In Deep – 14: Alphonse

Those of you who have been paying attention will realise that there is no cemetery in Innsmouth that caters for the majority population. Not at all. Anyone living here, with connexions to the Esoteric Order of Dagon, knows that life is an adolescence of variable length on land before the Change is complete, and thereafter, an eternity of life in the glory of Y’ha-nthlei, beyond Devil Reef. Even those who meet an untimely death are sent out for burial at sea. However, since 1928, other folk have come to the town and some of them have made homes here; not all of them have – how shall I put it? – the worship of Dagon in their blood. Therefore, to the north of the community, just back from the coast, there is a small burial ground for outsiders. I had completely forgotten about its existence; most likely, no-one on my trail would think of it either.

Dawn had come but the rain wasn’t letting up. It had developed that blunt, bone-chilling cold that comes after a full night without the sun to warm it, and I was soon drenched to the skin. I made my way along the Manuxet banks, past the old gold refineries and down to the beach; I forded the river where it meets the Atlantic and set about trudging along the sand close to the water’s edge. Away towards the eastern horizon, a waterspout dropped its swirling liquid tentacle down from the clouds and lightning flashed in its wake. I kept my head down and my pace steady: not all of the people who would be looking for me would be in the town; certainly, many of them would be in the water...

Distant cliffs appeared ahead of me and I made for the rain-spattered dunes. Wet through as I was, slogging through the loose sand didn’t help me to set any land-speed records, but here amongst the coarse grass and sea-wrack, I had a little more cover to play with. Eventually, I exited the sandhills and stepped out onto the ocean road behind the beach. Here, at its northern end, it was little more than a dirt track: to the south it turned to gravel and then to bitumen, until it ran past what once had been my home. I wondered if I’d ever be seeing that home again.

I crossed over and hopped a post-and-rail fence into the salt marshes on the other side. A hundred yards ahead, on top of a slight rise and surrounded by an iron fence topped with rusty spikes, was a huddle of headstones and decrepit tombs, many of which had seen no maintenance since the turn of last century. I made a beeline for it, slogging through cold, black mud, and worked my way along the fence-line until I came to the gate. A curving metal sign over the entranceway read “Foreigners’ Graveyard” in steadily dripping letters. I shouldered my cylinder and scanned the grey horizon in all directions: for what it was worth, I couldn’t see anyone, so I made my way inside.

Within, the ground was only slightly less boggy than outside the fence’s perimeter. Headstones and other grave markers sagged and teetered in the mire, choked with overgrown thorn plants and wayward grass. Towards the centre of this sombre isle, several ponderous tombs leaned against each other, their sculptured finishes cracked and tumbled. The earth was pitted and hummocked, where subsidence down below dropped the sod on those nestled within.

The rain gathered itself for another assault. I dropped my cylinder and sank down under the wings of a headless angel. I fumbled in my pockets for a cigarette and gratefully lit up, cupping my hands around my lighter. I was tired and hungry, and I needed to rest somewhere before exploring the options available to me here.

While thus occupied, I noticed a light coming from the largest of the tombs. My heart sank and I groaned: surely the E.O.D. wouldn’t post a watch for me here? My presence was a fluke, a lucky accident generated by a random and freaky dream, unless... I looked towards the coast. Maybe a pair of eyes out beyond the breakers had seen me and spread the word?

I flicked my smoke out into the weather where it fizzed into silence. Hefting the heavy leather tube over my shoulder, I stood up wearily: I was going to have to take a look at whatever was waiting for me and see if it posed a threat.

My shoes were soaked through, so I didn’t bother trying to avoid the puddles; I just moved circumspectly towards the tomb’s gaping entrance by the most discreet and direct route possible. Several granite steps led up to the entryway and a morbid inscription over the door declared in Latin that we were nothing but shadows. Just beyond the threshold, out of the downpour, was a well-used hurricane lamp generating a friendly yellow light.

I stepped inside and the sound of the rain diminished greatly. Within, was a stone room lined with shelves, stocked with crumbling and decrepit coffins. Opposite the entrance, some dark stairs led downwards toward a distant, unseen, second source of illumination.

