Death on the Arkham Express

by Byron Craft

  “As you said,” put in the Worm. “Only the desire to multiply. The Doel are without shape, they are formless until they feed . . .”

  “How far can they reach?” I groaned.

  “The distances of Earth to things that have traveled through space is minuscule. A mere trifle. They will overrun your planet. They will utterly destroy.”

  “And then what?” Although I didn’t want to, it was a question that needed asking.

  “The instant the Doel are Earthbound their limited awareness only knows three things; to eat, to grow, and procreate. When their food source dries up, when their numbers increase at a far greater rate than the cerebral cortex and cerebellum of all living creatures, they will atrophy, their existence will cease. Without biological life forms, only vegetation remains and without photosynthesis; the carbon dioxide-oxygen cycle, all plant life will wither and rot.”

  The thing’s arms and three-fingered hands flared out as if expressing an emotion. “Their life and later their extinction will take away all from the Earth.”

  Revulsion overcame me. A sickening in my stomach of such magnitude never experienced before. Was everything I was learning from Night Crawler factual or a ruse? Was it an outer space red herring meant to mislead me? I did walk in on it exposing the true nature of Lady blue. Was there greater treachery? I had experienced, first hand, the many holes in the victims’ craniums, and that disgusting white worm thing revealed by Doc Winfield’s grotesque post mortem. It made what I heard credible. A horror without form that enters brains and clothes itself in human thought until the crawling, fleshless obscenity sucks the life out of its human host!

  “Besides eating their way into existence, how did they get here in the first place?” I dared to ask.

  “Harmonic resonance, it is a diverse and varied phenomenon seen in countless forms throughout the universe, from gravitational orbital resonances to electromagnetic oscillations, to acoustical vibrations in solids, liquids, and gases.” Night Crawler’s cylindrical torso swelled dramatically and then contracted. Was breathing difficult for it? “Harmonic resonance,” it picked up again, “spans a vast range of spatial scales, from the tiniest wave-like vibrations of elemental particles, to even the subtle timbres of lifeforms. It is a power of attraction. In the case of planet Earth, there were two attracting elements.”

  I stared at the wormy thing waiting for “It” to continue.

  “The wheels of your metallic conveyance contacting a rail generates sound waves which travel further than the rail and the air. It makes an ideal positioning signal for the Doel.”

  What, at times, I thought that the “tchjk tchjk tchjk” sound was soothing while at others an annoying pain in the head, became a homing pigeon for a thing from outer space. Amazed I asked the obvious, “You said there were two attracting elements. What’s the second?”

  “You, Earthly Detective.”

  I was dumbfounded. What the hell was Mr. Worm driving at? Me? Before I could sputter a few syllables “It” persisted with its tall tale.

  “There is something about you that is different from other Earth dwellers of your kind. You vibrate contrary to the rest of your race.”

  Inside I was shaking like a leaf, but I knew that wasn’t what the oddball creature meant. “This is crazy. I’m no different than any other guy on the street.”

  “It is there, I assure you. I can feel it also. Reach back into your mind Earthling. Something in your past may have altered your bio-harmonics.”

  There was nothin’ special about me. I put my pants on one leg at a time and could drink booze with the best and the worst of them. What the hell; and then, a creepy feeling overcame me. I started to review my career on the force.

  I work at Station House 13. I am the head of the Mythos Division for the Arkham Police. I investigate any and all things that go bump in the night while at the same time trying to discover their hole-and-corner intent. I hunt down things that can be misshapen, vague or unseen, and at other times, material horrors, all of which usually leave bloody trails wherever they go. I took out a band of ugly little Pilot Demons by burning my house down around them. Besides being homeless for a while, nothing special or singularly unusual happened. I blew the head off an Innsmouth bastard with my .45, but the fish face never touched me. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Could it have been Corvus Astaroth, the Night-Gaunt? When I impaled the S.O.B. with an iron sword, I got a tremendous electrical shock. Did that have a permanent effect on me?

  “Realization presents itself on your features, Earthly Detective.”

