Arkham Detective Agency: A Lovecraftian-Noir Tribute to C. J. Henderson

by C. J. Henderson

  “Tell me about Pastore,” he said.

  “I was hoping we could change the subject. Can’t be good for me to keep thinking about it.”

  “Then tell me about you. Haven’t heard from you in years.”

  “And I feel bad about that, Frank, I really do. But we … we barely shared anything as it was. Few friends, interests. You knew my brother. But I liked you more than most of his friends.”

  “You mean cops.”

  “And when you left the force I knew you were making an escape. I was glad for you. Figured I’d let you go.”

  “Well,” he said, and the word hung in the air for several moments. “Like you said, we weren’t that close. Not like we were a thing.”

  But damned if they hadn’t come close. Maybe it had all been in his head. Maybe the looks he and Isa had exchanged at barbecues and weddings had just been looks. Maybe it was better that way—the best Frank had ever gotten from anyone, or given for that matter, had always been in daydreams. He’d spared them both the reality, he supposed, out of respect to her brother. That or she was one of the rare few daydreams he’d wanted to keep.

  She wasn’t saying anything now. He looked at her and she returned his questioning gaze. After a moment she laughed. He grunted. “Yeah.”

  “I guess we ought to talk about Pastore,” she said. “He’s young. Very hot-tempered. Most of the geniuses are. The joy of playing their music makes up for the tantruming.” Isabella yawned. “The performance was recorded by an outfit called Extrasolar Arts. Something where they digitize art and transmit it into space.”

  Nardi’s eyebrows twitched. “Really.”

  “It’s for rich crazy people who want their work to survive past the end of the world,” Isabella said drowsily. Good, she was relaxing. Nardi had the music folder in his lap and he pulled up the camera app on his phone. No, better to send a bare-bones e-mail first and let people decide if they wanted to receive the images.

  “Oh, Frank,” Isabella mumbled. He looked up, panning his flashlight toward her, and saw her eyes glistening. “I can hear the music,” she breathed. “Oh my God, Frank, it’s beautiful.”

  He began to rise and felt an incredible weight across his chest. He fell back into the chair and gasped her name. It’s here. Whatever it is, it’s here and it’s filling the room and Jesus, I think I hear the music, too.

  But it was only her voice, sing-song as it drifted toward sleep. “Oh, Frank,” she said again. Then, “I think I took the poison before I called you. I barely remember now.”

  Frank tried to scream, to rouse her from the darkness enfolding her mind and body, but all he could manage was a little squeak. Then—

  - - -

  He sensed warmth at his back. It was the only evidence of sunlight coming through the window against which he sat. The room was cloaked in shadow. His hands were planted firmly on the arms of the chair and he couldn’t move them. He couldn’t move, period. He quickly discerned that he was not bound, but frozen.

  The beam of Frank’s flashlight was nowhere to be seen, and Isabella’s prone body was but a vague silhouette against what seemed a living, seething darkness occupying the hotel room. Frank felt certain that it was the darkness holding him down, weighing upon his limbs and chest and pinning his eyelids open so that he had no choice but to witness whatever came next.

  What came next was a tall, lithe figure from across the room, a gaunt male who walked straight over to Nardi, took the smartphone from his lap, and began swiping his fingers across the screen. The phone illuminated a face that was pallid and pinched. The man was either angry or afraid or both. He’s looking through my call history. Or maybe he wants to know if I took pictures of the music.

  “Pastore,” Nardi whistled through closed teeth, his jaw immobile.

  “I followed her,” the man said, still somewhat distracted by his phone search. “It’s too late for her but not for me.”

  “Why can’t I move?”

  “Because I don’t allow it.” Pastore shrugged inside an ill-fitting tuxedo jacket.

  The cold dread which had been sitting in Frank’s stomach melted away. Heat rose in him. “You say it’s not too late for you? You killed her. You’re a dead man.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Pastore said. He returned the phone to Nardi’s lap and sat on the end of the bed. Paid no mind to Isa’s body. Frank was on fire. He strained every muscle and nerve within his body but could only manage to bring water to his eyes.

