Edward Lee: The Innswich Horror

A modest smile of pride touched his face. “Mr. Onderdonk would always keep the key beneath his door mat; I’ve seen him put it there a lot, sir, during my hikes through the woods.”

“Not only a lad of proper manners,” I gushed, “but one of industriousness.” I blinked. “But you were asleep only a short time ago.”

“I woke up and heard you and my mom talking, so I came out on my own, to get the key for you.”

This was certainly a gift I could never have anticipated. “You’re a fine boy, Walter, and a very brave one. But it’s unduly dangerous out here. Do you know about… ,” but then the sentence deteriorated.

“I know all about the fullbloods, sir. I’ve seen them a few times, but tonight, I’ve seen a whole lot of them.”

And it’s my fault, I reminded myself. Walter’s courage was commendable but it did indeed put him in great danger. “Get in next to me, Walter. We’re going to pick up your mother so I can take you both to live with me.”

“But you’ll need help, sir,” he added. “It would be best if I position myself in the back of the truck. I can’t get a good aim if I’m inside with you.”

“A good aim? Walter, whatever are you talking about?”

He raised his handmade bow. “They may try to block the road back to the house, but I’m a pretty good shot.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Lad, you’re surely the bravest boy to ever walk these parts but I’m afraid that suction-cup arrows will do little good against the fullbloods.”

Then he showed me a handful of real arrows.

“See, Mr. Morley? We better go, before they come.”

What could I say to such youthful ingenuity and unhesitant bravado? “All right, Walter. Get in back and be vigilant… And keep your fingers crossed that this old vehicle starts.”

The boy hopped in back. With wide eyes, then, and a trembling lip, I inserted the key into the cylinder, uttered a prayer that seemed dismally anemic, and turned the key.

The rusted hulk hitched, gave off a loud metallic whine that made the tendons in my neck stand out, then rumbled to a start. I ground gears in my attempt to get it in first, gritted my teeth at a long grind, then we were finally moving. The vehicle was indeed roadworthy, but in that evidence, the noise its starting had made could surely be heard from here to town.

I pulled out and turned posthaste, gravel and oyster shells popping beneath worn tires. “Keep a sharp eye!” I called to Walter when I considered the necessity to leave the headlamps off. “Yes, Mr. Morley!” he replied, and when I glanced back through the hole which had once housed glass, I saw the lad positioned in back, his crude bow at the ready. I knew that at an identical age, I’d have been in possession of not one-tenth of the boy’s courage. I’ll raise him as though he were my own, I vowed, and be the father he’d never had, and the same for Mary’s baby… Rusted springs ground when I throttled the archaic vehicle across the rutted road to town. The moon seemed to spray its light upon us for the few seconds that the road exposed us, such that the road itself and the trees and vegetation lining it seemed iridescent, and this made me think of Lovecraft’s masterpiece, “The Color Out of Space,” said to be his personal favorite. Though my fear levels jumped from this brief exposure, it enabled me to view the road both ways. Where I expected to glimpse enemies, I saw, again, virtually nothing in the way of detractors.

Strange, I thought. Unless they’re lying in wait…

The enfeebled truck rocked when I traversed the wheel and navigated into the long, heavily wooded dirt-scratch lane which would lead us to the house. Suddenly darkness swallowed us, only minutely dappled by the moon, for the boughs of overhead trees nearly connected with one another from either side, transposing our route into that of a tunnel. I had to retard speed considerably now, for the reduced visibility.

Walter’s wan face peered in to the rear hole. “Mr. Morley? Maybe you should turn on the headlamps. I can’t see a thing! ”

The light-discipline of a soldier surely had tactical exceptions, not to mention that I was nothing remotely similar to a soldier. Just a rich pud, I recalled Zalen’s slight, but he was right. I fancied I could hear him laughing at me now, even as his odious head continued to cook. But now I would have to be a soldier, and I would have to take chances in order to achieve success. I took the lad’s advice, and switched on the headlamps.

The boy shrieked, and so did I.

Figures rushed forward out of the bramble-carpeted woods. Before I could even make transitive reaction, I saw a queerly robed figure—but one with a clearly human face—lunge forward but then buckle back, his hand shooting to his face as an arrow caught him right in his opened mouth.

“Good shot, Walter!”

When a hand—a human hand, not the webbed extremity I expected—shot into the passenger window, I thrust my pistol-filled fist toward it, then—

BAM!

The lucky shot caught the marauder right in the adam’s apple. Bubbly blood shot from the wound as the robed predator screamed.

And it was a man I recognized. Mr. Wraxall, the restaurant owner…

These were not the monstrous fullbloods I anticipated to be set for ambush, but townsmen, all dressed in those same robes with esoteric fringe. More snatches of faces were revealed: the hotel clerk, the maintenance man, the diner who’d been lunching with his paramour at the restaurant, and others. When two more shot out from left and right, Walter struck one in the shoulder; the aggressor unwisely hesitated where he stood, then was bellowing as the vehicle’s wheels drubbed him beneath the chassis. The second assailant tried to climb into my open window where I easily fired a shot directly into the top of his head. He fell away, but not before I could recognize the face in the hood’s oval: Dr. Anstruther.

Sin or not, I chuckled at the cad’s death, and considered the splotches of his grey matter upon my shirt a unique badge of honor.

The rest of the road to the house was clear.

Where I’d expected the opposition to be formidable, I found only sheepshank weakness in its place. The squat house now came into view at the end of the headlamps’ beams.

“This was almost too easy, Walter,” I called out behind me. “And that troubles me quite a bit.” I killed the motor, hopped out. “We must hurry now and fetch your mother. Between the engine-noise and my pistol, there’ll be more after us…”

I sprang to the vehicle’s rear bed to lift Walter out, but—

Oh, my God in Heaven, no…

The only objects occupying this space were the boy’s meager bow and the final can of petrol.

I glanced out into the woods but saw and heard nothing.

How could I have let this happen? I condemned myself. The town collective snatched Walter out of the back… and have taken him away…

4.

A half-hour’s desperate search in the woods yielded no positive result, and to search longer would only jeopardize the possibility of getting Mary and her unborn out alive. Hence, I trudged back to the brick-and-ivy-netted hovel like a man on his way to the gallows. What could I tell Mary? Her son had been abducted and most likely was dead already—all under my charge…

The very normal sound of crickets followed me back inside, but then came another sound, one which actually deflected my all-pervading muse of despair:

The sound of a baby crying.

I plunged out of the foyer’s ink-like murk into the candle-lit room, where the sound of infantile crying hijacked my gaze toward the heap of a mattress. “Mary!”