Shortly before ten the next morning I stood with my one small valise
in front of Hammond's Drug Store in old Market Square waiting for
the Innsmouth bus. In a few moments a small motor-coach of extreme
decrepitude and dirty gray color rattled down State Street, made a
turn, and drew up at the curb beside me. I felt immediately that
it was the right one; a guess which the half-illegible sign on the
windshield--"_Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb'port_"--soon verified.
There were only three passengers--dark, unkempt men of sullen visage
and somewhat youthful cast--and when the vehicle stopped they clumsily
shambled out and began walking up State Street in a silent, almost
furtive fashion. The driver also alighted. This, I reflected, must be
the Joe Sargent mentioned by the ticket-agent; and even before I had
noticed any details there spread over me a wave of spontaneous aversion
which could be neither checked nor explained.
He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall,
dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed gray golf
cap. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the
sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull,
expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery blue eyes
that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin,
and singularly undeveloped ears. As he walked toward the bus I observed
his peculiarly shambling gait and saw that his feet were inordinately
immense. The more I studied them the more I wondered how he could buy
any shoes to fit them.
A certain greasiness about the fellow increased my dislike. He was
evidently given to working or lounging around the fish docks, and
carried with him much of their characteristic smell. Just what foreign
blood was in him I could not even guess.
I was sorry when I saw that there would be no other passengers on the
bus. Somehow I did not like the idea of riding alone with this driver.
But as the leaving time obviously approached I conquered my qualms and
followed the man aboard, extending him a dollar bill and murmuring the
single word "Innsmouth."
At length the decrepit vehicle started with a jerk, and rattled noisily
past the old brick buildings of State Street amidst a cloud of vapor
from the exhaust.
The day was warm and sunny, but the landscape of sand, sedge-grass,
and stunted shrubbery became more and more desolate as we proceeded.
Out the window I could see the blue water and the sandy line of Plum
Island, and we presently drew very near the beach as our narrow road
veered off from the main highway to Rowley and Ipswich.
At last we lost sight of Plum Island and saw the vast expanse of the
open Atlantic on our left. Our narrow course began to climb steeply,
and I felt a singular sense of disquiet in looking at the lonely crest
ahead where the rutted roadway met the sky. It was as if the bus were
about to keep on its ascent leaving the sane earth altogether and
merging with the unknown arcana of upper air and cryptical sky. The
smell of the sea took on ominous implications, and the silent driver's
bent, rigid back and narrow head became more and more hateful. As I
looked at him I saw that the back of his head was almost as hairless
as his face, having only a few straggling yellow strands upon a gray
scabrous surface.
Then we reached the crest and beheld the outspread valley beyond,
where the Manuxet joins the sea just north of the long line of cliffs
that culminate in Kingsport Head; all my attention was captured by the
nearer panorama just below me. I had, I realized, come face to face
with rumor-shadowed Innsmouth.
It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a
portentous dearth of visible life. The vast huddle of sagging gambrel
roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea
of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I
could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. Stretching inland I saw
the rusted, grass-grown line of the abandoned railway, with leaning
telegraph-poles now devoid of wires.
Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end
in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most
decayed. And far out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long,
black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of
odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil Reef. As I looked,
a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim
repulsion; and oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than
the primary impression.
As the bus reached a lower level I began to catch the steady note of
a waterfall through the unnatural stillness. The leaning, unpainted
houses grew thicker, lined both sides of the road, and displayed more
urban tendencies than did those we were leaving behind. The panorama
ahead had contracted to a street scene, and in spots I could see
where a cobblestone pavement and stretches of brick sidewalk had
formerly existed. All the houses were apparently deserted, and there
were occasional gaps where tumbledown chimneys and cellar walls told
of buildings that had collapsed. Pervading everything was the most
nauseous fishy odor imaginable.
And I was not to reach my destination without one other very strong
impression of poignantly disagreeable quality. The bus had come to a
sort of open concourse or radial point with churches on two sides and
the bedraggled remains of a circular green in the center, and I was
looking at a large pillared hall on the right-hand junction ahead. The
structure's once white paint was now gray and peeling, and the black
and gold sign on the pediment was so faded that I could only with
difficulty make out the words "Esoteric Order of Dagon."
The door of the church basement was open, revealing a rectangle of
blackness inside. And as I looked, a certain object crossed or seemed
to cross that dark rectangle; burning into my brain a momentary
conception of nightmare which was all the more maddening because
analysis could not show a single nightmarish quality in it.
It was a living object--the first except the driver that I had seen
since entering the compact part of the town--and had I been in a
steadier mood I would have found nothing whatever of terror in it.
Clearly, as I realized a moment later, it was the pastor; clad in
some peculiar vestments doubtless introduced since the Order of Dagon
had modified the ritual of the local churches. The thing which had
probably caught my first subconscious glance and supplied the touch of
bizarre horror was the tall tiara he wore; an almost exact duplicate
of the one Miss Tilton had shown me the previous evening. This, acting
on my imagination, had supplied namelessly sinister qualities to the
indeterminate face and robed, shambling form beneath it.
A very thin sprinkling of repellent-looking youngish people now became
visible on the sidewalks--lone individuals, and silent knots of two
or three. The lower floors of the crumbling houses sometimes harbored
small shops with dingy signs, and I noticed a parked truck or two as we
rattled along. The sound of waterfalls became more and more distinct,
and presently I saw a fairly deep river-gorge ahead, spanned by a wide,
iron-railed highway bridge beyond which a large square opened out. Then
we rolled into the large semicircular square across the river and drew
up on the right-hand side in front of a tall, cupola-crowned building
with remnants of yellow paint and with a half-effaced sign proclaiming
it to be the Gilman House.
