Nightscapes





The Waite Inheritance by Peter F. Guenther



* * *

The next few days passed uneventfully, although Jack took the precaution of walking Kate most places. She protested continually, arguing that he was in just as much danger as she, but he would hear none of it.

That Wednesday evening, Jack returned to his dorm room to find his answering machine blinking. He hit play. "Jack?" a familiar voice said, "it's Fr. Pat. Why aren't you in? You know I hate talking to these damn machines." Jack smiled; the priest was playing the curmudgeon again. The voice turned serious very quickly, however. "Listen, I'm going out of town for a few days. I'll try to get in touch with you soon. Talking to you the other night set me to thinking, as I said then, and I'm following up on a few leads. I'm flying to Boston tonight, because some of this I have to do in person. I'll be driving up the coast to a little town called Arkham, to consult with a few colleagues at the university there. Then I'm going to follow up on Waite's New England heritage. I have a nasty thought about things. I'll be more specific as soon as I can.

"But this is very important. DO NOT do anything related to the Waite matter until you see me again. No matter what happens, you understand? Do not pursue the BEEEEP." With that, the answering machine cut him off.

Jack took the warning to heart, though, and played the message for Kate as well. In the next couple of days, she finished up her paper and turned it in early. The two of them waited eagerly to hear more from the old Jesuit.

Over the next few days, Jack and Kate both felt the sensation of eyes watching them, but only when they were outside. Although he tried to laugh it off, Jack had the feeling that there was something behind it, though he never got as much a glimpse of the watcher as Kate had.

Saturday, Kate and Jack returned from a date to find another message from the old priest. "I really do hate talking to these machines. Why are you never in your room, Jack? Listen, I've faxed some materials -- yes, I hate that machine, too -- to our office in the library. I want both of you to take a careful look at them. Again, stay away from the Waite matter -- I am now convinced that the danger did not die with Jeremiah Waite. Take care, and I'll talk to you soon. I'm driving up the coast to a little town called Innsmouth you'll read more about in the faxes, then I'll be returning to Boston. Leave a message at the Boston College Jesuit Residence to let me know you got the fax and that you're okay."

The two went across campus to the towered library where Fr. Parks had an office which they, as his research assistants, shared. Jack found the documents as promised. Before even looking at the documents, Jack made the phone call to allay the priest's fears; he was sure the man would call Boston tonight to check his messages. Then he gathered up the pages, commenting, "The old man sure does like to run up the phone bill -- there are forty pages here!"

The cover page had a note from the Jesuit, which Kate read out loud. "You'll find several things here. The first is the narrative of a man who visited Innsmouth in the late 1920's. You'll find this interesting because Innsmouth is where Zedekiah and Rebecca Waite lived before they settled in Michigan in 1847. You'll find this especially notable when you consider what Zadok Allen is quoted as saying in the narrative -- 1846 was a turning point for the town of Innsmouth."

"Wait," Jack interrupted. "Zebulon Waite was born in 1847, too."

Kate thought for a second and then nodded. She continued, "The second thing included in this fax are copies of a few postcards from the Newburyport, MA Historical Society. They depict a piece of jewelry mentioned in the narrative.

"Finally, you'll find a diagram from Abd Al'Hazred's famous work. I can't believe I missed it back in 1969, but then Claver University has a much later translation which may have left it out. I believe this diagram shows the ritual which Jeremiah Waite conducted then; what I've translated so far agrees with that. I'm not far enough into the translation to be absolutely certain, though."

"I ask you to take one further precaution: Open up my top right desk drawer. In it you will find several of the star-stones which we have discussed before. They have a certain amount of potency against the type of thing we're up against. Each of you, please wear one around your neck at all times. Humor me; I am an old man now and given to worry."

Jack opened the drawer indicated and found a half-dozen greyish green stones. He pulled out two which were hung on leather strips and gave one to Kate. The other he pondered for a moment before tying it around his neck and dropping it under his shirt. The stone itself was a five-pointed star; in its center was a lozenge shape with something rising from its center. The overall impression was of an eye with a burning pupil. The stone, even though it was perfectly dry, felt slick in Jack's hand. Kate donned hers as well.

