Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

THE COMING

by

HUGH B. CAVE

KEITH WALKER WAS one of five passengers in the Reverend Ralph Beckford’s station wagon that Sunday afternoon as it began its low-gear descent down The Devil’s Ladder into Deeprock Gorge. All the others had been present in the Reverend’s church that morning and heard him preach about the coming. Keith had not heard about it until he called on Jennifer Skipworth after the service.

“Oh, now, come on,” he’d said when Jennifer told him what they planned to do. “You can’t be serious!”

“We are serious.” The girl he was in love with stopped pacing her living room and faced him with her hands outstretched. “Keith, we are! Like the Reverend says, it’s all in Revelations if you’ll just take time to read between the lines. Darling, I’m not asking you to believe. Only to come with us.”

“But why Deeprock Gorge?” Keith protested. “I went fishing there once with Mr. Powell”—Otis Powell was editor of the Innsmouth newspaper Keith worked for—“and it’s got to be the most Godforsaken place in the whole of Massachusetts. It’s even hard to get to.”

“Howard has a house there.”

“Oh.” There were some houses in the gorge, Keith remembered. Cabins, anyway. Maybe three or four of them, strung out along the banks of the stream. Weekend summer camps, he guessed they were.

“Howard Lindsay, you mean? The big guy who owns the paint factory?”

She nodded. “He’s a deacon in our church.”

“I see.”

“Do you want to know who else is going?”

“Well, if I’m going to be one of them,” Keith said. Which, of course, he would be, because he sure wasn’t going to let her go on any such crazy mission without him. He had long believed that most of the folks who went to Reverend Beckford’s church were a little daft. That they now believed Satan was about to take over the world didn’t surprise him.

How they hoped to stop old Beelzebub from doing it did interest him, though, as a possible story for the paper. “You mean you’re going there just to pray?”

“That’s right, Keith. To pray.”

“Then why not in the church? Why Deeprock Gorge, of all places?”

“Because Christ wrestled with Satan in a wilderness. Please, darling, try to understand.”

She told him who would be going. Reverend Beckford, of course. Mary Sewell and her eleven-year-old son Davey. Howard Lindsay, who had recently bought the gorge, or at least the cabins in it, so his factory workers could use them weekends. “And, I hope, you. You will come, won’t you, Keith? It’ll only be for one night.”

“Where you go, I go,” he told her.

Jennifer lived with her parents in a house on the edge of town, and on the way back to his in-town bachelor apartment, Keith had stopped at the home of Otis Powell, his editor, and told Powell what was up. “It could be a pretty good story, don’t you think: Reverend Beckford convincing all those good people the Devil is coming to take us over, and some of them going into the wilderness to pray for help?” He would go anyway, he knew, even if Powell laughed at him. But Powell said yes, it could be a story, so go ahead and good luck.

* * *

The Devil’s Ladder behind them, the road along the river’s edge was no more than a pair of ruts through dark grey sand and rocks. At times Keith thought they wouldn’t get through. But there were tyre tracks, so other vehicles must have managed it, and presently, lo and behold, there was the cabin.

He helped Jennifer with the food they’d brought, and the Sewells with their gear—because Mary Sewell weighed at least 250 pounds— and by the time he carried his own things into the cabin, the others were already in the bedrooms, getting set up for the night. What they should do, Reverend Beckford said, was have a bite of something to eat because it was already past five o’clock, and then get busy on what they’d come here for.

There were two bedrooms in the place, along with a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a big front room with a fireplace. The Reverend, Howard Lindsay and Keith had one bedroom; Jennifer and Mary Sewell and Mary’s boy Davey had the other. The beds were cot-size bunks built into the walls.

“Just what are you planning to do here, Reverend?” Keith asked while making up his bed. The Reverend was about fifty years old and easily six-foot-three but so skinny he might disappear through a floor-crack at any minute. A nice fellow, though, except he got so intense about things sometimes.

“Pray,” he said.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see. But you will, soon as we’ve eaten.”

“There may be other people in some of the cabins along here,” Keith pointed out. “You plan on asking them to pray with us?”

