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

by C. J. Henderson

  “I wish I did, Andrew. I’d give anything to be able to help you. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors over the years, everyone who works at MU has heard things. There is always gossip surrounding the tunnels. I’ve heard tales about everything from alligators to gill-men to ghouls, eaters of the dead, living down there, and Special Collections, which is filled with ancient and rare occult books, well, you hear people bring up demons and Satan, and even strange horrors from outer space. MU may be an Ivy League school, but it does not lack in the paranormal conspiracy theories department, especially around Samhain, Beltane, and Walpurgis Night. There is also the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the Eye of Amara; both are far more open than is the Labyrinth Society. You have to remember this is New England and people here love to see witches and monsters in every nook and shadow in Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. If you believed in witch-haunted, this is the American ground zero. Here, every shadow has a monster inside of it.”

  Shadows. I’m good with shadows. Might say I was married to them. Monsters, not so much, unless they walked around on two feet and did all the fucked-up things people do.

  “What I need is in those shadows, Candy.”

  Talk of gill-men and ghouls had me a bit spooked. I’m not a believer, but I’ve seen things over the years that could not be explained, and I’ve heard whispers at the Agency; Arkham is Spooktown; for real.

  I may have started out using Candy, but I now had a rather large soft spot for her. She had a good heart and her thing for me had grown from role worship into real warmth and deep concern. Candy hadn’t come out and said, I love you, but it was there. Didn’t want to admit it, but it was in me too. Started to feel if brought her any deeper into this case, some of the bad that was prancin’ ’round would eyeball her.

  “You better be careful, Andrew. If anything were to happen to you—”

  She was tearing up.

  I got it.

  I took her hand and led her to the bedroom. No freak full-on. We made love. Then I held her, kissed her more tenderly than I had ever kissed a woman and almost opened my mouth and let those three little words out.

  Checked in with Nardi. Reported: following “Cookie”. No candles, no romantic, no clandestine, no hotel room with a guy, lunch with a girlfriend at a place where I can’t afford the parking. Afternoon: art gallery. She didn’t buy anything. Didn’t really look at the paintings either. With her there, they all looked like smears of sick color, or jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces. She was home by five. Stayed in all night.

  Had lunch with the hubby the next day. Colder affair I ain’t seen. They had the Red Snapper and didn’t say more than 20 words to each other. Nardi hadn’t given me any background on the hubby, so I decided to unearth the lowdown myself. 4 p.m. he’s pulled up to a pricey little home tucked deep in the pines. Inside, ten minutes later, and he’s putting it to a hottie on the couch. Seen a lot of this stuff, some dirty, some driven, this one looked like love. Saw all I needed to know.

  Labyrinth Society and Miskatonic University. Whatever “Cookie” was involved in led there. Notion was sitting in my gut like a bad plate of beans, was telling me, get back on it. Now.

  Did.

  Friday night. Dinner. Candy broke it for me. Said, before dessert, she had dessert for me. Jeffrey E. Pennybridge. MU alumni. Labyrinth Society member; former. Tossed out, social and business pariah. Caught running a pyramid scheme and 17 other Class A-1 felonies that crossed lines the law is not tolerant off. Exposed and shredded in the New York and Boston papers, made the national nightly news for a few weeks. Went to jail for fraud and money laundering and 16 other counts. Rumor had it, he was currently a zero, a hardcore drunk living on the street, eating at the Mission soup kitchen, when he remembered to eat. Candy said, she’d bet he felt betrayed by his former fraternity brothers. If I could find him he might talk.

  Had to agree, he’d want to bite back. I’ve been tossed out, burned, know what animal festers in your gut and keeps your hate up at night.

  Took Candy home, had my dessert, left her in dreamland, went looking for Pennybridge.

  Just after the midnight hour chimed: found him. Drinking Mad Dog with other homeless people, wasn’t drunk, but he was working on it. I had a bottle of Glenlivet in the car, a present from Candy, offered him a taste from his old life. Said, I had some questions and there was money in it, too. His hungry couldn’t resist the beans I offered.

  Isolation and alienation are monster accelerants when you pair them with hate. Pennybridge wanted revenge. Didn’t need to strap him down. I poured. He started framing it for me.

  “Labyrinth Society. Sure. Fuckers left me in a life of vulgarity. Lost it all. Wife. Power. Connections. All that money. Everything. If you only knew what that is like.”

