That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1)

by Emily C. Skaftun

  I looked the house and yard up and down for another dead raccoon or something similar. I doubt a squirrel holds so much blood. And while my conscious mind would not allow me to search for a dead person, I found none. I am the only animal in or near the house, in any state of life or death, of any size worth considering. As I write this, I confirm I am not dead. Sick, yes! Weak, yes! Insane? Perhaps ... I would rather be insane than a murderer of such skill and cunning and cruelty. (Are the two mutually exclusive, as I suggest?)

  What have I done? Or, what have I allowed to be done? What have I, against all my science and learning and experience, unleashed into the world?

  Again, I beg the air and the page; what have I done?

  #

  Ibid.

  I have taken some long minutes to clean myself and dress. I cannot find my clothes of yesterday. Neither can I find any wounds on my person. I wrote the earlier entry awash with what I feared was my own blood, but it cannot be. I have no cut, no hole, not even a missing toe nail or molar to point the bloody stylus at me. Small consolation, as now I must wonder who or what served as the hapless ink bottle to this mad inscription.

  I made myself eat a little, but my bodily functions seem to fail me today, and I am already exhausted, having done no more than snuff the candles and clear the doorways. I shall not wait for the holiday to end. I shall go now, weak as I am, and take the N to the University. I shall lock it up safely in the book vault--am I not its curator?--and think on what to do, whom to consult. I must end this evil now, and I need to get this monstrosity away from me, now, immediately, and perhaps forever.

  #

  Here ends the personal journal of Professor Falcrovet.

  #

  As is well publicized, he was found dead on the morning of 2 January by staff of the library. They found him locked in the book vault, dead on the floor directly below the display for the Necronomicon. He lay in a pool of his own blood. His body was almost completely drained, despite not having any obvious wounds or cuts. The police continue to maintain the belief that this blood must have come from self-inflicted wounds.

  The authorities choose to ignore the implications of the trail of blood that led out of the vault for almost one hundred feet, into the stacks, and ended abruptly in a pile of broken glass, amidst which Hal's key to the book vault was found. A high window, directly over the key and final drops of blood, had been smashed out, probably on the same night as Hal's death, but that cannot be confirmed.

  The solution to the blood trail is obvious to me, when you see Hal's personal notes to himself about his waning health. He was not a weak or unhealthy man. His symptoms, seen in hindsight, point easily to hypovolemic shock from severe loss of blood. I know that Hal himself would eventually have seen what the coroner takes as a flight of fancy; Hal was losing that blood for days before his death. His lack of wounds does confuse the matter, but not for me. The medical experts ignore all else but the blood on his carpet, and the blood in the library.

  This line of reasoning now brings me to the details of the blood trail itself. The trail was marked by footprints of a most unusual nature. The footprints were not Hal's, as he was wearing his normal dress shoes. The human-sized prints--both left- and right-footed--had three large toes each, perhaps ending in very long nails, but actually appearing to have animal claws. The prints appeared inside and outside the book vault, all the way along the blood trail to the vault key and the pile of broken glass. Again, the police regard this as either a hoax or a coincidence, somehow trying to convince themselves we only wish to see animal prints, instead of random blood marks.

  Hal's account is further discredited by the book itself. The Head Librarian reported days later, during the investigation and interviews of her staff, that Hal's notes in his professional journal could not possibly describe the Necronomicon in her vault. That book was not dry, brittle, or fragile, she stated. The book appeared to her to be in excellent condition, and she doubted Hal's estimations of its antiquity. Her primary concerns were to get the "disgusting thing" out of her library, to hand it over to the authorities to investigate the trafficking of such frauds, and to prevent further loss of University funds to charlatans.

  However difficult the evidence is to read, however bizarre Hal's final state of body and written mind, I am not dissuaded from my hypothesis that Hal was murdered. Murdered not by human hands, but murdered all the same. The "daemon" of three toes slew him and took his blood to feed the Necronomicon, in order to revitalize it, or perhaps to prepare it for some immediate task of apocalyptic proportions. The book slumbers now, but it is visited on rare occasion by scientists of the University and the courts, as they attempt to identify the materials of the book binding and ink, with a frustrating but telling lack of success.

  It is obvious to me now that it is constructed of human skin and blood, as the book itself told Hal, but not from some recent murder or delusion of sacrifice to an Elder God. They will not find the victim or victims, because the book is indeed centuries old. It is protected by its own infernal powers, and by denizens of a world we fragile humans barely touch, who appear rarely, and then only to do the important work of their masters.

  If it were not for the love I hold for my late mentor, Halwarth Stephen Falcrovet, I would not dare to work to turn over these ancient and slimy rocks, to see what unearthly worms lie beneath. My loss at his death is overshadowed by the fear and dread I feel every waking moment, as if something were watching me, biding its time. I expect any night to be awakened, all too briefly, by the scraping and scratching of three long, bloody claws at my window.

