The Innsmouth Syndrome (14 page)

Their pursuers swarmed up the last few feet of the pier as the boat accelerated, jumping into the water without hesitation.  Gary kept the outboard level, maximizing their speed and steering for the open sea.  Some of the pursuing swimmers were moving astonishingly fast, but the twenty horsepower motor soon had the
Lexy
flying over the harbour swell, leaving them to fight through its wake.  Cars were racing back down the seafront, seeking to cut them off at the harbour entrance but Carla could already tell that they wouldn’t be fast enough. 

“Can we make it?”  She had to shout to be heard above the buzzing of the outboard and the rush of water under the hull.  Gary just grimaced at her.  He did not look hopeful.

The transition to open water as they passed through the harbour entrance was sudden, and jarring.  Roused to fury by the storm, the ocean drove implacably at the shoreline, and the
Lexy
was caught by an endless procession of relentlessly advancing waves. 

Carla wedged herself in the nose of the boat as best she could, clinging on for dear life as the tiny launch crested each new roller and scudded down each retreating slope.  Gary wrestled with the outboard, fighting cavitation, trying to keep the blades submerged and the nose of the boat pointed out to sea.

A loud, unearthly squeal reverberated across the water from the seafront, accompanied by the shattering of wood, glass and brick as the windows and doors of the Evangelical Order of David burst open from within.  Carla gasped in dismay as half a dozen colossal, oily, black tentacles grew from the apertures and lunged into the air, each one shimmering with ghostly, green light.  Neon eyes and mouths coalesced along them as they swayed, a hundred feet above the town, before plunging down into the sea.

The cultists gathered along the shore cheered and fired into the air.  “Gary!” screamed Carla, above the roaring wind.

“I know, I know!”

“Faster!  Come on, faster!”

“I know!”

The shoggoth’s arms pulsed as the creature extended itself through the water, looking for them.  How big
was
it?  They were some two hundred yards from the shore already, and travelling quickly despite the surge.  Would it just free itself and swim after them? 

Away to her left, one of the luciferous tentacles broke the surface, contorting itself and forming an eye, the size of a fist, that scanned the water like a periscope before fixing itself on the
Lexy. 
It fell back into the water.  Carla could visualise it, squirming towards them through the murk beneath the hull, dragging the
Lexy
down to her doom.  Terrified, she scoured the water around them for any sign of its approach.

In the stern, Gary cursed as the water around them began to take on the vile, green glow of the approaching shoggoth.  Loops of protoplasm broke the surface and began to congeal into an unholy mockery of a head. 

Gary fought to unclamp the portable outboard motor as the head burst open, becoming a gigantic, snarling mouth, studded with eyes.  Carla tried to stand but the cold glare of the shoggoth rooted her to the spot, irresistably pinned before the staring, malignant eyes.  The shoggoth thrust forward, hungrily. 

Gary stood, and swung the outboard in a wide arc, shearing off a questing tentacle and burying the whirling propeller deep in the beast’s slavering maw.

Inky gobbets of gelatinous flesh pelted the boat, and a rancid, urinal stench filled the air as the whining blades sliced through everything they touched.  The shoggoth bellowed and a cluster of pseudopods burst from the water, tearing the outboard from Gary’s grasp.  Carla was just in time to grab the waistband of his jeans and save him from following it.

She caught a glimpse of the outboard coming to pieces as the shoggoth angrily engulfed it.  Hissing furiously, the beast contracted and plunged, almost capsizing the
Lexy,
and throwing up a huge plume of water that hung over them like an exclamation mark.

Gary and Carla lay still in the bottom of the boat as it pitched and wallowed, waiting for glowing tentacles to drag them down too.  One minute went by, then two, and Carla dared to think that maybe, just maybe, it had gone away.  She looked at Gary.  “Has it … has it gone?”

Gary sighed and raised himself to his knees.  “Yeah.  I think so.  For now.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Carla, the adrenalin suddenly draining from her system.  She was so tired.  She couldn’t remember feeling this exhausted.  Or cold.  Her clothes were saturated.

“Yeah, well, don’t be too happy about it.  We lost the engine.  Tide’s taking us back in.  Ten more minutes, we’ll be back among that lot.”  He pointed back towards the shore.  Carla sat up, pulling straggling, wet hair away from her face to see what he was looking at.

The waterfront was lined with Dagon worshippers, standing solemnly, waiting for the sea to carry the
Lexy
back to them.  Each surging wave was taking them closer.  Gary was right.  Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and they’d be back amongst the mob.

“Oars!” cried Carla, wringing her hands.  “There must be oars or something!”

“There’s no oars.”

“Well, why the fuck not?  Jesus Christ!”

Gary was fiddling with the flare pistol again.  “We’ve got one flare left.  You want it?”

“What am I going to do with it?” snapped Carla.  “One flare?”

He looked at her, levelly.  “To kill yourself with.”

Carla gaped at him.  He wasn’t joking.  Unable to help herself, she started to laugh.  “
Kill
myself?” she giggled, weakly.  “I don’t want to kill myself!  What about a radio?  Has this boat got a radio?  We can call the coastguard.”

“There’s no radio” answered Gary, evenly.  “Look, if you don’t want it, great.  I’m going to use it.  I’m not letting them give me to that …
thing
.  I’m not going to be turned into one of them.  You can do what you want.”  He stood up.

“Don’t be stupid!  We’ll – we’ll have a chance to escape!  Get to a car, maybe!”  Carla stood up too.  Gary gave her his small, sad smile and shook his head.  “I’m sorry.  Sorry you got dragged into all this.”  He exhaled deeply.  “Fuck it.”

In one smooth movement he wedged the stubby barrel of the flare pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.  Carla screamed and fell to the deck.

Gary fell down with her; the little calcium meteor burying itself somewhere near the center of his head, scouring neurons and annihilating synapses in his basal brain. Purifying cortices.  Incinerating memories.  Red fire burned in his mouth and his eyes, and a cloud of dank, greasy smoke gushed into the air like a departing soul.

Carla wept, adding to the brine pooled in the bottom of the boat.  The flare didn’t last long, maybe ten or twelve seconds before it began to fizzle and subside.  Eventually the smoke and steam ebbed away too.  The storm was dying now, the wind less intense.  The tide less frenzied, but still insistent, pushing the
Lexy
towards the shore. 

Carla raised her eyes.  Through her tears she could see the grinning townsfolk lining the seafront, waving torches, knives and guns.  Esgrith was reading something aloud, the jubilant crowd punctuating his speech with cries of “Ia, Dagon!” and “Ia, Cthulhu!” 

As the Atlantic coaxed her the last few dozen yards to the seawall, Carla could make out the depraved priest’s words - and she found herself reciting them along with him.

And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.