Kate then collected the loose sheets from the sack and rolled them up. "Let's read these somewhere else. My dorm room is closer than yours." Jack agreed, so they walked a couple blocks through campus as a steady drizzle fell. Once in the comfort of her room, they read.

For almost an hour they read in silence; beginning with the 1927 narrative, they learned of Innsmouth and its degeneration and of the half-humans purported to have spawned there from the mating of humans and a race called the Deep Ones, anthropoid ocean dwellers. From an implicit faith in Fr. Parks and their own experiences, neither of the two seriously doubted that the account was true, and very relevant to their situation.

After they were done with the narrative, Kate said, "Well, that explains why they fled New England." There was another connection with the story, Jack felt sure, but he couldn't place it until Kate looked at the next page and gasped, "Jack! The postcards! We've seen these creatures before -- or images of them, at least! In the mausoleum!"

Jack recognized the resemblance, too. "The stained glass windows, right? These are the things chasing the people! Even after moving out here, the Waites must have lived in fear of the Deep Ones. And those windows must have been commissioned by the third generation -- Ezekiel Waite built the mausoleum and had his father and grandfather moved into it after he became rich. Imagine that kind of fear being passed from generation to generation!"

"Speaking of bodies, did I ever tell you how the various Waites died?" Kate asked. "Every male Waite died by violent means; all of them, except Zedekiah, at an early age. Zedekiah shot his own son, Zebulon, in 1892, but died in the struggle. Ezekiel Waite and Ephraim Waite both killed themselves. Both, interestingly enough, within a few years of child disappearances."

Jack saw a sudden insight light up Kate's face. "Jack, we have to go to the mausoleum now. I need to check something."

"Absolutely not!" he protested. "It's after dark, we're both very tightly wound, and Pat warned us not to do anything before talking to him!"

"Yes, but we know some things that he doesn't," Kate countered. "And if history repeats itself, in another week children are going to start dying. We can't let that happen."

The two argued for twenty minutes, but eventually Kate wore Jack down. He was more infuriated by the fact that she wouldn't tell him what she was thinking than by her demand to visit the cemetery at night. Eventually, more out of curiosity than anything else, he gave in.

Within a half hour, they were outside the cemetery gates. "It's midnight, we're being stalked by a serial-killing cult, and we're breaking into a cemetery," Jack muttered. "And this rain is really picking up."

"We're not breaking in; look, the gate's open," Kate countered brightly. "Oh, but speaking of breaking, do be a dear and bring that crowbar you keep in the trunk." And she turned and walked into the cemetery, leaving Jack gaping and mutely protesting. After a few seconds, he retrieved the crowbar and followed her.

As they had the Saturday before, they found the Waite mausoleum ajar. Kate entered calmly and flicked her flashlight on. "Look," she said, playing its beam over the windows. Jack cringed as he thought of the attention it might attract. "The creatures in the windows are the same." She held up the facsimile to prove her point.

Exasperated, Jack said, "But we already agreed on that! There was no doubt in my mind that they were the same. The Waites were scared of these fish-devils. Got it. Why did we have to drive out here?"

"Because of this," Kate answered, turning to another window. "I guess it stuck in my mind from the first time we looked at these windows, but it never really sank in until I was thinking about things after the fax. Look at this window" -- it was the one showing the mausoleum -- "this isn't a separate scene beneath it. This is part of the same scene!" Further down the window, almost hidden by the sarcophagus in front of it -- Jack was sure he hadn't seen it before -- was a man hiding from the fish-things in an underground chamber. Suddenly, Jack understood what Kate was getting at.

"You think they built a hidey-hole -- and that it's under this mausoleum?" he asked.

"That's sure what the window shows," Kate replied. "And I bet the entrance is in one of these unused sarcophagi. Use the crowbar to lift this one's lid." Kate indicated the one directly under the window.

Jack started to protest, but then looked closely at the sarcophagus lid. While Jeremiah's had been sealed with some kind of mortar, the unused one had not. He used the crowbar and the lid lifted easily, but heavily, away.

As soon as he lifted the lid, though, Jack felt as if he had been punched in the gut. The crack of nearby thunder seemed to shake the mausoleum's walls. And Kate gasped, "Something just moved outside."

