Innsmouth Nightmares Read online

  The warehouse, if that’s what it was, had some recognizable windows, though their frames were skewed by the partial collapse of the building into rhomboids. Something moved, inside one of them—a large fish of some kind, looking back at him. Might be the face of a big moray eel.

  “Holy fuck,” Gil murmured. “The water’s so clear! That’s…really not normal around here!”

  “Normal for the time of day,” Lymon said. His voice sounded low, croakingly low, oddly melancholy. “It’s just—a trick of the light. The old town shows itself as the night comes.”

  “I didn’t know the water had, like, totally swallowed it up. You remember when we used to come and look at the town through the fence?”

  “Sure. The ruins of Innsmouth. Try to figure out which story was true. Some kind of dumping place for World War One mustard gas—that’s the story my old man used to repeat. Toxic dump. People had to be evacuated and the place destroyed, so stay away.”

  “I always liked the devil worshipper story. That was cooler.”

  Lymon chuckled—again his voice had that oddly low, silky intonation Gil wasn’t used to. “Devil Reef is just out there past the harbor…so maybe that’s how the story got started. But it was never about worshipping the Devil, whoever that may be.”

  “I don’t think it was the Devil, like Lucifer. But—some other ‘devil’. Half fish and half man. From the Bible.”

  “Sure. He was mentioned several times in the Old Testament. Like from Judges—Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their God…”

  Gil glanced at him. “Impressive, dude! You memorized it!”

  Lymon gazed fixedly into the sea. “My favorite is from 1 Samuel—Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon…But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold…”

  Gil stared. “That’s…a long passage to memorize. When did you get all, uh, theological?”

  “It’s nothing to do with theology. It’s about things that are old and powerful and different. Some creatures were simply powerful enough to be worshipped. That Bible story—a lot of propaganda. I don’t imagine the ark of the Covenant would have bothered Dagon much.”

  Gil licked his lips and looked at his watch. “We got a long way to go back.

  I need to find out what Eddie was all worked up about…”

  “Sure. Here—you finish the brandy. I’m going out on the fishing platform for a minute.”

  He handed Gil the brandy bottle and walked off down the dike, toward a flat wooden structure Gil hadn’t seen before. It was a kind of short jetty cantilevered from the dike, jutting out over the sunken remains of Innsmouth. The support beams were bolted into the dike below the water level.

  As the sun went down, the sea breeze was rising, wet and cold, making Gil shiver. Good excuse as any, he thought, opening the brandy bottle. He drank down the last quarter of it, tossed the bottle in the water, and stuck his hands in his coat pockets to warm them as he walked over to the platform.

  Lymon was standing right on the edge, looking down, as Gil joined him. “What’s up with this thing, Lymon? Something for tourists?”

  “It’s for fishing.”

  “Fishing here? Supposedly all the fish from here is toxic.”

  Lymon didn’t respond. He just stared down into the water.

  After a long moment he said, “You ready, Gil?”

  “Yeah. We should get back. Hey, when the tide goes out, does it expose the town?”

  “Only some of the higher bits. The water’s getting darker but you can still see…there! Look—you see that?” Lymon pointed.

  “What?”

  “Over by the spire…”

  Something was moving toward them, making a rippling wake as it came. Gil thought it was a sea lion, probably. That was a head, sticking up out of the water, approaching them, not a fin.

  “Is that a…” He broke off, and stepped closer to the edge to peer at the thing. “No. Not a seal—maybe a dolphin?”

  “No. That’s my cousin,” Lymon said. “She’s been down there for years.”

  Then Gil felt a painful punch in the middle of his back as Lymon knocked him headfirst into the water.

  Gil’s mouth was open to shout and it filled with saltwater as he plunged down, toward sunken roofs, darting black shapes and rippling columns of yellow-red light.

  He felt saltwater burning his throat, searing his lungs. Drowning. Got to get to the surface.

  He flailed, but thrashing only sent him deeper.

