Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

“So what are you planning to fill their dim little heads with?”

“I wouldn’t mind telling them the story of your village.”

“Few years since it’s been that.” Tom finished scrutinising the cheque and folded it twice to slip into his trousers pocket, then stared at or through his guest. “On a night like this there’d be so many fish we’d have to bring the nets in before dawn or have them snapped.”

“Nights like this make me want to swim,” Fiona said, and perhaps more relevantly “He used to like taking the boat out then.”

She ladled soup into three decidedly various bowls, and watched with Tom while Grant committed his stained spoon to the viscous milky liquid. It explained the smell in the kitchen and tasted just not too strongly of it to be palatable. “There are still fish, then,” he said, and when his hosts met this with identical small-eyed stares “Good. Good.”

“We’ve given up the fishing. We’ve come to an arrangement,” said Tom.

Grant sensed that was as much as he would say about it, presumably resenting the loss of his independence. Nobody spoke until the bowls were empty, nor indeed until Fiona had served three platefuls of flaccid whitish meat accompanied by heaps of mush, apparently potatoes and some previously green vegetable. More of the meat finished gently quivering to itself in an indistinguishable lump on a platter. Grant thought rather than hoped it might be tripe, but unless the taste of the soup had lodged in his mouth, the main course wasn’t mammalian. Having been watched throughout two rubbery mouthfuls, he felt expected to say at least “That’s good too. What is it?”

“All there is to eat round here,” Tom said in a sudden dull rage.

“Now, Tom, it’s not his fault.”

“It’s people’s like his.” Tom scowled at his dinner and then at the guest. “Want to know what you want to tell the sprats you’re supposed to be teaching?”

“I believe I do, but if you’d like—”

“About time they were told to stop using cars for a start. And if the poor deprived mites can’t live without them, tell them not to take them places they don’t need to go.”

“Saints, Tom, they’re only youngsters.”

“They’ll grow up, won’t they, if the world doesn’t conk out first.” With renewed ire he said to Grant “They need to do without their fridges and their freezers and their microwaves and whatever else is upsetting things.”

Grant felt both accused of too much urban living and uneasy about how the meat was stored. Since no refrigerator was visible, he hoped it was fresh. He fed himself mouthfuls to be done with it and dinner generally, but hadn’t completed the labour when he swallowed in order to speak. “At least you aren’t alone, then.”

“It’s in your cities people go off and leave each other,” muttered Tom.

“No, I mean you aren’t the only ones in your village. I got the idea from your friend Mr Beach you were.”

Tom looked ready to deny any friendship, but it seemed he was preparing to demand “Calling him a liar, are you?”

“I wouldn’t say a liar, just mistaken,” Grant said, nodding at the wall the cottage shared with its neighbour. His hosts merely eyed him as though they couldn’t hear the renewed sounds beyond the wall, a floundering and shuffling that brought to mind someone old or otherwise incapacitated. “Rats?” he was compelled to assume.

“We’ve seen a few of those in our time,” said Tom, continuing to regard him.

If that was meant for wit, Grant found it offered no more than the least of the children he’d had to teach. Some acoustic effect made the rat sound much larger as it scuffed along the far side of the wall before receding into the other cottage. Rather than risk stirring it or his hosts up further, Grant concentrated on downing enough of his meal to allow him to push away his plate and mime fullness. He was certainly full of a taste not altogether reminiscent of fish; he felt as though he was trying to swim through it, or it through him. When he drank a glass of the pitcher of water that had been the solitary accompaniment to the meal, he thought the taste was in there too.

Fiona cleared the plates into the sink, and that was the end of dinner. “Shall I help?” Grant had been brought up to offer.

“That’s her work.”

Since Fiona smiled indulgently at that, Grant didn’t feel entitled to disagree. “I’d better go and phone, then.”

He imagined he saw a pale shape lurch away from the window into the unspecific dimness—it must have been Fiona’s reflection as she turned to blink at him. “He said you had.”

“I ought to let my friends know I won’t be seeing them tonight.”

“They’ll know when you don’t, won’t they? We don’t want the waves carrying you off” Wiping her hands on a cloth that might have been part of someone’s discarded garment, she pulled out a drawer beside the sink. “Stay in and we’ll play a few games.”