“He’s coming to, doctor,” claimed the pregnant nurse. “He’ll need more pain antidote soon.”
“Prepare the injection, please, Lucy.”
The voice had arrived out of view, but next, I was not surprised to see a lab-coated Dr. Anstruther step up to the surgery bed. “It’s best not to struggle, Mr. Garret, and far better to accept your new fate. Discard any yearnings of your former life. You’ll get by much better, I assure you.” He took a hypodermic from the nurse and eventually emptied it into an isolated vein. “The morphine sulphate is quite effective, and it will be administered regularly until no longer necessary—only a matter of days, really.” With forceps, then, he removed the cotton from Garret’s mouth. “And, as you’ve already deduced, I’ve extracted all of your teeth.”
Garret’s wasted expression turned to the doctor. “Whuh-whuh… why?”
“In time, you’ll come to understand. Oh, and I’m happy to relate that I’ve examined your semen under the microscope and found an impressively high sperm-count and excellent motility. You’re a preeminent candidate for sirehood.”
Garret just stared, as if into an unreckonable cosmic gulf.
Anstruther turned to the nurse while jotting something on a board. “Lucy, the gentleman in Bed Number Two has unfortunately expired. He’ll need to be disposed of, along with Mr. Garret’s limbs.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“In a few days you’ll be feeling much better,” the doctor re-addressed Garret. “And like Lucy has already said, for some time to come, you’ll be enjoying the company of many, many woman, most of whom are possessed of some considerable desirability. Such is the lot of a Sire, Mr. Garret. Do yourself a service and maintain the proper mental perspective. For so long as you remain virile you will remain alive, and in your quiet times, I’d advise you to solicit whatever god you may believe in.”
The surgery-shocked and now toothless William Garret blabbered, “Look what you’ve done to me! Yuh-yuh-you’re a monster!”
Anstruther smiled sedately. “No, Mr. Garret. You’re fortunate in that you will never have to see the real monsters…”
When I forced my eye away from that Tartarean hole in the wall, I felt like a 100-year-old man. I staggered wide-eyed back the way I came, to the climb-way, where I had every intention of ascending back up to my room, securing my personal effects, and leaving this God-forsaken place posthaste. But when I got to the aperture which housed the ladder—
My heart slammed in my chest.
I heard footsteps. Climbing up.
Trying to cut the intruder off and make it up to my room undetected possessed no probability at all. A subconscious directive, instead, took me back across the near lightless channel, to its opposite end, where I guessed—or prayed—that there might be an identical climb-way. Please, Lord, I beseeched in a mental groan.
Either my prayer had been answered or simple luck was with me, for, yes, there was another climb-way. I stepped in, grabbed the rungs, but before I could proceed upward—
“You, there,” a voice called from the other end.
I didn’t turn to look but instead tried to hide within the climbing-way’s murk.
“Who is that? Nowry? Peters?”
I did not waste mental time considering why the male voice might be calling the name of a dead man, but it would be easy to suppose Nowry had other clan in town. Instead, I made my move. I did not climb up, I climbed down, for to return upstairs might sever any chance of escape. A similar hidden passage paralleled the first floor; I knew I needn’t bother examining any of the peeping-holes here. But there must be a way out, and I’ve got to find it!
No door, though, or any other passage, became visible in the light of my pocket-flash…
Then I heard the footsteps coming down the ladder I’d just quitted.
To the passageway’s opposite end I hastened, for where else could I go? I reasoned there had to exist some exterior access to these hidden crannies. For instance, how had my current pursuer gained the climbing-ways?
A door! I prayed. There must be a door!
But when I’d made this opposite end, I found no door; meanwhile, the footsteps echoed more loudly.
It was the sole of my shoe that found it: not a standing door, nor access panel, but a hinged plate-metal hatch. I opened it in relief but then gasped as my flash-lamp revealed details of the ungainly egression—a climb-way of ancient brick, fitted with a slime-coated iron ladder, leading straight down. It was with the staunchest resolve that I lowered myself down into its methanous depths, closed the hatch above me, and descended. My position forced a procession in total darkness; I half-expected at any moment to be lowering myself into an open sewer and the stercoraceous smells and matter that companioned them, but when my feet settled on solidity, I relighted my flash-lamp to find myself in still another passageway. My panic had skewed my bearings but an instinct told me the brick lined access proceeded north and south. For a reason unbeknownst to me, I took the southward way.
Flash in the lead, I walked for at least one hundred yards in the ill-smelling murk. I knew now, however, that this passage was not an out-of-service sewer line; no signs were extant of the expected residuum. It’s a tunnel, I knew then, and as surely as if the words had been spoken aloud, Zalen’s words seemed to echo in my head: And my grandfather wasn’t lying when he told Lovecraft about the network of tunnels under the old waterfront…
I needn’t define the extent of the chill that moved caterpillar-like up my spine. And of the hellish scene I’d witnessed back at the hotel, I could only assume that virile men with suitably favorable looks were being forced to inseminate local women, whose newborns were then sold to some illicit adoptive initiative. Why, though, was I more perturbed by what Zalen had told me, especially his cryptic final monologue: In the story, what happened to outsiders who did too much nosing around?
Now, it seemed, the most dreadful of circumstances had transposed my very self into Lovecraft’s fictitious Robert Olmstead, the out-of-towner hellbent to escape the horrors of Innsmouth.
I could go to Zalen now, tonight, it came to me, if I could only find the exit to this blasted catacomb…
Minutes later, fate or God handed me said exit as a gift.
The tunnel emptied me near a rock jetty along the harbor’s edge. A spectacular, frost-white moon hung behind intermittent clouds; the water in the harbor sat still as glass. Gazing out over the twilit port, beneath the violet night, proved a supernal sight, but all else I’d witnessed was anything but supernal. More phantasmal than anything else, or more iniquitous. The very-normal appearing harbor, after closer scrutiny, was flecked by arcane maws. Mouths of rock-hidden grottos, and tunnel-exits exuding strange smells. No human instinct could prevent me from entering of such a maw…
More lichen and niter-crusted catacombs awaited me, several branching off from the main. I had to harness my sharpest sense of awareness, lest I easily be lost here. The leftmost tine in the fork was the one I chose. I kept my footing sure, only turning on the flash in brief increments in order to conserve its batteries. I didn’t have to proceed far before the most hideous death-stench assailed me; a handkerchief to my face barely stifled its sickening noxiousness. Eventually, the tunnel emptied into vast cavern, the first glimpse of which nearly caused me to shriek and flee.
But how could I? I had to find out what this was…