Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

“Reverend, look!” Jennifer cried, turning to point to the river. “Something’s happening here!”

But it wasn’t happening any more. Evidently the Reverend’s yell had put a stop to it, the way a rock dropped into a pool would scatter a school of minnows. The oversized insects or whatever they were had fled, and the only sounds now to be heard were the normal ones made by any stream travelling over a rocky bed.

With the moonlight showing them where to put their feet, the three of them walked on down the gorge to the first of the other cabins. Smaller than the one they were using, it was built up against the cliff wall with a flight of steps leading up to a short veranda. They climbed the steps and the Reverend knocked politely on the door, but there was no response. Keith looked at his watch. The Reverend knocked again, louder, and Keith said with a frown, “They can’t be in bed; it’s only quarter to eight.” Then he walked along the veranda and peered in through a window.

So far as he could see, no one was home. “Maybe they’re at some other cabin,” he said. “Most likely all the folks who use these cabins of Lindsay’s are friends. Maybe they get together in the evenings.”

The Reverend said he thought that was probably so, and the three of them went on down the gorge to the second house, but no one answered his knock there, either. At the third, which appeared to be the last, they were truly surprised when they found no one at home.

“They’ve got to be here somewhere,” the Reverend said. “You heard what Howard Lindsay said: he checked in town before we came, and some of his factory people are out here this weekend.”

“You suppose they all got together and went someplace for dinner?” Keith wondered aloud.

Jennifer shook her head. “That wouldn’t make any sense. I mean, why would they come here for a weekend in the wilderness and then go somewhere to eat? There are no restaurants around here.”

“Well, like Keith says, they’re probably together somewhere,” the Reverend said. “We’ll just have to try again in the morning.”

It had been a long walk and they were weary by the time they got back to Howard Lindsay’s cabin. The others—Lindsay, Big Mary and the boy—were seated there in front of the fireplace. Reverend Beckford told about the empty cabins. Then Jennifer spoke of what she and Keith had heard and seen before he joined them.

“Noises? Shadow-things?” Howard Lindsay said with a scowl.

“You sure you didn’t just get carried away by your imagination? This gorge can be pretty spooky at night if you’re new here.”

“We heard what we heard,” Jennifer insisted. “We saw things that weren’t natural.”

“Maybe he’s here!” said young Davey Sewell.

“Maybe who’s here?” his mother said. “What are you talking about?”

“Satan. What if he came because we prayed to Jesus to fight him again? He and Jesus fought in the Bible, didn’t they?” The boy’s face glowed with excitement. “Maybe he wants a rematch!”

“Now, now,” Lindsay said, “what you two heard was just the different sounds the river makes at night. I’ve heard them many a time.” He lifted a big tumbler of water from the floor beside his chair and looked through it at the logs blazing in the fireplace. “I don’t care if our river wants to screech like an owl or wail like a banshee,” he said with a grin. “This is the best damn drinking water—begging your pardon, Reverend—in the whole of creation. I never can get enough of it when I’m here.” He aimed his grin at Big Mary and Jennifer. “You women and your bottled stuff!” he snorted. “I bet if you was to have both kinds tested, you’d find that what I’m drinking is a whole sight better!”

Big Mary heaved herself up from her chair and said, “Well, you go right ahead and drink all you want of it, Deacon, but I’m dead beat and going to bed. Goodnight, all of you.”

“If that goes for the rest of you, I believe I’ll turn in, too,” Reverend Beckford said, making it a question by hiking his eyebrows up.

They said it did, and the evening was finished.

* * *

Those bunk-beds in Howard Lindsay’s cabin were not the most comfortable in the world. When Keith opened his eyes and saw by the moonlight in the room that the Reverend and Howard Lindsay were still asleep, he thought his aching back must have been what waked him. Then he heard a noise outside the window next to his bunk. Someone was out there walking around, it seemed.

Puzzled, he got up and stepped to the window and looked out.

With the moon directly overhead, Deeprock Gorge was almost as bright as day, except the light was sort of unreal. What was out there was even more unreal, though. Keith grabbed hold of the window ledge and felt his eyes bulging in their sockets.

“Lord Jesus!” he heard himself whisper—and he was not a church-going man.