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

by C. J. Henderson

  In truth, no matter from where they hailed, most research and development types were one step beyond the man in the street. Ordinary folk simply did not realize what was happening in their world, what kind of forces were being poked and examined in laboratories all around the globe.

  Many knew a sheep had been cloned, but nothing much more about that particular branch of science had reached them. Some were aware that bacteria had been discovered on Mars, but that small percentage of the population which knew this fact for the most part had no idea what astounding ramifications that news actually held. They did not know how many elements were contained on the periodic table, how many of them were man-made, nor what the search for further elements might mean for their lives.

  The man in the street was, by and large, an ignorant, drooling simian compared to most scientists. But, compared to the Miskatonic team walking across the snow-swept airstrip, so too were most other scientists. Between them, the group had witnessed things practically undreamed of by their supposed peers. Many outsiders suggested that the university was a place where magic and witchcraft were taught in the classroom, but such rumors swirled only among the uniformed and infantile. Miskatonic was a bastion of rationality and scientific thought and those who worked within its walls were proud of that tradition.

  On that particular morning, however, those approaching the towering granite wall before them felt more like children. They knew they were being brought to the same entrance through which Dyer and Danforth had passed decades earlier. But much had changed since that fateful day. On the mundane side, the military had leveled the area before the entrance to facilitate the insertion of a landing strip. They had also installed a modern doorway into the side of the mountain, one designed to keep the terrible cold of the Antarctic at bay. But, all around the edges of the steel and glass intrusions the team could see their first hints that perhaps Antarctic Station 12 was indeed a unique place after all.

  Before them, there in the middle of what was supposed to be a frozen wilderness, was the proof of the photographs they had been shown. Massive, prodigious blocks of dark primordial stone, delicately cut and arranged like so many boxes on a store shelf. In some places, the mountainside before them seemed to have been carved directly to form open-air buildings, dotted with towers, all of it covered with insanely intricate layers of carving, quite similar to those Dyer had described finding inside.

  Streaming lines of meticulous bas-relief work extended upward at least a hundred and fifty feet, far beyond any of their abilities to make out detail. Such a sight let the newcomers know they were all about to enter another remarkable period of advancement, were about to be made privy to secrets withheld from mankind since the beginning of time. As the Miskatonic team stood in the freezing cold, gaping in wonder, Mekler smiled once more, asking in a mostly rhetorical tone, “So, pretty impressive, eh?”

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Nardi innocently, pointing upward at the carvings seemingly running along the entire length of the mountainside.

  “You know what Dyer thought,” replied Knight before their guide could respond, “that the star-headed creatures discovered here were from another world. The age of the carvings precludes their having been made by humans.”

  “Meanin’ E.T. liked to get out the old hammer and chisel. What about it?”

  The professor did not grow exasperated with his bodyguard. The detective had not asked his question hostilely, had not thrown it out as a challenge. Nardi was as impressed with the workmanship as any present. But he did not understand what was so exciting about the discovery. Trying to withhold the obvious patience needed from his voice, Knight explained, “We’re talking inter-galactic travel here. These beings were capable of moving distances we can barely comprehend, let alone match. And yet, when they got here, they made records in stone. When we went to the moon, we left behind plaques with messages pre-printed in English, but we didn’t attempt to communicate with all comers by leaving pictographs of any kind, let alone something on this scale.”

  “What you’re sayin’ is,” Nardi said slowly, his mind straining to comprehend, “alla this, this is like a message they left for us … even though we didn’t even exist yet?”

  “Us, Martians, anyone who might happen along, I suppose,” answered the professor. His head still upturned like the others of the team, still scanning the incredible workmanship before him, Knight added, “It’s more than that as well. I mean, why bother to work in stone at all? And beyond that, how did they do it? Was it hammered and chiseled as you suggested, or did they possess machines which could leave a message in stone the way we can leave one on paper with a pen? They were also telepathic. Could they create such works with their minds? Who knows?”

  “So, you begin to see the possibilities here,” interrupted Mekler, no trace of sarcasm to be seen on that small part of his face exposed to the elements. As he waved his hands in both directions to emphasize his comment, he added, “And, while you’re at it, take into consideration that you’re merely looking at work that’s been outside, exposed to the elements for millions of years. Wait until you see the work inside.”

  “Indeed,” responded Knight, slapping his gloved hands together with a near-childlike enthusiasm, “why don’t we do that?”

  - - -

  As high as the Miskatonic team’s hopes had been for the expedition, each and every one of them had found their wildest dreams to have been trifling in comparison to what the government’s researchers had put together over the decades. Star charts beyond anything known to man had been recorded there in abundance. Ways and means to rearranging molecular bonds so that base materials could be reproduced without resorting to the massive dangers of nano-technology had been assembled along with rudimentary anti-gravity devices and teleportation machines.

