Shadows Over Innsmouth by Stephen Jones (Editor)

Author:Stephen Jones (Editor)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Genre Fiction, Horror, Anthologies & Short Stories, Paranormal, Anthologies & Literary Collections, General, Anthologies, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal & Urban, Anthologies & Literature Collections, Short Stories, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 1781165289
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

CTHULHU

DAOINE DOMHAIN

by PETER TREMAYNE

HOW SHOULD I start? Do I have time to finish? Questions pour into my mind and remain unanswered, for they are unanswerable. But I must get something down on paper; at least make some attempt to warn people of the terrible dangers that lurk in the depths for mankind. How foolish and pitifully stupid a species we are, thinking that we are more intelligent than any other species, thinking that we are the “chosen” race. What arrogance—what ignorance! What infantile minds we have compared to... But I must begin as it began for me.

My name is Tom Hacket. My home is Rockport, Cape Ann, Massachusetts. My family history is fairly typical of this area of America. My great-grandparents arrived from County Cork, Ireland, to settle in Boston. My grandfather, Daniel, was born in Ireland but had come to America with his parents when only a few years old. Neither my father nor I ever had the desire to visit Ireland. We had no nostalgic yearnings, like some Irish-Americans, to visit the “old country.” We felt ourselves to be purely American. But grandfather Daniel... well, he is the mystery in our family. And if I were to ascribe a start to these curious events then I would say that the beginning was my grandfather.

Daniel Hacket had joined the United States Navy and served as a lieutenant on a destroyer. Sometime in the early spring of 1928, he went on leave to Ireland, leaving his wife and baby (my father) behind in Rockport. He never came back; nor did anyone in the family ever hear from him again. My grandmother, according to my father, always believed that he had been forcibly prevented from returning.

The US Navy took a more uncharitable line and posted him as a deserter. After grandmother died, my father expressed the opinion, contrary to his mother’s faith in Daniel Hacket’s fidelity, that his father had probably settled down with some colleen in Ireland under an assumed name. If the truth were known, he always felt bitter about the mysterious desertion of his father. However, the interesting thing was that my father never sold our house in Rockport; we never moved. And it was only towards the end of my father’s life that he revealed the promise he made to grandmother. She had refused to move away or sell up in the belief that one day Daniel Hacket would attempt to get in touch if he were able. She had made my father promise to keep the old house in the family for as long as he was able.

No one asked that promise of me. I inherited the old wooden colonial-style house, which stood on the headland near Cape Ann, when my father died of cancer. My mother had been dead for some years and, as I had no brothers or sisters, the lonely old house was all mine. I was working as a reporter for the Boston Herald and the house was no longer of interest to me.

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