Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

“Well, if that’s so, then what’re you doing looking for them out here?”

“That’s kind of a long story,” she said impatiently, tired of this distrustful man and the stink of gasoline, just wanting to get back on the road again if he can’t, or won’t, tell her anything useful. “I wanted to see Innsmouth Harbour, that’s all.”

“Ain’t much left to see,” he said. “When I was a kid, back in the ’50s, there was still some of the refinery standing, a few buildings left along the waterfront. My old man, he used to tell me ghost stories to keep me away from them. But someone or another tore all that shit down years ago. You take the road up to Ipswich and Plum Island, then head east, if you really wanna see for yourself.”

“Thank you,” Lacey said, and she turned the key in the switch and wrestled the stick out of park.

“Anytime at all,” the man replied. “You find anything interestin’, let me know.”

And as she pulled away from the gas station, lightning flashed bright across the northern sky, somewhere off towards Plum Island and the cold Atlantic Ocean.

3:15 P.M.

The train slips through the shadow cast by the I-84 overpass, brief ribbon of twilight from concrete and steel eclipse and then bright daylight again, and in a moment the Vermonter is pulling into the Hartford station. Lacey looks over her shoulder, trying not to look like she’s looking, to see if they’re still standing at the back of the car watching her, the priest and the oyster-haired crazy woman who gave her the envelope with the photograph and letter. And they are, one on each side of the aisle like mismatched gargoyle bookends. Ten minutes or so since she first noticed them back there, the priest with his newspaper folded and tucked beneath one arm and the oysterhaired woman staring at the floor and mumbling quietly to herself. The priest makes eye contact with Lacey and she turns away, looks quickly towards the front of the train again. A few of the passengers already on their feet, already retrieving bags and briefcases from overhead compartments, eager to be somewhere else, and the woman sitting next to Lacey asks if this is her stop.

“No,” she says. “No, I’m going on to New Haven.”

“Oh, do you have family there?” the woman asks. “Are you a student? My father went to Yale, but that was—”

“Will you watch my seat, please?” Lacey asks her and the woman frowns, but nods her head yes.

“Thanks. I won’t be long. I just need to make a phone call.”

Lacey gets up and the oyster-haired woman stops mumbling to herself and takes a hesitant step forward; the priest lays one hand on her shoulder and she halts, but glares at Lacey with her bulging eyes and holds up one palm like a crossing guard stopping traffic.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Lacey says.

“You can leave that here, too, if you like,” the woman who smells like wintergreen and mothballs says and Lacey realises that she’s still holding the box with the Innsmouth fossil.

“No. I’ll be right back,” Lacey tells her, gripping the box a little more tightly, and before the woman can say anything else, before the priest has a chance to change his mind and let the oyster-haired woman come after her, Lacey turns and pushes her way along the aisle towards the exit sign.

“Excuse me,” she says, repeated like a prayer, a hasty mantra as she squeezes past impatient, unhelpful men and women. She accidentally steps on someone’s foot and he tells her to slow the fuck down, just wait her turn, what the fuck’s wrong with her, anyway. Then she’s past the last of them and moving quickly down the steps, out of the train and standing safe on the wide and crowded platform. Glancing back at the tinted windows, she doesn’t see the priest or the crazy woman who gave her the envelope. Lacey asks a porter pulling an empty luggage rack where she can find a pay phone and he points to the Amtrak terminal.

“Right through there,” he says, “on your left, by the rest rooms.” She thanks him and walks quickly across the platform towards the doors, the wide, electric doors sliding open and closed, spitting some people out and swallowing others whole.

“Miss Morrow!” the priest shouts, his voice small above the muttering crowd. “Please, wait! You don’t understand!”

But Lacey doesn’t wait, only a few more feet to the wide terminal doors and never mind the damned pay phones, she can always call Jasper Morgan after she finds a security guard or a cop.

“Please!” the priest shouts, and the wide doors slide open again.

It ain’t me you got to be afraid of, Miss. Get that straight.