  There were hints of grander possibilities everywhere. But, unlike the humor of many popular entertainments, where such mundane inventions as the microwave or Teflon were credited to interaction with alien cultures, the simple truth was that for all its runaway progress, humanity’s collective knowledge had barely reached a point where, even with actual devices with which to work, the greatest minds available could scarcely begin to backward-engineer them. Even after nearly a century of access, most of what had been deciphered and put into practice was beyond human capability to manufacture. No more than a handful of working engines that showed any promise had been built.

  “Franklin, it’s simply amazing.”

  “You been sayin’ that a lot, Professor.”

  “Ummmm, I suppose I have at that, but … this place … everything contained here … my God, we’ve been here two weeks now, and still … well, frankly I’m staggered. I’ve been flitting like a drunken bee from place to place … there’s so much to see, to experience, to think about—”

  “Professor …”

  Knight turned sharply at the detective’s tone. The man had not raised his voice, growled, or made any kind of indication that he might be upset. And yet, something in the single word arrested the professor’s attention to where he suddenly found himself shifting his focus entirely to Nardi.

  “Have you noticed anything unusual about the folks here? The ones who were already here, I mean. Mekler, the others?”

  “Usual idiosyncrasies one finds in these types, of course,” answered Knight. “Especially when locked away from the rest of the world. But …”

  “Something else. You ever notice how Mekler begins almost every other sentence with the word ‘so?’”

  “Well, now that you mention it …”

  “I looked him up online. Found a number of places where some of his lectures, or at least pieces of them, are posted. Did you know he’s a Texan?”

  “Really?” answered the professor. “I had no idea. You wouldn’t think it to listen to him.”

  “All depends on what you’re listening to.”

  As he finished his sentence Nardi cued “play” on a computer link he had set up previously—a l
ink to a Houston University lecture being given by Dr. Mekler on unification theory. A lecture he gave in a distinctive Texas accent. A lecture during which, despite its seventy-eight minute length, he did not begin a single sentence with the word “so.”

  The detective had not meant for Knight to listen to the entire speech, but the professor had insisted on doing so. When it finally finished, Nardi asked, “What do you think?”

  “I believe that if you’ve found this much, a man of your obvious tenacity has probably found more. Why don’t you put all your suspicions forth before I comment?”

  “I don’t blame you for not noticin’ anything. You and the others have all been caught up in everything here—it’s like some sci-fi movie. But, maybe because I’m the odd man out, I’m seein’ things no one expected.”

  “Such as—”

  “One thing, it’s not just Mekler. All the other scientists, they’ve all got some tick, some rehearsed speech thing. Grenvil, he’s always sayin’ ‘you know.’ McKeown, he says ‘granted.’ Hansen, it’s ‘actually.’”

  Snapping his fingers, Knight began nodding unconsciously, suddenly adding, “Yes, just the other day, I remember myself thinking that Jorlick might be a brilliant physicist, but if she said ‘like’ in the middle of a sentence once more that I might be tempted to do her violence.”

  “I’ll tell you something else. Mekler might not have the accent he came down here with, but neither does anyone else.” As Knight’s eyes narrowed, the detective said in a lowered voice, “Name one person that came down here before us, military or otherwise, who has any kind of accent whatsoever?”

  The professor considered the question, sending his mind searching through his memory of the past two weeks, looking for any colloquialisms uttered, a single dropped “g,” anything that might keep Nardi’s lunatic observation from seeming anything like correct. Looking into the detective’s eyes, Knight could see his bodyguard was hoping he might be able to as well. As the professor’s face betrayed his own misgivings, Nardi blurted, “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph … oh, now what?”

  “Calm yourself, Franklin—”

  “Calm myself,” the detective blurted, his hands waving. “We’re in some Children of the Corn, Body Snatchers kind of goddamned nightmare, and you want me to be calm?”

  “Yes,” answered Knight, his voice dropping sharply, “I do. When you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize doing so is in our best interests.” As Nardi caught hold of himself, forced his panic down to where he might be able to control it once more, the professor added, “You’ve pieced together something—we don’t know exactly what, yet—on your own. Commendable, by the way. You’ve been living with the dread that you might be right for some time, alone. Now that you’ve finally said something and found agreement, the enormity of what you’ve uncovered has suddenly hit you and you’ve been understandably panicked by it.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Oh, it’ll catch up to me, too; soon enough, I expect. I mean, since you took the initiative in figuring out that something was wrong here, it seems the least I can do would be to join in.” His last words uttered with a small catch in the back of his voice, the professor added, “My, I do believe it’s started in already.”

  Nardi sat back on his bunk, his hands twitching—his eyes unblinking. His head shaking slightly as well, he said, “Christ, man do I wish I had a cigarette.” When Knight made no reply, the detective asked, “Something wrong?”

  “Oh, obviously. There’s no doubting you’ve uncovered something of major importance. But what? Dyer wrote of alien corpses, of monstrous beings he theorized would possess incredible powers for destruction. He hinted at the possibility of hidden underwater cities. After ten minutes in this place, the fact that alien intelligence was involved in its construction was beyond doubt.”

