The Innswich Horror (19 page)

The awkward-jointed, shuddering thing had
somehow been staked to a tree via one of Onderdonk’s iron stoking
rods rammed into one of its orbicular eyeballs. As the impossible
vocal protest wound down, it convulsed with an added sound akin to
wet leather flapping.

A dark blur, then, and rapid footfalls,
snagged my gaze, as I plainly saw a figure gliding away into the
woods.

Who had saved me?
Mary?
I wondered, but,
no, if so she’d have said something, and no woman in her stage of
pregnancy could’ve moved so nimbly. Or perhaps a townsperson in
conscientious objection to the collective’s ghastly initiatives.
Or…

Could it have been young Walter?

The madness of the previous minutes released
my senses. I was still on a mission: to save Mary and her son, to
see to their escape from this macabre, clandestine netherocracy.
Distant thrashing in the woods told me my savior was heading west,
across the road…

Towards Mary’s house.

Recovered now, I reclaimed my pistol.

“Kill her,” Zalen’s head said. “Then kill
yourself.”

With more than a little loathe I picked the
head up by its greasy hair and—

“Don’t you dare, Morley!”

—dropped it into the smoker which was
slow-cooking Mr. Onderdonk. Reclosing the lid, I could still hear
its muffled remonstrance. “Ain’t nothing but a rich pud…”

“But a rich pud still in possession of his
head,” I replied. Then I ran off—after the shape that had spared my
life.

It was chiefly blind faith that guided me
through the night-shrouded thicket and labyrinth of gnarled trees.
Fireflies constellated the darkness. Eventually, I sighed in relief
to see the squat, dark form of Mary’s overgrown abode, the faintest
candles glowing in the tiny windows. And—

There he is!

It was before one such window that I spied
the obscure figure, the person who’d saved my life. But before I
could take even a single step forward, the figure whirled, and it
whisked away into the trees deft as a wood-sprite. My first impulse
was to call out but then I remembered the necessity of
inconspicuousness. Who knew how many other fullbloods lurked near?
Nor did I run after the figure, for that would result in complete
diversion to my goal. Instead, I peeked into the wanly lit pane
that the figure had just quitted, and there I saw, on a pitiful
sack filled with leaves and dead grass, Mary’s young son Walter,
asleep. It was the candle-stub and holder sitting on the crude dirt
floor that gave the room its diminutive light.

I had no time for contemplations; softer and
more erratic footfalls alarmed me from the southward side of the
house. Pistol at the ready, I covered myself behind a tree, holding
my breath…

The figure that stepped into a sprawl of
moonlight was Mary.

She trudged forward with difficulty,
obviously returning from the forced bacchanal at the lake. Wearied,
then, she gasped, then buckled over and was sick. I rushed to her
as she retched in misery.

“Oh, Foster!” she sobbed. “I prayed that
you’d still be alive—”

“Your prayers have been
answered,” I said and took her up in an embrace.
But we’ll need more than prayer, I’m
afraid,
came an amending thought. She wore
the esoteric robe of earlier, with the confounding configurations
embroidered within its fringes. Her warm, heavy body trembled in my
arms. “I’ve come for you, and your son—”

She bolted from the comfort my embrace had
given her. “We must get inside, and we must keep out voices very
low.”

“Mary, I—”

“Shhh! You
don’t
understand!” and
she took my hand and pulled me into the squalor-embalmed house
through a narrow, uneven door. Total dark and a dense mustiness
suddenly cocooned me; it was only her warm hand I had as a
guide.

She piloted me to another low-ceilinged room
lit by one candle alone, make-shift furniture in evidence. I helped
her sit on a milk crate-turned-chair, and when she finally caught
her breath, she looked up at me with the saddest eyes. “Oh, Foster,
I’m so sorry. You’ve jeopardized your life by coming here.”

“I’ve come here, Mary,” I asserted, “for you
and your son.”

Her flushed face fell into her hands.
“There’s so much you don’t know.”

“Calm yourself. I know everything now.”

Astonishment forced her gaze upward.
“You’ve-you’ve seen the things?”

“Yes, earlier at the lake, during the
regrettable ritual that your circumstances have forced upon you,
and also minutes ago, at the Onderdonk’s. One of the fullbloods
nearly killed me.”

