The Taint and Other Novellas

The Taint

The Taint was written December 2002 to January 2003, specifically for editor Steve Jones’ proposed Mythos collection, “Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth,” a volume dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft’s darkly mysterious seaport ‘town of ill repute’ inhabited by the changeling Deep Ones, those less than human, amphibious worshippers of Lord Cthulhu in his house in R’lyeh. One of only a very few recent Mythos tales by my hand, apart from its unavoidable, indeed obligatory backdrop, this story escapes almost entirely from Lovecraft’s literary influence to become wholly original, and I consider it on a par with Born of the Winds written all of thirty years earlier. Fedogan & Bremer published The Taint in a limited edition of “Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth” in time to launch the book at the World Fantasy Convention, Madison WI, November 2005…

James Jamieson looked through binoculars at the lone figure on the beach—a male figure, at the rim of the sea—and said, “That’s pretty much what I would have wanted to do, when I was his age. Beachcombing, or writing books; maybe poetry? Or just bumming my way around the world. But my folks had other ideas. Just as well, I suppose. ‘No future in poetry, son. Or in daydreaming or beachcombing.’ That was my father, a doctor in his own right. Like father like son, right?” Lowering his binoculars, he smiled at the others with him. “Still, I think I would have enjoyed it.”

“Beachcombing, in the summer? Oh, I could understand that well enough!” John Tremain, the middle-aged headmaster at the technical college in St. Austell, answered him. “The smell of the sea, the curved horizon way out there, sea breezes in your hair, and the wailing of the gulls? Better than the yelping of brats any time—oh yes! The sun’s sparkle on the sea and warm sand between your toes—it’s very seductive. But this late in the season, and in my career?” He shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks. You won’t find me with my hands in my pockets, sauntering along the tidemark and picking over the seaweed.”

He paused, shrugged, and continued, “Not now, anyway. But on the other hand, when I was a young fellow teaching arts and crafts: carpentry and joinery, woodcraft in general—I mean, working with woods as opposed to surviving in them—now would have been the ideal time for a stroll on the beach. And I used to do quite a bit of it. Yes, indeed. For it’s autumn when the best pieces get washed ashore.”

“Pieces?” Jilly White came back from wherever her thoughts had momentarily wandered, blinked her pretty but clouded green eyes at Tremain, then glanced from face to face in search of a hint, a clue. “I’m sorry, John, but I wasn’t quite…?”

“Driftwood,” the teacher smiled. “All those twisted, sandpapered roots that get tumbled in with the tide when the wind’s off the sea. Those bleached, knotted, gargoyle branches. It’s a long time ago now, but—” He almost sighed, gave another shrug, and finished off, “But searching for driftwood was as close as I ever got to being a beachcomber.”

And Doreen, his tall, slender, haughty but not unattractive wife, said, “You’ve visited with us often enough, Jilly. Surely you must have noticed John’s carvings? They were all driftwood originally, washed up on the beach there.”

And now they all looked at Jilly…

There were four of them, five if you included Jilly White’s daughter, Anne, curled up with a book in the lee of a sand-dune some twenty-five yards down the beach and out of earshot. Above her, a crest of crabgrass like some buried sand-giant’s eyebrow framed the girl where her curled body described a malformed eye in the dune’s hollow. And that was where Jilly White’s mind had been: on her fifteen-year-old daughter, there in the lee of the dune; and on the muffled, shuffling beachcomber on the far side of the dunes, near the water’s edge where the waves frothed and the sand was dark and damp.

All of them were well wrapped against a breeze off the sea that wasn’t so much harsh as constant, unremitting. Only endure it long enough, it would cool your ears and start to find a way through your clothes. It was getting like that now; not yet the end of September, but the breeze made it feel a lot later.

“John’s carvings?” said Jilly, who was still a little distant despite that she was right there with the others on Doctor (or ex-Doctor) James Jamieson’s verandah overlooking the beach. But now, suddenly, she snapped to. “Oh, his carvings! The driftwood! Why, yes, of course I’ve noticed them—and admired them, honestly—John’s driftwood carvings. Silly of me, really. I’m sorry, John, but when you said ‘pieces’ I must have been thinking of something broken. Broken in pieces, you know?”

And Jamieson thought: She looks rather fragile herself. Not yet broken but certainly brittle…as if she might snap quite easily. And taking some of the attention, the weight off Jilly, he said, “Scrimshaw, eh? How interesting. I’d enjoy to see your work some time.”

“Any time at all,” Tremain answered. “But, er, while it’s a bit rude of me to correct you, er, James, it isn’t scrimshaw.”

“Oh?” The old man looked taken aback. “It isn’t?”

The headmaster opened his mouth to explain, but before he could utter another word his wife, Doreen, cut in with, “Scrimshaw is the art or handicraft of old-time sailors, Doctor.” She could be a little stiff with first names. “Well, art of a sort, anyway.” And tut-tutting—apparently annoyed by the breeze—she paused to brush back some ruffled, dowdy-looking strands of hair from her forehead before explaining further. “Scrimshaw is the name they’ve given to those odd designs that they carve on shells and old whalebones and such.”

“Ah!” Jamieson exclaimed. “But of course it is!” And glancing at Jilly, now huddling to herself, shivering a little and looking pale, he smiled warmly and said, “So you see, Jilly my dear, you’re not alone in mixing things up this afternoon. What with driftwood and scrimshaw and the wind—which is picking up I think, and blowing our brains about—why, it’s easy to lose track of things and fall out with the facts. Maybe we should go inside, eh? A glass of cognac will do us the world of good, and I’ll treat you to something I’ve newly discovered: a nice slice of homemade game pie from that bakery in the village. Then I’ll be satisfied that I’ve at least fed and watered you, and warmed your bones, before I let you go off home.”

But as his visitors trooped indoors, the ex-Doctor quickly took up his binoculars to scan the beach again. In this off-the-beaten-track sort of place, one wouldn’t really expect to see a great many people on the shore; none, at this time of year. The beachcomber was still there, however; hunched over and with his head down, he shambled slowly along. And it appeared that Anne, Jilly’s bookish, reserved if not exactly retiring daughter, had finally noticed him. What’s more, she had stood up and was making her way down the beach toward him.

Jamieson gave a start as Jilly touched his arm. And: “It’s all right,” she said quietly, (perhaps even confidentially, the doctor thought). “It’s nothing you should feel concerned about. Young Geoff and Anne, they’re just friends. They went to school together…well, for a while anyway. The infants, you know?”

“Oh dear!” Jamieson blinked his slightly rheumy old eyes at her. “I do hope you don’t think I was spying on them—I mean, on your daughter. And as for this, er, Geoff?”

“It’s all right,” she said again, tugging him inside. “It’s quite all right. You’ve probably bumped into him in the village and he may well have sparked some professional interest in you. That’s only natural, after all. But he’s really quite harmless, I assure you…”

• • •

Eating slowly, perhaps to avoid conversation, Jilly wasn’t done with her food when the Tremains were ready to go. “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll have to wait for Anne. She won’t be long…knows better than to be out when the light starts failing.”

“You don’t mind her walking with the village idiot?” John’s words sounded much too harsh; he was probably biting his lip as he turned his face away and Doreen helped him on with his coat.

“Ignore my husband,” Doreen twisted her face into something that didn’t quite equal a smile. “According to him all children are idiots. It seems that’s what being a teacher does to you.”

Jilly said, “Personally, I prefer to think of the boy as an unfortunate. And of course in a small seaside village he stands out like a sore thumb. I’m glad he has a…a friend in Anne.”

And John half relented. “You’re right, of course. And maybe I’m in the wrong profession. But it’s much like Doreen says. If you work all day with kids, especially bolshy teenagers, and in this day and age when you daren’t even frown at the little sods let alone slap their backsides—”

At the door, Doreen lifted her chin. “I don’t recall saying anything like that. Nothing as rude as that, anyway.”

“Oh, you know what I mean!” John said testily, trailing her outside, and colliding with her where she’d paused on the front doorstep. Then—in unison but almost as an afterthought—they stuck their heads back inside to thank Jamieson for his hospitality.

“Not at all,” their host answered. “And I’ll be dropping in on you soon, to have a look at those carvings.”

“Please do,” John told him.

And Doreen added, “Evenings or weekends, you’ll be welcome. We’re so glad that you’ve settled in here, Doctor.”

“Oh, call me James, for goodness sake!” Jamieson waved them goodbye, closed the door, turned to Jilly and raised an enquiring, bushy grey eyebrow.

She shrugged. “A bit pompous maybe, but they’re neighbours. And it does get lonely out here.”

They went to the bay window in the end wall and watched the Tremains drive off down the road to their home less than a mile away. Jilly lived half a mile beyond that, and the tiny village—a huddle of old fishermen’s houses, really—stood some four or five hundred yards farther yet, just out of sight behind the rising, rocky promontory called South Point. On the far side of the village, a twin promontory, North Point, formed a bay, with the harbour lying sheltered in the bight.

For a moment more Jamieson watched the Tremains’s car speed into the distance, then turned a glance of covert admiration on Jilly. She noticed it, however, cocked her head on one side and said, “Oh? Is there something…?”

Caught out and feeling just a little uncomfortable now, the old man said, “My dear, I hope you won’t mind me saying so, but you’re a very attractive woman. And even though I’m a comparative stranger here, a newcomer, I can’t say I’ve come across too many eligible bachelors in the village.”

Now Jilly frowned. Her lips began to frame a question—or perhaps a sharp retort, an angry outburst—but he beat her to it.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” He held up his hands. “It’s none of my business, I know. And I keep forgetting that your husband…that he—”

“—Died less than eighteen months ago, yes,” Jilly said.

The old man sighed. “My bedside manner hasn’t improved any with age,” he said. “I retired here for what I thought would be solitude—an absence of everything that’s gone before—only to find that I can’t seem to leave my practice behind me! To my patients I was a healer, a father confessor, a friend, a champion. I didn’t realize it would be so hard not to continue being those things.”

She shook her pretty head, smiled wanly and said, “James, I don’t mind your compliments, your concern, or your curiosity. I find it refreshing that there are still people who…who care about anyone. Or anything for that matter!”

“But you frowned.”

“Not at what you said,” she answered, “but the way you said it. Your accent, really.”

“My accent?”

“Very similar to my husband’s. He was an American, too, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that. And he had a similar accent? A New England accent, you say?” Suddenly there was a new, a different note of concern in Jamieson’s voice, unlike the fatherly interest he’d taken in Jilly earlier. “And may I ask where he hailed from, your husband? His home town?”

“George was from Massachusetts, a town on or near the coast—pretty much like this place, I suppose—called, er, Ipswich? Or maybe Arkham or Innsmouth. He would talk about all three, so I can’t be certain. And I admit to being a dunce where American geography is concerned. But I’m sure I have his birth certificate somewhere in the house, if you’re that interested?”

Sitting down, the old man bade Jilly do the same. “Interested?” he said. “Well, perhaps not. Let sleeping dogs lie, eh?”

“Sleeping dogs?” Now she was frowning again.

And he sighed before answering. “Well, I did practice for a few months—just a few months—in Innsmouth. A very strange place, Jilly, even for this day and age. But no, you don’t want to know about that.”

“But now you’ve got me interested,” she said. “I mean, what was so strange about the place?”

“Well, if you must know, it was mainly the people—degenerate, inbred, often retarded—in fact much like young Geoff. I have bumped into him, yes, and there’s that about the boy…there’s a certain look to him…” But there the old man paused, probably because he’d seen how Jilly’s hands fluttered, trembling on the arms of her chair. Seeing where he was looking, she put her hands in her lap, clasping them until her fingers went white. It was obvious that something he had said had disturbed her considerably. And so:

“Let’s change the subject,” he said, sitting up straighter. “And let me apologise again for being so personal. But a woman like you—still young and attractive, in a place like this—surely you should be looking to the future now, realizing that it’s time to go, time to get out of here. Because while you’re here there are always going to be memories. But there’s an old saying that goes ‘out of sight—’”

“‘—Out of mind?’” She finished it for him.