Jack shouldered past her, to get nearer to the door. The sick feeling in his stomach got worse as he confirmed she was right. He heard soft footsteps outside the nearly-closed mausoleum doors.

Suddenly the doors flew in, and something small and fast right behind them. Kate screamed; in the waving flashlight beam, Jack caught a glimpse of black batwings and fangs. Then something very weighty knocked him to the ground. Somehow, he managed to brush it off him as he hit the ground. A second later, he was scrambling to his feet.

Lightning illuminated the mausoleum through the open door. Jack had an impression of two large cats with fiercely burning red eyes and, incongruously, large wings on their backs. "Oh my God," Kate shrieked. "The winged things shown in the other window." Jack nodded, which she probably didn't see in her shaking flashlight beam, but had another thought. He held his chest where the thing's claws had raked him; they had felt almost like stone. In the unsteady light, too, the things looked like they were covered not in fur, but in stone. He understood now what that odd pattern had been on the backs of the cat statues in front of the tomb: wings.

The lead cat crouched down, readying itself for another pounce. In a sudden flash of insight, Kate pulled out her star talisman and shone the light on it. The cat paused for a second.

That pause was all Jack needed. He covered the few feet between himself and the first cat in one step, then swung the crowbar, catching the cat full in the face and sending it up and back. Fragments of stone flew; one clipped him just above the eye. "Come on," he called to Kate. "Let's get out of here!" He took another step and slammed the second cat into the opened bronze door, then was clear of the tomb. Kate was right behind him. They ran to the car without looking back.

Kate asked, "What were those things?"

"Must have been some kind of tomb guardian," Jack answered, starting the engine. He dared a look back. One of the cats swooped down on its batwings to land on one of the brick posts next to the gate, and glared at him from there. Caught in its near-hypnotic gaze, he paused for a full minute. Kate shook him. Snapping out of it, he said, "Look, it's not coming any closer. I think it may be limited to the graveyard."

"Where's the other one?" Kate whimpered. With that, Jack put the car into gear and peeled away.

Between his shattered nerves and the speed he was driving, it was a miracle that Jack kept the car on the wet road. They drove back; Jack dropped Kate off and watched her in the door, then drove to his own dorm. As he let himself in, he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't felt the sensation of eyes upon him all day.


"Oh God," Kate said, looking at the paper on Monday morning. Apparently their nighttime escapade, along with some other news, had happened too late to get into the Sunday paper. She pointed to the headline which screamed "Child missing!" A Waynestown boy had gone missing Saturday night; the last he had been seen, it was around twilight. A few of his friends reported seeing him talking to an unknown man. Kate read the description with her hand to her mouth; the only detail the friends could provide was that the man was dressed in a bulky overcoat.

Worse yet, there were two sidebars to the story. One was titled "1969 All Over Again?" and offered details with which they were already well acquainted. The second one noted that the same night, the tomb of the 1969 serial killer had been disturbed by person or persons unknown. While there were no witnesses, the next morning visitors to the cemetery found the doors of the Waite mausoleum wide open and one of the cat statues which had flanked the doors smashed. Oddly, one of the unused stone vaults had its lid raised; police saw nothing inside, though, and had closed it again. None of the other vaults showed any sign of interference.

"There was nothing in that empty vault. I got a quick look before all hell broke loose. We found out nothing. and our fingerprints must be all over that tomb," Jack groaned.

"Are they?" Kate wondered. "Maybe the door, but we didn't touch much inside. Besides which, we were there last week for a perfectly legitimate purpose, and have the photos to prove it! And I turned that report in last week. And anyhow, our prints may be there, but the police don't have my fingerprints on file. I don't know about yours…"

"Let's just hope for the best," Jack sighed. "But from now on, we listen to the priest -- we're not getting in this any deeper."

Despite Jack's intentions, they soon found themselves drawn in deeper. By Tuesday a total of five children were missing; many parents were hysterical, and blame was thrown on the media, sick copycats, divorced parents who seized the opportunity as a smoke screen, and so on. Waynestown, however, was in a panic, and Claver University and its community of Lakeside not much better.

