin,” Marsh told him.
I couldn’t believe they were arguing about genealogy while a kidnapping was in progress. Apparently Aubs couldn’t either. “Stop it,” she said. “Let us go. Right now. You’re going to be in so much trouble. You committed kidnapping and assault and battery and breaking and entering and. . . a lot of other things,” she finished weakly.
It didn’t seem like a good idea to threaten them when they had the upper hand, but Marsh laughed delightedly.
“Listen to you! What spirit! You’re a Gilman all right!”
“No I’m not,” she replied. “Hugh Gilman was my stepfather. My biological father’s name was Abernathy.”
There was a shocked silence.
“Now you tell us,” said Marsh.
“Change of plans?” suggested Gilman, the gills on the sides of his neck fluttering anxiously.