  I didn’t like being called “Earthly Detective,” but I didn’t say as much. Worm didn’t have any features for me to read. I was listening to a bulbous head that resembled a pile of crap with an eye and a mouth.

  “This is not my first-time journeying to your world.”

  “So, your kind are infiltrating our planet?” I threw down the gauntlet.

  “The Megadrile are not invaders. I am a police-man. Before we could seal the hole in our plane of existence that allowed the Doel to escape, some came here at another time within your sphere. The woman that plummeted to her death in your place of residence . . .”

  “Arkham?”

  “Precisely, I hurled her out of the window. The Doel had infected her. The collision with the … what is your word? ‘pavement’ destroyed the parasite and any chances of it multiplying.”

  “Yeah,” I said disgusted, angry, and sickened. “I was there.”

  “Precisely again, you see now the attraction?”

  “No!”

  “Then there was the prisoner you were transporting.”

  “What about him.”

  “He never made it to confinement after you released him to the authorities. The Doel were growing inside him as well. When and if you return to your Arkham you may learn through your information services about the criminal with the missing head. They will never find it. I disposed of it along with the Doel that resided inside.”

  I didn’t like it when the worm said, “if you return to your Arkham,” but I chose to ignore it because it solved my chain of murders. I didn’t have all the details yet, but that would probably come later. How do you collar a six-foot worm? Where do I clamp on the handcuffs? “That explains all of the killings on the Arkham Express doesn’t it?”

  “I am regretful to be the executioner, but it is true. The infection had to be eliminated. An observer on our world, for a period of surveillance, left a portal open too wide and too long outflowing the Doel to your side. The hole has since been sealed. As a regulator, I was able to pass over. My obligation is to police the dimensional barrier. Since the discharge, the task that laid before me was to eliminate all the Doels that crossed-over. I have done as such except for the ones occupying your metallic conveyance. Only I am unable to finish my assignment.”

  “Your assignment? What else is left to do? Everyone is dead on this train except for me. Hey, don’t get any ideas, pal!”

  “No Detective, you are free of the infection. I don’t know why? Perhaps your bio- harmonics makes you immune, or maybe it is what you Earthlings call ‘luck.’ Your ‘luck’ was good as well when you put the bodies of the infected ones in the cold room on wheels. The reduced temperature slows their rate of reproduction. I was going to destroy the contents of each victims’ skull, but there was always interference. Your conveyance on rails . . . “

  “It’s called a railroad train.” His misuse of the term irritated me.

  “Your ‘train’ is so crowded that it became an impediment to my intended destruction of the Doels. The one you called the ‘boilerman’ was simple to dispose of outdoors, cloaked in the nocturnal freezing rain. However, the passengers inside made my concealment practically impossible. Soon the seeds the Doel have planted will mature and escape their confines. Mankind will be overrun.”

  Somehow a written confession from a worm didn’t seem plausible. “So, you bashed skulls and ripped the head off a poor soul to accomplish y
our ‘assignment.’ Wasn’t there any means at your disposal besides killing them all?”

  “They were mercy killings. Once infected by the Doel there is no turning back. The . . . decapitation . . . was my solitary combative confrontation.” Night Crawler’s inflating and deflating respiration increased. “I became skilled at other methods since. The conflict left my fluid mechanics ecosystem damaged. I can function outside of it for only short periods. The impairment also made me unable to return to my Megadrile World.”

  The blue pus and the meat cleaver all made sense to me. A fight probably ensued and the dining car steward, Donald Wheatcroft, must have got in a few licks with the knife before going down. Did the blue stuff drive the thing I came to know as the dame reading Wuthering Heights? I cocked my head toward the shell of Lady Blue, “This is a robot?”

  “It is not self-propelled, merely an abstract, a transportation device, both terrestrial and celestial. It is a quantum prosthesis.”

  “You were inside operating IT?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Can’t the quantum whatchamacallit be repaired?”

  “That would be for the mechanists of my world. I am simply a police-man.”

  The big worm’s ballooning increased. “You left out two others on the train.”

