The Innswich Horror (5 page)

“But it’s only five cents—”

“Keep it, please. You can buy a special
treat for your stepfather and children.”

The moment lengthened. Her eyes held on
mine. “You’re very nice, Foster,” she gushed. “Thank you…”

“Until tomorrow, then!” and I was off.

I left in a blissful rush, not only quite
taken by the cherubic and lovely girl but also by this new and
surprising kindle to my obsession.

I knew at once that I must
break the promise I’d made. Her concern was obviously exaggerated,
and I couldn’t very well deprive her brother of a photograph that
must mean a great deal to him.
The
poorhouse behind the new fire station,
I
recalled, and—there! A sign right before me read FIREHOUSE with an
arrow pointing west. A sudden uproar startled me, when several more
fish-laden trucks hauled around the cobblestoned circle, but when
they passed I noticed that the westernmost road entry was cordoned
off and closed—sewerpipe workers were digging—so I thought it best
to cut around behind the row of block buildings that housed
Baxter’s General Store, Wraxall’s Eatery, and the others. The
alleyway gave wide birth and I was pleased to find it clean, free
of garbage and its attendant stench, and absent of vermin. I was
halfway along, though, when I heard a voice so wee I thought it
must be my imagination.

I stopped, listened…

“Bugger. You did that on
purpose. I
know
you did. You want to mess things up for me.”

True, the voice was oh-so-faint but
unmistakably the voice of Mary, and when I turned I noticed a
narrow window opened just a crack.

It was not my nature at
all—please, believe me—but something connatural in my psyche
forced
my eyes to that
crack…

Time seemed to freeze when my vision fully
registered the macabre scene within. A thin, haggard man sat
troubled in a wheelchair—Paul, no doubt. Either age or despair ran
lines down his face like a wood-carver’s awl; his hair was a shaggy
tumult. But the severity of his overall physical state trivialized
the ramshackled appearance and uncleanliness.

I felt wounded appraising him…

His legs ended at the knees, leaving sleeves
of empty denim.

His arms ended at the elbows.

My God,
I thought. I’d never imagined that the accident
Mary referred to could’ve been so calamitous. My spirit was left
tamped when the thought impacted me: that this ruined twig of a man
had just over a decade ago been the energetic seventeen-year-old
“grocery youth” who’d generously prepared Lovecraft/Robert Olmstead
with a hand-drawn map of the town.

And what was now taking place was a pitiable
site, indeed.

The girth of Mary’s belly made it difficult
for her to bend over, yet bend over she did, after fiddled at
Paul’s trousers. It was clear now what his problem had been
earlier. A bucket in the corner of the office told me that’s where
he’d been struggling to when he’d flopped himself out of the chair:
for the purpose of urinating, a task not easily accomplished given
his disabilities. I could only presume that his trousers were left
perpetually open for such emergencies.

Distaste plainly stamped on her face, Mary
held a tin can betwixt the poor man’s legs, into which he now
voided his bladder.

Her wince intensified. “For goodness sake,
Paul! You go more than a horse! Hurry!”

Another full minute lapsed when finally the
void terminated and Mary aversively emptied it in the small sink.
“You just want attention anytime you know I’m getting some.”

“I do not,” he said forlornly. “I had to go
and you weren’t here.”

She sat with some effort
in a fold down chair, cradling the distended belly. “I’m doing all
of this for you and step-dad, you know. Working two jobs and
carrying another baby. I’m tired of you taking me for granted.
You’re lucky to be alive, you know, and you
wouldn’t
 
be, Paul, if it weren’t for me.”

Paul railed, elevating his stumps. “Oh,
yeah, I’m so lucky to be alive! Thanks very much!”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said in a lower
and somehow darker tone. “We could have it a lot worse. Both of
us.”

“He wanted to talk
to
me,
not
you,
” Paul objected,
spittle on his lips and tears in his eyes. “I knew Lovecraft better
than you, and just because—”

“That’s enough,” came her tempered retort,
then she rose from the chair, but before she could exit—

“Mary, wait! Please!” the invalid
implored.