I was glad to get out of that bus, and at once proceeded to check
my valise in the shabby hotel lobby. There was only one person in
sight--an elderly man without what I had come to call the "Innsmouth
look"--and I decided not to ask him any of the questions which bothered
me; remembering that odd things had been noticed in this hotel.
Instead, I strolled out on the square, from which the bus had already
gone, and studied the scene minutely and appraisingly.
For some reason or other I chose to make my first inquiries at
the chain grocery, whose personnel was not likely to be native to
Innsmouth. I found a solitary boy of about seventeen in charge, and was
pleased to note the brightness and affability which promised cheerful
information. He seemed exceptionally eager to talk, and I soon gathered
that he did not like the place, its fishy smell, or its furtive people.
His family did not like him to work in Innsmouth, but the chain had
transferred him there and he did not wish to give up his job.
There was, he said, no public library or chamber of commerce in
Innsmouth, but I could probably find my way about. The street I had
come down was Federal. West of that were the fine old residence
streets--Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and Adams--and east of it were
the shoreward slums.
Certain spots were almost forbidden territory, as he had learned at
considerable cost. One must not, for example, linger much around the
Marsh refinery, or around any of the still used churches, or around the
pillared Order of Dagon Hall at New Church Green. Those churches were
very odd--all violently disavowed by their respective denominations
elsewhere, and apparently using the queerest kind of ceremonials and
clerical vestments.
As for the Innsmouth people--the youth hardly knew what to make of
them. Their appearance--especially those staring, unwinking eyes which
one never saw shut--was certainly shocking enough--and their voices
were disgusting. It was awful to hear them chanting in their churches
at night, and especially during their main festivals or revivals, which
fell twice a year on April 30 and October 31.
They were very fond of the water, and swam a great deal in both river
and harbor. Swimming races out to Devil Reef were very common, and
everyone in sight seemed well able to share in this arduous sport.
It would be of no use, my informant said, to ask the natives anything
about the place. The only one who would talk was a very aged but
normal-looking man who lived at the poorhouse on the north rim of the
town and spent his time walking about or lounging around the fire
station. This hoary character, Zadok Allen, was 96 years old and
somewhat touched in the head, besides being the town drunkard. He was a
strange, furtive creature who constantly looked over his shoulder as
if afraid of something, and when sober could not be persuaded to talk
at all with strangers. He was, however, unable to resist any offer of
his favorite poison; and once drunk would furnish the most astonishing
fragments of whispered reminiscence.
After all, though, little useful data could be gained from him; since
his stories were all insane, incomplete hints of impossible marvels and
horrors which could have no source save in his own distorted fancy.
Nobody ever believed him, but the natives did not like him to drink
and talk with any strangers; and it was not always safe to be seen
questioning him. It was probably from him that some of the wildest
popular whispers and delusions were derived.
The Marshes, together with the other three gently bred families of the
town--the Waites, the Gilmans, and the Eliots--were all very retiring.
They lived in immense houses along Washington Street, and several were
reputed to harbor in concealment certain kinsfolk whose personal aspect
forbade public view, and whose deaths had been reported and recorded.
Warning me that most of the street signs were down, the youth drew for
my benefit a rough but ample and painstaking sketch map of the town's
salient features. After a moment's study I felt sure that it would be
of great help, and pocketed it with profuse thanks.
Thus began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth's
narrow, shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward
the roar of the lower falls, I passed close to the Marsh refinery,
which seemed oddly free from the noise of industry. This building
stood on the steep river bluff near a bridge and an open confluence of
streets which I took to be the earliest civic center, displaced after
the Revolution by the present Town Square.
Re-crossing the gorge on the Main Street bridge, I struck a region of
utter desertion which somehow made me shudder. Collapsing huddles of
gambrel roofs formed a jagged and fantastic skyline, above which rose
the ghoulish, decapitated steeple of an ancient church.
Fish Street was as deserted as Main, though it differed in having many
brick and stone warehouses still in excellent shape. Water Street
was almost its duplicate, save that there were great seaward gaps
where wharves had been. Not a living thing did I see, except for the
scattered fishermen on the distant breakwater, and not a sound did I
hear save the lapping of the harbor tides and the roar of the falls in
the Manuxet.
I kept north along Main to Martin, then turning inland, crossing
Federal Street safely north of the Green, and entering the decayed
patrician neighborhood of northern Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and
Adams Streets. Following Washington Street toward the river, I now
faced a zone of former industry and commerce; noting the ruins of a
factory ahead, and seeing others, with the traces of an old railway
station and covered railway bridge beyond up the gorge on my right.
The uncertain bridge now before me was posted with a warning sign,
but I took the risk and crossed again to the south bank where traces
of life reappeared. Furtive, shambling creatures stared cryptically
in my direction, and more normal faces eyed me coldly and curiously.
Innsmouth was rapidly becoming intolerable, and I turned down Paine
Street toward the Square in the hope of getting some vehicle to take me
to Arkham before the still-distant starting time of that sinister bus.
It was then that I saw the tumbledown fire station on my left,
and noticed the red-faced, bushy-bearded, watery-eyed old man in
nondescript rags who sat on a bench in front of it talking with a pair
of unkempt but not abnormal-looking firemen. This, of course, must be
Zadok Allen, the half-crazed, liquorish non-agenarian whose tales of
old Innsmouth and its shadow were so hideous and incredible.