Innsmouth Nightmares Read online

  Edited by Lois H. Gresh

  INTRODUCTION

  Lois H. Gresh

  This is the book of my dreams. I’ve always been fond of Innsmouth. Directly over my desk, a painting of Innsmouth hangs on an old hook left by the former inhabitants of my house. I spend most of my life at this desk, so Innsmouth is always with me. There’s something very appealing about the tottering village and its shambling denizens, the cults, the dreariness, the turbulence of the sea, and Devil Reef.

  When I proposed this anthology to Pete Crowther at PS Publishing, I told him that I wanted to produce a book brimming with extraordinary Innsmouth stories. I wanted to produce a book that I would never grow tired of reading, a book that I would read every now and then for the rest of my life. I think that I succeeded.

  I requested stories from all the top writers in the weird genre. I desperately wanted Ramsey Campbell, but alas, Pete had Ramsey squirreled away writing a trilogy of Lovecraftian novels, so Ramsey was a bit tanked out to pen a short Innsmouth tale. Almost everyone else is in this book—all the writers of weird fiction that readers go ape over. Given my obsession with Innsmouth, I was sorely tempted to add a story, but in the end, decided it would be poor form to write a story for an anthology of which I’m editor.

  In short, this book is a killer. Every story supplies a knock-out punch.

  Opening the book is John Shirley’s “Windows Underwater.” This is a fantastic fusion of everything that is classically Innsmouth but with an incredible bizarre and futuristic twist. Tight writing, a scene you won’t forget (I love it!), and a great finale. This is John Shirley at his best.

  I’m a big fan of Lavie Tidhar’s work, so I figured, if Lavie writes an Innsmouth story, it’s bound to be radically different from everything else. I couldn’t have guessed more correctly. Lavie’s “Cold Blood” is unlike anything I’ve read about Innsmouth. Truman Capote as the Ultimate Outsider comes to Innsmouth with Nelle to determine the real truth behind murder. Lavie nails Capote’s character and also nails In Cold Blood—absolutely brilliant.

  Approaching Innsmouth from an entirely different angle, Laird Barron’s “Fear Sun” is futuristic technopunk-weird. It reads as if it’s the beginning of a much longer tale, one that I would snatch up and read should it become available. “Fear Sun” gives us Innsmouth run by a tough-as-nuts heiress, and for good measure, Laird dishes up a super-secret mad scientist laboratory, a spook, and a Gray Eminence. The writing is pure Laird, perfect in every way.

  Are you excited yet?

  After reading the first three stories, you may need to calm down before continuing because the killer tales just keep coming. Or you can just plow through these gems, read to the end, then circle back and re-read the whole book.

  In Paul Kane’s “Thicker Than Water,” a jittery young woman sets off with her fiancé to meet her future in-laws for the first time. Yes, they live in Innsmouth, and if you haven’t guessed, wedding bells are not exactly chiming. Paul’s depictions of Innsmouth, the water, the in-laws, and the “good provider” are spot-on. I wrote in the guidelines for this book that I wanted weird stories about water, and Paul certainly delivered.

  In Tim Lebbon’s “Strange Currents,” a man is lost at sea, but does he really want to reach land? What is it about the ocean currents that drives his lifeboat? This story evokes a vague feeling of The Call of Cthulhu as well as Innsmouth.

  In Nancy Kilpatrick’s “Mourning People,” a woman must tidy up her mother’s affairs and honor a promise that can only be fulfilled in Innsmouth. Nancy beautifully captures the chilling, weird, depressing mood of Innsmouth.

  Richard Gavin’s “The Barnacle Daughter” asks the question, So who’s your Daddy, do you even know? Young Rose seeks her lost daddy—is he dead, is he alive, or is he something else? And assuming she finds him, what will happen?

  Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Between the Pilings” gives us stunning images of Innsmouth and its inhabitants. In Steve’s story, a man returns to the site of a very strange childhood vacation, one that didn’t end particularly well.

  In “The Imps of Innsmouth” by Wilum Pugmire, a girl awakens to the old ways of Innsmouth. Classic Innsmouth. Classic Wilum. What more could you want?

  John Langan’s “The Open Mouth of Charybdis” feels a bit like a Twilight Zone tale. As I finished John’s story, the closing Twilight Zone music actually ran through my head. The moral of this story is: never vacation in Innsmouth. You can change the name of a place, but you can’t change its substance.

