I came by ship across the Big Pond to the USA in 1961, hoping for, what? Answers to questions I never dared to ask. Answers that would never have been given freely or open-handedly, even while I slowly died of something incurable and inoperable. A cancer, spreading it’s tentacles through my body, singing it’s whispered songs of the ocean as it cheerfully drowned all my childhood dreams, holding them under the water like so many unwanted, blind kittens.
She was waiting for me at the foot of the lecture hall stairs, as I knew she would be. That saccharin expression of care, and sympathy was plastered all over her face. I had witnessed it creeping over her face whenever she looked at me, ever since I first told her about the thing that grew inside my body. I was never sure if she saw me as a student like any other, or someone set apart. A Joan of Arc, leading an onslaught against my own heart and lungs and brain. I’ll admit, I used my precarious position to get a place in a student apartment in the town, rather than having to take my chances in the warrens. But lately I had begun to regret being so open about my impending departure from this life in general, and Miskatonic in particular. I had kept everyone away at arm’s length so successfully, so no one would miss me when I had gone.
"Eleanor," she said, unctuously, "come and sit down here. Let the crowds out first before you go."
Crowds? The last lecture in the anthropological study of death and death rituals before spring break? Only ten students had bothered to turn up.
"Excellent study Eleanor", the Professor continued. "Even allowing for your unique perception of the subject matter, this is easily a top grade essay. I predict great things for you in the future." As that inappropriate word slipped out, she coughed and spluttered and tried to hide her embarrassment in a paper handkerchief. I was unmoved. I had no interest in taking anyone to task for daring to speak of the future in front of one who had none.
"Is there really no chance" she said, patting my hand. I didn’t answer and steeled myself not to pull my hand away. I didn’t like being touched anyway, but lately my skin felt as thin as tissue paper and just as fragile. Small bruises had begun to appear on the backs of my hands. The kind usually seen on the elderly.
The lecture hall had cleared, the last student racing back to the warrens to pack for spring break. I took my marked essay from the Professor.
"So, will we see you next semester?" she said, "or if you want to take the time to rest, I will gladly recommend you defer until you feel stronger."
What would happen, I wondered, if I confessed that I would never be stronger or better, and that any amount of rest was not going to halt my inevitable race to the end. I would be discovering the validity, or otherwise, of our studies into death far sooner than anyone else in the class.
"Thank you for a very interesting semester," I said. I swear there were tears in the woman’s eyes. It would take a valiant effort on my part not to reciprocate.
"Are you going anywhere nice for spring break?" she said.
"I’ll be visiting family."
"Oh wonderful. Family. Yes, that is just what you need right now." She stood up from her stool and shook my hand vigorously. Of course she was forgetting, or chose to forget, that my immediate family all lived across the Big Pond, in Wales, where I had come from. But I had decided to spare her the awful knowledge of just which branch of my family I had decided to visit. The bus to Innsmouth was leaving soon, so I picked up my small case, patted the poor bewildered woman on the shoulder, and left. As I boarded the bus I looked back for a moment, at the university and all the plans I had made in my naivety.
There were only two passengers on the Innsmouth bus; myself, and an old woman. With a bus-full of seats to choose from, she picked the one across the aisle from mine. I looked across at her. She was hunched into a coat three sizes larger than herself. She wore a hat, but her head seemed to be narrow and slightly bulging. She stared at me with pale watery blue eyes. I tried to concentrate on the passing scenery, but she was humming something. A song I didn’t recognise, a tune that vibrated inside my skull, trying to slide into my blood and bone. That made me smile. I hadn’t expected an attempt to be made so soon. Had she been sent to discover if I could be easily turned? I wore a wig after the chemo destroyed my own hair. And under the wig, tattooed indelibly on my skin, covering my scalp, was something that would prevent her like from tearing into my soul. Her song ended with a hiss of rage just as the bus had come to a full stop. She ran off the bus at a speed that frankly astonished me. I, though only in my 20’s, ambled like the old, worn out woman that I was.
