"He is asleep now," Piers said, "and the taint sleeps with him."
Simon Raven
Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960)
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"The Taint" by Brian Lumley (2005)
From: The Taint and Other Novellas
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"The Taint" is a masterpiece of aftermath and belatedness. In my opinion it surpasses "The Viaduct" and "The Picnickers" as Lumley's most accomplished shorter work. There are no eye-popping space adventures, and thankfully no first-person narrators. The fate of earth or humanity is not at stake, just a half dozen people Lumley teaches us to care about.
The story takes place in a village on the UK's southwest coast. Previously something happened there, and those who remain live with it, acknowledged consciously or not.
Newly arrived retiree Dr. James Jamieson has moved from the U.S. The story begins on his patio overlooking the beach as he entertains new friends. These include John and Doreen Tremain, a talkative couple useful for both relaying local gossip and as red herrings. Jilly White, recently widowed, is also a guest, ever watchful of her teenage daughter Anne.
Jamieson will also shortly meet Geoff, ward of the Fosters, a beleaguered fishing family. Geoff is ostracized by locals because he is a genetic misfire with pronounced Innsmouth characteristics. Before the story's end he will succumb to the call of the ocean, but die because his gills are malformed.
Dr. Jamieson becomes a close confidant of Jilly. She has no car, so persuades Jamieson to doctor her and prescribe for her anxieties. She is also desperate to talk with him about her late husband George White, who hailed from Innsmouth.
Lumley handles the third-person in this story beautifully. Through the slow accretion of facts via dialogue, Jilly learns about Innsmouth from Jamieson. (We find out that Jamieson spent some time in Innsmouth, though he is initially misleading about this fact.)
...."During my time at my practice in Innsmouth, I saw some strange sad cases. Many locals are inbred, to such an extent that their blood is tainted. I would very much like to be able to put that some other way, but no other way says it so succinctly. And the 'Innsmouth look'—a name given to the very weird, almost alien appearance of some of the town's inhabitants—is the principal symptom of that taint.
"However, among the many myths and legends I've heard about that place and those with 'the look,' some of the more fanciful have it the other way round; they insist that it wasn't so much inbreeding that caused the taint as miscegenation…the mixed breeding between the town's old-time sea captains and the women of certain South Sea island tribes with which they often traded during their voyages. And what's more, the same legends have it that it wasn't only the native women with whom these degenerate old sea dogs associated, but…but I think it's best to leave that be for now, for tittle-tattle of that nature can so easily descend into sheer fantasy.
"Very well, but whatever the origin or source of the town's problems—the real source, that is—it's still possible that it may at least have some connection with those old sea-traders and the things they brought back with them from their ventures. Certainly some of them married and brought home native women—which in this day and age mightn't cause much of a stir, but in the mid-19th century was very much frowned upon—and in their turn these women must surely have brought some of their personal belongings and customs with them: a few native gewgaws, some items of clothing, their 'cuisine,' of course…possibly even something of their, er, religions? Or perhaps 'religion' is too strong a word for what we should more properlyaccept as primitive native beliefs.
"In any case, that's as far back as I was able to trace the blood taint—if such it is,—but as for the 'Innsmouth look' itself, and the horrible way it manifested itself in the town's inhabitants…well, I think the best way to describe that is as a disease; yes, and perhaps more than one disease at that.
"As to the form or forms this affliction takes," (now Jamieson began to lie, or at least to step aside from the truth,) "well, if I didn't know any better, I might say that there's a fairly representative example or specimen, as it were, right here in our own backyard: that poor unfortunate youth who lives with the Fosters, Anne's friend, young Geoff. Of course, I don't know of any connection—and can't see how there could possibly be one—but that youth would seem to have something much akin to the Innsmouth stigma, if not the selfsame affliction. Just take a look at his condition:
"The unwholesome scaliness of the skin, far worse than any mere ichthyosis; the strange, shambling gait; the eyes, larger than normal and increasingly difficult to close; the speech—where such exists at all—or the guttural gruntings that pass for speech; and those gross anomalies or distortions of facial arrangement giving rise to fishy or froggy looks…and all of these features present in young Geoff. Why, John Tremain tells me that the youth reminds him of nothing so much as a stranded fish! And if somehow there is something of the Innsmouth taint in him…well then, is it any wonder that such dreadful fantasies came into being in the first place? I think not…"
Pausing, the old man stared hard at Jilly. During his discourse she had turned very pale, sunk down into her chair, and gripped its arms with white-knuckled hands. And for the first time he noticed grey in her hair, at the temples. She had not, however, given way to those twitches and jerks normally associated with her nervous condition, and all of her attention was still rapt upon him....
