A Lonely and Curious Country (21 page)

              "What?"

              "Ah. Ah. Nothing. Ah. Let's get out of here." He slides off his barstool, staggers, gets his feet under him. "I need some air."

              "Sure." I get an arm around his shoulders, help him to the door. Nobody marks our passage. Nobody sees us go.

              Outside, the stars are clear and bright, even here in the city. McGovern turns his face up to the wind, but his eyes take in the stars, and I can see his fright deepen. "God, Guilford. It's so huge, it's so empty. We're not looking up, Guilford. We're not. We're looking
out
."

              A moment of deja vu.

              "They come from a place where things aren't the way they are here. I mean...physics...geometry. It's all wrong. It's all...haunted." McGovern staggers into the alleyway. He leans against the wall. He is sweating freely now, big droplets rolling down his pale face. His eyes are huge. "I...I...they came for me." He shakes his head like a dog, as if to clear it. "One night...I was alone...and they came to me. Offered me everything. Power. And I knew...I knew if I refused, something terrible would happen. Something terrible." Tears are leaking out of his eyes now, mingling with the sweat. "Oh god, something terrible. I'm so scared." He puts his fingers to his mouth, pulls at the lips, scrubs his hands over his face. "It's all wrong. It's all gone wrong. They...I...I didn't know they could do that to people." He looks up at me with mad eyes. "Say, boy, do you know
this
?" He makes a sign with two fingers in the air. A sign I've known since my boyhood.

              "No."

              "And I know the Voorish sign, too, and the Sign of Opening, and the Sign of He Who Must Not Be Named. They took me down the thousand steps to the pit, when I'd stopped screaming, and they showed me..." He sobs pushes his face into a grotesque mask with his hands. "I...I saw a shoggoth. It changed shape! Oh, god, nothing's ever going to be right again. Oh mother, I'm so scared." He looks up. "I don't feel good."

              "No," I say. "You don't." I am not surprised. I am not surprised by any of it. I am not surprised because while he was in the bathroom, I poured about a third of the bottle of McGovern's 'miracle drug' into his beer.

              "Oh mama. Mama, mama, mama, mama." McGovern suddenly throws back his head and howls, cords standing out on his neck. He reaches up with both hands and rakes them down his face, drawing blood. He catches the edge of one eyeball with a nail, and that begins to bleed as well. "Aaaah! Aaah-aah-a!
Aaayunglui bcoma hatur ngglr! Wza-yei! Wza-yei yoggog rrthna! Aaah! Aaaaaaaaah!"

              Every muscle in his body has gone taut. His face is frozen, mouth open, bleeding. He has bitten through the tip of his tongue, and it dangles on the end of a string of gristle. He pitches forward, his whole trunk leaning like a falling tree, and slams his face up against the wall. He begins vigorously scrubbing it back and forth over the bricks, as if trying to wipe away his features, still screaming in Aklo, hands beating a tattoo on his own thighs.

              I step forward, reach into his pants pocket, and withdraw his keys. The movement, the touch, galvanizes him. He spins around to face me, and behind the bloody, ruined features I see two mad eyes, filled with more terror than I have ever seen on any creature. He shakes his head back and forth, blood flying, then turns and pelts away down the alley, venting terrible gobbling screams into the night air.

              I slide into his car, start the engine, and drive out of Arkham.

***

              I park the car well outside of town and lead my three companions in on foot. There are no lighted houses in this town, no streetlamps, no automobiles. It is utterly dark, and quiet enough to hear the breaking of waves on the unseen beach. The pale moon, rising over the horizon, casts a wan glow on cracked streets and tottering gambrel-roofed houses, their eyes empty.

              "I know a house on the edge of town we can use," I say. "It looks down the hill towards the town square. I'll venture out from there and find the well. You can cover me from inside."

              "How far?" Pennington hisses.

              "A few blocks. Stay close."

              We pass an old grocery store, its door hanging open over a splintery front porch. Only I glimpse the pale, luminous eyes that look out from that darkness for a moment as we pass. I do not turn my head. I continue on.

              Two blocks later, I turn down a narrow, tangled lane that runs along the hill's edge before the town proper. Its far windows look down on the decaying sprawl of Innsmouth, as far as the bay and the black ocean beyond. I turn around and regard my three companions. I have worked with Pennington and Robertson for two years, Harkaway slightly less. Robertson and Harkaway are married. Robertson has a daughter. Harkaway is hoping for a son in the fall. Pennington has collectors-edition copies of Dickens, Poe, Twain. Sometimes, on his off days, he will go for long rambles in the town, or sit in the park and read Yeats.

              My friends. My daylight companions.

              "I'm going in," I say. "Pennington, you and Robertson follow close, cover me. Harkaway, if you could go around the back, check for movement, anything suspicious, then follow us inside. All right?"

              They nod. They are frightened. The town is so silent. The night is so complete.

              "All right. Go."

              I open the door and step inside. Once through the door, Pennington and Robertson switch on their flashlights. The light picks out a bare, empty shell of a house, with a set of broken stairs leading up to a second-floor mezzanine. A closed door stands to our direct left, and a short hallway leads to the kitchen, and a back door.

              Pennington taps my shoulder, points toward the rear door, and goes down the hall to check it.

