"I Notice You Have Gills"
May. 13th, 2022 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"I Notice You Have Gills"
A Trom Girl Mystery
6/20-6/22/2005
I.
"Hope's End, Maine," muttered Archie mostly to himself. "Whoever named this town knew their business. What a rundown dump."
Behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee, Megan Salenger slowed as they drove down the empty main street. She could not disagree with him. Most of the buildings had been boarded up long ago. Others had windows where the glass had been broken out, or had doors hanging crazily off one hinge. None of the stores seemed to be still in business. On one side street, an ancient rusted Oldsmobile sat with its hood up as if gasping for breath.
The streets themselves were narrow and twisting, perforated with potholes, barely wide enough for two cars at the same time. Evidently, the town had developed in the days of horse-drawn carriages and had never been rebuilt. Streetlamps were only found scattered every few blocks.
The Trom Girl pulled over and took off her tinted aviator's glasses. At twenty-six, Megan had an inquisitive foxlike face with a pointed nose, full lips and huge dark eyes. Her thick mop of short black hair was tousled and untidy as usual. After a long moment, she said in a perplexed voice, "The references said a population of 1,820 but I see no signs of inhabitants at all."
Seated beside her, Archie McAllister was also peering up and down empty streets. "I don't know, hon. Maybe that Prescott guy meant some OTHER town named Hope's End? Maybe he was pulling your leg?"
"That seems unlikely," she answered. "Sable interviewed him. You know her enhanced senses make it almost imposssible to mislead her. She can hear hearbeats speed up and smell adrenalin in trace perspiration."
"I know, I know. Sable really can read a newspaper from across the street and hear a moth go by. I didn't believe it until I saw demonstratations of her powers." The big guy scratched his week's growth of beard thoughtfully. "Sable is better than a lie detector. If she said this Prescott was telling the truth, I'm inclined to believe her."
Reaching over, Megan teasingly helped him scratch his chin. "You've seen many unusual phenomena this past year, my love. You seem to take it well."
"Hah. Well, I try to be open-minded." Archie gestured at the deserted streets. "Should we get out and look around?"
"I believe we should," answered the Trom Girl. She was wearing white sneakers, jeans and a red windbreaker over a white T-shirt. Dropping the keys in a pocket of her jacket, she opened the door and hopped lightly down to the street. Only five foot three and slim, she looked younger than she was and could be taken for a minor.
In contrast, Archie stood nearly a foot faller and was a hundred pounds heavier. He was not overweight but solid. The well-worn work boots, khaki pants and red flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled back added to a roughneck image at first glance. But Archie's sky-blue eyes were gentle and that was what people noticed right away.
Standing next to her Jeep, Megan had taken a small flat device from a pocket and was studying its screen. Her nose wrinkled up as she squinted. "Odd."
On the sidewalk, Archie was peering into the window of what had been a hardware store, with its shelves long stripped and only a few scraps of paper on the floor to show anyone had ever been in there. He straightened up and turned toward her. "Odd? Like how odd?"
"I can't get meaningful readings," she said. "There are a number of life forms nearby, but something is interfering with the sensors." She gave up and jammed the device in her hip pocket. "The town is not empty, Archie. It's just that no one is showing themselves."
"Another 'Trom Girl Mystery,' all right! Here we go..." Archie came around to loom protectively over her. "I don't see anyone peeking out of windows. Hey, there goes a seagull. At least something's alive here."
"We are less than a mile from the ocean. Hope's End was a busy port in its day, with a fishing industry and a tannery." Megan pointed down the street. "That building seems unusual. Let's have a look."
As they walked briskly down the untended sidewalk, with weeds growing up through its cracks, they passed a shoe store and a butcher shop, both closed and boarded up. At the end of the street was a small Green, with a few forlorn trees and some benches. Beyond that, just before the woods began, was what had once been a church.
"Hey, I finally see someone," Archie whispered. "Looks like an old man with a cane. He's crossing the street back that way."
Megan glanced back. "He's entering that hotel. Let's inspect this church first."
This structure alone was in good repair, painted within recent memory and kept presentable. Inexplicably, the front door was nailed shut and there was a massive padlock as well. The message board beside the front door where services would have been listed was blank, and the name of the denomination had been painted over. In stylized black script was written DEEP WISDOM OF THE PAST. On a chest-high stone pillar beside the door crouched a bizarre little statue carved out of black basalt. It was the figure of a shark with human arms and legs, body parallel to the ground and tail held out stiffly behind it.
"That's cute!" Archie snorted. "A walking Great White. What do you make of that?"
"That is Grelok, one of the three Halarim," Megan replied in her serious tone. "He is represented by his sacred beast, the Malak. Archie, this is a sign of the Midnight War in this town. There is serious danger here." She leaned closer and said, "The inscription is faded but it seems to be in English..."
