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

by C. J. Henderson

  “So, tell me, how does one become a tour guide?”

  “Not a tour guide,” Hewitt said, feigning indignity at the expression. “Proprietor and chief raconteur of Arkham Ghost Tours.”

  “Rather an odd occupation, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, not so much. Less stressful than my old job.”

  “What was that?”

  “Investigative reporter for a Chicago daily.” Hewitt studied Nardi’s face as she offered a glimpse at her résumé, judging his reaction. “Worked there more than twenty years before coming home to Arkham.”

  “Really—a genuine Arkham native,” Nardi said, though his surprise seemed oddly staged. “Why’d you give it up?”

  “Got too good at it,” Hewitt explained, a trace of regret in her tone. “It was like an obsession, exposing every aberrant indulgence and injustice, ferreting out every crooked cop and shady transaction. Got tired of digging up dirt on every politician in the state. No matter how noble they are when they take office, corruption finds them soon enough.”

  “And now you shepherd people through the streets of Arkham, telling weird tales and ghost stories. Quite a leap.”

  “It keeps me going while I work on the book,” she said. She had already managed to interest someone who worked with the university press. “It’s much easier to divulge the secrets of the dead. They don’t have attorneys eager to threaten you with libel suits. They don’t have acquaintances in the mafia they can beg for favors. And they don’t have husbands and wives and children who grieve and ache and suffer over the humiliation, no matter how accurate and noteworthy your award-winning reporting may be.”

  “‘Secrets of the Dead’—is that the title of your book?” The detective felt an unexpected casualness creeping into their conversation—a bond that, upon sensing it, immediately bothered him. Remembering he had arranged this meeting for a specific reason, he made a sudden and perceptible change in his approach. “I guess you’ve put in plenty of hours researching this city.”

  “Officially, ten months, as far as the book goes,” Hewitt said. “Technically, I’ve been gathering Arkham tales most of my life, I suppose.”

  “The tour was enlightening. You seem well prepared to answer questions about nearly any location—any old mansion, any abandoned church, any burial ground. That is a valuable commodity. Don’t be surprised if I start calling you for input every time I run into a brick wall,” Nardi said, alluding to his offer to make her a consultant—a strategically-placed bit of flattery. The next words he spoke, however, changed the nature of what had been an amiable conversation. “I was surprised you haven’t looked into Christchurch Cemetery.”

  The very mention of it clearly disturbed Hewitt.

  “Truth is, I don’t go to Christchurch Cemetery for personal reasons,” she said. “My brother’s grave marker is there.”

  Nardi paused as he contemplated the way Hewitt had phrased her last statement.

  “I hope you don’t find my curiosity intrusive, but was your brother abducted?”

  “Yes,” Hewitt said, her friendly demeanor wavering. “Well, not exactly. We don’t really know.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I shouldn’t be so sensitive about it.” Her gaze shifted and her face grew ashen, hard and strained. “Not after all these years. Alex was seventeen when he disappeared. At first, the police considered him a runaway. A few weeks into the investigation, someone found his jacket and one of his shoes—both covered in dried blood. I think the sheriff called in the FBI at some point, but there were never any leads to follow. A year went by and my parents decided to hold a memorial service. The body was never found.”

  “His belongings …” Nardi dawdled, carefully choosing the language with which to ask the next question. “Do you know if the police advised your parents as to where the physical evidence was discovered?”

  “In a drainage canal, out past Boundary Street, a few blocks from the Presbyterian church,” Hewitt said, struggling to keep her sorrow contained. “On Alex’s birthday, Mom would put flowers on the roadside. She kept it up for years, even after Dad died. She kept visiting that stretch of road right up until she went into the nursing home. When she passed away ten years ago, I promised I’d do it for her. Of course, I was working in Chicago. I never had the time.”