Twice that Tuesday, Jack felt the eerie sensation of eyes upon him. If the feeling really did come from being watched, he pondered, what manner of eyes was it that made him feel that way? And why was he being followed -- did the cult whose existence he postulated view him as that much of a threat? With a sigh, he wished he were -- he felt an acute sense of personal guilt in the disappearances, and wished he could do something to stop them.

That Wednesday night, his world was shattered. He received a phone call that Kate was in the university hospital, having been attacked on her way home from an evening class. He hurried over to the hospital. There, the nurse told him that her injuries were unsightly, but not too serious. She was no longer in shock; they would watch her overnight in case of any unsuspected injuries, but he could expect her to be released the next day. And yes, he could have a few minutes with her, but shouldn't expect her to be too coherent.

From the time when he received the call, Jack had felt his anger growing. As he ran to the hospital, he determined that whatever was necessary, he would end things this night. As he stepped into the hospital room, that anger was building into a murderous rage; it peaked when he saw his girlfriend on the hospital bed.

Her eyes were open -- or at least, the one that wasn't swollen shut was. Her left eye was surrounded by an ugly, fresh bruise; several thick parallel scratches tore down her right cheek. What tore his heart open, though, was the way she started when he stepped into the room; he firmed his resolve to remove the source of her fear. He sat down next to her; she managed a weak smile, but tears were still flowing down her cheeks.

"Oh, Jack, it was terrible . . .," she sobbed.

"Who did this?" he asked, the veins on the side of his head standing out.

"It was -- that thing -- that's been watching us. Oh, Jack, it's not human," she gasped. "They won't believe me, but it's not. It's one of those things -- on the window, and in that fax . . . It jumped out of the shadows at me, knocked me down . . . and the smell . . . and then it tried, it tried . . . oh, but I fought it off."

Jack held her, awkwardly as he tried to avoid putting any pressure on her injuries, and tried to soothe her. In a few minutes, drowsy from medications and exhausted from fear, she was asleep. He laid her back on the bed and made his way out of the hospital.

Barely thinking at a conscious level, he strode quickly back to his dorm and climbed in his car. He started it up and headed out to Waynestown; if history was repeating itself, there was only one place to start.

A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of the Waite mansion. Its vacant windows glittered evilly in the moonlight; the whole façade seemed to leer at him suggestively. He signed his disgust at the house and pulled the crowbar from his trunk. He didn't own any better weapon, and in his black rage he expected this to suffice. He walked through the tall grass to the rear of the house, to try the door they had seen open at the beginning of the month. It was, indeed, still open. He let himself into the kitchen.

As he made his way through deserted rooms full of covered furniture, his flashlight revealed many spots that seemed cleared of dust recently. Others, though, bore evidence of recent disruption: heavy-soled feet had come through here in the past few days. Of course, Jack thought, the police would have checked here first. What am I doing here? he wondered.

But his anger called for some kind of outlet, so he carried through with his plan. In the front hall of the house, he made his way up the stairs, and then up a second flight. From Kate's comments and what he had seen through the windows of the house, he had a pretty clear idea of where he had to go. On the third floor, then, he let himself through large paneled doors that led directly off the top of the stairs. He saw with a slight hint of satisfaction that this was indeed the library. The floor here seemed completely clean of dust, so he could not be sure if the police had been here. He set himself to inspecting the bookcases, one of which must surely hide the way to that infamous chamber.

In a way, he was not surprised to see the contents of those shelves, because it confirmed what he suspected. Jeremiah Waite, his ancestors, or both, had been heavily into the occult. Most of the titles were familiar to him from his work in the library's special collections, although their contents were inaccessible because of language: Cultes des Goules was here, which he remembered the priest mentioning just two weeks before; De Vermis Mysteriis and the Book of Iod; a slim English volume that purported to be a translation of the Eltdown Shards; and, as Jack expected from the materials the priest had faxed him, a copy of Al Azif, translated as the Necronomicon. He pulled it off the shelf; it was stuffed full of extra pages of notes. One page looked much like a handwritten copy of the diagram Fr. Parks had sent him. This page was littered with marginalia; one that Jack could make out called the ritual the "Rite of Keeping." Jack snapped the book shut and slid it back on the shelf, a cloud of dust from the action assailing his nose.