Behind them, an old man's voice cackled, "True! All too true, missy."
II.
Megan spun around, intensely annoyed that anyone could approach her without being detected. With all her Kumundu training, it should not be possible for anyone short of a Brumal to sneak up on her.
Too much fooling around with Archie, she reproached herself. Too much sex and anticipating sex and then lazing in afterglow, too many evenings at low-intelligence movies or lingering for hours in Italian restaurants when she should be training and practicing. Teacher Chael would be furious if he had seen her getting caught like this. None of this showed on her face. Her expression had settled into its normal inquisitive mode. "Do I know you? Are you Winslow Prescott?"
"I am," he answered. Close up, he was only in his late fifties but he seemed in poor health. Prescott slumped, shoulders down, leaning on a nearby fence for support. He was slightly strange looking in any case, with a long bony face and thick bristly whitish-blond hair that stood up like seal fur. Prescott was well-dressed but his dark blue suit jacket did not fit him any more. It was as if he had shrunk in recent years.
"I didn't meet you when you visited KDF headquarters," the Trom Girl said. "Sable filled me in on your meeting. This is my partner Archie, perhaps you could quickly summarize the situation for his benefit?"
Prescott looked about uneasily. For the first time, they had a quick glimpse of staring bulging eyes in a second story window across the street, then the curtain was pulled shut again. "Ummm. Let's head for Osbourne House, that hotel down the street. I took a room there."
With Megan and Archie following, Prescott slowly hobbled down the uneven sidewalk. "My grandparents were from Hope's End. My father and mother grew up here, next door neighbors. But around the time I was born, they moved to Bangor. They never came back here that I know of, and they certainly never brought me here. This is only the second time I have been in Hope's End."
Osbourne House was a delapidated three story hotel with a front porch that ran its full width. Three wicker chairs sat by the front door, one with its seat ripped and the other two not looking much better. A placard on the wall beside the open front door listed rates for rooms, and the part where it declared meals were available had been crossed out with black marker.
Stepping up to the porch, Megan Salenger announced, "Let me do the talking, please." She crossed a dim lobby with a couch that smelled musty and a potted plant that seemed barely clinging to life. Behind a waist high counter sat an elderly man in dress slacks and white long-sleeved shirt. He straightened up as they entered and fixed an openly hostile glare at the three entering the lobby.
"I'll take a room for two days, please," the Trom Girl told him firmly. "Next to Mr Prescott if that's possible."
"No, no. No vacancies. Sorry," the old man muttered as he slumped back into his seat.
"Let me make the situation clear," Megan said in a cold voice that made both Archie and Prescott blink at the iron authority in it. She held out a leather billfold that held her official-looking KDF membership card in it, as well as her documentation as investigator for the licensed Dire Wolf Agency. The old man stared, not sure what those IDs meant but intimidated by them.
"I will be paying cash for my room," Megan said. "I think the last thing this hotel wants is a full scale inspection by the Board of Health. Or to have the State Troopers go through this town looking for an alleged fugitive. You don't want that... DO you?"
"You folks have any luggage?" he asked, as if still looking for a reason to refuse her.
"It's in our vehicle. We'll bring it in later." Megan took out a thick wad of twenty and fifty dollar bills and began peeling a few off. "This is for two days. Your sign says eighty-five dollars a night, so I plan on vacating Thursday morning before noon."
As the clerk took the money hesitantly, she raised an accusing finger. "A receipt, of course."
The old man dug around in the wide middle drawer in front of him, came out with a dusty ledger and opened it. Using an old-fashioned fountain pen, he painstakingly wrote her out a receipt, checked her name against her driver's license. As the money and the receipt changed hands, Megan nodded with satisfaction. She took the key he pulled down off a hook behind him.
"Second floor, right by the stairs. Enjoy your... stay," the clerk said in barely audible terms. Megan gave him a wry smile and led Archie and Prescott up narrow creaking stairs.
III.
"Whoa, welcome to 1911," Archie laughed as they looked over the room. There was a double bed with a cast iron frame, a dresser with an elaborately carved mirror, a writing desk and a few overstuffed easy chairs. In the bathroom was a toilet with a pull chain, a sink with rust-colored stains and a large bathtub but no shower. There was no TV, not even a radio. A dial telephone sat on a stand by the bed.
"Just for fun, I'm going to ask the clerk if we have wi-fi," Archie said as he peered out the grimy window at the main street.
"Now your story, Mr Prescott?" Megan pulled the straightback wooden chair away from the desk and dropped down into it. As Prescott gingerly lowered himself into an easy chair, Archie stayed by the window.
