Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

“While you obviously do. Explain. You ain’t going nowhere. We’re stuck here. Once that smoke gets in, we have to enter the warehouse. So talk to me. Tell me about what’s happening down at Innsmouth.”

It was a long shot, but it hit home. “You know about Innsmouth?”

“Enough.”

“Damn diseased place,” he coughed. “Zeitsheim is one of its progeny. There are other enclaves in Europe. He’s on his way back from there. We have to get to him before he gets back to Innsmouth. It’s too far for even one of his kind to swim.”

“So the FBI wants him alive?”

“Yeah. Your employers are his own kind. They don’t want us to get hold of him. Not outside Innsmouth. Down there, he’d be safe enough. They have ways of protecting the community you wouldn’t believe. On his own, here, he’s vulnerable. So rather than let him fall into our hands, they want him dead.”

“Incinerated,” I corrected.

“What?”

“Incinerated. If Zeitsheim burns like that paper zombie out there, there’ll be no more than a small pile of ash to interrogate. That was my job. What I was paid to do, anyhow. Which is why, I assume, you guys wanted to remove me. And why a friend of mine ended up bleeding to death on the sidewalk.”

The Fed grimaced, but I won’t say it was remorse. “You seemed determined not to take a hint.”

“So, what did you mean when you said that Zeitsheim sent that thing?”

“You won’t believe it—”

“After what I saw out there, at least try me.”

“Not all of his kind want him dead. Others want to help get him back to Innsmouth. Whatever transpired in Europe, they want to know about it. So they send him help when he calls for it. Did you notice the wind? How freakish it was?”

“Sure.” The wind that had sculpted the garbage man.

“Does the name Ithaqua mean anything to you? Or the Wendigo?”

I nodded at the latter. “Indian spirit.” I was combing my mental files for a reference. “Walker on the winds.” Ah, illumination, of a sort.

“That’s it, Mr. Stone,” the Fed grunted. “The winds. But it was around long before the Indians called it the Wendigo. Zeitsheim and his kind call it Ithaqua. They worship it and other very strange gods. Gods that have been around longer than the solar system.”

“They wouldn’t be gods otherwise,” I said flippantly.

“Doesn’t pay to laugh at them.”

“No. I wasn’t laughing when that thing came at me. So you’re telling me that Zeitsheim summoned the wind—the wind-walker? And it moulded the garbage thing?” But I’d seen it, goddam it. It had happened right in front of me. That was no illusion. For the moment I was going to have to go along with all this bullshit.

The Fed started coughing and I noticed the air getting thick. The damn smoke was seeping in fast. We had to get up into the warehouse. I dragged the Fed to his feet, pulled his gun out of my pocket and stuck it into his left hand.

“You may need this. But forget about taking me out of the equation, pal. Next time I shoot at you, it’ll be here.” And I tapped him lightly between the eyes. He knew I wasn’t kidding.

We made our way up the stairs. The stairwell was filling with smoke now. I guessed the fire outside had really got going. Maybe the whole block would end up in flames. Well, it’s what my employers wanted, assuming Zeitsheim ended up on the pyre. We went through some doors onto a floor of the warehouse.

My night vision isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t have seen anything if it hadn’t been for the fire below in the alley. Waving red light danced on the walls opposite, so that we could see around us. The place was lit in dull, wavering orange, the deserted spaces like an alien landscape. Which was appropriate, I guess.

“How do you know Zeitsheim is still here?” I said softly.

The Fed leaned on one of the iron columns. “We’ve got all the exits covered. Cellars are shut down. He can’t walk through walls.”

“Sewers? Seems to me if a guy stinks like he does, a little excrement isn’t going to make a lot of difference.”

“He couldn’t get into the system. Sealed a while ago for safety.”

I nodded. “He knows you’re after him and he knows his mock suicide didn’t work. How did he do that, by the way? The word is, he was dead. Down at the morgue, they do know a dead body when they see one.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh, but I do. One more impossibility isn’t going to spoil my day.”

“All right. Can’t do any harm to tell you. No one would believe you. He’s not human. Not completely. None of them are in that damn seaport. They spend most of their lives in the sea, god damn it. The sea!”

A momentary reflection came to me, something I’d read in the papers I’d been researching. “Isn’t there some kind of reef?”

“Devil’s Reef? Yeah, you’ve been doing your homework, Mr. Stone.”

“Your mob torpedoed it some seventy-five-odd years ago. I guess they didn’t finish the job.”