By carefully studying the bases of the bookcases, he quickly determined the only one which could be swung out. He set himself to discovering the mechanism or method of this, glad he had had the foresight to don gloves before entering the house. Finally he found that lifting the bookcase up about an inch allowed it to turn freely. It swung back into a dark passage.

Jack transferred his flashlight to his mouth, adopting a double-handed grip on the crowbar, took a deep breath, and then plunged into the passage. It ran about ten feet, then turned into a very tight, twisting staircase. As he advanced, his nostrils tested the air, searching for the reek of rotting flesh. It was not there, he found with both disappointment and relief. But a few steps on he found there was something; the smell of long-ago rotten meat, all but masking a hint of fish. He thought of the fish-men in the stained glass windows and gave a small shudder. There was no turning back, though; his blood pounded in his temples from both rage and fear.

He made his way slowly up the stairs; he cursed himself now for the flashlight, sure that it had immediately betrayed his presence to anyone up here. As his head cleared the top of the stairs, though, he found the chamber empty.

It was indeed the chamber Kate had described, roughly square, with the top edges clipped by the narrowing roof. Dark stains on the walls and pooled in the center of the floor attested the horror which had occurred here a quarter-century ago. Jack took a shallow breath and decided to leave.

Just then, though, he heard a creak from the passageway below, followed by the unmistakable sound of the bookcase falling back into place. Someone stood between him and his only means of escape. In panic, Jack asked, "Who's there?" then cursed as the flashlight fell from between his teeth. As it rolled on the stairs, the beam swung crazily, then went out in a flash as the bulb shattered on a lower stair. He was plunged into absolute darkness in the windowless chamber.

What's more, the odor he had detected faintly before assailed him now. It was the reek of a great quantity of fish, left out in the sun on a hot summer day, but more: the breath of the tomb, a salty, smoky tang, a musky animal scent. As the soft steps in the passageway neared the stairs, he heard breathing, a harsh, wheezing inhalation followed by a gurgling, lungy exhalation. Jack adjusted his grip on the crowbar and readied himself for the intruder.

"Yes, you have come, as I expected," said a voice with the texture of bursting bubbles. A throaty laugh followed. "Now I have eliminated the risk from both the girl and you."

"You bastard!" Jack cried out, and swung with the crowbar. It was stopped in mid-swing and torn from his hands; he heard it fall, clanging, down the stairs. He took several steps back from the stairs, driven back by the encroaching stink; suddenly, the person before him grabbed his shoulder in an inescapable clutch. Jack gave an internal shudder -- unable to move his shoulder -- at the touch; it felt more like a talon than a hand, and he thought of the scratches on Kate's face. Suddenly that claw and its mate spun him around and his captor, still unseen, was behind him, moving him forward. In a moment Jack found his face against the rough wall of the chamber; then the creature grabbed both his hands with one hand, and Jack heard the other work against some kind of catch. The wall moved away from his face.

The creature continued to march him forward, through another chamber whose existence Jack didn't think anyone had guessed. Here the dead-fish reek was stronger; Jack had a strong conviction that this was where his captor lived. As they walked, Jack's wrists were chafed by the rough hand; he had never felt a human hand with skin so rough. Bits of it flaked off, in fact, as they moved.

Jack's captor felt a need to talk, apparently. Jack heard that awful, bubbly-rasping voice say, "You thought I would be stupid enough to enact the ritual here? No, I have a far better place. But I knew you would be stupid enough to think so."

Jack stumbled as he was forced down another tight stairway, twin to the one in the other chamber. He had no idea what bowels of the house he was being led to. He made his way awkwardly down the stairs; there were far more steps than he had climbed up from the library. After a few rotations down the twisting course, he was sure they couldn't emerge above the house's cellar.

The stairs ended and Jack stumbled again on the level floor; it felt like cement to his feet. The ever-present hand yanked him back, though, and kept him from falling. A throaty chuckle emerged behind him. "I do get hungry, you know, and I'm looking forward to having your company for a while . . .," the voice said; something long and sinuous, but so dry that Jack couldn't imagine it as a tongue, brushed against his neck. Convulsions of disgust racked his body. Another throaty chuckle followed.

