The Innswich Horror by Edward Lee

Author:Edward Lee [Lee, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: violence, sex, monsters, mythos, lovecraft
Publisher: Edward Lee
Published: 2012-03-28T07:26:02+00:00

4.

A half-hour’s desperate search in the woods yielded no positive result, and to search longer would only jeopardize the possibility of getting Mary and her unborn out alive. Hence, I trudged back to the brick-and-ivy-netted hovel like a man on his way to the gallows. What could I tell Mary? Her son had been abducted and most likely was dead already—all under my charge…

The very normal sound of crickets followed me back inside, but then came another sound, one which actually deflected my all-pervading muse of despair:

The sound of a baby crying.

I plunged out of the foyer’s ink-like murk into the candle-lit room, where the sound of infantile crying hijacked my gaze toward the heap of a mattress. “Mary!”

There she sat, bearing an exhausted smile as she sat upright among makeshift pillows. In her arms, pressed to her swelling bosom, was a newly born babe, swaddled in linens.

“I went into labor just after you left,” she said, rosy-cheeked. “And then it happened only minutes later.” She turned the infant for me to see.

A miracle, I thought. It was as perfect as any babe I’d ever beheld. The moment it took notice of me, it quieted, and looked at me wide-eyed.

“See, he likes you, Foster. Just the sight of you calms him.” Mary rocked him as best she could.

“What a wonder,” I whispered. “I’m only sorry I wasn’t here to assist when the time came.”

“Each time it’s easier,” she informed. “There was barely any pain with this one.” She glanced hopefully to me, eyes aglint in the candlelight. “But we must name him right away, in case—”

In case we die trying to leave, I finished for her.

“I’m going to name him Foster,” she said.

I went speechless, a tear beading in my eye.

Then her hopeful glance turned hard as granite. “And they’re not going to get this one. Only over my dead body…”

The joy of this notice crested in my heart, but then crashed to the most stygian depths.

She still didn’t know that Walter was gone.

“Mary, I… I…”

“I love you so much, Foster,” she interrupted, teary-eyed herself. “I want you to marry me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and raise this child with you… and make love to you every single night…”

The words, greater than any gift I’d ever been given, only dragged my spirit deeper into the abyss of black verity.

“You, me, and Walter,” she mused on, breast-feeding now. “We’ll be such a happy family.”

Sorrow sealed my throat like a strangler’s gasp. I could barely hack out, “Mary, you don’t understand. It’s about—”

“I know what it’s about,” her placid voice came to me. “It’s about Walter.”

I stared.

“I never got the chance to explain earlier,” she went on, modestly covering enough of her bosom to forestall my view. “Earlier, you said that you’d witnessed Cyrus Zalen at the waterfront, delivering sacks of newborns to the fullbloods.”

“But-but… but Mary, what—”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You were simply mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” I asked but by now my mind was thoroughly disarranged. “No, no, Mary, I saw him, it was Zalen.

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