“What?” she nearly growled.

“I need you to…”

“You need me to
what?
”

Now his voice degraded to a pitiful peep
“You know… With your hand…”

A hot glare raged on her face. “No! It’s
dirty and sinful! It’s disgusting!”

My brows rose high.

Paul’s forlorn whine continued. “But it’s so
hard to do it myself. I get lonely back here, and…”

“No!”

“At least-at least… can I see? I’ve got
nothing else, Mary. Please. Let me see, just for a second…”

Mary’s comely visage was now a mask of
disdain. “No! I’m your sister, for goodness sake!” then she left
the room in a whir and slammed the door.

First, the blaring sight, then, second, the
implications, left me agog at the window. Yet when my eyes fond
their way back to the unfortunate Paul, I heard my very soul
groan…

He sat now in a desperate hunch, his back to
me, his shoulders moving as his forlorn whimpers drew on. I did not
need to see to know that he was attempting to masturbate with his
elbow stumps.

What a
tragedy,
 
I
thought.

My secret gaze retreated.
Though the situation offended my outer sensibilities, I did not
issue judgments, but what a sorry plight life left to so
many.
The poor girl, pregnant while having
to work two jobs to support an invalid brother and most likely an
invalid stepfather.
While the poor brother
himself has only… this as his only accessible mode of
pleasure.
The grim reality only served to
reflect more of myself back into whatever sense of self-awareness I
possessed. I was the indulgent, filthy rich, having never had to
work in my life, while these people.

I knew that before I left this town, I would
do something quite generous for this destitute family…

The alley’s exit conducted me to a
crossroad, when I turned westward and followed the sign. Clean
block buildings lined one side of the street, stands of dense trees
lined the other. I set my quiet despair behind me, to re-attended
my task.

I MUST locate this Cryus Zalen…

Sunlight sifted through
high branches while from the east a gentle surf touched my ears. I
wondered if Lovecraft had ever walked this particular street and so
hoped that he had. I knew that I was seeing what he saw as his mind
worked on the pieces of
The Shadow Over
Innsmouth.

A crunch to my left stopped my gait. I
turned, scanned the crush of trees, but saw no one where I was sure
someone must be. The sound I’d heard was unmistakable: a footstep
crunching down on the drought-withered detritus of the woods.

After several more paces, the crunch
resounded again.

“Hello there!” I called when I saw the
figure shamble through the trees. A figure, yes, adorned in a long,
ruined black raincoat. “Mr. Zalen! Please! I’ve dire need to speak
with you!”

The figure disappeared as quickly as if it
were part of the woods. I could only wonder now just how
debilitated Mr. Zalen had become via the rigors of opiate addiction
and impoverishment. The latter stages of such misfortunes regularly
left its victims incoherent or fully mad. Should this be the case
with Zalen, my trek could well prove pointless.

A ten-minute stroll left me standing before
the new fire station where several men chatted amiably while they
washed and polished the grand, new pumper truck. Not half a block
on, I found what could only be the poorhouse.

The single-floored length of small
apartments looked pressed down by adversity, as though soullessness
were as salient a feature as the compartments’ peeling paint and
rag-stuffed broken window panes. From them issued the smells of
urine and rotting food. An elderly man sat slumped and glassy-eyed
before one dingy-doored room, to the effect that I thought he might
be deceased until he shivered once, and hacked. An obese blind
woman with a white cane sat just as dejected at the next unit. She
looked up sightlessly when she’d no doubt heard my passing, then
rose from the milk crate she used for a chair, tapped back to the
doorway, and went in. The door slammed.

The end unit struck me as darker than all
the rest, though the sunlight here shone evenly across the entire
length of apartments. A doorless postal box revealed no occupant’s
name, and I noticed a grease-stained garbage bag sitting roadside
filled with stubs of burned down candles, expended flash bulbs, and
empty food cans aswarm with flies. A cracked walkway led me forward
until I stopped, forced to eye a curious door-knocker mounted in
the beaten door’s center stile, a queer oval of tarnished bronze
depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth or
nose, no additional features.

