IV

I can hardly describe the mood in which I was left by this harrowing

episode--an episode at once mad and pitiful, grotesque and terrifying.

The grocery boy had prepared me for it, yet the reality left me none

the less bewildered and disturbed. Puerile though the story was, old

Zadok's insane earnestness and horror had communicated to me a mounting

unrest which joined with my earlier sense of loathing for the town and

its blight of intangible shadow.

The hour had grown perilously late--my watch said 7:15, and the Arkham

bus left Town Square at eight--so I tried to give my thoughts as

neutral and practical a cast as possible, meanwhile walking rapidly

through the deserted streets of gaping roofs and leaning houses toward

the hotel where I had checked my valise and would find my bus.

Studying the grocery youth's map and seeking a route I had not

traversed before, I chose Marsh Street instead of State for my approach

to Town Square. Near the corner of Fall Street I began to see scattered

groups of furtive whisperers, and when I finally reached the Square I

saw that almost all the loiterers were congregated around the door of

the Gilman House. It seemed as if many bulging, watery, unwinking eyes

looked oddly at me as I claimed my valise in the lobby, and I hoped

that none of these unpleasant creatures would be my fellow-passengers

on the coach.

The bus, rather early, rattled in with three passengers somewhat

before eight, and an evil-looking fellow on the sidewalk muttered a

few indistinguishable words to the driver. I was, it appeared, in very

bad luck. There had been something wrong with the engine, despite the

excellent time made from Newburyport, and the bus could not complete

the journey to Arkham. No, it could not possibly be repaired that

night, nor was there any other way of getting transportation out of

Innsmouth, either to Arkham or elsewhere. Sargent was sorry, but I

would have to stop over at the Gilman. Probably the clerk would make

the price easy for me, but there was nothing else to do. Almost dazed

by this sudden obstacle, and violently dreading the fall of night in

this decaying and half-unlighted town, I left the bus and reentered

the hotel lobby; where the sullen, queer-looking night clerk told me I

could have Room 428 on next the top floor--large, but without running

water--for a dollar.

Despite what I had heard of this hotel in Newburyport, I signed the

register, paid my dollar, let the clerk take my valise, and followed

that sour, solitary attendant up three creaking flights of stairs past

dusty corridors which seemed wholly devoid of life. My room, a dismal

rear one with two windows and bare, cheap furnishings, over-looked

a dingy courtyard otherwise hemmed in by low, deserted brick blocks,

and commanded a view of decrepit westward-stretching roofs with a

marshy countryside beyond. At the end of the corridor was a bathroom--a

discouraging relique with ancient marble bowl, tin tub, faint electric

light, and musty wooden panelling around all the plumbing fixtures.

As twilight deepened I turned on the one feeble electric bulb over the

cheap, iron-framed bed, and tried as best I could to read. I felt it

advisable to keep my mind wholesomely occupied, for it would not do

to brood over the abnormalities of this ancient, blight-shadowed town

while I was still within its borders. The insane yarn I had heard from

the aged drunkard did not promise very pleasant dreams, and I felt I

must keep the image of his wild, watery eyes as far as possible from my

imagination.

Another thing that disturbed me was the absence of a bolt on the door

of my room. One had been there, as marks clearly showed, but there

were signs of recent removal. No doubt it had become out of order,

like so many other things in this decrepit edifice. In my nervousness

I looked around and discovered a bolt on the clothespress which seemed

to be of the same size, judging from the marks, as the one formerly on

the door. To gain a partial relief from the general tension I busied

myself by transferring this hardware to the vacant place with the aid

of a handy three-in-one device including a screw-driver which I kept

on my keyring. The bolt fitted perfectly, and I was somewhat relieved

when I knew that I could shoot it firmly upon retiring. There were

adequate bolts on the two lateral doors to connecting rooms, and these

I proceeded to fasten.

I did not undress, but decided to read till I was sleepy and then

lie down with only my coat, collar, and shoes off. Taking a pocket

flashlight from my valise, I placed it in my trousers, so that I

could read my watch if I woke up later in the dark. Drowsiness,

however, did not come; and when I stopped to analyze my thoughts I

found to my disquiet that I was really unconsciously listening for

something--listening for something which I dreaded but could not name.