Still Jack had not passed a single window since leaving the library. He wondered if there was any way into this chamber except from above. Weakly, he tried to wrest his hands free from his captor, but was completely ineffectual. He found that the rage had seeped from him, replaced only with a numbing fear which he felt as palpably as a cold stone laying on his chest. He felt his life was forfeit now, no matter what he tried to do.

"There is no escape, young fool," that terrible voice assured him. "You can only go forward now." And with that, Jack was shoved into a hole in the wall. He felt the wall's rough edges as he went into the hole; but from there on, all was dirt. He was in what he could only identify as a burrow, about three feet high and wide. A powerful kick moved him down the burrow and buried his face in the dirt for a moment.

"Move down the passage," he was told. "As you crawl, I will tell you a story.

"Have you ever heard of a place in New England called Innsmouth?" the voice gurgled. "That's where Zedekiah Waite was from. In the 1840's he was living as a fisherman in the town, but he had spent several years as a sailor. He was erudite in his way; he had seen many ports, heard many strange tales, and picked up a number of odd books along his way. So when Obed Marsh suggested that the town enter into an arrangement with immeasurably old, immeasurably crafty demons from the sea, Zedekiah knew better. But he let it happen, knowing that it would no matter what he said. He did his best not to get involved.

"In 1846, though, all that changed. When the men of the town let down their side of the bargain, the devils rose up out of the sea and arranged things to their own satisfaction. The night was filled with the screams of dying men frightened by nightmares whose existence they never dreamt of. Marsh hadn't told them everything about the bargain -- or whom they were bargaining with.

"The night was also filled with the screams of women, for it wasn't just blood or vengeance that these Deep Ones sought. And after that night, Zedekiah Marsh knew that he could not live with the bargain that had been made. He fled the town with his young wife. How he escaped, I don't know. Few did; the townspeople and their new masters did not want any news to reach their neighbors.

"But that wasn't what Zedekiah wanted to do. He merely wanted to live out his life in peace, and so he and his wife settled in Michigan. What he had read of these Deep Ones said that they were ocean-dwellers, so he felt the Great Lakes posed no risk. As a sailor and fisherman, he had lived too long near water to give it up entirely. Still, once settled here, he took up farming, and to the end of his days never sat in a boat again.

"The next year, his wife Rebecca gave birth to a child. Both of them were very relieved when the boy, whom they named Zebulon, seemed a normal -- a human -- child. The years passed by for the family, and they made a happy living off the land. In time, the community grew up around them.

"As Zebulon hit middle age, though, now with a son of his own, he experienced a change. In his forties, his eyes began to bulge ominously, and he blinked less and less; his hair fell out in great patches; his skin became almost scaly. Zebulon himself recognized what was happening first, for he had read in his father's strange books, and had acquired more books of his own. He sought mastery over his body through magical means, and when that availed little, he strove to hide his affliction from his father. But it soon became clear to both of them that Zebulon's father was not Zedekiah -- indeed, was not even human. And Zedekiah had lived his life in fear of the race which his 'son' clearly belonged to. Just as his Bible told him he should not suffer a witch to live, he was not about to suffer this man, an affront to humanity and to Zedekiah himself. One day in 1892, Zedekiah steeled himself, then burst into his son's house and shot him in the head. He no doubt would have destroyed Zebulon's teenage son, Ezekiel, as well, but as Zebulon's life's blood -- which little resembled human blood -- seeped out, the fish-man tore out the throat of the man he had thought of for most of his life as his father.

"Ezekiel knew little of what had happened. That fall he was sent down to Detroit to finish his schooling, and became involved in the earliest days of automobile manufacturing. Quickly amassing a fortune, he returned home and built a grand new house. He eventually learned of his strange inheritance, though; and when its biological reality became clear to him, it shattered his mind. He took his own life before the transformation demanded by his blood was complete.

"The inheritance took a similar turn with Ezekiel's son Ephraim. He was dead by his own hand by age 38.

