The Innsmouth Syndrome (13 page)

The stuff was as dark as pitch, but it was lit from within by a phosphorescent yellow-green light.  The oily bulk completely filled the hatchway now, but still more was streaming volcanically through.  Carla clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling a cry as a lopsided orifice began to form in the centre of the mass. 

Coiling tongues extruded themselves from somewhere at its core and improvised fingers wormed across the floor, sucking at the concrete for grip.  Bright cores of primary green flared into being around the edges of the gaping maw, perhaps two dozen of them, shining with the light of another place, another time.  Pupils condensed in the centers and several of them reared up on dripping pseudopodae, surveying the congregation at un-guessable wavelengths.  Protoplasmic tracheal tubes spluttered and hissed, spraying great gouts of slimy water onto the floor.

Carla felt dizzy as she watched the sprouting eyes and fingers explore the room.  The thing seemed to radiate a dark intelligence.  Just looking at it, she could sense its hunger and its capacity for cruelty, could feel the malice of countless ages concentrated in its primordial bulk.  As it regarded its willing servitors with those cold, unblinking eyes, Carla was reminded of nothing so much as a cat, toying with the lives of idiot mice.

The congregation withdrew apprehensively as a slithering tentacle roved briefly in their direction.  Esgrith shouted to his acolytes, struggling to make himself heard above the splashing and atonal whistling coming from the giant shoggoth.  Two of them stepped forwards, pulling with them two terrified goats and a hyperventilating teenage girl.

“That’s Debbie Trent!” exclaimed Gary.  “She was in my class at school.  She must have had her birthday if they’re bringing her before the shoggoth!”

“What are they going to do?” asked Carla thickly, unable to tear her eyes away from the gibbering horror below them.  She imagined the roof giving way, the two of them plummeting directly down onto those eager, ravenous jaws.

“They’ll offer the goats to it first and then present the girl.  It should just infect her, but I’ve heard that sometimes it just kills them for no reason.”

As he spoke, the shoggoth saw the goats cringing before it.  Instantly, two new mouths snapped open, new eyes swam to the surface and it lunged forward, engulfing their heads and instantly decapitating them. 

Carla turned away and threw up, trying desperately to strangle the sound of retching.  The constant percussion of the rain on the PVC roof, and the sinister piping of the feeding shoggoth below must have been enough to drown out any noise she could make though.  When she looked back the monster had sucked the headless goats entirely into its biomass.  Carla briefly wondered what kind of strange, archaean enzymes the ancient abomination would use to digest the wretched animals.   What kind of profane, apocryphal biology could have given rise to such an entity?  How did it - could it - live?

As Esgrith roughly shoved the terrified teenage girl in front of the shoggoth, it gradually ceased fluting and growling, until the only sound was once again that of the wind-driven rain.  All its eyes were fixed upon the girl, bathing her in their alien luminescence, at once intimidating and hypnotic.  For long seconds they remained perfectly still, as if creature, girl, congregation and Carla had been frozen in time.  Carla was almost psychotic with tension, only able to imagine the vile cryptid shearing off the girl’s head with the same relish with which it had dispatched the goats.

Her hand flew to her throat as she saw two plasmatic extrusions begin to coil themselves gently, but firmly, around the girl’s wrists – and then it attacked.

With the speed of a striking snake, the shoggoth splayed itself across the girl’s face like a shiny, molten mask, gripping her limbs with crushing force as she struggled.  Carla rose to her feet instinctively and was immediately restrained by Gary. 

“She’s OK!” he hissed.  “It’s not killing her!  It’s infecting her.  Travelling to her brain.”

“She’ll die!”

“She won’t die!  She’d be better if she did.  The First Flesh calls to Father Dagon, he’ll always be with her now.  Look!”

The monster was releasing her, almost tenderly.  She fell to her knees at once, gasping for air.  Beside her, the shoggoth thrashed the air with scores of tentacles and roared through a dozen bubbling vents, sending ropes of mucous flying through the air.  The crowd cheered and applauded wildly and Esgrith hobbled back to the girl’s side, grabbing her hand and lifting it in the air as if he was declaring the winner of a boxing match. 

“Ia shoggoth!” he cried, hoarsely.

“Ia shoggoth!” chanted the congregation.

“Ia Dagon!”

“Ia Dagon!”

“Ia, IA CTHULHU!”

As the crowd screamed rapturously in response, Esgrith threw his arms wide and his head back – staring straight up through the skylight at Carla’s terrified face.

`He can’t see me’ she told herself.  Not with those cataracts, how could he?  But as his expression changed she knew that he had.

“Oh,
shit
!” yelled Gary, and took off, back towards the plank.  “Come on!” 

Below her, Esgrith’s face was contorted in fury and he was barking incomprehensible orders at the congregation, jabbing a finger upwards at the roof.  Confused, they stared upwards, hundreds of misshapen, misplaced eyes, trying to squint past the glare from the striplights.

Carla was already on her feet when Gary came racing back for her.  “Come on!  What the fuck are you waiting for?  We gotta go!  Now!”

Grabbing hold of her cuff he led her in a kamikaze sprint across the slippery roof, ushering her in front of him as they reached the plank.

