There was no morality in all this, no good or evil, right or wrong. These things were. They are and shall be.
Other such notions I had left behind, discarded with my humanity.
That’s the story. Uncle’s in the treetops. So am I. He and his fellows worship me now, because I went so much farther than even they ever did. I am like a god to them.
Joram is not here. Zenas is not here. Neither are Elder Abraham or Brother Azrael, though they can sense my presence, and we converse.
I returned to Earth, to Chorazin in the Pennsylvania hills, because the time and the seasons and the motions of the stars decreed. I fell backwards through millions of years. But I did not arrive precisely back at the point from which I’d departed.
I manifested myself to my old friend Jerry, who was a grown man now, though he looked pretty much the same, long-limbed and smooth-skinned and always covered with mud. I don’t know if he was exactly glad to see me, but I don’t think he was afraid.
The Elder and the Brother had not changed at all. They do not.
I can’t actually touch the earth. I can’t come down. You will have to come to me if you want to know more. Climb.
Down into Silence
Storm Constantine
Sometimes, places are more beautiful in decay, no matter how elegant and grand they might have been in their prime. Gone the straight lines of walls and roofs, gone the smooth roadways, the tidy gardens. The mellow light of October gilds the ancient stone, the defiant spires still standing. The sun falls down the cloud-flecked sky, robed in the colours of harvest. The palette of Fall roars against the dark hills, the trees still clothed in finery, hanging on, perhaps, for the ball, the festivaclass="underline" All Hallows’ Eve. Gazing upon such a scene, you cannot help but feel melancholy, grieving for a world you never knew, but which you know is lost forever and cannot truly be restored or replicated, even as a theme park. That lost world was somehow greater than what has come to replace it.
There are few hidden places now, few uncovered secrets—anywhere. We know the secrets of Innsmouth, or what the alleged witnesses told us were true so long ago. Nearly a hundred years has passed. The way the town draws her skirts around the truth is clever; those who did witness, if they did, lost a degree of sanity, could never be thought of as entirely reliable again. Maybe none of it was true. The surviving records sound like witch trials to me, more imagination than fact.
And yet, standing here on the bridge over the tumbling River Manuxet, gazing out to sea, I wonder. The fact is, I want it to be true, all of it.
I went to Innsmouth to capture the spirit of the town in pictures—this is my hobby, not my job. I visit places of ill or unusual reputation and post the results of my captures on a blog. Halloween seemed an appropriate time of year to visit this allegedly blighted spot. So—I’m on holiday, shooting the memory of monsters, but not with a gun.
I’ve already begun to compose the text that will accompany my pictures. I think the old stories are based on fact but have been exaggerated over the years. The only person who revealed the “truth” was Zadok Allen in the 1920s, and he was hardly a reliable source, being an aged and raddled alcoholic. Robert Olmstead, who collected and revealed Allen’s ramblings, proved to be equally unreliable. Claiming to be a “descendent” of the famed Marsh family, he ended his life in an asylum. Records state that a tumour on the brain altered his behaviour and made him prey to delusions. Most historians interested in the town believe Allen and Olmstead concocted the most outrageous of the stories between them. Allen, immersed in inebriated fantasies fuelled by paranoia and plain lunacy, found in Olmstead an eager and gullible listener, who egged him on, drawing ever more dubious tales from the old drunk.
When I first arrived in town, like everyone I suppose, I began hunting for the “Innsmouth Look” in the faces of the inhabitants—traces of a batrachian ancestry, beasts from the sea and their hybrid offspring. But it soon became clear that the majority of the modern population came from somewhere else. There is plenty of work here now. Innsmouth is up there with Salem and Arkham as a tourist destination. There’s a huge welcome sign on the main road in, sporting a cheerful fish man waving at new arrivals with webbed hands, claiming “Welcome to the Darkest Corner of New England”. I forced myself not to buy a luridly-green, batrachian plushie thing from the gift shop I passed, even though I could imagine the toy sitting on my work station and how well it would go with my other fetishes. But regardless of the kitsch appeal, I felt it was more of an abomination than anything that might have happened here in the past. Yet despite the gift shop and the welcome sign, the place is still recognisable as the town that fell to ruin early in the twentieth century. The famous old landmarks remain, even if a couple more cafés have been added to the main square. The Gilman House Hotel, the largest hostelry in town, has been renovated to a state of shabby chic—it’s now fit to house guests. Those who run Innsmouth must be aware that the greater part of the town’s allure—and therefore their livelihoods—derives from what it was and that must not be obliterated.
Of course, I had to stay at The Gilman House. Even though other guest houses in the area had interesting names, Obed’s Rest, Sumatry and Eliza Orne’s Cottage, I doubted the people who worked in them were natives to the area.
I registered in the lobby, which was hung with plaited ropes of dwarf corn cobs dyed different shades of red, orange and gold. Before the desk was a pile of plump pumpkins carved into grimacing faces.
When I entered my room, it smelled of spiced soup and candy, undoubtedly courtesy of a seasonally-themed air freshener.
Now, I gaze out of the window. Innsmouth is quite beautiful in the light of the fading day. I wish, though, I was closer to the sea. I’ll eat dinner in the hotel, and afterwards will take my initial steps into the town, without baggage; the true start of my exploration. I prefer to absorb the atmosphere of a place, attune to it with my senses, before capturing its soul through my camera. Sniper shots on my phone, however, are allowed.
The Gilman House lies on the Town Square and my first pictures are taken from my window. There’s a fountain in the middle of the square now, with wooden benches around it. Children are playing there. Immense stone fishes with mad eyes vomit water into the wide, sea-shell bowl.
The old families of Innsmouth were supposed to have died out or been killed, but over the years off-shoots of these lines have appeared from other, often distant places. Perhaps they are charlatans, but they have reclaimed their ancestral homes with the blessing of the town council. They too are now part of the tourist industry, even if their eyes don’t bulge, and they have discernible chins, the necks beneath disappointingly lacking gills.
According to Olmstead, when he visited this town, he eventually had to escape it, pursued by monstrous inhabitants. I suppose he could have been driven out of town, but surely only because the community was closed, undoubtedly inbred, and resented outsiders poking about. It’s likely many of them had been deformed because of their heritage. Maybe the legendary sea captain Obed Marsh did bring strange ideas back with him from his voyages to Polynesia. But had the inhabitants of Innsmouth bred with fish people? Much as the idea is appealing for someone who loves mystery and strangeness, I don’t think so. I accept it’s possible they worshipped gods of the sea and believed the agents of those gods were fishlike beings that could come onto the land. The Esoteric Order of Dagon, whose temple still stands, was undoubtedly an offshoot of Freemasonry that embraced the new religion Marsh brought to the town. The people believed in it and their town—particularly their fishing—flourished; the power of suggestion is a powerful thing. Believe something hard enough and you can make it true.