The Shadow Over Innsmouth | Page 8

in
indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most
decayed. And far out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long,
black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of
odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil Reef. As I looked, a
subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to repulsion; and
oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than the primary
impression.
We met no one on the road, but presently began to pass deserted farms
in varying stages of ruin. Then I noticed a few inhabited houses with
rags stuffed in the broken windows and shells and dead fish lying about
the littered yards. Once or twice I saw listless-looking people working
in barren gardens or digging clams on the fishy-smelling beach below,
and groups of dirty, simian-visaged children playing around
weed-grown doorsteps. Somehow these people seemed more
disquieting than the dismal buildings, for almost every one had certain
peculiarities of face and motions which I instinctively disliked without
being able to define or comprehend them. For a second I thought this
typical physique suggested some picture I had seen, perhaps in a book,
under circumstances of particular horror or melancholy; but this
pseudo-recollection passed very quickly.
As the bus reached a lower level I began to catch the steady note of a
waterfall through the unnatural stillness, The leaning, unpainted houses
grew thicker, lined both sides of the road, and displayed more urban

tendencies than did those we were leaving behind, The panorama ahead
had contracted to a street scene, and in spots I could see where a
cobblestone pavement and stretches of brick sidewalk had formerly
existed. All the houses were apparently deserted, and there were
occasional gaps where tumbledown chimneys and cellar walls told of
buildings that had collapsed. Pervading everything was the most
nauseous fishy odour imaginable.
Soon cross streets and junctions began to appear; those on the left
leading to shoreward realms of unpaved squalor and decay, while those
on the right shewed vistas of departed grandeur. So far I had seen no
people in the town, but there now came signs of a sparse habitation -
curtained windows here and there, and an occasional battered motorcar
at the curb. Pavement and sidewalks were increasingly well-defined,
and though most of the houses were quite old - wood and brick
structures of the early 1901 century - they were obviously kept fit for
habitation. At an amateur antiquarian I almost lost my olfactory disgust
and my feeling of menace and repulsion amidst this rich, unaltered
survival from the past.
But I was not to reach my destination without one very strong
impression of poignantly disagreeable quality. The bus had come to a
sort of open concourse or radial point with churches on two sides and
the bedraggled remains of a circular green in the centre, and I was
looking at a large pillared hall on the right-hand junction ahead. The
structure's once white paint was now gray and peeling and the black
and gold sign on the pediment was so faded that I could only with
difficulty make out the words "Esoteric Order of Dagon". This, then
was the former Masonic Hall now given over to a degraded cult. As I
strained to decipher this inscription my notice was distracted by the
raucous tones of a cracked bell across the street, and I quickly turned to
look out the window on my side of the coach.
The sound came from a squat stone church of manifestly later date than
most of the houses, built in a clumsy Gothic fashion and having a
disproportionately high basement with shuttered windows. Though the
hands of its clock were missing on the side I glimpsed, I knew that

those hoarse strokes were tolling the hour of eleven. Then suddenly all
thoughts of time were blotted out by an onrushing image of sharp
intensity and unaccountable horror which had seized me before I knew
what it really was. The door of the church basement was open,
revealing a rectangle of blackness inside. And as I looked, a certain
object crossed or seemed to cross that dark rectangle; burning into my
brain a momentary conception of nightmare which was all the more
maddening because analysis could not shew a single nightmarish
quality in it.
It was a living object - the first except the driver that I had seen since
entering the compact part of the town - and had I been in a steadier
mood I would have found nothing whatever of terror in it. Clearly, as I
realised a moment later, it was the pastor; clad in some peculiar
vestments doubtless introduced since the Order of Dagon had modified
the ritual of the local churches. The thing which had probably caught
my