The Taint and Other Novellas (27 page)

“George White gave you money?”

“Fer Geoff’s upkeep, yes.” Foster had readily admitted it. “That’s a fact. The poor bugger were sellin’ off bits of precious stuff—jewell’ry and such—in all the towns around. Fer the lad, true enough, but also fer um’s own pleasure…or so I’ve heard it said. But that’s none of my business…”

Then there was poor Jilly White. She, too—her health—was very obviously in decline. Her nightmares were of constant concern, having grown repetitive and increasingly weird to the point of grotesque. Also, her speech and mobility were suffering badly; she stuttered, often repeated herself, occasionally fell while negotiating the most simple routines both in and out of doors. Indeed, she had become something of a prisoner in her own home; she only rarely ventured down onto the beach, to sit with her daughter in the weak but welcome spring sunshine.

As to her dreams:

It had been a long-drawn-out process, but Jamieson had been patient; he had managed to extract something of the nightmarish contents of Jilly’s dreams from the lady herself, the rest from Anne during the return journey from a language lesson trip into St. Austell. Unsurprisingly, all of the worst dreams were centered upon George White, Jilly’s ex-husband; not on his suicide, as might at least in some part be expected, but on his disease: its progression and acceleration toward the end.

In particular she dreamed of frogs or the batrachia in general, and of fish…but
not
as creatures of Nature. The horror of these visitations was that they were completely alien, gross mutations or hybrids of man and monster. And the man was George White, his human face and something of his form transposed upon those of the amphibia and fishes alike—and all too often upon beings who had the physical components of both genera
and more!
In short, Jilly dreamed of Deep Ones, where George was a member of that aquatic society!

And Anne White told of how her mother mumbled and gibbered, gasping her horror of “great wet eyes that wouldn’t or couldn’t close;” or “scales as sharp and rough as a file;” or “the flaps in George’s neck, going right through to the inside and pulsing like…like
gills
when he snorted or choked in his sleep!” But these things with regard to her mother’s nightmares weren’t all that Anne had spoken of on the occasion of that revealing drive home from her language lesson. For she had also been perfectly open in telling Jamieson:

“I know you saw me at my window that time when you brought her pills and spoke to my mother at length, the night you told her about Innsmouth. I heard you start to talk, got out of bed, and sat listening at the head of the stairs. I was as quiet as could be and must have heard almost everything you said.”

And Jamieson had nodded. “Things she probably wouldn’t have spoken of if she’d known you were awake? Did it…bother you, our conversation?”

“Perhaps a little…but no, not really,” she had answered. “I know more than my mother gives me credit for. But about what you told her, in connection with my father and what she dreamed about him, well, there is something I’d like to know—without that you need to repeat it to her.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You said that you’d seen those sick Innsmouth people, ‘in every stage of degeneration.’ And I wondered…”

“…You wondered just what those stages were?” The old man had prompted her, and then gone on: “Well, there are stages and there are states. It usually depends on how they start out. The taint might occur from birth, or it might come much later. Some scarcely develop the Innsmouth look at all…while others are born with it.”

“Like Geoff?”

“Like him, yes.” Again Jamieson nodded. “It rather depends on the strength of the Innsmouth blood in the parents…or in at least one of them, obviously. Or in the ancestral blood line in general.”

And then, out of the blue and without any hesitation, she’d said, “I know that Geoff is my half-brother. It’s why my mother let’s us be friends. She feels guilty for my father’s sake—in his place, I mean. And so she thinks of Geoff as ‘family.’ Well, of a sort.”

“And you? How do you think of him?”

“As my brother, do you mean?” She had offered an indecisive shake of her head. “I’m not really sure. In a way, I suppose. I don’t find him horrible, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, of course not, and neither do I!” The old man had been quick to answer. “As a doctor, I’ve grown used to accepting too many abnormalities in people to be repulsed by any of them.”

“Abnormalities?” Anne had cocked her head a little, favouring Jamieson with a curious, perhaps challenging look. And:

“Differences, then,” he had told her.

And after a moment’s silence she’d said, “Go on, then. Tell me about them: these states or stages.”

