The Innsmouth Syndrome (11 page)

Someone was trying to get in!  Someone was trying to get in, and the window lay between Carla and the door.  With a final groan of straining wood the casement gave way and the windows burst open, the curtains suddenly billowing inwards as a poltergeist of freezing wind blasted into the room.

Carla drew in a long, shuddering breath, her eyes riveted to the flurrying curtains – and when a fat, stubby-fingered hand reached in and clutched at the wall she screamed, a shocked, wailing counterpoint to the baying of the storm.

Another hand appeared, and the invader levered himself clumsily through the window, water cascading from a torn, yellow sou’wester as he fell to one knee.  The crowbar he had used to lever the window open was still clasped in his hand.  It was Saul Taub. 

He raised his head and leered idiotically, vacantly, his pale, round face slick with rain.  One malevolent, bulging eye fixed itself on Carla while the other swiveled madly and uselessly in its socket.  A thick rope of drool fell from the corner of his mouth as he drew back his lips, exposing sharp, little teeth.  He began to chant as he pushed himself to his feet, his speech slow and glottal.

“Goooosey, Goooosey Ganderrrrrrr … where – shall I – wander? 
Up
– stairs, and
down
– stairs … and
in
– my
la -
dy’s
cham
- ber!”

He shambled forwards, stiff-legged and rolling, reaching for her.  Carla shrieked and lunged across the bed, grabbing for the phone.  Taub grunted and swung the crowbar downwards, aiming for her skull.  Carla flinched instinctively and it missed her, the tip embedding itself in the veneered plywood headboard with a deceptively soft `thunk’. 

Taub abandoned the weapon and  lumbered awkwardly onto the bed, grasping Carla’s ankle and dragging her roughly towards him before she could press the button that would connect her to the reception desk.  She kicked out, screeching with terror and adrenaline, catching him hard in the nose, but his grip only tightened.  Desperate, Carla leaned towards him and smashed the telephone receiver into the side of his head.

The plastic splintered, and his skin split, blood leaking down his face, but he didn’t even seem to feel it.  Straddling her, he grabbed her throat with both hands and abruptly cut off both her cries and her air supply. 

Despite the raging storm outside, and Saul Taub’s rasping breaths as he strangled her, the room suddenly seemed deathly quiet as they wrestled for Carla’s life.  Her eyes began to bulge until they resembled her would-be murderer’s.  Her head was hanging off the edge of the bed, neck fully extended as his stubby thumbs dug into her windpipe.  She turned to the side, trying to open her throat, to no avail.  Her face began to darken as the deoxygenated blood failed to drain from her head.  She was going dizzy, about to pass out. 

Her handbag was on the floor next to the bed.  She could see her mobile phone in it as her vision began to swim and her fingers became numb and unresponsive.  It was a mile away.  She reached for it uncertainly.  It was ten miles away, down the wrong end of a telescope.  The fingers of unconsciousness began to close around her brain.

She registered sudden movement, a muffled thud, a sudden loosening of the fingers around her throat.  Startled, she snorted a huge lungful of air and made a grab for her handbag.  Taub’s features were contorted in pain and he was sneering over his shoulder at somebody standing behind him.  Carla’s fingers found her mobile phone – wait, no, it was something contoured.  An aerosol?  Of course, the pepper spray that the salesman had given her!   

She threw an arm across her eyes to shield them, squeezed the trigger cap and kept it held down.  On top of her, Taub grunted as a noxious jet of laychrymatory agent hissed directly into his face.  She felt his weight shift.  A second later he began to roar. 

Carla held her breath as a fine fog of spray drifted down towards her, but for Taub it was too late.  He bellowed like a dying bull, clawing at his features, with blood, tears and mucous running over his fingers as the chemicals stung his eyes and skin.  Carla started struggling, trying to free herself from the man’s bulk.  Behind him she saw the crowbar that he had used to break-in being raised above his head.  It wavered there for a moment and then fell with breathtakingly savage force, smiting the top of his skull like a thunderbolt from God, pitching his blubbery torso forwards on top of her.

Carla fought hysterically to free herself and scrambled to her feet.  As well as the cut she had inflicted on his face, gore was trickling from two immense gashes on Taub’s head where the crowbar blows had landed.  Standing next to the bed, bloodied crowbar in hand, was his son.

Still gasping for breath Carla backed away, massaging her throat.

“Is he dead?” asked Gary, calmly.  Carla forced herself to look at the body sprawled on the bed.  The torso was still rising and falling gently, he was still breathing.  “N-no.  He’ll live.” she croaked, wincing at the pain from her bruised vocal chords.

Wordlessly, Gary walked around the bed.  Before she could stop him he raised the crowbar and brought it down again with sickening speed.  Carla recoiled as fresh blood splattered across the sheets.  As Gary raised the weapon again she reeled forwards and caught his arm – but it was too late.  Saul Taub had stopped breathing. 

His son seemed unaffected.  “Come on” he said, crossing to the door.  “Get your coat on, before the others come in.”

“You killed him!” cried Carla, unable to tear her eyes away from the dead man’s face.  “We have to call somebody.  I can’t deal with this. Oh, my God.”  She sank tearfully to the floor. 

