Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

The men obeyed me instantly, lowering themselves quickly through the hatch. Closing it swiftly, O’Brien stared at me in the dim light, an incredulous expression on his bluff features.

“What in the name of all that’s holy are those things?”

Before I could reply, there came a clamorous hammering on the hull. It sounded as though there were hundreds of them battering against the tough steel.

Moments later, we heard the Commander’s voice giving the order to dive. Hanging on grimly to keep my balance, I experienced a sudden chill as we began to descend. With an effort, I made my way forward.

Here, I found Commander Lowrie at the periscope. He turned and listened grimly as I briefly explained what had happened and what we had seen. Strangely, he didn’t appear as surprised as I had expected when I described those creatures, which were now attacking the submarine. It was almost as if he had anticipated something of the kind.

“I’ve read my orders,” he said harshly. “Clearly there’s some truth in the odd tales which have come out of Innsmouth over the years. Some of them speak of hybrid creatures spawned in the town during the last century and others of the Deep Ones, denizens of some city on the sea bottom. Seems they can exist both on land and in the water.”

“Surely that’s not possible,” I said.

“I’m just going by what I’ve been told. Obviously there’s something out here that defies common sense. But until I find out otherwise, I have to accept these stories, no matter how weird they may seem.”

“What are our orders?” I asked. The battering against the hull had now diminished appreciably. “Most of those creatures seem to have dispersed now we’re going down.”

“We’re to remain at a depth of eighty feet and head west, skirting that reef and head into open water. Then we go down as far as we can and, depending on what we find there, I’ll have to make a decision regarding firing the torpedoes we have on board.”

“Then you reckon there may be something down there which has to be destroyed?”

“Maybe.” He paused, then added as an afterthought, “I’ve been in the Navy for nearly thirty years and I’ve seen some strange things in that time, believe me.”

He motioned towards the search periscope, which, unlike the normal one, had a wide angle of vision. “We have a very powerful searchlight mounted forward on the hull. Hopefully, we’ll be able to use this periscope to see something of what’s down there.”

“You won’t have much latitude,” I remarked.

“No, but in the circumstances, it’s the best we can do.”

Levelling off at eighty feet, we edged slowly ocean-ward, skirting the reef to the south.

“We have a hydrophone operator on board,” Lowrie explained, “and he’s listening out for obstacles since we don’t know accurately how far that reef extends below the surface.”

Twenty minutes later, we had safely navigated the southern edge of the reef and were soon in deeper water. Now, the submarine angled more steeply downward and Commander Lowrie remained at the search periscope, using it for the first time underwater in an attempt to pick out anything visible in the beam from the searchlight.

In this manner, we proceeded to within thirty feet of the ocean floor, then assumed a more even keel. Motioning me forward, he indicated I could take a look at the scene outside. At first, even with my eye pressed hard against the lens, I could see very little. The searchlight beam, powerful as it was, scarcely penetrated more than ten feet into the inky black water. Then something suddenly flashed across my field of view. I caught only the barest glimpse of it before it vanished, but that had been sufficient to recognise one of those creatures we had spotted on the surface.

It was followed, an instant later, by another and this time I almost cried out at the sight. Whatever it was, I doubted if that creature could ever have been human. It seemed octopoid in outline with tentacles rather than two arms, yet the rest of the body was almost like that of a man!

Beside me, I heard the Commander issue a terse order. The next moment, we began to descend once more and now, through the periscope, I was able to discern the sea-bed some thirty feet below. It sloped gradually downward but two minutes later a black, almost straight line of utter darkness appeared directly in front of us, stretching away in an unbroken line in both directions.

I recognised immediately what it was; the dark abyss at the edge of the shallows around Devil Reef, a fathomless chasm the depth of which we did not know.

Sucking in a deep breath, I relinquished the periscope to the commander and heard his muttered exclamation as he, too, saw it.

“How far down is it possible for us to go without cracking the hull?” I asked.

“Certainly not more than three hundred feet,” he replied. “More than that I wouldn’t like to attempt.”

“That’s still a good distance above the bottom if the reports about the depth of this area are accurate.”