“There are those born with the look, as I’ve mentioned,” he had answered, “and those who gradually develop it, some of whom stay mostly, well,
normal
-looking. There are plenty of those in Innsmouth right now. Also, there is always a handful who retain their, er, agreeable—their acceptably, well,
human
—features for a great many years, changing only towards the end, when the metamorphosis occurs very rapidly indeed. At the hospital where I worked, some of the geneticists—Innsmouth people themselves—were trying to alter certain genes in their patients; if not to kill off the process entirely, at least to prolong the human looks of those who were likely to suffer the change.”

“‘Human-looking’, and ‘metamorphosis’, and ‘geneticists’, Anne had nodded, thoughtfully. “But with those words—and the way you explained it—it doesn’t sound so much a disease as a, well, a ‘metamorphosis,’ yes; and that
is
your own word! Like a pupa into a butterfly, or rather a tadpole into a frog. Except, instead of a tadpole…”

But there she’d frowned, broken off and sat back musing in her seat. “It’s all very puzzling, but I think the answers are coming and that I’m beginning to understand.” Then, sitting up straight again until she strained against her safety belt, she had said. “But look—we’re almost home!” And urgently turning to stare at Jamieson’s profile: “We’re through the village and there are still some things I wanted to ask—just one or two more, that’s all.”

At which the old man had slowed down, allowing her time to speak, and prompting her, “Go on then, ask away.”

“This cult of Dagon,” she had said then. “This religion or ‘Esoteric Order’ in Innsmouth—does it still exist? I mean, do they still worship? And if so, what if someone with the look or the blood—what if he doesn’t want to be one of them—what if he reneges and…and runs away? My mother asked you much the same question, I know. But you didn’t quite answer her.”

“I think,” Jamieson had said then, bringing his vehicle to a halt outside the Whites’ house, “I think that would be quite bad for this hypothetical person. What would he do, if or when the change came upon him? With no one to help him; none of his own kind, that is.”

Anne’s mother had come to the door of the house, and stood there all pale and uncertain. But Anne, getting out of the car, had looked at the old man with her penetrating gaze, and he had seen that it was all coming together for her—and that indeed she knew more than her mother had given her credit for…

• • •

In the second week of May things came to a head.

The first handful of tourists and early holidaymakers were in the village, staying at two or three cheap bed-and-breakfast places; and these city folk were making their way down onto the beaches each day, albeit muffled against the still occasionally brisk weather.

And in the lenses of Jamieson’s binoculars, the gnarled Tom Foster and his malformed ward had also been seen—as often as not arguing, apparently—the younger one pulling himself away, and the elder dragging after him, shaking his head and pointing back imploringly the way they’d come. And despite that the ill-favoured youth was failing, he yet retained enough strength to power him stumblingly, stubbornly on, leaving his foster-father panting and cursing in his wake. But when the youth was alone—fluttering there like a stumpy scarecrow on the sands, with his few wisps of coarse hair blowing back from his head in the wind off the ocean—then as always he would be seen gazing out over the troubled waters, as if transfixed by their vast expanse…

It happened on a reasonably warm Sunday afternoon that the Tremains, Jamieson, and Anne White were on the beach together, or rather at the same time. And so was young Geoff.

For ease of walking the old man held to firmer ground set back from the dunes, on a heading that would take him past the Tremains’s house as he visited Jilly White’s place. Doreen and John Tremain were taking the air maybe two hundred yards ahead of Jamieson; with their backs to him, they hadn’t as yet observed him. And Anne was a small dot in the distance, huddled with a book in the lee of a grass-crested dune, a favourite location of hers, just one hundred or so yards this side of her mother’s house. Today she stayed close to home out of necessity, for the simple reason that Jilly had taken to her bed four days ago as the result of some sort of physical or mental collapse, if not a complete nervous breakdown.

There were a very few holidaymakers on the beach…fewer still in bathing costumes, daring the water for the first time. But closer to the sea than the rest—coming from the direction of the village and avoiding the small family groups—there was young Geoff. Jamieson had his binoculars with him; he paused to focus on the youth, finding himself mildly concerned on noting his poor condition.