Impatiently, Gary came back and grabbed her wrist, tried to drag her to her feet.  “Come on!  There are more of them outside.  You have to come with me.  I’ll show you what you wanted to see, but we have to go now.”

“The police!  What about the police?”

“Forget the police, they’re not going to come.  Here” – he thrust her coat at her – “put this on.  Where’s yer shoes?”

He located her shoes, grabbed an armful of her clothes and tried again to pull her towards the door.  Carla snatched her arm away.  He was about to grab it again when a soft metallic tapping made them both freeze.  It came from the window.  Someone else was climbing up Saul Taub’s ladder.

“Quickly!” hissed Gary.  Gripped by panic, Carla stumbled to the door.  Just as they reached it, another dark shape appeared in the window frame.   With a squeal of terror she bundled the teenager into the corridor and slammed the door behind them.

Gary led the way to the stairs.  As they reached the first floor they could hear guttural voices travelling up the stairwell.  Abruptly changing course he led her into the first floor corridor, to the stairs at the far end of the building.  Achieving the ground floor, they plunged through a fire exit into the driving rain, triggering a moaning fire alarm throughout the building.

“Wait!” panted Carla.  “My car keys!”

Gary shook his head.  “Your car’s no good.  They bust the engine already.”

“Why?  Why are they doing this?  Who sent them?”

“The Reverend, who d’ya think?  Me, Dad, Ramram’s dad, Kara’s brother, a few others.  He said you had to disappear.  You were causing problems and we had to get rid of you.  Now come
on
, we have to get moving!”

“Where?  Where are we going?”

“The temple.  Come on!”

*****

“We need to find a car or something” panted Carla as she struggled into the mismatched clothes that Gary had grabbed from her room.  They were hiding in a darkened shop doorway somewhere between the hotel and the seafront.  Gary was keeping lookout.  He answered her over his shoulder.

“It’s only round the next corner, we can make it on foot.”

“On foot?  I told you, I’m not going to your blasted temple.  I want to get out of here.  I’m not going back there.  Not without a National Guard unit right behind me!”

“It’s a full moon, high tide.  There’s a ceremony tonight.  I can get us to where you can see it.  Once you have, maybe you can convince your FBI friends to come and help us.”

“I don’t have any FBI friends.”

“Whatever.  Look, it’s safe.  We can go up the next-door fire escape and get onto the roof that way.  We can see in through the skylight.  I’ve done it loads of times before.”

“What if they see us?  I wish you’d picked up my phone!”

“They can’t.  There’s no lights up there.  Trust me, it’s safe.  And it’s a full moon tonight, so there’ll definitely be communion.”

“Holy communion?” enquired Carla, pulling on the woolly hat she was glad to discover still in her coat pocket.

“Communion.  With Y’ha-nthlei.”

“Who’s Y’ha-nthlei?”

“It’s not a person, it’s a place.  Come on, let’s move.”

They crossed the street cautiously and moved through a warren of dark, deserted alleyways towards the seafront, picking their way past overflowing bins and discarded furniture.  The crumbling tenements were too close together to admit cars here, and at least gave them some shelter from the storm-driven rain.

“Gary” hissed Carla.  “Gary!  When you say communion, do you mean –“

“Look, it’s complicated” interrupted the teenager.  “You need to know the history or it doesn’t make sense.”

“So, tell me the history” demanded Carla.  “I really think it’s the least you can do.”

Gary sighed.  “Well, look, it all started way back in, like, the 1920s or something.  I mean, it started earlier than then, but that’s when the old temple got destroyed.  The way the Rev tells it, it was like the whole town were all worshippers back then, and the people from Y’ha-nthlei were still coming back up to the surface and into the town.”

“Where is this `Y’ha-nthlei’ you keep talking about?” interrupted Carla.

“Under the sea.  It’s a city under the sea.  The entrance used to be out by Devil’s Reef.”

“A city under the sea?  That’s ridiculous!”

“Yeah, well, that’s what they say.  I’m just telling it like they told me.  An undersea city that’s the home of Lord Dagon.”

“Lord Dagon?  Like in the Bible?  The Philistine god from the Bible?”

“Dunno about that.  He’s, like, the leader of Y’ha-nthlei.  There are these two voices from Y’ha-nthlei, him and the Hydra.  Anyway, the point is that back in the 1920s or 1930s or something, the FBI, like, totally shut them down.  Arrested everyone, and burned down the temple, and locked all the top temple people up somewhere.  Then they got a submarine and torpedoed the reef, totally collapsed the way to Y’ha-nthlei. Closed it off completely.  Yeah?”

“If you say so.”

“Right, so then in the 1960s ol’ Esgrith comes to town.  Dunno where he came from, but he arrives here with all this money.  Buys up all these burnt-out warehouses, and in the basement of one of them he finds this tiny piece that survived.”

“Piece of what?”

Gary began to sound evasive.  “I don’t rightly know, OK?  Esgrith calls it `the First Flesh’.  The voices from below call it `shoggoth’.  It’s like this weird stuff, like a living creature, but not any
particular
living creature.  It’s hard to explain, but the thing is that the Deep Ones can, like, totally control it.  They make it do whatever they want, yeah?  And once it gets into you, you can hear the voices.  From down there.  You can hear Dagon and Hydra.  And they can make the shoggoth force you to do whatever they want.”