  “The pilot of this device on wheels and its helper?”

  “Precisely.” I relished the opportunity to pilfer his lingo. “The engineer and the conductor?”

  “They were infected as well. I disposed of them into the boiler’s firebox. My vital force is ebbing. I did it with all the strength left to me. Their bodies will serve as the last source of fuel for this conveyance. Soon it will slow to a stop. Eliminate the Doel before that happens. I can no longer apprehend the mind parasites. The quantum prosthesis is breaking down. It has never happened to our kind. The consequences of its deterioration have only been theorized. It may implode. It may create a cavity in the abyss. We, I am afraid, do not know. Move quickly; the Doel must be utterly destroyed.”

  “How?” my voice squeaked a bit.

  “Incineration,” the worm answered weakly.

  “Burn all the bodies in the reefer!” I hollered.

  Night Crawler inflated even more. Soon there would be little room left in the compartment. It outstretched a hand as if to say “Yes.” I skirted around its ballooning form and headed for the exit. Halfway out of what was once Lady Blue’s private compartment I heard an expulsion of air pronounce her last words, “Beware, Detective, in humans the cerebellum plays an important role in motor control.”

  When in the first-class passageway I heard a loud soggy “kerplop.” I wasn’t about to look back and find out what color now decorated the interior of compartment number seven.

  The last words uttered by bogus Lady Blue stung me. I looked to where I had dragged poor dead Nigel. The blanket I used to wrap up his corpse was still there. Nigel Guest wasn’t in it.

  ***

  Fire, fire, burn them up. Cremate the remains of the victims was all I could think about as I ran out of first-class, through the Pullman and into the dining car. I had my Zippo, but that was pretty much useless without something to ignite. In the dining car, where I last interviewed Conductor Passworthy, was the kerosene lantern the engineer loaned me. It was a good size lamp for signaling with a half-gallon reservoir. It wouldn’t be enough, I decided. The bodies had been piling up in the reefer, and I was going to need a greater amount of flammable substance.

  I removed the rope and pasteboard sign across the entrance to the galley. I tossed them to the floor. There was no need any longer for a police barricade. The stains of slippery red blood on the galley deck had dried to a crackly chocolate shade when I stepped on it. I found what I needed in the icebox, a two-gallon bucket of lard. Lard is combustible like wood, it will burn if you get it hot enough, and the kerosene will be its fire starter.

  I kept a watchful eye as I headed to the refrigerator car. Dead Nigel probably walked around, and I wasn’t about to let him catch me off guard. At the open-air platform, I unlatched the door to the reefer. The racket made by the steam train was louder outside, the clickety-clackety sound of the wheels bouncing over the rails now took on an eerie quality. The noise was shrill.

  With the door shut and the noise of the slowing train muffled, I drew the bolt barring entrance from the outside. Nigel hadn’t been close behind and this, I thought, would stop him from sneaking up on me. Once the bodies of the victims were cremated, I would hunt down Nigel Guest.

  The task was gruesome, but according to Mr. Worm, necessary. I went about scooping handfuls of lard and smearing the stuff on all the corpses. The job of spreading the greasy mess over the stiffs was a stomach-turner. At least they were all clothed. Their attire would help to feed the flames. It was an ugly thing, but it had to be done. I poured a fair amount of the kerosene over of each. I was counting heads and the headless, wiping my hands on my handkerchief when I realized that Railroad Dick’s body was not amongst the deceased. I looked up and expected him to be standing somewhere within the car’s interior. I was startled when I saw Nigel grinning at me. His eyes were white without pupils, and like the Dick, his teeth looked more canine than human.