  “I didn’t intend any of this,” Gio Pastore said. He kneaded his long, pale hands together. Then he turned from Frank, taking something from the bed. It was a laptop, which he opened and rested with the screen facing Frank. A video began: it was difficult to see at first, as it was a nighttime scene, but Frank’s vision adjusted quickly. He was looking at Pastore and his musicians—Isa among them, seated in the back. She looked so still and beautiful and at peace. Behind her glittered the lights of a cityscape and, above it, Heaven’s firmament. A rooftop in Manhattan. The one and only performance of Il Torrente Forte.

  The suite opened with a low, long, somber note. Pastore stood before his octet, hands rising toward the stars. Then his arms dropped and he went into a flurry of wild gesticulations. The players somehow kept time with him and a frantic, discordant tune filled Frank’s head. But this was only the first movement. This wasn’t the madness, not yet.

  Sitting on the hotel bed next to Isa, Pastore’s eyes were closed. He swayed gently, lips moving soundlessly. Even now, possessed of whatever desperate horror had brought him to this room, he was in love with himself. Frank tried to temper the rage within his guts. Save it. Just wait.

  The suite’s second movement returned to the slow, mournful pace of the opening. There was nothing really remarkable about it. Though Frank was no critic, it seemed like Pastore was trying too hard to come up with something uneven and unsettling that still sounded like music. Then the third movement began.

  At least that’s what Frank assumed—on the video, Pastore was still waving his arms and looking from one musician to the next, but the musicians weren’t moving. Isa sat perfectly still, eyes half-closed, cello resting at her side, bow in her lap. There was only silence. Evening in Manhattan and only silence. The players looked dead. Pastore moved like the wind.

  The laptop went dark and Pastore closed it.

  “Your audience?” Frank asked.

  “There on the roof? Oh, a few patrons. Benefactors from over the years.”

  “Dead as well?”

  “No, no. They’re fine. It’s not about the music you heard. It’s about what you didn’t hear—that lives only in the performers.” Pastore’s silhouette trembled. “You saw, they didn’t even play the final movement. They couldn’t, not with those instruments.”

  “And the other audience? The ones you beamed your music to?”

  Pastore sniffed. “Extrasolar Arts, that entire thing was a waste of money. You see, my true benefactor—I thought he was up there, out there, but he lives in me, too. Just like the music. Space and time mean little to him. He was with us all the while.”

  “Name him.”

  Pastore shook his head furiously. “I can’t. But—” He leaned toward Frank and took from his lap the folder containing the sheet music. He used Frank’s phone to illuminate the pages. Flipping to the third movement, Pastore pointed at one obscene note which occurred again and again. It looked like an eye with malformed arms splayed about it, gesticulating the way Pastore had in the video.

  “That’s his sign,” Pastore said, “his name. I daren’t speak it but through the music.”

  “You gave them to him. Drove them mad. A sacrifice.”

  Pastore shook his head again. “No! I told you I didn’t mean for this to happen! The piece is a tribute, nothing more! A tribute to the god who’s shepherded me and my work. And it was a gift to those who played it—you saw them in the final movement, in that living-death trance—they WERE both alive and dead, like me! And loved it. We alone hea
rd the music!” He hurled the sheets across the room. The pages scattered to and fro in the dark. “It never occurred to me that we’d be so haunted by that third movement and what we can’t remember. That we would be driven to seek some approximation of that living death state. I’m only a novice practitioner of the old way. I can cast shadow over light, hold a man in an invisible vise … I can admit when I’ve overstepped my bounds. I shouldn’t have composed the Torrent.”

  “You realize that now,” Frank growled, “and she’s dead—right there, look at her! You arrogant piece of shit.”

  Pastore didn’t look at Isa. He looked at Frank. “I can feel it tugging inside me, like a black hole … that place where the music still lives, inaccessible to memory … it’s going to kill me, too, if you don’t do something. I can pay you money far beyond anything you know.”

  “Pastore,” Frank said slowly. “No.”

