The Watcher from the Sky

"The Watcher from the Sky: The Deposition of Abel Keane" is the second part of August Derleth's The Trail of Cthulhu series, following "The House on Curwen Street" and followed by "The Gorge Beyond Salapunco". It was first published in the July 1945 issue of Weird Tales.
==Synopsis==
Abel Keane is a divinity student living in Boston, Massachusetts, who has some experience as a stage hypnotist and has taught himself psychic abilities, including telepathy. One night, Keane returns to his apartment to find a man clad in strange robes sleeping in his bed. Since the door was locked, Keane can only conclude that the intruder somehow entered by the window.
Using his psychic sensitivity, Keane tries to learn something about the man, who responds mentally by calling Keane by name and telling him to be patient. He explains that he is Andrew Phelan, who had disappeared from this same room two years before, and has recently returned from Celaeno. When Phelan wakes up, he asks Keane to lend him a suit so he can go out. Keane tries to prevent him from leaving without further explanations, but when he attempts to hypnotise Phelan, he ends up falling asleep himself. Somehow, their minds are linked, and Keane experiences visions of Phelan leaving the apartment, taking a bus to Innsmouth, walking to the Marsh family refinery and the Esoteric Order of Dagon church, and being pursued by a batrachian creature until he escapes the town. Keane wakes up at the moment Phelan is returning to the room, and the latter confirms that what Keane witnessed did in fact occur.
While Phelan rests, Keane tries to find information that would elucidate what's happening. He finds out that Phelan, before his disappearance, had been a secretary of Prof. Laban Shrewsbury, and would often visit the Miskatonic University library on behalf of his employer. Keane takes a bus to Arkham and heads straight to the library to inquire about what kinds of books Phelan used to consult. Later on, Keane takes another bus to Innsmouth, where he talks to a shopkeeper (the only person he could find who doesn't have the Innsmouth look), asking him about the reason the town is shunned and the refinery owned by Ahab Marsh. The shopkeeper, Mr. Hendreson, tells Keane that Ahab Marsh's ancestor, Obed, had brought the church of Dagon to Innsmouth, but warns him not to let the locals know that he's been asking questions, as people who do so always end up disappearing.
At last, Keane returns to Boston and confronts Phelan, who explains that he and Shrewsbury are in a mission to try to prevent the return of the god known as Cthulhu, who ruled the Earth before being imprisoned. To protect themselves, they are armed with five-pointed star-stones that can repel Cthulhu's lesser servants, including the batrachian Deep Ones, but are not effective against the deity itself or its more immediate servants. Two years ago, when one of these mighty creatures caught on to their trail, Shrewsbury and Phelan were forced to flee with the help of their own allies: the winged Byakhee, servants of Cthulhu's rival Hastur. Drinking from the golden mead of the Elder Gods, the professor and his secretary have astrally traveled to the Celaeno star system, where an alien library is located. For the last couple of years, the two have been studying the records there, while also keeping a watch on Earth. Once the people of Innsmouth restablished commerce with the Deep Ones, Shrewsbury discovered that Ahab Marsh was planning to open up a gateway to free Cthulhu from his prison. To prevent that, Shrewsbury sent Phelan back to Earth.
Keane offers assistance, so he and Phelan apply make-up to disguise themselves as Deep One hybrids and infiltrate Innsmouth. Once there, they manage to spy on Ahab Marsh: a man with a mysterious past, who doesn't seem to belong anywhere in the Marsh family tree. His appearance is bizarre, even for an Innsmouther, with tall stature and a shuffling inhuman gait. He is hairless, chinless, and his eyes and hands are hidden behind thick spectacles and mittens. Later at night, Keane and Phelan find evidence that Marsh has been swimming out to Devil Reef and abducting people to be offered as sacrifices to Cthulhu. When Keane speaks to Hendreson again, the latter informs him that there have been numerous disappearances of young men and women, most of whom have worked for Ahab Marsh before they vanished.
Phelan gives Keane a star-stone, three pellets of concentrated golden mead, and a special whistle that can be used to call out the Byakhee, and informs him that they must leave as soon as they finish the job at hand, which is to destroy Ahab. With that goal in mind, they forge a letter from an old relative to lure the two elderly Marsh women away from the house, leaving Ahab alone. They then proceed to scatter a large number of star-stones around the house, cutting out any avenues of escape for the cultist. Finally, they set the house on fire and watch while Ahab is unable to approach the star-stones and perishes in the fire as a result. As his clothes burn and his wax ears melt, they see that Ahab Marsh is not a hybrid, but a full-blood Deep One with a scaled and tentacled body, webbed hands and feet, and functional gills. Keane and Phelan flee from Innsmouth while the fire spreads to other houses. Phelan urges Keane to move on and remember what to do if he is followed. Keane witnesses Phelan summoning the Byakhee and departing to Celaeno.
Two weeks later, Keane notices that he's being followed by an Innsmouther, and starts hearing the noise of a huge creature moving underground. His consciousness expands when he swallows the golden mead pellet, and just as he summons the Byakhee to take him to Celaeno, he catches a mental glimpse of the beast that is now pursuing him: something "like a giant frog with tentacles".
==Behind the Mythos==
In "The Watcher from the Sky", the events of The Shadow Over Innsmouth are alluded to by Mr. Hendreson, who refers to the narrator of that story by the name Williamson. In the original story, the narrator's maternal grandfather is named James Williamson, but the narrator's name is not given. Nowadays, his name is generally assumed to be Robert Olmstead.
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:August Derleth works