Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

With that he turned and left us, jamming his sombrero down on his head as he did so. Despite this faintly ludicrous gesture we were both stunned—I might almost say impressed—by his speech. For nearly a minute we stood there silent, motionless. Though, objectively, I have nothing but contempt for Cutbirth, I had been made aware of a certain power in him, or about him.

The Dean finally broke the silence: “Come, Dr. Vilier. Let me show you the library where you will be conducting your researches.”

“What was that about the House of Dagon?”

“Oh, just his usual nonsense,” said the Dean irritably. Then he paused, hesitating whether to confide in me. At last he said: “Felix Cutbirth is by way of being an artist. I had the misfortune to see some of his paintings at an exhibition in Morchester not so long ago. They are vile things, vile… But not without accomplishment. He studied at the Slade in London, I believe. While there, he became involved with something called the Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society. You remember: Yeats, Crowley, Machen, Mathers—?” I nodded. “Well, after a while he became dissatisfied with them and broke away to found his own little magical sect called the Order of Dagon. I am happy to say it failed miserably. On his return to Morchester, Cutbirth tried to set up the Order here. He had a temple for a while at the back of a Turkish Restaurant in Morchester High Street, but neither the temple nor the restaurant prospered. He still has a few devotees among the credulous of this city, but they may be counted on the fingers of one hand. That is all we need to know about Mr. Cutbirth!”

And with that we proceeded to the library.

SEPTEMBER 13TH

This is my second day in the library and I have made some progress. There is surprisingly little information to be had on the well other than the rather surprising fact that it has not been used as such since the early twelfth century. A date of 1107 or 1108 is usually given for the closing of the well, but no explanation is given. I presume that it became contaminated in some way, but I could not understand why the whole structure was not destroyed.

Today, however, I have made a discovery. Of course the real story will, I suspect, remain hidden, but at least we have the legend. Legends are revealing in their own way.

One of the oldest volumes in the library is a kind of scrapbook, an untidy binding together of all sorts of early manuscripts to do with the Cathedral. Most of these are deeds and charters and inventories, not very interesting, but towards the end of the book I found what I recognised as a very early—perhaps even the original—manuscript of William of Morchester’s Gesta Anselmi.

In the 1160s Archbishop Thomas Becket was, no doubt for his own political purposes, pressing the Pope to make a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm (1033–1109) a saint. To this end he commissioned William of Morchester to write a life of Anselm, praising him and listing all his miracles: a hagiography in other words. This William called the Gesta Anselmi or “The Deeds of Anselm”.

It is a typical work of the period, with very little of historical value in it. It deals in the kind of absurd legends and miracles that the Medievals loved: Anselm restores sight to a blind man; he revives a dead child; a barren woman prays at the tomb of Anselm and soon finds herself with child, and so on. I had seen copies of it before, but this manuscript seemed fuller and older than the others.

Towards the end of the MS I came across a passage that I had certainly never previously encountered. Several lines had been drawn through it, as if the scribe had deemed it unsuitable for further publication, but I was able to read it quite easily. It began:

Anselmus cum in Priorium Benedictinum Morcastri advenerat monachos valde perturbatos de puteo suo vidit…

When Anselm came to the Benedictine Priory at Morchester he saw the monks in much distress on account of their well. For they had built their cloister around an ancient well which had been there for many centuries and where in time past many foul and blasphemous ceremonies had been enacted to worship the ancient Gods and Demons of the Pagans. For, it was said, in the depths of this ancient well were many caverns and paths beneath the earth which connected with sea caverns on the southern shores. [In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the sea was much closer to Morchester than it is now.] And it was said that these demons came out of the sea and through the caverns to the well where they had been worshipped as gods in former times.