Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

“I thought we had time, that the calling that cannot be ignored would never come, but it is too late. Others have hastened it, and the water calls to us even as they call to it. I can’t stand against it, Isaac. The change is come.”

“David—” Kapenda began, but the older man turned and began to move off across the field, bobbing down shoulder-deep into the water with each long stride, sweeping his arms around as though swimming.

“David!” Kapenda shouted, but the man didn’t turn. Just before he was lost to view, the water around him seemed suddenly full of movement, with things rising to the surface and looking back at him. Kapenda, scared, turned away and returned to the jeep.

* * *

“I’ve found us a boat!” said Needham when Kapenda got back. He didn’t seem bothered that Kapenda hadn’t found anything new to film.

“Your idea about the fields yesterday, about how smooth they are, it got me thinking,” Needham continued. “Now the flow’s slowing down, it’s safe to go out in a boat, not in the fields but around the houses. They got film of the barns yesterday, didn’t they? Well, we’ll go one better, we’ll get film of the houses, of Grovehill!”

Plumb was already in the boat, bobbing gently at the edge of the flood. It was a small dinghy with barely enough room for the three of them. Kapenda had to keep the camera on his shoulder as Needham steered the boat using the outboard on its back. Why had he come? Kapenda wondered.

Because, he knew, this was where he belonged, recording. Whatever David had meant, whatever this flood and the ones that had come before it were, someone had to catch them, pin them to history. Here, in this drowned and drowning world, he had to be the eyes of everyone who came after him.

Needham piloted the boat away from the centre of Grovehill, down winding lanes among houses that were underwater to their eaves. They went slowly—here and there, cars floated past them, and the tops of signs and traffic lights emerged from the flood like the stems of water plants. Kapenda filmed a few short sequences as they drifted, with Plumb making up meaningless but portentous-sounding phrases. Mostly, the imagery did the talking. At one point, they docked against a road emerging from the water that rose up to a hill upon which a cluster of houses sat, relatively safe. Kapenda focused in, hoping for footage of their occupants, but no one moved. Had they been evacuated already?

Several minutes later, they found themselves drifting over a playing field, the ghostly lines of football pitches just visible through the still, surprisingly clear water. While Plumb and Needham argued a script point, Kapenda had an idea—he fixed the water-cover to the lens of the camera and then held it over the side of the boat and into the water. The surprising clarity would hopefully allow him to obtain good images of the submerged world, eerie and silent. Leaning back and getting as comfortable as he could, Kapenda held the camera so that it filmed what was below while he listened as the talent and the director argued.

“Hey!” a voice called, perhaps twenty minutes later. It was distorted, the voice, coming from a loudhailer. Kapenda looked up. Bouncing across the surface towards them was one of the rescue boats, a policeman in its bow waving at them.

“Oh fuck,” said Needham.

“What?” asked Plumb.

“I didn’t actually ask permission to come out here,” said Needham.

“Shit!” said Plumb. “We’ll be fucking arrested!”

“We won’t. Isaac, have you got enough footage?”

“Yes.”

“Then we play innocent. Plumb, charm them if you can.”

“You have to go back!” the policeman called. Needham raised an arm at him and as the launch pulled alongside them, the talent began to do his stuff.

* * *

By the time they sorted out the police, with many mea culpas from Needham and much oleaginous smiling from Plumb, it was late. The water had continued to rise, its surface now only a few feet down the hill from the pub’s door. Plumb made a joke about being able to use the boat to get back to it, but it was almost true and none of them laughed.

Inside, most of the crews were quiet and there was little of the talking and boasting and arguing that Kapenda would have expected. There were less of them as well; some had already left, retreating north to the dry or hunting for other stories. In Middlesbrough and Cumbria, rivers were bursting their banks and Kapenda watched footage on the news of flooded farmland and towns losing their footing to water. In one tracking shot, he was sure he saw something behind the local talent, a tiny figure hanging in a tree, spinning lazily on a chain as the water rose to meet it.

Back in his room, Kapenda started to view the film he had taken that day. The first shots were good, nice framings of Plumb in the prow of their dinghy with Grovehill, drowned, over his shoulder. He edited the shots together and then sent them to Needham, who would work on voiceovers with Plumb.

Then he came to the underwater footage.