“Something like that.” He nodded. “A chance to start again, in a place, some town or city, that does have its fair share of eligible bachelors…” And then he smiled, however wryly. “But there I go, being personal again!”

Jilly didn’t return his smile but told him, “I do intend to get away, I have intended it, but there are several things that stop me. For one, it’s such a short time since George…well, since he…”

“I understand.” Jamieson nodded. “You haven’t yet found the time or the energy to get around to it.”

“And two, it’s not going to be easy to sell up—not for a decent price, anyway. I mean, look how cheaply you were able to secure this place.”

Again the old man nodded. “When people die or move away, no one moves in, right? Well, except for old cheapskates like me.”

“And all perfectly understandable,” said Jilly. “There’s no school in the village, and no work; the fishing has been unproductive for years now, though of late it has seemed to pick up just a little. As for amenities: the nearest supermarket is in St. Austell! And when the weather gets bad the old road out of the village is like a death trap; it’s always getting potholed or washed out. So there’s no real reason why anyone would want to come here. A few holidaymakers, maybe, in the summer season, and the very rare occasion when someone like you might want to retire here. But apart from that…”

“Yes?” He prompted her, slyly. “But apart from that? Jilly, almost everything you’ve said seems to me contradictory. You’ve given some very excellent reasons why you shouldn’t stay, and a few pretty bad ones why you should. Or haven’t I heard them all yet?”

She shrank down into herself a little, and Jamieson saw her hands go back to the arms of her chair, fluttering there like a pair of nervous birds…

• • •

“It’s my daughter,” she said after a while. “It’s Anne. I think we’ll have to stay here a little longer, if only for her sake.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She’s…she’s doing piano with Miss Harding in the village, and twice a week she studies languages at night school in St. Austell. She loves it; she’s quite a little interpreter, you know, and I feel I have to let her continue.”

“Languages, you say?” The old man’s eyebrows went up. “Well, she’ll find plenty of work as an interpreter—or as a teacher, for that matter.”

“Yes, I think so, too!” said Jilly, more energetically now. “It’s her future, and she has a very real talent. Why, she even reads sign!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sign language, as used by the deaf and dumb.”

“Oh, yes, of course. But no, er, higher education?”

“She had the grades,” said Jilly, protectively. “She would have no trouble getting into university. But what some desire, others put aside. And to be totally honest…well, she’s not the communal type. She wouldn’t be happy away from home.”

Again Jamieson’s nod of understanding. “A bit of a loner,” he said.

“She’s a young girl,” Jilly quickly replied, “and so was I, once upon a time. And I know that we all go through our phases. She’s unsettled enough—I mean, what with her father’s death and all—so any move will just have to wait. And that’s that.”

Now, having firmly indicated that she no longer desired to talk about her daughter, it was Jilly’s turn to change the subject. And in doing so she returned to a previous topic.

“You know,” she said, after a moment, “despite that you’ll probably think it’s a morbid sort of fascination, I can’t help being interested in what you were saying about Innsmouth—the way its denizens were, well, strange.”

Denizens, Jamieson repeated her, but silently, to himself. Yes, I suppose you could describe them that way.

He might have answered her. But a moment earlier, as Jilly had spoken the last few words, so the verandah door had glided open to admit Anne. There she stood framed against the evening, her hair blowing in the unrelenting sea breeze, her huge green eyes gazing enquiringly into the room. But her face was oh-so-pale, and her gaze cold and unsmiling. Maybe she’d been out in the wind too long and the chill had finally got to her.

Sliding the door shut behind her, and going to the fire to warm herself she said, “What was that you were saying, Mother? Something about strange denizens?”

But Jilly shrugged it off. “Mr Jamieson and I were engaged in a private conversation, dear, and you shouldn’t be so nosy.”

That was that; Anne’s return had called a halt to any more talk. But when Jamieson drew the verandah curtains he couldn’t help noticing that hulking, shambling, head-down figure silhouetted against the sand dunes; the shape of Geoff, casting long ugly shadows as he headed back toward the village.

Following which it was time to drive Anne and Jilly home…

• • •

There was a week of bad weather. James Jamieson would sit in a chair by his sliding patio window and gaze out across the decking of the verandah, across the dunes and beach, at the roaring, rearing ocean. But no matter the driving rain and pounding surf, the roiling sky split by flashes of lightning and shuddering to drum rolls of thunder, sooner or later there would be a hulking figure on the sands: “Young Geoff,” as Jilly White had seen fit to call him, the “unfortunate” youth from the village.

Sometimes the boy—or young man, whatever—would be seen shambling along the tidemark; at others he’d walk too close to the turbulent water, and end up sloshing through the foam when waves cast their spume across his route. Jamieson made a point of watching him through his expensive high-resolution binoculars, and now and then he would bring Geoff’s face into sharper focus.

The sloping forehead and almost bald head; the wide, fleshy mouth, bulging eyes and scaly bump of a chin, with the bristles of a stubby beard poking through; the youth’s skin—its roughness in general, with those odd folds or wattles—especially the loose flaps between his ears and his collar…

One afternoon toward the end of the week, when the weather was calmer, Jamieson also spied John Tremain on the beach. The link road must have washed out again, relieving the headmaster of his duties for a day or so and allowing him time to indulge his hobby. And sure enough as he walked the tidemark, he would stoop now and then to examine this or that piece of old driftwood. But at the same time “the village idiot” was also on the beach, and their paths crossed. Jamieson watched it all unfold in the cross hairs of his binoculars:

Tremain, crouching over a dark patch of seaweed, and Geoff coming over the dunes on a collision course. Then the meeting; the headmaster seeing the youth and jerking upright, lurching backward from the advancing figure and apparently threatening him with the knobby end of a stripped branch! The other coming to an awkward halt, and standing there with his arms and hands flapping uselessly, his flabby mouth opening and closing as if in silent protest.

But was it revulsion, hatred, or stark terror on Tremain’s part? Or simply shock? Jamieson couldn’t make up his mind. But whichever, it appeared that Tremain’s dislike of “bolshy” teenagers went twice for those who weren’t so much bolshy as, well, unfortunate.

That, however, was all there was to it; hardly a confrontation as such, and over and done with as quickly as that. Then Tremain scuttling for home, and Geoff standing there, watching him go. The end. But at least it had served to remind Jamieson of his promise to go and see John’s driftwood carvings—which was one reason at least why he should pay a return visit…

• • •

At the weekend Jamieson called the Tremains on the telephone to check that the invitation was still open, and on Sunday evening he drove the solitary mile to his neighbour’s place, parking by the side of the road. Since he, the Whites and the Tremains had the only properties on this stretch of potholed road, it wasn’t likely that he’d be causing any traffic problems.

“Saw you on the beach the other day,” he told John when he was seated and had a drink in his hand. “Beachcombing, hey?”

The other nodded. “It seems our talking about it must have sparked me off again. I found one or two rather nice pieces.”

“You certainly have an eye for it,” the old man commented, his flattery very deliberate. “Why, I can see you have several ‘nice pieces’—expertly finished pieces, that is—right here. But if you’ll forgive my saying so, it seems to me these aren’t so much carvings as wind-, sea-, and sand-sculptures really, which you have somehow managed to revitalize with sandpaper and varnish, imagination and infinite skill. So much so that you’ve returned them to a new, dramatic life of their own!”

“Really?” Tremain was taken aback; he didn’t see Jamieson’s flattery for what it really was, as a means to an end, a way to ingratiate himself into the Tremains’s confidence. For Jamieson found himself in such a close-knit microcosm of isolated community society that he felt sure the headmaster and his wife would have knowledge of almost everything that had gone on here; they would have the answers to questions he couldn’t possibly put to Jilly, not in her condition.

For the old man suspected—indeed, he more than suspected—that Jilly White’s circumstances had brought her to the verge of nervous exhaustion. But what exactly were her circumstances? As yet there were loose ends here, which Jamieson must at least attempt to tie up before making any firm decision or taking any definite course of action.

Which was why the ex-Doctor was here at the Tremains’s this evening. They were after all his and Jilly’s closest neighbours and closest in status, too. Whereas the people of the village—while they might well be the salt of the earth—were of a very different order indeed. And close-mouthed? Oh, he’d get nothing out of them.

And so back to the driftwood:

“Yes, really,” the old man finally answered John Tremain’s pleased if surprised inquiry. “I mean, this table we’re sitting at, drinking from: a table of driftwood—but see how the grain stands out, the fine polish!” In fact the table was quite ugly. Jamieson pointed across the room. “And who could fail to admire your plant stand there, so black it looks lacquered.”

“Yacht varnish,” Tremain was all puffed up now. “As for why it’s so black, it’s ebony.”

“Diospyros,” said Doreen Tremain, entering from the kitchen with a tray of food. “A very heavy wood, and tropical. Goodness only knows how long it was in the sea, to finally get washed up here.”

“Amazing!” Jamieson declared. “And not just the stand. Your knowledge of woods—and indeed of most things, as I’ve noted—does both of you great credit.”

And now she preened and fussed no less than her husband. “I do so hope you like turbot, er, James?”

“Psetta maxima,” said Jamieson, not to be outdone. “If it’s fish, dear lady, then you need have no fear. I’m not the one to turn my nose up at a good piece of fish.”

“I got it from Tom Foster in the village,” she answered. “I like his fish, if not his company.” And she wrinkled her nose.

“Tom Foster?” Jamieson repeated her, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think I know him.”

“And you don’t want to,” said John, helping the old man up, and showing him to the dining table. “Tom might be a good fisherman, but that’s all he’s good for. Him and his Gypsy wife.”

Sitting down, Jamieson blinked his rheumy eyes at the other and enquired, “His Gypsy wife?”

“She’s not a Gypsy,” Doreen shook her head. “No, not Romany at all, despite her looks. It seems her great-grandmother was a Polynesian woman. Oh, there are plenty such throwbacks in Devon and Cornwall, descendants of women brought back from the Indies and South Pacific when the old sailing ships plied their trade. Anyway, the Fosters are the ones who have charge of that young Geoff person. But there again, I suppose we should be thankful that someone is taking care of him.”

“Huh!” John Tremain grunted. “Surely his mother is the one who should be taking care of him. Or better far his father, except we all know that’s no longer possible.”

“And never would have been,” Doreen added. “Well, not without all sorts of complications, accusations, and difficulties in general.”

Watching the fish being served, Jamieson said, “I’m afraid you’ve quite lost me. Do you think you could…I mean, would you mind explaining?”

The Tremains looked at each other, then at the old man.

“Oh?” he said. “Do I sense some dark secret here, one from which I’m excluded? But that’s okay—if I don’t need to know, then I don’t need to know. After all, I am new around here.”

“No,” said Doreen, “it’s not that. It’s just that—”

“It’s sort of delicate,” her husband said. “Or not exactly delicate, not any longer, but not the kind of thing people like to talk about. Especially when it’s your neighbour, or your ex-neighbour, who is concerned.”

“My ex-neighbour?” Jamieson frowned. “George White? He was your neighbour, yes, but never mine. So, what’s the mystery?”

“You’ve not sensed anything?” This was Doreen again. “With poor Jilly? You’ve not wondered why she and Anne always seem to be sticking up for—”

“For that damned idiot in the village?” John saw his opportunity to jump in and finish it for her.

And the old man slowly nodded. “I think I begin to see,” he said. “There’s some connection between George White, Jilly and Anne, and—”

“And Geoff, yes,” said Doreen. “But do you think we should finish eating first? I see no reason why we can’t tell you all about it. You are or were a doctor, after all—and we’re sure you’ve heard of similar or worse cases—but I’d hate the food to spoil.”