"Jeremiah, however -- Ephraim's son -- had witnessed the changes in his father. He embraced the heritage and sought to hasten its arrival. He devoured the books in his ancestors' library and rounded out the collection with many more of his own. His fathers had been burdened with Christianity, with a stark vision of right and wrong, human and devil, but Jeremiah grasped the possibilities of his 'affliction.' He turned his back on Christian religion and began to practice the rituals he read about.

"Sadly, though, Jeremiah died as young as any of his ancestors; in him, too, the change was incomplete. He had done all he could, though. But he was a monster inside, just like his ancestors! Instead of shunning his nature, he went too far in the other direction and reveled in it!

"Only I have taken the balanced path, of living with the Waite curse, but not allowing it to rule me; of fighting it tooth-and-nail for all these years, as it ravaged the humanity I thought I once possessed. I suffer through it as I seek to end it."

Jack thought he saw opportunity. There was a dim glow ahead where he surmised the passageway ended. Gathering up his remaining strength and allowing himself to hope again, he first asked, "Yes -- how do you fit into all this?"

His tormentor began, "Fool! Can you . . .," but Jack interrupted him by grabbing a handful of the packed soil which lined the passageway, twisting his body clear, and hurling it where he hoped the face of the creature -- for surely it could not be fully human! -- lay. Jack scrambled forward and into the open chamber at the end of the passage, but the dim light -- apparently the phosphorescence of some lichen -- was not enough for him to descry any exit. Moreover, Jack was stunned by what he could detect in the chamber, for the smell of corruption, of newly rotting flesh, was overwhelming, and he had too good an idea of what the dark shapes along the wall were.

Behind him, he heard sputtering, then the creature -- which in this dim light was still only an anthropomorphic blur -- burst out of the passage in an explosive frenzy. It leapt at him, and even though Jack raised his arm in a block, it was upon him. A scaly talon grasped his throat, and the thing breathed into his face the fullness of its rotting, fishy breath. "Fool!" it raved. "Can you not tell? I am Zebulon Waite!"

It seemed to be sobbing, then, this barely-glimpsed thing that held Jack. "My father's bullet was not enough to end my life, and in sheer animal instinct I ended his life. Oh, I am damned, and my hell is this unending life!

"As the son of a Deep One, I am cursed with the immortality that is their blessing! My life was too strong to end at my father's hand, and even though I deny my aquatic nature, still I am in the grips of this never-ending life!

"The only thing which keeps me human is the ritual which must be repeated four times a century. The first time, I hoped that performing it would completely restore my humanity, but it did not! And I further damned myself by slaying innocents and reveling in their blood! Indeed, even eating their flesh, for I HUNGER!!!

"My descendants performed the ritual for me three more times, but now I am left alone! No one to talk to, I squat under my own grave, ticking off the years until I must again commit these atrocious acts to save myself from eternal hellfire! And you try to stop me!"

The creature's grip loosened around Jack's throat. Jack could hear it crying, racked with great, dry sobs. Then it turned to him again. "But I must eat! And I must complete the ritual, or embrace my new life and descend into the sea with my kindred!"

Suddenly remembering, Jack reached into his shirt and pulled out the star-stone. The creature, able to see in the dim light or otherwise able to sense it, laughed. "The Elder Sign has no power over me, coward!" It reached forward and tore the sign off Jack's throat, then flung it away.

What had once been Zebulon Waite lunged at him; Jack sidestepped, avoiding the lunge, but recoiled from the fleshy, suspended thing he ran into. Then Jack himself began to cry, for he knew what he had bumped into and knew that he was going to die in this crypt.

As he crouched and stumbled around the chamber, evading his tormentor, a scraping noise came from above and to one side. A glimmer of hope was once more kindled in his head, and he moved towards the sound. He sensed the once-human mere inches from him, however.

Suddenly, light sprang into the chamber from behind Jack. To his dismay, it illumined fully his tormentor, and Jack froze in horror. Aside from the fact that it stood on two legs, Jack could see little sign that the thing was remotely human. The creature that Zebulon Waite had degenerated into stood around five feet tall -- it had once been taller but now was hunched perpetually. Its hands and feet were completely webbed; the feet, indeed, had deformed so much that they were now little more than extremely broad flippers. The whole of its skin was covered in scaly, green growth; there were many gaps and scabs among the scales, however, and an orange ichor seeped from open wounds. Even as Jack watched, several scales flaked off and more ooze began to flow.