“So… you
know
about the
fullbloods?”

“I know everything. I know
what’s going on at the second floor of the Hilman House, I know
about the dual corpse repositories in the caverns beneath the
waterfront. I know why your brother Paul is infirm, and I also know
that your stepfather is a crossbreed between their race and ours
and that he’s the only one of his kind allowed to live after the
mandated genocide of years ago.” I took her hand. “And, Mary, I
know why they’re forcing the collective’s women to remain
perpetually pregnant. The newborns aren’t sacrificed,
they’re
utilized
for research intended to lead to the demise of humankind.
Several hours ago I witnessed Zalen handing over several such
newborns to the fullbloods, out on the sandbar.”

She hitched on another sob. “Zalen? But, my
God, you must think I’m a fiend for allowing my babies to be used
like this.”

“I think nothing of the
sort,” I snapped, “for I also know that you are
forced
into this perverse servitude.
Should you refuse to comply, you and your family would all be
slaughtered.” I quieted, and gripped her hand more tightly, to
assure her. “Mary, I know also of the servile tasks you were
pressured to perform in the past, out of desperation, under Cyrus
Zalen’s pandering influence and pornographic endeavors.”

She nearly gagged, tears now literally
plipping from her eyes onto the dirt floor. “Then how can a moral
man like you even stand to be in the same room with me?”

My verity left no margin for hesitation.
“I’m in love with you, Mary. It would wound my heart forever for
you to not believe this.”

Her face went back to her hands. “That just
makes it worse…”

“Why!” I demanded, perhaps
too loudly. “I don’t expect you to love me in return, but I can
pray and live in the hope that one day you will, and should that
never happen, then I will
still
love you just as much.”

Now she hugged me quite
suddenly, “Oh, Foster, but I
do
love you; I have since you came into the
restaurant today—”

I could’ve collapsed in the rush ebullience
that inundated my spirit. At that moment I knew that in my life of
plenty I actually had nothing—until now.

Now, I had everything.

“Then why on earth do you
say our love makes us
worse?
” I pleaded.

“Foster! Think about it!
Lovecraft’s story is
true,
and I’m living right in the middle of
it.”

“What Zalen didn’t tell me I found out for
myself.”

“But, Foster—Zalen is the
reason that the fullbloods are on the hunt. They’re on the hunt…
for
you.
”

“When I was at the old Innswich Point
tonight, I was forced to shoot one of their reanimants, a
prostitute of Zalen’s,” I told her, then remembered the most
disturbing point. “I didn’t really kill her, for she was already
dead. But my shot detained her long enough to broker my escape.
It’s quite possible that one or more of the fullbloods saw or heard
this, and even more possible that Candace informed them directly
after I’d fled.”

“That’s not the reason, Foster,” she went
on, a hand to her belly as if discomfited. “It’s because of Zalen,
much earlier today. Sentinels are everywhere. Every single
townsperson reports back to them. And some of them, like Candace,
are already physically dead. One of them overheard Zalen telling
you about the tunnels beneath the waterfront of Innswich Point. No
one can know about that, Foster. It’s one of their greatest
secrets, so anyone who learns of it… is hunted down.”

This was moot, though I should’ve recalled
Lovecraft’s story with more exploit. Even the most guarded whispers
were overheard, if not by the degraded townsfolk, then by the Deep
Ones themselves, whose auditory faculties were super-normal. But a
paramount point collided with my deductive processes now that I’d
gleaned this data. “I take it, then, we’re not safe in your house.
We must leave at once.”

“They won’t come here, Foster,” she said
with downcast eyes. “One of their leaders… has taken a fancy to
me.”

“You needn’t be ashamed,” I assured her.
“Zalen mentioned this. He called them ‘sovereigns’; but he also
mentioned that sexual intercourse, even among these hierarchs, is
banned via their new laws. I also know that the reason your brother
and stepfather have been spared is due to this same sovereign’s
fondness for you. ”

She began to speak, but then bowed forward
with a grimace.

“Mary! You’re in pain.”

“No, no, I’m all right. I just need a short
rest”—she reached up. “Help me, Foster, to the bed.”