  He knew “Cookie”; they had a thing back in college. She was a wildcat, fucked and fucked until your dick was ready to fall off. He thought they were going to get married. She was just playing him. She was bottomless, wanted it all. Wanted to be the first woman in the Labyrinth Society. Wanted to be the Grand Poobah. Sure, she knew all about it. Got some from Daddy, a lot from him.

  “Any perception I held was out to lunch, I’d tell her anything she wanted to know. You would have, too. Way she enraptured you, things she could do with her mouth. You ran to be tethered to her. Fucking ran. I’m not the only one. After me, she had others. At least three I know about. I’ve heard about the former brothers who are dead. “Cookie” had relationships with three of them. Knowing her, I’d be willing to wager she had them all.”

  Half the bottle of Glenlivet in him, he kept on spilling. Strange, unbelievable shit. He wanted to get it out. Wanted someone after her and them, too. Take them all down. Let them see and feel everything he’d suffered.

  “Break them. Strip prosperity and privilege from them and leave them in a nightmare with all their dreams in the grave. Fuckers.”

  Told him what he was dying to hear, I was working on it. More I know, the further they’d fall.

  “They safeguard The Gates. Have forever, Labyrinth Society is older than the one at MU, came out of Egypt and was passed down. End days are really coming. Not the Christian End Days, something bigger. Worse. End Days that aren’t religious bullshit. Labyrinth Society members are the keyholders.”

  “After Cookie graduated, got her degree in archeology, she went to Egypt for two years, and not to get a tan—I know what she was looking for there. Came back changed. Meaner. Colder. Her face and demeanor were a mere façade. That was when she married Nathanael, Nathanael Morganfield. Society wedding made in Hell, in the hells beneath the hells. Heard, Nathanael was next-in-line to be the First Adherent of the Labyrinth Society. And he was nothing to look at, always been pudgy and plain, more on the ugly than plain-side. Power he had, and daddy’s money and holdings are legendary, but Nathanael was a pussyhound. He had a compulsion, no want; need, kind that makes your hands shake and elevates your heart rate—Hitchcock could have made a movie about the women that manipulated him, or vice-versa.

  Pennybridge spilled for another forty-five minutes. Hate (he wanted them to know Armageddon and eat mud) and rage and facts, desire claims terrified, dredged up. Some oozed out, some spat, clipped, some hooted and snarled.

  He passed out. Drove Pennybridge to the Mission and walked him in. Left him on a bench inside for the staff to deal with.

  The statement of a felon while he was drunk off his ass gave me motive.

  No evidence.

  Nothing that was even scented circumstantial.

  Hand what I had, what I thought, to Nardi and the cops, cops would see to it Nardi handed me a pink slip with an anchor tied to it, or the high-society boys would get me burned and blacklisted. Shit, maybe worse.

  Saw my fate. Termination: (Cause) batshit crazy.

  Labyrinth Society. Twenty-one members. Eight dead. Annabelle “Cookie” Morganfield. Black widow. Murderess.

  Notion in my gut did not want to put the brakes on and step out to lunch. Pr
ove she was a monster and get back to New York with Candy on my arm.

  I was going to win this for Candy. Be a real hero. Yeah. I could do poetic sunsets on the boardwalk in Rockaway on Candy’s arm. Then we’d walk home and play snuggle bunnies.

  - - -

  Spent the rest of the weekend with Candy. Saturday. She made me linguine with hot Italian sausage in a red sauce—nailed it, and showed me what an extraordinary snuggle bunny could glitter up. Sunday. Yanks vs. the Reds. Tanaka pitching. Candy kept the beer cold and coming. Late lunch, Nathan’s hot dogs with the works (she’d ordered the meat sauce from Mike’s in The City). Yanks won. I did too.

  Monday: my eight-year-old Subaru followed Cookie’s new Benz. Shopping; shoes and a bag; Jimmy Choo. Lunch. Shopping; a jacket; Alexander McQueen.

  Talked to Nardi. Told him, I had nuthin’, nuthin’, and nuthin’ and I didn’t think she was sleeping around. Nardi said, stick with it.

  Planned to.

  Thursday night. Hubby on his way to Beantown for biz. His lady friend’s suitcase was in the trunk snuggled up to his. I had the snaps to prove it.