At length, feeling a fatigue which had nothing of drowsiness in it, I

bolted the newly outfitted hall door, turned off the light, and threw

myself down on the hard, uneven bed--coat, collar, shoes, and all. In

the darkness every faint noise of the night seemed magnified, and a

flood of doubly unpleasant thoughts swept over me. I was sorry I had

put out the light, yet was too tired to rise and turn it on again.

Then, after a long, dreary interval, and prefaced by a fresh creaking

of stairs and corridor, there came that soft, damnably unmistakable

sound which seemed like a malign fulfilment of all my apprehensions.

Without the least shadow of a doubt, the lock on my hall door was being

tried--cautiously, furtively, tentatively--with a key.

The change in the menace from vague premonition to immediate reality

was a profound shock, and fell upon me with the force of a genuine

blow. It never once occurred to me that the fumbling might be a mere

mistake. Malign purpose was all I could think of, and I kept deathly

quiet, awaiting the would-be intruder's next move.

After a time the cautious rattling ceased, and I heard the room to the

north entered with a pass key. Then the lock of the connecting door to

my room was softly tried. The bolt held, of course, and I heard the

floor creak as the prowler left the room. After a moment there came

another soft rattling, and I knew that the room to the south of me was

being entered. Again a furtive trying of a bolted connecting door,

and again a receding creaking. This time the creaking went along the

hall and down the stairs, so I knew that the prowler had realized the

bolted condition of my doors and was giving up his attempt for a time.

_The one thing to do was to get out of that hotel alive as quickly as I

could, and through some channel other than the front stairs and lobby!_

Rising softly and throwing my flashlight on the switch, I sought

to light the bulb over my bed in order to choose and pocket some

belongings for a swift, valiseless flight. Nothing, however, happened;

and I saw that the power had been cut off. So, filling my pockets

with the flashlight's aid, I put on my hat and tiptoed to the

windows to consider chances of descent. Despite the state's safety

regulations there was no fire escape on this side of the hotel, and

I saw that my windows commanded only a sheer three-story drop to the

cobbled courtyard. On the right and left, however, some ancient brick

business blocks abutted on the hotel; their slant roofs coming up to a

reasonable jumping distance from my fourth-story level. To reach either

of these lines of buildings I would have to be in a room two doors

from my own--in one case on the north and in the other case on the

south--and my mind instantly set to work calculating what chances I had

of making the transfer.

First, I reinforced my own outer door by pushing the bureau against

it--little by little, in order to make a minimum of sound. Then,

gathering from the grocery boy's map that the best route out of town

was southward, I glanced first at the connecting door on the south

side of the room. It was designed to open in my direction, hence I

saw--after drawing the bolt and finding other fastenings in place--it

was not a favorable one for forcing. Accordingly abandoning it as a

route, I cautiously moved the bedstead against it to hamper any attack

which might be made on it later from the next room. The door on the

north was hung to open away from me, and this--though a test proved

it to be locked or bolted from the other side--I knew must be my

route. If I could gain the roofs of the buildings in Paine Street and

descend successfully to the ground level, I might perhaps dart through

the courtyard and the adjacent or opposite buildings to Washington

or Bates--or else emerge in Paine and edge around southward into

Washington. In any case, I would aim to strike Washington somehow and

get quickly out of the Town Square region. My preference would be to

avoid Paine, since the fire station there might be open all night.

I was irresolutely speculating on when I had better attack the

northward door, and on how I could least audibly manage it, when I

noticed that the vague noises underfoot had given place to a fresh and

heavier creaking of the stairs. A wavering flicker of light showed

through my transom, and the boards of the corridor began to groan with

a ponderous load. Muffled sounds of possible vocal origin approached,

and at length a firm knock came at my outer door.

For a moment I simply held my breath and waited. Eternities

seemed to elapse, and the nauseous fishy odor of my environment

seemed to mount suddenly and spectacularly. Then the knocking was

repeated--continuously, and with growing insistence. I knew that the

time for action had come, and forthwith drew the bolt of the northward

connecting door, bracing myself for the task of battering it open. The

knocking waxed louder, and I hoped that its volume would cover the

sound of my efforts. At last beginning my attempt, I lunged again and

again at the thin panelling with my left shoulder, heedless of shock or

pain.

Finally the connecting door gave, but with such a crash that I knew

those outside must have heard. Instantly the outside knocking became

a violent battering, while keys sounded ominously in the hall doors

of the rooms on both sides of me. Rushing through the newly opened

connection, I succeeded in bolting the northerly hall door before the

lock could be turned; but even as I did so I heard the hall door of the

third room--the one from whose window I had hoped to reach the roof

below--being tried with a pass key.