***
George White, it turns out, brought treasure and sacred books from Innsmouth when he moved to the UK. Jamieson, far from being a disinterested retiree, has come to reclaim Innsmouth's stolen patrimony.
At story's end, he explains all this to Jilly's daughter Anne, daughter of George White.
"....I swear to you—whatever you tell me—it will be safe with me. I think you must know that by now."
The old man nodded and gently disengaged himself. "I think I can do that, yes. That is, as long as you're not going to be frightened by it, and provided you won't run away…like your father."
"He was very afraid, wasn't he?" she said. "But I'll never understand why he stole the books and the Innsmouth jewellery. If he hadn't taken them, maybe they'd have just let him go."
"I think that perhaps he planned to sell those books," the old man answered. "In order to support himself, naturally. For of course he would have known that they were very rare and valuable. But after he fled Innsmouth, changed his name, got back a little self-confidence and started to think clearly, he must also have realized that wherever the books surfaced they would be a sure link—a clue, a pointer—to his whereabouts. And so he kept them."
"And yet he sold the jewellery." She frowned.
"Because gold is different than books." Jamieson smiled. "It becomes very personal; the people who buy jewellery wear it, of course, but they also guard it very closely and they don't keep it on library shelves or places where others might wonder about it. Also, your father was careful not to spread it too thickly. Some here, some there; never too much in any one place. Perhaps at one time he'd reasoned that just like the books he shouldn't sell the jewellery—but then came the time when he had to."
"Yet the people of the Esoteric Order weren't any too careful with it," she said, questioningly.
"Because they consider Innsmouth their town and safe," Jamieson answered. "And also because their members rarely betray a trust. Which in turn is because there are penalties for any who do."
"Penalties?"
"There are laws, Anne. Doesn't every society have laws?"
Her huge eyes studied his, and Jamieson felt the trust they conveyed…a mutual trust, passing in both directions. And he said, "So is there anything else I should tell you right now?"
"A great many things," Anne answered, musingly. "It's just that I'm not quite sure how to ask about them. I have to think things through." But in the next moment she was alert again:
"You say my father changed his name?"
"Oh yes, as part of the merry chase he's led us—led me—all these years. But the jewellery did in the end let him down. All winter long, when I've been out and about, I've been buying it back in the towns around. I have most of it now. As for your father's name: actually, he wasn't a White but a Waite, from a long line—a very, very long line—of Innsmouth Waites. One of his ancestors, and mine, sailed with Obed Marsh on the Polynesian trade routes. But as for myself…well, chronologically I'm a lot closer to those old seafarers than poor George was."
She blinked, shook her head in bewilderment; the first time the old man had seen her caught unawares, which made him smile. And: "You're a Waite, too?" she said. "But…Jamieson?"
"Well, actually it's Jamie's son." He corrected her. "Jamie Waite's son, out of old Innsmouth. Have I shocked you? Is it so awful to discover that the kinship you've felt is real?"
And after the briefest pause, while once again she studied his face: "No," she answered, and shook her head. "I think I've probably guessed it—some of it—all along. And Geoff, poor Geoff…Why, it would also make you kin to him, and I think he knew it, too! It was in his eyes when he looked at you."
"Geoff?" The old man's face fell and he gave a sad shake of his head. "What a pity. But he was a hopeless case who couldn't ever have developed fully. His gills were rudimentary, useless, unformed, atrophied. Atavisms, throwbacks in bloodlines that we hoped had been successfully conditioned out, still occur occasionally. That poor boy was in one such 'state,' trapped between his ancestral heritage and his—or his father's—scientifically engineered or altered genes. And instead of cojoining, the two facets fought."
"A throwback," she said, softly. "What a horrible description!"
And the old man shrugged, sighed, and said, "Yes. Yet what else can we call him, the way Geoff was, and the way he looked? But one day, my dear, our ambassadors—our agents—will walk among people and look no different from them, and be completely accepted by them. Until eventually we Deep Ones will be the one race, the true amphibious race which nature always intended. We were the first…why, we came from the sea, the cradle of life itself! Given time, and the land and sea both shall be ours."
"Ambassadors…" Anne repeated him, letting it all sink in. "But in actual fact agents. Spies and fifth columnists."