Worst of all, though, was the thing's head. It had almost no neck; what it did have was slit by gills. The edges of the gills were an angry red, and the skin there was covered with cracks and scars. Above that neck was an ugly face; a lipless mouth rasped for air, while the nose had no sign of nostrils and had mostly receded into the face. To the left of that nose was one round, unblinking eye; the other eye was covered in a massive scar that still oozed some. No hair was visible anywhere on it, and the thing's sex organs had mostly pulled back into its body. Over the nose, a thick, horny ridge rose, blended with the scar tissue of the long-ago head wound, and then wrapped over the top of the head.

Jack, still crying, began to scream then, letting out long, piercing yells, then sucking in deep breaths to yell more. In an obscene parody, the thing before him, frozen in the unexpected light, sucked in breaths through its wide mouth. Jack watched the thing labor with every breath, its mouth and throat working furiously.

Then someone brushed by him from behind. "You damned fool!" that someone muttered in a familiar voice. The figure then raised a staff and struck at the creature; it landed with a loud crack!, but the creature recoiled even more than seemed deserved. Zebulon Waite emitted a shrill cry and fell on the ground.

The figure, whom Jack now identified as Fr. Parks beyond any doubt, then reversed the staff. Jack glimpsed a sharp wooden point. The priest raised the stave and plunged it into the soft, grey belly of the creature. The shrill cry continued, then dissipated. And as Jack watched, the creature itself seemed to dissipate, its unnatural hide melting off the bones. Soon, only a pool of green and orange ichor was left under a pile of steaming bones.

This left Jack to confront the horror still surrounding him, revealed by the light coming from above. As he had feared, the bodies of five children lined the walls of the rough-cut stone chamber. Their rib cages had been cracked open, their internal organs pinned to the low roof of the room in an obscene pentacle. Jack looked away.

The priest raised the staff from the steaming remains, giving Jack a glimpse of the strange, swastika-like diagrams carved all over its dark, highly polished surface. The priest put his arm around Jack and said, "Come on -- let's get out of here."

They mounted the stairs, which Jack had not been able to find in the dark, and emerged into the Waite mausoleum. Jack noted that they came up not in one of the empty sarcophagi, but the one marked Zebulon Waite -- which had turned out to also be empty. The priest retrieved the electric torch he had set at the top of those stairs and, with a scraping noise, slid the top of the coffer into place. Jack was shaking as he stepped out into the night and inhaled the fresh air hungrily.

Having noted the young man's interest in the staff, the Jesuit observed as they walked towards the car, "It turns out the Elder Sign has no effect on the Deep Ones. As lesser servants of the Great Old Ones, it cannot bind them. I had to turn to the En'kileya Codex, an ancient Melanasian document carved on slabs of wood in a language only a dozen people alive today can read, to find the Charm of the Deep! You're lucky I'm one of that dozen. The Codex includes a rite for carving objects -- stones, pieces of wood, any number of things -- to have power against the Deep Ones. Zadok Allen refers to its results in that manuscript you read -- those strange, swastika-etched stones that Obed Marsh found."

"So it wasn't a cult, as we had feared, after all -- it was just one creature, living far beyond his proper lifespan. Zebulon Waite would have been -- what? Almost one hundred fifty years old!" Jack said. He needed to talk; he desperately needed to put the horror of the night behind him.

The priest nodded grimly. "As soon as I began checking on the Waites' New England heritage, I got a pretty clear idea of what had happened. Rebecca Waite must have been impregnated by a Deep One during that terrible night in 1846. And while most of the other progeny of the Deep Ones either come to terms with their monstrous identity, or take their own lives, Zebulon Waite was far too religious to do either. He lived a century and a half in fear of the Deep Ones, but allowed himself to become a far worse monster, to save himself from the hell he feared. He truly was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea."


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© 2000 Edward P. Berglund
"The Waite Inheritance": © 2000 Peter F. Guenther. All rights reserved.
Graphics © 1999-2000 Erebus Graphic Design. All rights reserved. Email to: James V. Kracht.

Created: May 16, 2000; Current Update: August 9, 2004