The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2)

by Zachary Rawlins

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “…about lawyers.”

  I was talking to a statue with horrified eyes. I pretended not to notice.

  “They had a really weird name…Yog & Sothoth, as I recall.”

  Yael flinched as if I had flung something in her direction. Her response fell apart before she articulated a single word.

  “What an odd dream,” I observed glibly, cracking my back and contemplating the act of standing. “The funniest thing, you know…”

  Her eyebrows went up, and she made an ambiguous noise.

  “…they asked about you.”

  It was like watching a balloon deflate. I have no idea whether it was relief or confirmation of fears.

  “Are you okay, Yael?”

  She nodded absently, and then offered her hand to help me to my feet. Her fingers were narrow and warm and felt as if they might fracture if I gripped them too hard. She was slight, so I had to do most of the work. I felt as if someone had replaced my brain with a kilo of broken glass, and I had a new chip in one of my front teeth that I couldn’t leave alone, but the important stuff seemed intact. I didn’t even feel that sick or feverish – just a week or so behind on sleep.

  “Are you okay, Preston?”

  I offered a distracted nod.

  “I’ll make it, one way, or another. I’m a survivor.”

  Yael nodded seriously.

  “I can see that. Dunwich informed me of what transpired, in a general sense. You must understand – what seems important to us is not important to the cats, and it goes against their nature to share secrets, even with allies. At best, I heard a general outline of events. Yesterday seems to have been replete with opportunities for you to betray me, Preston.” Her expression was calm now, her voice steady and confident. Whatever anxiety had seized her, she reconciled herself to it with enviable efficiency. “Did you avail yourself of any of them?”

  “Sometimes you talk like one of those lawyers, girl.” I ran my hand through my greasy hair. “Look, I gotta go check on April. It’s been hours. Maybe a shower and something to eat, and then we can…”

  I tried to slip quickly by her, toward my door. Yael was having none of it. She halted me with a pair of fingers gently pressed against my sternum.

  “April is fine. She and Sumire are asleep, and Dunwich is watching over them. Answer the question, please.”

  “You are a tough cookie, aren’t you?” I pushed her hand away gently. “I don’t know what happened on your end at all, you realize. If we are going to work together, we need to have equal standing.”

  “If there is to be any cooperation between us, then I need to know that I can trust you.”

  “I could say the same about you, Yael.”

  “Could you?” The look in her eyes was Artic Circle frigid. The question was not rhetorical. “Do you truly doubt me?”

  I’m a convincing liar, but I am no magician.

  “No,” I admitted, with a shake of my head. “Not at all.”

  “I will tell you everything that happened while you were gone,” Yael promised, as if it cost her nothing. “I think I need to do that, actually. I need to know which side you are on, first, though.”

  “Side? I lost track of all my options.”

  “There are only two choices, Preston.” Yael had a look of regret on her face, as if spoiling a child’s illusion. “With, or against.”

  Her tremendous aplomb, the graceful and principled opposition she offered up with the kind of guileless sincerity of a children’s story – I had an inkling why Jenny Frost turned into a tongue-tied mess around her, why the Outer Dark was covetous. Yael made everything simple – because, in her eyes, it was – and the universe apparently lacked the will to contradict her.

  If I had known the location of a sword embedded in stone, or a lost magical ring, I would have taken Yael there directly.

  “Having seen the alternatives, it would be insane not to be on your side, Yael.”

  “You have your own circumstances to consider.” Yael spoke softly, not really looking in my direction. Her arms curled around herself, in an unconscious hug. “My enemies, as you are now aware, are numerous and powerful. They would be willing to solve all sorts of problems for you. We hardly know each other, after all.”

  “That’s the part that confuses me, I guess. Why do they need my help, if they are so terrifying? Why not just snap you up and be done with it?”

  “They tried that, actually,” Yael answered, with a modestly downcast expression. “It didn’t work out, because of...circumstances.”

  “Circumstances?”

  She just nodded.

  I glanced at the sun, struggling pitifully to make an impression through a blanket of wet clouds. I would have to make a decision soon – but not quite yet. Yael and I still had a little time, for whatever it was worth.

  “If I believed I could collect, I’d sell you out in a second, Yael. Consequences be damned.” I was too tired to pretty it up, but she took it well. “I don’t trust your enemies enough to make a deal, and I think it’s in my best interests to stay on your good side.” I actually meant April’s best interests, but that’s best unsaid. “I didn’t betray you, to Madeleine Diem, or Mr. Yog and Mr. Sothoth.”

  To her credit, she didn’t need to stare deeply into my eyes or perform some sort of half-assed interrogation. She just gave me an approving nod, a wan smile, and stepped out of my way.

  “Take your shower, Preston, but do not linger,” she said, her voice hushed. “There is something I need to show you.”

  10. Concordance of the Fifth Assembly

  An archive of small wonders and mysteries. Collecting the secret names of flowers and the dead, transient as the clouds that drift in from the cold waters of the ocean. Arachnid patience and black marble eyes, weighted with ancestral memory.