And so they ate in relative silence. Doreen Tremain’s cooking couldn’t be faulted, and her choice of white wine was of a similar high quality…

• • •

“It was fifteen, sixteen years ago,” John Tremain began, “and we were relative newcomers here, just as you are now. In those days this was a prosperous little place; the fish were plentiful and the village booming; in the summer there were people on the beaches and in the shops. Nowadays—there’s only the post office, the pub, and the bakery. The post office doubles as a general store and does most of the business, and you can still buy a few fresh fish on the quayside before what’s left gets shipped inland. And that’s about it right now. But back then:

“They were even building a few new homes here, extending the village, as it were. This house and yours, they were the result. That’s why they’re newish places. But the road got no further than your place and hasn’t been repaired to any great extent since. Jilly and George’s place was maybe twenty years older; standing closer to the village, it wasn’t as isolated. As for the other houses they’d planned to build on this road, they just didn’t happen. Prices of raw materials were rocketing, the summers weren’t much good any more, and fish stocks had begun a rapid decline.

“The Whites had been here for a year or two. They had met and married in Newquay, and moved here for the same reason we did: the housing was cheaper than in the towns. George didn’t seem to have a job. He’d inherited some fabulous art items in gold and was gradually selling them off to a dealer in Truro. And Jilly was doing some freelance editing for local publishers.”

Now Doreen took over. “As for George’s gold: it was jewellery, and quite remarkable. I had a brooch off him that I wear now and then. It’s unique, I think. Beautiful but very strange. Perhaps you’d like to see it?”

“Certainly,” said the old man. “Indeed I would.” While she went to fetch it, John continued the story.

“Anyway, Jilly was heavy with Anne at the time, but George wasn’t a home body. They had a car—the same wreck she’s got now, more off the road than on it—which he used to get into St. Austell, Truro, Newquay, and goodness knows where else. He would be away for two or three days at a time, often for whole weekends. Which wasn’t fair on Jilly who was very close to her time. But look, let me cut a long story short.

“Apparently George had been a bit of a louse for quite some time. In fact as soon as Jilly had declared her pregnancy, that was when he’d commenced his…well, his—

“—Womanizing?” The old man sat up straighter in his chair. “Are you saying he was something of a rake?”

By now Doreen had returned with a small jewellery box. “Oh, George White was much more than something of a rake,” she said. “He was a great deal of a rake, in fact a roue! And all through poor Jilly’s pregnancy he’d been, you know, doing it in most of the towns around.”

“Really?” said Jamieson. “But you can’t know that for sure, now can you?”

“Ah, but we can,” said John, “for he was seen! Some of the locals had seen him going into…well, ‘houses of ill repute,’ shall we put it that way? And a handful of the village’s single men, whose morals also weren’t all they might be, learned about George’s reputation in those same, er, houses. But you’ll know, James—and I’m sure that in your capacity as a doctor you will know—it’s a sad but true fact that you do actually reap what you sow. And in George White’s case, that was true in more ways than one.”

“Which is where this becomes even more indelicate,” Doreen got to her feet. “And I have things to do in the kitchen. So if you’ll excuse me…” And leaving her jewellery box on the table she left the room and closed the door behind her. Then:

“George caught something,” said John, quietly.

“He what?”

“Well, that’s the only way I can explain it. He caught this bloody awful disease, presumably from some woman with whom he’d, er, associated. But that wasn’t all.”

“There’s more?” Jamieson shook his head. “Poor Jilly.”

“Poor Jilly, indeed! For little Anne was only a few months old when this slut from Newquay arrived in the village with her loathsome child—a baby she blamed on George White.”

“Ah!” Jamieson nodded knowingly. “And the child was Geoff, right?”

“Of course. That same cretin, adopted by the Fosters, who shambles around the village even now. A retarded youth of some fifteen years—but who looks like and has the strength of an eighteen-year-old—who in fact is George White’s illegitimate son and young Anne’s half-brother. And because I’m quite fond of Jilly, I find that…that creature perfectly unbearable!”

“Not to mention dangerous,” said Jamieson.

“Eh? What’s that?” The other looked startled.

“I was out on my verandah,” said the old man. “It was just the other day, and I saw you with…with that young man. You seemed to be engaged in some sort of confrontation.”

“But that’s it exactly!” said Tremain. “He’s suddenly there—he comes upon you, out of nowhere—and God only knows what goes on in that misshapen head of his. Enough to scare the life out of a man, coming over the dunes like that, and blowing like a stranded fish! A damn great fish, yes, that’s what he reminds me of. Ugh! And it’s how Tom Foster uses him, too!”

“What? Foster uses him?” Jamieson seemed totally engrossed. “In what way? Are we talking about physical abuse?”

“No, no, nothing that bad!” Tremain held up his hands. “No, but have you seen that retard swim? My God, if he had more than half a brain he’d be training for the olympics! What? Why, he’s like a porpoise in the water! That’s how Foster uses him.”

“I’m afraid I’m still not with you,” Jamieson admitted, his expression one of complete bafflement. “You’re saying that this Foster somehow uses the boy to catch fish?”

“Yes.” The other nodded. “And if the weather hadn’t been so bad recently you wouldn’t have seen nearly so much of the idiot on the beach. No, for he’d have been out with Tom Foster in his boat. The lad swims—in all weathers, apparently—to bring in the fish for that degenerate who looks after him.”

Jamieson laughed out loud, then stopped abruptly and asked, “But…do you actually believe that? That a man can herd fish? I mean, that’s quite incredible!”

“Oh?” Tremain answered. “You think so? Then don’t just take my word for it but the next time you’re in town go have a drink in the Sailor’s Rest. Get talking with any of the local fishermen and ask them how come Foster always gets the best catches.”

“But herding fish—” the old man began to protest.

And Tremain cut him off: “Now, I didn’t say that. I said he brings them in—somehow attracts them.” Then he offered a weak grin. “Yes, I’m well aware that sounds almost as silly. But—” He pursed his lips, shrugged and fell silent.

“So,” said Jamieson. “Some truths, some rumours. But as far as I’m concerned, I still don’t know it all. For instance, what was this awful disease you say George White contracted? What do you mean by ‘awful’? All venereal diseases are pretty awful.”

“Well, I suppose they are,” Tremain answered. “But not like this one. There’s awful and awful, but this was hideous. And he passed it down to his idiot child, too.”

“He did what?”

“The way ‘young Geoff’ looks now, that was how George White looked in the months before he—”

“Died?”

“No.” The other shook his head, grimly. “It’s not as simple as that. George didn’t just die, he took his own life.” And:

“Ah!” said the old man. “So it was suicide.”

Tremain nodded. “And I know this is a dreadful thing to say, but with a man like that—with his sexual appetites—surely it’s just as well. A disease like that…why, he was a walking time bomb!”

“My goodness!” Jamieson exclaimed. “Was it never diagnosed? Can we put a name to it? Who was his doctor?”

“He wouldn’t see a doctor. The more Jilly pressed him to do so, the more he retreated into himself. And only she could tell you what life must have been like with him, during his last few weeks. But since she’d already stuck it out for fifteen or more years, watching it gradually come out in him during all of that time…God, how strong she must have been!”

“Terrible, terrible!” said Jamieson—and then he frowned. “Yet Jilly and her child, I mean Anne—apparently they didn’t come down with anything.”

“No, and we can thank God for that!” said Tremain. “I think we’ll have to assume that as soon as Jilly knew how sick George was, she—or they—stopped…well, you know what I mean.”

“Yes.” Jamieson nodded. “I do know: they were man and wife in name only. But if both Anne and Geoff were born within a few months of each other—and if young Geoff was, well, defective from birth—then Anne is a very fortunate young woman indeed.”

“Exactly,” said Tremain. “And is it any wonder her mother’s nerves are so bad? My wife and I, we’ve known the White’s a lot longer than you, James, and I can assure you that there’s never been a woman more watchful of her child than Jilly is of Anne.”

“Watchful?”

Doreen had come back in, and she said, “Oh, yes. That girl, she can’t cough or catch a cold, or even develop a pimple without having her mother fussing all over her. Why, Anne’s skin is flawless, but if you should see them on the beach together next summer—and if Anne’s skin gets a little red or rough from the sun and the sand—you watch Jilly’s reaction.”

And Tremain concurred. “It’s a wonder Jilly so much as lets that kid out of the house…”

• • •

The subject changed; the conversation moved on; half an hour or so later Jamieson looked at his watch. “Almost time I was on my way,” he said. “There are some programmes I want to watch on TV tonight.” He turned to Doreen. “Before I go, however, you might like to show me that brooch of yours. You were, er, busy in the kitchen for a while when we were talking and I didn’t much like to open the box in your absence.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was very thoughtful of you to wait for me.” She opened the small velvet-lined box and passed it across to him. The brooch was pinned to a pad in the bottom of the box and the old man let it lie there, simply turning the box in his hand and looking at the brooch from all angles.

“You’re absolutely right.” He nodded after a moment or two. “Without a doubt it has a certain beauty, but it’s also a very odd piece. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen gold worked in this style. But you know…” Here he paused and frowned, apparently uncertain how best to continue.

“Oh?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“Well—” he began to answer, then paused again and bit his lip. “Well, it’s just that…I don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it.”

Doreen took back the box and brooch, and said, “But now you really must mention it! You have to! Do you think there’s something wrong with the brooch? But then, what could be wrong with it? Some kind of fake, maybe? Poor quality gold? Or not gold at all!” Her voice was more strident, more high-pitched, moment by moment. “Is that it, James? Have I been cheated?”

“At the price, whatever it was you paid? Probably not. It’s the meaning of the thing. It’s what it stands for. Doreen, this isn’t a lucky item.”

“It’s unlucky? In what way?”

“Well, anthropology was a hobby of mine no less than driftwood art is your husband’s. And as for the odd style and native workmanship we see here…I believe you’ll find this brooch is from the South Seas, where it was probably crafted by a tribal witchdoctor.”

“What? A witchdoctor?” Doreen’s hand went to her throat.

“Oh, yes.” Jamieson nodded. “And having fashioned it from an alloy of local gold and some other lustrous metal, the idea would have been to lay a curse upon it, then to ensure it fell into the hands of an enemy. A kind of sympathetic magic—or in the poor victim’s case, quite unsympathetic.”

Now Doreen took the box back, and staring hard at its contents said, “To be honest, I’ve never much liked this thing. I only bought it out of some misguided sense of loyalty to Jilly, so that I could tell myself that at least some money was finding its way into that household. What with George’s philandering and all, they couldn’t have been very well off.”

Her husband took the box off her, peered at the brooch for a few moments, and said, “I think you must be right, James. It isn’t a very pleasant sort of thing at all. It’s quite unearthly, really. These weird arabesques, not of any terrestrial foliage but more of…what? Interwoven seaweeds, kelp, suckered tentacles? And these scalloped edges you see in certain shells. I mean, it’s undeniably striking in its looks—well, until you look closer. And then, why, you’re absolutely right! It’s somehow crude, as if crafted by some primitive islander.”

He handed the box back to his wife who said, “I’ll sell it at once! I believe I know the jewellers where George White got rid of those other pieces.” And glancing at the old man: “It’s not that I’m superstitious, you understand, but better not to risk it. You never know where this thing’s been.”

“Dear lady, you’re so right,” Jamieson said. “But myself, having an interest in this sort of thing—and being a doctor of an entirely different stamp—I find the piece fascinating So if you do decide to sell it, don’t take it to a dealer but offer it to me first. And whatever you paid for it, I think we can safely say you won’t be the worse off.”

“Why, that’s so very kind of you!” she said, seeing him to the door. “But are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” the old man answered. “Give me a ring in the morning when you’ve had time to think it over, and let me know what I owe you.”

With which the Tremains walked him to his car…

• • •

The winter came in quickly and savagely, keeping almost everyone in the village to their houses. With the fishermen’s boats sheltering within the harbour wall, only the old Sailor’s Rest was doing anything like good business.