              "I'll check the bedroom," Robertson whispers, and opens the door. He steps inside, and I hear a brief flailing tattoo of motion as he tries to backpedal or catch himself. Then a fall, a strangled cry, and a thick splash somewhere far below. Then a second splash. Then silence.

              I shut the door.

              Pennington comes running back into the room. "What was that?"

              "I don't know," I say.

              "Where's Robertson?"

              I nod at the bedroom door.

              Pennington looks at it, looks back at me, and I see something cross his face. Something I've been expecting for years. Pennington is thinking very hard. "Where's Robertson?" he asks again.

              "In there." I nod at the door.

              As if on cue, there is another splash from somewhere beyond and below.

              Pennington draws his pistol. He throws another sidelong glance at me, and then steps forward and opens the door.

              My sister is there, in all her glory. She has changed so much since the days of my childhood, but I still know her. I would know her anywhere. We have shared dreams of sunless seas, and deep bells echoing on the north wind. She looks down at Pennington with her beautiful, pearlescent eyes. Her body gleams in the torchlight.

              "Jesus Christ." Pennington takes a step back, raises the pistol.

              A scream from outside. Pennington jerks his head in that direction.

              I take the pistol out of his hand.

              He looks at me, eyes wide and staring, showing whites all around. Pennington is intelligent. He knows what is happening to him.

              "Robertson is dead," I say. "Harkway is dead."

              "You did this."

              "No," I say. "I am only the hand. The instrument through which the will of Mother Hydra and Father Dagon flows. This is my
dho-nha
. This is what I am for."

              The front door opens, and terrible shapes are on the other side. I can hear the Children padding down the hall from the back door. They have crept up out of the deeps to enact my grandmother's will. Our great Father's will. Our will.

              Pennington shakes his head. "You don't have to do this, Paul. You don't have to..."

              "I always did. I always have. I always will. Past, present, future; all are one in Yog-Sothoth."

              The smells of fish and sea-water fill the room. The shapes of the children, my brothers and sisters, my kin, fill the doorway, the hallway, are crawling from the hole in the floor to join my sister. Pennington looks around at them; at their great, naked, ruddy bulk. He looks at me. "Not like this, Guilford. Please. Let me die a man's death. Not like this."

              "I always respected you," I say.

              "Please, Guilford."

              I raise the pistol.

              My hand does not shake. My aim is true.

              I can grant him this favor.

              I do.

              I return to Kingsport in the early morning. I climb the steps to Boone's office.

              The door opens. In I run.

              I put a bullet through the upraised newspaper and into Boone's gut, then turn away before the paper drops and I have to see the look on his face. I walk out the door, down the steps, back to the car.

              I drive to the coast, to a disused pier that juts out past the last of the hills, out into the wide Atlantic sea. The mist is still heavy on the shoreline. I step out of the car. I take off my coat, my shirt, my trousers, my shoes. I step out of my my underwear and, naked, I leap into the sea. The water hits my body like a blessing, like a benediction, washing away all the blood and dirt and horror. I swim. I swim south along the coast, down from Kingsport to Innsmouth. To quiet Innsmouth, where the white gulls tarry around a spire of rock that juts up from the bay. I climb up on that rock and watch the sun rise, and shake and shiver and cry and laugh. I wonder if I spilled some of the elixir on myself after all. I feel ill.

              I feel haunted.

              I sit on that rock and watch the sun come up, and dream of the moment when my task, my
dho-nha
, is at an end. When I can change, and go down to join my sister, my brethren. When I can cast away fear and guilt like a suit of clothes, and go down into the arms of the sunless sea. Then will I go down to join my sister in the deep places of the world. Then will I go down to where the deep bells toll, and there, amidst our undying ancestors, we will swim together through the halls of our fathers, in endless, timeless bliss.

              Forever.

***

              The man's suit is rumpled from his drive, but every hair on his head is Brylcreemed in place. He offers out a warm, dry, uncallused hand.

              I shake it.

              "Isaiah Snow," the man says. "Rad Div, New York. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Guilford."

              "Thank you for coming on such short notice," I say.

              "We felt the situation demanded it. And may I add that I am terribly sorry for your loss. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for you at this time."

              "Thank you." I look away. "I was on assignment in Innsmouth. I came back to find..." I wave my hand vaguely. "My team gone. My supervisor dead. And you say Neiman McGovern is..."

              "Confined in a private wing of the university at the moment," Snow says. His calm demeanor falters. "I visited him this morning. He is...very unwell. Very unwell."

              "Do you think he could possibly have...?"

              Snow sighs. "Mr. McGovern is not at all in his right mind. I'm led to understand that he was working very hard, researching matters the university is not comfortable disclosing. His car was found here in Kingsport. I'm afraid that, pending further information, we will have to assume that he is involved with the disappearance of your team, and the murder of Mr. Boone. Obviously, we would appreciate any help that you can give us in this matter."

              "Of course," I say. "Consider me at your disposal."

              "Thank you. You're local to this town, Mr. Guilford? Familiar with it?"

              "I was born here."

              Snow nods. "I've been led to understand that this area is prey to a lot of peculiar beliefs. Old mysticism, that kind of thing."

              "It's true, I'm afraid." I walk to the window. I look out over the ancient town. "This is a legend-haunted part of the world, Mr. Snow. It's old, and it's full of superstitions. But by light, and rationality, and science, we'll drive them all out." I turn to face him. "One by one, we'll drive them all out."