"A year ago, I met a woman from this town. At an art gallery. Her name was Adelle. She introduced herself with a comment that we looked like brother and sister... and we did." Prescott sounded deeply saddened by the tale. "I had never met anyone anywhere with hair like mine. We did look like relatives, and when I learned she also was from Hope's End, I concluded that maybe we were related on my mother's side of the family. Perhaps we were cousins?"
"Where is this Adelle?" Megan interrupted.
"We were supposed to meet here a month ago and she would show me around the area. I came here and could find no trace of her! The townspeople were sullen and unfriendly and denied ever knowing her. After two days of getting nowhere, I was stressed out and ready for a breakdown." Prescott raised his head to meet Megan's unemotional gaze. "It was seeing that church that made me decide to go to the Kenneth Dred Foundation."
Archie came over from the window and plopped down in the chair next to Megan. "You know about the KDF? They're kind of secret."
"Oh, the occult has always been a hobby of mine. I have studied the Midnight War all my life. I've read so much about Kenneth Dred, not to mention the Dire Wolf and Khang and the Silver Skull. So I recognized the idol of Grelok in front of that church. 'Deep Wisdom of the Past,' indeed. And the people seemed weirder the more I saw of them. I got glimpses of horribly deformed faces watching me from windows and doorways. My nerve broke. I drove directly to 38th Street in New York and Sable agreed to meet me."
Megan leaned forward in her chair, hands folded in front of her. "Sable asked me to investigate while the rest of our team is busy on an already ongoing case. They may join us in a few days. Meanwhile I will look into the situation with my... boyfriend here."
"You usually say partner, like we're cops teamed up or something," Archie said.
Despite the tension in the air, Megan shrugged and smiled. "We've been seeing each other for nineteen months now. I'm getting comfortable with the word." She stood up abruptly. "But back to the matter at hand. What do you know of the history of Hope's End?"
"Only a little," Prescott answered uncertainly. "It was a fishing village in the 19th Century. It fell on hard times, then in the 1920s a man named Gregori Lundborg built a new fishery and a few stores. Overnight, the fishing got so abundant that the town boomed. The town grew rich."
"But..." Archie interrupted. "I can sense a 'but' coming..."
"But there were unsavory rumors. During the Depression, the Lutheran Church was closed and that strange cult replaced it. A few families took over everything, and they all seemed to have a strange look to them. I hate to say it, but the ruling elite were described as having gaunt faces and stiff hair. Like mine. And around the age of sixty, they tended to disappear. Not die, not retire, just sort of disappear..."
As Prescott's voice trailed off, Megan said gently, "I think the woman Adelle was sent to bring you back here. She was bait for a trap."
"What?! Why? I'm not rich. I don't own property here. There's no reason anyone would want to drag me to Hope's End."
The Trom Girl sighed. "I don't think you are going to like the answers we find. Hold still, please." She unclipped the Link from her belt and started pressing buttons and studying the screen. "Just a few more minutes. Would you hold your breath, please? Again, as long as you can. Thank you."
She stood up and turned to Archie. "Honey, would you fill that bathtub, please? Right to the brim. Thanks." Turning back to Prescott, her voice was sad. "Sir, I have to give you bad news. I recognize the name Lundborg. They have been a family of warlocks for centuries. Two Lundborgs founded Red Sect. Another one made an alliance with the Darthim. And I think the Gregori Lundborg who took over this town used sorcery to achieve his results."
From the bathroom, Archie called, "All set, honey!"
The Trom Girl gestured for Winslow Precott to follow her into the bathroom. She asked him to kneel on the tile floor by the bathtub and he reluctantly complied, staring up at her with obvious bafflement.
"Here are the answers you are looking for," she told him. "Don't think about it, just stick your head in that tub and hold it underwater as long as you can. Trust me."
With a strange fatalistic expression, Prescott leaned over and plunged his head into the water, up to his shoulders. Ten seconds passed, then thirty. A full minute. Prescott showed no signs of distress, moving his hands for support on the rim of the tub.
Archie's jaw dropped open at two minutes and he involuntarily moved forward to intervene but Megan stopped him with an arm across his chest. "He's fine," she said.
Finally, Winslow Prescott flung his head up and back out of the tub with a gasp. On both sides of his neck, a row of three gills opened and closed.
IV.
"God-DAMN," Archie snorted. "I will never say I've seen everything."
Getting to his feet, Winslow Prescott tentatively touched the sides of his neck where the slits had sealed themselves again to leave only faint ridges. "I understand now. I understand it all."
"Yes," Megan said. "The readings I took confirmed it. When you are submerged in water, a flap closes your lungs. I noticed you had gills as soon as I saw you."
"So I guess you don't go swimming much?" Archie asked.
"No, I've always been afraid of the water," Prescott said. He touched his hair and found it was already dry. "Young lady, what am I? Tell me!"
