Again I doused my light and ducked behind a flank of piled half-human corpses when a light—no, several—were discernible. But voices as well, this time, two at least; and from the chamber’s farthest cranny, the coming light enabled me to detect another rearward egress. By now I had to reason that the tunnelworks were extensive indeed. Two figures, then, one short, one taller, emerged, each bearing a candlefish torch. The sputtering, smoky flames threw cragged shadows everywhere, like a grim, kaleidoscopic nightmare.
“Gotta make it quick, son, like we’se always do,” came a roughened, accent-tinted adult voice. “Ya never know when one’a their sentinels is liable to be snoopin’ around.”
“I know, dad,” replied the obvious voice of a young boy.
“You cut out the biceps’n calves, like I taught ya, and I’ll hack out the ribs’n bellies. Let’s try’n get a whole lot in a little time, heh, son?”
“Sure, dad.”
The smoky light easily revealed these new interlopers: Onderdonk and his young son. They must have discovered a tunnel of their own that gained them access without being visible to the town proper, where they clearly were not welcome. With a considerable skill, the boy flopped several corpses off the pile and within seconds was deftly butchering the meat off their arms and legs. Meanwhile, the father, with cleavers in each hand, systematically hacked lengths of ribs off more corpses and neatly cleaved out the abdominal walls. After they’d each administered to half a dozen or so of the dead half-human, half-batrachian monstrosities, they switched. Minutes later, they’d loaded the butchered wares into burlaps sacks.
“Good job, son,” Onderdonk praised the lad. “Bet we got here more’n a week’s worth’a meat for the smoker.”
“I hope we make a lot of money, dad.”
“That’s my boy,” the adult proudly smiled and patted his son’s head. “It’s God’s way’a lookin’ after God-fearin’ folk like us, seein’ to it that these half-blooders got the taste of fish’n good pork together. What choice we got seein’ how them devil-lovin’ Olmsteaders won’t let us fish proper in their waters?”
“Yeah, dad. I’m glad God looks after us like this.”
“We’se quite fortunate, son, and can’t never forget it. Times’re tougher for so many.”
“But, dad?” The boy looked quizzical through a pause. “How come they don’t rot and get to stinkin’, you know, like in that other place?”
“It’s ‘cos them bodies in that other place is all pure-blood humans like us, but these here?” Onderdonk patted the slick greenish belly of a dead female whose face and bosom looked more toadlike, complete with warts. “All’a these here are ‘least half-full’a the fish blood, like this splittail,” and he callously cradled a wart-sheened breast. “This ‘un here is likely fourth generation along with a whole lot of ‘em—the one’s ud already turned. But even first generation, boy, is enough to keep ‘em from rotting proper, and bugs’n varmints don’t go near ‘em. It’s their fish blood, see? That’s what makes ‘em never go to rot ‘cos they cain’t die, not unless they’se kilt deliberate or by accident.”
“Oh,” the boy replied. “That’s kind’a… neat.”
“Um-hmm. Now, help me fling these leavin’s back.”
With a drooping spirit, I watched from my discreted location as the pair heaved the butchered remnants up and over the mainstay of the piles, evidently to prevent any “sentinels” from ascertaining what had been done here.
“There,” Onderdonk’s whisper echoed. “Let’s skedaddle…”
In the fluttering light, I watched them leave, sacks of pilfered meat flung over their shoulders.
But the sickness in my gut had long-since seized me: the stealings from this preternatural corpse-vault were clearly what Onderdonk passed off to unsuspecting customers as “fish-fed pork,” a small portion of which now occupied my digestive tract. When safe to do so, I staggered away, all too aware that this was not the effect of hallucinotic gasses, and after retracing several yards back through the tunnel I’d entered in, I regurgitated the entire contents of my stomach.
Back on the rocky crags where the tunnel emptied, I fell to my knees in the relief of the fresh air and the simple sight of the normal world: the moonlight, the harbor, the boat docks and waterfront buildings. The normal world, yes, I thanked God, for I knew now how thin the veil was between that normality and utter, unnameable malignity. Who knew what other aberrant atrociousness the world hid just below its surface? I sat against the rock, listening to the water lapping against pier posts and shore—part of me quite paralyzed by my witness, not just what I’d seen but what it all meant.
I let the salt air flutter against my face and fill my lungs; I knew my body and my mind needed a few moments’ rest before I could calculate the entails of my next move. I stared dumbly out into the pier-ringed inlet, watching silent boats rock gently in their slips, when my eyes found the barely noticeable rise of the sand bar…
Lovecraft’s Devil’s Reef, I mused. At least that had been pure invention. But who would believe the rest? And did I believe it?
At first I thought it must be a fleck of something in my eye but the more I stared the more convinced I became of something minuscule disturbing the late-night harbor’s stillness.
A boat, I thought.
It was merely a small rowboat, and there appeared to be but one person aboard, oaring silently into the inlet. For several moments I profaned beneath my breath when some clouds of deeper depths roved across the moon to darken the cryptic scene. It was likely only a crabber, or someone checking buoys, but I couldn’t fight the temptation that it was more than that. When the clouds moved off, I saw that the meager skiff had been rowed deliberately aground on the longest finger of the sandbar, and its one-man crew had already debarked…
He’s walking along the sandbar, I saw at once. And… what’s that he’s carrying?
Indeed, the distant figure was belabored by what seemed to be a sack that he was dragging along behind him. At that point, the veils of clouds moved fully away from the moon’s radiant face, and suddenly the entirety of the harbor glowed in crisp, ghostly white light.
Even this far off, I could now see enough. The trudging figure wore what I was very sure had to be a long, greasy black raincoat and hood…
Zalen.
His progress halted when he came to the bar’s point of greatest girth. Then he just stood there for many minutes, his head tilted down as if—
As if he’s waiting for something, it morbidly occurred to me. Waiting for something in the water…
And then, from that same water, something did indeed emerge.
A figure, yes, but one unclothed and gleaming in a bump-ridden off-green hue. It stood lanky and lean, but long-limbed and with a head almost flattened and a face angled forward to a sharp point. Even from this distant vantage point I could fully detect the hugeness of its unblinking eyes; like crystalline globes, they were, aglitter from some stolid menace beneath. Eventually two more primeval faces rose slowly from the water, to reveal their full physiques to the moon, one decidedly female for it was well-breasted and much more widely hipped than the other two, whose maleness hung bumped and long at their groins. I was grateful that the distance did not afford me any further clarity of physical details.
The first one reached forward and took the proffered sack from Zalen…
I didn’t need to be properly informed of the sack’s contents for when the thing opened it up and looked in, the tiniest sounds eddied out, tiny, yes, but all-determinant.