  “Cookie” met a Wool Herringbone suit in The Seahorse Bar & Grill at 10:30. No talk. No drinks. Split.

  I knew where this was going.

  I had it covered; Bushnell Equinox Z Digital Night Vision Monocular and my Nikon 85mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor Lens.

  Go ahead, bitch, turn out the lights.

  I followed his BMW Z5. Wondered why she didn’t just drive to his place.

  They’re inside. He’s sitting. She’s standing, walking around him in circles, big cat zeroing in on its prey, herding it. She’s doing most of the talking. He doesn’t look happy. Also, looks scared.

  Light in the room goes out and the “light” in the room, in my night vision monocular winks a few times, “undulates” and flips, looks like the special effects right out of a modern Sci-Fi movie … and “Cookie” sure as fuck ain’t “Cookie”.

  She’s ebony. Not black. Not Negro. Not African-American. Ebony. Taller than tall, even for the NBA. Chest and torso still shaped like a woman, but her head, face, are canine; think Anubis meets a quasi-reptilian Big Bad Wolf. Her eyes are demonic blazes and her hands are gone. In their place, long, thin lamprey-like appendages and they’re on him. Sucking and tearing. He’s shredded. Corpse-meat. Horrorshow doesn’t last more than a minute or two and the “light” undulates again. There’s Annabelle “Cookie” Morganfield.

  Morgue-meat lying at her feet and she just walks over and picks up his car keys. Leaves. Just walks out. No rush. Not shaken. Drives off in his car.

  I sit there, my professional attentiveness and everything I thought I knew yesterday (up is there and down is down there, the moon is not made of cheese, there are no supernatural monsters among us) is lost to WHAT THE FUCK.

  Fucking occult shit. Pennybridge’s half-drunk ravings. MU alumni. Labyrinth Society. What the fuck I just saw! Nine dead. Annabelle “Cookie” Morganfield just fucking shape-shifted—twice, in front of me. “Just look at that emblem, sigil-thing, they have for their fraternity emblem. I heard it’s an Elizabethan cryptogram passed down from John Dee. He got it from Agrippa, and it’s older than any Arabic writings we have. If that don’t make them into the occult, I don’t know what does and if they are some occult league, they’re into the darkside. Why else be so secretive?” The tunnels, gill-men and ghouls, and images of Kolchak, capsizing any rational I might have had a few minutes back. The Special Collections of ancient and rare occult books. Strange horrors—gods or monsters, from outer space. Paranormal conspiracy theories, the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Cults. Things that came out of Egypt—she was in Egypt and that thing kinda looked like goddamn fucking Anubis. Fucking shape-shifting. Eerie with so much dread in it even ghosts are terrified. Monsters in every fucking nook and shadow in Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. Tittle-tattle gossip. Whispers. Rumors. What Candy said and what my gut screamed and what I’d seen. It’s all-frenzy, fucking nightmare factory, in my head.

  What the fuck? What the fuck was that?

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Ain’t no rainbow at the end of this. You win, you breathe. You don’t, cold cold ground won’t give a shit but it will take you in.

  “Fuck.”

  Won’t be no pension, no serenity … and no Big Apple as my triumphant stage. No glory in Candy’s eyes.

  Nardi sure as shit won’t believe this shit.

  No one will.

  Not even Candy.

  Why the fuck would they?

  Then it hit me, Annabelle “Cookie” Morganfield’s medical records.

  Took me two days to get my paws on them.

  If I’m walking away from this nightmare in Shitland, only one way out, can she be killed?

  Medical records. Fell two years ago while horseback riding, broke her arm. Gall bladder surgery last summer.

  Maybe? With a shit-ton of questions marks after it.

  Half-human?

  Part-human?

  Human sometimes, others not?

  Is her appearance, as a woman, as human, just frontage that thing puts on to walk around?

  Nine mm silver bullets, burn her after she dead? Holy water and a stake through the heart? Anything put her down and keep her dead?

  No Van Helsing, or number for the FBI’s X-Files department, listed in the phone book. Fuck, Rod Serling’s dead, so, there’s no one to call and reel me back from The Twilight Zone.

  One thing to try. Two to the back of the head. Step out of the shadows and BANG, BANG; take everything she thinks is coming. And pray.

  That I can do. But can I walk away clean? Will the bitch stay dead?