Driving his car to work at the college in St. Austell over frequently washed-out and ever potholed roads, headmaster John Tremain cursed the day he’d bought his place (a) for its cheapness and (b) for its “seclusion and wild dramatic beauty.” The seclusion was fine and dandy but he could do without the wildness of winters like this one, and of drama he’d had more than enough. Come spring and the first half-decent offer he got, he and Doreen would be out of here for a more convenient place in St. Austell. It would be more expensive, but what the hell…he’d sell the car, cycle to work, and save money on petrol and repairs.

As for the Whites: Jilly and Anne were more or less housebound, but they did have a regular visitor in the old American gentleman. James Jamieson had seemed to take to them almost as family, and never turned up on their doorstep without bringing some gift or other with him. Often as not it was food: a fresh pie from the bakery, a loaf of bread and slab of cheese, maybe a bottle of good wine. All to the good, for Jilly’s old car was well past reliable, and Anne had to attend her piano and language lessons. Jamieson would drive the girl to and fro without complaint, and wouldn’t accept a penny for all his kindness.

Also, when Anne went down with a sore throat, which served to drive her mother frantic with worry, Jamieson gave the girl a thorough examination and diagnosed a mild case of laryngitis. His remedy—one aspirin three times daily, and between times a good gargle with a spoonful of salt in water—worked wonders, for mother and daughter both! But his ministrations didn’t stop there. For having now seen Jilly on several occasions when her nervous condition was at its worst, the old man had in fact prescribed for her, too; though not without protesting that in fact he shouldn’t for he’d retired from all that. Nevertheless, the pills he made up for her did the trick, calming her nerves like nothing she’d tried before. They couldn’t entirely relieve her obsession or anxieties with regard to Anne, however, though now when she felt compelled to fuss and fret her hands wouldn’t shake so badly, and her at best fluffy mind would stay focussed for longer. Moreover, now that certain repetitive nightmares of long-standing no longer visited her quite so frequently, Jilly was pleased to declare that she was sleeping better…

• • •

Occasionally, when the weather was a little kinder, Anne would walk to her piano lesson at Miss Harding’s thatched cottage on the far side of the village. Jilly would usually accompany her daughter part way, and use the occasion to visit the bakery or collect groceries at the post office. The winter being a hard one, such times were rare; more often than not, James Jamieson would arrive in his car in time to give Anne a lift. It got so that Jilly even expected him, and Anne—normally so retiring—had come to regard him as some kind of father or grandfather figure.

One day in mid-January, when the wind drove the waves high up the beach, and stinging hail came sleeting almost horizontally off the sea, the old man and his young passenger arrived at Miss Harding’s place to find an agitated Tom Foster waiting for them—in fact waiting for Jamieson.

The old man had bumped into Foster once or twice before in the Sailor’s Rest, and had found him a surly, bearded, weatherbeaten brute with a gravelly voice and a habit of slamming his empty mug on the bar by way of catching the barman’s attention and ordering another drink. He had few friends among the other fishermen and was as much a loner as any man Jamieson had ever known. Yet now, today, he was in need of a friend—or rather, in need of a doctor.

The village spinster, Miss Julia Harding, had kept Foster waiting in the small conservatory that fronted her cottage; he wasn’t the sort of person she would allow in the house proper. But Foster, still shaking rain from his lank hair, and pacing to and fro—a few paces each way, which was all the conservatory allowed—pounced on Jamieson as soon as the old man was ushered into view by Miss Harding.

“It’s the boy,” he rasped, grabbing Jamieson’s arm. “Can’t get no sleep, the way um itches. I know’d you’d be comin’ with the lass fer the teachin’, and so I waited. But I do wish you’d come see the boy. I’d consider it a real favour, and Tom Foster dun’t forget um that does um a favour. But it’s more fer young Geoff’n fer me. Um’s skin be raw from scratchin’, so it be. And I got no car fer gettin’ um inter the city…beside which, um dun’t want no big city doctor. But um won’t fuss any with you, if you’ll come see um.”

“I don’t any longer practice…” The old man appeared at a loss what to do or say.

But Anne took his other arm. “Please go,” she said. “Oh do please go and see Geoff! And I’ll go with you.”

Miss Harding wagged her finger at Anne, and said, “Oh? And what of your lesson, young lady?” But then, looking for support from Tom Foster and Jamieson, and seeing none, she immediately shook her head in self denial. “No, no—whatever was I thinking? If something ails that poor lad, it’s surely more important than a piano lesson. It must be, for Mr. Foster here, well, he’s hardly one to get himself all stirred up on a mere whim—nor for anything much else, except maybe his fishing—and not even that on a bad day!”

“That I’m not,” growled Foster, either ignoring or failing to recognize the spinster’s jibe for what it really was. And to Jamieson: “Will you come?”

“Well,” the old man sighed, “I don’t suppose it can do any harm to see the boy, and I always carry my old medicine bag in the back of the car…not that there’s a lot of medicine in it these days. But—” He threw up his hands, took Anne and Foster back out to his car, and drove them to the latter’s house where it stood facing the sea across the harbour wall in Fore Street.

Tom Foster’s wife, a small, black-haired, dark-complexioned woman, but not nearly as gnarled or surly as her husband, wiped her hands on her apron to clasp Jamieson’s hand as she let them into the house. She said nothing but simply indicated a bedroom door where it stood ajar.

Geoff was inside, a bulky shape under a coarse blanket, and the room bore the unmistakable odour of fish—but then, so did the entire house. Wrinkling his nose, Jamieson glanced at Anne, but she didn’t seem to have noticed the fish stink; all she was interested in was Geoff’s welfare. As she approached the bed so its occupant seemed to sense her presence; the youth’s bulbous, ugly head came out from under the blanket, and he stared at her with luminous green eyes. But:

“No, no, lass!” Tom Foster grunted. “I knows you be friends but you can’t be in ’ere. Um’s naked under that blanket, and um ain’t nice ter look at what wi’ um’s scratchin’ and all. So out you goes and Ma Foster’ll see ter you in the front.” And coarse brute of a man that he was, he gentled her out of the room.

As Foster closed the door behind her, so Jamieson drew up a chair close to the bed, and said, “Now then, young man, try not to be alarmed. I’m here to see what the trouble is.” With which he began to turn back the blanket. A squat hand, short-fingered and thickly webbed, at once grasped the top edge of the blanket and held it fast. The old man saw blood under the sharp fingernails, the trembling of the unfortunate’s entire body under the blanket, and the terror in his huge, moist, oh-so-deep eyes.

Foster immediately stepped forward. “Now, dun’t you take on so, lad,” he said. “This un’s a doctor, um be. A friend ter the lass and ’er Ma. If you let um, um’ll see ter your scratchin’.”

The thing called Geoff (for close up he was scarcely human) opened his mouth and Jamieson saw his teeth, small but as sharp as needles. There was no threat in it, however—just a popping of those pouty lips, a soundless pleading almost—as the hand slowly relaxed its grip, allowing the old man to turn back the cover without further hindrance.

Despite that Foster was hovering over the old man, watching him closely, he saw no evidence of shock at what was uncovered: that scaly body—which even five years ago a specialist in St. Austell had called the worst case of ichthyosis he’d ever seen, now twice as bad at least—that body under a heavily wattled neck and sloping but powerful shoulders, and the raw, red areas on the forearms and under the ribcage where the rough grey skin had been torn. And as the old man opened his bag and called for hot water and a clean towel, Foster nodded his satisfaction. He had done the right thing sure enough, and Jamieson was a doctor good and true who would care for a life even if it were such as this one under the blanket.

But as Foster turned away to answer Jamieson’s request, the old man took his arm and said, “Tom, do you care for him?”

“Eh?” Foster grunted. “Why, me and my old girl, we’ve cared fer um fer fifteen years! And in fifteen years you can get used ter things, even them things that never gets no better but only worse. And as fer folks—even poorly made ’uns such as the boy—why, in time you can even get fond of ’em, so you can!”

Jamieson nodded and said, “Then look after him better.” And he let Foster go…

• • •

Anne saw the wet, pink-splotched towels when Mrs Foster brought them out of Geoff’s room. And then Tom Foster allowed her in.

The old man was putting his things back into his bag as she hurried to the bedside. There was a clean white sheet under the blanket now, and it was tucked up under Geoff’s blob of a chin. The youth’s neck was bandaged to hold a dressing under his left ear; his right arm lay on top of the blanket, the forearm bandaged where a red stain was evidence of some small seepage.

“What was it?” Anne snatched a breath, touching her hand to her lips and staring at Jamieson wide-eyed, her face drawn and pale, even paler than usual. “Oh, what was it?”

“A skin disorder,” he told her. “Something parasitic—like lice or scabies—but I think I got all of it. No need to worry about it, however. It must have been uncomfortable for him, but it certainly wasn’t deadly. Geoff will recover, I assure you.”

And Tom Foster said, “Anythin’ I can do fer you, Mr. Jamieson, sir, jus’ you ask. I dun’t forget um who’s done me or mine a favour—no, not never.”

“Well, Tom,” Jamieson answered, “I might come to you for a nice piece of fish some time, and that would be payment enough for what little I’ve done here. Right now, though, we’ve other things to talk about.” He turned to the girl. “Anne, if you’ll wait in the car?”

Anne had sat down in the chair by the bed. She was holding Geoff’s hand and they were looking at each other, and Jamieson couldn’t help noticing a striking similarity in the deep green colour of their eyes…but only in their colour. It was true that Anne’s eyes were slightly, almost unnoticeably protuberant, but as for the other’s…

…In his current physical condition, and despite that his eyes were huge and bulging, even more so than was usual, still the old man had to grant them the dubious distinction of being Geoff’s most human feature!

And now the youth had taken his hand from the girl’s, and his stubby fingers were moving rapidly, urgently, making signs which she appeared to understand and began answering in a like fashion. This “conversation” lasted only a moment or so longer, until Geoff turned his watery gaze on Jamieson and twisted his face into what had to be his version of a smile. At which Anne said:

“He says I’m to thank you for him. So thank you.” Then she stood up and left the room and the house…

• • •

Inside the front door, Jamieson spoke to Tom Foster in lowered tones. “Do you know what I dug out and scraped off him?”

“How’d I know that?” the other protested. “You be the doctor.”

“Oh?” said the old man. “And you be the fisherman, but you tell me you’ve never seen such as that before? Very well, then I’ll tell you: they were fish-lice, Tom. Copepods, small crustaceans that live on fish as parasites. Now then, Mr. Fisherman—tell me you’ve never seen fish-lice before.”

The other looked away, then slowly nodded. “I’ve seen ’em, sure enough. Usually on plaice or flounder, flatties or bottomfeeders. But on a man? In the flesh of a man?” And now he shook his head. “I jus’ dint want ter believe it, that’s all.”

“Well, now you can believe it,” said Jamieson. “And the only way he could have got them was by frequent periods of immersion in the sea. They got under his skin where it’s especially scaly and fed there like ticks on a dog. They were dug in quite deep, so I know he’s had them for a long time.”

“Oh? And are you sayin’ I ain’t looked after um, then?” Tom was angry now. “Well, I’m tellin’ you as how I din’t see ’em on um afore! And anyways, you answer me this—if um’s had ’em so long, why’d they wait ter flare up now, eh?”

The old man nodded. “Oh, I think I can tell you that, Tom. It’s because his skin was all dried out. And because they need it damp, they started digging in for the moisture in his blood. So all of a sudden the boy was itching and hurting. And when he scratched, the hurt only got worse. That’s what happened here. So now then, you can tell me something: when were you last out at sea, Tom? Not recently, I’ll wager!”

“Ah-hah!” The other narrowed his eyes, thrust his chin out. “So then, Mr. Jamieson. You’ve been alistenin’ ter rumours, eh? And what did them waggin’ village tongues tell you…that Tom Foster makes um’s poor dumb freak swim fer um? And that um gets um ter chase up the fish fer um? Hah!” He shook his head. “Well it ain’t so! That ’un swims ’cos um likes ter swim, and ’cos um wants ter swim—and in all weathers if I dun’t be watchin’ um! That’s all there be ter such tall stories. But if you be askin’ does um know where the best fish can be found? Then you’re damn right um do, and that’s why I gets the best catch—always! So then, what else can I tell you?”