  The train rattled like the ball bearing in a can of spray paint. The back of my shirt was wet with sweat before we went three stops. The air in the cars tasted stale and metallic, and the lights flickered intermittently in the tunnels.

  “Innsmouth, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me what happened down here, while I was chasing my tail in Iram.”

  “Yes. At the time it didn’t seem prudent,” Yael said, looking guilty over the omission. “I had to make sure you weren’t orchestrating events.”

  “I’m not the type, I swear.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” she said, with a brief smile. “Madeleine Diem made it altogether clear that you had nothing to do with this – and if it means anything, I apologize for suspecting you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  “Whatever suspicion you were operating on, you were right. It was probably smart, getting Josh to find the address,” Yael continued, glancing over at the subway map and counting stops. “I don’t think Holly or Madeleine expected anyone to come check on Madeleine’s former home.”

  “I don’t understand why,” I complained, resting my head against the window. “Sure, Holly didn’t tell us about it, but we would have turned that info up eventually. Wouldn’t anyone have gone looking for answers there, once they knew it existed?”

  “No.” Yael shook her head. “Sometimes I think Josh doesn’t like you very much, Preston.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Josh gave you an address, but that’s it. He could have given you a few helpful pieces of information, had he been so inclined. They would have been obvious to anyone reviewing newspaper clippings, and obviously relevant.”

  That goddamn vulture. I resolved to strangle the ghoul at the first opportunity.

  “What didn’t he tell me?”

  “You’ll see,” Yael said, clearly enjoying herself. “Don’t worry.”

  I wasn’t worried. I was annoyed, but I didn’t share that. Yael had come around to my side – at least as far as the attack on Sumire went – so I didn’t want to antagonize her with my impatience.

&n
bsp; We pulled into the last stop in Sarnath. There were only two stations that served Innsmouth, and I suspected we would use the latter, as it was closer to the water. Public transportation omitted some neighborhoods in the Nameless City, and the waterfront was perhaps most notable among those omissions.

  The car mostly cleared out. As we rolled out of the station, I decided to change the subject.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said, smiling pleasantly. “Where did someone like you have the misfortune to encounter Jenny Frost?”

  “Why does everyone always ask that?” Yael sighed. “In the Waste, naturally.”

  “The Waste?”

  “Yes. The enormous wasteland that surrounds the Nameless City.” Yael toyed absently with vinyl mascots April had attached to her umbrella strap. “You must have come through it on your way here.”

  “I suppose,” I said, scratching the stubble on my chin. “I don’t remember much, though. Mountains, I think, and after that, desert. A train, maybe? That’s about it.”

  “There isn’t much more to it. There are ruins, but most of them are poisoned and radioactive. There are a few trading posts, some lizards, and more bandits that I expected. That’s really about it.”

  “And that’s where you met Jenny?”

  “That’s it.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “We encountered the same group of scavengers, and dealt with them together. I thought I would be safer in her company…”

  “Probably not.”

  “…and she had been wandering aimlessly for some time, and required a guide. We shared the same destination, so it just made sense.”

  The way she described it, it almost did. Assuming you knew nothing at all about Jenny Frost.

  “That must have been an experience.”

  She nodded, eyes far away.

  “I don’t want to put this the wrong way,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “but, have you noticed that Jenny is an exceptionally dangerous person?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not sure what you are getting at.”

  “You seem like a nice person, Yael,” I admitted, exasperated. “You also seem to be friends with the worst person I know.”

  Yael folded her arms and turned her attention to the darkness outside the window.

  “You don’t know Jenny Frost,” Yael said, speaking quietly, so that I strained to hear her over the clamor of the train. “You have no idea.”

  ***

  “It was like this…”

  “…the first time I came here. Yes.”

  The rain beat on Yael’s umbrella. There was enough room to fit me maybe halfway underneath.

  “Well, sh…shoot.”

  There were fragments of three of the walls, but the front of the building had been consumed completely in the fire that reduced the vast majority of the structure to ashes. The tremendous heat of the conflagration had scorched houses half a block distant, and killed trees across the street. It had happened decades ago, but the ash remained piled against the heat-scarred remnants, as if neither wind nor rain could wash the site clean.

  There wasn’t enough left to guess at what it might have been, aside from a home to Madeleine Diem. Located at the end of a street adjacent to the water, the building had extensive grounds, which likely spared the adjoining warehouses and commercial property from the flames. The sea was quiet today, but the wind carried cold and salt.

  There should have been gulls crying.

  “I’m thinking arson.”

  “Arson for sure.”

  “Huh.”

  “Records say it was a temple.”

  “What kind?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Who do you think torched it?”

  “Holly or Madeleine.”

  “I’m getting tired of hearing that particular answer.”

  “Me too.”

  “You wanna go in?”

  “Sure,” she said, pulling on her mask. “Let Dunwich go ahead. We have no idea if the flooring is still intact.”

  The cat padded across the ash, staining his paws. The rain pelted his coat and assaulted the umbrella. He sniffed at the scorched timbers, then trotted nimbly across, tail waving proudly. We watched him meander through the ruins, until he shot Yael a look.

  “Come on,” she said, closing her umbrella. “It’s safe enough.”