  I unholstered my Colt, slipped the thumb safety off, aimed at his forehead, and pulled the trigger. The .45 caliber report was deafening echoing off the metal walls of the refrigerator car. The top of Nigel Guest’s head blew off exposing a writhing mass of white finger worms. The massive wound didn’t slow him down a bit. He looked like a bleached witch. Dead Nigel came for me arms outstretched. The oil lantern rested on the case of kumquats where I last left it. The filler cap was off. I scooped it up, poured the remainder of the kerosene over his noggin, and ducked in time to avoid a clobbering. The punch that missed threw him momentarily off balance, and I stepped to his left dropping the empty engineer’s lamp. Nigel advanced with a victorious devilish grin. I flipped open the top of my zippo, spun the wheel against its flint, and ignited his opened skull. Nigel flailed about blindly, the top of his head a flaming torch. He swung to the right, arms still outstretched, then to the left; I was able to keep a safe distance.

  I undid the locking bar to the side loading platform and rolled the huge door to one side. Nigel staggered close and fell to his knees. The opened crown of his blasted skull smoldered and turned a crispy brown. We had been traveling along the shoreward realms leading to Arkham. I planted my shoe in the square of Nigel’s back and shoved. I watched his toasted form tumble over the rocky coast. Through the dense fog, I could barely make out his shadowy outline. Nigel bounced across massive boulders and, farther down, into the surf. The Arkham Express slowly moved along until I could no longer catch sight of him.

  The lighter was still in my hand after Nigel departed. I lit each recumbent form igniting first the kerosene which in turn, as the heat increased, kindled the lard. The flames rose high, fire and ice. The mobile Viking funeral and my confrontation with Nigel caused me to be careless. The stocky baldheaded shape of Railroad Dick materialized before me. He must have been crouched down amongst the many crates waiting for his opportunity to pounce. The bastard sucker punched me again. It was a hard right. I didn’t go down this time, but back peddled squarely into the steel frame of the large loading door. A stabbing pain shot up my spine. I drew my .45 only to have it knocked from my grasp by yet another blow from the Dick. I watched as my gun tumbled to the grass alongside the railroad tracks. He took the third swing, and I ducked this time. His fist struck the steel doorframe with a loud “clang.” It didn’t seem to faze him. The contact his fist made with the frame must have broken every bone in his hand, but he didn’t flinch.

  I countered the Railroad Dick’s attack with a right cross followed by an uppercut. He stood his ground, smiled, and let me have it again. He landed a punch to my chest, and I almost lost my balance toppling backward toward the open edge of the traveling refrigerator car. The heals of my shoes hung precariously over the threshold. My arms swu
ng wildly, out of control, and I caught hold of an iron ladder rung. It led to the roof of the reefer. I think that the Dick was surprised that I didn’t fall out like Nigel, if the walking dead can ever harbor the emotion of astonishment. Dick just stood gawking at me. Maybe it was the movement of the fog-shrouded landscape sliding by that momentarily mesmerized him, or maybe he was truly amazed that I didn’t take a backflip. Nevertheless, it gave me the few seconds needed to scale the ladder to the roof.

  We were traveling below thirty miles per hour, and the train kept slowing. I remembered what the Night Crawler said, that all the Doel things must be “utterly destroyed” before the train came to rest. Right then I wasn’t that concerned about the worm’s warning. The wind was whipping topside, and I had to jamb my fedora tightly on to my noodle to keep it from blowing off. If my luck held out, maybe Railroad Dick will burn up with the rest of the cadavers below and I would ride out the ever-decreasing speed of the Arkham Express until it ceased moving. Luck was not on my side. I witnessed the bald pate of the Dick rise above the ladder. His head was just above the roofline, and before he could climb higher, I ran over and kicked him square between the eyes.

  I stuck like glue. The Dick had grabbed my ankle, and I plummeted to my backside. I tried to kick loose from his iron grip, but he held me fast. I removed the stiletto from my shirt pocket, ejected the blade, and buried it to the hilt in the Dick’s wrist. The long blade of my stiletto jutted out beneath the heal of his palm with the handle juxtaposed on the other side of his wrist. There was no blood. I don’t know if it was the shock of being stabbed or that a crucial zombie muscle had been severed, all the same, he released his grip. The action gave me time to get to my feet. I swayed with the movement of the train. Zombie Railroad Dick climbed the last remaining rungs of the ladder and faced me once again.