Fort Fredericks
ONWARD WE WENT, EVER UPSTREAM. THE Miskatonic remained a wide, winding thoroughfare, barely frequented. From time to time we might encounter a rowboat, or a lighter, or a cross-river ferry that was little more than a glorified raft. For the most part we had the river to ourselves. The Miskatonic was not a commercial waterway, nothing on a par with the Hudson or the Potomac. It was a thing of sinuous curves and broad sloping banks, somehow strangely lonely and, at twilight, eerie, for the hush that fell over it during that hour was like a breath being held; the setting of the sun ceremonial, akin to a coffin being lowered into the grave.
We were a day’s travel east of Lake Makadewa when we had our first sight of Indians, two of them paddling a dugout canoe. Their attire was less flamboyant than I expected: buckskin tunics and trousers with tasselled fringes, moccasins, long dark hair tied back with bands of beads, but no feather headdresses, no war paint. They stayed their paddles as the Innsmouth Belle chugged by, eyeing us in a blankly neutral manner, projecting neither aggression nor curiosity. If they felt anything at all about the paddle steamer and her crew, they kept it well hidden.
Junior Brenneman, by contrast, was considerably more forthcoming when it came to expressing his sentiments about the Indians. He coughed up a great wad of phlegm and expectorated it loudly and showily over the side of the boat. In case the Indians had not got the message first time around, he repeated the action. He also gesticulated at the Belle, yelling, “Lousy goddamn redskins. This here’s how you get about in the goddamn modern age. You don’t paddle a piece of tree trunk like cavemen.”
As if to undermine his point, the Belle chose that moment to have one of her little fits. Her engine faltered and she started to lose speed. Charley took the wheel while Skipper Brenneman attended to the problem. By the time we were cruising smoothly along again, the Indians and their canoe were well out of sight.
* * *
Junior did not confine his contempt for other races to Indians. He also despised Negroes, which made it tricky for him to be shipmates with Charley. He used racial epithets whenever referring to the man, as often to his face as behind his back, and while I did not find the words offensive per se, the frequency with which he resorted to them became wearisome. Charley himself seemed able to take it on the chin. I asked him once whether he minded how Junior spoke to him. He just shrugged and said, “There’s nothin’ I can do ’bout it, Mr Conroy, so there’s no point me frettin’ ’bout it. I been on the Belle three years now, and in all that time Mr Junior ain’t changed his tune. I don’t listen to it no longer. I figure he don’t hate me. He just wants me to know my place. If he hated me, he’d have done much worse by now than simply call me names. ’Sides, even if I wanted to stand up for myself, his pa’s the captain. Ain’t going to risk upsettin’ the boss.”
One had to admire such forbearance. But Charley’s easy-going character seemed to insulate him from attack like armour. He had a kind of quiet self-possession that I considered hard-won and estimable.
The Miskatonic disgorged us onto Lake Makadewa the next morning, and we put in at the river-mouth settlement of Fort Fredericks to resupply. The place had been a military frontier outpost during colonial times and was still circumvallated by the remnants of a tall wooden stockade. Its inhabitants numbered no more than fifty, comprising three extended families and a handful of solitary fur trappers and outdoorsmen, spread across a score of log cabins. The crew of the Belle were familiar faces to them, and the skipper was able to purchase fresh meat, bread and water for us at a comparatively fair price; complete strangers would have been fleeced.
As I wandered the tiny township, finding it odd but bracing to be able to walk around freely after several days confined to a boat, I observed that the denizens of Fort Fredericks were in dire need of new breeding stock. Everywhere there were signs of genetic limitation, from mild defects such as jug ears and boss eyes to more serious deformities such as a club foot, a hunchback and, in more than one instance, an extra finger. Nobody had taught these people about the dangers of consanguinity and homozygosity. I foresaw only increasing malformation, dwindling health and eventual sterility in their future.
An old woman – seventy if she was a day – waylaid me as I ambled past, plucking my sleeve with a hand as scrawny as a chicken’s foot and offering me a gurning grimace that revealed but two remaining teeth, and both of those clinging on for dear life. I thought she was after money, and delved into my pocket to see if I had a spare nickel or two; I would have paid anything to rid myself of her.
