The Innswich Horror (6 page)

Before I could object, the door opened, and
out stepped a timid and very naked woman in her twenties. One hand
covered her bare pubis; her other arm attempted to cover two very
swollen breasts. What she couldn’t cover at all, however, was the
belly stretched out tight and huge from a state of pregnancy that
had to be close to the end of its term. Obliquely, I made out a
radio tune from the other room, “Heaven Can Wait,” I believe, by
Glen Gray.

The girl smiled crookedly at me through a
gap in the hair falling over her face. “Hi. We-we could have a nice
time together, sir…”

More of the real world I
didn’t care for at all. By now I’d managed the shock of this
horrendous miscalculation, and produced a frown of my own which I
directed immediately to Zalen. “I gave you the money so you needn’t
feel your valuable time is
wasted
. I’m not interested in
prostitution nor pornography.”

Zalen chuckled. “Come on,
Mr. Morley. You ever had your tallywhacker in a
pregnant
girl? Bet’cha
haven’t.”

“You’re a profane vagabond!” I yelled at
him.

“—and it’s not like you can knock her
up.”

I wished that looks could
kill at that moment, for my look of utter loathing would surely
have shorn him in half. “I’m interested in a
particular
photograph I’m told
you’re in possession of, and if this is the case, I’ll pay you one
hundred more dollars for it.”

Zalen looked agape at my
words, then flicked a hand at the girl, to shoo her back into the
bedroom. “A
hundred dollars,
you say?”

“One hundred dollars.” Now I noticed what
first appeared to be splotches of pepper inside the man’s elbows
but my naivety wore off in a moment and told me they were needle
scars. “My patience is growing thin, Mr. Zalen. Do you or do you
not have a photograph of a writer by the name of Howard Phillips
Lovecraft?”

For the first time Zalen actually smiled.
The couch creaked when he sat down and crossed his thin, white
legs. “I remember him, all right. Had a voice like a kazoo, and all
the guy ever ate were ginger snaps.” He jumped up quickly, and
slipped something from the bookcase. He showed it to me behind his
gap-toothed smile.

It was a copy of the
Visionary Publications edition of
The
Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I removed mine from my jacket pocket and
showed him likewise.

“I didn’t think anybody
even
read
that
guy, but I’ll tell you, after this came out, a
lot
of folks did, and they weren’t
too happy with what he had to say about our town. Most of Olmstead
back then was moved down to Innswich Point, so the guy changes the
name to
Innsmouth.
Christ. Changed all the names but only a little, you know?
Like he
wanted
us
to know what he was really writing about.”

“For God’s sake, Mr. Zalen,” I countered.
“He merely used his topical impressions of this town as a setting
for a fantasy story. You’re practically accusing him of libel. All
writers do things like that.” I cleared my throat. “Now. Do you
have the photograph?”

“Yeah, I got it, but only the negative. I
can have it developed for you tomorrow.” His smile turned
slatternly. “But I’ll take the hundred up front.”

I am not a man given to
confrontation or brusqueness, but this I would not stand for.
“You’ll take
five
dollars for processing fees, and the remaining ninety-five
when I have what I want,” I told him and thrust him another
five.

He took it all too eagerly. “Deal. Tomorrow,
say four.” His eyes turned to cunning slits. “Who told you I had
the picture?”

“A friend of mine,” I snapped. “A woman
named Mary Simpson—”

An abruptitude pushed him
back in his seat; he nearly howled. “Oh, now I get it! She’s
a
friend
of
yours, huh? I guess you’re not the goodie-two-shoes I pegged you
as.”

I winced at the remark. “What on earth do
you mean?”

“Mary Simpson used to be
the town slut. Now, this town was
full
of sluts but Mary took the
cake. She was a
whore
, Mr. Morley, a whore of the first water, as my grandfather
used to say.”

