Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

Jamieson watched him in his binoculars, that tired shambler on the shore: his slow lurching, feet flip-flopping, shoulders sloping, head down and collar up. And despite that the weather was much improved, he no longer went out to sea. Oh, he looked at the sea— constantly pausing to lift his ugly head and gaze out across that wide wet horizon—gaze longingly, the old man thought, as he attempted to read something of emotion into the near-distant visage—but the youth’s great former ability in the water, and his untried but suspected strength on dry land, these seemed absent now. Plainly put, he was in decline.

The old man had heard rumours in the village pub. The fishing was much improved but Tom Foster wasn’t doing as well as in previous years; he’d lost his good luck charm, the backward boy who guided his boat to the best fishing grounds. At least, that was how they saw it, the other fishermen, but it was Tom Foster himself who had told the old man the truth of it one evening in the Sailor’s Rest.

“It’s the boy,” he said, concernedly. “Um’s not umself. Um says the sea lures um, and um’s afeared of it. Oh, um walks the shore and watches all the whitecaps, the seahorses come rollin’ in, but um ain’t about ter go aridin’ on em. I dun’t know what um means, but um keeps complainin’ as how um ‘ain’t ready’, and doubts um ever will be, but if um ‘goes now’ it’ll be the end of um. Lord only knows where um’s thinkin’ of goin’! And truth is, um sickens. So while I knows um’d come out with me if I was ter ask um, I won’t fer um’s sake. The only good thing: um lies in the bath a lot, keeps umself well soaked in fresh water so um’s skin dun’t suffer much and there be no more of them fish-lice.”

And the leathery old seaman had shrugged—though in no way negligently—as he finished his pint, and then his ruminations with the words, “No more sea swimmin’, no more fish-lice—it’s as simple as that. But as fer the rest of it... I worries about um, that I do.”

“Answer me one question,” the old man had begged of Foster then. “Tell me, why did you take him in? You had no obligation in that respect. I mean, it wasn’t as if the youth—the child—was of your blood. He was a foundling, and there were, well, complications right from the start.”

Foster had nodded. “It were my woman, the missus, who took ter um. Her great-granny had told of just such young ’uns when um were a little ’un out in the islands. And Ma Foster felt fer um, um did. Me too, ’ventually, seein’ as how we’ve had um all this time. But we always knew who um’s dad were. No big secret that, fer um were here plain ter see. Gone now, though, but um did used ter pay um’s share.”

“George White gave you money?”

“Fer Geoff’s upkeep, yes.” Foster had readily admitted it. “That’s a fact. The poor bugger were sellin’ off bits of precious stuff—jewell’ry and such—in all the towns around. Fer the lad, true enough, but also fer um’s own pleasure... or so I’ve heard it said. But that’s none of my business...”

Then there was poor Jilly White. She, too—her health—was very obviously in decline. Her nightmares were of constant concern, having grown repetitive and increasingly weird to the point of grotesque. Also, her speech and mobility were suffering badly; she stuttered, often repeated herself, occasionally fell while negotiating the most simple routines both in and out of doors. Indeed, she had become something of a prisoner in her own home; she only rarely ventured down onto the beach, to sit with her daughter in the weak but welcome spring sunshine.

As to her dreams:

It had been a long-drawn-out process, but Jamieson had been patient; he had managed to extract something of the nightmarish contents of Jilly’s dreams from the lady herself, the rest from Anne during the return journey from a language lesson trip into St. Austell. Unsurprisingly, all of the worst dreams were centred upon George White, Jilly’s ex-husband; not on his suicide, as might at least in some part be expected, but on his disease: its progression and acceleration toward the end.

In particular she dreamed of frogs or the batrachia in general, and of fish... but not as creatures of Nature. The horror of these visitations was that they were completely alien, gross mutations or hybrids of man and monster. And the man was George White, his human face and something of his form transposed upon those of the amphibia and fishes alike—and all too often upon beings who had the physical components of both genera and more! In short, Jilly dreamed of Deep Ones, where George was a member of that aquatic society!