THE WHATE HOUSE in Innsmouth c1 & C2

The house was where a murder had occured. I am an investigator of the police in Innsmouth.

Whaterly house in Innsmouth
C1
THE WHATE HOUSE IN INNSMOUTH
PROLOGUE


In 1909, I am a police officer in Innsmouth, and my partner is Eric Vandal. I go by the name of Jake Johnson. I answered the phone in the police station. The voice on the other end said,"There's a body..." The thunder interrupted his speech. I could hear it clearly, I could imagine the wind blow throuigh the streets, I expected to not hear him afterwards as I thought the storm would carry the little box away where he was standing in. But he still was there.

Thunder most violently crashed and exploded, the window in the police station lit up with its brilliance. The wind threatened to tear loose the shingles on the houses, it hurled papers that were caught in its grasp. Stones flew like daggers to strike windows and people on the streets.The station had several constables and detectives in it. The people there were glum, a few officers walked inside the house, water sped off their gramants to shower the floor with its mildew. One constable sneezed tears ran from his eyes..

"What did you say?" I asked as I listened to his voice saying this to me. I heard the thunder as it roared ane the water hammered the place where he was stanidng. It sounded like a typewriter hammering the page with it's keys. I heard the wind scream across the box. I think I imagined the box lift and shake like a hulu dancers' hips..

"A body on a fence...". the voice said along with a throaty cough. blew his nose. that I heard him do this.

"I see a body, Where?" I asked as I struggled to hear his voice more clearly. I hat l thought I could ahve someone else take this case, but knew no one else would want to do this. I winces as I saw the wind hurl a newspaer across the street and debres into the street, it threated to pull people form the street to lob them about in the area with a great deal of strength. I bit my lip, as I tried to hear his voice more clearly.

"A fence."

"On a fence, Where?" I asked, I looked across the room to see my partner who as laughing as if there was nothing to worry about. He walked toward me, his shirt was perfect and his jacket lay across the back of the chair where he had been sitting until he walked toward me. His right hand crashed against my shoulder, nearly driving me to my knees. His mustache was large and thick, he was in a good mood. It figured that he was happy. I thought he was ctrazy loving storms that exploded and burst across the city streets. Water was something he loved as much as he loved lightning and thunder that deafened everyone with deafeness.

"The barbs at Dun..."

"Dun and what?" I asked praying I couldn't hear the next word from him. I looked at my partner, standing there lifting a cup to his mouth to wash whatever he was eating down his throat, he burped. He lowered his cup to the table beside where I sat.

"And Burrows," the voice said.

"Are you standing in a police call box?" I asked as I tried to grab my pistol and trench coat. Motioned for Eric to grab his jacket from where it had been sitting before I answered the phone.

"Yes!"

"Stay there?" I needed to see this witness, have him show me the body. Because I doubted I could see anything there the rain would muck up my glasses lense. I headed toward the door.

The door shuddered and shook. Rain ran off the handle to fall on the floor.

I touched the door knob with drew my hand from the knob, A chill got to my hand from the door knob. I winced as I reached inside my jacket to grab my fur lined gloves to protect them from the cold in the air. Eric handed me my hat, at least its brim would keep the rain off my specs.

My hand felt frozen, I struggled to force the door open. When the door moved past its mooring, the door ripped open as if it was a hot knife going through a celery stick. It nearly hurled me from the floor I stood on. I dangled from the knob, my partner grabbed me by my other arm to drag me back to the stairway. My feet were nowhere near the stairs that were there; I hung three feet below it.
Thunder roared and lightning flashed, illuminating the street.

I cursed as I saw the rain fall like a shotgun being fired. It pelted every inch of the sidewalk and us. I blew on my hands to have them warm up, the moisture tore through my gloves, that were fur lined. The chill was very deep and strong. It sank like a stone as it arrived in water into my flesh.

I said,"Christ. That wind is going to kill someone some day."