  In the interval of intense silence that followed Hewitt’s confession, the pair realized that all the boisterous college students had scurried back to their dorm rooms and that more than an hour had passed. The owner of Miskatonic Pizza Company busied himself vacuuming the carpet, waiting patiently to turn off the lights and retire for the evening.

  “I’ve got this,” Nardi said, picking up the check. “I know it’s a long shot, but I would be willing to look into the case for you.”

  “Really, Mr. Nardi—”

  “Frank.”

  “Frank—you don’t have to keep playing this game,” Hewitt said. “You’re working on a case— one that somehow has a connection to Alex. This impromptu dinner date is nothing but a veiled debriefing.” Hewitt had recovered her composure and gave no indication that she took offense to Nardi’s methodology. “Your tricks might work on regular folks, but not on someone who spent nearly two decades interviewing people—grilling them and manipulating them into letting their little secrets slip. Hopefully, you gleaned something useful. I just wish you had been straightforward from the beginning.”

  “Fair enough,” Nardi said. “If I do come across something, I’ll let you know.”

  “No, thank you,” Hewitt said, collecting her purse as she stood. “Some things we have to let go. If we didn’t, we’d all lose our grip on hope and sanity, wouldn’t we?”

  - - -

  Tisha Hewitt woke from a deathlike slumber, the echo of a distant scream receding into oblivion. Her conversation with Franklin Nardi had dredged up more memories than she had realized, reviving the old nightmares she had spent years trying to entomb.

  Reaching for the mission-style lamp on the nightstand, she accidentally toppled a plastic tumbler sending the remnants of her iced tea splattering over the parquet wood flooring.

  “Shit.”

  Glancing at the clock-radio on the nearby dresser, Hewitt faltered beneath the blankets. Three hours of sleep hardly seemed adequate, but the memory of the vivid nightmare shattered all prospects for a peaceful rest. As always, the recurrent dream had deposited her in the labyrinthine corridors of some colossal underground complex with its low, arched roof and stone walls green with mold. Through that ancient subterranean passage she shambled, sluggishly approaching a figure she believed to be her brother, Alex. Drawing closer, she clutched his shoulder—only to watch in horror as the putrefied, worm-eaten vestiges of his body disintegrated, melting into a pool of bubbling gore.

  Before relinquishing its grasp, the nightmare tormented her with one additional vision: Her screams summoned a horde of hideous preternatural abominations that tenanted this dark and loathsome cavern. From out of the shadows scuttled the mammoth translucent organisms, their headless umbrella-like bodies ringed by innumerable tentacles and trailed by a tube-like structure that terminated in a mouth filled with jagged, metallic teeth. From the membranous body of each gliding horror sprouted a dozen slender, spiny spidery legs with alternating black, red and yellow bands.

  Though these things exhibited no visible biological capacity for communication, they transmitted one distinct message. Every time she suffered through the nightmare, she heard their repeated mandate clearly, spoken in the voice of her lost brother:

  Leave us alone.

  After a strong cup of coffee and a shower, Hewett stared vacantly at her laptop for several minutes. The book can wait, she thought to herself.

  It took her most of an hour to locate the cardboard box filled with important forms and files she had collected before selling her parents’ house. Thumbing through the paperwork, she took inventory of package’s contents: father’s will, mother’s will, various l
ife insurance policies, military records relating to her dad’s service, 401K statements and other pieces of paper that efficiently encapsulated her parents’ very existence. Their entire lifetimes had been condensed into an inconsequential jumble of legal transcripts and financial reports.

  At the bottom of the box, she found what she was looking for in an oversized manila envelope inscribed with the words “Alex—reports and news clippings.”

  For the first time in years, Hewitt examined all the information her mother had meticulously assembled and preserved—every written report from local law enforcement officers, every mention of the search in the local newspaper and a copy of every homemade handbill posted around Arkham and throughout New England. Pages from a journal her mother kept detailing the long and excruciating year following Alex’s disappearance brought a flood of tears.