Howard Lindsay said, “Yes, some of my people are out here this weekend. I checked in town before we left.” Lindsay was a broadshouldered, brawny fellow, just the sort you’d expect to want a cabin in a wilderness. The paint factory he owned seemed to make him a good deal of money.

“It’s a bit late to call on people this evening,” the Reverend said. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Keith finished getting his bed ready and went into the kitchen, where Jennifer and fat Mary Sewell—Big Mary, folks called her—were starting supper. They’d brought along food already cooked, Jennifer explained, because they hadn’t known how much free time they might have with all the praying to be done. After lighting the propane stove so they could heat things, Keith turned on the faucet in the sink and reached for a glass to get himself a drink of water.

“Use that,” Big Mary said, pointing to a plastic jug of store-bought water. “Deacon Lindsay says the river water’s clean and we’re crazy, but the way this poor world is headed, you can’t trust nothing any more.”

Keith said okay and drank bottled water and then went out to sit on the back steps and think about the story he would write. Noting how dark it was getting, he looked at his watch, then held his wrist to his ear to make sure the watch was still running. In town, with daylight-saving time in effect, darkness would still be a long way off. But here in the gorge, with its high, sheer walls shutting out the light, the day was already dying. Made a fellow feel a bit strange, like he was in another world. There’d be a near-full moon tonight, though, he remembered. The gorge should be something to see with moonlight pouring down into it.

He finished thinking and went back inside, where he helped set the table for a fine supper of Boston baked beans and ham and home-baked bread. After the Reverend asked a blessing that seemed a bit too long with everyone so hungry, they ate. Then the Reverend pushed his chair back and said, “We men ought to do the dishes, I expect, since you ladies did the cooking. But first let’s get started on what we came here for.”

He led them out to the river’s edge, where it was almost totally dark now. Even the shallow, twenty-foot wide stream was more heard than seen as it rushed past over its bed of boulders. With the Reverend telling them what to do, they formed a circle and held hands. Then in his deep, throaty voice he began praying.

“Lord, look down on this troubled Earth, please, and see what’s happening here. It isn’t pretty. All over this once-beautiful planet people are doing things they shouldn’t ought to be doing. Like polluting our rivers and lakes so we’ll soon be short of drinking water. And wantonly killing off whole species of the wonderful creatures you put here to share your bounty with us. Look, Lord, at how people are stupidly cutting down the forests we need to keep clean the air we breathe, and how they are further making the air unbreathable by poisoning it with smokestacks and automobile exhausts.

“Lord, the few of us that see what’s going on and want to put a stop to it need your help now in the worst way. Yes, we do. By ourselves we can’t make much of a difference because we’re so outnumbered by those who don’t care. Take a good look at what’s going on down here, Lord. See for yourself the ever-greater numbers of people using drugs—especially young people. Note the drug-related murders and the child abuse. See the number of people openly admitting they’ve turned away from you and are worshipping Satan.

“Lord, the Devil is on the warpath again, as you must know. We’ve got whole nations here that are stockpiling things like hydrogen bombs and planning to use chemical- and germ warfare against their innocent neighbours. It’s frightening, I tell you. It’s scaring the living daylights out of those of us who aren’t too blind or selfish to see what it’s likely to lead to. But Lord, you beat old Lucifer once before in a wilderness like this, and with your help we can whip him again. So look down on us here and tell us what to do, we beseech you. Tell us before it’s too late. Amen.”

Reverend Beckford prayed along those lines for another half-hour or so, then opened his eyes. “There,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I’m sure we all feel some better already because we know He heard us. We can go inside now. But at daybreak we’ll talk to Him again.”

When the men had done the dishes by lamplight, Howard Lindsay built a fire and the group sat by the fireplace, talking. Mary Sewell’s boy Davey played some hymns on a harmonica he’d brought along. The others exclaimed at how good he was and asked for more. Then the moon came up, filling the gorge with a shimmering mist of quicksilver, and Keith reached for Jennifer Skipworth’s hand.

“How about a little walk?” Keith suggested.

She smiled at him and they went out together, telling the others they’d soon be back.