He was stumbling very badly now; his flabby mouth had fallen fully open, and his bulbous chin wobbled on his chest. Even at this distance, the youth’s eyes seemed filmed over, and the scaly skin of his face was grey. He seemed to be gasping at the air, and his broad, rounded shoulders went up and down with the heaving of his chest.

As the old man watched, so that strange figure tore off its shapeless jacket and threw it aside, then angled its route even closer to the band of damp sand at the sea’s rim. Some children paddling and splashing there, laughing as they jumped the small waves in six inches of water, noticed Geoff’s approach. They at once quit their play and fell silent, backed away from him, and finally turned to run up the beach.

And sensing that something was about to happen here, Jamieson put on a little more speed. Likewise the Tremains; they too were walking faster, cresting the dunes, heading for the softer sands of the beach proper. Being that much closer to the youth, they had obviously witnessed his antics and noted his poor condition, and like the old man they’d sensed something strange in the air.

Anne, on the other hand, remained seated, reading in the scoop of her dune, as yet unaware of the drama taking shape close by.

Jamieson, no longer showing any sign of his age or possible infirmity, put on yet more speed; he was anxious to be as close as possible to whatever was happening here. He only paused when he heard a weird cry—a strange, ululant howling—following which he hurried on and crested the dunes in the prints left by the Tremains. Then, from that slightly higher elevation, and at a distance of less than one hundred and fifty yards, he scanned the scene ahead.

Having heard the weird howling, Anne was on her feet now at the crest of her dune, looking down across the beach. And there was her half-brother, up to his knees in the water, tearing off his shirt and dropping his ragged trousers, making these nerve-jangling noises as he howled, hissed, and shrieked at the sea!

Anne ran down across the beach; the Tremains hurried after, and Jamieson raced to catch up. He was vaguely aware that Jilly White had appeared on the decking at the back of her house, and was standing or staggering there in her dressing-gown. White as a ghost, clutching at the handrail with one shaking hand, Jilly held the other to her mouth.

Anne was into the water now, wading out toward the demented—or tormented—youth. John Tremain had kicked off his shoes; he tested the water, hoisted the cuffs of his trousers uselessly, and went splashing toward the pair. And meanwhile Jamieson, puffing and panting with the effort, had closed in on the scene as a whole.

Geoff had stopped hissing and howling; he grasped at Anne’s hand, held it tight, pointed urgently out to sea. Then, releasing her, he made signs:
Come with me, sister, for I have to go! I am not ready, but still I must go! It calls to me…the sea is calling and I can no longer resist…I
must
go!

Then he saw her uncertainty, her denial, stopped making his signs, and began dragging her deeper into the water. But it was now clear that he was deranged, unhinged, and his teeth gleamed the yellowy-white of fish-bone as he recommenced his gibbering, his howling, his awful cries of supplication…his liturgy to the unknown lords of the sea.

Jamieson was much closer now, and Tremain closer still. The headmaster grabbed at Anne, tried to fight the youth off. Geoff released Anne’s hand and turned on Tremain, fastening his sharp teeth on the other’s shoulder and biting through his thin shirt. Tremain gave a cry of pain! Lurching backwards, he stumbled and fell into the water, which momentarily covered his head.

But the youth saw what he had done—knew he’d done wrong and with Tremain’s blood staining his face, and streaming from his gaping circle of a mouth, he appeared to regain his senses…at least partly. And shaking his head, Geoff signalled his farewell to Anne, waddled a foot deeper into the water’s surge, let himself fall forward and began to swim.

He swam, and it was at once apparent that this was his natural element. And seeing him go, Jamieson thought,
Alas that he isn’t equipped for it…

Tremain had dragged himself to the beach; Anne had returned to where the water reached her knees, and watched Geoff’s progress as his form diminished with distance. Jamieson helped John Tremain up out of the shallows, dampened a handkerchief in salt water, applied it to the raw, bleeding area between the other’s neck and shoulder. Doreen Tremain hurried forward, wringing her hands and asking what she should do.

“Take him home,” said the old man. “Keep my handkerchief on the wound to staunch the bleeding. Treat it with an antiseptic, then pad and bandage it. When John recovers from the shock take him into St. Austell for shots: anti-tetanus, and whatever else is prescribed. But don’t delay. Do you understand?” She nodded, helped her husband up the beach and away.