Eric said,"What are you complaining about? There but a chill in the air lad." He laughed as he stood there trying to have me get on the stairs to move down them. The wind closed its arms about us sommothering in its chill and deathly hold. We were engulfed in its cold. Steam rose from his mouth as he stepped beside me. There was a grin on his mug, that made my blood boil. He liked the cold. It ran down his cheeks to soak into his coat's neck.




C2

A man stood in the police box.at the momment was, looking toward my partner and me as we approached him. \A flash of lightning showed him in its brilliance. He blew on his hands. His hair was concealed in a bowler cap. A cigarette dangled from his lips. His eyebrows were bushy. He was a bull of a man. There was fog from his breath from the chill in the air. He was looking at where we had come from, in the general direction of the police station. He looked up into my face; his chin had the beginnings of a beard, no mustache. The cuffs of his shirt were visible, thanks to his overcoat, which did not cover them or his jacket’s cuffs. I saw a chain run to his pocket.

He said,” Look at it. The body right there!” he pointed at it. His skin was pale, and there were freckles on his face. He was shivering. He smelled of puke, his dress shirt was stained with it, and alcohol. He was now looking at the ground.

I saw the witness staining there, grinding the toe of his shoe into the stonework on the sidewalk. I approached him. It was apparent he had found the body impaled on the fence of the house. His eyes were bloodshot. Shuddering as he saw me approach him. Rubbing his hands together and blowing on them. The rain came down most heavily. There was a dark shadow in the shape of a body hanging off the fence rail looked to be the size of a body.

He grabbed my forearm, forced me to look at the body hanging from the fence to truly look at him, and said,” Look? At him! Don’t you see his body! Jesus, what happened?” Pointing at the body hanging from the fence.

I wrote down the information that I gained from him. I looked at him, my pencil dangled from my hand. I wanted to have him calm down. Did he hear any sound? Probably not over the thunder that was roaring here.

Looking over at the body, I put my hand under his chin to look into his face. He has van dyke facial hair. I looked at his face, seeing that blood had vacated his skin. I recognized the face, but could not place it anywhere I had seen it. However, when I lifted one of his eyelids. I saw the blue eye, which was how I knew him.

It was that of a reporter who had come here to investigate the Whately family, having come from Arkham. He had been hounding us, trying to find answers to his questions. He was like a dog chasing a cat. He would not let up in his pursuit of knowledge of the Whate family. He was a reporter for the Innsmouth Journal.

His eyes were bloodshot. The body looked as if it had been frightened. if I were to judge how the body looked. I saw the body there. It hung from the barbs that made up the top of the fence. The body smelled of decaying fish and seaweed. His shoulder had some seaweed on it. His body was in an overcoat hanging over the fence with his arms hanging down toward the ground.

I saw beneath the right-hand lay an enormous statue of a being lying on its back, the blades of grass rose up about the object that fell there. When I lifted the object from the stalks of grass. When I looked at the object, it was a figure sitting on a chair, there were two taloned feet and hands with three fingers per hand and foot. The statue’s left taloned hand held a heart. Its fingers numbered three in each hand. On its back were wings like a bat that rose from its back, which were three feet across. They were spread. Its head looked like a squid’s body, its tenacled face had parted where its maw was to show its mouth to the viewer, its back and chest cavity looked humanoid. Beneath it was a stone base with strange markings on it.

I pondered what this person had seen. He looked mortified. The body looked as if he had tried to jump over the barbed fence's top. The wall of the fence was masonry work. The barbs cut into his chest and groin. The barbs were covered in blood that dried there from his body, having flowed down to the masonry work there. He appeared to have looked over his shoulder to see what was behind him. His eyes were large, and his skin was white. His mouth was agape; it seemed as though he was trying to say something, but I did not know. I looked over his shoulder as he hung there to see the house of the Whate. In all its beauty, I felt fear slip and claw its way back to my body as I spied the house..

