“You could take that old bus, I suppose,” he said with a certain hesitation, “but it ain’t thought much of hereabouts. It goes through Innsmouth – – you may have heard about that – – and so the people don’t like it. Run by an Innsmouth fellow – – Joe Sargent – – but never gets any custom from here, or Arkham either, I guess. Wonder it keeps running at all. I s’pose it’s cheap enough, but I never see mor’n two or three people in it – – nobody but those Innsmouth folk Leaves the square – – front of Hammond’s Drug Store – – at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. unless they’ve changed lately. Looks like a terrible rattletrap – – I’ve never been on it.”
That was the first I ever heard of shadowed Innsmouth. Any reference to a town not shown on common map or listed in recent guidebooks would have interested me, and the agent’s odd manner of allusion roused something like real curiosity. A town able to inspire such dislike in it its neighbors, I thought, must be at least rather unusual, and worthy of a tourist’s attention. If it came before Arkham I would stop off there and so I asked the agent to tell me something about it. He was very deliberate, and spoke with an air of feeling slightly superior to what he said.
“Innsmouth? Well, it’s a queer kind of a town down at the mouth of the Manuxet. Used to be almost a city – – quite a port before the War of 1812 – – but all gone to pieces in the last hundred years or so. No railroad now – – B. and M. never went through, and the branch line from Rowley was given up years ago.
“More empty houses’ than there are people, I guess, and no business to speak Of except fishing and lobstering. Everybody trades mostly either here or in Arkham or Ipswich. Once they had quite a few mills, but nothing’s left now except one gold refinery running on the leanest kind of part time.
“That refinery, though, used to he a big thing, and old man Marsh, who owns it, must be richer’n Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks mighty close in his home. He’s supposed to have developed some skin disease or deformity late in life that makes him keep out of sight Grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother seems to’ve been some kind of foreigner – – they say a South Sea islander – – so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people, and folks here and hereabouts always try to cover up any Innsmouth blood they have in But Marsh’s children and grandchildren loot just like anyone else far’s I can see. I’ve had ’em pointed out to me here – – though, come to think of it, the elder children don’t seem to be around lately. Never saw the old man.
“And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well, young fellow, you mustn’t take too much stock in what people here say. They’re hard to get started, but once they do get started they never let up. They’ve been telling things about Innsmouth – – whispering ’em, mostly – – for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they’re more scared than anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh – – about old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that people stumbled on around 1845 or there-abouts – – but I come from Panton, Vermont, and that kind of story don’t go down with me.
“You ought to hear, though, what some of the old-timers tell about the black reef off the coast – – Devil Reef, they call it. It’s well above water a good part of the time, and never much below it, but at that your could hardly call it an island. The story is that there’s a whole legion of devils seen sometimes on that reef-sprawled about, or darting in and out of some kind of caves near the top. It’s a rugged, uneven thing, a good bit over a mile out, and toward the end of shipping days sailors used to make big detours just to avoid it.