The Innsmouth Syndrome (5 page)

“You reported it to the EPA first though.”

“Yes.”

“Why?  Did you find something?”

“Well, I wanted to report it to
somebody
, and the only explanation I could think of was that these people had been exposed to some kind of environmental hazard.”

Carla weighed the possibility.  “PCBs, heavy metals, something like that?” 

The examiner nodded.  “Yes.  Something – I hate to resort to clichè, but – something in the water, perhaps?  They say there used to be a gold refinery in the town, many years ago.  I don’t know how one refines gold, but it doesn’t seem impossible that they could have used something unpleasant.  Maybe something that leached into the ground, polluted the water table.”

“It would have to be something pretty exotic to cause a syndrome as specific as this” pointed out Carla.  The examiner shook his head.  “No.  I changed my mind about that.  I don’t think it fits anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it seems to me that the symptoms – can we call them symptoms now? – are more pronounced in the older residents.”

“So, not a teratogen then.  It has to be something that has a cumulative dose effect, accumulates in the tissues over time.  If it takes a few years of exposure to build up to a toxic level -”

“Again, no.  Visitors to the town do not seem to be affected.  I’m sure you’ve seen some of them, people who work here, may have been here for many years.  They have no trace of illness.  It is only in the people who are born here, in the families that have been here for many generations.  I have dismissed radioactive contamination, also, for this reason.”

“No, ionising rads wouldn’t do this.  Besides, you’d see cancers.” murmured Carla, thinking out loud.  “Well then, what?”

The doctor gestured with his hands, palms up.  “I do not know.  I am hoping that you have encountered something like this before.”

Carla didn’t reply.  She didn’t want to admit that she had no more idea than the examiner did.  Less, by the sound of it. 

They walked in silence for a while.  The buildings here were even more rundown than those in the town centre, their walls stained black by decades of moss.  The road had narrowed to a single lane with no sidewalk, but there was no traffic to endanger them. 

Bloated gulls called to them forlornly as they emerged onto the seafront.  Not the stout, mustard-beaked herring gulls that would once have commanded the coast.  These were sad and degraded inland scavengers, living off cold fries and discarded sandwiches, nesting in bins and painting the shoreline with high-cholesterol diarrhoea.

It was deserted in both directions.  The promenade, Water Street, had none of the trappings that might entice tourists to the coast.  Apart from one very unwelcoming-looking bar, it consisted entirely of ancient warehouses.  Several had collapsed completely into rubble.  Still others had been shored up with what looked like pieces of flotsam to avert a similar fate.  A few had been partially refurbished, with corrugated metal doors and fresh cement. 

They crossed the road to stand by the low harbour wall.  The water beneath was murky, thick with weed and kelp where it splashed against the slabs of stone.  To their left, where the road curved around to the other jaw of the harbour, a rotting wooden infrastructure allowed access to jetties and moorings.  An impressive amount of rubbish had accumulated around and beneath it, mainly bags, bottles and cans.  The only boats moored amongst the detritus were a couple of small fishing vessels, and a handful of dinghies of assorted seaworthiness. 

Carla leaned on the wall and gazed out to sea.  In the middle-distance, waves burst angrily against the thin black line of a reef.  Next to it, a safe water buoy periodically pulsed with red light.  She remembered the flickering light that she had seen the previous night, while driving into Innsmouth.  It must have been fishermen, out on those rocks.

“What if” she said, turning back to face Dr Khalil, “What if there was some local epidemic around here back when those kids were born?  Something like rubella?  That explains your birth defects, it explains why outsiders are free of them ...”

“With the exact same symptoms in each?  And what about their parents?  The man in the shop?  The woman at the news-stand?”

“Yeah” mumbled Carla.  “It’s not a perfect fit, I admit.”

“Not really” agreed the medical examiner – not unkindly.  He seemed to have something to add, but was hesitant, searching for the right words. 

“Ah, look.  Look.  I
did
have an idea of my own – about how this syndrome might be explained.  It’s probably ridiculous, but ...”

He looked at Carla.  She raised her eyebrows in mute encouragement.

“Well, I wondered if it might be atavism.”

“Atavism?”

“Yes.  Well, the changes are so dramatic, and – syndactyly, changes in soft and hard tissue, cartilage growth, ichthyosis, tooth loss ... maybe if the victims were exposed to some kind of agent – a chemical, or even a virus –“

“And it triggered dormant genes” finished Carla.  “Caused point mutations, reactivated old DNA.”

“Exactly!” said Khalil, excitedly.  “Ancient sequences that used to code for proteins that we don’t use any more!  From way back in human evolution.  Before we even
were
human, maybe before we even crawled up out of the sea.  It is like the babies that, even today, sometimes are born with tails.  Those genes are still in us, lying dormant.  Of course, these genes would probably be older than that - but who can imagine all the scrap that clutters our genome?”

