The Innswich Horror

ssssssssssnap!

—out shot a sickly pink cord which could only suffice for its tongue. Immediately I recalled the details of my glimpse through this window earlier in the day, where the same deformed and disjointed figure that Walter referred to as his “gramps” vollied the same cord that I’d then mistaken for a whip. But now I saw that it was no whip; it was a narrow yet heavily veined tentacle, rife with minute suckers which pulsed beneath a repugnant glisten. The appalling, boneless appendage was deftly forestalled by Lovecraft’s wrist, whereupon he sliced the tentacle off with his knife.

Its pain was readily apparent as arms only vaguely human sprang up in protest. The lopsided head shuddered, the great rimmed mouth locked open in order to release a vociferation that could only have been born in hell: a whistle like a tea kettle interlaced by the slopping, wet spattery scream I’d heard a facsimile of earlier. When it tried to rise on joints that flexed backwards, Lovecraft came more definitely forward with his fileting knife…

I trotted away, unable to bear any more of this dismal execution. When the tenor and volume of the crossbreed’s scream quadrupled, I knew the grim task had been done.

With a blank mind, then, I started the rickety vehicle and pulled off. Smoke gusted and springs creaked, but now the truck was barreling down the road away from the awful house that Mary would never again have to enter.

The road south seemed the most direct shot, and its first quarter mile stood miraculously clear. Around a bend, though—

Mary and I screamed in unison.

It was a veritable barricade of monsters which occluded the pass. Fifty of them? A hundred? The logistics scarcely mattered. The sweep of our headlights compounded the sight to an utter vision of chaos: green-glistening skin pocked by brown, toadlike bumps, eyes jutting from compressed, earless heads like balls of black glass. Though they all stood upright, they showed white, runneled underbellies and legs corded with strange muscles. Dangling, horrific genitals told me they were predominantly male. Their height fluctuated between five to seven feet, though even in their upright stances, most were half-hunched over, so God knew their true height. Dare I barrel forward in an attempt to mow them down? Were I alone I may have risked this, but with Mary and her children in my charge, I knew I couldn’t.

The sight froze, maximizing the horror of what we beheld. The mass of abominations stood there, flexed on corded muscles, and as the headlamps blared, they all leaned back, tilted their heads upward, and then, as if on psychic command, their hideous rimmed mouths all opened at once and they began to shriek.

The sound caused the very woods to vibrate: a phlegmatic keening blended with the sound of a thousand men marching quickly through muck. If sound could cause physical impact, this was surely the case for the cacophony, now, made the truck visibly rock. I’m sure I was screaming myself as I threw the decrepit vehicle into reverse, but even at the top of my lungs my own utterance of fear could not be heard over the unearthly mudslide of sound which was being vaulted at us. Mary had already passed out so she did not have to see what I glimpsed in that last half-second before I could turn fully around…

With the fullbloods’ screams of objection, the tongue of each and every one of them jettisoned from their mouths. Unlike Mary’s stepfather, whose hybrid tongue was but a single pink tentacle, each of these monsters possessed a tongue comprised of at least a dozen of the same, glistening and sucker-pocked appendages. Each clump of deranged tongues seemed to twist into a single, fat pulsing column and shivered there in mid-air throughout the entirety of their vocal display. These columns of detestable flesh had to extend at least five feet.

I fully depressed the accelerator pedal when I’d managed to turn around to a northward heading. Did my eyes deceive me when I dared to take one glance in the rearward mirror? I could’ve sworn they were pursuing me now—the entire mass of the things—and some seemed to be leaping forward at bounds of twenty feet, which barely afforded the speeding vehicle any distance ahead of them. It took me a half mile, in fact, to gain any comfortable ground, but just as I’d realized this—

I screamed again and slammed on the truck’s brakes.

At least twice as many fullbloods blocked the northward way out. My God, what can I do now? When I looked over my shoulder through the truck’s former rear window, I could see the first of the southern detachment coming round the bend, bringing their vocal storm with them, but I noticed something else as well…

The can of gasoline that had been in back previously was no longer there.

Where it had gone to, I hardly had time to consider. Now, it seemed, I had no choice but to try to plow through this mass to the north. The baby was wailing now, and Walter finally roused, too, only to glimpse the horrific sight before us.

“Say your prayers, Walter,” I urged, and then the fullbloods ahead of us began to shamble forward. In less then a minute, I knew, we’d be converged upon from north and south.

As I would utter my own last prayer and plunged the accelerator in a feeble attempt to plow through the monstrous blockade, young Walter pointed left and cried out, “Mr. Morley! Who’s that man there?”

Man? my shattered faculties managed, but when I looked I saw the black- raincoated form of Lovecraft waving assertively at us. He was urging me to veer the truck left, into a narrow trail that looked barely able admit the vehicle’s width.

I saw, too, that it was he who’d taken the fuel can from the truck’s rear bed. The can hung from his hand.

When I pulled into the trail, I saw the northward mass of beasts shift into the woods themselves, as if to try to cut me off before I could drive to wherever the road would take us. Shortly thereafter the southern mass poured into the trail behind us. The sound they made caused the forest to tremor: the wet, slopping gush detailed by wave after wave of inhuman caterwauls. At this point, the forest was verminous with the shambling, bump-skinned things.

Then the woods began to shift with crackling light…

“A fire!” Walter shouted.

I could see it all too easily now as I pressed the feeble truck to the extent of its mechanical possibilities. A virtual wall of flame spread through the woods just behind the encroaching ranks, and when I looked desperately south, I saw another wall spreading. Lovecraft had obviously walked a line of petrol on either side of the trail, igniting them only when the dual masses of ichthyic creatures had proceeded deeply enough to be trapped. This month of steadfast drought had turned the forest floor and brambles to a tinder-dry state, and now it was all combusting almost simultaneously. Orange, wavering light pressed us in now, and the sound of crackling woods soon overcame the volume of the fullbloods’ wretched howls, their unearthly battle-cry quickly transposing to sounds of utter consternation. In only a minute or two our entire surroundings were aflame.

Our adversaries were trapped in the woods now by two encroaching walls of fire. The things were trapped, yes.

But so were we.

Each fire-line seemed to follow the truck’s progress. The most stifling heat surged inward, and when glancing to either side I saw mad, inhuman figures thrashing, flopping, convulsing in the ignited woods, dressed in suits of fire. The rearview showed me the narrow trail completely engulfed, with ghost-shapes of blistering things as they were incinerated alive. Just as the fire began to engulf the truck…

I could’ve swooned at the sight.

The trail disgorged us into a moon-lit clearing.

“We’re out!” Walter shouted.

“We made it,” came my own disbelieving whisper. I maintained my headway, though, for fear that some of the fullbloods must have escaped the conflagration, but when at a safe distance, I idled to a halt and looked back on the fiery scene…

Walter’s gaze joined my own. Now the fires were spreading outward, smoke pouring off treetops and billowing in the sky. The macabre, bellicose howls of hundreds of fullbloods now wound down to pathetic and periodic squeals. It was the crackling of massive flames that drowned out all else.

“What… What happened?” Mary asked, bewildered, the baby asleep at her bosom. “It looks like the entire woods are on fire.”

“They will be if we don’t get away from here now,” I realized, and back into gear the truck went, and we