Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

I inched my way down the slippery stair. The light below was very poor, but something shifted in the shadows. I called him again. Then at last I saw him, though he was no more than a blur. He was on the next landing down, halfway between me and the floor!

“Zeitsheim. That you? I’m from BoBo. You can’t stay here. We gotta find you another bolt-hole until the ship for Innsmouth is ready.”

He eased out from cover. From here, he looked human enough, though I couldn’t see his face properly. I kept my gun out of sight.

“The Feds are lookin’ for you,” I told him, easing down another step. “Can’t stay here, pal. BoBo has a better place.”

He didn’t look hostile, so maybe he was buying it. But I wasn’t about to find out. The outside door opened, letting in a pale shaft of streetlight. Zeitsheim swung round and over his massive shoulder I saw a figure slide into the building only to take immediate cover in the pitch darkness behind the door.

“Don’t move up there!” barked a voice. “NYPD! I have a gun trained on you. One move and I will shoot. You hear me. I will shoot. Now, come down the stairs very slowly with your hands on your head.”

The cop edged forward and I could just make him out. He had his weapon held in both hands, trained like he said on Zeitsheim.

Impasse. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

But Zeitsheim made up my mind for me. He swung round and hauled himself up the stairs, his shape blurring for a moment as he did so. Like I said, the light was very poor, the whole place one mass of shadows. But Zeitsheim was changing. His trunk thickened, his neck disappearing. In that darkness, he was just like a single mass rising up the stairs. And he meant to burst past me. Or over me.

Down below, the cop opened fire. I was too mesmerized to turn and make a bolt for it. I took out my own gun and let the Zeitsheim-thing have it. I didn’t miss and I guess the cop’s bullets found their mark, too. At any rate, the combined force of the bullets achieved something, because the shape crashed into the steel rail at one side of the stair, snapped it clean off like it was made of balsa wood and then went tumbling out into space.

It landed with a sickening smack on the cement floor, making a sound like a huge sack of eggs bursting. I was grateful for the darkness, because the thing exploded. It’s the only word for it.

And the shafts of light from the open door picked out the details in appalling, gory splendor. Like a bathful of slime. One very big bathful.

The cop staggered back against the door, pretty shaken up, his gun hanging at his side. He hardly noticed me as I began a slow climb down.

But the fun was only just beginning. As I looked down at the widespread remains of Zeitsheim, I realized that they were moving. Rippling, to be precise. The extremities of that slick pool were beginning to flow towards the door. And gradually the whole mass started to shiver and edge forward, like fluid running off toward a drain.

The sea! That was it. This damn thing was flowing back to the water beyond the wharf outside the door, no more than a few yards away.

The cop was just gaping, rigid as stone.

“Shut the door!” I yelled. “For Chrissake, shut the door!”

It snapped him awake, but panic swept over him and he blasted away with his last couple of rounds. The bullets whanged off the floor and walls, powerless against the moving slime. But one of them clanged into a pile of oil drums that had been stacked beyond the shadows. Faintly I could hear the glug, glug of oil that had been released.

I flicked on my lighter and held it up. Sure enough, oil was leaking out over the floor, running thickly to the edge of the pool of moving slime.

I had my instructions.

I tossed the lighter floor-ward. It bounced and came to a halt in the widening oil slick. For a moment I thought nothing would happen. But the oil caught. And I had my second blaze of the night.

Without another glance, I raced down the last of the stairs. The oil had really caught now and fingers of flame were reaching out across the floor. The cop didn’t know which way to look, like a man in a dream.

Almost beside us, the slime suddenly rose up, seemingly in an attempt to reshape itself into a human form, the fire engulfing its base as though the slime were as combustible as the oil. A wild, wide mouth formed somewhere where the head was supposed to be and a dreadful hissing, an agonized shriek, emerged.

“What the—?” gasped the cop.

“Don’t ask,” I told him, gripping him by the elbow and marshalling him to the door. Behind us, Zeitsheim was swaying to and fro, his shape completely distorted now, like someone trying to break its way out of a thick cellophane shroud. But the flames just roared into it. It would be over in seconds.

I pushed the cop out on to the wharf, which was easy enough given his stupefaction, and dragged the door shut behind me. I turned round—to find myself looking into the mouths of three more guns.

“FBI,” said one of the gunmen, holding up a badge briefly.