"Only the End of the World Again"

By Neil Gaiman

originally published Shadows Over Innsmouth 1994

Lawrence Talbot is a claims adjuster.  And a werewolf (get the joke?).  Being a long-time drifter, he's found himself this winter in the run-down town of Innsmouth.  Where everyone seems to know he's a werewolf.  One afternoon, he finds a fat, odd mad sitting in his office.  The man mutters some of the usual "return of the Great Old Ones" stuff Lawrence is used to hearing from the townsfolk, then leaves.  

Lawrence has a strange encounter with the fortune teller in the office opposite his, and then finds himself led by a bartender to a cliffside overlooking the ocean, where the townsfolk are cavorting in some kind of ritual abandon in the surf.  There the bartender, the fat man, and the fortune teller prepare to sacrifice him to the Great Old Ones, telling him that while his wolf-form is murderous, his human form is innocent.

Despite their claims that he will not be able to, Lawrence turns into his wolf form and attacks the fortune teller.  In a dream-like state, he has a vision of himself under the sea, battling a feminine creature with a face "like the stuff you don't want to eat in a sushi counter; all suckers and spines and drifting anemone fronds."  

He returns to consciousness to find he's killed the fortune teller.  The bartender tries to charge him with a ritual dagger, but misses and falls to his death off the cliff.  The fat man shrugs the whole thing off, saying "it's over for now."  He walks away.  Lawrence goes off hunting.  In the morning he awakes naked in the snow, with the remains of a deer he killed last night beside him.  A hawk flies over and drops a small dead squid at Lawrence's feet.  He takes this as some kind of omen, but its meaning is unclear to him.

Neil Gaiman is fine writer, creator of the award-winning Sandman comics series, the book Coraline and many other excellent works.  He's also Lovecraft fan and has a finely-tuned sense of humor and whimsy.  "Only" is an amusing, well-told, but ultimately not-very meaty tale, full of in-jokes. Perhaps its best part is the depiction of a modern but still completely seedy and decaying Innsmouth.  Fun, but hardly essential stuff.  It was later adapted into a graphic novel.