Philip Hemplow - The Innsmouth Syndrome

Other files documented an impressive history of shoplifting, vandalism and truancy on the part of the foursome. Breaking windows, shouting in the street, suspicion of arson, suspicion of theft, underage drinking… it seemed that Wayne had spent three months in juvenile detention when he was fourteen. He had just turned fifteen when he died.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the surly waitress was flapping a filthy-looking cloth rather unconvincingly at the coffee rings and dried ketchup splatters on the next table, nonchalantly trying to catch a look at her screen. Carla sighed, and closed the laptop. Draining her glass, she made to leave, fishing in her handbag for her purse.

The sound of breaking glass made her jump, spilling coins everywhere. A sudden, strident blaring from outside made her jump again. Lights flashed against the diner window. The car!

Carla hurried to the door, just in time to see three figures silhouetted by the pulsing lights of the Honda. One of them was groping through the passenger-side window. The others saw Carla framed in the doorway of the diner and tapped him on the shoulder. He ducked back out of the vehicle, and all three of them took off at a run.

Carla shouted after them. “God damn it, that’s my car!”, but could only watch as they swarmed noisily up the chain-link fence at the back of the car park, dropping over the wall behind it and out of sight. “God damn it!”

Adrenaline was saturating her nervous system for the second time in ten minutes. Was everyone in this place some kind of hoodlum? Behind her, the door of the diner slammed shut. She turned around, incredulous, as the lock turned as well. Furious, Carla kicked at it and shouted. “Oh, thanks! Thanks for nothing, you little cow!”

There was no response, just the scraping of the blinds being turned down, and a pop as the sign above her head was switched off.

The car alarm was still blaring away on the other side of the road. Fuming with anger, Carla stabbed the button that deactivated it, and stormed over to look at the damage. The passenger-side window had been smashed, and there was glass all over the seat. The GPS was on the floor. She guessed that the would-be thief had fumbled it when he started running. Nothing seemed to be missing.

She swept as much of the glass out onto the ground as she could, using her handbag in the absence of anything more appropriate, but rueing the scratches to the expensive Italian leather. A church clock somewhere began to strike the half hour. She ought to report the incident to the police, get a crime number. Hertz would be expecting one. On the other hand, the car was booked on a CDC credit card, she was already late and it was freezing. She’d be damned if she was going to wait around for the local cops to show up. She just wanted to get out of this dump, and find Innsmouth and her hotel.

She had calmed down somewhat by the time she was back behind the wheel. Anticipating the bitter draught through the shattered window, she had unpacked her overcoat from the trunk. On the plus side, she supposed, the constant fresh air would help to keep her alert at the wheel.

The GPS was working, at least. After a couple of turns she found herself on the main road out of Newburyport. A mile or so later it directed her to take a much smaller fork that branched off towards the coast.

The Handel on the radio had finished and been replaced by Bartok, but violent bursts of static began to interrupt it as the channel faded. The auto-tuner eventually lost its lock on the signal altogether and began helplessly cycling through the frequencies. Carla turned it off.

This was definitely estuary country. What little scenery she could make out in the gathering darkness beyond the headlights consisted mainly of marshy pools and tall tussocks of tough grass. The icy air that roared in through the destroyed window reeked of nitrous, tidal peat. Carla even suspected that, above the bellowing wind and the muted howl of the VTEC, she could hear the distant pounding of the Atlantic.

After a few miles the road began to rise quite steeply. There was no doubt now, she could definitely hear waves breaking somewhere below. At the top, the road snaked through several sharp corners and then drifted gradually down towards the lights of what could only be Innsmouth.

Not that there were many lights. Carla could make out a few obvious streets, and a couple of long chains of hanging bulbs that swayed in the breeze along the seafront. Somewhere out to sea she thought she saw a flickering, fiery glow. Too low and too large for a distress flare. It looked more like a bonfire, but by the time she tried to get a fix on its position she had travelled too far down the hill, and it was lost among the wavetops.

She was on the outskirts of town now. The flat-roofed, boxy bungalows were relatively new – probably sixties vintage – but cheaply made and suffering greatly from exposure to the sea air. Most had been painted white originally, in some laughable pastiche of Mediterranean coastal architecture. They were water-stained and flaking now, with crumbling brickwork and rotting sills.

The climate didn’t seem to have been any kinder to the cars that were parked haphazardly on the street, some of which looked as though they might be older than the houses. Carla sighed. When she’d read that she was coming to Essex county, she’d fondly hoped that the assignment might have been in a place like one of the absurdly wealthy and picturesque little seaside towns further down the coast. As it was, this made even Newburyport look like the Hamptons.

The GPS guided her faithfully down increasingly dishevelled streets towards the town centre. The number of houses that were boarded up and completely vacant increased as she progressed, mute testimony to the failure of whichever chipper urban regeneration scheme had led to their construction in the first place – and to the seemingly endless recession which had destroyed property values, businesses and communities throughout the entire region. The entire country, really.

The town centre was markedly different. Most of the houses loomed to three narrow storeys, and were dark and ancient. In places, newer constructions were sandwiched between them where an intervening structure had finally succumbed and been pulled down. The sagging roofs and subsidence cracks in most of the old buildings suggested that this architectural predation was ongoing, and likely to accelerate. It was just unfortunate that the new houses looked almost as gloomy and uninviting as the old.

A final turn, past the ruins of a burnt-out church, brought her onto what must have been the main street. It was a broader, U-shaped thoroughfare, with a tattily overgrown stretch of grass running down the middle. Whatever had stood here before had been demolished and replaced with dreary concrete boxes to serve as shops. Carla noticed a pawn shop, a betting shop, a barbers, a liquor store, a couple of charity shops, all protected by locked, steel shutters.

There was a bar that looked open, its windows streaming light onto the pavement outside. Looking through them as the car sidled past, the only customers that Carla could see were two young men playing pool.

“Follow the road ahead, and in – twenty – yards pull over.”

Sure enough, the end of the road was occupied by what looked to be a hotel. She could tell, because it looked like every other ‘Exec Lodge’ chain hotel she had ever stayed in. Built to format, with a facade of pale, yellow cement and a big, brown porch, with automated sliding doors. God, she hated the places. Unfortunately, they enjoyed the status of official “preferred provider” to CDC employees. Meaning they were cheap.

A sign directed her through an archway to a small car park at the side of the building. There were three or four cars there already, but no shortage of spaces. Carla lost no time in grabbing her case from the trunk and making her way inside, keen to warm up after her freezing journey.