  Then a thick-bodied, naked woman rose up before him, a graceless bluewhite shape, intermittently scaly—was this indeed a woman? She was looking unblinkingly at him from enormous, bulging eyes set a little too widely. He could see the pink and blue gills respirating on her neck; he could see…

  Nothing. Could see nothing. Darkness swirled around him, icy cold penetrated to his bones, water pressure squeezed him—and something gripped him tightly by the ankles, pulling him deeper, and he thought, Strange way to die…

  Gil woke, and, after awhile, decided he was alive—in some fashion.

  The six-sided chamber, perhaps thirty-five feet long and twenty wide, was cut from ancient layers of coral and stone; the smell made him think of his father’s fish market on a hot day. But it was cold in there, and misty.

  Gil raised himself on one elbow to look around. Where was the light coming from? It pulsed softly from the corners of the room, hand-sized growths shaped something like mushrooms but filmy, transparent, laced with veins which glowed roseate-tinged blue.

  On the wall to Gil’s left was a bas relief carving of a sort of bearded merman wearing a crown, rising up from the sea spreading his brutish claws in perverse benediction.

  Dagon, Gil thought.

  Now and then the walls shivered with a soft hollow booming—the sound of the sea, up above. Cracks in the ceiling dripped in rhythm with the boom.

  Gil sat up, and after the throbbing in his head subsided, he found he was naked, except for a clean dry blanket. He had been laid upon a wet, plastic-wrapped mattress, probably dragged from some sunken boat; the mattress lay upon a stone slab. Where was the door to the room? He couldn’t see one.

  “Hey!” he called out, his voice raspy from salt. He noticed a plastic bucket on the floor holding what looked like fresh water. And a terrible thirst took hold of him.

  It could be drugged…

  But he was soon crouching beside it, drinking clean water, clearing his throat.

  “I’m glad you’re up,” said Lymon. Gil turned to see Lymon sauntering in. There was a deep shadow behind him, that emitted a grinding sound as it closed behind Lymon. Some sort of hidden door.

  Gil stared at Lymon. A kind of slippery membrane oozed across Lymon’s otherwise naked skin. Gill-slits had opened in Lymon’s neck; his face was more elongated, now, his mouth rounder, thicker; his ears seemed to have vanished entirely; most of his hair was gone. There were only wisps of his orange hair remaining, hanging lankly to his thin shoulders. Some of the membrane had been pulled back from his head, flopped down his back like a hood made of jellyfish stuff. There were webbings of skin between his fingers.

  Gil shook his head. “Jesus fuck, Lymon.”

  Lymon smiled. His teeth had become needlelike. “Do you like my second skin? It’s alive, you know. It’s a symbiotic organism, feeding off wastes from my skin and body. It protects me from cold and water pressure and salt damage. For genetic humans like you, we have another sort of second skin. It extracts oxygen right from the water, takes your carbon dioxide and—”

  “Lymon—shut the fuck up! You’re…you’ve…” Gil felt sick and the feeling overwhelmed him. He had to turn and heave out a bellyful of water.

  “Yes,” Lymon said, calmly, as Gil coughed and spat. “I’ve changed.”
His voice had that odd, low silkiness as he went on. “The faithful of Innsmouth were not all exterminated. Some were able to escape. They were not entirely changed, themselves. They intermarried…and those of us in whom the recessive gene is active—well, after a certain amount of time, as adults, we are called to the sea, and we begin to change.” Lymon took Gil’s elbow, helped him to sit on the mattress again. “He calls to us, Gil, and we hear him, when no one else does…”

  The door grated again, and the female came into the room, the one who’d approached Gil underwater. She was carrying a stone jar; she wore the living ooze just as Lymon did.

  “That is Darla Jane,” said Lymon.

  “Eat,” she said, proffering the jar. Her voice had a reverberant lisp to it.

  Gil looked into the jar. It looked like boiled spinach, with bits of fish; there was a rusty spoon in the jar too.

  “Seaweed, a variety that will restore your strength,” Lymon said. “And some fish. You’d better get used to fish. I must insist you eat—otherwise, certain persons will enter, and you will be force-fed in a particularly unpleasant way.”