He was wearing a leather jacket. He looked as if he had tried to jump the fence that was there. The paper in his pocket had scribbles on it that I could not read. I withdrew his notes from his inside pocket of the overcoat.

I knew that no one lived here any longer. The people steered clear of the house. Thanks to the stories we had heard about the house. The stories made us believe that there were ghosts in the house. The house looked as though something or someone was there presently. I did not believe what I was seeing. I advanced toward the flame-ravaged house. There were soot-covered doors that were there, the house was a brick and wood structure. The portions looked as if a breeze was to meet it. It would topple in on itself. The bricks were fragmentary, and the cement that made up the masonry had fallen apart to a great degree. The walls still stood there, sheltering the interior of the house.

A chill crawled across my spine, and I shivered, but not from the cold but from what my mind was suggesting to me. My breath caught in my throat. What happened here? My nerves were on edge, it's chill froze my blood in its veins.

The door was open wide, but was hidden beneath the garbled roof of the porch. Was there someone there? I stepped on the stairs, which creaked. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned around and ran back to my partner. My hand trembled as I returned to my partner. I reached out to touch him, and he nearly jumped up to the moon. He dropped the gas lantern on the ground; its light had gone away/


“Jesus! You scared me. What did you see?” He asked as he brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. A flash of lightning showed that he was pale as bleached flour. His eyes were wide open. His eyes darted away from the body and me.

“Sorry about that. I think you should join me in going into the house.”, I said as soon as I recovered my breath enough to speak. It sounded like I had croaked these very words. My hand trembled.

I was trembling. I walked with him into the house. My nerves were on end. I was afraid of what I saw there. There was a scent of blood in the air. Eric felt assured that the people who were there may need some help that we could bring to them.

We heard chanting as we approached the house. I walked through the open doorway. The walls were covered in strange script that we were unable to read, with pictures on some of the walls that looked like pictures that the north america indians would draw on them. The drawings made my bladder go. The chanting stopped as so as my foot touched the board that creaked. There now hung a quiet so quiet I could hear my heart beating in my chest.

Lightning lit the sky. Thunder roared. The house was as still as a grave. The house had a large hallway. In the middle of the hallway was a stairway that had a huge balcony with a terrace at the top of the balcony. The interior was shrouded in darkness. Or so we believed. The reason I say this is due to what we found there.

We walked into the living room, in the middle sat three large sofas with a table in the middle where a woman lay on top of, she was dressed in a corset with lace cups for her breasts to be held in the stays were satin with back closures her stockings were black with reinforced heels and toes. Her legs hung off the table's top to reach the floor. There was a rug on the floor beath the coffee table, her heels tore a rent in the thick pile rug. Candlebras were on the end tables at the end of the sofas; the candles had been extinguished. Cigars and cigarettes were lying in ashtrays; there were six bodies here in various states of dress. There lay a white powder on a sheet of glass, in a line. I suspect it is Coca.

My right hand slipped inside my pocket to touch the handle of my pistol. My hand slipped and slid off my pistol, I tried to reach the guard of the pistol, and nervously, I began to feel that I was in danger.

I saw a man standing beside the woman on the table, holding a serpentine dagger in his hands. Its blade was wave like in appearance a droplet of blood fell from its keen edge. It was over the woman's chest and I saw blood run off her breasts.The blade hovered over her chest, I saw a figure walk toward him, this figure looked like the statue that the reporter had with him when he died on the fence. Thsi figure looked about sight feet tall. It calm as you be up to the amn hoiding the dagger, it reached in to touch her chest, it with drew a heart from the woman's chest. It opend its maw to take a bit out of the heart.'

The man with the dagger looked at me,and laughed. his wrist and hand was blood stained, and his lounge coat's middle was also blood stained. He smirked at me. he looked as if he had not a care in the world. He resembled someone that I thought I should know like someone, He turned to show me the blade he held in his hands, He stepped toward me. I should have recognized them from somewhere, but the where I did not know.