For an instant I felt absolute despair, since my trapping in a chamber

with no window egress seemed complete. Then, with a dazed automatism,

I made for the next connecting door and performed the blind motion of

pushing at it in an effort to get through!

Sheer fortunate chance gave me my reprieve--for the connecting door

before me was not only unlocked but actually ajar. In a second I was

through, and had my right knee and shoulder against a hall door which

was visibly opening inward. My pressure took the opener off guard, for

the thing shut as I pushed, so that I could slip the well-conditioned

bolt as I had done with the other door. As I gained this respite I

heard the battering at the two other doors abate, while a confused

clatter came from the connecting door I had shielded with the bedstead.

Evidently the bulk of my assailants had entered the southerly room and

were massing in a lateral attack. But at the same moment a pass key

sounded in the next door to the north, and I knew that a nearer peril

was at hand.

The northward connecting door was wide open, but there was no time to

think about checking the already turning lock in the hall. All I could

do was to shut and bolt the open connecting door, as well as its mate

on the opposite side--pushing a bedstead against the one and a bureau

against the other, and moving a washstand in front of the hall door.

I must, I saw, trust to such makeshift barriers to shield me till I

could get out the window and on the roof of the Paine Street block. But

even in this acute moment my chief horror was something apart from the

immediate weakness of my defenses. I was shuddering because not one

of my pursuers, despite some hideous pantings, gruntings, and subdued

barkings at odd intervals, was uttering an intelligible vocal sound!

As I moved the furniture and rushed toward the windows I heard a

frightful scurrying along the corridor toward the room north of me, and

perceived that the southward battering had ceased. Plainly, most of my

opponents were about to concentrate against the feeble connecting door

which they knew must open directly on me. Outside, the moon played on

the ridge-pole of the block below, and I saw that the jump would be

desperately hazardous because of the steep surface on which I must land.

The clatter at the northerly connecting door was now terrific, and

I saw that the weak panelling was beginning to splinter. Obviously,

the besiegers had brought some ponderous object into play as a

battering-ram. The bedstead, however, still held firm; so that I had at

least a faint chance of making good my escape. As I opened the window

I noticed that it was flanked by heavy velour draperies suspended from

a pole by brass rings, and also that there was a large projecting

catch for the shutters on the exterior. Seeing a possible means of

avoiding the dangerous jump, I yanked at the hangings and brought

them down, pole and all; then quickly hooking two of the rings in the

shutter catch and flinging the drapery outside. The heavy folds reached

fully to the abutting roof, and I saw that the rings and catch would

be likely to bear my weight. So, climbing out of the window and down

the improvised rope ladder, I left behind me forever the morbid and

horror-infested fabric of the Gilman House.

I landed safely on the loose slates of the steep roof, and succeeded in

gaining the gaping black skylight without a slip. The place inside was

ghoulish-looking, but I was past minding such impressions and made at

once for the staircase revealed by my flashlight--after a hasty glance

at my watch, which showed the hour to be 2 A.M. The steps creaked, but

seemed tolerably sound; and I raced down past a barnlike second story

to the ground floor. The desolation was complete, and only echoes

answered my footfalls.

The hallway inside was black, and when I reached the opposite end I saw

that the street door was wedged immovably shut. Resolved to try another

building, I groped my way toward the courtyard, but stopped short when

close to the doorway.

For out of an opened door in the Gilman House a large crowd of doubtful

shapes was pouring--lanterns bobbing in the darkness, and horrible

croaking voices exchanging low cries in what was certainly not English.

Their features were indistinguishable, but their crouching, shambling

gait was abominably repellent. And worst of all, I perceived that one

figure was strangely robed, and unmistakably surmounted by a tall tiara

of a design altogether too familiar. Again groping toward the street,

I opened a door off the hall and came upon an empty room with closely

shuttered but sashless windows. Fumbling in the rays of my flashlight,

I found I could open the shutters; and in another moment had climbed

outside and was carefully closing the aperture in its original manner.

I walked rapidly, softly, and close to the ruined houses. At Bates

Street I drew into a yawning vestibule while two shambling figures

crossed in front of me, but was soon on my way again and approaching

the open space where Eliot Street obliquely crosses Washington at the

intersection of South. Though I had never seen this space, it had

looked dangerous to me on the grocery youth's map; since the moonlight

would have free play there. There was no use trying to evade it, for

any alternative course would involve detours of possibly disastrous

visibility and delaying effect. The only thing to do was to cross it

boldly and openly; imitating the typical shamble of the Innsmouth folk

as best I could, and trusting that no one--or at least no pursuer of

mine--would be there.

