The Lovecraft Squad

by John Llewellyn Probert

  “That ghastly little man?” Dr. Cruttenden appeared to be rolling up her sleeves. “I’ll soon have him out of there.”

  Karen grinned. “You may have a bit of a job. I think he’s hoping to see the same thing you did.”

  “Maybe it’ll cart him off with it while he’s at it.” Dr. Cruttenden broke off a chunk of cheese and chewed it absentmindedly. “Mind you, he’s welcome to it, whoever or whatever it is. I’d be happy if I never saw it again. Ugly bloody thing, and that voice!”

  “What sort of a noise did it make?” asked Chambers. “Groaning? Hissing?”

  “No.” Rosalie almost looked offended. “And it wasn’t rattling a chain either. It spoke to me.”

  Karen pushed a stray strand of hair back over her right ear. “You vaguely told us before, but what exactly did it say to you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t elaborate, but that’s because I was in something of a state of shock, for which I must apologize.”

  Karen shook her head. “No need,” she said, reaching for her ever-present tape recorder. “But I would really like to know everything it said.”

  “Not much.” Rosalie had picked up one of the pickled onions. She gave it a heavy crunch and then swallowed the whole thing. It almost made her cough. “Just something about digging. Or rather, not.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “‘Don’t dig down below,’ it said to me. It was quite emphatic about it. Said it a couple of times.” She shuddered and frowned. “At least, I think it was a couple.”

  “‘Don’t dig,’” Karen repeated and then switched the recorder off. “I wonder what that could have meant?”

  “The graveyard, presumably.” Chambers was peering out through the slit window of the apsidal. “There’s nowhere you can really dig in here, is there?”

  “Of course there is, you silly man.” The other pickled onion disappeared and that just left the ham. Rosalie stamped on the floor. Her foot made hardly a noise on the dull stone. “What do you think lies beneath here?”

  Chambers shrugged. “The undercroft?”

  “Possibly. It’s rumored that this church possesses an unusually large undercroft, with hidden chambers and passages, some of which have been closed for over a hundred years. But what lies beneath that?”

  “Earth? Rock?”

  Rosalie shook her head and popped the final strip of cold meat into her mouth. “Plague victims.”

  Karen’s mouth opened at that.

  “Don’t do that my dear, you’re actually very pretty and a look of bovine stupidity most certainly does not become you.”

  “Plague victims?” Karen refused to be distracted. “You mean from the Great Plague of London?”

  “Oh yes, from 1665, and possibly victims of the Black Death which, of course, was much earlier.”

  “How much earlier?” Chambers asked.

  “Around 1350, although there were still cases in the latter half of that century and the first half of the next. Of course, I have no idea if bodies were buried here over that entire length of time, but we have it on good authority that this place, and much of Blackheath, was used for the burial of plague victims in the fourteenth century as well as the seventeenth.”

  “How do we know?” Karen had the tape recorder on again.

  “Well, I’d show you but that . . . man is in my room at the moment. Anyway, it’s all down to you and your discovery, otherwise I would never have read up so much about Geoffrey Chaucer.”

  “How does he figure into it?” Chambers was paying more attention now.

  Rosalie gave him the withering look of a teacher who is extremely displeased with her star pupil. “If you recall, we covered this back in Oxford.”

  “I’m afraid Professor Chambers has been through a lot since then,” said Karen, “and so have we all. Could you possibly repeat it again for the official record?”

  Dr. Cruttenden made a noise that sounded a bit like a hrumph before continuing. “In 1389 Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed the official Clerk of the King’s Works. His main task was to organize repairs on Westminster Palace, but it is claimed that the reason he was given the position in the first place by King Richard II is that he did such a marvelous job supervising the clearing and burying of plague victims from the streets of London town.”

  “Burying them here?” Chambers was pointing a finger at the ground.

  Dr. Cruttenden nodded. “And sealing them in stone so that . . . oh, what did that book say? Something like ‘So that in future times a church might be built on this place to seal in what evil Satan may wish to revisit upon the world.’ It’s quite a famous quote, actually, and he said it in 1377.” She looked at them as if the date was supposed to have significance. When Karen and Chambers continued to look at her with blank faces she rolled her eyes. “The year 1377? When he went on a mysterious sea voyage abroad? A journey for which many possible explanations have been offered but none have been accepted as fact.”