Picking up the lamp, I headed over to the stairs and peered down. A stone door stood open and flickering candlelight flooded out. I could hear movement coming from beyond, objects clinking and rattling, and a tuneless, breathy whistle accompanying it all. I took a couple of cautious steps downwards and my foot struck something sitting on the stairs: raising my lamp, I saw a crude pottery bowl wobbling on the stonework; within was a thick, brown gravy, dribbling around a hand with many of the bones exposed.

‘Whoopth!’ said a lisping voice, ‘Thorry about that: thilly of me to leave my breakfatht lying about!’

The creature – there is no other word for it – that stood before me was confronting indeed. It was vaguely human. That is, the lineaments of humanity clung to it; however, apart from this rudimentary foundation, the balance was decidedly alien. Its face was dog-like, with a forward-thrusting muzzle filled with sharp teeth which made its attempts at speech difficult; it was covered all over – as far as I could see – in matted and dense dark fur; its legs were those of an animal with strange, half-hooved paws at the extremity. But for the fact that it was wearing a shirt and waistcoat, covered by a sturdy, much-stained apron, and a pair of pince-nez, I probably would have been less inclined to hang around. It reached down jauntily to scoop up the forgotten meal and then, holding this at its side as if it were nothing of any consequence, held out its other hand for me to shake.

‘My name’th Alphonthe,’ it said brightly, ‘I wathn’t exthpecting you to get here tho quickly.’

I blinked, then slowly took the extended hand. ‘I wasn’t otherwise occupied - Alphonse?’ He smiled warmly at me, showing all his crooked teeth.

‘I’d athk you in,’ he said turning to the room beyond, ‘but it’th forbidden for you to enter.’ He began busily bustling about: inside there was a large table beneath the curving low arch of a cavern. The walls were burdened with shelves, upon which sat bottles and jars and various items of brass and wood construction; in one corner stood a furnace with an anvil and blacksmith’s tools alongside. It looked for all the world like how a wizard’s workshop is supposed to look.

‘I altho won’t athk you to join in my repatht,’ said Alphonse returning to the doorway, ‘but here’th thome cheethe and bread. And thome beer.’

He passed to me a wooden bowl with a loaf in it and a wedge of hard cheese with a knife sticking out of it. With this came a hefty, rustic-looking jug with foaming suds slopping over the sides. My stomach growled unrepentantly - I sank down on the bottom step and immediately tucked in.

‘I thuthpected that you might need that,’ smirked Alphonse. Grabbing a three-legged stool, he plonked himself down in the doorway and proceeded to light up a pipe. He sat there blowing smoke rings while I chugged down everything I could get my face around – it had been a long time since that measly fruit cup.

‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ I belched when I was finished. My host gave a nod of the head by way of response.

‘Now,’ he said, tapping his pipe on the stone floor and then scraping its bowl with his claw, ‘you have quethtionth that need anthwerth...’ he raised his eyebrows and stared at me with his golden, canine eyes.

I organised my thoughts, then pointed a finger at the room behind him. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘what’s all that?’

Alphonse waved a dismissive hand. ‘All thith,’ he said, ‘ith me doing a favour for thomeone elthe, by thpethifically coming to your athithtanthe. You met him before. But I think you have other, more prething conthernth.’

‘Alright,’ I said, frowning, and adding this information to the other bizarre conundrums locked in my head, ‘let’s go right back to the beginning: there was a stranger in town; who was he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alphonse, shrugging, ‘I’m not pthycic. What can you tell me about him?’

I rummaged around in my pockets. Pulling forth the intricate lumps of metal and the hexagonal plates, I dropped them on the floor before him.

‘He looked like a cockroach with a bad case of acne; and he had these with him.’

Alphonse sniffed, and pawed at the assembled doo-dads. He rolled the lumpy metal thing carefully to one side. ‘That’th a weapon,’ he said. ‘Careful where you point it. Thith,’ he lifted up the metal rod, ‘ith dangerouth, altho. Thtick the pointy end in the ground and all hell will break loothe.’

He picked up the metal plates and scrutinised them closely, holding them up to the light. ‘I figure they’re some kind of instructions,’ I said, ‘information maybe? Mission parameters?’

He nodded, contemplating. ‘Pothibly. Pothibly...’ he murmured. He slid them together in a stack and turned to me.

‘Thith thtranger,’ he said, ‘ith a member of an alien thpethieth from the far edge of the Tholar Thythtem. They call themthelveth by variouth termth, but thome people here on Earth call them the Mi-Go.’

‘“Mi-Go”? As in “Me Tarzan; You Go?”’

‘It’th a Himalayan dialect actually,’ Alphonse continued, ‘They had a bathe there many yearth ago, and there were dithputeth with the indigenouth population. If one of them ith here, then it’th very bad.’

‘Oh, he’s not gonna be troubling anybody anymore,’ I said, smiling grimly.

Alphonse tipped his head back to look at me through his glasses. ‘Well, good,’ he said. ‘Now you’ll want to know what he wath doing around thethe partth.’

I pulled out my cigarettes and lit up. ‘Enlighten me, Alphonse.’ I blew a cloud of smoke to one side.

Alphonse leant back and rested his head against the door lintel, narrowing his gaze.

‘Thethe creatureth,’ he began, ‘had a colony not far from here to the north. Thentral to their community and itth practitheth was a thtone, which wath taken from them by a man who dithcovered too much about them and who began revealing their prethenthe here on thith planet.’

‘A stone?’ I immediately thought back to my session with Mrs Pettifer and the crazy utterances of Madame Klopp.

‘Yeth,’ continued Alphonse, ‘a thtone which wath brought from their dithtant planet of Yuggoth. Thome people think that Pluto ith Yuggoth, but it’th actually a different rock altogether. Anyway, thith man thent the thtone to a colleague in Arkham in the care of hith thon, but the lad wath ambuthed along the way by a devotee, a human agent, of the Mi-Go.’

‘Wait: people work for these critters? That’s messed up.’

Alphonse nodded. ‘Humanth can be thwayed by all thortth of promitheth,’ he said, ‘very few of which need to be made good on.’ He pulled out his pipe once more and began packing it with tobacco.

‘Well, the human agent dethided to hide with the thtone,’ he went on, ‘I gueth he wath thtarting to mithtrutht hith Mi-Go mathterth. He came here, figuring that it wath off the map and fairly thecluded.’ I leant forward with my lighter and lit his pipe. He sucked at the stem a few times and then blew a pall of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘The trail goeth cold at that point,’ he said. ‘Thith fellow came here and then – poof! – he’th gone.’ He gave me a sidelong look: ‘I’ll bet you can offer a theory ath to what happened to him...’

I took a long drag at my smoke and narrowed my gaze at him.

‘Yep,’ I answered, ‘yep. As a stranger to Innsmouth, he would’ve been marked as soon as he set foot in town. He would’ve been rounded up and either scared away – if he was no threat – or he would’ve been made to disappear if he was.’ I stubbed out my cigarette on the step. ‘We’re not really a welcoming community.’

‘Tho, you mutht have thome idea of where the thtone ith at thith point?’ Alphonse regarded me levelly.

I nodded. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ I said. Alphonse puffed at his pipe. I looked at him and then dragged out the leather cylinder from the step behind me.

‘One thing more,’ I said, ‘what are these? And how do they figure in all this mess?’ I popped the cap on the tube and slid one of the hexagonal bars out for him to look at. I turned it around so he could see the teeth marks I’d made on one end.

‘Interethting,’ he said drawing it forth and inspecting it closely. ‘I believe I know what thethe are, but let me do thome tethtth.’

He stood up and pattered across to his anvil. Taking a pair of grunty clippers, he adroitly snipped a piece off the end of the bar, making a rough, disfigured disc of the metal. This he threw into a small dish on the table. Then, taking a glass phial from off a shelf, he poured a clear liquid over the sample, at the same time holding a paw over his snout. Smoky white fumes issued forth and Alphonse flapped them away expertly. Then he picked up a set of pincers and lifted the sample out to regard it carefully. Walking over to the doorway, he showed me the shiny piece of metal steaming in the pincers’ grip.

‘It’th platinum,’ he said, ‘which raitheth a few quethtionth...’

‘Yeah,’ I growled, ‘what in this town is worth 19 three-foot long bars of platinum to a bug from outer space? And who’s naming the price? The bug was here on a goddam' shopping expedition!’

Alphonse dropped the pincers and their sample back on the table and picked up the remainder of the bar from the anvil. Coming back to the doorway he handed it to me and said:

‘Find the thtone, you’ll find your anthwerth...’

To Be Continued...