The Weird Company by Pete Rawlik Read Free Book Online Page B

Carefully I reached the downed figure and rolled him over. He was wrapped in a dark mariner’s sea coat which hung loose as if he had once been of much larger physique than he currently was. Atop his head was a black woolen cap that was pulled down to cover most of his head. On his hands he wore a pair of thick leather gloves that hung just as loose as the man’s coat, and were in a startling state of disrepair. Indeed, I quickly formed the impression that the garments had been long unused and badly looked after, for they carried with them a thick damp musty odor that seemed to mingle with a stench that reminded me of the beach at low tide, or perhaps of my mother’s kitchen on Friday when the fishmonger came. I pulled off his hat and opened his coat. My actions revealed a parody of a man. The head was nearly hairless, and what hair there was jutted out as course clumped fibers. The skin was rough and patterned in large thick pads which diminished into a fine pebbling around the face. His ears were perfunctory holes surrounded by weird atavistic nubs of flesh.
    He stared up at me, weird lidless eyes, huge eyes that bulged moist and dark in the night. There was something familiar in his face, and I quickly recognized him as the driver of the now defunct bus, a man named Sargent. Strange gurgling sounds came from his mouth and throat which took me a moment to realize were words. “Yew have the look,” he gurgled, shoving something large and cold into my hands. My eyes darted toward it, something wrapped in oilskin and leather ties. “Take this,” more gurgling and heavy rasping breaths obscured his speech, “Wait . . . in Arkham.” Then the strange man-thing convulsed and was silent.
    Slowly, deliberately, I quietly backed away and began briskly moving down the rail line and out of the city. The whispering voice of Pth’thya-l’yi had suddenly gone silent. There was a new voice, one that was just as insistent as that of my own ancestor, but that urged me into a new action. The words I could not understand, but their meaning was clear, I was to take the package and head to Arkham. Arkham it insisted, go to Arkham. Arkham. The name pounded in my head like a beating drum, and though I had spent the last few months of my life being driven to return to Innsmouth I turned and did as the voice in my head insisted. I headed west toward Arkham. Whatever this new compulsion was, it was stronger than the one that had called me east.
    Glancing over my shoulder I left the dead man behind, the package he gave me still in my hands. I knew the western spur would take me through the marsh lands and then down through remote farm land. I paused for a moment and looked back. I could hear the screaming coming from the tiny hamlet and it touched a chord of memory. Skulking about the town, fleeing in the middle of the night, pursued by angry hordes, it was all too familiar. Panicked, I ran, just as I had done four years before, when the inhabitants of Innsmouth seemed so much more monstrous, and I at the time still had ears and eyelids, and still believed myself to be human.

CHAPTER 2
    From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead
“The Rendition of Ephraim Waite”
    By all rights I should have abandoned the oilskin that had been given to me by that sad lonely man from Innsmouth. That he had died moments later should have made no difference to me, but it did. Perhaps it was guilt over my previous actions so many years ago. Perhaps it was the recognition that in some manner the two of us were kin. Regardless I kept the package and headed toward Arkham. Why I paused and hid myself I cannot say. Why I then proceeded to untie the leather strings and unfold the oilskin is a mystery to me. There were within the protective wrappings three journals, of substantial age, each filled with crabbed handwriting that was barely legible, and appeared to be written using some form of the Cyrillic alphabet. Consequently, the journals were beyond my