  Gil felt heavy, weighted down by disorientation and despair. He had no strength in him to fight. He reached into the jar, scooped up some of the warm food with the spoon, and ate. It was salty, and its texture was revolting, but it restored hope and strength almost immediately.

  Lymon and Darla Jane watched in silence. When he’d eaten enough, Lymon took the jar away and Darla Jane pushed him back onto the mattress.

  “Breed,” she said. “We breed.”

  “Oh…no, no, really, that’s not going to work,” Gil sputtered, looking away from her. The smell; the membrane slopping over her—unbearable. He tried to push her away. But it was like pushing away a mudslide.

  “You don’t understand,” Lymon said. “It’s not…about arousal, really. Not at first. But—she will show you. We need your seed, Gil. We need human seed; we only do hybrids, as children, you see. That’s what works best.”

  “But me—Lymon? I’m your friend!”

  “And I would miss you, Gil! So you’ll be here with me. I wanted to give you a chance to live your dream. To be something that matters. To really have an impact on the world. We’ve been preparing the planet—encouraging climate change deniers, through our intermediaries…and certain industries. The damage humanity was doing to the sea could not be tolerated. We’ll end it our way. And yet, ironically, global warming is to our benefit! The sea rises! What it consumes, we too will consume. Now let Darla Jane have her way, Gil.”

  “No—that’s completely…no.”

  “It’s alright. You don’t have to kiss her.”

  Lymon walked away, and the thing calling itself Darla Jane pressed him back, and straddled him—and the membrane parted at her groin.

  Something emerged from her, there. From between her legs. Tendrils, thin and whipping and transparent, restless and seeking, tickling up his belly; then a red hose-like organ extruded from under the tendrils. The living hose opened itself wide, and slowly but inexorably sucked his private parts into itself—clasping testicles and all.

  Gil writhed and shrieked and tried to push her away but she was far stronger than he was and he could get no grip on her slick limbs.

  The hose-like organ squeezed peristaltically, milking his blood up into it, forcing his organ to become rigid. There was a kind of sickening pseudo pleasure in the process but he was gagging at her subaquatic reek, struggling against her clamp-like hands.

  The tendrils to either side of the hose extruded spines—which stabbed into his thighs.

  The pain was piercing, attenuated—but almost immediately vanished. Some biological anesthetic, he thought. Like mosquitoes use so you don’t feel them bite.

  Then he felt a cold pulsing from the spines—and knew he was being injected. A thick, glutinous fluid was forced into his muscles. It carried a ghastly ecstasy, a vile delight that expanded through him from his pierced thighs…and he found himself bucking his hips, forcing his reproductive organs deeper into the externalized genitalia of the thing that held him down until…

  3. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. June 2037.

  Gil delighted in the feeling of being a hand in the glove of the sea. He loved being out here, free of the oppressive weight of the temple hidden under the reefs—the freedom of the open sea, the infinite possibilities. He loved kicking easily along, warm and safe within his second skin. He envied Lymon his ability to breathe directly in water—Lymon didn’t have to look out through a bubble of the membrane. It blurred his vision, around the edges. But he could see well enough: the light wavering down from the surface; a school of striped fish swimming by. How had he ever felt that fish were repellent? They really were lovely—the way they all moved as one, in their school. Someday the interspecies council would move with such graceful unanimity.

  The Atlantic Ocean had regained much of its ancient vitality with the awakening of Dagon and the hard work done by His people. The acidity from global warming had been much reduced, with the cultivation of the undersea forests of specially bred kelp. Mercury and other toxins were being sponged away. The council had destroyed many of the ships that had done so much damage; they had blocked the outflow from dirtwalker cities—all that had helped. The wars, too, on the surface, had helped. Struggling for resources in an overheated world, the dirtwalkers were reduced in numbers and thus in power to do harm.

  It really was becoming a kind of paradise, along the northeast shore, underwater. But a number of foul dirtwalker settlements still festered on the coast.

