Cthulhurotica by Cody Goodfellow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jennifer Brozek, Ahimsa Kerp, Carrie Cuinn, Gabrielle Harbowy, Don Pizarro, Madison Woods, Richard Baron, Juan Miguel Marin, Maria Mitchell, Mae Empson, Nathan Crowder, KV Taylor, Andrew Scearce, Constella Espj, Leon J. West, Travis King, Steven J. Searce, Clint Collins, Matthew Marovich, Gary Mark Bernstein, Kirsten Brown, Kenneth Hite, Justin Everett

she for that whole year she was unaccounted for? Dryden puzzled it over. Piracy was common back then. The Clark could have been commandeered by sea wolves and then used to transport contraband. Innsmouth had a dark reputation that had been whispered about by its neighbors for over a century and a half. The town was universally shunned by anyone living near it (except, of course, by those living inside of it), the general impression being that its citizens carried themselves outside the laws of mankind. Dryden had hoped that Dyer’s grandson, Abe, would supply the concrete corroboration he needed. Instead, the man had been supremely unhelpful, and Dryden grudgingly walked up the trail back into town.
    One of the few people who treated Dryden like a welcome guest was Hitch Leeds, manager of a coffee shop near the pier. He’d lived in Innsmouth for about ten years and most of his clientèle was comprised of the non-native longshoremen and other sailors who drifted in and out of Innsmouth Harbor regularly. Hitch smiled as Dryden entered the warm shop with a bit of mist clinging to his gray coat.
    “Your special today, Dryden?”
    “Please, Hitch,” Dryden replied with a halfhearted smile. Hitch set to work brewing a black coffee, laced with espresso, while Dryden sat down and set the bound articles from the university on the counter. Hitch cast an absent glance over at them.
    “Light reading for the weekend, huh?”
    “Not exactly. It’s a bunch of articles detailing that shipwreck I’m tracking.”
    “I used to do a little beach combing myself when I was a kid, down in North Carolina. Down there, every kid goes through a phase where they think they’re going to be the one to solve the mystery of what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke. That’s how I used to spend a lot of summer days – scrambling around Roanoke with my cousins. All we ever found was cigarette butts and cans. Some shells.”
    “My pursuit is even more mysterious. The Catherine Clark disappeared at sea, but according to at least one account, was sighted here in Innsmouth a year after she vanished.”
    “I don’t understand why you put so much stock in that tale. Most likely it was a different ship that was sighted.”
    “Wait a minute, Leeds. You don’t know the whole story about that.” Dryden smiled knowingly and retrieved from his binder the aged log of Innsmouth’s lighthouse keeper, Dyer Gilman. Clearing his voice, Dryden read aloud:
     
    The Catherine Clark stood on the sea about a mile off from Devil’s Reef on the night of December 21, 1873. I’d recognize that accursed figurehead anywhere. She’s haunted my dreams ever since Grant first showed me her bewitching eyes. She stood regal and calm amidst the sea’s maelstrom. Her ghostly singing echoed over the Innsmouth Coast. Some of the older families were unaffected by the noise, and harshly criticized others for being frightened. It was hard not to be afraid. It was hard not to be afraid when you saw so many of the young men wandering out in the horrific storm to stare out on the coast like they had no brains left in their heads. They stood enthralled by that accursed singing. I felt it a bit, myself, though I imagine as an old, grizzled man of the sea, I had more control than the younger fellers who began casting themselves to the sea like worms on hooks to the arms of – God only knows what.
    Oh yes, though, I felt the pull. I felt the pull twanging through every quivering muscle in my body. Within every beat of the notes that hellish night sang I felt the pull to go to the sea and to follow that ocean-fairing Galatea into the depths of her darkness. To throw myself upon where ever she lay. To entomb myself in that sound, that hellish, accursed, moaning sound!
     
    The beeping of the coffee maker wrenched Hitch’s attention back to the counter. Dryden smirked, knowing Hitch had been thoroughly mesmerized by the shadow of Gilman’s words cast over his mundane thoughts. Hitch