I drew my pistol and fired at him. My bullet hit him in the head. A portion of his brains spillled out of his skull to run down his cheek and his neck.He fell onto the rug beside the body on the table.

The air smelled of shit and urine; there were puddles of shit beneath the woman’s rear and urine filled the air. The men had puddles beneath them. The air stank. Eric put his hand over his mouth and nose; he was gagging from the scent. Blood was pooling from the woman’s chest where her heart had been removed from her chest.

Dust had begun to fly from their bodies, the bodies had begun to shrink in size, and their garments began to dissolve from their bodies. Eric looked at the bodies as they began to dissolve into nothingness. He stepped away from the sofas. Tears ran from his eyes.

There were two men dressed in suits, and one wore a lounge coat. A dagger fell from the man dressed in a lounge coat. His hand was blood-stained, and his waist was also blood-stained. He fell beside the coffee table. They are all aristocrats. One of them is a member of the Whately family, but he shouldn’t have been here. He was the one dressed in the lounge coat.

Two of the women were dressed in evening gowns. Their lips were red, and talc covered their cheeks. Their garments looked to have been torn, but by someone or something. The reason I said things was because of what I saw there. The bodies lay on the sofas.

There was one woman dressed in a negligee. Her garment looked to have been a black corset with red stays; the mesh cups were of a floral design. Her hands hung off the table, as did her bare feet; they were bent backward. It looked as if she struggled before the dagger sank into her flesh, and blood blossomed out of her chest cavity and ran between the valley of her breasts.

Her eyes were wide enough to roll out of her head. I expected to see her eyes roll out of the skull. Her mouth was agape. One of whom had her heart removed from her body. It looked as though she was being sacrificed; there was a bowl in the middle of the coffee table. Four legs of a reptilian build. The table should not have supported the body and this map on her waist; it was not of this region of land, but the shoreline of the estate.

The dagger that was used to remove her heart. Having a crossbar with tentacles forming its guard, with the guard being open. Blood covered the body without a heart, lying on the table. She looked to be in her bedclothes. Her corset was cut to allow access to the heart. Her legs were in stockings, her panties were gone. Her face was without makeup, and her hair fell to her back. She looked to be an aristocrat, as did the others in the room.

The floor had seaweed upon it, and there was a scent of rot and decay. When I looked at the floor, I saw circles on it, about 3 inches in width. Some looked as if they were pulled across the floor. The woman’s body, without a heart, has seaweed on it; the heart has a gash in it in a circular fashion.

The scent made my stomach heave, and vomit spilled out to fall upon the floor. I stood there looking at the body with my lantern to see with. When I lowered the lantern, he bolted for the door through which we moved.

My partner looked appalled at the bodies in the house, we walked toward the rooms in to the right and left of the living room. We heard a wind howl from the room on the right. This is where the circles originated from. So we believed. It looked to have been with three talons per foot.

He had seemed most interested in the body on the fence to the house. He looked at the house, its upper floor had a terrace, and one of the rooms there had its door to the terrace open. We could see a curtain move through the chamber. The wind was blowing through the left door. I peered inside the open doorway.

The house should have been vacant, yet there were these bodies on the ground floor, and seaweed also fell across the floor to the coffee table. Where the map was stained with blood, where the body lay, its heart removed.

Some seaweed lay across the end table to its right. The circles were two feet from each other. The strides looked to have been six inches away. The circles seemed to have been lifted away on their right and left of each other. There were three taloned feet per foot. Tears and blood were staining the rug that was there. It came from the left doorway.

“What the hell happened here? Why are there people here?” ,Vandal asked as he stepped inside the living room. He walked toward the door on the right side. The room had a pendulum clock there by the door. There were plates on the walls, there were statues of knights on each wall, beside the banistered staircases.

“I don’t know what the reason was for them to have been here,” I said as I stepped back inside the house.