Just how fully the pursuit was organized--and indeed, just what its

purpose might be--I could form no idea. There seemed to be unusual

activity in the town, but I judged that the news of my escape from

the Gilman had not yet spread. The open space was, as I had expected,

strongly moonlit. But my progress was unimpeded, and no fresh sound

arose to hint that I had been spied. Glancing about me, I involuntarily

let my pace slacken for a second to take in the sight of the sea,

gorgeous in the burning moonlight at the street's end. Far out beyond

the breakwater was the dim, dark line of Devil Reef.

Then, without warning, I saw the intermittent flashes of light on the

distant reef. My muscles tightened for panic flight, held in only by a

certain unconscious caution and half-hypnotic fascination. And to make

matters worse, there now flashed forth from the lofty cupola of the

Gilman House, which loomed up to the northeast behind me, a series of

analogous though differently spaced gleams which could be nothing less

than an answering signal.

I now bent to the left around the ruinous green; still gazing toward

the ocean as it blazed in the spectral summer moonlight, and watching

the cryptical flashing of those nameless, unexplainable beacons.

It was then that the most horrible impression of all was borne in upon

me--the impression which destroyed my last vestige of self-control and

sent me running frantically southward past the yawning black doorways

and fishily staring windows of that deserted nightmare street. For at

a closer glance I saw that the moonlit waters between the reef and

the shore were far from empty. They were alive with a teeming horde of

shapes swimming inward toward the town!

My frantic running ceased before I had covered a block, for at my left

I began to hear something like the hue and cry of organized pursuit.

There were footsteps and guttural sounds, and a rattling motor wheezed

south along Federal Street. In a second all my plans were utterly

changed--for if the southward highway were blocked ahead of me, I must

clearly find another egress from Innsmouth. I paused and drew into a

gaping doorway, reflecting how lucky I was to have left the moonlit

open space before these pursuers came down the parallel street.

Then I thought of the abandoned railway to Rowley, whose solid line of

ballasted, weed-grown earth still stretched off to the northwest from

the crumbling station on the edge of the river gorge. There was just a

chance that the townsfolk would not think of that!

Drawing inside the hall of my deserted shelter, I once more consulted

the grocery boy's map with the aid of the flashlight. The immediate

problem was how to reach the ancient railway; and I now saw that the

safest course was ahead to Babson Street, then west to Lafayette--there

edging around but not crossing an open space homologous to the one

I had traversed--and subsequently back northward and westward in

zigzagging line through Lafayette, Bates, Adams, and Banks Streets--the

latter skirting the river gorge--to the abandoned and dilapidated

station I had seen from my window. My reason for going ahead to Babson

was that I wished neither to re-cross the earlier open space nor to

begin my westward course along a cross street as broad as South. I

crossed the street to the right-hand side in order to edge around into

Babson as inconspicuously as possible.

In Babson Street I clung as closely as possible to the sagging,

uneven buildings; twice pausing in a doorway as the noises behind me

momentarily increased. The open space ahead shone wide and desolate

under the moon, but my route would not force me to cross it. During

my second pause I began to detect a fresh distribution of the vague

sounds; and upon looking cautiously out from cover beheld a motor car

darting across the open space, bound outward along Eliot Street.

As I watched--choked by a sudden rise in the fishy odor after a short

abatement--I saw a band of uncouth, crouching shapes loping and

shambling in the same direction; and knew that this must be the party

guarding the Ipswich road, since that highway forms an extension of

Eliot Street. Two of the figures I glimpsed were in voluminous robes,

and one wore a peaked diadem which glistened whitely in the moonlight.

The gait of this figure was so odd that it sent a chill through me--for

it seemed to me the creature was almost _hopping_.

When the last of the band was out of sight I resumed my progress;

darting around the corner into Lafayette Street, and crossing Eliot

very hurriedly lest stragglers of the party be still advancing along

that thoroughfare. I did hear some croaking and clattering sounds

far off toward Town Square, but accomplished the passage without

disaster. My greatest dread was in re-crossing broad and moonlit South

Street--with its seaward view--and I had to nerve myself for the

ordeal. Someone might easily be looking, and possible Eliot Street

stragglers could not fail to glimpse me from either of two points. At

the last moment I decided I had better slacken my trot and make the

crossing as before in the shambling gait of an average Innsmouth native.