Carla was sceptical.  “Well, atavism is obviously a known phenomenon.  It’s ... theoretically, it’s probably possible” she allowed.  “But it’s wildly unlikely.  The trouble is, we haven’t established any parameters.  We don’t know how many cases we’re talking about, what time period they cover, or even exactly what the symptoms are.  There’s no way to look for commonality between the cases until we’ve done that.  We need data.”

“You might find that the residents are not very forthcoming with that information” cautioned Khalil. 

“Well, we can get it from medical records, direct observation, whatever.  It has to be the first step.  What about the doctors here?”

“The nearest doctor’s office is in Newburyport.  I spoke to her.  She says that she’s never had an Innsmouth patient with these kind of features in her office.  She knew what features I was talking about, but she’d always just assumed that there were a lot of ugly people in Innsmouth.”

Carla laughed, half-heartedly.  “It would be really convenient if she was right.”  She turned back out to sea, and sighed. 

“Look, I don’t have the resources to do a full epidemiological investigation here.  I don’t even know if the CDC as a whole does, as it doesn’t
look
as though lives are at immediate risk.  All I can do is collect as much information as possible in the next few days and recommend further action.”

“I understand” said Dr Khalil, gravely.  “Of course I will help you in any way I can.”

Carla glanced at him.  “Can you get birth records from the local hospital?  If you can go through those and find any details of abnormalities recorded by obstetricians, it would help to give us an idea of how many cases we’re dealing with.  Start with the records of the four kids killed in the car crash.”

“I ... can do that” allowed Khalil.  “It might take a few days.  I don’t think it will turn up much though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it might.  But I’ve not observed any young children carrying these symptoms.  They’ve all been as old as the ones in the car, or older.  Maybe the symptoms are only triggered by the onset of puberty.”

“Well, even if it only rules out a congenital defect, it still adds to the information we have.  In the meantime, I’ll look around the town.  Try and talk to anyone who looks like they have symptoms, see if they’ll open up.”

“You might find people here quite hostile to ... strangers” warned the examiner.

“Doesn’t matter.  If they don’t want to talk to me there’s not much I can do, but I should try.  It might help us build up a list of the features of the disease, might even help us pinpoint other things they all have in common.”

Khalil looked at his watch.  “I should go” he apologised.  “I have a meeting at half past ten.  I will start looking through birth records this afternoon though.”

“That’s OK.”  Carla extended her hand and the medical examiner shook it.  “Thankyou for coming to meet me.  And for presenting such an ... interesting problem.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Dr Edwards.  I will speak to you again soon.”  He turned to go, but paused and called over his shoulder.  “And be careful, Dr Edwards.”

*****

Carla watched him jog back across the road, turning the collars of his coat up against the stiffening breeze and the first spattering of rain.  There was still nobody else around.  She decided to walk further down the seafront, past the darkly decomposing warehouses. 

One of them was in a far better state of repair than the others, with fresh cement cladding and glossy, PVC roofing membrane.  It had no windows and only one visible door.  A state-of-the-art security camera fixed to the eaves stared down expectantly at this point of entry.  A large, though faint, wooden sign above the door declared the place to be home to the “Evangelical Order of David” - clearly the church group that Dr Khalil had mentioned.  There were smaller words beneath in gaudily elaborate lettering.  Carla had to cross the road to read them.

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.

Carla recognised the line instantly, even without wanting to.  Psalm 77.  A favourite of her mother, who would recite it at breakfast time whenever the rent was due.  Even as a child, Carla had found it rather a plaintive and obsequious verse.

She forced her mind back to the matter at hand.  The makeshift church might be a good place to get information if she could find whoever was in charge - though there was no sound or sign of life at that moment.  She considered trying the door but decided against it.  It was early in the morning; there wasn’t likely to be anybody answering anyway.

With a final glance up at the security camera, Carla moved on.  The rain had grown from a light drizzle to a steady shower and was growing in intensity every second.  She quickened her pace and fished a knitted, woollen hat out of her coat pocket.  Wearing it would probably do her hairstyle no more harm than the rain otherwise would.  Even so, within a hundred paces the water had begun to soak through the wool.  She resolved to look for shelter until the downpour passed.

The rough-looking bar on the corner had not been open when she passed it with Dr Khalil, so there seemed little point in heading back to it now.  Nor was there any obvious refuge ahead of her.  There was, however, a collapsed warehouse to her left.  The ground was cluttered with broken bricks and chunks of mortar that had not been cleared, but fifty or sixty feet of graffiti-garnished wall was still intact, and in the far corner a remnant of the ground-floor ceiling still offered the prospect of shelter.