  “So bodies have been buried on this site for more than seven hundred years.” Karen spoke so quietly it was possible to hear the squeak of the cassette tape as it ran over the recording heads.

  “Buried, moved about, dug up again, buried again. It’s been a curious site for that sort of thing.” Rosalie chuckled. “You wonder where they managed to find room for them all.”

  “Perhaps the undercroft goes a very long way down.” Chambers had intended it as a joke but here, in this tiny, chilly room, it didn’t sound funny at all.

  “Or perhaps they had magic to help them.” Rosalie didn’t sound as if she was even trying to joke.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  The lecturer gave Karen a reassuring smile. “Only what it says in the history books, my dear. According to the Medical Faculty of Paris at the time, the Black Death was thought to be due to a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused ‘a great pestilence in the air.’ Perhaps some other ‘conjuration’ helped them dispose of all the bodies.”

  “I’ve never really understood this,” said Karen, “were the Black Death and the Great Plague caused by the same thing?”

  Chambers coughed to draw attention. At last here was something he could talk about. “On the whole, yes. Yersinia pestis was the organism, and it was spread by fleas that lived on rats. Yersinia obstructs the flea’s mid-gut, which basically causes it to starve and makes it incredibly hungry. So it feeds aggressively, drinking as much blood as it can. But the gut is blocked so its food doesn’t go down. Instead . . .”

  “. . . it vomits up a mixture of the ingested blood and the Yersinia into the wound it’s feeding from,” finished off Dr. Cruttenden. “All rather disgusting, really.”

  “Yes,” said Karen. “Really disgusting.”

  All three of them were suddenly looking at the floor.

  “They couldn’t still be down there, could they?”

  “What, my dear?”

  “The fleas.” Karen had gone pale. “They couldn’t still be down there? I mean, like, hibernating or anything?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not an expert.” Rosalie looked to Chambers, who responded with a shrug. “However, I imagine they would only be able to live for several hundred years if they themselves had been given magical powers.”

  “So that means maybe.”

  Chambers stepped over and placed his hands on Karen’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  She gave him a weak smile and nodded. “I felt very sick there for a second, but it’s gone now. I’ll be fine, thanks.”

  “Well, I think that’s enough talk of things that are long dead.” Chambers picked up the tray. “Are you going to try and sleep some more or come along with us?”

  “Ghosts, plague victims, and fleas?” Rosalie shuddered. “I think I’ll come along with you if you don’t mind. I’m guessing nothing else strange has happened since my little visitation?”

  Karen and Chambers exchanged looks.

  “So something has, then?”

  Karen spoke first.
“While we get Dr. Chesney’s lunch you might like to take a look at the picture that’s appeared on the wall of the north aisle.”

  “A picture?” Rosalie was brightening again. It certainly didn’t take much to cheer her up. “What of?”

  “Oh, you’ll love it,” said Karen. “It’s a skeleton.”

  “Marvelous!” Dr. Cruttenden appeared overly enthused, but Chambers guessed this was her own way of compensating for the situation they seemed to be finding themselves in. “Is there any writing with it?”

  “Not as far as any of us could see,” he said. “But your trained eyes may be able to do better.”

  “Of course, of course.” She was on her feet and pushing past them. “If you will excuse me, I shall see you both a little later.”

  They only managed to make it as far as the door to the undercroft when Rosalie called out from the other side of the church.

  “I thought you said there were no words with the picture?”

  “None!” Chambers called back. “Not a single letter!”

  “Well that’s odd,” came the reply, “because there are definitely some here now.”

  SIXTEEN

  Thursday, December 22, 1994. 1:59 P.M.

  THEY ALL CAME RUNNING at that. Karen and Chambers from the top of the steps, Ronnie and Paul from the undercroft, even Chesney from Dr. Cruttenden’s room. Father Traynor remained noticeably absent.

  “What have you found now?” Chesney sounded mildly irritated, as if he was starting to become jealous of Rosalie for discovering the things he ought to be.

  “Look.” Dr. Cruttenden pointed to the wall mural. “Miss Shepworth and Professor Chambers told me there were no words associated with the image of the skeleton. But now, as you can see, they are quite apparent.”