Vandal opened the door to find a study with books adorning each wall, and scrolls lay on the shelves in the walls. There was a pouch of tobacco as well. There was a bottle of rum half full sitting on a writing table, having an ink pot there, with its quill lay on its side on the table. Beside a chair, there was a door open, with seaweed in the entrance way from outside. The handle of the veranda was visible, with kelp lying on the handle; the rocks outside had some kelp on them. The rocks were barren of debris, but these had them.

He walked out to see the outside from there. It was on the side of a cliff, and there was a wharf there. A vessel would have been docked there. But there was no vessel there now.

A diary lay open on an end table with a gas lantern there, not turned on. There was coca in a pouch in the cushion on its left side. Volumes lined the walls of this room, as did scrolls on the other walls. He looked at it, lifted the diary from where it rested there.

He looked at the diary and saw the words… I know, he will come a calling. It is time for him to arrive. I have arranged for him to have his gift. It will be found in the living room. October thirty-first was the date.

“How did he know it would be here, and what was it?” Vandal asked as he walked into the living room where I stood. I had gone to the police box to call for an autopsy to be done. Here.

Eric lifted the diary up and carried it with him into the room where I still stood looking at the now empty sofas, and the coffee table had on it a map. I scooped it up and carried it further away from the bodies, that were no more. Nothing remained there to suggest that they been there. Fear stole upon my heart and mind.

The wind made my body cold, and the lightning caused me to jump with each bolt that lit the sky. The thunder made it impossible to speak through the police box. The wind tore away at my clothes.

I looked out the door to see the coroner walk toward the body dangling from the fence’s bars. His horse and carriage arrived there, and his driver sat on the bench watching the house. The coroner walked toward the body hanging there. The statue lay on the ground before his outstretched hand and arm.

I stepped out onto the veranda to look at him. He turned on his camera to shoot the body hanging there. The flash showed the body in its white light. His waistcoat was visible in its brilliance, and his shirt's collar was starched. His front had fallen onto the fence top, and some of these spikes protruded through his back and lower abdomen. He still unnerved me.

The coroner looked at me as I stood there, blowing on my chilled fingers. He said,” Is that all there is to look at? Mightis.”

“There are seven bodies there in the main room! One was killed by a knife, the others looked as if frightened by something that killed them,” I said as I looked at him. He lifted the camera and carried it with him. His top hat was holding away the rain that pounded him as he stood there,

“Six bodies, you say?” Fredrick said as he walked toward me. “Where are they?”

“They were inside the house,” I said as I pointed over my shoulder to reveal the fire-ravaged house, I could hear the wood crackle and burst beneath its weight as the beams broke loose from where they were held onto the wood of the structure.

“Why did you say were?” Did they go somewhere?” his eyebrows went up as if he did not understand what I said. I did not know how to describe what I saw inside the house. I saw its light as it continued to consume the house. The heat made me wince, I peered back over my shoulder to see the house, smoke billowed and crawled skyward. The huge tongues of flame lapped at the wood that made up the house. I hightailed it to the police box to send the firefighters here to try and stopped the flames from consuming it. i felt that flames would purify the house from what it had held inside.

“Yes! They went somewhere? Just where they went I don't know nor can I guess?” I said as I looked at him, I did not know if he believed me or not.

“Anything odd about the bodies?” he asked as he walked to the door where I stood blocking the entry.

“Yes, one was sacrificed. It looked as though the victim was dressed in her nightgown.” I said as I recalled the woman on the table. Her blood ran down the crevise that was where her breasts parted from each other, blood filled the hole where her heart had been, it filled her chest cavity.

“Is that all. You can tell me!” Frederick said as he lifted his hat to see my face beneath its brim.

“The other bodies look as if they were frightened to death by something that was in the house?”, I said and continued to say, "the fire that consumed the house where the bodies were. They vanished when I walked in there. It was as if it was nightmare rather than a dream."

“Frightened, you say, is there any odor here?” he asked me as he looked into my frightened face. He looked away from my face.

“The air is filled with the aroma of shit and ammonia. It was around the six bodies there, also rotting kelp,” I said.