  Near the bottom of the box, she found a single Polaroid snapshot, taken only weeks before the incident. The photo showed both seventeen-year-old Alex and twelve-year-old Tisha on a 1980 trip to the Florida Keys. She remembered the day vividly: Her father had taken the picture in the parking lot of a Woolworth’s in Key West where the family had stopped to buy fishing gear.

  Less than a month after that vacation, Alex was gone.

  Among the newspaper clippings, Hewitt also discovered a group of articles held together with a paperclip—articles about other Arkham disappearances. The pieces recounted tales of men, women and children who, over the last 35 years, had ended up as missing persons. Although her mother had never mentioned anything about it, she must have believed there might be a connection.

  Methodically, Hewitt reviewed each episode, organizing the data and creating a spreadsheet. She began with a young woman named Petra Whitley. Whitley, a sociology major at Miskatonic University, went missing on Christmas Eve in 1982. Three years later, in 1985, a taxi driver vanished, his vehicle found still running on the side of the road. In 1987, a high school student—just one year younger than Alex had been when he disappeared—never returned from a late-night party following a football game.

  The most recent abduction story added to the collection took place in 2004, the year before Hewitt’s mother had gone into the nursing home.

  As Hewitt devoured every scrap of information she could find, she perceived a disquieting negligence on the part of Arkham police detectives assigned to investigate the cases. More often than not, law enforcement officials shelved the cases as impossible to solve and, in a few instances, brazenly suggested the person in question had simply packed up and moved out of town without notifying their relatives.

  Having cataloged each vanishing, Hewitt next turned to the Internet, running online searches for each missing Arkham resident. She was stunned when not a single name turned up information about the missing persons. The police and media apparently failed to uncover any similarities among the cases. In fact, Hewitt realized that none of the newspaper clippings mentioned the previous disappearances—as if the city had developed selective amnesia.

  Hewitt saw the common denominator instantly: Of the fifteen cases reported by the Arkham Gazette, nine included some statement or reference that suggested the individual had been last seen in the vicinity of Boundary and Hill streets.

  - - -

  “Honestly, I can’t believe it’s you.” Winston Moss admired his unexpected visitor with tender eyes. Though age had started to coarsen his countenance, his features retained a smoothness that lent him an aura of wholesomeness. His smile made Tisha Hewitt blush. “How many years has it been?”

  “At least thirty, I guess,” she said, surprised when the CPA flung his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. “You went to Framingham State University after high school, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right—six years to get a four-year degree,” he said, resorting to one of his favorite quips. “I ended up working in Boston for twelve years before I lined up a spot here.”

  A minute later, Moss chuckled nervously upon realizing he had been standing and staring at Hewitt much longer than tact and etiquette would endorse. Embarrassed, Moss offered her a chair at a table in the conference room of Jackson, Moss & Associates, a respected accounting and tax firm in Arkham. He excused himself for a moment and, when he returned, brought two cups of coffee.

  “I was surprised to find you were still here in town,” Hewitt said, wincing a little as she took a sip of the lukewarm hazelnut-flavored blend. “I always thought you wanted to pack your bags and leave Arkham behind.”

  “When I was a teenager, yeah—I couldn’t wait to get out of this place.” Moss shot a glance toward the third-story window of the office. The office overlooked the scenic Miskatonic and the gentrified River Town district with its upscale bistros and art galleries. “But, you know, there’s no city like Arkham,” he said. “I missed it, I guess.”

  Throughout Hewitt’s childhood, Moss had been her brother’s closest friend. During their high school years, the two were inseparable, playing varsity sports, taking weekend camping trips, sneaking off to see bands like The Ramones and Blondie at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston—even double-dating. When Alex disappeared, Moss suffered as keenly as Hewitt’s immediate family. His depression culminated in a suicide attempt and a year-long stay in a mental health facility in Gardner, Massachusetts.

  “What about you? I heard you moved out of state.”

