A body in the mud by the Miskatonic River is just an average day for Detective Vergil Levard. But when the cadaver shows signs of something more sinister afoot, Vergil is forced to make a deal with the devil and work with the leader of the local bootleggers, Jimmy Hogan, to track down the killers.<br><br>If Vergil were a normal copper, the strange sigil wouldn’t have meant anything to him. If Hogan were a normal mobster, Vergil wouldn’t be falling for him. And if the fishing village of Innsmouth were a normal smuggler’s front, neither of them would have to fear for their sanity.<br><br>With darkness closing in and some terror from the deep creeping up behind them, Vergil and Hogan have nothing left to hold onto except each other.

Moonshine

With one last burst of effort, Vergil threw him towards the trees. “Run, you idiot. Get the car going. I’ll be right behind you. Run!”


It was a funny thing the war had done to men; no matter how paralyzed with terror they were, when someonebarked an order their bodies still moved to follow it. Hogan started to sprint. Vergil turned to face the beast in the moonlight. The moment his eyes were set on it again his throat started to clench in terror, but fear was like any other reaction of the body, you learned to manage it with time. Vergil slurred out. “Philip Manuxet?”


With nothing to chase, the monster had slowed and hearing those words it’s head cocked to the side. A golden eye the size of a saucer blinked at Vergil. It understood him. Now that he had a moment, details his mind had rejected in their horror started slipping through to Vergil. There were tatters of sodden cloth hanging from the creature’s ridged back and from its jagged joints. “You were a man once, weren’t you?”


Chapter 13