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

by C. J. Henderson

  - - -

  “It’s an elevator?”

  “Could be,” agreed Knight, “could be a well. But there’s a shaft running right through the station that has no obvious access, that’s been purposely hidden. We’ve all become so used to simply moving about within the parts of this place that have been built right up against the alien’s cavern that we’ve forgotten there’s far more of it.”

  “Sure,” responded Nardi. “Tell people ‘here’s everything you could want to look at, all nice and neat, where there’s heat and light,’ what a surprise nobody kicks about seein’ anything else.”

  “Yes,” agreed the professor. “Especially since there’s so much to see in those warm, illuminated places. Any scientist could spend a lifetime within the spot around which their particular discipline is centered and never have it cross their mind that there might be more.”

  “Not to seem like I’m quoting Mekler but … ‘so,’ what do you want to do?”

  “I believe that it doesn’t go down any further, since we do appear to be on the ground level of things—alien or human. So … not quoting our bizarre Mr. Mekler, either, I suppose we should attempt to take a look above.”

  Nardi understood what was being suggested. It meant leaving the warmth and supposed safety of the human construction for the cold and darkness of the ancient caverns surrounding Station 12. It meant bundling themselves in furs, finding mobile lights, and then disappearing from sight for—most likely—long enough to be noticed. It meant letting whom—or what—ever was up to something know they had been noticed.

  The detective was torn. Not rocking the boat always had its advantages, of course but in this situation they appeared to be short-term gains. Ones that would most likely not last.

  “Did Mekler figure things out,” he wondered, “realize something had to be wrong, and still ignore it all?”

  Every single person that had come down to Antarctic Station 12, every one of them to whom he had been able to relate, all of them seemed odd. Off. Different. But from him and the rest of humanity. Not from each other.

  That was what pounded through Nardi’s brain as the professor waited for his answer. All that he had noticed the last few days. While Knight had investigated the site, he had studied its inhabitants, and had found them to be a series of slightly different versions of one single entity.

  Male or female, scientist or soldier, they were all—ultimately, if one looked carefully enough—the same person. They walked in the same just slightly less-than-perfect gait. They all spoke with the same accent. They all knew the same stories, all answered the same questions in the same way. All had the same twinkle in their eye. All laughed in the same pitch. All held a glass in the same manner. In two days of constant observation, the detective realized, he could not prove that any of them had actually gone to bed. Or eaten a meal.

  Used a lavatory.

  It was not something one would notice on their own. They would have to be consciously searching for it. But Nardi had been doing just that, and had uncovered exactly what he feared he would—knew he would. Knowing in his heart that to not investigate further into what had happened to Mekler and the others would mean eventually finding out what had happened the hard way, the detective sighed, hating those moments when all his choices ended with his back to a wall.

  Looking up at Knight, his mental hesitation having lasted only the briefest of moments—just long enough for him to imagine himself starting every sentence he uttered with the same word—he said, “Yeah, I suppose we should, at that.”

  - - -

  It took the two men less than a day to gather what they needed without being observed. The heavy clothing needed to leave their heated environment, they already possessed. Stealing a pair of sturdy maintenance flashlights proved slightly difficult, only because they had to discover their location without asking where they might be stored. Luckily for the pair, the tools Knight suspected they would require to force their entry to the alien chambers were stored in the same area as the lights. Nardi chose a strong leather utility belt that held a chisel, several screwdrivers of various size and design and a one-handed sledge, as well as an assortment of snap-on pouches made of molded leather.

  Once armed with the necessary equipment, the two retired to the room they shared and waited for the night shift. Antarctic Station 12 did not operate with any attempt to reproduce a suburban mind-set. Its day was only broken into eight-hour segments to remind those working within its borders to pace themselves—to remember to take meals, to get sleep, to not push themselves too hard despite the endless lures to do so. Over the decades, many of the researchers assigned to the never-ending treasure trove of scientific opportunity had worn themselves to nervous frazzles, desperate to unlock the tantalizing secrets with which they found themselves surrounded. Thus it was that the shifts had been instituted as a nod toward normalcy.

  For Knight and Nardi, waiting until they were expected to be asleep to attempt their break-in meant they would have eight hours to do so during which they would not be expected to be anywhere, would not cause any concern by being absent. It took them most of their first two hours to make their way from their quarters to the third floor of the human sector, and then to the floor above, all without being seen.

  “Okay, Professor,” whispered Nardi, standing next to Knight in the frigid darkness, “so far so good. Now what?”

  Knight pointed toward the spot where, if his guesses were correct, the secret chamber from below would intersect with the darkened world above. Making their way along the roof of Station 12 carefully, loath to use their lights until absolutely necessary, the pair not only watched the placement of their feet step by step, but also scanned the area, taking in the cyclopean immensity of the alien chamber.

  Compared to the standard, straightforward design of the human sector beneath them, the twisting gaggle of offshoots from the overwhelmingly large cavern could not help but arrest their attention. Everywhere they looked, their eyes caught glints of more carvings, the walls and ceilings covered, every speck of room decorated with further streams of engraved details of a life utterly foreign and unknown.