  Swimming toward the Plum Island Sound, Gil sighed, thinking that perhaps his father would have been proud of him, after all, if he could have shown him all this—his father had always loved the sea. But Pops and Mom were dead. Eddie too—Eduardo had gone a bit mad, after seeing Lymon and his brother Gil, on the trawler, that day.

  I thought of him as my stronger older brother, but Eduardo was weak, and foolish, Gil thought. A person of no vision.

  He had refused to be recruited. And Lymon’s spies on the surface had reported Eddie’s demise. Dead of a heroin overdose. Gil’s parents had each taken their own lonely path to death. Pops had died of cancer, Mom had crawled into a bottle and never gotten out. They’d wasted away in Rowley.

  As he gazed out across the undersea-scape, Gil’s only real regret was that he had no artist’s supplies. How he’d love to find a way to paint this. The kelp forests; the sliding shark, the nosing dolphin. Blue-green water and diffused golden light; green going to black farther down. And the work crew, swimming briskly to the dike. What a sight they were—men and women transformed, merged with the sea.

  The work was almost done, he saw, as they approached the dike. The undermining was finished. The chains were being locked into place.

  Soon, the head engineer signaled to Gil—who was, now, high priest of the interspecies brotherhood—asking for permission to proceed.

  Gil looked around, saw that the tide was high as it was going to be, and the others had drawn back to safety. He gestured, Proceed.

  The engineer signaled Darla Jane—who gave that high keening call she had, that came from her vibrating gill-slits…

  And soon the kraken came from their deep place of slumber.

  Their massive oblong bodies stretched out; they turned in the water, their multiple limbs seeking, reaching for the chains; their tentacles entwined the thick steel bands. And the giant squids, bigger than any known to dirtwalker humanity, began to pull…

  It took almost ten minutes…but the underpinnings at last collapsed, taking the dike with them. A great rumbling shuddered through the sea as the dike fell into it, ragged boulders of asphalt streaming bubbles as they plunged down.

  But Gil was lifted up. With a cry of joy Gil felt himself carried up, bodily sluiced toward the land as the dike disintegrated into the Atlantic Ocean.

  The great wave lifted him ever higher, over the sinking debris; up and up so that at last he broke th
e surface, and with Lymon and their companions he rode the tsunami in at dawn, the servants of Dagon astride the great wave that would be the first of many to crash down on Rowley, Massachusetts, drowning it as Innsmouth had been drowned, crushing buildings and choking the squirming dirtwalkers, so that the triumph of Dagon, and the glory of Gilberto Lopez and Lymon Barnes was complete…

  John Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association for his story collection Black Butterflies. He was co-screenwriter of the film The Crow and worked as a scripter in live action television and animation. His novels include Demons, Crawlers, In Darkness Waiting, Cellars, A Song Called Youth, Wyatt in Wichita, Doyle After Death, A Splendid Chaos, and Everything is Broken. His latest story collections are Living Shadows and In Extremis. He has written the lyrics for numerous songs recorded by the Blue Oyster Cult and for his own bands, Sado-Nation, The Panther Moderns, and The Screaming Geezers.

  COLD BLOOD

  Lavie Tidhar

  1.

  The town of Innsmouth skulks on the inhospitable shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Essex County, Massachusetts, a lonesome area that other New Englanders seldom speak of. The air is murky and the water of the ocean tinged a sickly green. At night, strange fires can still be seen on Devil Reef. The local accent is nasal, and the men, many of them, wear long coats and wide-brimmed hats against the sun. The views are extensive if rather off-putting, and the sunsets are rich and dark as human blood.

  What remains of Innsmouth can be seen as a fragmented shadow when one approaches on the bus from nearby Newburyport. The railroad bypasses Innsmouth, and no ships call at the ruined old harbor. It isn’t much of a town, but rather an amalgamation of oddly-shaped individualistic buildings that sprawl outwards like a malignant spider bite from the town square, many of them seemingly disused and lying in various states of disrepair. There is a mustiness to the town, and when the breeze blows cold from the sea it brings with it the sharpness of tar and salt and something else, a scent less easily identifiable, vital and wild yet strangely decayed.