  * * *

  Professor Halwarth Stephen Falcrovet has served as the professor of Occult Studies at Miskatonic University for over thirteen years. He has advanced degrees from Miskatonic, Harvard, and MIT. He has published over one hundred scholarly papers. His book, Analysis and Timeline of the Transition of Extrasolar Entity Worship Cults from the Levant to the Caribbean is taught in universities world-wide. He is President of the International Body of Xenobiologists and Xenopsychologists. He is an Arthur Murray dance instructor and enjoys cryptograms, logic puzzles, riddles, and cooking exotic foods from all over the world. He resides in Arkham, Massachusetts.

  * * *

  Darin M. Bush became a life-long fan of science fiction and fantasy after seeing the original Star Wars: A New Hope in the theatre as a child. He is the author of the short stories "Hot Steel, Cold Irony" and "Abducted by the Librarian," available on the Kindle. He has adapted Shakespeare for community theatre. His poetry has been translated into Norwegian and Japanese. He is a certified Toastmaster, having served as a mentor and officer many times. He has worked in special education and information technology. He can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/darinmbush. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

  * * *

  Arkquarium

  An account by Wes Hickman, as provided by Folly Blaine

  * * *

  During my junior year of high school I volunteered nights and weekends at the Arkquarium--technically the Arkham Aquarium, but nobody ever called it that. I told my parents I was volunteering to boost my college application, but really it was because of Ellen. Smart, funny, awesome Ellen Jasper. Ellen was in my biology class and worked at the aquarium's coffee cart. I'd been in love with her forever, since second grade at least, and by setting myself up as the only other male high school junior in her vicinity, my plan to make her notice me was foolproof--until I discovered you don't get much quality flirt-time when you're busy wiping fingerprints off glass all day, scrubbing algae out of tanks with a ratty sponge, and scraping wads of dried chewing gum from the faux-rock walls.

  Ellen's coffee cart was in the lobby between the tide pool replica and the ticket office. Just past that you'd enter the dim, winding halls where I spent most of my shifts wiping down endless panes of smudged tank glass. But I lived for the opportunity to clean out the tide pool--people were always dropping their sunglasses and jewelry in there, just out of reach--bec
ause it meant talking to Ellen. Gentle, wonderful, thoughtful Ellen who, back in the second grade, walked me to the nurse's office after a fourth grader busted my lip and my shirt got drenched in blood. Ellen never even flinched.

  I was up front one day, trolling the tide pool with my net on its long metal pole, trying to think of something to say. "Have you checked out the new exhibit?" I asked.

  Ellen shook her head. "I've been stuck up here all day." She scrolled through her phone, laughing occasionally. I could tell she wasn't really listening. "What's the exhibit about?"

  "Octopi, squid. It's just a bunch of posters so far. There's a cool one about how all octopuses are venomous from some National Geographic study. The aquarium's supposed to get a couple live ones next week. Should be pretty awesome. I hear Doctor G's got a knack for finding rare ones."

  "Doctor G?" Ellen looked up from her phone. "Don't you think there's something strange about that guy?"

  I shrugged and scooped a piece of floating popcorn into my net. Doctor G was the aquarium's marine biologist, one of those pale academics Miskatonic U was so fond of matriculating.

  Ellen continued, "Gail in janitorial says all kinds of noises come out of his labs late at night. Like heavy furniture moving and squealing sounds. You know," she lowered her voice, "from those back rooms."

  Ellen, who I happened to know was a vegetarian, went on to tell me her theories about Doctor G and what went on in his lab, mostly involving fish torture. She leaned against the coffee cart, screwed up her mouth, and rambled about how intersecting ocean currents off Martin's Beach meant Arkham had a lot of displaced sea life washing ashore or making their way up the Miskatonic River, getting stuck--blah blah something about global warming, vents along tectonic plates, or whatever. I tried to pay attention, but I was too distracted by the little downy hairs on her tanned arms. I wanted so much to touch them.

  Ellen's eyes narrowed. Doctor G, she said, received all kinds of weird deliveries in the dead of night. Nobody knew what those deliveries were exactly, but they made the staff nervous, and Ellen--she tossed her long brown hair over her perfect shoulders--said she knew all this for certain because everybody chatted around her like she was invisible when they came to refill their coffee.

  "I bet I can find out what's back there," I said, because I'm an idiot. "I know where they keep the keys."

  "You do?" she said.

  I stood up tall, puffed out my chest. "In the ticket office. In that gray cabinet against the far wall." I'd found the keys by accident, all carefully labeled, while looking for paper towels.

  "I'd feel so much better if I knew all the animals were being treated with respect, you know?"

  I didn't really know what she was talking about, but I said "Absolutely," and returned to the tide pool before she saw the blush creep into my cheeks. I plucked a waterlogged penny from the sand--heads up!--and slid it into my pocket.

  I could use all the good luck I could get.

  #

  Here's what I told the cops, later, about that night, before I realized it was easier to lie. This is straight out of the police report:

  After I borrowed the spare key from the ticket office, I waited for Doctor G to take a bathroom break. It was a lot easier than I expected, actually. If anybody asked what I was doing, I figured I'd just say I was looking for a mop or something. But nobody did.

  I was really nervous and not paying much attention, but the main thing I noticed when I finally got in there was a tub at the center of the room. The same kind of heavy plastic tub they use for transferring bigger stuff between tanks and you know it looked kind of like a squid through the clear lid--like the ones on the posters in the new exhibit--not that I was an expert or anything. There were a few dead fish floating on the surface of the water, all decomposing and peeling scales, like they'd been in there a while.