  The other man clenched his fists. “It was only meant as a tribute!”

  “You are the tribute, idiot,” Frank said. “And, even though I gave serious thought to strangling the life from you—even though you deserve it—I’m not going to. You’ll wait, and cry, and then you’ll die by your own hand. And then the music will be gone.”

  Pastore leered at him and snarled, “I can—”

  “You can do nothing, novice.” Frank’s glare pierced the darkness and he saw Pastore recoil. “Now let me go.”

  Pastore sat silent on the bed as Frank walked past him. It took everything within Frank to gather his belongings and leave Pastore alive in that room. He went to his office and drank half a bottle of Nyquil. Then he called a friend in Arkham PD and reported the suicide. He asked his friend to be as discreet as possible. After feeding the sheet music he’d taken to a black candle, he sat, alone, for a time. He did not sleep.

  He hoped that Isabella had found the music again. He hoped that there was some comfort for her in that, that perhaps Pastore’s benefactor would be merciful, or at least indifferent, toward those who had not known him. Frank was sorely tempted to attempt communication with her. He forced himself to swallow the feeling down. There was no point. She had come to him, yes, but only after sealing her fate with the poison. No, no, it was as cruel to blame her as it was to blame himself. They were just acquaintances who’d passed briefly in life.

  It was mid-morning and the sun streamed through the windows. Frank stared into its haze of color, then rose from his chair, seized by a thought. He went to his private bookshelf, unlocked its glass doors and fished out a thin volume. It was a play—a fragment, really, incomplete, its second and final act omitted. He thumbed through the first act and tried to recall what had moved him to fetch the book. He couldn’t remember at all. He was grateful for that, and returned the book to where it had stood collecting dust.

  ECHO OF A DISTANT SCREAM

  Lee Clark Zumpe

  Arkham – County Sheriff’s Office detectives are investigating the suspicious disappearance of 22-year-old Nathaniel Morin, son of Arkham attorney Everett Morin. A reward of $2,500 is being offered for information about the case.

  Nathaniel was last seen the evening of Aug. 28 dining with friends at Miflin’s. He is 5’ 8” and weighs about 145 pounds. He was last seen wearing a yellow polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals.

  - - -

  In the shivering dusk of a cool October evening, a small congregation huddled in the gleam of a streetlight.

  “It is believed that this is the house where the poet Edward Pickman Derby spent his youth,” Tisha Hewitt said, glancing over her shoulder at a grim old four-story mansion with high-peaked gables and blackened eaves, narrow windows and tilting chimneystack. The residence sat amidst a cluster of nineteenth-century dwellings near the intersection of East College and Walnut Street. “Pay close attention to the attic window, for that may well be the very room where Derby and his bohemian peers dabbled with the dark arts.”

  As Hewitt’s gaze returned to those who had managed to endure the circuitous two-mile, 90-minute jaunt from the Miskatonic University campus through Arkham’s merchant district and French Hill neighborhood, she assessed the group’s declining attentiveness. Her party looked weary, but contented. Tonight she decided to go with an abridged version of the Derby legend, the final stop on the tour. Before continuing, she placed her lantern—clearly a modern affair with high intensity LED bulbs, but designed with a vintage look, complete with rustic copper finish—atop the stone wall encircling the estate.

  “Derby was only eighteen when he published his book of poetry Azathoth and Other Horrors, a curious monograph that earned him much acclaim in some circles.” Like an actor on the stage of a community theater drama, Hewitt articulated the well-rehearsed lines summing up the tragic life of yet another Arkham eccentric. “His most celebrated work—the one which depicts an encounter with a Daemon Sultan of Ultimate Chaos—probably cost him his sanity. His mental collapse, hastened by external influences, led him to an early grave.”

  Hewitt watched as both out-of-towners and locals snapped pictures of the ancient home with their cameras and cell phones. The estate’s weedy lawn and bleak façade practically radiated misfortune and gloom.

