Edward Lee - The Innswich Horror

“Looks like your God hit the road, Morley,” hacked another splattering laugh of the evil head. “Can’t say that I blame Him…”

It was almost merciful the way my consciousness dimmed just as the marauding hand clasped my genitals and began to twist. Would my skull erupt before I ultimately smothered? I felt the thin, boney fingers tightening, slickened by frog-slime. It seemed to temper itself then, as though it would uproot my privates and collapse my head simultaneously; but as I felt what I was certain were my last heartbeats, the abomination released me as if electrically shocked, leapt upright onto its hideous feet, and released a bellow so cacophonous and inhuman I thought I’d go mad merely from the sound.

A sound like a rising and falling shriek intertwined a wet, slopping-like splatter.

I thudded to my side, desperate to recover breath. Moving clouds over the woods unmercifully afforded more moonlight at the same instant I looked up…

The awkward-jointed, shuddering thing had somehow been staked to a tree via one of Onderdonk’s iron stoking rods rammed into one of its orbicular eyeballs. As the impossible vocal protest wound down, it convulsed with an added sound akin to wet leather flapping.

A dark blur, then, and rapid footfalls, snagged my gaze, as I plainly saw a figure gliding away into the woods.

Who had saved me? Mary? I wondered, but, no, if so she’d have said something, and no woman in her stage of pregnancy could’ve moved so nimbly. Or perhaps a townsperson in conscientious objection to the collective’s ghastly initiatives. Or…

Could it have been young Walter?

The madness of the previous minutes released my senses. I was still on a mission: to save Mary and her son, to see to their escape from this macabre, clandestine netherocracy. Distant thrashing in the woods told me my savior was heading west, across the road…

Towards Mary’s house.

Recovered now, I reclaimed my pistol.

“Kill her,” Zalen’s head said. “Then kill yourself.”

With more than a little loathe I picked the head up by its greasy hair and—

“Don’t you dare, Morley!”

—dropped it into the smoker which was slow-cooking Mr. Onderdonk. Reclosing the lid, I could still hear its muffled remonstrance. “Ain’t nothing but a rich pud…”

“But a rich pud still in possession of his head,” I replied. Then I ran off—after the shape that had spared my life.

It was chiefly blind faith that guided me through the night-shrouded thicket and labyrinth of gnarled trees. Fireflies constellated the darkness. Eventually, I sighed in relief to see the squat, dark form of Mary’s overgrown abode, the faintest candles glowing in the tiny windows. And—

There he is!

It was before one such window that I spied the obscure figure, the person who’d saved my life. But before I could take even a single step forward, the figure whirled, and it whisked away into the trees deft as a wood-sprite. My first impulse was to call out but then I remembered the necessity of inconspicuousness. Who knew how many other fullbloods lurked near? Nor did I run after the figure, for that would result in complete diversion to my goal. Instead, I peeked into the wanly lit pane that the figure had just quitted, and there I saw, on a pitiful sack filled with leaves and dead grass, Mary’s young son Walter, asleep. It was the candle-stub and holder sitting on the crude dirt floor that gave the room its diminutive light.

I had no time for contemplations; softer and more erratic footfalls alarmed me from the southward side of the house. Pistol at the ready, I covered myself behind a tree, holding my breath…

The figure that stepped into a sprawl of moonlight was Mary.

She trudged forward with difficulty, obviously returning from the forced bacchanal at the lake. Wearied, then, she gasped, then buckled over and was sick. I rushed to her as she retched in misery.

“Oh, Foster!” she sobbed. “I prayed that you’d still be alive—”

“Your prayers have been answered,” I said and took her up in an embrace. But we’ll need more than prayer, I’m afraid, came an amending thought. She wore the esoteric robe of earlier, with the confounding configurations embroidered within its fringes. Her warm, heavy body trembled in my arms. “I’ve come for you, and your son—”

She bolted from the comfort my embrace had given her. “We must get inside, and we must keep out voices very low.”

“Mary, I—”

“Shhh! You don’t understand!” and she took my hand and pulled me into the squalor-embalmed house through a narrow, uneven door. Total dark and a dense mustiness suddenly cocooned me; it was only her warm hand I had as a guide.

She piloted me to another low-ceilinged room lit by one candle alone, make-shift furniture in evidence. I helped her sit on a milk crate-turned-chair, and when she finally caught her breath, she looked up at me with the saddest eyes. “Oh, Foster, I’m so sorry. You’ve jeopardized your life by coming here.”

“I’ve come here, Mary,” I asserted, “for you and your son.”

Her flushed face fell into her hands. “There’s so much you don’t know.”

“Calm yourself. I know everything now.”

Astonishment forced her gaze upward. “You’ve-you’ve seen the things?”

“Yes, earlier at the lake, during the regrettable ritual that your circumstances have forced upon you, and also minutes ago, at the Onderdonk’s. One of the fullbloods nearly killed me.”

“So… you know about the fullbloods?”

“I know everything. I know what’s going on at the second floor of the Hilman House, I know about the dual corpse repositories in the caverns beneath the waterfront. I know why your brother Paul is infirm, and I also know that your stepfather is a crossbreed between their race and ours and that he’s the only one of his kind allowed to live after the mandated genocide of years ago.” I took her hand. “And, Mary, I know why they’re forcing the collective’s women to remain perpetually pregnant. The newborns aren’t sacrificed, they’re utilized for research intended to lead to the demise of humankind. Several hours ago I witnessed Zalen handing over several such newborns to the fullbloods, out on the sandbar.”

She hitched on another sob. “Zalen? But, my God, you must think I’m a fiend for allowing my babies to be used like this.”

“I think nothing of the sort,” I snapped, “for I also know that you are forced into this perverse servitude. Should you refuse to comply, you and your family would all be slaughtered.” I quieted, and gripped her hand more tightly, to assure her. “Mary, I know also of the servile tasks you were pressured to perform in the past, out of desperation, under Cyrus Zalen’s pandering influence and pornographic endeavors.”

She nearly gagged, tears now literally plipping from her eyes onto the dirt floor. “Then how can a moral man like you even stand to be in the same room with me?”

My verity left no margin for hesitation. “I’m in love with you, Mary. It would wound my heart forever for you to not believe this.”

Her face went back to her hands. “That just makes it worse…”

“Why!” I demanded, perhaps too loudly. “I don’t expect you to love me in return, but I can pray and live in the hope that one day you will, and should that never happen, then I will still love you just as much.”

Now she hugged me quite suddenly, “Oh, Foster, but I do love you; I have since you came into the restaurant today—”

I could’ve collapsed in the rush ebullience that inundated my spirit. At that moment I knew that in my life of plenty I actually had nothing—until now.