I took great caution
assisting her; she appeared exhausted, worn, and aching all at
once. A glance to the “bed” forced a grimace on my part, for it
existed as no more than the most primitive of straw
mattresses.
With a little luck, she’ll be
sleeping in a REAL bed tomorrow, likely for the first time in her
horrendously burdened life.

A happy sigh escaped her lips. “That’s much
better, Foster. Thank you. Dr. Anstruther says I’ll be due in
another week or so.”

“Anstruther,” I sputtered
the name with venom. “I’ve seen
his
handiwork. I take it he’s a senior member of
Olmstead’s collective.”

She nodded. “He’s the one
who runs everything here—for
them.
”

“I should’ve known.”

She lay back, sedate now, and—I pray
God—banishing the profane foray at the lake from her tired mind.
“Here, Foster,” she murmured; she took my hand and placed it at the
center of her swollen belly. “Feel the life inside.”

It did so with great
wonder.
A blessing,
I mused.
Each and every life is a
blessing…

“I’d like so much to keep it,” came her next
murmuration. Tears welled. “I’d give anything…”

“You will keep it,
Mary—this I vow.” The great bolus of flesh beneath the occult robe
seemed to
beat
with heat. “You stay here and rest while I return to the
Onderdonk’s to retrieve their motor. In less than an hour’s time,
I’ll be transporting you and Walter away from here, to the security
of my estate in Providence—”

“You just don’t
understand,” she moaned in frustration. “If I try to leave, they’ll
come after me. No one in the collective can
ever
leave.”

“We’ll see about that,” I replied but still
mindful of what Zalen had implied of the fates of those who had
tried. “Leave it to me. I will drive you to safety or die
trying.”

When she looked at me, I noted something
behind her eyes that could only be the desperate joy of hope.

“It just makes me love you more for wanting
to do this for us. But I can’t let you. We would never make it out;
we’d all die.”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” I told
her with no hesitancy whatsoever. “Are you? Would you take that
chance, for Walter to finally have a good life and attend good
schools like other boys? Would you take that chance”—I gave the
gravid belly a momentary caress—“to give this unborn child the
chance to live and to behold the beauty of the world, and to save
it from the blasphemous death that awaits it otherwise?”

She sobbed, gulped, and
nodded. “Yes! I
will
take the chance! Even if we all die, then at least I’ll get
to die with you…”

“Wait here,” I told her, choking up. “I’ll
return presently,” and next I was out of the house and back out
into the moon-spattered night.

I did not allow myself to entertain thoughts
which might divert my focus, but what a luxury that would have
been. I wended back toward the Onderdonk’s, eyes proverbially
peeled, my Colt pistol slippery in my sweating hand. The woods were
profuse with night-sounds now, where they hadn’t been before. It
made me wonder. If these fullblooded monstrosities were indeed on
the hunt for me, I saw no hint of them all the way back to
Onderdonk’s ramshackle compound.

The smokers were gusting;
I ignored the rich, savory—and unmentionable—aroma. Only from the
corner of my eye did I allow myself a glance at the dead creature
staked to the tree. The prospect of seeing one of these
abominations in detail did not incite my curiosity. Closer to the
truck, I had to step around Zalen’s innards and body parts, a
fairly daunting task in itself, though I did spare myself one
mental levity:
It couldn’t have happened
to a finer and more forthright gentleman.

Good Lord!
came my next distasteful thought, for when I
slipped into the time-weathered vehicle, my buttocks grew
immediately sopped from the deposit of Zalen’s blood which had been
let during his evisceration and dismemberment. I sat still a
moment, to slowly survey my immediate surroundings through the
windscreen, and saw nothing—absolutely
nothing
—out of the ordinary.
If these fullbloods are hunting me, they’re
exhibiting a less-than-fair effort thus far.
A grim reminder assailed me next, however: Zalen’s earlier
concern about the truck’s starting mechanism. I was an antiquarian
and philanthropist, not a car thief.
If
it’s a keyed ignition, then I’ll have no choice but to drag
Onderdonk’s half-cooked corpse from the smoker and search his
pockets for the key…
I withdrew my
pocket-flash, closed my shooting eye to preserve its night-vision,
then, for just a split-second, turned on the flash before the
dashboard.