Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

I felt myself, in that sickly incapable way one has in nightmares, try to turn and run as his bloodshot eyes found me, but he was upon me within one stride. I could smell the high, ammoniac reek of his breath, feel the chill of his body assault me like hammering waves at a weather-beaten shoreline. I knew his name, though it made my brain bleed from every aperture to think it, let alone say it, if indeed I had the tongue for such a conglomeration of alien sounds.

Uhogguath. Uhogguath.

It sounded like the kind of wet, stertorous breathing a predator does when it is head-deep in carrion. His hand closed around me. I felt his fingers squeeze the life from my lungs. Red filled my vision. I felt the grind of bones as he pulverised my body, felt the furnace of his lungs as they churned carious breath around the target of my head.

When I woke up, my nails having dug into the palms hard enough to draw blood, the name was so much air hissing from between my teeth and I could barely remember it, only that my speaking of it in the dream had caused the oceans to yawn open to their beds, where pregnant things struggled and palpated and razored each other with claws, foul and black like something found rotting at the bottom of a fruit bowl. Things that were not for the sane to alight upon.

The wind was howling once more at the edges of the room and, had I not been reassured that the rock and the living quarters were almost one and the same, I would have believed that the weather could tear open the face of the cliff and deliver me to this churning sea where its bedevilled, unnatural population would devour me in a trice.

IV

THE DISAGREEABLE MATTER OF THE HARE • FISH AND CHIPS •

AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT • THE CORNER OF MY EYE

After a shower, and a modest breakfast—a handful of nuts mixed with Greek yoghurt and honey—I felt emboldened enough to share the dream with my fellow guests. Penny blanched somewhat when I told her about the realisation that the fistful of carrot-tops was nothing of the sort.

“I think that’s easily the most dreadful thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

“Oh come,” protested her husband. “There are worse things every night on the news. This is a dream, a confection of the brain, that’s all.” I could see that he was unhappy with me. I hadn’t thought this through, convinced only that it would make for an amusing anecdote. All it had done was upset Penny, position Alastair against me as a result, and remind me of the whole sordid evening. Ralph was the only one who seemed impressed by my narrative.

“I found this on the beach,” I said, rooting in my pocket, desperate to claw back some vestige of respect. I held up the stone like a trophy. “Pretty little thing, isn’t it?”

And it was, even more so in daylight. The stone had been washed smooth by countless millennia of tidal movement, the hole perhaps created by centuries of focused boring by a channel of water when it had become trapped in one position. Penny was suitably impressed, and I felt the mood change for the better.

She took the stone from me—I felt a sudden pang of resentment at that—and cooed over the striations in the stone, the little glints and glimmers of silica or quartz. I found my resentment deepen when she started to lecture me about what it was called.

“An adder stone,” she said, “or a hag stone. They’re meant to possess magical properties. Some would have it that they’re made from the hardened saliva of a nest of dragons or serpents, the hole made by the stabbing of their tongues. They work like charms, warding off curses or disease. And if you look through the hole, you can detect traps, or see the true identity of witches or other supernatural creatures.”

“Thank you for that lesson,” I said, somewhat tartly, and extended my hand. Penny returned the stone and I slipped it into my pocket. “There are others, I’m sure, if you do a little hunting.” I felt awkward now that the stone was back in my possession, as if I’d humiliated a child. There remained a stiltedness in the atmosphere that would not be relieved.

I decided to do the honourable thing and retreat for a few hours. The wind was stiff still, but not quite so savage as it had been first thing and anyway, its bark, especially in the exposed knuckle of the Soldier’s Quarters, was much worse than its bite. The clouds were torn to shreds by it, allowing a bright, wintry sun to have some say in the matter.

I decided to unlock one of the guest bicycles and take a ride to Bray beach via the coastal road. If I found a windbreak, I could warm up over the newspaper for an hour or two before a spot of lunch.

The romantic notion I had of myself pedalling gaily along a picturesque coastline was swiftly banished once I found myself travelling against the wind. I was breathing heavily by the time I reached the end of the causeway, and I stopped to button my jacket closed in a bid to lessen its drag quotient.