I had not quite crossed the street when I heard a muttering band

advancing along Washington from the north. As they reached the broad

open space where I had had my first disquieting glimpse of the moonlit

water I could see them plainly only a block away--and was horrified by

the bestial abnormality of their faces and the dog-like sub-humanness

of their crouching gait. One man moved in a positively simian way, with

long arms frequently touching the ground; while another figure--robed

and tiaraed--seemed to progress in an almost hopping fashion. I judged

this party to be the one I had seen in the Gilman's courtyard--the one,

therefore, most closely on my trail. As some of the figures turned

to look in my direction I was transfixed with fright, yet managed to

preserve the casual, shambling gait I had assumed. To this day I do

not know whether they saw me or not. If they did, my stratagem must

have deceived them, for they passed on across the moonlit space without

varying their course--meanwhile croaking and jabbering in some hateful

guttural patois I could not identify.

Once more in shadow, I resumed my former dog-trot past the leaning and

decrepit houses that stared blankly into the night. Having crossed to

the western sidewalk I rounded the nearest corner into Bates Street,

where I kept close to the buildings on the southern side. At last I saw

the ancient arcaded station--or what was left of it--and made directly

for the tracks that started from its farther end.

The rails were rusty but mainly intact, and not more than half the

ties had rotted away. Walking or running on such a surface was very

difficult; but I did my best, and on the whole made very fair time. For

some distance the line kept on along the gorge's brink, but at length I

reached the long covered bridge where it crossed the chasm at a dizzy

height. The condition of this bridge would determine my next step. If

humanly possible, I would use it; if not, I would have to risk more

street wandering and take the nearest intact highway bridge.

The vast, barnlike length of the old bridge gleamed spectrally in the

moonlight and I saw that the ties were safe for at least a few feet

within. Entering, I began to use my flashlight, and was almost knocked

down by the cloud of bats that flapped past me. About halfway across

there was a perilous gap in the ties which I feared for a moment would

halt me; but in the end I risked a desperate jump which fortunately

succeeded.

I was glad to see the moonlight again when I emerged from that macabre

tunnel. The old tracks crossed River Street at a grade, and at once

veered off into a region increasingly rural and with less and less of

Innsmouth's abhorrent fishy odor. Here the dense growth of weeds and

briers hindered me and cruelly tore my clothes, but I was none the less

glad that they were there to give me concealment in case of peril. I

knew that much of my route must be visible from the Rowley road.

The marshy region began very shortly, with the single track on a low,

grassy embankment. Then came a sort of island of higher ground, where

the line passed through a shallow open cut choked with bushes and

brambles. I was very glad of this partial shelter, since at this point

the Rowley road was uncomfortably near according to my window view.

Just before entering the cut I glanced behind me, but saw no pursuer.

The ancient spires and roofs of decaying Innsmouth gleamed lovely and

ethereal in the magic yellow moonlight, and I thought of how they must

have looked in the old days before the shadow fell. Then, as my gaze

circled inland from the town, something less tranquil arrested my

notice and held me immobile for a second.

What I saw--or fancied I saw--was a disturbing suggestion of undulant

motion far to the south; a suggestion which made me conclude that

a very large horde must be pouring out of the city along the level

Ipswich road. The distance was great, and I could distinguish nothing

in detail; but I did not at all like the look of that moving column.

All sorts of unpleasant conjectures crossed my mind. I thought of those

very extreme Innsmouth types said to be hidden in crumbling, centuried

warrens near the waterfront. I thought, too, of those nameless swimmers

I had seen. Counting the parties so far glimpsed, as well as those

presumably covering other roads, the number of my pursuers must be

strangely large for a town as depopulated as Innsmouth.

Who were they? Why were they here? And if such a column of them was

scouring the Ipswich road, would the patrols on the other roads be

likewise augmented?

I had entered the brush-grown cut and was struggling along at a very

slow pace when that damnable fishy odor again waxed dominant. There

were sounds, too--a kind of wholesale, colossal flopping or pattering

which somehow called up images of the most detestable sort.

And then both stench and sounds grew stronger, so that I paused

shivering and grateful for the cut's protection. It was here, I

recalled, that the Rowley road drew so close to the old railway before

crossing westward and diverging. Something was coming along that road,

and I must lie low till its passage and vanishment in the distance.