“You’re lying,” I replied with immediacy.
“You’re merely trying to incense me because you’re resentful of
people with means. I see your frowsy smile, Mr. Zalen, but I’ve a
mind to wipe it right off your face by canceling any further
business with you and seeing my way out of this den of drugs and
iniquity you call your home.”

“But you won’t do
that,
Mr.
Morley,
because guys like you always get what they want. You’ll be back
tomorrow, and you’ll have the rest of the money. You just don’t
want to know the truth.”

“And what truth is that?”

“Not too many years ago? Mary Simpson was
the top dog dockside whore in all of Innswich. Christ, she’s had,
like, eight or ten trick babies, man. She made a lot of money for
me.”

Now it was my turn to smile at the bombast.
“I’m supposed to believe you’re her panderer? Er, what do they call
them now? Pimps?”

“Not is, was. About five years ago the bitch
got all high-falutin’ on me.”

“I still don’t believe you. She enlightened
me of her plight, regarding her husband who abandoned her.
Certainly, the man was of less repute even than you.”

“Husband, Jesus.” He shook
his head with the same grin. “If you believe that, you probably
believed that
War of the Worlds
broadcast last October.”

Of course, I hadn’t
believed a word of it; I’d read the book! But for what Zalen was
inferring now?
It’s just more of his
loser’s game,
I knew. “And now I suppose
you’re going to tell me she was a drug addict, like
you.”

“Naw, she never rode the horse, she was just
crazy for cock.” He raised a brow. “Well, cock and money.”

“And this I’m supposed to take on the
authority of a drug addict who would stoop so low as to sell
pictures of innocent young pregnant women to degenerates.”

“There are a lot of
‘degenerates’ in the world, Morley. Supply and
demand—
there’s
what your capitalism’s caused.” He looked directly at me.
“You’d be surprised how many sick fellas there are out there who
like to look at pregnant girls.”

“And you’re the purveyor—to support your
narcotics habit, no doubt,” I snapped. “Without the supply, there
becomes no demand, and then morality returns. But this will never
happen as long as predators such as yourself remain in business.
You sell desperation, Mr. Zalen, via the exploitation of the
subjugated and the poverty-stricken.”

This seemed to ruffle a
feather or two. “Hey, you’re just a rich pud, and you got no right
to make judgments about people you don’t know. Not everybody’s got
it easy like you do. The government’s building
battleships
for this new Naval
Expansion Act while half the country’s starving,
Mr.
Morley, and while
ten million people got no jobs. Redistribution of wealth is the
only moral answer. What an apathetic military industrial complex
forces me, or the girl in the back room, or Mary, or
anyone else
to do to
survive is nothing
you
have the right comment on.”

An unwavering sorrow
touched me with the self-admission that, on this particular point,
he was correct. Perhaps that’s why his truth urged me to despise
him all the more. Though obviously a proponent of Marx and Ingles,
Zalen had quite accurately labeled me.
A
rich pud.
I didn’t bother to point out my
many acts of philanthropy; I’m sure an alienist in this day and age
would diagnose my acts of charity as merely attempts to alleviate
guilt. Eventually I replied, “I apologize for any such judgments,
but for nothing else. Even if what you accuse Mary of is true, I
could hardly blame her, for reasons you’ve already stated. I
believe that she and millions of other downtrodden… and even
you,
Mr. Zalen, are
essentially victims of an invidious environment.”

“Oh, you’re a real treat!” he laughed.

I knew I must not let him circumvent me, for
that would only refresh my despair, in which case he would win.
“I’m here for business regarding my pastime. Let us stick to that.
I’ll also pay—say, five dollars apiece—for any quality photographs
of this Innswich Point that you may have taken before the
government renewal effort.”

His insolent grin
returned, and that cocksure slouch. “You
sure
that’s all you want, Mr.
Morley?”

“Quite,” I asserted.

“But, why? Back then, all of Olmstead,
especially the Point, was a slum district.”

