"The Crossing"

by Adrian Cole

originally published Shadows Over Innsmouth, 1994

The unnamed narrator receives a mysterious postcard.  Believing it has some connection to his long-lost father, Silas Waite, he traces it to it's origin, an English coastal town called Appledore.

At the pub, no one knows anything about Silas Waite.  He goes for a walk along the muddy beach in the dusk.  The environment grows foreboding.  Frightened, he tries to head back into town.  He sees strange figures watching him.  One of them beckons.

It is an old man.  He takes him into a clearly long-uninhabited shack and tells him he is Silas Waite.  He needs the narrator to do something involving his son, David.  The narrator judges this guy crazy, and tries to escape.  He finds out he is (inexplicably) no longer in Appledore, but in Innsmouth.  He is chased by weird people.  He escapes.  He returns to Appledore - somehow.

This is a pretty weak story.  It starts off with a nice buildup, but all logic goes out the window when the narrator suddenly, without explanation, finds himself in Innsmouth.  From there it's basically a chase.  And then a paragraph tells us he returned to Appledore, but offers no explanation as to how.  Even the most surreal stories need a little bit of internal logic!