Crouched in the bushes of that sandy cleft I felt reasonably safe, even

though I knew the searchers would have to cross the track in front of

me not much more than a hundred yards away. I would be able to see

them, but they could not, except by a malign miracle, see me.

All at once I began dreading to look at them as they passed. I saw the

close moonlit space where they would surge by, and had curious thoughts

about the irredeemable pollution of that space. They would perhaps

be the worst of all Innsmouth types--something one would not care to

remember.

The stench waxed overpowering, and the noises swelled to a bestial

babel of croaking, baying, and barking, without the least suggestion

of human speech. Were these indeed the voices of my pursuers? That

flopping or pattering was monstrous--I could not look upon the

degenerate creatures responsible for it. I would keep my eyes shut till

the sounds receded toward the west. The horde was very close now--the

air foul with their hoarse snarlings, and the ground almost shaking

with their alien-rhythmed footfalls. My breath nearly ceased to come,

and I put every ounce of will-power into the task of holding my eyelids

down.

I am not even yet willing to say whether what followed was a hideous

actuality or only a nightmare hallucination. The later action of the

government, after my frantic appeals, would tend to confirm it as a

monstrous truth; but could not an hallucination have been repeated

under the quasi-hypnotic spell of that ancient, haunted, and shadowed

town?

But I must try to tell what I thought I saw that night under the

mocking yellow moon--saw surging and hopping down the Rowley road in

plain sight in front of me as I crouched among the wild brambles of

that desolate railway cut. Of course my resolution to keep my eyes shut

had failed. It was foredoomed to failure--for who could crouch blindly

while a legion of croaking, baying entities of unknown source flopped

noisomely past, scarcely more than a hundred yards away?

For I knew that a long section of them must be plainly in sight where

the sides of the cut flattened out and the road crossed the track--and

I could no longer keep myself from sampling whatever horror that

leering yellow moon might have to show.

It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of

this earth, of every vestige of mental peace and confidence in the

integrity of nature and of the human mind. Can it be possible that this

planet has actually spawned such things; that human eyes have truly

seen, as objective flesh, what man has hitherto known only in febrile

phantasy and tenuous legend?

And yet I saw them in a limitless stream--flopping, hopping, croaking,

bleating--surging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a

grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them

had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal ... and some were

strangely robed ... and one, who led the way, was clad in a ghoulishly

humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man's felt hat

perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head....

I think their predominant color was a grayish-green, though they had

white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of

their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid,

while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes

that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills,

and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on

two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no

more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for

articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their

staring faces lacked.

But for all of their monstrousness they were not unfamiliar to me. I

knew too well what they must be--for was not the memory of that evil

tiara at Newburyport still fresh? They were the blasphemous fish-frogs

of the nameless design--living and horrible--and as I saw them I knew

also of what that humped, tiaraed priest in the black church basement

had so fearsomely reminded me. Their number was past guessing. It

seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them--and certainly my

momentary glimpse could have shown only the least fraction. In another

instant everything was blotted out by a merciful fit of fainting; the

first I had ever had.

V

It was a gentle daylight rain that awaked me from my stupor in the

brush-grown railway cut, and when I staggered out to the roadway ahead

I saw no trace of any prints in the fresh mud. Innsmouth's ruined roofs

and toppling steeples loomed up grayly toward the southeast, but not a

living creature did I spy in all the desolate salt marshes around. My

watch was still going, and told me that the hour was past noon.

The reality of what I had been through was highly uncertain in my mind,

but I felt that something hideous lay in the background. I must get

away from evil-shadowed Innsmouth--and accordingly I began to test

my cramped, wearied powers of locomotion. Despite weakness, hunger,

horror, and bewilderment I found myself after a time able to walk; so

started slowly along the muddy road to Rowley. Before evening I was

in the village, getting a meal and providing myself with presentable

clothes. I caught the night train to Arkham, and the next day talked

long and earnestly with government officials there; a process I later

repeated in Boston. With the main result of these colloquies the public

is now familiar--and I wish, for normality's sake, there were nothing

more to tell. Perhaps it is madness that is overtaking me--yet perhaps

a greater horror--or a greater marvel--is reaching out.