Carla’s earlier reservations about the safety of the improvised walkway disappeared, as the door of the warehouse burst open with a roar, and the furious crowd spilled out into the street.  She closed her eyes and flew across the gap, the wood springing her into the air as her feet came down once, twice – nearly there – and over, onto the opposite building. 

Gary wasted no time in following, his arms windmilling in the shrieking gale as he sprang sure-footedly across.  As they made for the fire escape, their footsteps on the metal roof sounded thunderous.  `Just follow Gary’, Carla told herself.  `He knows where to go.  You just have to keep up with him.  Don’t think about anything else, just keep up.’

A succession of running jumps took them down the fire escape.  She could hear engines being revved nearby, motorbikes and pickups.  Gary risked a quick peek around the corner of the building. 

“We’ve got to get to the harbor, find a boat.  It’s the only way we’ll get out of here.  It’s down the waterfront, to the end.”

“What is that?” panted Carla.  “Like three hundred yards?”

“Something like that.  Can you make it?”

“Yeah.  Can you?”

“They’re gonna see us and chase us, so it’s got to be a sprint.  You ready?  Come on.”

They sprinted out onto the waterfront.  For a few seconds, Carla thought they might actually make it without being spotted, but a shout and an angry roaring behind them made it clear that they had been.  She could hear vehicles turning, the engines being over-revved, doors slamming.  `Treat it like a race’ she told herself.  `Catch up with Gary.  Don’t let him win.’

The strength of the wind made it hard to catch breaths and she found herself gulping at the air.  She daren’t take the time to look over her shoulder, but she could hear a big, heavy vehicle gaining on them, grinding its way up through the gears.  Powerful headlights brought the road before her into sharp relief, the shearing raindrops gleaming silver, interfering with the picture.  Her shadow, stretched out in front of her, began to shrink as their pursuers drew closer.

Gary had stopped - was waving at her – had grabbed her arm and pulled her off the road.  A giant red pickup mounted the pavement right where she had been a split second before.  Carla saw a flashgun image of its howling occupants, madness written in their features, like details from a Dore engraving.  The truck careened off the harbour wall, its front crumple zone disintegrating, and skidded on the saturated tarmac spilling passengers as it went.

Gary had dragged her onto a small flight of steep, stone steps that led down to one of the piers.  It was dark down there, away from the streetlamps and the headlights of the stalled truck, but Carla could hear the water lapping greedily at the pilings.  Holding tightly to Gary’s hand, she clambered unsteadily down and immediately fell over on the greasy, wet wood.

Gary hissed at her.  “We’ll take the
Lexy
, it’s the fastest boat here.  End of the jetty.  Come on!” 

Bent double, he scampered away into the darkness.  Carla pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled after him, gasping for breath.

Above and behind, she could hear the shouts and whooping of the mob as it hurried down the road towards the harbour.  A gunshot startled her, and she reflexively threw herself flat against the slimy wood of the jetty – but it had just been an exuberant shot into the air.  It was too dark for them to be seen down at water level.  By normal eyes, at least.

She found Gary busily untying the lines that were mooring a derelict-looking launch, barely big enough for two.  The windscreen had a large hole in it and approximately half the paint had flaked off the hull, which sat suspiciously low in the water. 

“Get in.  Get her started” gasped Gary, throwing the first line down and setting to work on the second. 

The tiny vessel wobbled alarmingly as Carla stepped into it and she instinctively sat down, hard.  Torch beams were scanning the piers like searchlights, looking for any sign of the escapees.  She could see silhouettes loping down the steps from the street. 

The launch had an outboard motor that at least looked newer than the rest of the craft.  Carla ran her hands over it in the darkness, looking for the starter.  Was that it?  She pulled the little tab, experimentally, slowly drawing the ripcord a little way out.  She could hear bare feet slapping against the pier now.  `Please let it start first time’ she prayed.  `Please let it have petrol.’

Screwing her eyes shut, she yanked the ripcord as hard as she could.  The motor rattled, but did nothing.  `Damn it!’

She tried again, with the same result.  The searching torches zeroed in on the sound, suddenly bathing them in startlingly bright light, and a raucous ululation went up from the street.  The boat rocked sickeningly as Gary dove in and began to wrestle with something under the seat behind her.  “For fuck’s sake, get her going!” he shouted as scuttling shadows advanced on them down the pier.

“I’m – trying!” Carla cried, giving the motor another futile yank.  “It won’t - start!”  A sinister, animal growl made her look up as a figure lunged at them out of the night.  She recoiled and prepared to defend herself as it set one foot on the boat.  A dull thump and a blast of fire drove it straight back to the pier as Gary discharged the flare pistol into its chest. 

The man’s bodywarmer caught fire spectacularly, wreathing him in flames as the two thousand-degree fireball lodged against his skin.  The other worshippers halted in their tracks as he flailed around helplessly, his agonised, inhuman keening filling the night.  Staggering to the edge of the pier he threw himself into the water, the still-burning flare glowing below the surface as he sank. 

Small caliber bullets fired from the street began to fizz into the water near the launch as Carla seized hold of the ripcord again.  She tugged it in a blind frenzy, again and again while Gary hunted for another flare cartridge.   Suddenly, with a fine rattle, the recalcitrant engine coughed into life.  “Give it here” barked Gary immediately, pressing the flare pistol into Carla’s hands and crowding into the stern.  “Shoot this at anyone who comes close.”