Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

They were good shots, the focus correct and imagery startling. The water was clear but full of debris—paper and clothing and unidentifiable things floated past the lens as it passed over cars still parked in driveways, gardens in which plants waved, houses around which fishes swam. At one point the corpse of a cow bounced languidly along the centre of a street, lifting and falling as the gentle current carried it on. The dead animal’s eyes were gone, leaving torn holes where they used to be, and one of its legs ended in a ragged stump. It remained in the centre of the shot for several minutes, keeping pace with the boat above, and then it was gone as they shifted direction. Kapenda’s last view of it was its hind legs, trailing behind as it jolted slowly out of sight.

They were in a garden.

At first, he thought it was a joke. Someone had set four figures around a picnic table, seated in plastic chairs, some kind of weird garden ornamentation, and then one of the figures moved and Kapenda realised that, whatever they were, they were real.

Three were dark, the fourth paler, all squat and fat and bald. One of them held a hunk of grey meat in its hand, was taking bites from it with a mouth that was wide and lipless. Their eyes, as far as Kapenda could tell, were entirely black, bulging from the side of their heads. All four were scaly, their backs ridged. As Kapenda watched, one of the figures reached out and caught something floating past and its hand was webbed, the fingers thick and ending in savage, curved claws.

As the figures moved off the side of the screen, the palest looked up. Thick folds of skin in its neck rippled, gill-slits opening and closing. Its mouth was wide, open to reveal gums that were bleeding, raw from tiny, newly-emerging triangular teeth. It nodded, as though in greeting, and raised a webbed hand to the camera.

One of its eyes was a dead, milky white.

Kapenda turned off the camera and went to stand by the window. He took the little figure from his pocket, turning it, feeling its depth-worn smoothness as the chain moved through his fingers.

He watched as figures swam through the ever-advancing water below him, never quite breaking the surface, forming intricate patterns of ripple and wave. Rice had called the thing from the hedge an idol. Was it simple peasant magic? No, this was nothing simple, nothing innocent. The idol looked nothing like the figures in the flood, was something harsh and alien. What had David said? That it was the thing that came after?

What was coming?

The rain fell, and the water rose to eat the Earth.

RISING, NOT DREAMING

by ANGELA SLATTER

“PLAY,” THEY SAID, and I did, plucking at a harp made of bone and sinew.

“Sing,” they said, and I did, weaving words with water and making my listeners weep. I drew from their depths, from souls no one suspected, the dreams that might make them slumber. I surrounded them with lullabies to send gods to sleep, to keep them below and render them harmless to all that breathed above.

Too many had been the ages of pain and death, too long had the Great Old Ones reigned. Enough, said my masters, enough. Too long had the dreams of men been troubled with the ructions of the star lords. Too often did they rise at whim from their undersea city, their R’lyeth, to walk the earth and bring darkness with them.

They wondered, my masters, how to keep the beasts beneath the waves. They thought music perhaps would lull them, that in the magic of sound there might somehow be salvation. But who to play—who could play—such a tune? A competition was held to judge the best musician, the most enthralling player, the finest singer-seducer. They promised immortality, my masters, that no one would forget the winner’s playing—for that one there would always be an audience. They gambled, quite correctly, upon an artist’s pride and arrogance.

And I won. Gods help me, I won. I was tasked to sit upon a high mountain by the sea, to play there and let the waves of my music swell and flow, to crash against the walking monstrosities, to enchant them, to lead them like stupid children into the deep, back to their sunken city.

The spells my masters had set around me meant I would not, could not drown, that the water would be to me as the air had been. That my life would not wear out, that I would forever keep them under my thrall, my hideous listeners, eternally asleep. I did not pay attention, though, not carefully enough. Only once I’d been trapped did I replay the words in my head and realise what I’d agreed to do.

Eternally asleep as long as I continued to play.

I think of the wife I had, sweet and tender.

I think of her belly swelling, rich and round.

I think of how I told her it would be all right. That I would return, my masters would reward me and we would never want for anything ever again.