I dared not look for that piece of strange jewelry said to be in the

Miskatonic University Museum. I did, however, improve my stay in Arkham

by collecting some genealogical notes I had long wished to possess;

very rough and hasty data, it is true, but capable of good use later

on when I might have time to collate and codify them. The curator of

the historical society there--Mr. E. Lapham Peabody--was very courteous

about assisting me, and expressed unusual interest when I told him I

was a grandson of Eliza Orne of Arkham, who was born in 1867 and had

married James Williamson of Ohio at the age of seventeen.

It seemed that a maternal uncle of mine had been there many years

before on a quest much like my own; and that my grandmother's family

was a topic of some local curiosity. There had, Mr. Peabody said, been

considerable discussion about the marriage of her father, Benjamin

Orne, just after the Civil War; since the ancestry of the bride was

peculiarly puzzling. That bride was understood to have been an orphaned

Marsh of New Hampshire--a cousin of the Essex County Marshes--but her

education had been in France and she knew very little of her family. A

guardian had deposited funds in a Boston bank to maintain her and her

French governess; but that guardian's name was unfamiliar to Arkham

people, and in time he dropped out of sight, so that the governess

assumed his role by court appointment. The French-woman--now long

dead--was very taciturn, and there were those who said she could have

told more than she did.

But the most baffling thing was the inability of anyone to place

the recorded parents of the young woman--Enoch and Lydia (Meserve)

Marsh--among the known families of New Hampshire. Possibly,

many suggested, she was the natural daughter of some Marsh of

prominence--she certainly had the true Marsh eyes. Most of the

puzzling was done after her early death, which took place at the birth

of my grandmother--her only child. Having formed some disagreeable

impressions connected with the name of Marsh, I did not welcome the

news that it belonged on my own ancestral tree; nor was I pleased

by Mr. Peabody's suggestion that I had the true Marsh eyes myself.

However, I was grateful for data which I knew would prove valuable;

and took copious notes and lists of book references regarding the

well-documented Orne family.

I went directly home to Toledo from Boston, and later spent a month

at Maumee recuperating from my ordeal. In September I entered Oberlin

for my final year, and from then till the next June was busy with

studies and other wholesome activities--reminded of the bygone terror

only by occasional official visits from government men in connection

with the campaign which my pleas and evidence had started. Around the

middle of July--just a year after the Innsmouth experience--I spent a

week with my late mother's family in Cleveland; checking some of my

new genealogical data with the various notes, traditions, and bits

of heirloom material in existence there, and seeing what kind of a

connected chart I could construct.

I did not exactly relish this task, for the atmosphere of the

Williamson home had always depressed me. There was a strain of

morbidity there, and my mother had never encouraged my visiting her

parents as a child, although she always welcomed her father when

he came to Toledo. My Arkham-born grandmother had seemed strange

and almost terrifying to me, and I do not think I grieved when she

disappeared. I was eight years old then, and it was said that she had

wandered off in grief after the suicide of my uncle Douglas, her eldest

son. He had shot himself after a trip to New England--the same trip,

no doubt, which had caused him to be recalled at the Arkham Historical

Society.

This uncle had resembled her, and I had never liked him either.

Something about the staring, unwinking expression of both of them

had given me a vague, unaccountable uneasiness. My mother and uncle

Walter had not looked like that. They were like their father, though

poor little cousin Lawrence--Walter's son--had been an almost perfect

duplicate of his grandmother before his condition took him to the

permanent seclusion of a sanitarium at Canton. I had not seen him in

four years, but my uncle once implied that his state, both mental and

physical, was very bad. This worry had probably been a major cause of

his mother's death two years before.

My grandfather and his widowered son Walter now comprised the Cleveland

household, but the memory of older times hung thickly over it. I still

disliked the place, and tried to get my researches done as quickly as

possible. Williamson records and traditions were supplied in abundance

by my grandfather; though for Orne material I had to depend on my uncle

Walter, who put at my disposal the contents of all his files, including

notes, letters, cuttings, heirlooms, photographs, and miniatures.

It was in going over the letters and pictures on the Orne side that I

began to acquire a kind of terror of my own ancestry. As I have said,

my grandmother and uncle Douglas had always disturbed me. Now, years

after their passing, I gazed at their pictured faces with a measurably

heightened feeling of repulsion and alienation. I could not at first

understand the change, but gradually a horrible sort of _comparison_

began to obtrude itself on my unconscious mind despite the steady

refusal of my consciousness to admit even the least suspicion of it.

