Spawn of the Green Abyss (story)

"Spawn of the Green Abyss" is a short story by C. Hall Thompson, published in Weird Tales.
==Synopsis==
This short story is similar to the Innsmouth leitmotif of sea dwelling monsters intertwining with humanity. 
A doctor taking restive time in a remote Mid-Atlantic town falls in love with the daughter of a cursed former sailor. As their relationship develops, he discovers that she is actually only part human, her father having been bewitched and seduced by an abomination from beneath the waves. As the girl begins to hear the calling of her blood, she begs her new husband to kill her rather than let her be drawn into the horrors thrust upon her by her inheritance. 
==Setting==
The story is set in Kalesmouth, an "antiquated village sprawled on a forlorn peninsula off New Jersey’s Northeastern coast." It is described as little more than a sprinkling of cottages with a single general-store and a population in the low fifties. The small white houses are scattered along a narrow finger of sand-and-rock land that juts defiantly eastward into the sea. There is water on three sides and a single highway to the mainland. Its most prominent landmark is an ancient mansion called Heath House, a "misty hulk" with "straggling, mossy embattlements." Behind it is a cove in which stood four weirdly hewn pillars, placed so that each made the corner of a crude square; in the moonglow they had the aspect of sinister mediaeval altars of sacrifice, reared to noxious, unnameable gods. 
==Characters==
*Dr. James Arkwright, a young brain surgeon.
*Cassandra Arkwright, née Heath, Lazarus' daughter, and the product of his unholy coupling. She is described as "slim and well-made; ebony hair flowing to her shoulders gave one a feeling of rich warmth. It matched the steady blackness of extraordinary eyes that protruded ever so slightly. Her skin was deeply tanned." 
*Lazarus Heath, a former sailor manipulated into breeding with a creature from the deep. His "skin, taut and dry, was the color of aged jade, covered with minute, glistening scales.... Lazarus Heath’s pale eyes bulged horribly," and he has "two faint bluish streaks, about four inches in length, running along each side of the scaly neck, just below the jawline."
*Dr. Henry Joyce Ambler, a provincial GP; a "florid, white-haired individual, full of shop-talk."
*Eb Linder, the "taciturn, wind-dried proprietor of the general-store."
*Solly-Jo, a "slow-witted, distorted brute, with matted blond-gray hair"; he is homeless and sleeps on Kalesmouth's beach.
==Publication History==
"Spawn of the Green Abyss" was first published in the November 1946 edition of pulp magazine Weird Tales. It has since been reprinted several times, including in Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992) and A Mountain Walked (Centipede Press, 2014), and has also been translated into German.
==Connection to the Mythos==
*The Spawn of the Green Abyss were added to the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game by Chaosium.
Category:C. Hall Thompson works
Category:Mythos-Adjacent Works