The crone, however, wished merely to talk, and what she had to offer, between wheezy whistling breaths, was some kind of admonition. I cannot recall the precise wording she used, for it all came out pell-mell from her repellent gummy maw, but it amounted to this. She had heard that I and my fellow travellers were traversing the lake to rejoin the Miskatonic on the far side. If we insisted upon doing that, she said, then we must make the crossing in haste and at a single go. For it was the spawning time of year, and Fort Fredericks folk left the lake well alone during that time. No one fished it nor ventured upon it until after the mating frenzy was done and the waters became calm.
Naturally I enquired what creatures were spawning and why this was so hazardous to shipping. The old woman shook her head in a grave manner, as if to elucidate would be to invite disaster. She told me simply to heed what she had said. God willing, our boat would skate across the lake in no time flat and there would be no repercussions.
I reported her ominous maunderings to the skipper, who allowed that he had heard similar things in the past but had discounted them, mainly because he had never had cause to cross the lake before. Fort Fredericks had always been the apogee of his voyages, the point beyond which he had no reason to go. He surmised that the spawning the old woman had talked about was the by-product of an annual migration of Atlantic salmon. If they congregated in sufficient numbers, then he supposed their antics might make the lake impassable, since no steamer paddle could plough through a teeming mass of fish. At any rate, with the Belle going at flank speed and encountering no impediment, we should be able to span the lake in a couple of hours. In such a short space of time, what could possibly go wrong?
* * *
Quite a lot, as it happened. For no sooner had we put out from shore than a mist descended. Fort Fredericks, barely five hundred yards behind us, vanished from view, and all became swirling evanescent whiteness. Skipper Brenneman contemplated turning back but decided against it. Lake mists tended to burn off fairly rapidly, he declared.
So, on we went, across water that was as still as glass. “Makadewa” is Algonquin for “black”, and the lake certainly lived up to its name. I had never seen aqueous depths so darkly, unfathomably impenetrable. It was like sailing over pure starless night.
An hour passed, and in the pilothouse the skipper steered confidently onward, consulting his compass every now and then. I wanted to work in the laboratory but felt too discombobulated to concentrate. The crone’s warning echoed in my ears. I took up position at the bow, gazing at the bare few yards of water the mist allowed one to see. Nate joined me, and soon picked up on my apprehension. When he enquired what the matter was, I made some jocular offhand comment about mating salmon.
“Salmon?” he mused. “That’s funny. I’m led to understand that this lake is home to a very different form of aquatic species.”
“You know something, Nate. What have you heard?”
Dropping his voice to a low, confidential tone, he told me that the timing of our journey had worked in our favour. Had our departure from Arkham not been postponed by the rains, we might have reached Lake Makadewa too soon. As it was, we were here just at the right moment, and if we were lucky we might observe a phenomenon that was without rival anywhere in the natural world. We might even have the opportunity to capture our first specimen.
Evidently the creatures that spawned in the lake were anomalous, and my apprehension deepened, even as feelings of intrigue stirred. I kept a sharper lookout. Several times I fancied I saw movement in the water, but it was only a thickening or thinning of the mist, which gave an illusion of animation.
Then the Belle’s engine began to judder, and shortly after that it let out a mournful squeal and a loud gushing hiss, and went silent. All at once we were coasting through the water, gradually decelerating, the revolutions of the paddle wheel slowing, until our momentum diminished to nothing and we were stationary. With a curse, Skipper Brenneman headed below decks to the engine room. The mist drifted over us. Water tapped at the hull like a hundred impatient fingertips. Other than that and the muffled clanking of the skipper’s tools, there was no sound.
I became more agitated, recalling how the crone had said that we should cross the lake “at a single go”. Here we were, in contravention of that instruction, becalmed. What might that mean for us? Nothing, I hoped, but I could not help thinking that the sooner the Belle got under way again, the better.
Then Bessie, the canine cat, began to whimper. Charley swept the animal up in his arms, and it shivered in his embrace, peering dolorously around, ears flattened.
“Bessie ain’t happy,” Charley observed, somewhat redundantly. “There’s somethin’ out there. Somethin’ she don’t cotton to.”
“Maybe it’s having a coloured breathing his stink breath all over her she don’t cotton to,” said Junior.
I told the first mate to shut up, and he gave me the eye but did as I said.
That was when it came: a soft, slopping splash, as of a body breaking the lake surface. We all swung in the direction of the noise.
“What was that?” said Junior. “Otter? Beaver maybe?”
“No,” said Nate. “Charley, fetch me a net from the hold. A large one.”