  Knight went silent then, staring off at a point somewhere beyond the wall before him. As he did so, he moved one hand in the air absently—or, more correctly, the finger of one hand, almost as if he were conducting some unseen orchestra. As his odd behavior continued, he mumbled, far more to himself than anyone else, “Aliens visit the Earth, millions of years ago, corpses are found … all logic says they have to be aeons old but … could even glacial cold preserve them so perfectly, so utterly completely—for so long?” The professor’s head turned jerkily, as if he wanted to look for something, but did not know in what direction it might lie.

  “Men arrive, find them,” he muttered, his words coming faster, “but also find living beings. Perhaps their creations, their servitors, the Shoggoths. But, still alive? Still wandering the corridors of this place, after millions of years? Purposelessly, doing nothing? Why do they steal mundane items from the expedition? Why remove the corpses of their masters? Why kill some of the humans, but not all of them?”

  Despite the moderate temperature on the tightly regulated quarters built by the military within the alien catacombs, Piers Knight had begun to perspire. Within his mind’s eye, he was wandering throughout every inch of the complex he had seen thus far. Unlike his fellow team members, whose personal disciplines had kept them occupied studying specific aspects of the ancient base, the professor was a museum curator. As such, it would be expected of him to view the place as one large opportunity for exhibits. No one had thought it the least irregular for him to travel the unspectacular back corridors of the Elder Things’ home, scanning the walls, inspecting the flooring, checking every aspect of the place. No one knew exactly what Knight was looking for; but then, it was obvious that he did not know himself.

  However, as Nardi listened to the professor ramble, watched him thinking, struggling to wade through the volume of unrelated information about their surroundings which he had gathered over their time there, he recognized in Knight what he had seen so often in others—had done himself—during his years with the police force. The professor was fishing within the clues he possessed, attempting to find a direction in which to proceed. Looking for something innocent he might have noticed earlier which he had not recognized at that moment for what it was.

  And then, suddenly, Knight rose, crossing the room to his desk. Normally quite fastidious about his placement of objects in his work area, he now shoved everything to one side in a jumbled heap, half of it crashing to the floor. Grabbing up a marker, he did not even bother to find a piece of paper on which to draw, but simply began sketching on the desktop itself.

  “What’ve you got, Professor?”

  “An idea about the structure of this place.” As he continued to scribble, adding more and more details to the layout he was assembling, he explained, “If there’s one thing one learns traveling the world to explore castles, pyramids, temples, et cetera, it’s that walls are not always what they seem …”

  His voice trailing off for a moment, Knight stared at his blueprint. Squinting as he did so, his mind searched for one further bit of memory until, suddenly, his unconsciously drumming fingers curled into a fist with which he slammed the table.

  “Yes!” Adding one final line, he pointed, saying, “There—right there. That’s where they are.”

  “Who, Professor?”

  “Whomever it is that doesn’t wish for us to find them.”

  “Yeah.” Nardi drew the word out suggestively, then asked, “And is there anything wrong with leaving them unfound?”

  “As much as I hate to say it, Franklin, yes, I believe there might be at that.”

  - - -

  The two men decided on a course of action quickly, then returned to their normal routine. Over the next several days, Nardi studied those who had been stationed at Antarctic Station 12 before their arrival. He listened to speech patterns, studied physical movements, facial expressions, et cetera. He engaged them in conversation and kept track of what subjects they brought up. The detective found some interesting corollaries.

  As for Knight, he concentrated on locating the entrance to his proposed hidden space. At first, he simply walked the corridors defi
ning the boundaries of the missing area—proving his theory for himself. It did not take long for him to assure himself that he had been correct. There was no doubting that a space existed, but as he circled the man-made rooms time after time, confirming its existence, he could not guess at its purpose.

  The human-built part of Station 12 took up a great deal of the original area’s central cavern. The contractors had first sealed up the front of the cave, building an air-tight entrance so the complex could be protected from the blasting polar winds. After that they had built inward, creating one chamber at a time so the long-dead city could be studied in far greater comfort than Dyer and Danforth had been afforded. The assembly of a massive generator outside the caverns had allowed the entire place to be illuminated and heated electrically.

  But, for some reason, there existed off to one side, toward the southernmost end of the alien’s original complex, a missing square within the human construction. It did not take Knight long to establish that the same two-meter by two-meter block was missing on all three levels of man-made structure. What he could not fathom, however, was its purpose.

  Standing outside the area in question at its uppermost level, he stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. To the occasional passerby there was nothing unusual about the professor acting in such a manner. They had seen him acting thusly since his arrival. As he stared at that moment, minute after minute, he asked himself, “What could be the purpose of such an area? Can’t be a missile silo, not enough shielding. Can’t be a meeting room, or a laboratory, hell … it can’t be anything. It’s just a three story closet. What in the name of God can you do in a three story closet?”

  And then, a separate part of his mind asked him, Who says it’s only three stories?

  Knight blinked, his body shaking slightly with a start as the obvious crashed inward on his consciousness. A slight half-smile crossing his face, he pushed himself away from the wall and headed off to prove what he suddenly knew to be the answer.