Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

He’d never been a violent man. Even his ex-wife would testify to that. But that was some other David. If the chain was broken… perhaps he didn’t have to remain consistent with that man’s behaviour. Maybe there were other ways of being that he could try. It struck him, like a bolt from the blue, that it might actually be interesting to punch a snivelling woman in the face. To knock her down and then stand over her and take his time over deciding what to do next—or what things, and in what order.

He realised with a shiver that these courses of action had always been there, running side-by-side with normal life, and it was only the restraining links to his previous ways that had stopped him trying them before.

As he lurched into the courtyard after her, he saw the girl reach the other side and go banging straight into the metal gate. During the day this gate yielded access to another alley, which let out onto the next street. Right now, however, it was padlocked.

“Huh,” he said, with a slow smile. “So now what?”

But she turned from the gate to face him, and he was confused to see she didn’t look scared of him any more.

He realised, too late, that they were not alone in the courtyard.

Sitting at the small tables, waiting, were the young man from the beach, the woman who’d told him off for smoking the day before, and the man in the blue cap, along with several others.

They didn’t look scared of David either.

* * *

Two hours later the body was delivered to the cop’s house. It was brought over by Bonnie—owner of the coffee store, also the lady who’d asked David not to smoke—and her husband, coincidentally an amateur watercolourist. The body’s legs had already been removed and were waiting in the cold store of Max’s restaurant. Bonnie would later prepare them for the long roasting procedure that would ultimately create the smoky-sweet powder that not just the restaurant and her coffee shop but every eatery in town deployed, in one way or another, according to the recipe and procedures laid down by the town’s long-ago founders.

The cop received the body without enthusiasm. He’d tried to warn the guy, and he knew for a fact the village had plenty of the powder in reserve and so this didn’t need to have happened. Nonetheless, he did his job.

He put the body in the trunk of his car and drove it an hour along the coast road. He took a turn off Highway 1 not far from the Big Sur River Inn, and drove a further ten miles down an old, forgotten road to the secluded cove where, once again according to protocol—this one dictated by the Watchers—he unwrapped the offering from the plastic sheeting and left it face down on the sandy beach.

An hour after he left, three figures emerged from the pounding surf. The Watchers were as always dressed in long black coats—or cloaks, no human had ever been close enough to establish the difference and survive—and tall, pointed hats. They consumed the parts of the body they had a taste for, primarily internal organs. The rest was left for the crabs.

The Watchers took care to savour the experience, as they knew its days were numbered. The Elders amongst them had started to indicate they were growing bored of the special relationship with Carmel, and that it might soon be time for the town and its inhabitants to meet their end. A date had not yet been set for the night when the Watchers would swarm en masse up from the sea and fall upon the village, but it would be soon.

Or so they thought.

Unbeknownst to them, the vast god which lives—and has always lived—in the frigid waters just off Big Sur was reaching the end of one of its own millennial cycles. Within a consciousness that moved slowly (and yet was capable of sudden and terrible decisions), was stirring the thought that it was almost time to rise up again and consume this portion of the coast—if not tonight, then the next day or the next. As usual, and by intention, the process would closely resemble an earthquake, one that would on this occasion not merely knock down a few houses, but leave the shape of the coastline permanently changed.

So much changed, in fact, that the new outline would displease the nameless being that spends most of its time in the shadows on the dark side of the moon. This dissatisfaction would eventually cause it to destroy the Earth entirely, erasing it in an instant to swirling dust, so it could start its creative work again on a fresh canvas.

* * *

There are always chains, in work and love, from birth to death.

What keeps us sane is not knowing our position along them.

INTO THE WATER

by SIMON KURT UNSWORTH

KAPENDA WATCHED THE water, and the water ate the Earth.