“Nothing, Tom,” said Jamieson. “But there is something you can do for that youth. If he wants to swim, let him—you don’t need to let the village see it. And if he gets…well, infested again, you saw me working and know what to do. But whatever you do, you mustn’t let him dry out like that again. No, for it seems to me his skin needs that salt water…”

• • •

It had stopped hailing, and protected by the building Anne was waiting just outside the door. Since the door had been standing ajar, she must have heard the old man’s and Foster’s conversation. But she said nothing until they were in the car. Then:

“He had fish-lice?” It wasn’t a shocked exclamation, just a simple enquiry.

And starting up the car Jamieson answered, “Oh, people are prone to all kinds of strange infections and infestations. I’ve heard it said that AIDS—a disease caused by immune deficiency—came from monkeys; and there’s that terrible CJD that you can get from eating contaminated or incorrectly processed beef. And how about psittacosis? From parrots, of all things! As for that poor boy: well, what can I say? He likes to swim.”

“It’s very strange,” she said, as Jamieson drove out of the village, “but my father…he didn’t like the sea. Not at all. He had those books about it—about the sea and other things—and yet was afraid of it. He used to say it lured him. They say he killed himself, suicide, and perhaps he did; but at least he did it his way. I remember he once said to me, ‘If a time comes when I must go, it won’t take me alive.’ Toward the end he used to say all sorts of things that didn’t make a lot of sense, but I think he was talking about the sea.”

“And what makes you think that?” Jamieson asked her, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, and aware that she was watching him, probably to gauge his reaction.

“Well, because of the way he did it…jumped off the cliff at South Point, down onto the rocks. He washed up on the beach, all broken up.”

“How awful!” The old man swung the car onto the lonely road to Jilly White’s house. “And yet you and your mother, you continue to live right here, almost on the beach itself.”

“I think that’s because she needs to be sure about certain things,” the girl answered. “Needs to be sure of me, perhaps?”

Jamieson saw Jilly standing on the doorstep and stopped the car outside the house. He would have liked to carry on talking, to have the girl clarify her last cryptic remark, or learn more about the books she’d mentioned—her father’s books, about the sea. But Jilly was already coming forward. And now Anne touched the old man’s arm and said, “It’s best she doesn’t know we were at the Fosters’. If she knew about Geoff’s fish-lice, it might only set her off again.”

Then, lifting her voice a little as she got out of the car, she said, “Thank’s again for the ride.” And in a whisper added, “And for what you did for Geoff…”

• • •

The winter dragged on. Jamieson spent some of the time driving, visiting the local towns, even going as far afield as Falmouth and Penzance. And to break the boredom a little, usually there would be a weekly “social evening” alternating between Jilly’s, the Tremains’s, and Jamieson’s place. The old man even managed to inveigle Jilly into joining him and the Tremains in a visit to the dilapidated Sailor’s Rest one night.

On that occasion Anne went with them. She was under age for drinking—even for being in the pub—but the proprietor knew her, of course, and served her orange juice; and in any case it wasn’t as if the place was about to be raided.

Their table was close to a great open fireplace where logs popped and hissed, and the pub being mainly empty, the service couldn’t be faulted. In an atmosphere that was quietly mellow, the country food bought fresh from the village bakery was very good. Even Jilly appeared clear-headed and in good spirits for once, and as for the Tremains: putting their customary, frequently unwarranted snobbery aside, they were on their very best behaviour.

That was the up-side, but the down-side was on its way. It came as the evening drew to a close in the forms of the fisherman Tom Foster, and that of his ward the shambling Geoff, when the pair came in from the cold and took gloomy corner seats at a small table. It was doubtful that they had noticed the party seated near the fire on the far side of the room, but Foster’s narrowed eyes had certainly scanned the bar area before he ushered his ward and companion to their more discreet seats.

And as suddenly as that the evening turned sour. “Checking that his enemies aren’t in,” said Tremain under his breath. “I can understand that. He’s probably afraid they’ll report him.”

“His enemies?” said Jamieson. “The other village fishermen, you mean? Report him for what?”

“See for yourself,” said the other, indicating the barman, who was on his way to Foster’s corner with a tray. “A pint for Tom, and a half for that…for young Geoff. He lets that boy drink here—alcohol, mind—and him no older than Anne here. I mean, it’s one thing to have that…well, that poor unfortunate in the village, but quite another to deliberately addle what few brains he’s got with strong drink!”

Anne, visibly stiffening in her chair, at once spoke up in the youth’s defence. “Geoff isn’t stupid,” she said. “He can’t speak very well, and he’s different, but he isn’t stupid.” And staring pointedly at Tremain, “He isn’t ignorant, either.”

The headmaster’s mouth fell open. “Well, I…!” But before he could say more:

“John, you asked for that,” Doreen told him. “You’re aware that Anne is that youth’s friend. Why, she’s probably the only friend he’s got! You should mind what you say.”

“But I…” Tremain began to protest, only to have Jamieson step in with:

“Oh, come, come! Let’s not ruin the pleasant evening we’re having. Surely our opinions can differ without that we have to fight over them? If Tom Foster does wrong, then he does wrong. But I say let that youth have whatever pleasures he can find.”

“And I agree,” said Doreen, glowering at her husband. “God only knows he’ll find few enough!”

With which they fell silent, and that was that. Things had been said that couldn’t be retracted, and as for the evening’s cosy atmosphere and light-hearted conversation: suddenly everything had fallen flat. They tried to hang on to it but were too late. John Tremain took on a haughty, defensive attitude, while his wife turned cold and distant. Jilly retreated quietly into herself again, and young Anne’s presence continued to register only by virtue of her physically being there—but as for her thoughts, they could be anywhere…

• • •

After that, such get-togethers were few and far between. Their friendship—the fact that the Tremains, Whites, and Jamieson stuck together at all—continued on a far less intimate level, surviving mainly out of necessity; being of the village’s self-appointed upper crust, they couldn’t bring themselves to mingle too freely with those on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

The old man was the odd-man-out—or rather the pig-in-the-middle; while he maintained contact with the Tremains, Jamieson never failed to assist Jilly and Anne White whenever the opportunity presented itself. Moreover, he visited the Sailor’s Rest from time to time, building at least tentative friendships with several of the normally taciturn locals. The Tremains reckoned him either a fool or a saint, while the Whites—both of them—saw him as a godsend.

One evening in early March Jilly called the old man, ostensibly to tell him she was running low on medication, the pills which he’d prescribed and made up for her. But Jamieson sensed there was more than that to her call. The woman’s voice hinted of loneliness, and the old man’s intuition was that she wanted someone to talk to…or someone to talk to her.

He at once drove to her house.

Waiting for his knock, Jilly made him welcome with a glass of sherry. And after he had handed over a month’s supply of her pills, and she had offered him a chair, she said, “I feel such an idiot calling you so late when I’ve had all day to remember my medication was getting low. I hope you don’t mind?”

“Not at all, my dear,” the old man answered. “If anything, I’m just a little concerned that you may be taking too many of those things. I mean, by my calculations you should still have a fortnight’s supply at least. Of course, I could be wrong. My memory’s not as keen as it used to be. But…?”

“Oh!” she said. And then, quickly recovering: “Ah! No—not at all—your memory’s fine. I’m the one at fault. For like a fool I…well, I spilled some pills the other day, and didn’t like to use them after they’d been on the floor.”

“Very sensible, too!” he answered. “And anyway, I’ve let it go too long without asking you how you’ve been feeling. But you see, Jilly, I’m not getting any younger, and what used to be my bedside manner is all shot to pieces. I certainly wouldn’t like to think those pills of mine were doing you any harm.”

“Doing me harm? On the contrary,” she replied. “I think I’m feeling better. I’m calmer—perhaps a little easier in my mind—but….Well, just a moment ago, James, you were complaining about your memory. Huh! I should be so lucky! No, I don’t think it’s your pills—though it could be a side effect—but I do seem to stumble a lot. And I don’t just mean in my speech or my memory, but also physically. My balance is off, and I sometimes feel quite weak. You may have noticed?”

“Side effects, yes.” He nodded. “You could be right. But in a remote place like this it’s easy to get all vague and forgetful. I mean, who do you talk to? You see me occasionally—and of course there’s Anne—but that’s about it.” He looked around the room, frowning. “Talking about Anne, where is she?”

“Sleeping.” Jilly held a finger to her lips. “What with the weather improving and all, she’s been doing a lot of walking on the beach. Walking and reading, and so intelligent! Haven’t you ever wondered why she isn’t at school? They had nothing more to teach her, that’s why. She left school early, shortly after her father…after George…after he…” She paused, touched her hand to her brow, looked suddenly vague.

“Yes, I understand,” said the old man, and waited.

In another moment Jilly blinked; and shaking her head as if to clear it, she said, “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was just wondering if there was anything else I could do for you,” Jamieson answered. “Apart from delivering your pills, that is. Did you want to talk, perhaps? For after all, we could all of us use a little company, some friendly conversation from time to time.”

“Talk?” she said—and then the cloud lifted from her brow. “Ah, talk! Now I remember! It was something you were telling me one time, but we were somehow interrupted. I think it was Anne. Yes, she came on the scene just as you were going to talk about…about…wasn’t it that coastal town in America, the place that George came from, that you were telling me about?”

“Innsmouth?” said the old man. “Yes, I believe I recall the occasion. But I also recall how nervous you were. And Jilly, in my opinion—from what I’ve observed of you, er, in my capacity as a doctor or ex-doctor—it seems to me that odd or peculiar subjects have a very unsettling effect on you. Are you sure you want to hear about Innsmouth?”

“While it’s true that certain subjects have a bad affect on me,” she began slowly, “at the same time I’m fascinated by anything concerning my husband’s history or his people. Especially the latter, his genealogy.” She speeded up a little. “After all what do we really know of genetics—those traits we carry down the generations with us—traits passed on by our forebears? And I think to myself, perhaps I’ve been avoiding George’s past for far too long. Things have happened here, James…” She clutched his arm. “Weird alterations, alienations, and I need to be sure they can’t ever happen again, not to me or mine!” She was going full tilt now. “Or if they do happen, that I’ll know what to do—what to do about—do about…”

But there Jilly stopped dead, with her mouth still open, as if she suddenly realized that she’d said too much, too quickly, and even too desperately.

And after a long moment’s silence the old man quietly said, “Maybe I’d better ask you again, my dear: are you sure you want me to tell you about Innsmouth?”

She took a deep breath, deliberately stilled the twitching of her slender hands on the arms of her chair, and said “Yes, I really would like to know all about that place and its people.”

“And after I’ve gone, leaving you on your own here tonight? What of your dreams, Jilly? For I feel I must warn you: you may well be courting nightmares.”

“I want to know,” she answered at once. “As for nightmares: you’re right, I can do without them. But still I have to know.”

“Anne has told me there are some books that belonged to her father.” Jamieson tried to reason with her. “Perhaps the answer you’re seeking can be found in their pages?”

“George’s books?” She shuddered. “Those ugly books! He used to bury himself in them. But when they were heaping the seaweed and burning it last summer, I asked Anne to throw them into the flames!” She offered a nervous, perhaps apologetic shrug. “What odds? I couldn’t have read them anyway, for they weren’t in English; they weren’t in any easily recognizable language. But the worst thing was the way they felt. Why, just touching them made me feel queasy!”

