“During the winter of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting - under suitable precautions - of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor.
“Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of arrests, the abnormally large force of men used in making them, and the secrecy surrounding the disposal of the prisoners. No trials, or even definite charges were reported; nor were any of the captives seen thereafter in theregular gaols of the nation. There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. Innsmouth itself was left almost depopulated…”
--From “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft
Agent Fred Mathis knows he is being watched.
You would not suspect this from the way he acts: He stares straight ahead and concentrates on the sound his shoes make as he walks down the dark street. He thinks about the soles of those shoes and how thin they are. He ignores the sixth sense that shoots adrenaline spikes outward to his scalp; he ignores the ice sheath on the back of his neck. He fingers the trigger on his FBI- issue Colt 1911. He remembers that his icebox is empty and he will need to buy something for dinner on his way home.
Fred is in the abandoned port town of Innsmouth searching for its latest victim--not for the body, since everyone at the bureau knows "The Things" there never leave bodies behind. No, he is searching for the car, for clothes, for a wallet or purse. His partner, Cecil Boyle, has taken wharf detail and Fred is glad of it. However sure he is that something watches his every move from the black, gaping mouths of these dilapidated buildings, Fred cannot stand to be next to the water here—with its odor of rotting wharf and the churning murk of sea lapping near his feet.
If you could see Fred Mathis from the vantage point of The Thing that is watching him, you would see a gray-haired, medium-built man in his late-60s, leaning forward as he plods ahead, foot after foot. You’d see his threadbare grey suit, his new stylish hat that doesn’t match. You’d see a weary, unshaven face, mild but impenetrable.
From this vantage point you probably wouldn’t see that Fred Mathis is invisible. Not invisible in the literal sense, of course. But years of listening and barely talking, of slipping into rooms unnoticed, of being passed over and looked through by his superiors, have all served to create an under-the-radar presence in him, a cloak of inconsequence that makes everyone ignore, underestimate and, finally, forget he is there. His late wife Adeline was the only one who ever really saw him, and now that she is gone he feels insubstantial and unanchored, as if at any moment, if he willed it, he could disintegrate. He likes this feeling. It is freedom, he thinks, to be light, to be invisible.
Fred turns a corner and sees an abandoned car that is neither rusted nor in an obvious state of disrepair. He opens the unlocked door and begins to search the pockets of a coat that had been left on the passenger seat.
Boyle trots up the street toward Fred. "You find it?" he shouts.
"Yup" says Fred, examining the flowery cursive lettering on one of the business cards he found.
For a moment, Fred imagines how this man--this Mister Rodger Barnes, this traveling salesman with the fancy business cards--must have taken a wrong exit off the highway and become lost on those dark winding back ways between Newburyport and Arkham. He imagines how he would have driven slowly down the main road into town hoping to find someone who could give him directions, gas, coffee.
"Poor bastard," Fred mumbles as he puts the card in his pocket.
"Find the keys?”
“Nope,” says Fred.
Well, reckon I'll hot wire the car then," Boyle says.
Fred's face softens as he watches him go to work. Cecil Boyle is a severely freckled redhead just shy of 25, new to the bureau--stuck with the partner who's on his way out, stuck with the worst assignment, the one everyone pretends doesn't exist. Boyle has found the one small part of these missions that is in any way bearable, and he beams when in a few seconds, he has managed to start the engine.
Fred looks briefly around the car for other personal effects, sees nothing and bends over to dislodge a large mossy brick from the road that will hold down the gas pedal. After some pushing and maneuvering of the car, they watch as it drives itself into the bay, floats for a few minutes, then submerges.
That's seven of them now, Fred thinks, right before a loud rotting-wood crack emanating from a nearby building startles them both.
"What's keeping us here?" Boyle asks as he draws his gun. His long strides threaten to break out into a run as he heads to where they parked their car.
They are silent on their drive back to their bureau office in Arkham. Fred has never been much for the gallows humor other agents use to calm their nerves, and it feels especially wrong in Innsmouth. Perhaps one could joke about rifling through the pockets of some mobster choking to death on his own blood, but about this? Too nightmarish. Better not to think about what it is they are doing, better not to talk, better to pretend none of it exists. At least Boyle's hands aren't shaking any more like on their first mission when Fred explained to him the reason why they should park on the outer road and walk into town. At least Boyle’s not asking him anymore about the previous year's raids and what Fred saw and did in them. At least he no longer questions their orders to monitor the missing persons reports of the area and destroy or hide any evidence that would lead local police to Innsmouth.
A body can get used to anything, Fred thinks, remembering the old Irish saying his mother had been so fond of. Even a hanging.
Even to Innsmouth, he adds.
***
A few weeks later, Fred Mathis is home on his day off. As he does every morning at the same time, he retrieves the newspaper from his front porch. Though he usually waits to sit at the kitchen table with his toast and coffee before beginning to read any part of it, the loud front-page headline this particular morning makes him freeze mid-step at his front door.
There will be no hiding this one, he thinks.
No, there’s no hiding the disappearance of Mrs. Henry Rothschild, better known by her famous maiden name, Marisol Koenkamp. You don’t just file away the missing person’s report that banking tycoon Henry Rothschild calls in, or stop him from holding a press conference offering 250 grand for the safe return of his wife, no questions asked. There’s no paying off newspaper editors when faced with something this juicy.
The corners of Fred’s mouth turn upwards in a strange facsimile of a smile. No, these kinds of things tend to take on a momentum of their own, he thinks. Soon, the entire nation will be rapt with gleefully morbid concern for Marisol Koenkamp, acclaimed stage and silent film star, the toast of New York and Hollywood, newly married to the richest man in the U.S.A.
