The Innswich Horror

not need to see to know that he was attempting to masturbate with his elbow stumps.

What a tragedy, I thought.

My secret gaze retreated. Though the situation offended my outer sensibilities, I did not issue judgments, but what a sorry plight life left to so many. The poor girl, pregnant while having to work two jobs to support an invalid brother and most likely an invalid stepfather. While the poor brother himself has only… this as his only accessible mode of pleasure. The grim reality only served to reflect more of myself back into whatever sense of self-awareness I possessed. I was the indulgent, filthy rich, having never had to work in my life, while these people.

I knew that before I left this town, I would do something quite generous for this destitute family…

The alley’s exit conducted me to a crossroad, when I turned westward and followed the sign. Clean block buildings lined one side of the street, stands of dense trees lined the other. I set my quiet despair behind me, to re-attended my task.

I MUST locate this Cryus Zalen…

Sunlight sifted through high branches while from the east a gentle surf touched my ears. I wondered if Lovecraft had ever walked this particular street and so hoped that he had. I knew that I was seeing what he saw as his mind worked on the pieces of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

A crunch to my left stopped my gait. I turned, scanned the crush of trees, but saw no one where I was sure someone must be. The sound I’d heard was unmistakable: a footstep crunching down on the drought-withered detritus of the woods.

After several more paces, the crunch resounded again.

“Hello there!” I called when I saw the figure shamble through the trees. A figure, yes, adorned in a long, ruined black raincoat. “Mr. Zalen! Please! I’ve dire need to speak with you!”

The figure disappeared as quickly as if it were part of the woods. I could only wonder now just how debilitated Mr. Zalen had become via the rigors of opiate addiction and impoverishment. The latter stages of such misfortunes regularly left its victims incoherent or fully mad. Should this be the case with Zalen, my trek could well prove pointless.

A ten-minute stroll left me standing before the new fire station where several men chatted amiably while they washed and polished the grand, new pumper truck. Not half a block on, I found what could only be the poorhouse.

The single-floored length of small apartments looked pressed down by adversity, as though soullessness were as salient a feature as the compartments’ peeling paint and rag-stuffed broken window panes. From them issued the smells of urine and rotting food. An elderly man sat slumped and glassy-eyed before one dingy-doored room, to the effect that I thought he might be deceased until he shivered once, and hacked. An obese blind woman with a white cane sat just as dejected at the next unit. She looked up sightlessly when she’d no doubt heard my passing, then rose from the milk crate she used for a chair, tapped back to the doorway, and went in. The door slammed.

The end unit struck me as darker than all the rest, though the sunlight here shone evenly across the entire length of apartments. A doorless postal box revealed no occupant’s name, and I noticed a grease-stained garbage bag sitting roadside filled with stubs of burned down candles, expended flash bulbs, and empty food cans aswarm with flies. A cracked walkway led me forward until I stopped, forced to eye a curious door-knocker mounted in the beaten door’s center stile, a queer oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth or nose, no additional features.

I wrapped hesitantly with the knocker, staring uneasily at the name plaque posted just above: C. ZALEN.

3.

What the door opened to show me was more of what I expected: a thin, pallid man demonstrating every sign of physical squalor. He still wore the ruinous black raincoat, which hung open to show him shirtless, sunken- chested, slat-ribbed. Frayed trousers torn off at the knees were what he wore below the waist, as well as rotten shoes. His already sunken eyes appeared nearly non-existent by the smudge-like crescents beneath them. I made every attempt to smile and seem unfazed.

“Ah, Mr. Zalen. My name is Foster Morley. I saw you cutting home through the woods but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

The man frowned. Longish black hair had been slicked back off his brow by either tonic or, more likely, the natural oils from his scalp that had accreted from not washing often. “What do you want?” he asked in a voice that sounded more hardy than I would expect from such a dilapidated unfortunate.

“You’re the photographer, correct? The newspaper man, or have I been informed in error?”

“That was a lifetime ago, but I guess if you’ve been informed about me, you’re either police or a client… and you don’t look like police so I guess you better come in.”

So he must still have some clients for his photography business, I reckoned. Which meant he had some money coming in. He invited me inside to a living room in worse repair than the exterior: a legless couch, the sparsest furniture, and one of those large wooden cable spools on end, to serve as a table. A chemical scent in the air suggested the solutions of photo development. Before he closed and bolted the door, he peeked both ways outside, as if suspicious of something. He oddly reached behind a bookcase whose shelves dipped at their centers, and withdrew a simple folder.

“Fifty cents each, Mr. Morley,” he told me, and handed me the folder. “I can tell by the way you dress you’re not on the outs like a lot of folks these days. You want to buy, not sell.”

I couldn’t imagine what he meant but I could tell by viewing the folder’s side what it contained: a hefty stack of photographs. An instantaneous thrill made my nerves buzz at the prospect. Mary, even in her disapproval of the man, must’ve called ahead to tell him what it was I sought. I nervously took a seat, and flung open the folder…

What a horror the times have turned this world into. I could’ve gagged at the repellent images that leapt up at my eyes from the glossy surfaces of the photographs. These were neither pictures of Lovecraft nor of Olmstead in days past. It was, instead, outright pornography.

The scenes depicted in the few sheets I looked at need not be described. I can only say that the photography itself was strikingly vivid and every bit of expert.

“But the ones with the white girl making it with the colored fellas are a buck each,” he continued. He skimmed off the tattered raincoat and hung it up on a nail in the wall. “If you’re into kids, they’re two bucks each.”

I thrust the evil folder back to him. “This is… not… what I came for.”

“Oh, so you’re a seller? Well, you gotta pay me up front for the film and developer, and I get half of what I can sell ‘em for. But keep in mind, if they ain’t pretty enough, I won’t bother ‘cos I can’t sell the pictures. And the more you can talk ‘em into doing, the more I can sell ‘em for.”

Through a dazedness of incomprehension, I merely replied, “What?”

He shot me a glare sharp as a dagger. “It’s the business, man! You got a couple cute daughters and you want me to snap ‘em nude or fuckin’ guys, right?”

I stared. “No,” I croaked. “I have no children.”

“Then what do you want, Morley?” he suddenly yelled. “I need money, and you’re wasting my time! Get out of here!”

Bleary-eyed, I gave him a ten-dollar bill.

“What’s the sawbuck for?” his rant continued after snapping the bill from my fingers. “I don’t turn tricks, man! I’m no swish! You want to fuck a girl, fine, I got one here, but don’t bullshit around! You’re starting to scare the shit out of me—” and then he yelled at what was presumably the door to the bedroom.