The old man narrowed his eyes, nodded and said, “And do you really expect me to talk about Innsmouth, when the very thought of a few mouldy old books makes you look ill? And you asked the girl to burn them, without even knowing their value or what was in them? You know, it’s probably a very good thing I came along when I did, Jilly. For it’s fairly obvious that you’re obsessed about something, and obsessions can all too easily turn to psychoses. Wherefore—”

“—You’re done with me,” she finished it for him, and fell back in her chair. “I’m ill with worry—or with my own, well, ‘obsession’ if you like—and you’re not going to help me with it.”

The old man took her hand, squeezed it, and shook his head. “Oh, Jilly!” he said. “You’ve got me all wrong. Psychology may be one of our more recently accepted medical sciences, but I’m not so ancient that I predate it in its entirety! Yes, I know a thing or two about the human psyche; more than enough to assure you that there’s not much wrong with yours.”

She looked bewildered, and so Jamieson continued, “You see, my dear, you’re finally opening up, deliberately exposing yourself to whatever your problem is, taking your first major step toward getting rid of it. So of course I’m going to help you.”

She sighed her relief, then checked herself and said, “But, if that involves telling me about Innsmouth—?”

“Then so be it,” said the old man. “But I would ask you not to interrupt me once I start, for I’m very easily sidetracked.” And after Jilly nodded her eager assent, he began…

• • •

“During my time at my practice in Innsmouth, I saw some strange sad cases. Many locals are inbred, to such an extent that their blood is tainted. I would very much like to be able to put that some other way, but no other way says it so succinctly. And the ‘Innsmouth look’—a name given to the very weird, almost alien appearance of some of the town’s inhabitants—is the principal symptom of that taint.

“However, among the many myths and legends I’ve heard about that place and those with ‘the look,’ some of the more fanciful have it the other way round; they insist that it wasn’t so much inbreeding that caused the taint as miscegenation…the mixed breeding between the town’s old-time sea captains and the women of certain South Sea island tribes with which they often traded during their voyages. And what’s more, the same legends have it that it wasn’t only the native women with whom these degenerate old sea dogs associated, but…but I think it’s best to leave that be for now, for tittle-tattle of that nature can so easily descend into sheer fantasy.

“Very well, but whatever the origin or source of the town’s problems—the real source, that is—it’s still possible that it may at least have some connection with those old sea-traders and the things they brought back with them from their ventures. Certainly some of them married and brought home native women—which in this day and age mightn’t cause much of a stir, but in the mid-19th century was very much frowned upon—and in their turn these women must surely have brought some of their personal belongings and customs with them: a few native gewgaws, some items of clothing, their ‘cuisine,’ of course…possibly even something of their, er, religions? Or perhaps ‘religion’ is too strong a word for what we should more properlyaccept as primitive native beliefs.

“In any case, that’s as far back as I was able to trace the blood taint—if such it is,—but as for the ‘Innsmouth look’ itself, and the horrible way it manifested itself in the town’s inhabitants…well, I think the best way to describe that is as a disease; yes, and perhaps more than one disease at that.

“As to the form or forms this affliction takes,” (now Jamieson began to lie, or at least to step aside from the truth,) “well, if I didn’t know any better, I might say that there’s a fairly representative example or specimen, as it were, right here in our own backyard: that poor unfortunate youth who lives with the Fosters, Anne’s friend, young Geoff. Of course, I don’t know of any connection—and can’t see how there could possibly be one—but that youth would seem to have something much akin to the Innsmouth stigma, if not the selfsame affliction. Just take a look at his condition:

“The unwholesome scaliness of the skin, far worse than any mere ichthyosis; the strange, shambling gait; the eyes, larger than normal and increasingly difficult to close; the speech—where such exists at all—or the guttural gruntings that pass for speech; and those gross anomalies or distortions of facial arrangement giving rise to fishy or froggy looks…and all of these features present in young Geoff. Why, John Tremain tells me that the youth reminds him of nothing so much as a stranded fish! And if somehow there is something of the Innsmouth taint in him…well then, is it any wonder that such dreadful fantasies came into being in the first place? I think not…”

Pausing, the old man stared hard at Jilly. During his discourse she had turned very pale, sunk down into her chair, and gripped its arms with white-knuckled hands. And for the first time he noticed grey in her hair, at the temples. She had not, however, given way to those twitches and jerks normally associated with her nervous condition, and all of her attention was still rapt upon him.

Now Jamieson waited for Jilly’s reaction to what he’d told her so far, and in a little while she found her voice and said, “You mentioned certain gewgaws that the native women might have brought with them from those South Sea islands. Did you perhaps mean jewellery, and if so have you ever seen any of it? I mean, what kind of gewgaws, exactly? Can you describe them for me?”

For a moment the old man frowned, then said, “Ah!” and nodded his understanding. “But I think we may be talking at cross purposes, Jilly. For where those native women are concerned—in connection with their belongings—I actually meant gewgaws: bangles and necklaces made from seashells, and ornaments carved out of coconut shells…that sort of thing. But it’s entirely possible I know what you mean by gewgaws…for of course I’ve seen that brooch that Mrs. Tremain purchased from your husband. Oh yes; and since I have a special interest in such items, I bought it back from her! But in fact the only genuine ‘gewgaws’ in the tales I’ve heard were the cheap trinkets which those old sea captains offered the islanders in so-called ‘trade.’ Trade? Daylight robbery, more like! While the gewgaws that you seem to be interested in have to be what those poor savages parted with in exchange for those worthless beads and all that useless frippery—by which I mean the quaintly-worked jewellery, but real jewellery, in precious golden alloy, that Innsmouth’s seafarers as good as stole from the natives! And you ask have I actually seen such? Indeed I have, and not just the piece I bought from Doreen Tremain…”

The old man had seemed to be growing more and more excited, carried away by his subject, apparently. But now, calming down, he paused to collect his thoughts and settled himself deeper in his chair before continuing. And:

“There now,” he finally said. “Didn’t I warn you that I was easily sidetracked? And wouldn’t you know it, but now I’ve completely lost the thread!”

“I had asked you about that native jewellery,” she reminded him. “I thought maybe you could describe it for me, or at least tell me where you saw it. And there was something else you said—something about the old sea captains and…and things they associated with other than the natives?—that I somehow found, well, interesting.”

“Ah!” the old man answered. “But I can assure you, my dear, that last was sheer fantasy. And as for the jewellery…where did I see it? Why, in Innsmouth itself, where else? In a museum there—well, a sort of museum—but more properly a shrine, or a site of remembrance, really. I suppose I could tell you about it if you still wish it? And if you’re sure none of this is too troubling for you?” The way he looked at her, his gaze was very penetrating. But having come this far, Jilly wasn’t about to be put off.

“I do wish it,” she nodded. “And I promise you I’ll try not…not to be troubled. So do please go on.”

The old man nodded and stroked his chin, and after a while carried on with his story.

“Anthropology, the study of man’s origins and ways of life, was always something of a hobby of mine,” he began. “And crumbling old Innsmouth, despite its many drawbacks, was not without its sources—its own often fascinating history and background—which as yet I’ve so poorly delineated.

“Some of the women—I can’t really call them ladies—who attended my practice were of the blood. Not necessarily tainted blood but native blood, certainly. Despite the many generations separating them from their dusky forebears,still there was that of the South Sea islands in them. And it was a handful of these patients of mine, my clients, so to speak, that led to my enquiries after the jewellery they wore…the odd clasp or brooch, a wrist bangle or necklace. I saw quite a few, all displaying a uniform, somehow rude style of workmanship, and all very similarly adorned or embellished.

“But as for a detailed description, that’s rather difficult. Floral? No, not really. Arabesque? That would more properly fit the picture; weird foliage and other plant forms, curiously and intricately intertwined…but not foliage of the land. It was oceanic: seaweeds and sea grasses, with rare conches and fishes hidden in the design—particularly fishes—forming what may only be described as an unearthly piscine or perhaps batrachian depiction. And occasionally, as a backdrop to the seaweeds and grasses, there were hinted buildings: strange, squat pyramids, and oddly-angled towers. It was as if the unknown craftsman—who or whatever—had attempted to convey the lost Atlantis or some other watery civilization…”

The old man paused again, then said, “There. As a description, however inadequate, that will have to suffice. Of course, I was never so close to the Innsmouth women that I was able to study their clasps and brooches in any great detail, but I did enquire of them as to their origin. Ah, but they were a closemouthed lot and would say very little…well, except for one, who was younger and less typical of her kind; and she directed me to the museum.

“In its heyday it had been a church—that was before the tainted blood had moved in and the more orthodox religions out,—a squat-towered stone church, yes, but long since desanctified. It stood close to another once-grand building: a pillared hall of considerable size, still bearing upon its pediment the faded legend, ‘Esoteric Order of Dagon.’

“Dagon, eh? But here a point of great interest:

“Many years ago, this great hall, too, had been a place of worship…or obeisance of some sort, certainly. And how was this for an anthropological puzzle? For of course the fish-god Dagon—half man, half fish—had been a deity of the Philistines, later to be adopted by the Phoenicians who called him Oannes. And yet these Polynesian islanders, thousands of miles away around the world, had offered up their sacrifices—or at least their prayers—to the selfsame god. And in the Innsmouth of the 1820s their descendants were carrying on that same tradition! But you know, my dear, and silly as it may seem, I can’t help wondering if perhaps they’re doing it still…I mean today, even now.

“But there you go, I’ve sidetracked myself again! So where was I? Ah, yes! The old church, or rather the museum.

“The place was gothic in its looks, with shuttered windows and a disproportionately high basement. And it was there in the half-sunken basement—the museum proper—that the ‘exhibits’ were housed. There under dusty glass in unlocked boxwood cases, I saw such a fabulous collection of golden jewellery and ornaments…why, it amazed me that there were no labels to describe the treasure, and more so that there was no curator to guard it against thieves or to enlighten casual visitors with its story! Not that there were many visitors. Indeed, on such occasions as I was there I saw no one—not even a church mouse.

“But that jewellery, made of those strange golden alloys…oh, it was truly fascinating! As was a small, apparently specialized library of some hundreds of books; all of them antiques, and all quietly rotting away on damp, easily accessible shelves. Apart from one or two titles of particularly unpleasant connotation, I recognized nothing that I saw; and, since most of those titles were in any case beyond me, I never so much as paused to turn a page. But as with the exotic, alien jewellery—and if I had been a thief, of course—I’m sure I might have walked out of there with a fortune in rare and forbidden volumes under my coat, and no one to stop, accuse or search me. In fact, searching my memory, I believe I’ve heard mention that certain books and a quantity of jewellery were indeed stolen from the museum some twenty-odd years ago. Not that gold was ever of any great rarity in Innsmouth, for those old sea captains had brought it home in such large amounts that back in the 1800’s one of them had even opened up a refinery in order to purify his holdings! I tried to visit the refinery, too, only to find it in a state of total dereliction…as was much of the old town itself in the wake of a…well, of a rumoured epidemic, and subsequent government raids in 1927-28. But there, that’s another story.”

And fidgeting a very little—seeming suddenly reticent—Jamieson brought his narrative to an abrupt halt, saying, “And there you have it, my dear. With regard to your question about the strange jewellery…well, I’ve tried to answer it as best possible. So, er, what else can I tell you? Nothing, I fear…”

But now it was Jilly White’s eyes searching the old man’s face, and not the other way about. For she had noticed several vague allusions and some major omissions in his narrative, for which she required explanations.

“About the jewellery…yes, I believe I understand,” she said. “But you’ve said some other things that aren’t nearly so clear. In fact you seemed to be avoiding certain subjects. And I w-w-want…I wan-w-w…!” She slammed her arms down on the arms of her chair, trying to control her stammering. “I want to know! About—how did you put it?—the associations of those old sea captains with something other than the island women, which you said was sheer fantasy. But fantasy or not, I want to know. And about…about their beliefs…their religion and d-d-dedication to Dagon. Also, w-w-with regard to that foreign jewellery, you said something about its craftsman, ‘who or whatever!’ Now what did you mean by that? And that epidemic you mentioned: what was all that about? What, an epidemic that warranted government raids? James—if you’re my friend at all—surely you m-m-must see that I have to know!”

