Part 3: Attack of the Fishmen - Documents

Diary of Thomas Waite

The last entry in the diary is from today. It reads:

Another sleepless night. I lay awake, listening to the movements of that...
thing... that I married pacing about her locked room. Damn the Esoteric Order
of Dagon! Damn the oaths!

And damn the town fathers for not hanging Obed Marsh when they had the chance!
No, burning him - him and his whole filthy clan!

I wish I could just leave, abandon my sham of a marriage, leave the store to
rot, and start a new life far, far away. But I'm trapped here.

Every time I look at Ramona I know it. Watching her sleep, in her beauty and
innocence, my heart feels like breaking. She has no idea of what she will
become.

Yesterday was her tenth birthday, the change cannot be far off. Her birth gave
me such joy - so much that I still use the month, day and year as the four
number combination for my safe: in that order, starting clockwise.

It is as though I am trying to preserve that date forever, and deny the
inevitable horror.

I sometimes think of killing her - an act of mercy before she starts to
manifest the horror. God forgive me. But she is my daughter, and I could never
harm her. She is blameless in all this.

When the time comes, Innsmouth will be the only place for her, and until then,
I must stay here to watch over her.

It is my penance, my atonement for creating her life with... her chosen mother.
After she joins... them - if the grief does not kill me - my life will be my
own once more. Not that I know how I will have the strength to go on without
her.



Ramona Waite's Coloring Book

The drawings that fill Ramona's book are like things from a nightmare. It is
hard to believe that a young child could imagine such horrors.

There are pictures of strange, unnatural creatures - crudely drawn, but still
able to provoke visceral feelings of revulsion. One of them is captioned with
the word "Mother" - what can it mean?

These profoundly disturbing images raise grave concerns about the girl's state
of mind.



Book of Dagon

This book is hand-written, and heavily bound. Its cover is embossed with the
title "The Book of Dagon." It seems to be a religious work, translated from a
series of ancient tablets.

It tells of an entity called Dagon - apparently some kind of sea-god - and his
consort Hydra.

They are the greatest of an underwater race called the Deep Ones, who worship
them with sacrifices and other rites. The descriptions of the sacrifices are
particularly shocking, and there are details of magical spells and other
strange rituals.

If this incredible manuscript is to be believed, their history stretches back
beyond the remotest human origins, into unthinkably remote antiquity.

A few individuals are so incredibly old that they have seen continents rise and
fall, for they do not die of old age as humans do. Father Dagon and Mother
Hydra are such individuals, and are greatly revered for their age and size.

Their greatest awe, however, is reserved for a dark god named, Great Cthulhu,
who is said to sleep and dream in the underwater city of R'lyeh.

The book seems incomplete. The last chapters tail off, as though the
translation has not been finished.



Post Mortem Records

She were a lively one and no mistake. I kept her going as long as I could, for
the music she were making. Such a pair of lungs. And after she were done, I
found those lungs on her look as good as they sounded.

Maybe I'll keep them. Her liver was particular sweet as well.

-

I never much wanted to go to New York, but if they all talk as much as this one
I reckon I aint missing much. Soon as he woke and saw the knives, he was away
talking and pleading and bargaining for his life.

All them words made me dizzy, and I had to take his tongue first to stop him.
In future I better wait a while after they eaten dinner, for his innards stank
awful.

-

The bones was nearly all out before he died. I was real careful around the
arteries, so as he didn't lose any more blood than could be helped, and he
lasted a lot longer for it.

The flesh moved on its own as he tried to work his arm, but with the bones gone
there weren't nothing it could do, just twitch. I took it out the strap so it
could move free and I watched. The new gag worked much better and he was more
quiet than the last.



The Gilman Hotel
February 7, 1922

Early Evening

Innsmouth turned out to be more dilapidated, depressed and unwelcoming than
initially expected.

The stench of rotten fish fills the air, while poverty and disease lie
festering in every cobbled back-street.