  I had to take her word for it. The floorboards were badly damaged by the fire, and in places, I could see down to the unfinished floor of the basement. The waterlogged wood bowed alarmingly beneath my feet, and had to fight the urge to try and rush across. Fortunately, the further reaches of the floor seemed somewhat more intact.

  The fire must have been extraordinarily hot. Little remained inside but melted scraps of metal and fragments of blackened brick, along with copious amounts of waterlogged ash.

  “Preston,” Yael said, calling me over to area by the somewhat intact east wall. “You need to see this.”

  I joined her. At Yael’s feet, there was a small collection of singed bone fragments. They were thoroughly charred, indicating a fire that burned long and hot. I squatted and sifted through the pile. The bone was damaged and cracked from heat, but I still found identifiable ribs, femurs, and portions of several different skulls.

  “There were a few of them,” I guessed. “Four or five people, maybe. And they were people-people – not fish-people.”

  “The proper name is Servants of the Deep,” Yael reminded me. “As for the bones, I thought as much.”

  “I’m not sure I get the significance…”

  “Let’s look around some more,” Yael said, striding away. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Despite her confidence, I found nothing but ash and a few fragments of bone scattered about. Some of the bone was animal, but much of it was very definitely not. Whatever story it was supposed to tell me, I couldn’t hear it. I was ready to give up when Yael called me over to what would have been roughly the center of the floor. She was examining a heavy wooden trapdoor gravely.

  “I didn’t notice this the last time I was here. We didn’t have very long to look around, though.”

  “Why not?”

  She glanced at the alley that led to the water.

  “Servants of the Deep. A bunch of them. Not five minutes after we arrived.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Are you kidding? We did the same thing we’ll do if they show up again – we ran.”

  “Probably smart.”

  Yael nudged the heavy metal ring that served as a handle for the trapdoor.

  “I did the lock already. You think you can pull this open?”

  I rolled up the sleeves of my jacket and rubbed my hands together.

  “Let me see.”

  It was heavier than it looked, but I’m sort of a big guy. I needed three tries, and a little help, but it opened.

  We looked down at a stairway composed entirely of coral, so rudimentary that it almost looked incidental. Yael clicked on her flashlight, but all we could see were uneven stairs descending into moist darkness.

  “You first?” I suggested.

  She nodded, and I let her and the cat go first. I’m not proud.

  I worried, given the proximity to the harbor, that the tunnel would be subject to flooding, but found no signs of water, to my relief. Drowning in the confined dark holds a particular dread that I was glad to skip. The steps were uneven and composed of smooth material, so footing required constant attention.

  I couldn’t see much of our surroundings, other than what was illuminated by the beam of Yael’s flashlight. We encountered a door identical to those installed in Constance’s observatory, and I wondered how long it had been since the sisters had last been able to share recommendations on contractors. A pair of Servants of the Deep had been assigned to guard the door, a task at which they had been thorough unsuccessful. A starved dog with a blood-and-foam spattered muzzle paused in the action
of removing a fish-person’s face to grin at us, oily tongue lolling out between partially rotted teeth.

  Except there are no dogs in the Nameless City. One of the ancient conditions that the Cats of Ulthar imposed, in return for their patronage and mercy – according to Holly, anyway.

  This was not a dog. This was Fenrir.

  “Oh, no,” Yael sighed. “Jenny? Are you here?”

  When I first met Jenny Frost, she was in the company of the wolf like beast she called Fenrir. He wasn’t a pet, or a companion – but then again, I’m not sure what he was to Jenny, or vice versa. They seem to cooperate, at times, but I have also seen them apparently at odds. Jenny’s treatment of Fenrir would seem cruel – she never feeds him, and frequently abandons him for long periods of time – but Fenrir’s own malevolence defies pity.

  It seemed like Yael recognized him, too.

  The ugly intelligence in Fenrir’s miserable pink-rimmed eyes transfixed me. His stomach was engorged, swollen as if with pregnancy, but Fenrir was emaciated, skin stretched tight over ribs and across the spine. Lice crawled freely through his patchy coat, and the skin beneath was blemished and coated with sores.

  I took a cautious step to the side, never taking my eyes off the thing in the shape of a dog.

  Fenrir dropped the chunk of tissue he had been chewing onto the ground, and shifted to accommodate my new position.

  Another step. Fenrir was up on his feet now, tail wagging lazily. Beady, mocking eyes.

  A final step put my back against the wall. Fenrir loped up three or four stairs, and then sat down between myself and the door like an obedient dog expecting a treat. The scalpel was in my left hand, concealed by the sleeve of my jacket, though I didn’t remember taking it from my pocket. I shifted my weight to my front leg, considered my options. Fenrir tracked my movements with ill-disguised amusement.

  Yael tapped my shoulder, and I very nearly screamed.

  “Preston,” she whispered, hand trembling. “Let me try.”

  I stepped back quickly, and the thing in the shape of a dog laughed silently at our antics.

  “Fenrir, I want you to listen to me.” Yael stepped forward as she spoke, voice and stride mostly firm. I was impressed. “It’s Yael, Jenny’s…well…”