Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

“Isaac, the High Street’s finally going under, we need to go and catch it,” said Needham from somewhere behind him. Kapenda raised his free hand in acknowledgement but didn’t move. Instead, he let his eye rise, up from the new channel of brown and churning floodwater to the bank above. The house’s foundations were exposed by the water so that it now teetered precariously on the edge of a gorge. Fall, thought Kapenda, fall, please. The house didn’t fall but it would, soon, and he hoped to be here when it did.

“Isaac!” Needham again. The talent was already at the high street, waiting. The talent was like a child, got fractious and bored if it wasn’t the centre of attention; Don’t keep the talent waiting, was the motto. Don’t annoy the talent was the rule. Sighing, Kapenda finally lowered the camera and turned to go.

It had rained for months, on and off. Summer had been a washout, the skies permanently thick with cloud, the sun an infrequent visitor. On the rare occasions the clouds broke and the sun struggled through, grounds steamed but didn’t dry out. The water table saturated upwards, the ground remaining sodden until the first of the winter storms came and the rivers rose and the banks broke and the water was suddenly everywhere.

They were less than a mile from the town, but the journey still took several minutes. The roads were swollen with run-off, thick limbs of water flowing down the gutters and pushing up from the drains, washing across the camber and constantly tugging at the vehicle. Kapenda wasn’t driving but he felt it, the way they pulled across the centre line and then back as Needham compensated. It had been like this for days now all across the south of England. Kapenda leaned against the window, peering at the rain and submerged land beyond the glass.

There were figures in the field.

Even at their reduced speed, they passed the little tableau too quickly for Kapenda to see what the figures were doing, and he had to crane back around to try and keep them in view. There were four of them, and they appeared to be crouching so that only their shoulders and heads emerged from the flooded pasture. One was holding its arms to the sky. There was something off about the shape of the figures—the arms held to the clouds were too long, the heads too bulbous. Were they moving? Still? Perhaps they were one of those odd art installations you sometimes came across, like Gormley’s standing figures on Crosby beach. Kapenda had filmed a segment on them not long after they had been put in place, and watching as the tide receded to reveal a series of bronze, motionless watching figures had been quite wonderful and slightly unnerving. Had they done something similar here?

The rain thickened, and the figures were lost to its grey embrace.

The talent, a weasel of a man called Plumb whose only discernible value was a smoothly good-looking face and a reassuring yet stentorian voice, was angry with Needham and Kapenda. As Kapenda framed him in shot so that the new river flowing down Grovehill’s main street and the sandbagged shops behind it could be seen over Plumb’s shoulder, Plumb was moaning.

“We’ve missed all the dramatic stuff,” he said.

“We’ve not,” said Needham. “Just trust in Isaac, he’ll make you look good.

“It’s not about me looking good,” said Plumb, bristling, brushing the cowlick of hair that was drooping over his forehead. “It’s about the story.”

“Of course it is,” said Needham. “Now, have you got your script?”

They didn’t get the lead item on the news, but they did get the second-string item, a cut to Plumb after the main story so that he could intone his description of Grovehill’s failed flood defences. Kapenda had used the natural light to make Plumb seem larger and the water behind darker, more ominous. He was happy with the effect, especially the last tracking shot away from the talent to look up the street, lost under a caul of fast-moving flood whose surface rippled and glittered. The water looked alive, depthless and hungry, something inexorable and unknowable.

Now that, thought Kapenda, is how to tell a story, and only spotted the shape moving through the water when he was reviewing the footage a couple of hours after it had gone out. It was a dark blur just below the waves, moving against the current and it vanished after perhaps half a minute. Something tumbling through the flow, Kapenda thought, and wished it had broken the surface—it would have made a nice image to finish the film on.

* * *

Plumb had found an audience.

They were in the bar of the pub where they were staying: the tiny, cramped rooms the only place available. The flood had done the hospitality industry a world of good, Kapenda thought; every room in the area was taken with television and print reporters.

“Of course, it’s all global warming’s fault,” Plumb said.