"Let's sit again and be calm," she said as she led them back toward the chairs. "Mr Prescott, there is a Race of amphibious humans who have lived in their marine realm of Ulgor for thousands of years. They are called Gelydrim. You may have read of Atron Ke?"
"Why, yes. Jeremy Bane fought him several times. I thought he was one of a kind, a mutant or something."
"No," Megan answered as she moved her chair closer. "Sometimes, a few Gelydrim leave Ulgor and come to our surface world. They may be exiles or just wanderers who want to explore. I believe Gregori Lundborg somehow encountered a colony of these Gelydrim while on a ship in the Atlantic. He made a deal with them. The Gelydrim drove schools of fish toward the nets so Hope's End prospered."
"I don't understand." Prescott seemed calm and relaxed now he was getting some answers. "What did these... Gelydrim get out of the arrangement?"
"They worship Grelok. And Grelok demands sacrifice at the change of the seasons. As Lundborg took over the town, the disappearance of a young boy and young girl every three months was quietly covered up." Megan paused. "And there is something else. There is a certain faction in Ulgor who want to establish themselves on the surface. True Gelydrim become uncomfortable quickly in open air and cannot live long out of the water."
Archie smacked his hands together unexpectedly, making Megan and Prescott start at the noise. "I get it! I figured it out. The fishmen from Ulgor can't settle on the surface but maybe.. maybe if they had offspring with human beings...."
"Yes," Megan said.
"So I'm half human and half Gelydrim? I'm a hybrid?" demanded Prescott.
"As is most of this town," Megan said as she got up and crossed over to the window. She pulled the curtain aside. "Some of them seemed to be gathering by that church right now."
Archie came over next to her. "Geez, they do sorta look alike, don't they? So what's the plan, Trom Girl? You always have Plan A and Plan B with a contingency or two as well."
She turned back to the stunned man in the easy chair. "That's up to you, Mr Prescott. You have to decide what you want to do."
"Why... I should get back to my job. My house. I have two dogs and a cat depending on me."
"You've reached the age where the transformation is beginning," Megan told him. "You know that the people in Hope's End disappear around the age of sixty. They are becoming fully Ulgoran. Soon they can not pass in Human society."
"What changes do you mean? What will happen to me?!"
The Trom Girl said, "You will develop webbed feet, about twenty-four inches from heel to toe. Your eyes will protrude noticeably. You will find it difficult to stand fully upright. You will begin to drink salt water and crave raw fish." She shook her head regretfully. "At a critical point, you will need to be underwater for increasing periods of time."
Archie made a sympathetic sound. "Sounds unavoidable."
"I can't possibly live among people in the city like that," Prescott sobbed. "The people here.. Adelle.. they drew me back here for my own good."
"I agree," said the Trom Girl. "Do you want to stay here, in this town, until you change completely?"
"And then go to live in the ocean? Yes. I suppose I don't I have any choice, do I?"
"It's your nature," Megan said. "I don't know any way to stop the transformation."
Winslow Prescott got to his feet, took a deep shuddering breath, and placed a hand on Megan's shoulder. "Thank you. Both of you, for helping me. I'm going now to meet with the townspeople out there. MY people, I should say."
Megan glanced over at Archie. "Perhaps we should leave too."
"While Prescott has their attention? Yeah, I think that would be prudent. These people might have his welfare at heart, but I'm not sure they feel any friendliness toward us."
The three of them descended the stairs, crossed the lobby where the clerk gave them that same sour stare, and paused on the porch. Up the street, there was a murmur as the increasing crowd spotted them. More than twenty townspeople had gathered.
"Well, good luck, sir," Archie said as they separated on the sidewalk. "Maybe you can call the KDF once in a while so we know how you're doing."
Prescott waved goodbye and started shambling toward the crowd. Going the other way back to where the Jeep was parked, Megan and Archie walked quickly without quite breaking into a run. Bizarre faces appeared briefly at windows as they passed.
"Dang," said Archie under his breath. "You have that beam projector on you, Meg?"
"It's in my hand, set to heavy stun," she said. "If it wasn't against Trom policy, I would make one for you."
Getting into the Cherokee, both breathed a gust of relief. Megan started the engine, checked her mirrors and pulled out onto the narrow street. "Well. Rare we have a case with no violence at all, yes?"
"You know what bothers me? That cult. Grelok, that shark-god thing. Don't they sacrifice kids to it every time the seasons change?"
"I don't think so, Archie," Megan said. "Not anymore. The door to the church was nailed closed and it had a padlock on it that had not been opened in some time. I think that the sect has not had followers for years. The people of Hope's End have given up on colonizing. They are just waiting to get old and return to the sea."
Archie grunted. "I hope so. Still, maybe Sable will want to send the whole team here to investigate."
"That's up to her." Megan turned onto the highway, leaving Hope's End behind. "But I think if she waits too long, she will find a completely deserted town with only bad memories left behind."
