originally published Visionary Press, 1936
Our Narrator, a hapless geek, decides to celebrate his "coming of age" by taking a sightseeing tour of New England (I don't know about you but the sightseeing I did on my "coming of age" involved the bottom of a beer glass and the sight of the lovely G.O - but HPL had far more scruples than I).
After hearing some vague and unsavory legends about Innsmouth in Newburyport, his interest is piqued in Innsmouth (I told you this guy was a geek) and he starts nosing around, hearing some strange tales, mostly from a colorful old geezer at the train station, who enlightens him about a 2x a day bus to and from Innsmouth, which hardly anyone is willing to ride. He soon finds out why cuz the driver and few passengers are icky-looking and smell like fish.
After picking the brain of a disgruntled grocery boy, O.N. winds up plying ancient town drunk Zadok Allen with whiskey in order to get the backstory on Innsmouth. Despite his thick phoneticized accent, Zadok is pretty sharp for a really old drunk (I suppose HPL never actually talked to too many decrepit alcoholics).
Per Zadok, less than 100 years back, a merchant ship captain named Obed Marsh made contact with some South Sea islanders and adopted their debased religion, which centered around weird sea gods but was known to have some big advantages over Christianity, namely prayers were reliably answered. Obed started up a church in the town which offered up human sacrifices in exchange for awesome fishing hauls and spectacular gold jewelry.
This didn't sit all that well with the locals, who arrested Obed and his fellow cultists. This led to retaliation from the cult's benefactors, a community of Deep Ones who raid the town, killing about half the inhabitants and subjugating the rest, forcing them to breed with Deep Ones, producing half-breed offspring who start life as fairly normal human, then gradually transform into Deep Ones. What's more, the local Deepies have a long-range plan to dominate the rest of the surface world. "Ever hear of a shoggoth?" Zadok asks. But before he can explain, he shrieks that he's been seen and heard, and tells O.N. to get the heck out of Innsmouth ASAP. Next thing you know, Zadok's gone - never to be seen again.
O.N. tries to head for home, but the bus is broken down, and he has no choice but to stay at the local fleabag. As he's trying to maybe grab some Z's, he hears somebodies trying to get into his room. He flees through the hotel and a window, and makes his way through the streets, pursued by locals and later, he sees, hordes of Deep Ones swimming in from the sea. He manages to make it to some railroad tracks leading outside of town. Hiding in the brush, he gets a good look at the full-on Deep Ones and passes out.
Apparently he hid successfully, because he wakes up unmolested and makes his way back to Arkham, where he reports the whole experience. This leads to a hushed-up federal raid on Innsmouth which ends up with many of the half-breed citizenry incarcerated or killed, buildings being blown up, and something being torpedoed off the coast. The press makes out it was over bootlegging but WE know different, heh heh heh...
O.N. goes back to school like a good boy and tries to pretend his little side trip never happened. But, he soon discovers that he himself is descended from Innsmouth stock. First he is horrified, but, as the story ends, he has come to embrace his unhuman heritage, and looks forward to joining his brethren...
Whoo! This is one of HPL's most famous and celebrated stories and its easy to see why. This is perhaps the third/fourth time I've read it over the last (shudder ... ) nearly 40 years and never fails to kick in, despite familiarity and the dilution of the premise through years of bad Innsmouth knock-offs (last time I looked there's what - at least three Innsmouth-based collections out there).
It is not flawless. HPL felt he couldn't write action sequences effectively, while deCamp claimed the chase scene at the end is effective. I'm somewhere in between. it is effective, but it also reads very clinically, as if the narrator were carefully and meticulously planning every move, describing every turn and detour with more detail than you can get out of a Google Maps trip planner. Seriously, if you were trying to get outta town while a bunch of fish-people were after you, would you stop and consider everything so carefully. P.S. yes I'm aware this is supposed to be the narrator describing his experiences long after the fact, but I still think a more terse description would have worked better.
He still hadn't quite gotten over a few other bad habits: it takes nearly four paragraphs of "Arrgghh! It was so horrible I can't describe it but I'll try!" before he finally breaks down and gives us a word-pic of the fully-developed Deep Ones. On the other hand, said description is nice and straightforward and terse (by HPL) standards (I guess he figured fish-men were easier to visualize than the weirdies that would take up multiple paragraphs or pages later on).
But the very very good outweighs the minimal bad. This is a terrific, even gripping read, full of atmosphere (Derleth called it "brooding", and that fits) and doom. The final paragraph, which could have been corny or silly in lesser hands, remains chilling. It's always nice when you come across a classic that really is classic.
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