Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth Read online

  PRAISE FOR WEIRD SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH

  “Not just H. P. Lovecraft fans will revel in this fine follow-up to Jones’ Shadows Over Innsmouth, a World Fantasy finalist. As in its predecessor, the stories in this anthology draw inspiration from Lovecraft’s classic novelette of alien miscegenation, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ but avoid Cthulhu Mythos clichés.”

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Jones has brought together some of the industry’s top-notch authors... This collection is strongly recommended for Mythos fans. Due to the overall quality of the writing, though, it is strongly recommended for everyone else, too.”

  HELLNOTES

  “Fascinating and recommended.”

  ALL HALLOWS

  PRAISE FOR SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH

  “If you love Lovecraft then this anthology is a must-have. Story after story presents you with situations and characters that Lovecraft himself could have created. I’m hard-pressed to think of another effort that stays so true to the original.”

  SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE

  “Shadows Over Innsmouth is a very strong anthology, buttressed by some outstanding art by Dave Carson, Martin McKenna and Jim Pitts.”

  THE SCREAM FACTORY

  “Fans of Lovecraft’s Mythos will enjoy the stories.”

  SF SITE

  “Shadows Over Innsmouth is good, slimy fun.”

  SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

  “A fascinating idea for a horror compilation.”

  LANCASHIRE EVENING PRESS

  “This is an intelligent, witty anthology.”

  THE GOOD BOOK GUIDE

  “Lovecraftians will rejoice.”

  BOOKLIST

  Other macabre collections of Lovecraftian horror from Titan Books

  Available now:

  BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU, VOLUME ONE

  SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH

  Coming soon:

  BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU, VOLUME TWO

  ACOLYTES OF CTHULHU

  THE MADNESS OF CTHULHU

  WEIRD SHADOWS OVER

  INNSMOUTH

  WEIRD SHADOWS OVER

  INNSMOUTH

  Edited by STEPHEN JONES

  Illustrated by

  RANDY BROECKER

  LES EDWARDS

  BOB EGGLETON

  ALLAN SERVOSS

  TITAN BOOKS

  WEIRD SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781165294 • E-book edition ISBN: 9781781165300

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan Books edition: October 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Stephen Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2005, 2013 by Stephen Jones

  Original hardcover edition published 2005 by Fedogan & Bremer

  Illustrations © 2005, 2013 by Randy Broecker, Les Edwards, Bob Eggleton and Allan Servoss

  ‘Introduction: Weird Shadows...’ copyright © Stephen Jones 2005, 2013.

  ‘Discarded Draft of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”’ copyright © August Derleth 1949. Originally published in The Acolyte, No.2, Spring 1944. Reprinted by permission of Arkham House Publishers, Inc.

  ‘The Quest for Y’ha-Nthlei’ copyright © John Glasby 2005.

  ‘Brackish Waters’ copyright © Richard A. Lupoff 2005.

  ‘Voices in the Water’ copyright © Basil Copper 2005.

  ‘Another Fish Story’ copyright © Kim Newman 2005.

  ‘Take Me to the River’ copyright © Paul McAuley 2005.

  ‘The Coming’ copyright © Hugh B. Cave 1997, 2005. Originally published in somewhat different form in Dark Dixie Anthology III. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  ‘Eggs’ copyright © Steve Rasnic Tem 2000. Originally published in City Fishing. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ‘From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6’ copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2005.

  ‘Raised by the Moon’ copyright © Ramsey Campbell 2001. Originally published in The Spook, June 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ‘Fair Exchange’ copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2005.

  ‘The Taint’ copyright © Brian Lumley 2005. Afterwords: Contributors’ Notes’ copyright © Stephen Jones 2005, 2013.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For NATE

  in the year of his spawning,

  and those Great Old Ones

  MIKE and PAULA

  for putting their trust in me.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  WEIRD SHADOWS...

  by Stephen Jones

  DISCARDED DRAFT OF ‘THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH’

  by H. P. Lovecraft

  THE QUEST FOR Y’HA-NTHLEI

  by John Glasby

  BRACKISH WATERS

  by Richard A. Lupoff

  VOICES IN THE WATER

  by Basil Copper

  ANOTHER FISH STORY

  by Kim Newman

  TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

  by Paul McAuley

  THE COMING

  by Hugh B. Cave

  EGGS

  by Steve Rasnic Tem

  FROM CABINET 34, DRAWER 6

  by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  RAISED BY THE MOON

  by Ramsey Campbell

  FAIR EXCHANGE

  by Michael Marshall Smith

  THE TAINT

  by Brian Lumley

  Afterword

  CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  WEIRD SHADOWS...

  AROUND THE END of the 1980s, I had a brilliant idea for an anthology.