1/14/2016
A Trom Girl Mystery
6/20-6/22/2005
I.
"Hope's End, Maine," muttered Archie mostly to himself. "Whoever named this town knew their business. What a rundown dump."
Behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee, Megan Salenger slowed as they drove down the empty main street. She could not disagree with him. Most of the buildings had been boarded up long ago. Others had windows where the glass had been broken out, or had doors hanging crazily off one hinge. None of the stores seemed to be still in business. On one side street, an ancient rusted Oldsmobile sat with its hood up as if gasping for breath.
The streets themselves were narrow and twisting, perforated with potholes, barely wide enough for two cars at the same time. Evidently, the town had developed in the days of horse-drawn carriages and had never been rebuilt. Streetlamps were only found scattered every few blocks.
The Trom Girl pulled over and took off her tinted aviator's glasses. At twenty-six, Megan had an inquisitive foxlike face with a pointed nose, full lips and huge dark eyes. Her thick mop of short black hair was tousled and untidy as usual. After a long moment, she said in a perplexed voice, "The references said a population of 1,820 but I see no signs of inhabitants at all."
Seated beside her, Archie McAllister was also peering up and down empty streets. "I don't know, hon. Maybe that Prescott guy meant some OTHER town named Hope's End? Maybe he was pulling your leg?"
"That seems unlikely," she answered. "Sable interviewed him. You know her enhanced senses make it almost imposssible to mislead her. She can hear hearbeats speed up and smell adrenalin in trace perspiration."
"I know, I know. Sable really can read a newspaper from across the street and hear a moth go by. I didn't believe it until I saw demonstratations of her powers." The big guy scratched his week's growth of beard thoughtfully. "Sable is better than a lie detector. If she said this Prescott was telling the truth, I'm inclined to believe her."
Reaching over, Megan teasingly helped him scratch his chin. "You've seen many unusual phenomena this past year, my love. You seem to take it well."
"Hah. Well, I try to be open-minded." Archie gestured at the deserted streets. "Should we get out and look around?"
"I believe we should," answered the Trom Girl. She was wearing white sneakers, jeans and a red windbreaker over a white T-shirt. Dropping the keys in a pocket of her jacket, she opened the door and hopped lightly down to the street. Only five foot three and slim, she looked younger than she was and could be taken for a minor.
In contrast, Archie stood nearly a foot faller and was a hundred pounds heavier. He was not overweight but solid. The well-worn work boots, khaki pants and red flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled back added to a roughneck image at first glance. But Archie's sky-blue eyes were gentle and that was what people noticed right away.
Standing next to her Jeep, Megan had taken a small flat device from a pocket and was studying its screen. Her nose wrinkled up as she squinted. "Odd."
On the sidewalk, Archie was peering into the window of what had been a hardware store, with its shelves long stripped and only a few scraps of paper on the floor to show anyone had ever been in there. He straightened up and turned toward her. "Odd? Like how odd?"
"I can't get meaningful readings," she said. "There are a number of life forms nearby, but something is interfering with the sensors." She gave up and jammed the device in her hip pocket. "The town is not empty, Archie. It's just that no one is showing themselves."
"Another 'Trom Girl Mystery,' all right! Here we go..." Archie came around to loom protectively over her. "I don't see anyone peeking out of windows. Hey, there goes a seagull. At least something's alive here."
"We are less than a mile from the ocean. Hope's End was a busy port in its day, with a fishing industry and a tannery." Megan pointed down the street. "That building seems unusual. Let's have a look."
As they walked briskly down the untended sidewalk, with weeds growing up through its cracks, they passed a shoe store and a butcher shop, both closed and boarded up. At the end of the street was a small Green, with a few forlorn trees and some benches. Beyond that, just before the woods began, was what had once been a church.
"Hey, I finally see someone," Archie whispered. "Looks like an old man with a cane. He's crossing the street back that way."
Megan glanced back. "He's entering that hotel. Let's inspect this church first."
This structure alone was in good repair, painted within recent memory and kept presentable. Inexplicably, the front door was nailed shut and there was a massive padlock as well. The message board beside the front door where services would have been listed was blank, and the name of the denomination had been painted over. In stylized black script was written DEEP WISDOM OF THE PAST. On a chest-high stone pillar beside the door crouched a bizarre little statue carved out of black basalt. It was the figure of a shark with human arms and legs, body parallel to the ground and tail held out stiffly behind it.
"That's cute!" Archie snorted. "A walking Great White. What do you make of that?"
"That is Grelok, one of the three Halarim," Megan replied in her serious tone. "He is represented by his sacred beast, the Malak. Archie, this is a sign of the Midnight War in this town. There is serious danger here." She leaned closer and said, "The inscription is faded but it seems to be in English..."