* * *

The moonlight must have been responsible for what happened then. For more than two years Keith had known he was in love but hadn’t quite been sure he wanted to be tied down in marriage. After all, Jennifer Skipworth was a bit heavy on the church-going at times, even for Innsmouth, and even now, this expedition into Deeprock Gorge for a confrontation with Satan was on the spooky side. But before they had walked a hundred yards downriver he heard himself blurting it out. “Hey... why don’t you and I stop fooling around and get married, huh? Like soon, I mean.”

Then before she could answer, the moonlight did something else. Just ahead of them, at the water’s edge, a stone moved. Or if not a stone, a living thing that looked like a stone. It suddenly turned itself into a beetle or bug or insect the size of a dinner plate and with a loud hissing sound went waddling into the water, where it vanished.

Jennifer froze in her tracks and gasped, “What was that?”

Keith forgot about wanting to be married. His fingers tightened their grip on her hand and he went slowly forward, one careful step at a time, pulling her after him, until they reached the place where the thing had been. Smelling something, he dropped to his knees, still cautiously, and sniffed at the empty pocket of black sand. It had an odour of—what? Spoiled meat?

“Must have been some animal,” he said, rising. “A possum, maybe? But hurt, somehow. You want to go back?”

Jennifer thought about it. He’d asked her to marry him. The stupid possum or whatever it was had interrupted her answer. She wanted to marry this man. She wanted to tell him so, right here in this wilderness with the moon pouring its blessing down on them. “Let’s go on a bit more,” she said.

But then, right away, other things began to happen. Where the stream had been softly and romantically whispering along beside them, it acquired a new voice. Lots of new voices. Still holding Jennifer’s hand, Keith stopped short and scowled at the water and said, “Now what the hell...?”

The night began to fill up with weird noises. With snarly sounds and hissings and whimperings apparently being made by strange, unaccountable shadow-shapes that were appearing in the water. Every now and then one of the shapes surfaced enough to be halfway visible in the moonlight.

They were creepy-crawlies of one sort or another, Keith decided. Insects, bugs, water-spiders—about what you’d expect in such a stream. But they were bigger than any he’d ever seen before. Bigger than they had any right to be.

“Keith, what’s happening?” Jennifer whispered, hanging onto him. “What’s going on here?”

Keith didn’t know how to answer her. As they stood there staring wide-eyed at the stream, the unnatural sounds got louder and they saw more shadow-shapes that didn’t make any sense in such a place. It was as if the whole river had suddenly come alive in some weird, threatening way. As if many of the tiny, harmless creatures that normally lived in such streams had all at once grown in size and were either angry or confused about what had happened to them.

Then all at once Keith and Jennifer heard their names called and saw Reverend Beckford hurrying down the gorge toward them.

“Wait!” the Reverend shouted, waving at them. “Wait for me!” His yell bounced off the walls of the gorge in a string of echoes as, out of breath, he hurried to catch up to them. When he did that and got his breath back, he said, “I’ve decided to call on the people in the other cabins now, this evening, so they can join us at prayer in the morning. I’d be pleased if you two would come along.”

“Reverend, look!” Jennifer cried, turning to point to the river. “Something’s happening here!”

But it wasn’t happening any more. Evidently the Reverend’s yell had put a stop to it, the way a rock dropped into a pool would scatter a school of minnows. The oversized insects or whatever they were had fled, and the only sounds now to be heard were the normal ones made by any stream travelling over a rocky bed.

With the moonlight showing them where to put their feet, the three of them walked on down the gorge to the first of the other cabins. Smaller than the one they were using, it was built up against the cliff wall with a flight of steps leading up to a short veranda. They climbed the steps and the Reverend knocked politely on the door, but there was no response. Keith looked at his watch. The Reverend knocked again, louder, and Keith said with a frown, “They can’t be in bed; it’s only quarter to eight.” Then he walked along the veranda and peered in through a window.

So far as he could see, no one was home. “Maybe they’re at some other cabin,” he said. “Most likely all the folks who use these cabins of Lindsay’s are friends. Maybe they get together in the evenings.”

The Reverend said he thought that was probably so, and the three of them went on down the gorge to the second house, but no one answered his knock there, either. At the third, which appeared to be the last, they were truly surprised when they found no one at home.