  If I’m going to make it and spend my life in Candy’s arms, I have to try. Do what I have to do, hope it works … and keep my mouth shut.

  I called Candy. Told her, obtained a lot of info and I’m neck deep. Won’t be around all week. I’ll call when I can.

  She tells me she loves me and she saw a cute bungalow for sale today. She likes it, a lot, so, I better finish up and come home safe.

  Cleaned my weapons.

  Don’t know shit about what will happen, but I know gun violence and how to put a target down. Witnessed it. Been part of it. Candy’s heard some of my tales. She thinks they’re as gruesome as Ellroy’s. Can’t disagree.

  Seven nights later. Annabelle “Cookie” Morganfield meets another suit in Marty’s Indigo Room. I don’t need a map or a front row seat. Followed them to his car, watched them drive off. Found her Benz a block away. Sat and waited for her to return.

  There she was. I stepped from my hide. BANG! Brains spraying. BANG! Morgue-meat. Put a group of four more in her. She’s still morgue-meat. Flipped her over put six more in her, two in her face, four in her chest.

  Watched for a minute.

  Dead.

  My untraceable throwaway went into the Miskatonic River with her handbag.

  Home.

  Waiting for the news.

  Drank.

  Nardi called at nine. Annabelle Morganfield had been murdered last night. He had it on good authority she was shot fourteen times, her purse was missing, looked like a pro hit. What could I tell him?

  Lie short. Tucked her in at seven. Seemed like she was in for the night. I split.

  “Get over here. Make your report.”

  I did.

  M.E. did the autopsy on Annabelle Morganfield. She was dead. Was staying that way.

  - - -

  Candy’s buying that cute, quiet bungalow. I’m moving in. She’s also “Yes, I’ll marry you” happy with the ring I gave her.

  Fucking occult shit. Pennybridge’s half-drunk ravings. Labyrinth Society. Annabelle Morganfield. Shit about Elizabethan cryptograms and John Dee. The tunnels. The Special Collections. Fucking shape-shifting. Eerie with so much dread in it even ghosts are terrified. Monsters in every fucking shadow in Arkham.

  Tattle-tale gossip.

  Whispers.

  The gruesom
e, unbelievable facts of what I saw, what I did.

  Fuck that shit. I’m happy with the divorce cases Nardi keeps handing me.

  A PLEASURE INMADNESS

  C.J. Henderson

  “There is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know.”

  —William Hazlitt

  “This way.”

  Franklin Nardi, having learned to trust the professor enough to not disagree with him on a simple detail such as remembering from which direction they had come, slid around the corner indicated without question. True, he had been a New York City detective for nearly fifteen years—a patrolman for over five before that. His memory for such facts was still quite good. But, considering the situation they were in at that moment, from all that he had learned of Piers Knight in the relatively short time they had been working together, he was not going to argue.

  “Quickly, Mr. Nardi,” the professor shouted, straining to be heard over the blaring sirens still pointlessly screeching throughout the compound, “we have to hurry.”

  As the shrill, nightmarish piping echoed through the hallway around them, the detective noted that his breath had gone silver. Pointing it out to the professor, Knight responded, “Meaning we have less time than we believed.”

  Damn all the fools who plague me so, he thought, I’m beginning to think there might not actually be a way out of this.

  And then, both men’s hearts froze at a particular sound, their blood icing over within their veins. As they exited the side passageway into the main hall, all around them men and women ran into one another blindly—tripping, striking each other—screaming in mindless panic. Some fell to their knees, blubbering hysterically, others pounded on the walls, their shrieks nothing more than the ravings of the mad—insanity their only pathetic defense as the piercingly sharp notes of the creatures began to finally draw closer.

  Close enough to be distinguished—

  “Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li!”

  “Guess we weren’t the only ones who knew the right direction—eh, Professor?”

  The two men stopped, both panting, both realizing with the clarity of the doomed that they had reached the end of the line. Bending over slightly so as to be able to place his hands on his knees, Nardi took a number of deep breaths as rapidly as possible in the hopes of reviving himself. As he reached for his .45 once more, Knight pulled his tobacco pouch and pipe from his jacket pocket. As his bodyguard stared at him, amazed that the man could be thinking of having a smoke at a moment like that, the professor asked, “Not suddenly afraid of a bit of second-hand smoke, are you?”