Behind them, an old man's voice cackled, "True! All too true, missy."
II.
Megan spun around, intensely annoyed that anyone could approach her without being detected. With all her Kumundu training, it should not be possible for anyone short of a Brumal to sneak up on her.
Too much fooling around with Archie, she reproached herself. Too much sex and anticipating sex and then lazing in afterglow, too many evenings at low-intelligence movies or lingering for hours in Italian restaurants when she should be training and practicing. Teacher Chael would be furious if he had seen her getting caught like this. None of this showed on her face. Her expression had settled into its normal inquisitive mode. "Do I know you? Are you Winslow Prescott?"
"I am," he answered. Close up, he was only in his late fifties but he seemed in poor health. Prescott slumped, shoulders down, leaning on a nearby fence for support. He was slightly strange looking in any case, with a long bony face and thick bristly whitish-blond hair that stood up like seal fur. Prescott was well-dressed but his dark blue suit jacket did not fit him any more. It was as if he had shrunk in recent years.
"I didn't meet you when you visited KDF headquarters," the Trom Girl said. "Sable filled me in on your meeting. This is my partner Archie, perhaps you could quickly summarize the situation for his benefit?"
Prescott looked about uneasily. For the first time, they had a quick glimpse of staring bulging eyes in a second story window across the street, then the curtain was pulled shut again. "Ummm. Let's head for Osbourne House, that hotel down the street. I took a room there."
With Megan and Archie following, Prescott slowly hobbled down the uneven sidewalk. "My grandparents were from Hope's End. My father and mother grew up here, next door neighbors. But around the time I was born, they moved to Bangor. They never came back here that I know of, and they certainly never brought me here. This is only the second time I have been in Hope's End."
Osbourne House was a delapidated three story hotel with a front porch that ran its full width. Three wicker chairs sat by the front door, one with its seat ripped and the other two not looking much better. A placard on the wall beside the open front door listed rates for rooms, and the part where it declared meals were available had been crossed out with black marker.
Stepping up to the porch, Megan Salenger announced, "Let me do the talking, please." She crossed a dim lobby with a couch that smelled musty and a potted plant that seemed barely clinging to life. Behind a waist high counter sat an elderly man in dress slacks and white long-sleeved shirt. He straightened up as they entered and fixed an openly hostile glare at the three entering the lobby.
"I'll take a room for two days, please," the Trom Girl told him firmly. "Next to Mr Prescott if that's possible."
"No, no. No vacancies. Sorry," the old man muttered as he slumped back into his seat.
"Let me make the situation clear," Megan said in a cold voice that made both Archie and Prescott blink at the iron authority in it. She held out a leather billfold that held her official-looking KDF membership card in it, as well as her documentation as investigator for the licensed Dire Wolf Agency. The old man stared, not sure what those IDs meant but intimidated by them.
"I will be paying cash for my room," Megan said. "I think the last thing this hotel wants is a full scale inspection by the Board of Health. Or to have the State Troopers go through this town looking for an alleged fugitive. You don't want that... DO you?"
"You folks have any luggage?" he asked, as if still looking for a reason to refuse her.
"It's in our vehicle. We'll bring it in later." Megan took out a thick wad of twenty and fifty dollar bills and began peeling a few off. "This is for two days. Your sign says eighty-five dollars a night, so I plan on vacating Thursday morning before noon."
As the clerk took the money hesitantly, she raised an accusing finger. "A receipt, of course."
The old man dug around in the wide middle drawer in front of him, came out with a dusty ledger and opened it. Using an old-fashioned fountain pen, he painstakingly wrote her out a receipt, checked her name against her driver's license. As the money and the receipt changed hands, Megan nodded with satisfaction. She took the key he pulled down off a hook behind him.
"Second floor, right by the stairs. Enjoy your... stay," the clerk said in barely audible terms. Megan gave him a wry smile and led Archie and Prescott up narrow creaking stairs.
III.
"Whoa, welcome to 1911," Archie laughed as they looked over the room. There was a double bed with a cast iron frame, a dresser with an elaborately carved mirror, a writing desk and a few overstuffed easy chairs. In the bathroom was a toilet with a pull chain, a sink with rust-colored stains and a large bathtub but no shower. There was no TV, not even a radio. A dial telephone sat on a stand by the bed.
"Just for fun, I'm going to ask the clerk if we have wi-fi," Archie said as he peered out the grimy window at the main street.
"Now your story, Mr Prescott?" Megan pulled the straightback wooden chair away from the desk and dropped down into it. As Prescott gingerly lowered himself into an easy chair, Archie stayed by the window.
"A year ago, I met a woman from this town. At an art gallery. Her name was Adelle. She introduced herself with a comment that we looked like brother and sister... and we did." Prescott sounded deeply saddened by the tale. "I had never met anyone anywhere with hair like mine. We did look like relatives, and when I learned she also was from Hope's End, I concluded that maybe we were related on my mother's side of the family. Perhaps we were cousins?"