  “Gone are the gold and crimson hues of sunset and the day’s wavering flames,” Hewitt said, quoting one of Derby’s lesser-known poems. “Night falls, and o’er Arkham stretches the cold cosmos, bloated with smothered stars and shattered worlds with forgotten names.” She paused for dramatic effect, deliberately scanning the twilight as if expecting to see some gesture of acknowledgment from ubiquitous entities. “That concludes our walking tour of Arkham, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the program and learned something new about our witch-cursed, legend-haunted city. If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to stick around. To return to the library parking lot on Garrison, simply follow College Street west two blocks.”

  To her dismay, more than a quarter of the group remained, lagging like children unwilling to acknowledge the end of playtime. They always posed such mundane questions.

  “Have you ever seen a ghost, ma’am?” the first inquired.

  After fielding several tedious inquiries, Hewitt reluctantly called on a young man wearing a Misfits tee shirt who had raised a hand.

  “The website mentioned a number of cemeteries in the vicinity, but we only visited one this evening,” he said, making little effort to suppress his disappointment. “Are the other ones not part of the tour?”

  “I adjust the itinerary every few weeks to keep the tours fresh,” Hewitt explained. “I have a lot of return customers, so I try to introduce some new stops every few months.”

  “I was hoping you might know which Arkham graveyards are best for getting pictures of orbs.” The Arkham Ghost Tours brochure clearly stated that there was no guarantee that guests would experience supernatural phenomena or encounter ghosts, witches, ghouls or demons on any given visit. Still, some customers had unrealistic expectations—in fact, some of them thought Hewitt had an obligation to keep trudging through the streets until they saw something spectacular. “What about Christchurch Cemetery? Can we go there?”

  “No, not Christchurch,” she said curtly. “I haven’t done enough research on it yet. If you want to leave me your contact information, I’ll be glad to let you know when I’ve added it to the program.”

  The man accepted Hewitt’s proposal and began the short hike to the parking lot, leaving her facing one last lingering customer.

  “It’s getting late,” she said, picking up her lantern. “Did you have a question, sir?”

  “I always have questions,” he said. “Let’s walk and talk. You parked at the library?”

  She nodded and the two began the trek along College Street.

  “Name’s Nardi—Franklin Nardi,” the man said. “Call me Frank.”

  “Mr. Nardi, I’m flattered, but I’m not single.” In fact, she was—had been—for more than a decade. “And I’m expected home in a little while.”

  “Sorry
, should have anticipated that,” Nardi said. He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “I head up Arkham Detective Agency. Heard of it?”

  “No,” Hewitt said. “Why would I have?”

  “Oh, I just thought that we might play in the same sandbox from time to time,” Nardi explained. “My agency has taken on some unusual cases.”

  “You’re the outfit that advertises de-ghosting services, aren’t you?”

  “That would be us,” the detective said, chuckling a little. “Although that’s only a small percentage of our business. We provide security, run background checks, surveillance, track missing persons—all the fun stuff. Only, in this city, there’s usually an unexpected twist to every case.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as those Arkham legends you mentioned back there: ageless warlocks, interdimensional horrors and arrogant gods of unimaginable power,” Nardi said, his sincerity reflected in a solemn stare. His work, Hewitt could tell, had exposed him to expanses of knowledge most people never glimpsed. “My understanding is that you are working on a book—a collection of Arkham’s darkest secrets. My experiences might provide enough material for a few extra chapters.”

  “Don’t you have some kind of client confidentiality agreement?” Hewitt smiled in spite of her wariness. Though the detective suffered from a drought of social poise, his candor proved a source of reasonable charm. “I don’t want to get sued, you know.”

  “No names—just a few detailed anecdotes, over dinner?”

  “And in return?”

  “Arkham Detective Agency can always use another consultant.”

  - - -

  Less than two hours later, Tisha Hewitt found herself sharing a pitcher of beer and a three-cheese calzone with Franklin Nardi at Miskatonic Pizza Company. Even as midnight struck, the popular riverside restaurant remained crowded, its tables and booths filled with boisterous college students. The Tiffany-style hanging lamps supplied enough light for diners to find the food on their plates, but generously tolerated the adamant patches of shadow that clustered in every corner.