It was clear that the typical expression of these faces now suggested

something it had not suggested before--something which would bring

stark panic if too openly thought of.

But the worst shock came when my uncle showed me the Orne jewelry in

a downtown safe-deposit vault. Some of the items were delicate and

inspiring enough, but there was one box of strange old pieces descended

from my mysterious great-grandmother which my uncle was almost

reluctant to produce. They were, he said, of very grotesque and almost

repulsive design.

As my uncle began slowly and grudgingly to unwrap the things, he urged

me not to be shocked by the strangeness and frequent hideousness of

the designs. There were two armlets, a tiara, and a kind of pectoral;

the latter having in high relief certain figures of almost unbearable

extravagance.

He seemed to expect some demonstration when the first piece--the

tiara--became visible, but I doubt if he expected quite what actually

happened. I did not expect it, either, for I thought I was thoroughly

forewarned regarding what the jewelry would turn out to be. What I did

was to faint silently away just as I had done in that brier-choked

railway cut a year before.

From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and

apprehension, nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much

madness. My great-grandmother had been a Marsh of unknown source whose

husband lived in Arkham--and did not old Zadok say that the daughter of

Obed Marsh by a monstrous mother was married to an Arkham man through

a trick? What was it the ancient toper had muttered about the likeness

of my eyes to Captain Obed's? In Arkham, too, the curator had told me I

had the true Marsh eyes. Was Obed Marsh my own great-great-grandfather?

Who--or _what_--then, was my great-great-grandmother? But perhaps

this was all madness. Those whitish-gold ornaments might easily

have been bought from some Innsmouth sailor by the father of my

great-grandmother, whoever he was. And that look in the staring-eyed

faces of my grandmother and self-slain uncle might be sheer fancy,

bolstered up by the Innsmouth shadow which had so darkly colored my

imagination. But why had my uncle killed himself after an ancestral

quest in New England?

For more than two years I fought off these reflections with partial

success. My father secured me a place in an insurance office, and

I buried myself in routine as deeply as possible. In the winter of

1930-31, however, the dreams began. They were very sparse and insidious

at first, but increased in frequency and vividness as the weeks went

by. Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander

through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy cyclopean walls

and grotesque fishes as my companions. Then the _other shapes_ began to

appear, filling me with nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during

the dreams they did not horrify me at all--I was one with them; wearing

their unhuman trappings, treading their aqueous ways, and praying

monstrously at their evil sea-bottom temples.

There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember

each morning would be enough to stamp me as a madman or a genius if

ever I dared write it down. Some frightful influence, I felt, was

seeking gradually to drag me out of the sane world of wholesome life

into unnameable abysses of blackness and alienage; and the process

told heavily on me. My health and appearance grew steadily worse, till

finally I was forced to give up my position and adopt the static,

secluded life of an invalid. Some odd nervous affliction had me in its

grip, and I found myself at times almost unable to shut my eyes.

It was then that I began to study the mirror with mounting alarm. The

slow ravages of disease are not pleasant to watch, but in my case there

was something subtler and more puzzling in the background. My father

seemed to notice it, too, for he began looking at me curiously and

almost affrightedly. What was taking place in me? Could it be that I

was coming to resemble my grandmother and uncle Douglas?

One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother

under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many

terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque

brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may

have been sardonic. She had changed--as those who take to the water

change--and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a

spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose

wonders--destined for him as well--he had spurned with a smoking

pistol. This was to be my realm, too--I could not escape it. I would

never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man

ever walked the earth.

[Illustration: "One night, in a frightful dream, I met two Ancient Ones

under the sea in a phosphorescent, many terraced palace surrounded by

gardens of strange, leprous corals."]

I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand

years Pth'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone

back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y'ha-nthlei was not destroyed when

the upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not

destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the

palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them.

For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they

would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a

city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and

had brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once

more. For bringing the upper-earth men's death I must do a penance,

but that would not be heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a

_shoggoth_ for the first time, and the sight set me awake in a frenzy

of screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I had acquired

_the Innsmouth look_.

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an

automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The

tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward

the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange

things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have

waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium

as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of

splendors await me below, and I shall seek them soon. _Iā-R'lyeh!

Cthulhu fhtagn! Iā! Iā!_ No, I shall not shoot myself--I cannot

be made to shoot myself!

I shall plan my cousin's escape from that Canton madhouse, and together

we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that

brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to

cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep

Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.