  Tim Waggoner’s “Water’s Edge” is told in second person, an unusual approach to weird fiction. In this story, we learn what might have happened to the ordinary creatures of Innsmouth since the village’s destruction years ago. Extra bonus: guest appearance by Lord Dagon.

  Also featured in Innsmouth Nightmares is a new story by the one and only William F. Nolan. “Dark Waters” is a bittersweet tale about a man who honeymoons in the wrong place. I mean, would you choose Innsmouth for your honeymoon?

  Lisa Morton’s “A Girl’s Life” supplies yet another twist to Innsmouth. In Lisa’s story, a young girl enters puberty, but “the change” isn’t what you think it is.

  James A. Moore dishes up dark romance in “The Sea Witch.” The poor love-sopped fellow in this tale should take a cue from the weird hag who runs the local diner, and he should run for the hills. But he doesn’t. Of course.

  In Jason V Brock’s “Brood,” a local sheriff deals with bizarre corpses and a strange Area 51-like place called The Manuxet River Nuclear Complex.

  Then in Jonathan Thomas’ “Gone to Doggerland,” elderly Fiona gibbers irrationally like any other senile crone—or wait, perhaps her gibbering is something else. Bonus appearance: Aquatic Ape Theory.

  Next up is “The Scent of the Hammer and the Feather” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., whose poetic prose is unlike anybody else’s working in the weird genre today. Here, he beautifully captures adolescent angst: all the loneliness, the feelings of not belonging, the questioning of one’s very existence.

  Nancy Holder’s “Baubles” is a story of teenage adventure and weird romance. As an aside, would you want a gift bought in Innsmouth? After all, it’s such a cool “hippie” town. Any gift from Innsmouth must be super-cool, right?

  In Donald Tyson’s “The Waves Beckon,” a nurse is fired from the Arkham Hospital and finds work at Innsmouth’s Marsh Care Facility. Oh, need I say more? If you want a fun romp, this is it.

  Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “The Cats of River Street (1925)” evokes the bizarre, bleak, and decaying nature of Innsmouth. This is a beautifully written story, with Caitín at her best.

  The closing tale is S. T. Joshi’s novelette “Some Kind of Mistake,” in which a born-in-Innsmouth fellow returns home to seek Maxwell Gilman, a madman who threatens all of humanity. Beware of global warming. Beware of the technologies that pollute the Earth and its waters. But beware of Gilman? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

  I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed editing it. If you like tales about Innsmouth, you’re in for a real treat.

  Lois H. Gresh

  March 2015

  WINDOWS UNDERWATER

  John Shirley

  Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man

  And downward fish; yet had his temple high

  Reared in Azatus, dreaded through the coast

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  1. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. Summer 2014.

  Lymon and Gil, both twenty-one, stood in the shade of the canopy over the festival picnic tables. Gil looked around with disgust.

  Summer sunshine, green lawns, the smell of the marshes coming faintly from east of town. Tittering children eating frozen yogurt with
sprinkles.

  Gil was repelled by it.

  “I’m sick of Rowley, man.” He didn’t say it too loud. That dickhead Curston was sitting at one of the picnic tables, maybe forty feet away, jawing about baseball. Deputy Curston was all full of smiles because his Red Sox had a clear road to the playoffs. He’d given Gil at least two completely unnecessary traffic tickets.

  Lymon shrugged. “Rowley’s okay.” He was thoughtfully eating his extra large sprinkled cherry-chocolate frozen yogurt. He was the kind of guy who could eat anything and never get fat. Freckled, “pale as fishbelly, skinny as an eel”, was what Lymon’s dad said. Lymon’s dad had hinted that Lymon wasn’t actually his kid. True, Lymon didn’t look like his pop. Recessive genes, is all.

  Gil was half Mexican, ran to chubby and always fighting it. “You got to eat that giant triple cone in front of me?”

  “Surrender, surrender to the lure of the fro-gurt, Gil!”

  Gil snorted. “Hell, It’s not just Rowley. I’m sick of Massachusetts too,” Gil muttered. “I don’t like the cops, I don’t like the tourists, I don’t like the ocean— especially around here. Water’s too fucking murky and dark. I want to go to one of those islands where the water is crystal clear. You can see whatever’s down there. And there’s some kinda real culture going on. You know? Like in Hollywood.”