  And the tank smelled bad, even fishier than usual, if that makes any sense.

  The squid-thing though, I remember it had long wavy tentacles and a balloon head that was kind of a long, narrow triangle and a massive black eye in the center of its skull. Skull isn't really the right word ... Anyway, the creature hardly moved. I thought it was sick? Legs just drifted around its half-deflated balloon head, a spongy whitish color. I hadn't seen many cephalopods up close, but this one though, I knew enough to tell it wasn't a traditional squid or an octopus because ... well ... at the end of each suckery tentacle was a small, white hand. Eight hands, with thumbs, slowly opening and closing independently. I leaned over the tank as a viscous, veiny lid slid shut over its single black eye and opened again, watching me watching it. Then one of the tentacles darted to the surface and the hand on its end grabbed one of the dead fish. The hand hauled the fish down to a black beak at the base of its head-foot, and then the beak gobbled up the fish. Freaked me out.

  Then a toilet flushed down the hall--pipes always do this shuddering, clanking thing every time you flush a toilet in there. You'd think an aquarium would have better plumbing. And I got the hell out of that room before Doctor G or anybody else saw me. That was the first time. The second ...

  #

  The next morning I wanted to forget it ever happened. Well, I sort of wanted. On my way to grab a vacuum, I passed Ellen setting up a fresh batch of coffee and I stopped to say hello.

  "Hey," I said.

  "Hey, Wes." Ellen measured out a tablespoon of ground coffee, dumped it in the filter. "Did you--"

  Ellen trailed off as Doctor G pushed through the front doors and strode across the lobby. The doctor's hands were stuffed deep in his pockets and he was muttering, like usual, but he was followed by two squat, thick-necked dudes, which wasn't usual. Affecting nonchalance, I picked up a pen sitting on the counter, and spun it a couple of times between my fingers before it clattered to the counter. Doctor G and his goons never slowed.

  After they disappeared down the hallway, Ellen whispered. "What did you find out? Is he torturing animals?"

  "I saw--" I started to say "nothing," but the way she looked at me with those huge brown eyes--every detail spilled out before I could stop myself. It was stupid, really. If I could've just said from the beginning, "Hey, Ellen, want to hang out?" I never would've had to break into Doctor G's lab to impress her in the first place. But now I couldn't stop talking, even if part of me felt like I should've kept the creature a secret.

  I'd be such a shitty spy.

  When I finished, there was only the gurgle of drip coffee brewing. Ellen brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "I want you to show me," she said.

  I blinked. Seriously? She'd believed every crackpot theory she'd overheard for months and now she wanted proof. Just the thought of seeing that thing again made my stomach roil. All night I'd had nightmares about pale hands dragging a bloated pale fish-corpse up and out of the tub, getting closer and closer, tentacles filling my nostrils with salt water and seaweed, until I woke up choking on my own spit. No way was I going in that room again.

  Ellen put her hand on mine and batted her insanely long lashes at me. "Please?" She drew out the word, especially the "eeeeze" part. I swallowed the sour bile rising in my throat.

  "How about tonight?" I heard myself say.

  "I'll bring flashlights," said Ellen.

  #

  After our shifts ended, Ellen and I hung out on the floor of the ticket office, half-assedly studying for biology. The borrowed key was pinned hard and cold inside the pocket of my jeans, and it was a relief when Doctor G finally left through the lobby to the parking lot and Ellen confirmed his car was gone.

  Reentering the lab, first thing I noticed: the creature was no longer in the middle of the floor. That brought a huge rush of relief, and I would've been fine calling it a night then, but Ellen wanted to investigate, so I followed her into the adjoining room reluctantly.

  The overheads were off, but we could see by lights inside the tanks that lined the walls--enough to make out the edges of a long, narrow room, and a whole lot of occupied tanks. Water gurgled all
around us. Ellen inspected the tanks, cooing at the different fish. I switched on my flashlight and swung it around the space. Waist-high elevated pools, shallow like the tidal pools out front, took up most of the room. I leaned over to see what was inside.

  Behind me, Ellen shrieked.

  I spun to find Ellen trying to back away from the wall of tanks. Her long brown hair had caught on something, something--I stepped in close for a better view.

  Small pale fingers gripped Ellen's hair. Fingers attached to hands attached to tentacles, attached to a pale, long, bulbous, and eerily familiar head. My heart jolted into full-on freak out mode and my muscles screamed to run, but the sight of Ellen struggling stopped me. I lurched forward instead.

  Ellen was yanking her head around too much for me to pry the fingers open, and they were tangled too tight in her hair anyway. What I needed was a weapon. Nothing in reach--except the light in my hand. Light. Dark. That could work. I aimed the flashlight into the creature's single black eye. Its viscous lid snapped shut like the thing was in pain and I hoped it was. Ellen swatted the loosening hands free, stumbled, and then sprawled on the ground.

  "Are they off? Are they all off?" Her hands jerked through her hair, fingers raking through to the ends.