Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

Still frowning, he shook his head and slowly said, “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember that.” And then with a shrug of his narrow shoulders: “Well, so what? I don’t remember much of anything any more, only what needs to be done…”

And with one last look around he went on: “We have to get back down into the water. Just when we were drying out, eh? Be glad Green Park’s not far from here, only one stop. But it’s a hell of a junction, or used to be. It seems completely unreal, even surreal now—like some kind of weird dream—but there were three Tube lines criss-crossing Green Park in the old days. I still remember that much at least…” He gave himself a shake, and continued: “Anyway, for all that it’s close to the lake, it was bone-dry the last time I was there. Let’s hope nothing has changed. And after Green Park, at about the same distance again, then it’s Piccadilly Circus—the end of the line, as it were. The end for us, anyway.”

His comment was loaded—the last few words, definitely—but I ignored it and said, “And is that where we’ll surface?”

Again Henry’s nod. “It’ll make your skin crawl!” he said. And matching his words, he shuddered violently; which I didn’t in any way consider a consequence of his damp, clinging trousers. Then, when he’d controlled his shaking, he continued: “But yes, we’ll surface there, right up Bgg’ha’s jacksy, or as close as anyone would ever want to get to it!”

I waited until we were moving steadily forward again, in water that came up just inches short of our knees, and then said, “Henry, you say our skins will be made to crawl. But is there any special reason for that—or shouldn’t I ask?”

“You shouldn’t ask.” He shook his head.

“But I’m asking anyway.” Which was just natural curiosity on my part, I suppose. And whatever, I wanted the old man’s take on it; because we all see things, experience things, differently.

“As you will,” he said with a shrug, and went on: “Piccadilly Circus as was is lying crushed at the roots of Bgg’ha’s house. That great junction, once standing so close to the heart of a city, is now in the dark basement of the Twisted Tower, that vast heap of wreckage where he or it lords it over his minions—and over his human captives, his ‘cattle’.”

“His cattle…” I mused, because that thought or simile was still reasonably new to me. At least I had never heard it expressed that way before coming across Henry.

“As I may have told you before,” the old man said, “that’s all they are: food for Bgg’ha’s table, fodder for his stable.”

We were moving faster now, under an arched ceiling that was aglow, seemingly alive with luminous, swirling Shoggoth exhaust. And the closer we drew to Henry’s goal or target, the more voluble he was becoming.

“Do you know why I’m here?” he suddenly burst out. “I think you do—or rather, you think you do!”

Nodding, I said: “But haven’t we already decided that? It’s revenge, isn’t it? For your wife?”

“For my whole family!” he corrected me. And the catch, that half-sob, was back in his voice. “My poor wife, yes, of course—but also for my girls, my daughters! And my eldest, Janet—my God, how brave! I would never have suspected it of her, but she was braver than me. Inspiring, is how I’ve come to think of it: that my Janet was able to escape like that, and somehow managed to crawl back home again. But she did, she came home to me, and then… then she died! Not yet twenty years old, and gone like that.

“She died of horror and loathing—because of what had been done to her—but never of shame, for she had fought it all the way. And it’s mainly because… because of what Janet told me had happened to her that I’ve kept coming here. It’s why I’m here now: for Janet, yes, but also for her younger sister, Dawn, and for their mother; and for all the other females who’ve been taken—and who are still there, maybe alive even now in that Twisted Tower!”

“Still alive?” I repeated him. “You mean, maybe they’re not just fodder after all?” At which I could have bitten through my tongue as it dawned on me that it was probably very cruel of me to keep questioning him like this. But too late for that now.