  “Kind of boring here,” Lymon admitted. “Nothing to do but…”

  “But this,” Gil said. He waved a hand at the little tents and canopies and shade structures of the Rowley Arts and Crafts Festival. His other hand was holding a plastic wine glass from the “tasting booth”. Eight dollars for one glass of lame wine from Virginia.

  “If you left Rowley where would you go? You got free rent with your folks here.”

  “I’d go to California. Maybe L.A. Or San Diego. Get into film making or…”

  Lymon looked at Gil and raised the red-blond eyebrow that was always half raised anyway. “Film making. Really.”

  “Okay, listillo. I’ll start small—work for a videogame company. Do design, maybe direct cut scenes.” Gil drank some of his wine. “I got an uncle in L.A. He’s kind of a dick but he offered me a job. I could work there while I was getting my shit together to apply to Pixil Arts.”

  “You mean that uncle who has the car repair shop? You don’t know anything about cars either. You’ve been studying to be a pharmacist, man.”

  “He’d teach me. I hate being in a classroom. I want to be out doing something.”

  “You could go back to work for your Pops.”

  Gil made a face. “I don’t want to touch another goddamn fish. That’s why I took pharmacy—there’s nothing to do with fish. Dad still tries to get me to go out on Eddie’s boat.” His brother’s name was Edwardo but he went by Eddie. “I get seasick. And it’s all fished out, anyway, around here. Mostly jellyfish out there. Eddie’s getting desperate—starting to fish around Innsmouth. Those reefs out there.”

  Lymon blinked at him, genuinely startled. “That even legal?”

  “Sure it’s legal. Nobody does it much, is all—just a tradition not to fish there. I’m not going out on the boat, no way. I’m not even working at his fish market. The smell makes me sick.”

  “Everything makes you sick today, man. I like fish.”

  “I know you do. You and your fish tanks. Come on, Lymon, we should both go to L.A. Your dad’s trying to get you to move outta his place anyway. We can stay with my uncle.”

  “I’m doing pretty good with the bookstore. Assistant manager.”

  “They’re gonna close that store, man. Chain’s downsizing.”

  “Maybe.” Lymon ate some more frozen yogurt. “You wanta come over, play some Skyrim? You can use my sister’s computer, we can meet online.”

  Gil sighed. He drank a little wine. It was supposed to be cabernet but it tasted vinegary to him. “You and me used to talk about working in gaming. Gotta go to New York or L.A for that. You can code. I can draw. We can get a job at Pixil Arts.”

  “Yeah right. And we could date Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, drive em around in our new Porsches. Sure. You want some of this fro-gurt stuff? I bought too much.”

  “No.”

  “I’m playing Skyrim. You coming?”

  Gil sighed. “I guess so. It’s that or this. But I’m telling you…”

  “I know. You’re leaving town.”

  2. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. October 2028.

  “How long you back for this time, Gil?”

  They were standing on the top of the dike protecting Rowley from the ever-rising sea. Lymon had taken up cigarettes, Spirit Naturals, and he was blowing smoke upward to go with the breeze sucked toward the Atlantic as the tide went out.

  Gil made a faint groan. “I don’t know. Maybe a long time. Lost that gig at Vapor Arts. Actually, I got mad and quit.”

  “You ever get past designer assistant?”

  “No. Finally they offered me a job in the cafeteria.”

  “Christ.” Lymon shook his head. “Assholes. You’re a good artist.”

  “I don’t know how to use the new e-pens, all that stuff.” Gil shrugged, and admitted, “That technology’s been around twenty years—I could’ve learned. I got all caught up in Melda and that just didn’t work out. Nothing much worked out. I feel like growing up here just sapped all the life out of me. And L.A. couldn’t give it back.”

  “Well zip up your coat, and I’ll show you something to take your mind off all that.”

  Gil zipped up his coat—not that easy to do. He was getting into his late thirties now and putting on significant weight, like his Pops. He glanced at the sky. “Getting dark.”

  “Naw, won’t be dark for like three hours. It’s just how it is, now, lot of haze all the time, makes it murky out. Climate change. Florida’s half underwater, north Georgia’s turning into a desert. Carolinas it’s storms all the time. Here, it’s like this. And the ocean slopping right at our feet. But, do not despair, Gil, I got a pint of Hennessey on me too.”