Only a few of the inhabitants have been at all co-operative; the others are
evasive, and sometimes downright hostile.

My detective's instinct tells me they're trying to hide something. Of course, I
could simply be prejudiced by their look and manners - they're almost ugly
enough to get me believing those local tales of the "Innsmouth Taint."

Even so, I've been able to make some progress. Finding Ruth Billingham was a
lucky break. She's convinced lover boy is still in one piece, and being held in
the town Jailhouse.

Rebecca Lawrence is clearly afraid of something. She doesn't come across as the
type that scares easily - but then, I guess she's not afraid enough to leave.
She seems more worried about me.

Then there's Zadok Allen, the old rummy. He was willing to talk, all right. I
wish I knew whether he turned to drink because of what he saw, or whether he
saw things because he was drinking.

The Order of Dagon some heathen religion, brought back from the South Seas by
Obed Marsh? Rituals on Devil's Reef? Those who wouldn't join massacred by some
kind of monsters in 1846? It's all so far-fetched.

But what else could explain the thing that charged out from Thomas Waite's
attic? If I hadn't spoken with Thomas himself, I'd be sure I was seeing things.

Whatever's really going on, this place gives me the creeps. The dreams are
becoming stronger. I seem to spend each night in weird, fantastic landscapes,
with immense buildings like no architecture I've ever seen.

And my body in the dreams - it's so strange I can't begin to describe it. Maybe
it's some buried memory of all the occult stuff I studied when I - wasn't
myself.

And this spooky vision thing is acting up worse than ever. Used to be, I could
kind of see what people were thinking sometimes, but now it's going crazy. It's
like someone's watching me all the time, tracking me from the rooftops and the
shadows.

I'm so edgy I can hardly think straight. If only I could get some decent
bourbon in this miserable town.

I need to track down Brian Burnham, and fast - the sooner I get out of here,
the better. I'll make an early start in the morning.



Diary of the Church Minister

The evil began in 1846 - the same year Obed Marsh was first arrested, and the
same year he founded his blasphemous order. It is hard not to assume a
connection.

As the congregation here diminished, the townsfolk began to develop the
unnatural characteristics that outsiders have to come to call "the Innsmouth
look." It started in the Marsh family, but spread across the town.

For want of any other, I coined the name "ichthyosis" for the condition, and
began corresponding with a few medical men I had known in my student days. I
was unable to determine the nature of the condition, how it spread, and whether
I was in danger from it.

Although my flock had deserted me, I could not desert them - I had to stay and
fight this evil, or at least try to understand it. They do seem to avoid the
ancient sigil that I discovered in one dusty tome, which called it "the Elder
Sign."

Though it troubles me to rely on this instead of the Cross, it does appear to
offer more protection.

Soon, it became apparent that the condition was regarded as some sort of
blessing by the adherents of Marsh's ungodly faith.

I noticed that those most heavily disfigured by it commanded respect from the
others, and from time to time I overheard snatches of conversation about "the
pure blood" - which, from their context, seemed not to refer to the blood of
those untainted and healthy-looking.

There was talk of marriages, but no-one came to me to be wed. Wives were
sometimes mentioned, but never named. They seemed not to be from Innsmouth, and
yet no-one has moved to the town since Marsh's reign began.

As I walk the streets at dusk - which I seldom do, except at great need - I
seem to hear strange noises from unlit, curtained upper rooms in the town's
houses. I hear of births, but conduct no baptisms.

Those few who shun Marsh's temple are fearful, and I am fearful too. We must be
strong in our faith and in our lives, for we are all that remains of the true
Innsmouth, and its only hope of awakening from this nightmare.



Postcard

On the back of the postcard there is a handwritten religious verse. It must be
a coded message. It reads:

I ring the bells unto Thy glory, O Lord;
From the lowest unto the highest.
And by the sacrament of baptism
Shall I enter into your secrets.

The postcard must also serve some other purpose. It is pierced by four handmade
holes, each circled with a number of arrows. The arrows seem to signify some
sort of order.