“They’ve got to be here somewhere,” the Reverend said. “You heard what Howard Lindsay said: he checked in town before we came, and some of his factory people are out here this weekend.”

“You suppose they all got together and went someplace for dinner?” Keith wondered aloud.

Jennifer shook her head. “That wouldn’t make any sense. I mean, why would they come here for a weekend in the wilderness and then go somewhere to eat? There are no restaurants around here.”

“Well, like Keith says, they’re probably together somewhere,” the Reverend said. “We’ll just have to try again in the morning.”

It had been a long walk and they were weary by the time they got back to Howard Lindsay’s cabin. The others—Lindsay, Big Mary and the boy—were seated there in front of the fireplace. Reverend Beckford told about the empty cabins. Then Jennifer spoke of what she and Keith had heard and seen before he joined them.

“Noises? Shadow-things?” Howard Lindsay said with a scowl.

“You sure you didn’t just get carried away by your imagination? This gorge can be pretty spooky at night if you’re new here.”

“We heard what we heard,” Jennifer insisted. “We saw things that weren’t natural.”

“Maybe he’s here!” said young Davey Sewell.

“Maybe who’s here?” his mother said. “What are you talking about?”

“Satan. What if he came because we prayed to Jesus to fight him again? He and Jesus fought in the Bible, didn’t they?” The boy’s face glowed with excitement. “Maybe he wants a rematch!”

“Now, now,” Lindsay said, “what you two heard was just the different sounds the river makes at night. I’ve heard them many a time.” He lifted a big tumbler of water from the floor beside his chair and looked through it at the logs blazing in the fireplace. “I don’t care if our river wants to screech like an owl or wail like a banshee,” he said with a grin. “This is the best damn drinking water—begging your pardon, Reverend—in the whole of creation. I never can get enough of it when I’m here.” He aimed his grin at Big Mary and Jennifer. “You women and your bottled stuff!” he snorted. “I bet if you was to have both kinds tested, you’d find that what I’m drinking is a whole sight better!”

Big Mary heaved herself up from her chair and said, “Well, you go right ahead and drink all you want of it, Deacon, but I’m dead beat and going to bed. Goodnight, all of you.”

“If that goes for the rest of you, I believe I’ll turn in, too,” Reverend Beckford said, making it a question by hiking his eyebrows up.

They said it did, and the evening was finished.

* * *

Those bunk-beds in Howard Lindsay’s cabin were not the most comfortable in the world. When Keith opened his eyes and saw by the moonlight in the room that the Reverend and Howard Lindsay were still asleep, he thought his aching back must have been what waked him. Then he heard a noise outside the window next to his bunk. Someone was out there walking around, it seemed.

Puzzled, he got up and stepped to the window and looked out.

With the moon directly overhead, Deeprock Gorge was almost as bright as day, except the light was sort of unreal. What was out there was even more unreal, though. Keith grabbed hold of the window ledge and felt his eyes bulging in their sockets.

“Lord Jesus!” he heard himself whisper—and he was not a church-going man.

Just outside the window stood a naked man holding what looked like a tree-limb. He was about to use the limb as a club to smash the window, it seemed; at any rate he was holding it aloft in both hands and looking at the window. But what he was was more terrible than anything he might be thinking of doing.

He was big. Big all over. And not just huge but lumpy, as if he was made of rubber and someone had blown too much air into him. As for his head, Keith stared at that in total disbelief.

It wasn’t natural in any way. It was, in fact, a mass of enormous lumps or bumps that all but hid the eyes and most of the mouth. Massive, malformed swellings they were, from which the man’s eyes blazed like twin red coals and the left side of his mouth—all that remained visible—was curled up over teeth that were like the fangs of a serpent.

As Keith stared at him, half-paralysed, the man took a step forward and voiced the sound that must have waked Keith in the first place: a long, loud snarl of rage or hate or fury that actually made the window rattle.

And he wasn’t alone.