“Though I’d never expect you to understand,
I’ve an interest in seeing the town as Lovecraft saw it, when it
sparked the creative conception for his masterpiece.”

“So that’s your
hobby,
huh?” he
mocked.

“Yes, and one, I’d say, quite harmless when
compared to yours.”

He laughed. “Don’t
knock
my
hobby,
Mr. Morley. You know, pretty soon I’ll have to take a bang.” He
slapped the inside of an elbow. “You should stick around to watch.
It’d do someone like you good to see something like that, to look
real hard right into the face of the only salvation that capitalism
and all its hypocrisy leaves the poor.”

“Stop blaming your weakness on the American
economic program,” I scoffed at him.

“And this book—” He held
up
Innsmouth
again. “Pretty damn stupid if you ask me.”

“The likes of you would probably say the
same of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ Mr. Zalen.”

He clapped in amusement.
“Now you’re talkin’! Coleridge was a junkie too! But
Lovecraft’s
Innsmouth
tripe? He got the town all wrong.”

“It wasn’t about
the
town,
” I
nearly yelled back. “It was an intricate and very socially
symbolic
fantasy.
”

“And he should’ve at least done a better job
changing peoples’ names.”

I sat up more alertly.
“Why do you say that? I thought it mostly the names of
places
he
altered.”

“No, no, damn near
everyone in town he insulted with all that. Remember the bus driver
from the story, Joe Sargent? The real man’s name was Joe
Major,
for God’s sake.
And the town founders, the Larshes, he changed to the Marshes. And
then there’s always Zadok Allen. What did Lovecraft call him? A
‘hoary tippler’?”

“Zadok Allen was the piece’s most preeminent
stock character, a 96-year-old alcoholic who knew all of
Innsmouth’s darkest secrets.”

Another grinning stare. “You’re not very
perceptive, are you? The real man’s name was Adok Zalen. Does that
last name ring any bells?”

The implication astounded me. “Zadok
Allen-Adok Zalen, and… your name, too, is Zalen.”

“Yeah, he was my grandfather. Lovecraft got
him drunk near the docks one night with some rotgut he bought at
the variety store behind the speakeasy. My grandfather died the
next day—of alcohol poisoning from the booze your hero Lovecraft
gave him.”

Could this be true? And if so, it begged the
further question: how much of Lovecraft’s invention might be the
actual invention of Adok Zalen?

“Did the world a favor, though,” Zalen
prattled on. “Christ, my grandfather was older than the hills and
not worth a shit. He was a liar and a thief, and it was time for
him to go.”

“I commend you for the respect you have for
your relatives,” I said with a thick sarcasm.

“Lovecraft was a hack.
Seabury Quinn was a
much
better writer.”

I could’ve hemorrhaged! “He was nothing of
the sort, Mr. Zalen!” My shout of objection sounded
near-hysterical, for now Zalen’s deliberate hectoring was taking
its toll. This was my literary idol, after all, and I would not
stand to hear his name and talents sullied by this denizen
pornographer. “Now do you have the pictures of the old town or do
you not?”

“I got ‘em. Wait here,” and he got up and
loped into the back room.

The nerve of
him,
 
I
thought, truly riled now. What could
he
know about quality fantasy
fiction? The more I speculated, the more I preferred to dismiss his
accusation that Lovecraft may have contributed to Adok Zalen’s
demise.
He’s simply asserting these lies
for the purpose of a negative effect.
No
different from his lies about Mary.

I nearly moaned when my stray glance showed
me a slice of the bedroom. He’d left the door open, and what I
first noticed was a large-format camera on a tripodular stand. And
then… something else…

Sitting awkwardly on an unsheeted bed was
the pregnant prostitute—Candace, I believe he’d called her. She
remained naked, and the mammarian effect of her pregnancy had
stretched her areolae to pale pink circles. The great, gravid belly
only added to the difficulty of what she was doing…