Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

And Anne White told of how her mother mumbled and gibbered, gasping her horror of “great wet eyes that wouldn’t or couldn’t close”; or “scales as sharp and rough as a file”; or “the flaps in George’s neck, going right through to the inside and pulsing like... like gills when he snorted or choked in his sleep!” But these things with regard to her mother’s nightmares weren’t all that Anne had spoken of on the occasion of that revealing drive home from her language lesson. For she had also been perfectly open in telling Jamieson:

“I know you saw me at my window that time when you brought her pills and spoke to my mother at length, the night you told her about Innsmouth. I heard you start to talk, got out of bed, and sat listening at the head of the stairs. I was as quiet as could be and must have heard almost everything you said.”

And Jamieson had nodded. “Things she probably wouldn’t have spoken of if she’d known you were awake? Did it... bother you, our conversation?”

“Perhaps a little... but no, not really,” she had answered. “I know more than my mother gives me credit for. But about what you told her, in connection with my father and what she dreamed about him, well, there is something I’d like to know—without that you need to repeat it to her.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You said that you’d seen those sick Innsmouth people, ‘in every stage of degeneration’. And I wondered...”

“...You wondered just what those stages were?” The old man had prompted her, and then gone on: “Well, there are stages and there are states. It usually depends on how they start out. The taint might occur from birth, or it might come much later. Some scarcely develop the Innsmouth look at all... while others are born with it.”

“Like Geoff?”

“Like him, yes.” Again Jamieson nodded. “It rather depends on the strength of the Innsmouth blood in the parents... or in at least one of them, obviously. Or in the ancestral blood line in general.”

And then, out of the blue and without any hesitation, she’d said, “I know that Geoff is my half-brother. It’s why my mother let’s us be friends. She feels guilty for my father’s sake—in his place, I mean. And so she thinks of Geoff as ‘family’. Well, of a sort.”

“And you? How do you think of him?”

“As my brother, do you mean?” She had offered an indecisive shake of her head. “I’m not really sure. In a way, I suppose. I don’t find him horrible, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, of course not, and neither do I!” The old man had been quick to answer. “As a doctor, I’ve grown used to accepting too many abnormalities in people to be repulsed by any of them.”

“Abnormalities?” Anne had cocked her head a little, favouring Jamieson with a curious, perhaps challenging look. And:

“Differences, then,” he had told her.

And after a moment’s silence she’d said, “Go on, then. Tell me about them: these states or stages.”

“There are those born with the look, as I’ve mentioned,” he had answered, “and those who gradually develop it, some of whom stay mostly, well, normal-looking. There are plenty of those in Innsmouth right now. Also, there is always a handful who retain their, er, agreeable—their acceptably, well, human—features for a great many years, changing only towards the end, when the metamorphosis occurs very rapidly indeed. At the hospital where I worked, some of the geneticists—Innsmouth people themselves—were trying to alter certain genes in their patients; if not to kill off the process entirely, at least to prolong the human looks of those who were likely to suffer the change.”

“‘Human-looking’, and ‘metamorphosis’, and ‘geneticists’, Anne had nodded, thoughtfully. “But with those words—and the way you explained it—it doesn’t sound so much a disease as a, well, a ‘metamorphosis’, yes; and that is your own word! Like a pupa into a butterfly, or rather a tadpole into a frog. Except, instead of a tadpole...”

But there she’d frowned, broken off and sat back musing in her seat. “It’s all very puzzling, but I think the answers are coming and that I’m beginning to understand.” Then, sitting up straight again until she strained against her safety belt, she had said. “But look— we’re almost home!” And urgently turning to stare at Jamieson’s profile: “We’re through the village and there are still some things I wanted to ask—just one or two more, that’s all.”

At which the old man had slowed down, allowing her time to speak, and prompting her, “Go on then, ask away.”

“This cult of Dagon,” she had said then. “This religion or ‘Esoteric Order’ in Innsmouth—does it still exist? I mean, do they still worship? And if so, what if someone with the look or the blood—what if he doesn’t want to be one of them—what if he reneges and... and runs away? My mother asked you much the same question, I know. But you didn’t quite answer her.”