Coming up behind him, on his right, was a naked woman, and she too brandished a tree-limb club. She might have been a pretty woman once, but now she had the same lumps all over her body that the man had, and something even uglier. Big tufts of hair grew out of her cheeks and breasts and belly: long, black, bristly hair that made her look like some kind of wild animal. Or something that was in the process of becoming an animal but hadn’t quite finished. She too was snarling or hissing or whatever the sound ought to be called... because it wasn’t just one sound now, or coming from only those two throats. At least half a dozen other things that had been men and women came plodding into view even as Keith stood there petrified at the window. All of them had clubs.

“Lord Jesus,” Keith whispered again, then spun himself around on one heel and let out a yell that seemed likely to tear the roof off the cabin. “Reverend!” he screamed. “Lindsay! Wake up, wake up! We’re in big trouble!”

Even before the Reverend and Howard Lindsay reached his side to see what he meant, the thing outside nearest the window swung his tree-branch club and the window exploded.

The Reverend took one look at what was out there and began to pray in a low, shuddery voice. Howard Lindsay said, “Great God a’mighty!” and rushed to the door, calling back over his shoulder, “I’ll get the others! We have to clear out of here!” When he came racing back he had a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands, and the women and young Davey were behind him. Big Mary looked ridiculous in a lace-trimmed pink nightgown, of all things, while Jennifer and Davey wore pyjamas.

All three were big-eyed with fright and had a right to be, because the things outside were all at the window now, or their hideous faces were, filling the room with their snarling and hissing, and the floor was littered with shards of glass, and the Reverend was still praying, and Keith Walker stood there helpless, not knowing what to do. Nothing Keith had learned as a newspaper reporter was any good to him now.

Howard Lindsay knew what to do, though. Maybe he was the type for this kind of thing—big, burly, and running a paint factory—or maybe having a weapon in his hands gave him confidence. As if he faced a crowd of angry, naked, no-longer-human people every night of his life, he thrust the gun out in front of him and charged the shattered window yelling, “Get out of here! Out!”

Whatever they were, they still had minds enough to know the gun was sure to kill some of them if he used it. As he rushed to the window they backed away from it, still making those unhuman noises. But they backed away only a little.

“Out!” Lindsay roared, thrusting the gun through the broken pane and waving it around so as to threaten all of them with it. “Get away from here or I’ll use this on you!” And when they didn’t retreat fast enough to please him, he aimed over their heads and fired off a blast.

They backed up a bit more, and when Lindsay saw that was all the retreating they were going to do, he swung himself around and yelled at those in the room with him. “Come on!” he bellowed. “We have to get out of here while they’re deciding what to do!”

Waving the gun, he led a rush to the bedroom doorway and through the big front room to the veranda, and down the veranda steps to Reverend Beckford’s station wagon.

They piled into the wagon, all of them—the men and Jennifer and young Davey still in their pyjamas, Big Mary in that ridiculous nightgown, and with Lindsay at the wheel, because the Reverend was still praying, they took off. And just in time, too, because even as they did, that crowd of naked, hideous, no-longer-human men and women came around the corner of the cabin in clumsy pursuit.

As mentioned before, that river road was a low-gear thing, especially for a vehicle so heavily loaded. Big man though he was, the paint-factory owner had trouble keeping the station wagon ahead of the yelling, screaming horrors that came lurching after it, brandishing their clubs. Then came the climb out of the gorge, up the steep stretch known as The Devil’s Ladder.

Pointing its nose almost skyward, the old station wagon groaned like a living thing too weary to maintain such an effort. With Lindsay twisting the wheel to avoid boulders that could break an axle, it clawed its way up with the naked things gaining on it. “Faster!” Keith Walker kept yelling at the driver. “For God’s sake, give it some gas before they catch us!”

Just as the machine reached the top of the climb, the first of its pursuers grabbed hold of its rear bumper. But like a marathoner glad to be on level ground after struggling up an exhausting grade, the station wagon suddenly doubled its speed and the creature lost its grip and went sprawling face down in the road. From low gear Lindsay shifted into second, then into third. The pursuit died away. Everyone in the car let out a long sigh of relief.

Then the station wagon clawed its way around a bend and Lindsay had to step hard on the brake pedal because the road was blocked by a truck.