  As Knight counted off his footsteps in his head, he looked forward, grimly rewarded as a wall reared up out of the darkness the exact amount of feet before him where the hidden chamber should emerge. Making their way to it as quietly as possible, the pair finally chose to light one of their flashes. Panning it over the featureless wall before them, as they moved the beam upward, they saw that the secret room extended the entire way to the ceiling, disappearing into the mountain above them.

  “It’s a passageway,” hissed Knight.

  “An elevator,” suggested Nardi, a guess with which the professor agreed instantly. Making their way around the square, the pair discovered a rather pedestrian set of doors on its other side, adorned with the type of summoning controls one might find in any office building or hotel lobby. As the two simply stared, neither moving them either forward or back the way they had come, Knight whispered, “My, this is the moment, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean, Professor?”

  “Well, so far, we’ve simply been rushing forward, one guess after another; something isn’t right, people are acting strange, I think there’s a secret room, what is it, let’s find it …”

  Knight went quiet for a moment, his eyes still locked on the ever-so-ordinary button on the panel before him. Finally, shifting his eyes upward to meet the detective’s, he said, “Clemmens was right, sending you along. If you hadn’t caught what you had … dear lord, we both know I’d still be doing nothing more than studying the walls, making estimates on how much it would cost to move pieces of them back to Brooklyn, figuring out exhibit strategies …”

  The professor stopped again, his words jamming within his throat, unable to force their way free. Nardi made to speak, but Knight held up his hand with a motion which did not order the detective to silence, but begged for a moment. After a handful more of terrifyingly si
lent seconds, the professor sighed—a tremble in his voice—then began again, admitting, “Franklin, I’m certain you are thinking as I am, that once we press that button, once we learn the secret of what is going on here, we will most likely end up as Mekler and the others have. Yes?”

  “Actually,” answered the detective, “I’ve been figurin’ that if we didn’t find out what’s goin’ on, that was what was goin’ to happen. Look, you want it honest, I’ve been kinda thinkin’ that we were screwed ever since we got here. Just that bad gut feelin’ cops get. Hit me when we first met Mekler outside, kept crawlin’ around in me, forcin’ me to try and find something.”

  Nardi dropped his head, laughing slightly as he swung it back and forth for a moment. Finally looking up again, he said, “Look, it’s the last innin’, and what is, is. It’s not your fault I’m here. I stepped into this all on my own, chasin’ a paycheck. Now that we’re here, though, what choice do we have? We both know one of us has to push that button, and that we gotta find out what gives.”

  “It could be that prolonged exposure to the cold merely renders people incapable of maintaining a proper speech pattern.”

  Nardi knew the professor was attempting to make a joke. Nodding at him, the detective whispered back, “Yeah, could be. You sound like you’ve been outside too long already.”

  “Well then,” said Knight, a sudden grimness in his tone, “let’s warm things up around here. Shall we?”

  - - -

  It did not surprise either man that it took them almost another full minute before either could summon the intestinal fortitude to actually press the button which would open the sliding doors before them. Once they did, seeing the typical, simple elevator car within, they were not surprised to find that neither of them could move themselves forward into it. Nor did it surprise them that after they had managed to force themselves inside, each somewhat shamed to not do so in front of the other, that watching the door slide silently closed doubled the creeping terror building within their minds.

  Neither had been taken aback as had been Dyer by the sight of the alien catacombs, but that was understandable to them. Those two had been alone, not knowing what was around the next corner, coming across monsters from beyond, the bodies of their teammates, brutalized animal corpses. Even the mutant penguins mentioned in Dyer’s missive were more horrifying than anything they had encountered. No; they had entered a pristine, ordered research facility, one filled with modern conveniences not yet imagined in Dyer’s century. One that made it easy to snicker at the lunatic ravings, at the insane idea of “mountains of madness.”

  But, thought Knight as the car slowly climbed upward, Dr. Dyer doesn’t seem so insane now, does he?

  The professor had never actually dismissed his predecessor. He had, in his time, studying the ancient civilizations of mankind, poring over their remains and relics, encountered too much proof—oftentimes first-hand—that horrible secrets were masked by a thousand different veneers in every corner of the world. A part of him had known since he had read Dyer’s rambling plea that no one ever again be allowed to set foot on the Antarctic continent that he was going to uncover something terrifying.

  And yet, you had to come, his sense of self-preservation sneered, had to test yourself, had to probe, had to see—

  It seemed safe enough, another part of his mind snapped defensively. It wasn’t some ten-year-old daring himself to climb into a cave … the university, the government—it was just supposed to be another routine job …

  A tear ran down Knight’s cheek, sliding along the nylon hood drawn tight around his face. He had known danger in his time, faced monstrous things more than once. But, he had gone hunting them. He had been prepared. And, he reminded himself, he had only been risking his own life.

  Now, he thought, now, we’re the ones being hunted. And I do not believe we are very well prepared.

  And, hissed another segment of his mind, this time it’s not just your life being risked, is it?