“I can see that I’ve upset you,” he answered, reaching out and touching her hand. “And I believe I know what it is that’s so unsettling for you. You’re trying to connect all of this to George, aren’t you? You think that his blood, too, was tainted. Jilly, it may be so, but it’s not your fault. And if the taint is in fact a disease, it probably wasn’t his fault either. You can’t blame yourself that your husband may have been some kind of…of carrier. And even if he was, surely his influence is at an end now? You mustn’t go on believing that it…that it isn’t over yet.”

“Then convince me otherwise,” she answered, a little calmer now that she could speak openly of what was on her mind. “Tell me about these things, so that I’ll better understand them and be able to make up my own mind.”

Jamieson nodded. “Oh, I can tell you,” he said, “if only by repeating old wives tales—myths and rumours—and fishermen’s stories of mermaids and the like. But the state of your nerves, I’d really rather not.”

“My nerves, yes,” she said. “Wait.” And she fetched a glass of water and took two of her pills. “There, and now you can see that I’m following doctor’s orders. Now you must follow my orders and tell me.” And leaning forward in her chair, she gripped his forearms. “Please. If not for my sake…for Anne’s?”

And knowing her meaning, how could he refuse her?

“Very well,” the old man answered. “But my dear, this thing you’re worrying about, it is—it has to be—a horrible disease, and nothing more. So don’t go mixing fantasy and reality, for that way lies madness.”

And after a moment’s thought he told her the rest of it…

• • •

“The stories I’ve heard…well, they were incredible. Legends born of primitive innocence and native ignorance both. You see, with regard to Dagon, those islanders had their own myths which had been handed down from generation to generation. Their blood and looks being so debased, and the taint having such a hold on them—probably since time immemorial—they reasoned that they had been created in the image of their maker, the fish-god himself, Dagon.

“Indeed they told those old sea captains just such stories, and also that in return for worshipping Dagon they’d been given all the wealth of the oceans in the abundance of fish they were able to catch, and in the strange golden alloy, which was probably washed out of their mountains in rainy-season streams. It would be the native priests, of course—their witch doctors, priests of Dagon or his ‘esoteric order’—who secretly worked the gold into the jewellery whose remnants we occasionally see today.

“But the modern legend—the one you’ll hear in Innsmouth and its environs—is that in return for the good fishing and the gold, the natives gave of their children to the sea, or to manlike beings who lived in the sea: the so-called ‘Deep Ones,’ servitors of Dagon and other alleged, er, ‘deities’ of the deep, such as Great Cthulhu and Mother Hydra. And the same legend has it that Innsmouth’s sea captains, in their lust for alien gold, the favours of mainly forgotten gods out of doubtful myths, and the promise of life everlasting, followed suit in the sacrifice of their young to Dagon and the Deep Ones. Except they were not sacrifices as such but matings! Thus in both legends, it became possible to blame the ‘Innsmouth look’ or taint on this miscegenation: the mingling of Deep One and clean human blood. But of course no such matings took place because there’s no such thing as a merman! Nor was there ever, but that didn’t stop a handful of the more degenerate Innsmouth people from adopting the cult, as witness that weathered, white-pillared hall dedicated to the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

“Which leaves only the so-called ‘epidemic’ of 1927-28…

“Well, seventy years ago our society was far less tolerant. And sad to say that when stories leaked out of Innsmouth of the sheer scale of the taint—the numbers of inbred, diseased and malformed people living there—the federal government’s reaction was excessive in the extreme. But there’s little doubt that it would have been the same if AIDS had been found there in the same period: panic, and a knee-jerk reaction, yes. And so there followed a vast series of raids and many arrests, and a burning and dynamiting of large numbers of rotting old houses along the waterfront. But no criminal charges were brought and no one was committed for trial; just vague statements about malignant diseases, and the covert dispersal of a great many detainees into various naval and military prisons.

“Thus old Innsmouth was depopulated, and these seventy-odd years later its recovery is still only very sluggish. There is, however, a modern laboratory there now, where pathologists and other scientists—some of them Innsmouth people themselves—continue to study the taint and to offer what help they may to the descendants of survivors of those frenzied federal raids. I worked there myself, however briefly, but it was disheartening work to say the least. I saw sufferers in every stage of degeneration, and could only offer the most basic assistance to any of them. For among the doctors and other specialists there…well, the general concensus is that there’s no hope for a cure as yet for those with the Innsmouth blood. And until or unless the taint is allowed to die out by gradual dispersion or depletion of that diseased foreign gene pool, there shall always be those with the Innsmouth look…”

Jilly was as calm as Jamieson had ever seen her now—too calm, he thought—like the calm before a storm. Her eyes were unblinking and had a distant quality, but her look was reflective rather than vague or vacant. And finally, after a few long moments of silence, the old man prompted her, “What now, Jilly? Is something still bothering you?”

Her gaze focussed on him and she said, “Yes. I think there is one more thing. You said something about everlasting life—that the Innsmouth seafarers had been promised everlasting life if they embraced the worship of Dagon and these other cult figures. But…what if they reneged on the cult, turned back from such worship? You see, toward the end George frequently rambled in his sleep, and I’d often hear him say that he didn’t want to live forever, not like that. He meant his condition, of course. But I can’t believe—no, no, I can! I do!—that he believed in s-s-such things. So, do you think—I mean, is it p-p-possible—that my husband was once a m-member of that old Innsmouth c-c-cult? And could there be anything of t-truth in it? I mean, anything at all?”

Jamieson shook his head. “Anything to it? Only in his mind, my dear. For you see, as George’s condition worsened, it would have been more than a merely physical thing. He would have been doing what you are doing: looking for an explanation where none exists. And having had to do with those cultists—and knowing the legends—he might have come to believe that certain things were true. But as for you, you mustn’t. You simply mustn’t!”

“B-b-but that tainted blood,” she said, her voice a whisper now, as if from far away. “His blood, and Geoff’s blood, and…and w-w-what of Anne’s?”

“Jilly, now I want you to listen.” The old man took hold of her arms, grasping her very firmly. And of all the lies or half truths he had told her in the past half hour, the next would be his biggest deceit of all. “Jilly, I have known you and Anne—especially Anne—for quite a while now, and from my knowledge of the Innsmouth taint, and also from what I know and have seen of your daughter, I would be glad to stake my reputation on the fact that she is as normal as you or I.”

At which she sighed, relaxing a little in her chair…

And taking that as his signal to depart, Jamieson stood up. “I must be off,” he said. “It’s late and I’ve some things to do before bed.” Then, as he made his way to the door, he said: “Do give my regards to Anne, won’t you? It’s a shame I missed her—or perhaps not, since we needed to have our talk.”

Jilly had followed him—rather stumblingly, he thought—and at the door said, “I really d-d-don’t know how to thank you. My mind feels so much more at ease now. But then it always does after I-I-I’ve spoken with you.” She waited until he’d got into his car, and waved him a shaky goodbye before closing the door.

Pulling away from the house, the old man noticed an almost furtive flicker of movement in the drapes of an upstairs window. It was Anne’s bedroom; and very briefly he saw her face—those huge eyes of hers—in the gap of partly drawn-aside curtains. At which he wondered how long she had been awake; even wondered if she had been asleep! And if not, how much she’d overheard.

Or had she perhaps already known it all…?

• • •

The long winter with its various ailments—Anne White’s laryngitis, and Doreen Tremain’s ’flu—merged slowly into spring; green shoots became flowers in village gardens or window boxes; lowering skies brightened, becoming bluer day to day.

But among these changes were others, not nearly so natural and far less benign, and old Jamieson was witness to them all.

He would see the beachcomber—“young Geoff,” indeed, as if he were just another village youth—shambling along the tidemark. But he wasn’t like other youths, and he was ailing.

Jamieson watched him in his binoculars, that tired shambler on the shore: his slow lurching, feet flip-flopping, shoulders sloping, head down and collar up. And despite that the weather was much improved, he no longer went out to sea. Oh, he looked at the sea—constantly pausing to lift his ugly head and gaze out across that wide wet horizon—gaze longingly, the old man thought, as he attempted to read something of emotion into the near-distant visage—but the youth’s great former ability in the water, and his untried but suspected strength on dry land, these seemed absent now. Plainly put, he was in decline.

The old man had heard rumours in the village pub. The fishing was much improved but Tom Foster wasn’t doing as well as in previous years; he’d lost his good luck charm, the backward boy who guided his boat to the best fishing grounds. At least, that was how they saw it, the other fishermen, but it was Tom Foster himself who had told the old man the truth of it one evening in the Sailor’s Rest.

“It’s the boy,” he said, concernedly. “Um’s not umself. Um says the sea lures um, and um’s afeared of it. Oh, um walks the shore and watches all the whitecaps, the seahorses come rollin’ in, but um ain’t about ter go aridin’ on ’em. I dun’t know what um means, but um keeps complainin’ as how um ‘ain’t ready,’ and doubts um ever will be, but if um ‘goes now’ it’ll be the end of um. Lord only knows where um’s thinkin’ of goin’! And truth is, um sickens. So while I knows um’d come out with me if I was ter ask um, I won’t fer um’s sake. The only good thing: um lies in the bath a lot, keeps umself well soaked in fresh water so um’s skin dun’t suffer much and there be no more of them fish-lice.”

And the leathery old seaman had shrugged—though in no way negligently—as he finished his pint, and then his ruminations with the words, “No more sea swimmin’, no more fish-lice—it’s as simple as that. But as fer the rest of it…I worries about um, that I do.”

“Answer me one question,” the old man had begged of Foster then. “Tell me, why did you take him in? You had no obligation in that respect. I mean, it wasn’t as if the youth—the child—was of your blood. He was a foundling, and there were, well, complications right from the start.”

Foster had nodded. “It were my woman, the missus, who took ter um. Her great-granny had told of just such young ’uns when um were a little ’un out in the islands. And Ma Foster felt fer um, um did. Me too, ’ventually, seein’ as how we’ve had um all this time. But we always knew who um’s dad were. No big secret that, fer um were here plain ter see. Gone now, though, but um did used ter pay um’s share.”

“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.

Anne was at the water’s rim. Soaked from the waist down and shocked to her core—panting and gasping—she stared at the old man with her mouth wide open. And turning her head, looking out to sea, she said, “Geoff…Geoff!”

“Let’s get you home,” said Jamieson, taking her hand.

“But Geoff…what of Geoff?”

“We’ll call the coastguard.” The old man nodded reassuringly, and threw his jacket round her shoulders.

“He said…said he wasn’t ready.” She allowed him to lead her from the water.

“None of us were,” Jamieson muttered under his breath. “Not for this.”

Half-way up the beach toward the house, they heard a gurgling cry. It was Jilly White, staggering on the decking of her ocean-facing patio, one hand on the rail, the other pointing at the sky, the horizon, the sea, the beach…and finally at her daughter and Jamieson. Her drawn face went through a variety of changes; vacant one moment, it showed total horror in the next, and finally nothing as her eyes rolled up like white marbles.

Then, as her knees gave way beneath her, Jilly crumpled to the decking and lay there jerking, drooling, and mouthing incoherently…

• • •

The coastguard found no sign of Geoff, despite that their boat could be seen slicing through the off-shore water all that day, and then on Monday from dawn till dark. A doctor—a specialist from St. Austell—gave Jilly White a thorough examination, and during a quiet, private discussion with Jamieson out of earshot of Anne, readily agreed with the old man’s diagnosis. Of course Anne asked about it after the specialist had left, but Jamieson told her it could wait until all had settled down somewhat; and in any case things being as they were, for the moment incapable of improvement, Jilly’s best interests lay in resting. He, Jamieson himself, would remain in attendance, and with Anne’s help he would care for her mother until other decisions were made if such should become necessary.