It was not a truck that was coming or going. It only stood there in the road with its doors open and its tailgate down and two men standing nearby at the edge of the gorge, surrounded by rusty metal drums they must have unloaded from it. Even as the vehicle bearing the refugees from the gorge shivered to a stop, one of the men rolled a drum to the canyon’s rim and kicked it off into space.

The truck, Keith Walker noticed, was unmarked. Which was strange because in this part of the state people who owned such vehicles usually painted their names or the names of their businesses on them in pretty big letters. Like Howard Lindsay’s two trucks had LINDSAY PAINT COMPANY, INNSMOUTH, MASS and his phone number on them in letters about a foot high.

So why was Lindsay clawing his way out of the station wagon now and striding toward this truck as if he owned it? Why, after a frantic look behind to see if the naked people were in sight yet, was he yelling at the men as if they worked for him? And why was he shouting, “What do you think you’re doing here? How long have you been coming here with this stuff, for God’s sake?”

“We been comin’ here from the start, boss,” one of the men said. He didn’t look too bright. In fact, neither of them did. “Ain’t that what you told us to do, huh?”

“You bloody idiot, I didn’t say Deeprock! I said Redrock! But never mind now. You’re blocking the road. Get this damned truck out of here! Fast!” And again Lindsay turned to see if the monstrous things from the gorge were in sight.

They were. They had just rounded the bend of the road. And though obviously tired now from their struggle to climb The Devil’s Ladder—or maybe from the condition they were in, with their awful bodies even more misshapen than before—they still brandished their clubs and shouted threats. What was it they wanted, Keith asked himself? Revenge?

The two men ran back to their truck, and Lindsay to the station wagon. As the big vehicle growled into motion and Howard Lindsay sent the station wagon lurching after it, Keith turned for a last look behind.

For the first time he noticed that one of the naked gorge creatures was only a child. A girl about Davey’s age. Then, mercifully, another bend in the road hid them all from sight.

The station wagon was off the gorge road and on a two-lane blacktop before anyone spoke. The truck driver had pulled over to let it pass, and once again Keith had noticed there was no name on the truck. Turning on the seat, he looked hard at Howard Lindsay, who was still driving, and said, “What do you really make at that paint factory of yours, Lindsay?”

Lindsay shot him an angry glance, then concentrated fiercely on the road again. But his mouth tightened.

“Does it have anything to do with that dark-complexioned fellow who was in Innsmouth a while back, saying he wanted to learn the paint business? That fellow from—where was he from now? Iraq? Iran? Somewhere in the Middle East, I seem to remember. Does what you’re making now have anything to do with that fellow, Lindsay?”

Lindsay said nothing.

“But I guess he didn’t really want to learn about paint-making, did he?” Keith persisted. “What he wanted was to teach you how to make something. Those Middle East countries are big on things like germ warfare, aren’t they? Was it something like that he persuaded you to make and ship to him as paint? And have you been dumping the leftovers or by-products into Deeprock Gorge? That’s about the size of it, Lindsay... isn’t it?”

As the station wagon sped along the blacktop on its way to town, Howard Lindsay still had nothing to say, so Keith kept repeating the questions. Reverend Beckford and the others also fired questions at the driver, but he only sucked at his lower lip and gripped the wheel harder. Then all at once he stopped sucking his lip and Keith noticed it was twice its normal size. His hands gripping the wheel were swelling, too.

The Reverend Ralph Beckford was saying sort of vaguely, “When we get to town, we should go directly to the police station, don’t you think? Someone will have to go back there and get those people, even if they can’t be saved. And we must warn people about the river, too. We must make sure nobody else goes there.”

No one answered him. A puffy patch had appeared suddenly on Howard Lindsay’s forehead and his left cheek had bulged out.

He put his foot on the brake and steered the vehicle to the side of the road, just barely getting it there before his swelling hands lost their hold on the wheel. When he’d brought it to a stop, he sat there for a few seconds with his head bowed. Then he looked up at the image of his face in the rear-view mirror—a face like those of the people in the gorge—and said plaintively, “I’m afraid someone else will have to drive the rest of the way.”

And he began to cry.