I wrapped hesitantly with the knocker,
staring uneasily at the name plaque posted just above: C.
ZALEN.

3.

What the door opened to show me was more of
what I expected: a thin, pallid man demonstrating every sign of
physical squalor. He still wore the ruinous black raincoat, which
hung open to show him shirtless, sunken-chested, slat-ribbed.
Frayed trousers torn off at the knees were what he wore below the
waist, as well as rotten shoes. His already sunken eyes appeared
nearly non-existent by the smudge-like crescents beneath them. I
made every attempt to smile and seem unfazed.

“Ah, Mr. Zalen. My name is Foster Morley. I
saw you cutting home through the woods but I guess you didn’t hear
me.”

The man frowned. Longish black hair had been
slicked back off his brow by either tonic or, more likely, the
natural oils from his scalp that had accreted from not washing
often. “What do you want?” he asked in a voice that sounded more
hardy than I would expect from such a dilapidated unfortunate.

“You’re the photographer, correct? The
newspaper man, or have I been informed in error?”

“That was a lifetime ago,
but I guess if you’ve been
informed
about me, you’re either police or a client… and
you don’t look like police so I guess you better come
in.”

So he must still have some
clients for his photography business,
I
reckoned. Which meant he had
some
money coming in. He invited me inside to a living
room in worse repair than the exterior: a legless couch, the
sparsest furniture, and one of those large wooden cable spools on
end, to serve as a table. A chemical scent in the air suggested the
solutions of photo development. Before he closed and bolted the
door, he peeked both ways outside, as if suspicious of something.
He oddly reached
behind
a bookcase whose shelves dipped at their centers,
and withdrew a simple folder.

“Fifty cents each, Mr. Morley,” he told me,
and handed me the folder. “I can tell by the way you dress you’re
not on the outs like a lot of folks these days. You want to buy,
not sell.”

I couldn’t imagine what he meant but I could
tell by viewing the folder’s side what it contained: a hefty stack
of photographs. An instantaneous thrill made my nerves buzz at the
prospect. Mary, even in her disapproval of the man, must’ve called
ahead to tell him what it was I sought. I nervously took a seat,
and flung open the folder…

What a horror the times have turned this
world into. I could’ve gagged at the repellent images that leapt up
at my eyes from the glossy surfaces of the photographs. These were
neither pictures of Lovecraft nor of Olmstead in days past. It was,
instead, outright pornography.

The scenes depicted in the few sheets I
looked at need not be described. I can only say that the
photography itself was strikingly vivid and every bit of
expert.

“But the ones with the white girl making it
with the colored fellas are a buck each,” he continued. He skimmed
off the tattered raincoat and hung it up on a nail in the wall. “If
you’re into kids, they’re two bucks each.”

I thrust the evil folder back to him. “This
is… not… what I came for.”

“Oh, so you’re a seller? Well, you gotta pay
me up front for the film and developer, and I get half of what I
can sell ‘em for. But keep in mind, if they ain’t pretty enough, I
won’t bother ‘cos I can’t sell the pictures. And the more you can
talk ‘em into doing, the more I can sell ‘em for.”

Through a dazedness of
incomprehension, I merely replied, “
What?
”

He shot me a glare sharp as a dagger. “It’s
the business, man! You got a couple cute daughters and you want me
to snap ‘em nude or fuckin’ guys, right?”

I stared. “No,” I croaked. “I have no
children.”

“Then what do you want,
Morley?” he suddenly yelled. “I need
money,
and you’re wasting my time!
Get out of here!”

Bleary-eyed, I gave him a ten-dollar
bill.

“What’s the sawbuck for?”
his rant continued after snapping the bill from my fingers. “I
don’t turn tricks, man! I’m no swish! You want to fuck a
girl,
fine, I got one
here, but don’t bullshit around! You’re starting to scare the shit
out of me—” and then he yelled at what was presumably the door to
the bedroom. “Candace! Come out here!”