  “Quinnipiac University, journalism major,” Hewitt said. “After that, I worked in Chicago until a few years ago.”

  “You writing for the Arkham Gazette now?” Moss leaned across the table and grabbed a copy of the morning newspaper. Flipping to the back page of the business section, he pointed to a quarter-page advertisement. “We run with them three days a week. I don’t care what anyone says—print advertising still brings in plenty of business.”

  “No, I’m not doing anything for the Gazette right now,” she said. “Actually, I’m involved in some freelance investigative work. That’s why I’m here, Winston: I’m looking into Alex’s abduction.” Hewitt waited for the gravity of her words to register with Moss. Giving it time to sink in, she proceeded cautiously. “Turns out he wasn’t the only person to go missing in Arkham.”

  “Well, no, I mean, I wouldn’t think so.” Moss grew oddly meditative for a few awkward moments. Any delight the reunion had brought him now evaporated as he grappled with unwanted memories. “Big city like this, I would think people go missing quite often.”

  “Arkham’s not that big,” Hewitt said, trying to relieve the tension she could sense blossoming inside him. She worried that coming here to interview him had been a mistake. She worried she might stir up emotions that Moss could not handle. “I know what you mean, though. Funny thing is, these cases don’t ever seem to be resolved. It’s as if the whole town just sweeps them under the carpet after a few months.”

  “I think about Alex all the time,” Moss said, his tone defensive and curt. “He may as well have been my brother.”

  “He was mine,” Hewitt reminded him. “And we obviously haven’t forgotten him—that’s not what I meant.” She placed her hand tenderly over his, her very touch an affirmation of their shared grief. “But what about everyone else? How is it that so many people vanish, and the general public barely takes notice? Forget panic—this city can’t even admit that the sheriff’s office is sitting on a long list of cold cases that spans decades.”

  “How many people?”

  “At least fifteen,” she said. “And the only reason I know that is because my mother was keeping tabs on it. The stories run in the newspaper once or twice, then disappear from public record.”

  “It very nearly killed me when Alex disappeared,” Moss said, his pallor exposing an internal struggle. He stood and strode over to the window, stopping with his back to Hewitt. His stifled grief came surging like the storm-driven sea. “Tisha, I need to explain something to you: I cared a great deal for Alex. My feelings for your brother went deeper than friendship. Even though he didn’t share thos
e feelings for me—even though he couldn’t have those feelings for me—he didn’t want that to change our relationship. He respected me and he was always there for me, even when my family threatened to disown me.”

  “I didn’t know,” Hewitt said. His revelation, though, made perfect sense. “Alex always said he wished you could have been his brother, you know. I remember him trying to convince Dad to let you move in one summer.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help you, Tisha, I will.” His despair subsided to a melancholy calmness and resolute tenacity. He returned to the table and sat down, fixing his gaze on Hewitt. “What do you need from me?”

  “I need to know if there’s anything you can remember that might have gone unmentioned—any detail that seemed insignificant that might be important,” Hewitt said. “Almost every case I’ve looked at is tied to the area west of town. Is there any place you and Alex used to go over on Boundary Street?”

  “Not Boundary Street,” Moss said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Hill Street, just a little ways up from where it merges with West Washington. We used to go down into the creek there to smoke weed or drink beer.”

  “Alex smoked pot?”

  “Not very often,” Moss said, unable to contain a slight grin as he thought about his old friend. “Mostly, we just shared a six-pack down there before a Friday night football game at the high school.” The appeal of the memory suddenly faded, yielding to an intense and disquieting dread. “We’d sit in one of those storm tunnels so nobody could see us from the road.” The thought of it made him shudder. “Never felt comfortable there—like something was just out of sight, something hungry and shackled in the shadows, just waiting to feed.”

  “Do you think Alex might have been there the day he disappeared?”

  “I don’t know, Tisha,” Moss said. “To be honest, I haven’t been down that stretch of road in thirty-five years.”