So, this was Innsmouth, childhood home of my birth mother. In amongst her papers I had read a fragment of a letter, one she had received from my father: "Unspeakable horror overhangs the crumbling, town of Innsmouth and people there seem to have forgotten how to die." An attractive snippet to wave in front of a woman with a terminal disease. Odd, how that one fragment survived when my father’s other letters were destroyed. Almost as though it had been planted. Odd, how the box of papers and photographs had only appeared after I had been diagnosed. I never believed in coincidences. I had always known I was adopted, it was never a secret. I knew that my mother had left the town of her childhood, and moved to Wales. She had died shortly after I was born, but it was only recently that I discovered that she had walked out into the sea and drowned. Odd, how the sea calls to me and expects, without argument, that I will obey.
It demanded my willing obedience now. The long line of the Devil’s Reef was washed with waves, and every wave called out my name as it swept over the reef. I ignored it, with great effort, invoking the name of my love etched on my heart as protection. It worked, the owner of the name being well disposed to help. The sound of the waves and the keening, pleading voices faded away from my ears.
A few residents of this dark, permanently rain-soaked town were gathered by the only store by the green. As one, they wore dark brown clothing, that hung so loosely on their bodies that I could not work out which were men and which were women. My research in the university library had told me about the "Innsmouth look"; protruding eyes that never blinked, skin an unhealthy shade of grey, and a wide, fish-like mouth beneath a long, flattened nose. My mother had never looked like that. The only photograph I had of her was taken in 1941, when she was 20 and just before I was born. Was that why she drowned herself? Did she feel the change coming over her like a cancer? Did she feel the call of the Atlantic and was helpless to resist?
Through the gloom of darkening skies, I saw streets with dilapidated houses. The best kept building there was a church, deconsecrated, battered, but not unused. A crumbling sign, crudely painted, bore the inscription "Order of Dagon". A man came out of the building, dressed in black quasi-priest robes like a raven, flapping its wings, and wearing some kind of gaudy, tawdry crown. His steps were stumbling, as if he was held up by strings and controlled by some unseen puppet master. He stood and stared at me, then flung out one arm and pointed at me. The folk by the store wandered over the road to the church and joined the priest. Time to go.
I walked ahead, through narrow streets where shadowy shapes crouched around corners and peered over walls. My way was long; along Bank Street and Mill Street, to the corner with Fish Street, and then to the sea. I had to keep ahead of the Innsmouth folk and their disgusting, unholy priest if I was going to slip through the fingers of Dagon. I was tired. My encounter with the Professor had drained me emotionally, more than I had realised. Saying goodbye to her, I had said goodbye to my dreams. I had hoped to have finished my degree before the tentacles inside my body began to writhe their obscene dance in my blood. But they grew faster and stronger as I faded.
Faster yet, I pushed myself as the clouds hung lower in the desolate sky. The footsteps behind me increased in number, and I knew that all the devotees of Dagon were following. In amongst them would be members of my birth mother’s family. Her aunts and uncles, cousins and childhood friends, hounding her daughter. It would have been easier to give in, let them catch up with me, do whatever they wished, claimed me for their own if that was what they wanted. But I would leave life on my own terms, and go to the arms of my God, my love.
Just as the watery spring sun was sinking behind the dark sea, I made it to the seashore. I stepped up onto the breakwater, shedding my clothes as I walked. A cold night for a swim in the Atlantic, when my heart longed for the Irish Sea of my home. I stood, naked, in the cold wind while the Innsmouth folk caught up. As the first of them climbed onto the breakwater, I turned my back on them, reflecting that it would all have been the same had I stayed in Wales.
My secret, the silver inked triskelion of my God, my only love, Manawydan ap Llyr, that I carried on my back, was repeated on my legs and arms, on my scalp, and over my heart. I am bound to the sea, I was born of the sea, and I will die by the sea. As I dive into the Atlantic ocean, I can hear the screams and wails of desperation. My birth mother’s family called me, and like an obedient child, I answered the call, but though they may be deep within my blood and my bones, they cannot have my soul. I have made my stand like Joan of Arc and defied them.
Time to go.