The Nightmare Garden

11 Journey to the Sea

THE NOR’EASTER INN was as deserted as the rest of Innsmouth, at least from the outside. All of the residents seemed to fear the Proctors as much as the farmers we’d rescued did. I nudged open the front door with my foot and peered around the jamb to the inside while trying to keep the sun behind me. Backlit, I could get a look at the interior of the tavern before anyone inside got a look at me.

I gazed back at the street once more. A few Proctors moved in groups, Draven’s new needle pistols at the ready. One of them met my eyes and quickly looked away as he passed on the other side of the street without a second glance. No Proctor would touch me now; that much was clear. Not while I was marked as Draven’s agent.

The weight of the compass in my bag increased, or I imagined it did. The complicated clockwork within was driving my Weird crazy, like the tickle of a feather on my skin.

I was going to find a way to defy him, of course. There was no possibility of doing as he asked, allying myself with the Proctors. Draven might think he owned me by threatening to hurt Dean and my family, but hadn’t Tremaine threatened the same thing? I’d obeyed him out of what I thought was a lack of choice, and the results had been horrific. This time I had to fight. Had to be the girl my father told me I was—strong and smart. A Grayson, not a scared child.

Besides, Draven hadn’t discerned my entire mission in finding the Brotherhood. They were welcome to slug it out, but I had one goal in going north, and that was to find the nightmare clock. And once I did, the clock, if it worked, would set things right.

That was the promise I made to myself as I turned back and edged into the Nor’easter, letting the shadows dip across my face. It was oddly quiet and, as far as I could tell, empty. Dust motes were suspended in the gray midwinter light streaming through the broken windows. They cast jagged kaleidoscopic patterns on the dirty floor and showed just how shabby the place was.

“Hello?” I called.

Nobody answered me. I wandered a circuit of the small room, glass crunching under my shoes. The Nor’easter was beyond shabby, but that gave me a little hope. A place this run-down wasn’t likely to be harboring the law-abiding types who’d take one look at me and scream for a Proctor.

I determined that nobody was around, then pushed into the back room. Somebody screamed, and I raised my hands reflexively, until I realized it was the farmer’s daughter I’d seen at the barn.

“Great Old Ones return,” she hissed. “You do have a habit of popping up on people, don’t you?”

“Why are you here?” I said, shocked. The girl had changed from her nightclothes, but her face was still bruised and swollen. She gestured to her apron and the broom she held. “Proctors or not, if I don’t show up to work, I get fired. We can’t afford that in my house.”

“You seem all right,” I offered hesitantly.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks to you.” She stuck out her hand, awkwardly, and I shook it, just as awkwardly. “I’m Maggie,” she said. “Maggie Fisher.”

“You seem to already know who I am,” I said.

Maggie blushed. “I’m sorry about that stuff I said. I weren’t thinking. You did save me from the Proctors.”

“Forget it,” I said. I would have done the same in her position. I didn’t hold it against her. “Your mom all right?”

Maggie’s face fell. “She’s in and out, but the doc said she’d be okay. Might be in bed for a few weeks.”

“I’m sorry to ask you this now,” I said. “But do you know a woman named Rasputina Ivanova? Apparently she comes in here a lot.”

“Sure.” Maggie snuffled. “She’s always with this group of shady Russians. Hate ’em. They never tip.” She pointed back to the main room, to a round table in the corner. “She sits there and never talks, least not to decent types.”

I took a breath. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m just going to be frank. They smuggle people out of Innsmouth, don’t they?” I couldn’t exactly hop aboard a commercial steamer bound north, not with the sort of place I was heading for. And I didn’t want to run into any more Proctors if I could help it. My encounter with Draven had been more than enough.

Maggie stared at me, and I could see the struggle taking place behind her eyes.

“Do they pay you to point desperate people in their direction?” I lowered my voice, drawing closer, hoping to impress on her how serious I was. “I’m desperate, Maggie. Desperate as they come. I know you don’t trust me, but the sooner you point me in the right direction, the sooner I’ll be out of your village.”

One hand crept up to touch the bruises on her face, and Maggie flinched. “The submersible comes up out past the jetty, eleven-thirty or so on nights with a new moon. Tonight, I don’t know. So many Proctors out there … but there’ll be desperate folks too. There always are, and Captain Blood out there never turns down a quick buck.”

“I thought her name was Ivanova.” I shouldered my bag and prepared to go find a place to lie low until midnight.

“Yeah, it is,” Maggie said. “But we all call her after that old pirate story, because that’s exactly what she is. A bloody pirate.”

I looked out at the angry ocean, past the jetty to the clanging buoy that signaled the start of deep water. “Terrific,” I said. More pirates. More people out for my blood. Just what I needed.

Maggie told me how when the sky was dark, the submersible would creep into shallow water, past the jetty, and signal those hiding beneath the pier. Sometimes they sent a boat, but I doubted they would with the Dire Raven crouched over Innsmouth like an ill omen.

I spent the time as the sun set in the back room of the Nor’easter, where Maggie had agreed I could stay. I found an old vulcanized raincoat and turned it into a rubber sack for my journal, the compass and anything else vulnerable to seawater. I sealed it with a little glue and wrapped it tightly with rope, shoving it back into my satchel.

The hours as the clock crept toward midnight were agonizing. Nobody came into the pub, and Maggie paced restlessly, sweeping up broken glass, washing dishes and mopping the floor, chores to occupy a restless mind. In times past I had done math to keep my thoughts quiet, but I couldn’t focus that much tonight.

At last, the nautical clock chimed the quarter-hour, and I shrugged into my jacket and picked up my things. I couldn’t miss the sub.

“Hey,” Maggie said as I pushed open the door to the main room. “Be careful.” I stuck my head out the front door and checked the deserted street. “Those Russians on the sub ain’t exactly friendly.”

“I think it’s a little late for careful,” I told her. “But thanks all the same.”

The temperature had dropped from merely chilly to agonizingly cold, sea wind cutting across my bare cheeks like animal claws. I snuggled into my jacket and walked down to the end of the dock, scanning the dark-capped waves for any sign of life.

Nothing stirred except the wash of the waves against the dock, and as my chronometer crept past midnight, I began to lose hope. They have to come, I thought; even though I didn’t relish the journey, it was the only way I was getting north. The only way I could get far enough from Draven to figure out how I was going to outsmart him.

Heights didn’t bother me, but I didn’t like water. It was black, and cold, and the rocking made me feel as if I’d lost my grip on both the earth and gravity. I couldn’t think about that now, though. I could only think about the nightmare clock, the one thing that could help me.

The clanging of the buoy reached my ears again, and clouds scudded above my head. Lit only by faintest starlight, they were black hulking things, like the creatures that strove endlessly through the hundred skies above the black figure’s dome in my dreams.

Just then, far off in the shipping channel, I saw a single blue spot glow, slowly joined by others as something long and sleek slid from the depths. It bobbed to the top of the water with a knocking groan, the sound of rivets and