  “You know how to get to me. Offer me liquor. I’m a cheap date. It’s sad, dude.”

  “Dude, he says. The legacy of L.A. Come on.”

  Gil let himself be drawn along with Lymon. They tramped atop the curving seawall that kept Plum Sound from spilling over the lowlands. The dike was high and strong, the best the Army Corps of Engineers could put up as the rising seas threatened Rowley. But if the causeway cracked open, Rowley would be drowned.

  Lymon handed him the pint of brandy. For something to say as he unscrewed the top—so he didn’t feel like such an alky—Gil asked, “So your job’s still going good?”

  “Yeah. Have to learn new coding languages sometimes but—I like coding. Keeps my mind busy.”

  Gil glanced at Lymon and thought, Getting fifteen years older hasn’t helped him out much. Lymon’s profile seemed bloated; his lips thicker; eyes popping. Did he have some kind of thyroid issues?

  Walking along the top of the dike as if it were a sidewalk, they passed the pint of brandy and looked out over the water. Up ahead, the dike curved to follow the contours of Plum Island Sound; on their right, the mirrorlike water of the marshes reflected the dull sky; a sea gull skated through the reflection.

  Soon they’d left the Sound behind. Now, the sea gnashed close to hand, to the left; it churned, slowly, like a colossal ruminant chewing at something. The dike curved on between sea and marsh squeezed to a thin charcoal-colored line that pointed at Innsmouth Harbor.

  Gil glanced at his watch. It was low tide, but the water washed against the wall just ten feet below them. “How high’s it get on the dike when the tide’s full?”

  “Runs over the top, sometimes, if there’s a storm.” Lymon sniffed, and wiped his nose with one hand. “So far, not enough to do much damage. But that dike wasn’t ever high enough. Sea’s rising even faster than they expected.”

  He passed the brandy bottle.

  They fell silent for a time. The dike was flat, the brandy warming, and t
he miles seemed to melt away. Finally Gil said, “I kind of wonder, sometimes, why I always hated living out here. Rowley’s not so bad I guess. People treated me okay. Mostly. But something was always telling me I didn’t belong and—how many Mexican families in Rowley? Almost none. A few Puerto Ricans, a few Cubans. Me, I’m half—not fish nor fowl. And I don’t like the fish part.”

  Lymon gave him a sharp look.

  Gil went on, “I had this, like, fantasy, when the ocean was rising and all the dikes were being built…that Rowley would screw up and the whole town would be sunken. I figured my folks would get away on their boats and…” He shrugged and chuckled in a nervous kind of way. “Sick, I know.”

  “Huh. ‘kay. Kind of weird that you mentioned that but then again—You want to see a sunken town? You can pretend it’s Rowley.”

  Gil started to answer—then his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pants pocket, glanced at it, saw it was his brother’s number. He thumbed answer. “Eddie?” Gil listened. The phone crackled, then Eddie’s voice cut through. “…Gil? The… don’t…If they…that side…stay away…” Every third syllable was swallowed in a void. “They’re looking from…”

  “Eddie, what’s up, I’m losing your signal, here, man. Can’t make out what you’re saying.”

  “…looking up at me…windows underwater…their mouths…windows under the…just don’t…not with…”

  A furious crackle arose on the phone, as if something in the air was angrily drowning the voice out. “Eddie?”

  Eddie’s voice had fallen into a void of static. Then the static ended—there was only silence. Call ended, it said on the screen.

  “Lousy reception out here, don’t even bother trying to call him back, it’s hopeless, man,” Lymon said. “Hey, you see that? Over there, look! There’s your drowned town, man…”

  The sun was going down behind them; the sea in front, in this light, was strangely translucent, here; as if for a moment, just before it got dark out, it had chosen to disclose what was normally hidden.

  They were looking out at the sunken harbor of Innsmouth; the water had covered the old ruins. The high, razor-wired fences that had kept people out were fallen and rusting; between the remains of the fences the old brick and granite buildings were mostly tumbled into shapeless heaps; here and there in the ruins were recognizable constructions; peaked gables and gambrel roofs, a few chimney pots, something that might have been a warehouse. A narrow shape almost like an obelisk was poking out of the water, just its sharp peak showing—Gil realized, as he stared at it, that it was the top of an old church spire. No cross adorned its tip.