Sure enough, the next morning, the beleaguered and understaffed Bureau office is crawling with G-men from Washington, D.C.. Henry Rothschild has influence everywhere, and his hometown New York City mayor blusters in, demanding a full investigation and help and resources for the local police force. He is trailed by a nervous Arkham city mayor, who parrots everything he says. Mobs of reporters block the entrances. Huge rings stain the armpits of the thin dress shirt that Fred’s bureau chief wears as he scurries around. A telegram arrives from J. Edgar Hoover announcing he is on his way. Soon, everyone is whispering that Rothschild has been tipped off to the possibility of foul play at Innsmouth and the cover-ups of the deaths.
The whole sordid mess at that squalid seaport has officially blown up.
Look off to one side of this fury and you will see crumple-suited Fred Mathis, contemplating the scene. Boyle sits next to him on Fred’s desk, barely able to contain his happiness when Fred explains to him that they will be making no more trips to Innsmouth.
“So Rothschild knows about Innsmouth now?” Boyle asks in a low voice.
“That’s the rumor.”
“Whoo-boy! This is going to get good.” Boyle jumps jauntily from the desk.
“I’d watch it, kid.”
“What?”
“Look, who knows how this is going to turn, or what’s next. I’m on my way out, but you’re just starting here. You were on these cover-up missions. Just watch it. Get invisible. Don’t run your mouth.”
Boyle stares at Fred for a moment. “Does it ever ... I mean... does it …” his voice trails off. “Alright, yeah thanks,” he says quickly and walks back to his own desk.
Look closer now at Fred Mathis.
Watch as he turns his back to the fray and ruckus of the bureau office and sits at his desk. Watch how he opens the right-hand drawer and removes a small flask. Watch his hand as he takes a quick swig, how it shakes just a little. For the first time since the Innsmouth raids, which have become inexorably linked in his head with the last, dying days of Adeline, Fred Mathis is afraid.
***
Now, at night in the vast sea of his retirement—long after the military dynamites what’s left of the town, long after the independent congressional hearings on Innsmouth fizzle out with no answers, long after details and speculation of Marisol Koenkamp’s gruesome end and the calls for justice by families of the Innsmouth missing drop off the pages of the newspapers, long after the attention of the nation shifts from this strange, incomprehensible story to the end of Prohibition and the economy's nosedive—Fred is haunted by dreams in which he is witness to the actress' last moments alive.
He watches as she gets out of her car. She stands and thinks what to do, leaving her handbag and coat on the seat. It is raining and muggy. Headstrong and confident enough to be driving alone at night in the first place, she is at this point merely annoyed at her bad luck at getting hopelessly lost on those dark backroads.
He watches as she walks to a store that is strangely illuminated yet abandoned, calling out “Is someone there?” He tries to yell to her, to warn her, but chokes on his tongue, managing only a soft croak.
He watches her face deform into a mask of terror when she first sees the Thing coming out of the water.
He watches as she steps backward and turns, twisting her ankle and falling into the mud. She is crawling, whimpering, unable even to scream. He screams for her, impotent, unable to move--it is as if the earth had a subterranean pull that he is too weak to fight. Behind her the Thing steps closer, making its inhuman sounds.
Sometimes he wakes at that point, sweating and shaking. But on unlucky nights a final scene awaits him in his nightmares:
She is in the Thing’s clawed grasp in the moments before it kills her. Her naked body is a sickly greenish-white, vulnerable and fragile. She is frozen in terror and looking straight at Fred.
She sees me, he realizes with a shock. He is not invisible. He cannot hide.
***
Notes & Credits:
The sim is, of course, Innsmouth. It's amazingly well done and fun to explore. Play around with your environment editor to get some spooky atmospherics. These photos were taken with the Emerald preset "fin de siecle."
After visiting the sim I decided to read Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." More than anything, the mention--right at the beginning of the story--of the "raids of the winter of '27-'28" caught my attention. Who were these agents that went on the raid to rid Innsmouth of its monsters? What's their story? What happened to the town after that? What happens when a good man follows orders that are immoral, unethical, corrupt? Enter Fred Mathis, who I grew quite fond of while writing this story. Poor bastard.
Fred's suit and shoes are from Doc's Men's Wear. His hat is from Casa Cheerno. His shape and skin are from an amazing little shop called MB Skins, where you can get realistic, older, rough-around-the-edges skins and shapes for your avatar. I can't remember where I found the gun but it was created by Jasperella Forcella. It's scripted and comes with a holster.
Marisol's dress and hair in the first black & white photo are from Sonatta Morales, one of my favorite places to shop. I want everything in her delicious store.
Marisol's "Cleopatra dress" (Flower Isis) in the second black & white is an oldie but goodie from Vindi Vindaloo. I'm so glad she's back and creating new stuff. A testament to her talent is the fact that you can still wear the stuff she made in 2005 and it won't scream "I am a one-dimensional, non-textured pixel dress from 2005!" It looks better than much of the stuff being made in now. What I love about this dress in particular is its two dimensions: it is a 1920s art-deco style interpretation of Ancient Egyptian goddess/pharaoh wear.
Marisol is wearing one of my favorite, most versatile hairdos in that photo, milonga from le salon. I've had it for ages and unfortunately, I don't have a landmark for it and can't find it on search.
Finally, in the nightmare photos, Marisol is wearing Doris red dress from Ivalde. Her hair is Myrna from Ingenue. Marisol's skin in the old black & white photos is Marla from Milk Motion. In the nightmare sequence, she is wearing Noble Leisurely from Vita's Boudoir.
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