"Where is this Adelle?" Megan interrupted.
"We were supposed to meet here a month ago and she would show me around the area. I came here and could find no trace of her! The townspeople were sullen and unfriendly and denied ever knowing her. After two days of getting nowhere, I was stressed out and ready for a breakdown." Prescott raised his head to meet Megan's unemotional gaze. "It was seeing that church that made me decide to go to the Kenneth Dred Foundation."
Archie came over from the window and plopped down in the chair next to Megan. "You know about the KDF? They're kind of secret."
"Oh, the occult has always been a hobby of mine. I have studied the Midnight War all my life. I've read so much about Kenneth Dred, not to mention the Dire Wolf and Khang and the Silver Skull. So I recognized the idol of Grelok in front of that church. 'Deep Wisdom of the Past,' indeed. And the people seemed weirder the more I saw of them. I got glimpses of horribly deformed faces watching me from windows and doorways. My nerve broke. I drove directly to 38th Street in New York and Sable agreed to meet me."
Megan leaned forward in her chair, hands folded in front of her. "Sable asked me to investigate while the rest of our team is busy on an already ongoing case. They may join us in a few days. Meanwhile I will look into the situation with my... boyfriend here."
"You usually say partner, like we're cops teamed up or something," Archie said.
Despite the tension in the air, Megan shrugged and smiled. "We've been seeing each other for nineteen months now. I'm getting comfortable with the word." She stood up abruptly. "But back to the matter at hand. What do you know of the history of Hope's End?"
"Only a little," Prescott answered uncertainly. "It was a fishing village in the 19th Century. It fell on hard times, then in the 1920s a man named Gregori Lundborg built a new fishery and a few stores. Overnight, the fishing got so abundant that the town boomed. The town grew rich."
"But..." Archie interrupted. "I can sense a 'but' coming..."
"But there were unsavory rumors. During the Depression, the Lutheran Church was closed and that strange cult replaced it. A few families took over everything, and they all seemed to have a strange look to them. I hate to say it, but the ruling elite were described as having gaunt faces and stiff hair. Like mine. And around the age of sixty, they tended to disappear. Not die, not retire, just sort of disappear..."
As Prescott's voice trailed off, Megan said gently, "I think the woman Adelle was sent to bring you back here. She was bait for a trap."
"What?! Why? I'm not rich. I don't own property here. There's no reason anyone would want to drag me to Hope's End."
The Trom Girl sighed. "I don't think you are going to like the answers we find. Hold still, please." She unclipped the Link from her belt and started pressing buttons and studying the screen. "Just a few more minutes. Would you hold your breath, please? Again, as long as you can. Thank you."
She stood up and turned to Archie. "Honey, would you fill that bathtub, please? Right to the brim. Thanks." Turning back to Prescott, her voice was sad. "Sir, I have to give you bad news. I recognize the name Lundborg. They have been a family of warlocks for centuries. Two Lundborgs founded Red Sect. Another one made an alliance with the Darthim. And I think the Gregori Lundborg who took over this town used sorcery to achieve his results."
From the bathroom, Archie called, "All set, honey!"
The Trom Girl gestured for Winslow Precott to follow her into the bathroom. She asked him to kneel on the tile floor by the bathtub and he reluctantly complied, staring up at her with obvious bafflement.
"Here are the answers you are looking for," she told him. "Don't think about it, just stick your head in that tub and hold it underwater as long as you can. Trust me."
With a strange fatalistic expression, Prescott leaned over and plunged his head into the water, up to his shoulders. Ten seconds passed, then thirty. A full minute. Prescott showed no signs of distress, moving his hands for support on the rim of the tub.
Archie's jaw dropped open at two minutes and he involuntarily moved forward to intervene but Megan stopped him with an arm across his chest. "He's fine," she said.
Finally, Winslow Prescott flung his head up and back out of the tub with a gasp. On both sides of his neck, a row of three gills opened and closed.
IV.
"God-DAMN," Archie snorted. "I will never say I've seen everything."
Getting to his feet, Winslow Prescott tentatively touched the sides of his neck where the slits had sealed themselves again to leave only faint ridges. "I understand now. I understand it all."
"Yes," Megan said. "The readings I took confirmed it. When you are submerged in water, a flap closes your lungs. I noticed you had gills as soon as I saw you."
"So I guess you don't go swimming much?" Archie asked.
"No, I've always been afraid of the water," Prescott said. He touched his hair and found it was already dry. "Young lady, what am I? Tell me!"
"Let's sit again and be calm," she said as she led them back toward the chairs. "Mr Prescott, there is a Race of amphibious humans who have lived in their marine realm of Ulgor for thousands of years. They are called Gelydrim. You may have read of Atron Ke?"
