Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

“Yours are on the inside, like mine. A genetic modification which reproduced itself perfectly in you, just as in me. That’s why your father’s desertion was so disappointing to us, and one of the reasons why I had to track him down: to see how he would spawn, and if he’d spawn true. In your case he did. In Geoff’s, he didn’t.”

“My gills?” Yet again she stroked her throat, and then remembered something. “Ah! My laryngitis! When my throat hurt last December, and you examined me! Two or three aspirins a day was your advice to my mother, and I should gargle four or five times daily with a spoonful of salt dissolved in warm water.”

“You wouldn’t let anyone else see you.” The old man reminded her. “And why was that, I wonder? Why me?”

“Because I didn’t want any other doctor looking at me,” she replied. “I didn’t want anyone else examining me. Just you.”

“Kinship,” he said. “And you made the right choice. But you needn’t worry. Your gills—at present the merest of pink slits at the base of your windpipe—are as perfect as in any foetal or infant land-born Deep One. And they’ll stay that way for... oh, a long time—as long or even longer than mine have stayed that way, and will until I’m ready—when they’ll wear through. For a month or so then they’ll feel tender as their development progresses, with fleshy canals like empty veins that will carry air to your land lungs. At which time you’ll be as much at home in the sea as you are now on dry land. And that will be wonderful, my dear!”

“You want me to... to come with you? To be a... a...?”

“But you already are! There’s a certain faint but distinct odour about you, Anne. Yes, and I have it, too, and so did your half-brother. But you can dilute it with pills we’ve developed, and then dispel it utterly with a dab of special cologne.”

A much longer silence, and again she took his bare forearms in her hands, stroking down from the elbow. His skin felt quite smooth in that direction. But when she stroked upwards from the wrist...

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I am. My skin is like yours... the scales don’t show. They’re fine and pink and golden. But if I’m to come with you, what of my mother? You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with her.”

And now, finally, after all these truths, the old man must tell a lie. He must, because the truth was one she’d never accept—or rather she would—and all faith gone. But there had been no other way. And so:

“Your mother,” the old man hung his head, averted his gaze, started again. “Your mother, your own dear Jilly... I’m afraid she won’t last much longer.” That much at least was the truth.

But Anne’s hand had flown to her mouth, and so he hurriedly continued. “She has CJD, Anne—Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease—the so-called mad cow disease, at a very advanced stage.” (That was another truth, but not the whole truth.)

Anne’s mouth had fallen open. “Does she know?”

“But how can I tell her? And how can you? She may never be herself again. And if or when she were herself, she would only worry about what will become of you. And there’s no way we can tell her about... well, you know what I mean. But Anne, don’t look at me like that, for there’s nothing that can be done for her. There’s no known cure, no hospital can help her. I wanted her to have her time here, with you. And of course I’m here to help in the final stages. That specialist from St. Austell, he agrees with me.”

Finally the girl found her voice. “Then your pills were of no use to her.”

“A placebo.” Now Jamieson lied. “They were sugar pills, to give her some relief by making her think I was helping her.”

No, not so... and no help for Jilly, who would never have let her daughter go; whose daughter never would

have gone while her mother lived. And those pills filled with synthetic prions—rogue proteins indistinguishable from the human form of the insidious bovine disease, developed in a laboratory in shadowy old Innsmouth— eating away at Jilly’s brain even now, faster and faster.

Anne’s hand fell from her face. “How long?”

He shook his head. “Not long. After witnessing what happened the other day, not long at all. Days, maybe? No more than a month at best. But we shall be here, you and I. And Anne, we can make up for what she’ll miss. Your years, like mine... oh, you shall have years without number!”

“It’s true, then?” Anne looked at him, and Jamieson looked back but saw no sign of tears in her eyes, which was perfectly normal. “It’s true that we go on—that our lives go on—for a long time? But not everlasting, surely?”

He shook his head. “Not everlasting, no—though it sometimes feels that way! I often lose count of my years. But I am your ancestor, yes.”

Anne sighed and stood up. And brushing sand from her dress, she took his hand, helping him to his feet. “Shall we go and be with my mother... grandfather?”

Now his smile was broad indeed—a smile he showed only to close intimates—which displayed his small, sharp, fish-like teeth. And: