Deep Waters - Uneasy Alliance

‘Th’ Old Ones were; th’ Old Ones are; th’ Old Ones’re gonna come agin...!’

We were all packed into the Temple of the Esoteric Order of Dagon while Abner went into his routine. After his invocation, the robed figures standing around echoed him murmurously and made various holy hand signals. Sitting beside me, Barney Marsh followed suit and I reflexively copied his movements. I craned my neck to look across the aisle and saw Ned and Winston and a few of the other guys sitting hunched forward rebelliously, looking as if they had better places to be (and that of course would be a correct assumption). They all looked jittery and on edge; Winston kept rubbing hard at his nose and Ned’s face was covered with white powder, as if he’d been interrupted while putting his clown face on. I shook my head and turned back to tune into what Abner was saying.

‘Word’s come in from th’ ether,’ he said staring around at the gathering, ‘that our borders’ve bin violated. Drowners are comin’, an’ that’s bad news fer the community.’

A movement caught my attention and I saw Winston raise his hand and half stand up.

‘Sorry, Grampaw,’ he said, ‘what’s a Drowner, please?’

Abner thumped the floor with his cane and it echoed hollowly. ‘Dang, Winston! Din’t you pay attention in Temple school? You asleep that whole time?’

‘Maybe I just missed that class...’ Winston muttered lamely and sank back down in his seat.

‘Miss your own dang head if’n it weren’t nailed on!’ Abner rattled the floorboards once more. He turned to scan the congregation.

‘Fer the benefit o’ my iggerant grandson – and anyone else who oughtta have bin payin’ attention – Drowners is vermin; parasites what prey on the Great Old Ones. They go sniffin’ out our communities and settle in, unbodied an’ corrupt; eatin’ up our prayers an’ a-feastin’ on our thoughts, so’s we don’t hear the dreams o’ the Lord o’ th’ Abyss ‘n’ he cain’t hear ours.’

There was a hushed murmur through the room and some more frantic ritual gestures. I figured that Winston had already taken one for the team, so I raised my hand.

‘Excuse me please, Mr. Gilman, sir: but what does a Drowner look like? And how do we deal with it?’

‘Lan’ sakes, boy!’ Abner shook his head irritably, his boot-blacked head shining in the torchlight, ‘din’t I just tell you they’s “unbodied”? You cain’t see ‘em; you cain’t touch ‘em. But they’s there, sure ‘nough. Sometimes they bring their own worshippers with ‘em – witches and such like, hungry for power – them we kin deal with, but Drowner’s like weeds: you gotta pull ‘em up by the root, or they jist keep a-comin’ back.’

He stood up and leaned heavily on his cane.

‘We got wards around the town that keep us hid from Drowners, so’s they cain’t see or hear us. First thing we needs to do is check ‘em and make sure they’s still where they’s s’posed to be – if’n they’s a hole in that net, then that’s our first piece o’ business, to git that mended.

‘Else ways, mebbe someone went out past the wards and caught their attention, some way. Then, they mighta jist follered that idjit home, straight past the wards and on inta Town. If’n that’s how it went down, I sure wouldn’t wanna be that idjit once we find ‘im.’

Little bits of information were plinking and plopping into the bourbon-soaked pool of my brain. I took great care not to look over in Winston’s direction.

‘You two,’ Abner’s stick pointed starkly out across the throng in my direction and I tuned in quickly, ‘you two kin go out an’ check the western ward – that should be simple enough fer you to do. And you...’ Abner pointed in another direction and issued more assignments.

I looked sideways at Barney Marsh and found him looking likewise at me. We had never gotten along too well. I mean, it’s not that we were enemies, it’s just we were into different stuff: I was into heavy metal; he was more of a punk fan. We’d both been in the school football team, but Barney had left when he decided to quit school. Like me, Barney was big and strong; unlike me, Barney was feeling the Change a lot earlier than anyone else I’d met. I mean, he was green for Gods’ sake! He stood up, creaking in his leather pants and jacket over his black Ramones t-shirt.

‘You wanna get this done?’ he said, jerking a thumb towards the exit.

‘Uh sure,’ I answered, ‘just waitin’ for you.’

He snorted and lurched towards the door; I stood up and drifted in his wake.

Outside, the moon silvered down over the Temple and we could hear the distant throb of the disco from the Gilman House.

‘Where’s that piece o’ shit car you drive parked?’ Barney asked.

I stopped to light a cigarette. I used the time that took to consider whether I should be annoyed or not: there was serious stuff going down and the murky pool of my mind was still bubbling away.

I clapped my Zippo shut. ‘Over there,’ I said. ‘Wipe your boots before you get in.’

Abner had handed out the assignments, but Stan Eliot had given us all the particulars. Or goal was one of the old railway tunnels along the abandoned rail line that had once taken trains to Rowley. The line had been torn up shortly after the Innsmouth citizens had been allowed to return to the town and all of the tunnels (three in total) had been sealed with heavy wooden doors and chains. Our mission was to examine the furthest one of these, in which a sacred totem had been hidden – one of the links in the net that warded the town and kept us hidden from the Drowners.

I slid behind the wheel and twisted the key in the ignition. A burst of jangling, discordant music burst forth from the tape player. I stabbed the eject button. Squinting at the tape I looked over at Barney who regarded me with a questioning gaze.

‘The Sex Pistols?’ I said. I tossed the cassette into his lap and grabbed another from a number scattered behind the windshield. I quickly inserted it and turned up the volume.

‘Barney,’ I said, ‘when you get your own piece o’ shit car then you can decide what music gets played inside it.’

I gunned the engine and we slid off into the darkness, with “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” bellowing from the speakers...

To Be Continued...