In the event, however, the old man didn’t expect or receive too much help from Anne; no, for she was out on the beach, walking its length mile upon mile, watching the sea and only coming home to eat and sleep when she was exhausted. This remained her routine for four days, until Geoff’s bloated body was washed up on a shingle beach some miles down the coast.

Then Anne slept, and slept, a day and a night.

And the next morning—after visiting her mother’s bedside and finding her sleeping, however fitfully—Anne went to the old man in the hollow of her dune, and sat down with him in the sand on the first truly warm day of the year.

He was in shirt-sleeves, grey slacks, canvas shoes; dressed for the fine weather. And he had her book in his lap, unopened. Handing it over, he said, “I found it right here where you left it the other day. I was going to return it to you. You’re lucky no one else stumbled on it, and that it hasn’t rained.”

She took the heavy old book and put it down away from him, asking, “Did you look at it?”

He shook his head. “It’s your property. For all I know you might have written in it. I believe in privacy, both for myself and for others.”

She took his hand and leaned against him, letting him know that come what may they were friends. “Thank you for everything that you’ve done, especially for my mother,” she said. “I mean, I’m so glad you came here, to the village. Even knowing you had to come—” (a sly sideways glance at him,) “—still I’m glad. You’ve been here just a few months, yet I feel like I’ve known you, oh, for a very long time.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jamieson answered her.

“I feel I can talk to you,” she quickly went on. “I’ve felt that way since the first time I saw you. And after you treated Geoff when he was sick…well, then I knew it was so.”

“And indeed we do talk,” said the old man. “Nothing really deep, or not too deep, not yet—or until now?—but we talk. Perhaps it’s a question of trust, of a sort of kinship?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I know I can tell you things, secrets. I’ve needed to tell someone things. I’d like to have been able to tell my mother, but she wouldn’t have listened. Her nerves. She used to get worried, shake her head, walk away. Or rather, she would stumble away. Which has been getting worse every day. But you…you’re very different.”

He smiled. “Ah, well, but that’s always been my lot. As I believe I once told Jilly, sometimes I’m seen as a father confessor. Sort of odd, really, because I’m not a catholic.”

“Then what are you?” Anne tilted her head on one side. “I mean, what’s your religion? Are you an atheist?”

“Something like that.” Jamieson shrugged. “Actually, I do have certain beliefs. But I’m not one to believe in a conventional god, if that’s what you’re asking. And you? What do you believe in?”

“I believe in the things my father told me,” she answered dreamily. “Some beautiful things, some ugly, and some strange as the strangest myths and fables in the strangest books. But of course you know what I mean, even if I’m not sure myself.” As she spoke, she took up her book and hugged it to her chest. Bound in antique leather, dark as old oak and glossy with age, the book’s title, glimpsed between Anne’s spread fingers, consisted of just three ornately tooled letters: E.O.D.

“Well,” said Jamieson, “and here you are with just such a book. One of your strange books, perhaps? Certainly its title is very odd. Your mother once told me she gave you such books to burn…”

She looked at the book in her hands and said, “My father’s books? There were some she wanted rid of, yes. But I couldn’t just burn them. This is one of them. I’ve read them a lot and tried to make sense of them. Sometimes I thought I understood them; at others I was at a loss. But I knew they were important and now I know why.” And then, suddenly galvanized, gripping his arm below the elbow. “Can we please stop pretending? I know almost everything now…so won’t you please tell me the rest? And I swear to you—whatever you tell me—it will be safe with me. I think you must know that by now.”

The old man nodded and gently disengaged himself. “I think I can do that, yes. That is, as long as you’re not going to be frightened by it, and provided you won’t run away…like your father.”

“He was very afraid, wasn’t he?” she said. “But I’ll never understand why he stole the books and the Innsmouth jewellery. If he hadn’t taken them, maybe they’d have just let him go.”

“I think that perhaps he planned to sell those books,” the old man answered. “In order to support himself, naturally. For of course he would have known that they were very rare and valuable. But after he fled Innsmouth, changed his name, got back a little self-confidence and started to think clearly, he must also have realized that wherever the books surfaced they would be a sure link—a clue, a pointer—to his whereabouts. And so he kept them.”

“And yet he sold the jewellery.” She frowned.

“Because gold is different than books.” Jamieson smiled. “It becomes very personal; the people who buy jewellery wear it, of course, but they also guard it very closely and they don’t keep it on library shelves or places where others might wonder about it. Also, your father was careful not to spread it too thickly. Some here, some there; never too much in any one place. Perhaps at one time he’d reasoned that just like the books he shouldn’t sell the jewellery—but then came the time when he had to.”

“Yet the people of the Esoteric Order weren’t any too careful with it,” she said, questioningly.

“Because they consider Innsmouth their town and safe,” Jamieson answered. “And also because their members rarely betray a trust. Which in turn is because there are penalties for any who do.”

“Penalties?”

“There are laws, Anne. Doesn’t every society have laws?”

Her huge eyes studied his, and Jamieson felt the trust they conveyed…a mutual trust, passing in both directions. And he said, “So is there anything else I should tell you right now?”

“A great many things,” Anne answered, musingly. “It’s just that I’m not quite sure how to ask about them. I have to think things through.” But in the next moment she was alert again:

“You say my father changed his name?”

“Oh yes, as part of the merry chase he’s led us—led me—all these years. But the jewellery did in the end let him down. All winter long, when I’ve been out and about, I’ve been buying it back in the towns around. I have most of it now. As for your father’s name: actually, he wasn’t a White but a Waite, from a long line—a very, very long line—of Innsmouth Waites. One of his ancestors, and mine, sailed with Obed Marsh on the Polynesian trade routes. But as for myself…well, chronologically I’m a lot closer to those old seafarers than poor George was.”

She blinked, shook her head in bewilderment; the first time the old man had seen her caught unawares, which made him smile. And: “You’re a Waite, too?” she said. “But…Jamieson?”

“Well, actually it’s Jamie’s son.” He corrected her. “Jamie Waite’s son, out of old Innsmouth. Have I shocked you? Is it so awful to discover that the kinship you’ve felt is real?”

And after the briefest pause, while once again she studied his face: “No,” she answered, and shook her head. “I think I’ve probably guessed it—some of it—all along. And Geoff, poor Geoff…Why, it would also make you kin to him, and I think he knew it, too! It was in his eyes when he looked at you.”

“Geoff?” The old man’s face fell and he gave a sad shake of his head. “What a pity. But he was a hopeless case who couldn’t ever have developed fully. His gills were rudimentary, useless, unformed, atrophied. Atavisms, throwbacks in bloodlines that we hoped had been successfully conditioned out, still occur occasionally. That poor boy was in one such ‘state,’ trapped between his ancestral heritage and his—or his father’s—scientifically engineered or altered genes. And instead of cojoining, the two facets fought.”

“A throwback,” she said, softly. “What a horrible description!”

And the old man shrugged, sighed, and said, “Yes. Yet what else can we call him, the way Geoff was, and the way he looked? But one day, my dear, our ambassadors—our agents—will walk among people and look no different from them, and be completely accepted by them. Until eventually we Deep Ones will be the one race, the true amphibious race which nature always intended. We were the first…why, we came from the sea, the cradle of life itself! Given time, and the land and sea both shall be ours.”

“Ambassadors…” Anne repeated him, letting it all sink in. “But in actual fact agents. Spies and fifth columnists.”

“Our advance guard.” He nodded. “And who knows—you may be one of them? Indeed, that’s my intention.”

She stroked her throat, looked suddenly alarmed. “But Geoff and me, we were of an age, of a blood. And if his—his gills? —those flaps were gills? But…” Again she stroked her throat, searchingly now. Until he caught at her hand.

“Yours are on the inside, like mine. A genetic modification which reproduced itself perfectly in you, just as in me. That’s why your father’s desertion was so disappointing to us, and one of the reasons why I had to track him down: to see how he would spawn, and if he’d spawn true. In your case he did. In Geoff’s, he didn’t.”

“My gills?” Yet again she stroked her throat, and then remembered something. “Ah! My laryngitis! When my throat hurt last December, and you examined me! Two or three aspirins a day was your advice to my mother, and I should gargle four or five times daily with a spoonful of salt dissolved in warm water.”

“You wouldn’t let anyone else see you.” The old man reminded her. “And why was that, I wonder? Why me?”

“Because I didn’t want any other doctor looking at me,” she replied. “I didn’t want anyone else examining me. Just you.”

“Kinship,” he said. “And you made the right choice. But you needn’t worry. Your gills—at present the merest of pink slits at the base of your windpipe—are as perfect as in any foetal or infant land-born Deep One. And they’ll stay that way for…oh, a long time—as long or even longer than mine have stayed that way, and will until I’m ready—when they’ll wear through. For a month or so then they’ll feel tender as their development progresses, with fleshy canals like empty veins that will carry air to your land lungs. At which time you’ll be as much at home in the sea as you are now on dry land. And that will be wonderful, my dear!”

“You want me to…to come with you? To be a…a…?”

“But you already are! There’s a certain faint but distinct odour about you, Anne. Yes, and I have it, too, and so did your half-brother. But you can dilute it with pills we’ve developed, and then dispel it utterly with a dab of special cologne.”

A much longer silence, and again she took his bare forearms in her hands, stroking down from the elbow. His skin felt quite smooth in that direction. But when she stroked upwards from the wrist…

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I am. My skin is like yours…the scales don’t show. They’re fine and pink and golden. But if I’m to come with you, what of my mother? You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with her.”

And now, finally, after all these truths, the old man must tell a lie. He must, because the truth was one she’d never accept—or rather she would—and all faith gone. But there had been no other way. And so:

“Your mother,” the old man hung his head, averted his gaze, started again. “Your mother, your own dear Jilly…I’m afraid she won’t last much longer.” That much at least was the truth.

But Anne’s hand had flown to her mouth, and so he hurriedly continued. “She has CJD, Anne—Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease—the so-called mad cow disease, at a very advanced stage.” (That was another truth, but not the whole truth.)

Anne’s mouth had fallen open. “Does she know?”

“But how can I tell her? And how can you? She may never be herself again. And if or when she were herself, she would only worry about what will become of you. And there’s no way we can tell her about…well, you know what I mean. But Anne, don’t look at me like that, for there’s nothing that can be done for her. There’s no known cure, no hospital can help her. I wanted her to have her time here, with you. And of course I’m here to help in the final stages. That specialist from St. Austell, he agrees with me.”

Finally the girl found her voice. “Then your pills were of no use to her.”

“A placebo.” Now Jamieson lied. “They were sugar pills, to give her some relief by making her think I was helping her.”

No, not so…and no help for Jilly, who would never have let her daughter go; whose daughter never would have gone while her mother lived. And those pills filled with synthetic prions—rogue proteins indistinguishable from the human form of the insidious bovine disease, developed in a laboratory in shadowy old Innsmouth—eating away at Jilly’s brain even now, faster and faster.

Anne’s hand fell from her face. “How long?”

He shook his head. “Not long. After witnessing what happened the other day, not long at all. Days, maybe? No more than a month at best. But we shall be here, you and I. And Anne, we can make up for what she’ll miss. Your years, like mine…oh, you shall have years without number!”

“It’s true, then?” Anne looked at him, and Jamieson looked back but saw no sign of tears in her eyes, which was perfectly normal. “It’s true that we go on—that our lives go on—for a long time? But not everlasting, surely?”

He shook his head. “Not everlasting, no—though it sometimes feels that way! I often lose count of my years. But I am your ancestor, yes.”

Anne sighed and stood up. And brushing sand from her dress, she took his hand, helping him to his feet. “Shall we go and be with my mother…grandfather?”

Now his smile was broad indeed—a smile he showed only to close intimates—which displayed his small, sharp, fish-like teeth. And:

“Grandfather?” he said. “Ah, no. In fact I’m your father’s great-great-grandfather! And as for yourself, Anne…well you must add another great.”

And hand in hand they walked up the beach to the house. The young girl and the old—the very old—man…?