  To celebrate the centenary of the birth of supernatural fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890, Shadows Over Innsmouth would use the author’s 1931 novella ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ as the literary touchstone for a number of established authors to expand upon his concepts and create a loose, fictional history of the decaying Massachusetts seaport in the story and its ichthyoid denizens, the Deep Ones.

  I was so certain that the book would sell that, for the only time in my career, I went ahead and started commissioning stories from authors without a publisher’s deal. Luckily, most of the writers I contacted shared my enthusiasm for the project, and before long I had compiled mostly original stories by an impressive line-up of names, including Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Basil Copper, Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, Brian Stableford, Michael Marshall Smith and others, including Lovecraft’s seminal 26,000-word story itself.

  In the way these things sometimes work out, most of the stories I found myself accepting were from British authors, and in the end I decided to limit the book’s contributors to those shores (after all, Lovecraft himself was an avowed Anglophile, so it seemed somewhat appropriate).

  Then I started showing the manuscript to publishers
on both sides of the Atlantic. Although many expressed their enjoyment of the book, not a single one made an offer to publish it. A year turned into two. H. P. Lovecraft’s centenary came and went without creating more than a ripple, and still I couldn’t find a publisher.

  Finally, I gave up. Reluctantly, I explained the situation to the contributors (who were all very understanding) and released them from their contracts to sell their stories elsewhere. It didn’t come as much of a surprise that many of them found new markets almost immediately.

  And that, I thought, was that. At least I had learned a hard lesson— never commission an anthology without first getting an agreement with a publisher.

  Then, while I was attending the World Horror Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, I was approached on the final day of the event by Dwayne H. Olson, who had heard that I had a Lovecraftian anthology I could not sell and wanted to introduce me to Phil Rahman of Minneapolis small press publisher Fedogan & Bremer.

  Just as August Derleth and Donald Wandrei had initially set up Arkham House to ensure that Lovecraft’s fiction remained in print between hardcovers following the author’s premature death in 1937, so F&B was founded to preserve Wandrei’s work, although it also quickly expanded into a publisher of “widowed” Arkham-style books as well. Shadows Over Innsmouth fitted their avowed objective almost perfectly. Phil was enthusiastic about the book, and a proposed deal was done before the evening was over.

  The only problem was that I had already released all the contributors from their contracts. So, over the next couple of months, I contacted all the writers and got them to sell their stories back to me again.

  Shadows Over Innsmouth was finally published in 1994 in a beautifully illustrated hardcover edition. It was launched with a fish-themed signing party at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans and became the first book from Fedogan & Bremer to sell out and be reprinted. There was an attractive trade paperback edition from Gollancz in Britain, a cute two-volume set published in Japan, and (after rejecting it all those years earlier) Del Rey eventually added it to their handsome series of Lovecraftian paperbacks in America. More recently there has been a stylish Greek edition, and we’ve also sold rights to Russia and Germany. Now that first book (along with this follow-up volume) has been reissued by Titan Books as part of the publisher’s prestigious series of Lovecraft paperbacks. The reviews have been mostly positive, and the original edition was even nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

  Not bad for an anthology I couldn’t even sell initially.

  The thing was, though, it wasn’t a Lovecraft anthology. Well, not in inspiration, at least. With Shadows Over Innsmouth, I was trying to emulate one of the most talented, hard-working and perceptive editors in the weird fiction field—August W. Derleth (1909-1971).

  As much as I admired Lovecraft’s cosmic themes and eldritch horrors, it was actually the pulp thrills of Derleth’s pastiche collection The Mask of Cthulhu, his novel The Trail of Cthulhu and, especially, the anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos that I was attempting to recapture. Lovecraft himself had occasionally encouraged other writers to develop themes from his stories in their own work, and I attempted the same with a fictional history of Innsmouth.

  And so the years passed, and I began wondering... if Shadows Over Innsmouth had used Lovecraft’s 1920s-set story for its inspiration, what would happen if we moved on a step further? The answer can now be found in Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, where several of the contributors to the original volume, along with a number of additional authors from both sides of the Atlantic, put their own spin on the dark history of Innsmouth and its batrachian followers of Dagon.

  Using an early, discarded draft of Lovecraft’s story as a point of departure, once again as the decades pass, the fishy Deep Ones spread out from the east coast of the United States to cast their scaled shadows across the rest of the world in unusual and often unexpected ways.

  And in case you were wondering, yes, this book had it’s own set of problems, although nothing like those that assailed the earlier title. But if you are a Mythos fan who has enjoyed both of these volumes, then rest assured that I am already thinking about those Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth...

  Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

  Stephen Jones

  London, England

  DISCARDED DRAFT OF ‘THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH’

  by H. P. LOVECRAFT

  [PP. 1-6:]

  IT WAS IN the summer of 1927 that I suddenly cut short my sightseeing tour of New England and returned to Cleveland under a nervous strain. I have seldom mentioned the particulars of this trip, and hardly know why I do so now except that a recent newspaper cutting has somehow relieved the tension which formerly existed. A sweeping fire, it appears, has wiped out most of the empty ancient houses along the deserted Innsmouth waterfront as well as a certain number of buildings farther inland; while a singularly simultaneous explosion, heard for many miles around, has destroyed to a vast depth the great black reef a mile and a half out from shore where the sea-bottom abruptly falls to form an incalculable abyss. For certain reasons I take great satisfaction in these occurrences, even the first of which seems to me a blessing rather than a disaster. Especially am I glad that the old brick jewellery factory and the pillared Order of Dagon Hall have gone along with the rest. There is talk of incendiarism, and I suppose old Father Iwanicki could tell much if he chose; but what I know gives a very unusual angle to my opinion.

  I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and last time. It does not seem to be mentioned on any modern map, and I was planning to go directly from Newburyport to Arkham, and thence to Gloucester, if I could find transportation. I had no car, but was travelling by motor coach, train, and trolley, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I heard about Innsmouth. The agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, seemed sympathetic toward my efforts at economy, and made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered,

  “You could take that old bus, I suppose,” he said with a certain hesitation, “but it isn’t thought much of hereabouts. It goes through Innsmouth—you may have heard about that—and so the people don’t like it. Run by an Innsmouth man—Joe Sargent—but never gets any custom from here, or from Arkham either, I guess. Wonder it keeps running at all. I suppose it’s cheap enough, but I never see more than two or three people in it—nobody but those Innsmouth folks. Leaves the Square—front of Hammond’s Drug Store—at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. unless they’ve changed lately. Looks like a terrible rattletrap—I’ve never been on it.”

  That was the first I ever heard of Innsmouth. Any reference to a town not listed in the guidebooks would have interested me, and the agent’s odd manner of allusion roused something like real curiosity. A town able to inspire such dislike in its neighbours, I thought, must be at least rather unusual, and worthy of a sightseer’s attention. If it came before Arkham I would stop off there—and so I asked the agent to tell me something about it.

  He was very deliberate, and spoke with an air of feeling somewhat superior to what he said.

  “Innsmouth? Well, it’s a queer kind of a town down at the mouth of the Manuxet. It used to be almost a city—quite a seaport before the War of 1812—but the place has all gone to pieces in the last hundred years or so. There’s no railroad—the B & M never went through there, and the branch line from Rowley was given up years ago. More empty houses than there are people, I guess, and no business to speak of. Everybody trades either here or in Arkham or Ipswich. At one time they had quite a number of mills there, but nothing’s left now but one jewellery refinery.

  “That’s a pretty prominent proposition, though—all the travelling salesmen seem to know about it. Makes a special kind of fancy jewellery out of a secret alloy that nobody can analyse very well. They say it’s platinum, silv
er, and gold—but these people sell it so cheap that you can hardly believe it. Guess they have a corner on that kind of goods.

  “Old man Marsh, who owns the thing, must be richer than Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks pretty close around the town. He’s the grandson of Capt. Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother was some kind of foreigner—they say a South Sea native—so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people. But his children and grandchildren look just like anybody else so far as I can see. I’ve had ’em pointed out to me here. Never saw the old man.

  “And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well—you mustn’t take too much stock in what people around here say. They’re hard to get started, but once they do get started they never stop. They’ve been telling things about Innsmouth—whispering em, mostly—for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they’re more scared than anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh—about old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that people stumbled on around 1850 or thereabouts—but I come from Panton, Vermont, and that kind of story doesn’t go down with me.

  “The real thing behind all this is simply race prejudice—and I don’t say I’m blaming those that hold it. I hate those Innsmouth folks myself, and I wouldn’t care to go to their town. I suppose you know— though I can see you’re a Westerner by the way you talk—what a lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Asia, Africa, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with them. You’ve probably heard about the Salem man that came back with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there’s still a colony of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod.

  “Well, there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people. The place was always badly cut off from the rest of the country by salt marshes and inlets, and we can’t be sure about the ins and outs of the matter, but it’s pretty plain that old Captain Marsh must have brought home some odd specimens when he had all three of his ships in commission back in the 1830s and 1840s. There certainly is a strange kind of a streak in the Innsmouth folks today—I don’t know how to express it, but it sort of makes me crawl. You’ll notice it a little in Joe Sargent if you take that bus. Some of them have flat noses, big mouths, weak retreating chins, and a funny kind of rough grey skin. The sides of their necks are sort of shrivelled or creased up, and they get bald very young. Nobody around here or in Arkham will have anything to do with them, and they act kind of offish themselves when they come to town. They used to ride on the railroad, walking and taking the train at Rowley or Ipswich, but now they use that bus.