"Our advance guard." He nodded. "And who knows—you may be one of them? Indeed, that's my intention."
She stroked her throat, looked suddenly alarmed. "But Geoff and me, we were of an age, of a blood. And if his—his gills? —those flaps were gills? But…" Again she stroked her throat, searchingly now. Until he caught at her hand.
"Yours are on the inside, like mine. A genetic modification which reproduced itself perfectly in you, just as in me. That's why your father's desertion was so disappointing to us, and one of the reasons why I had to track him down: to see how he would spawn, and if he'd spawn true. In your case he did. In Geoff's, he didn't."
"My gills?" Yet again she stroked her throat, and then remembered something. "Ah! My laryngitis! When my throat hurt last December, and you examined me! Two or three aspirins a day was your advice to my mother, and I should gargle four or five times daily with a spoonful of salt dissolved in warm water."
"You wouldn't let anyone else see you." The old man reminded her. "And why was that, I wonder? Why me?"
"Because I didn't want any other doctor looking at me," she replied. "I didn't want anyone else examining me. Just you."
"Kinship," he said. "And you made the right choice. But you needn't worry. Your gills—at present the merest of pink slits at the base of your windpipe—are as perfect as in any foetal or infant land-born Deep One. And they'll stay that way for…oh, a long time—as long or even longer than mine have stayed that way, and will until I'm ready—when they'll wear through. For a month or so then they'll feel tender as their development progresses, with fleshy canals like empty veins that will carry air to your land lungs. At which time you'll be as much at home in the sea as you are now on dry land. And that will be wonderful, my dear!"
"You want me to…to come with you? To be a…a…?"
"But you already are! There's a certain faint but distinct odour about you, Anne. Yes, and I have it, too, and so did your half-brother. But you can dilute it with pills we've developed, and then dispel it utterly with a dab of special cologne."
A much longer silence, and again she took his bare forearms in her hands, stroking down from the elbow. His skin felt quite smooth in that direction. But when she stroked upwards from the wrist…
"Yes," she said, "I suppose I am. My skin is like yours…the scales don't show. They're fine and pink and golden. But if I'm to come with you, what of my mother? You still haven't told me what's wrong with her."
And now, finally, after all these truths, the old man must tell a lie. He must, because the truth was one she'd never accept—or rather she would—and all faith gone. But there had been no other way. And so:
"Your mother," the old man hung his head, averted his gaze, started again. "Your mother, your own dear Jilly…I'm afraid she won't last much longer." That much at least was the truth.
But Anne's hand had flown to her mouth, and so he hurriedly continued. "She has CJD, Anne—Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease—the so-called mad cow disease, at a very advanced stage." (That was another truth, but not the whole truth.)
Anne's mouth had fallen open. "Does she know?"
"But how can I tell her? And how can you? She may never be herself again. And if or when she were herself, she would only worry about what will become of you. And there's no way we can tell her about…well, you know what I mean. But Anne, don't look at me like that, for there's nothing that can be done for her. There's no known cure, no hospital can help her. I wanted her to have her time here, with you. And of course I'm here to help in the final stages. That specialist from St. Austell, he agrees with me."
Finally the girl found her voice. "Then your pills were of no use to her."
"A placebo." Now Jamieson lied. "They were sugar pills, to give her some relief by making her think I was helping her."
No, not so…and no help for Jilly, who would never have let her daughter go; whose daughter never would have gone while her mother lived. And those pills filled with synthetic prions—rogue proteins indistinguishable from the human form of the insidious bovine disease, developed in a laboratory in shadowy old Innsmouth—eating away at Jilly's brain even now, faster and faster.
Anne's hand fell from her face. "How long?"
He shook his head. "Not long. After witnessing what happened the other day, not long at all. Days, maybe? No more than a month at best. But we shall be here, you and I. And Anne, we can make up for what she'll miss. Your years, like mine…oh, you shall have years without number!"
"It's true, then?" Anne looked at him, and Jamieson looked back but saw no sign of tears in her eyes, which was perfectly normal. "It's true that we go on—that our lives go on—for a long time? But not everlasting, surely?"
He shook his head. "Not everlasting, no—though it sometimes feels that way! I often lose count of my years. But I am your ancestor, yes...."
"The Taint" has more secrets to surrender to the careful reader. Jamieson is pivotal to these, as well. This is a tale that rewards rereading.
❖
Jay
19 June 2020
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