  For an instant, the professor tried to pretend that he was only referring to the fact Nardi was with him, but he could not sustain the lie. Something had placed a foothold on the Earth millions of years ago. Long before man. Long before the dinosaurs. A race that built a vast empire across the land and under the water. That established beachheads on multiple planets throughout the solar system. That disappeared from our end of the galaxy before the amino acids necessary for humanity’s birth had even begun to form.

  But, they had left behind servitors, and they had left open doorways. Doorways that Dyer and Danforth had blundered through, servitors which they and their comrades had awakened. Servitors that had been fully roused when Starkweather and Moore had arrived. Immortal, unstoppable things from beyond understandable reality with powers unfathomable to mere human beings.

  Servitors, thought Knight, his mind stumbling over the notion, his blood freezing, without a solid shape—things that bubbled and sloshed, forming themselves to the task at hand.

  Things, he realized, that would have been on hand to meet the newly arrived humans. That could have watched and studied them, learned their ways, gifted with the patience of the undying—

  As well as the ability to read their minds.

  Knight blanched in horror. Suddenly everything that had filled Dyer with dread and sent him reeling off into mania as his desperate pleas were ignored by those around him, flooded the professor with the nightmarish truth of what was happening there at the bottom of the world. And then, at that moment, as the full enormity of his situation revealed itself to him, the elevator door slid open.

  Beyond its boundary, he saw a great open space hewn out of the mountain, one filled with an array of machines his brain could scarcely comprehend. Some were constructed in manners his mind could grasp—their assembly completed with metals and plastics, secured with rivets and clamps, welds and wirings. Others were not. Far beyond human conception, they were apparati hewn together from light and steam, molten plasma that somehow held its form, waves of magnetism which acted as coolants—

  Knight’s mind was staggered, unable to hold the myriad deluge of foreign, unknowable concepts forcing their way into it, drilling, burrowing into his consciousness.

  How, he wondered, his mind screaming the question at him, begging for relief, how can I even know what I’m seeing? How can I understand it—decipher any of it? How is it possible?

  And then, as he caught sight of Mekler working calmly at a station off to one side, everything became clear to him. Nardi had not yet caught a glimpse of what lay outside. The doors had been open only a split-second, had not yet even reached their full recession into the walls beyond. Knight realized he could not possibly tell one of the machines before him from another, understand the slightest thing about their operation … unless he was being told by an outside force.

  As the elevator doors finally slid into the walls, he remembered what Dyer had written, that the star-headed aliens and their servitors had to be telepathic. In an instant, he realized he was simply hearing the thoughts slipping over from those filling the chamber before him. Mekler, the others, were not humans. Those who had been sent earlier had been consumed ages ago, their identities stolen.

  The shoggoths could reform themselves, could steal the thoughts from their minds, the professor told himself, picking the memories from the air, but they did not understand the vocal cords they were reproducing. Could not understand the concept of personality.

  Realizations slammed against Knight: the purpose of the alien chamber, the meaning of the towering rod of electrified cold whirling lazily in its center, the fact that the elevator had taken far longer to reach the top than was possible—

  Time and space, warped, corrupted, he realized, the thoughts of the aliens flashing within his mind. We’re not here, not on Earth. We’ve been pulled to their alternate reality …

  And then he saw it, saw through the eyes of the invaders, saw what Dyer and Danforth had seen, saw what their minds had translated in
the only way they could—

  We’re inside the mountains of madness!

  “Professor,” hissed Nardi, unable to understand why Knight had stood in the doorway unmoving for a full two seconds. Terror creeping into his soul, he demanded, “What the hell is going on out there?”

  And his mind, hearing the question asked, sought the answer in the swirl of chatter sliding through the ether, and all was revealed. In an instant he understood the fact that crystalline solids formed most readily at low temperatures, that incredibly caustic chemicals were being hurled at stable inert gases before him in an attempt to strip loosely bound electrons from one element so they might adhere to another.

  “They’re trying to bond helium to neon—looking to force their gelid darkness across the face of the world.”

  Knight stood staring out the doorway, his mind transfixed, the secrets of matter transformation jingling their way through his brain. For the first few seconds of his mind’s contact with the thoughts of those in the chamber, he had gone unnoticed, merely another consciousness bonding with the mass intellect present. But then, unfortunately, he had asked a question, had searched for a specific bit of knowledge, and drawn attention to himself. The thing which had become Terrance Mekler was the first to notice.

  The instant the Mekler-thing took note of the intruding presence in the elevator doorway, all within the chamber shared in his awareness. As they did, however, so too did Knight. Grabbing Nardi by the shoulder, he pulled the detective forward, pointing at the hypnotically spinning rod of gaseous energy in the center of the chamber and, understanding for that one last second everything before him, the professor screamed, “Shoot it!”

  Fumbling for his weapon beneath his heavy coat, the detective managed to pull forth his .45 only seconds before the first of the pseudo-humans could reach them. As Knight slammed the Down button on the elevator, Nardi fired, emptying his clip into the whirling rod of wet, crackling color. The doors slid shut just as the first of the creatures came within reach, screeching—