The Mi-Go Expedition
A SENSIBLE PERSON MIGHT PRESUME THAT JUNIOR Brenneman’s attitude towards Charley would improve after the way the resourceful Negro had come to his rescue. At the very least he would exhibit some gratitude towards him.
Alas, the opposite was the case. Junior was, if anything, sourer in his dealings with his shipmate. I think he resented Charley being the hero of the hour and his saviour. His persecution of the giant thereupon became positively vicious, little short of a vendetta. Never once did he miss an opportunity to castigate or insult him. Charley took it well, with stoic fortitude, but in his eyes and hunched shoulders there was the constant flinch of a man awaiting the inevitable next blow from the scourge.
I took the skipper aside for a quiet word about his son, hoping that a piece of gentle fatherly remonstrance might temper Junior’s tongue. To my disappointment, but perhaps not to my surprise, the older Brenneman sided with the younger. Although he wasn’t blind to Junior’s less attractive traits, he said, the boy was an adult, beyond the reach of parental correction. Blood was blood, moreover, and the skipper could not put Charley’s considerations above those of family. He had a healthy respect for Charley, not least because the fellow was such a hard worker. All said and done, though, he was just a deckhand.
“I may have erred in a-givin’ him employment,” he said. “Junior’s always hed certain tendencies, an’ maybe I should have known better than ter force him ter live in close quarters, day an’ night, with a Negro. I thought it might if nothin’ else do him some good, show him that people’s people whatever the colour o’ their skin. Learn him suthin’. Clearly, if there’s been no change in him after three years, there never will be. I guess if it becomes too much for Charley he can always quit. I’d hate ter lose him, but I’d hate ter lose my son more. That make sense?”
I cannot say that it did, but the skipper appeared no less resistant to change than his son, so I refrained from pressing him any further.
* * *
West of Lake Makadewa, the Miskatonic grew steadily narrower and the landscape around it hillier and more densely forested. There was a sense of the wilderness tightening its grip on us. The trees loomed ever larger, with towering dark conifers coming to outnumber their deciduous counterparts and casting long saw-toothed shadows across the river. At times we had to navigate around rocky outcrops in midstream, with bare inches of leeway to port and starboard. Skipper Brenneman nudged the Belle past these boulder obstacles with considerable skill, drawing on his many years of experience as a waterman. Charley assisted, fending off with a boathook whenever the paddle steamer ventured too near a potentially hull-holing hazard. Junior, for his part, did little except limp about on his wounded leg and gripe. His injury excused him from all but the lightest duties, leaving Charley to shoulder his workload, which the Negro did uncomplainingly. In truth, it was not a heavy burden, since Junior did not do that much anyway. His position aboard the Belle was the very epitome of nepotism, and I presumed his father kept him on as crew simply because the fellow would have found it difficult earning an income anywhere else.
On the third day following the events at the lake, Nate requested that we put in at the northern bank so that he might mount an expedition inland. The skipper obliged, and Nate and I sallied forth bearing various items of equipment; primarily a length of rope, a flask of chloroform and a Winchester repeater. Only when we were some distance from the Belle did Nate vouchsafe the objective of our sortie. Around these parts, it transpired, there had been sightings of man-sized beasts that resembled nothing so much as winged crustaceans. Eyewitnesses reported coming across lone specimens of such creatures which, caught unawares, either scuttled off into the undergrowth or took to the air on their chiropteran wings. Singly, then, the beasts were prone to skittishness. When encountered in numbers, however, they were apt to go on the offensive, sometimes lethally so. Hence the Winchester, which Nate carried fully loaded. Just in case.
They were known as “mi-go”, these monsters, and many a local Indian legend had sprung up around them. Originating from the stars, they had visited Earth since the Jurassic Period, to mine certain minerals that could not be obtained elsewhere in the universe and which they ferried back to whatever distant celestial body they called home. So said men of the Pennacook nation, and the Penobscot, and the Abenaki, and the Huron, and others besides, with a consistency that was remarkable given how disparate and widely dispersed those tribes were. This, to Nate, suggested that the folklore was likelier a set of observed, attested facts than myth. The mi-go, moreover, were not animals, their appearance notwithstanding. They were instead agglomerations of fungus, capable of locomotion and communication, achieving the latter by means of their heads, which changed colour to express feelings and convey information. They could also, it was averred, replicate human speech, by means of rudimentary vocal cords.
What a coup it would be to catch one of them, Nate declared. What a triumph for science to have a mi-go in captivity, and then upon the dissecting table, teasing apart its secrets. How could a fungus attain sentience? Was a mi-go actually several different forms of fungus that had evolved to operate in concert? Was each individual a small collaborative community, which in turn formed part of a larger collective? To what use did they put the minerals that they unearthed with such troglodytic industriousness? Was it as a foodstuff? Fuel? Imagine being the one to plumb these mysteries and divine the answers.
Nate’s eyes were alive with excitement, that zeal for intellectual advancement that I myself knew so well. As we tramped up hill and down dale, his enthusiasm kept my spirits high and my apprehension at bay. The miles we walked seemed to pass like nothing, until all at once we came to the spot where mi-go were reputed to roam. Here, the forest petered out, ceding to rocky terrain interspersed with spills of scree. The sun seemed cooler and the breeze sharper, generating a mournful sough as it raked across the barren land. Nate advised me to keep my ears pricked. In particular I should listen out for a subtle whispering not unlike the buzzing of bees which might or might not contain snatches of English, for mi-go were at least passingly familiar with the languages of all who dwelled in the region, obtained perhaps through a form of telepathy, unless it was mere mimicry like that of the mynah bird. By this insidious whispering they were known to disorientate and lead astray intruders upon their territory, rather as the “little people” of Celtic myth were wont to do.
Nate wished to take a mi-go alive if possible, drugging it then binding it with rope to lug back to the boat. Failing that, dead would suffice. He gave me the rifle to hold and demonstrated the lever action that transferred a round from the magazine into the breech and at the same time re-cocked the hammer. Clutching the flask of chloroform, its cork loosely in place, he proceeded stealthily forward.
We must have patrolled for three or four hours through that rugged no-man’s-land, ever alert for the slightest untoward noise, the merest flicker of movement. Often I heard what I thought was a weird whispering, only to realise it was the wind causing a scrap of vegetation to shiver. Similarly my eye was caught time and again by something darting across the periphery of my vision, which in the event proved to be nothing more sinister than a jackrabbit or a chipmunk. My forefinger remained perpetually on the trigger of the Winchester and I was quite prepared to shoot first should a mi-go rear its head, rather than wait for Nate to douse the thing with chloroform. Who knew if the anaesthetic would even work on such a creature and, if so, how rapidly? As far as I was concerned, a dead specimen was as good as a living one. Safer, certainly.
The sun was well past its zenith when Nate at last admitted defeat. Rumours of mi-go infestation hereabouts were, it seemed, greatly exaggerated. I was relieved as we began retracing our steps. Nate professed disappointment at the expedition’s outcome but remained upbeat, saying we might have better luck next time. For myself, while it would have been something to have “bagged” one of the queer fungal organisms, I could not honestly say I was sad that the expedition had proved fruitless. Lacking my friend’s intrepid streak, I found the failure bearable.
It was twilight when we arrived back at the river, only to discover that life aboard the Innsmouth Belle had taken a turn for the murderous.