"Why, yes. Jeremy Bane fought him several times. I thought he was one of a kind, a mutant or something."
"No," Megan answered as she moved her chair closer. "Sometimes, a few Gelydrim leave Ulgor and come to our surface world. They may be exiles or just wanderers who want to explore. I believe Gregori Lundborg somehow encountered a colony of these Gelydrim while on a ship in the Atlantic. He made a deal with them. The Gelydrim drove schools of fish toward the nets so Hope's End prospered."
"I don't understand." Prescott seemed calm and relaxed now he was getting some answers. "What did these... Gelydrim get out of the arrangement?"
"They worship Grelok. And Grelok demands sacrifice at the change of the seasons. As Lundborg took over the town, the disappearance of a young boy and young girl every three months was quietly covered up." Megan paused. "And there is something else. There is a certain faction in Ulgor who want to establish themselves on the surface. True Gelydrim become uncomfortable quickly in open air and cannot live long out of the water."
Archie smacked his hands together unexpectedly, making Megan and Prescott start at the noise. "I get it! I figured it out. The fishmen from Ulgor can't settle on the surface but maybe.. maybe if they had offspring with human beings...."
"Yes," Megan said.
"So I'm half human and half Gelydrim? I'm a hybrid?" demanded Prescott.
"As is most of this town," Megan said as she got up and crossed over to the window. She pulled the curtain aside. "Some of them seemed to be gathering by that church right now."
Archie came over next to her. "Geez, they do sorta look alike, don't they? So what's the plan, Trom Girl? You always have Plan A and Plan B with a contingency or two as well."
She turned back to the stunned man in the easy chair. "That's up to you, Mr Prescott. You have to decide what you want to do."
"Why... I should get back to my job. My house. I have two dogs and a cat depending on me."
"You've reached the age where the transformation is beginning," Megan told him. "You know that the people in Hope's End disappear around the age of sixty. They are becoming fully Ulgoran. Soon they can not pass in Human society."
"What changes do you mean? What will happen to me?!"
The Trom Girl said, "You will develop webbed feet, about twenty-four inches from heel to toe. Your eyes will protrude noticeably. You will find it difficult to stand fully upright. You will begin to drink salt water and crave raw fish." She shook her head regretfully. "At a critical point, you will need to be underwater for increasing periods of time."
Archie made a sympathetic sound. "Sounds unavoidable."
"I can't possibly live among people in the city like that," Prescott sobbed. "The people here.. Adelle.. they drew me back here for my own good."
"I agree," said the Trom Girl. "Do you want to stay here, in this town, until you change completely?"
"And then go to live in the ocean? Yes. I suppose I don't I have any choice, do I?"
"It's your nature," Megan said. "I don't know any way to stop the transformation."
Winslow Prescott got to his feet, took a deep shuddering breath, and placed a hand on Megan's shoulder. "Thank you. Both of you, for helping me. I'm going now to meet with the townspeople out there. MY people, I should say."
Megan glanced over at Archie. "Perhaps we should leave too."
"While Prescott has their attention? Yeah, I think that would be prudent. These people might have his welfare at heart, but I'm not sure they feel any friendliness toward us."
The three of them descended the stairs, crossed the lobby where the clerk gave them that same sour stare, and paused on the porch. Up the street, there was a murmur as the increasing crowd spotted them. More than twenty townspeople had gathered.
"Well, good luck, sir," Archie said as they separated on the sidewalk. "Maybe you can call the KDF once in a while so we know how you're doing."
Prescott waved goodbye and started shambling toward the crowd. Going the other way back to where the Jeep was parked, Megan and Archie walked quickly without quite breaking into a run. Bizarre faces appeared briefly at windows as they passed.
"Dang," said Archie under his breath. "You have that beam projector on you, Meg?"
"It's in my hand, set to heavy stun," she said. "If it wasn't against Trom policy, I would make one for you."
Getting into the Cherokee, both breathed a gust of relief. Megan started the engine, checked her mirrors and pulled out onto the narrow street. "Well. Rare we have a case with no violence at all, yes?"
"You know what bothers me? That cult. Grelok, that shark-god thing. Don't they sacrifice kids to it every time the seasons change?"
"I don't think so, Archie," Megan said. "Not anymore. The door to the church was nailed closed and it had a padlock on it that had not been opened in some time. I think that the sect has not had followers for years. The people of Hope's End have given up on colonizing. They are just waiting to get old and return to the sea."
Archie grunted. "I hope so. Still, maybe Sable will want to send the whole team here to investigate."
"That's up to her." Megan turned onto the highway, leaving Hope's End behind. "But I think if she waits too long, she will find a completely deserted town with only bad memories left behind."
1/14/2016