  Ronnie stepped forward to take a closer look and the others made way for her. It had been her discovery after all.

  MEMENTO MORI

  One word was to the left, the other to the right of the image of the skeleton, each in letters easily twelve inches high. She read them aloud slowly, as if they had no meaning for her.

  “Remember you must die.” Karen’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “And this wasn’t here before?”

  “No, Dr. Cruttenden, it wasn’t.” Chesney was already taking pictures with his camera.

  “More work for your darkroom, eh?” said Hale, only to be rewarded with a glare.

  “The skeleton’s different too,” said Ronnie.

  “Is it?” Chambers looked at it carefully. She was right, of course. How could he not have seen it before? The image was more, well, solid.

  Whereas before it had appeared faded, the product of the work of centuries past, now the picture seemed clearer, the bones more solid, the outlines stronger. The pits that passed for eye sockets in the malformed skull seemed all the blacker. And the skull itself. Was it his imagination or was it even more misshapen than when they had first seen it?

  “It looks like some bloody monster,” said Paul, summing up succinctly what everybody was probably thinking. “Not just that huge skull, but the arms and legs as well. They don’t look like they belong to anything human. Like some huge toad that’s all messed up.”

  Now that he mentioned it, Chambers thought, he had a point. The proportions of the bones of the arm—humerus, radius, and ulna—were all wrong. Too large, too thick. And the lower limbs were the same. Most telling, however, were the digits. Long arachnodactylic fingers stretched out, as long as the thing’s arms, possessing far too many finger bones for them to be considered human. The same went for the toes, which made the thing seem almost amphibious.

  “What is it?” Karen breathed.

  Chambers licked his lips. Could it be intended to represent the great toad god Tsathoggua? Here? In an English church? “Can we all agree that it’s not what we originally saw an hour or so ago?”

  He was rewarded by fitful, tentative nodding from most of those present.

  “Mr. Chesney,” Chambers continued. “I’m relying on you to give us proof of that.” He pointed to the undercroft door. “Were you serious about getting those photographs developed this afternoon?”

  Chesney did not appear at all happy about being addressed in that way. “Of course I was,” he sniffed. “And I still intend to.”

  “Good. It’ll prove that this isn’t some kind of group hysteria.” He looked at the others. “I can’t begin to explain what’s going on here,” he glanced at the door, and specifically at the red panic button, “but I’ll understand if anyone thinks we should leave now, before things get any weirder.”

  It was a calculated gamble. Chambers didn’t want to leave, and he knew that neither he, nor Karen, nor Dr. Cruttenden could leave, not even if they wanted to, but it would be unthinkable to drag innocents along simply because they had wanted to take part in a newspaper publicity stunt.

  “Well, of course I’m not going,” Chesney replied, much to Chambers’s disappointment. “There’s definite evidence here of paranormal activity, and I have no intention of leaving before I have had the chance to fully investigate it.”

  “I can’t go,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “I need to be here as much as you two.”

  “What do you mean, you two?” Chesney flashed a look at Rosalie, and then at Karen and Chambers. “What are the three of you up to?”

  Chambers sighed. There was no point in holding anything back, not if they were going to be staying here. He looked at Karen, who nodded in agreement, and so he told them. Everything. From the discovery of the Chaucer manuscripts, to what happened at Oxford, to a detailed account of the dreams they had been plagued with since they had first been exposed to the scrolls.

  “You knew all of this, and didn’t plan on telling us?”

  “We are telling you,” said Karen. “Right after having given you the chance to leave.”

  “But I should have been told about this at the beginning!” He was starting to splutter. “It could have affected what preparations I needed to make, what equipment I needed to bring—”

  “And what would you have done differently, had you known?” said Karen. “Other than not come at all?”

  That was too much. “I resent that remark. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from your kind of reporter.” Chesney’s eyes narrowed. “Even though you have evidence of the supernatural you would prefer to keep your discoveries to yourself rather than share them with an expert. Well, two can play at that game.” And with that he turned on his heels and made for the undercroft steps.

  “I think you’ve pissed him off,” said Paul once Chesney was gone.

  “I’m pretty sure I have,” said Karen. “But it needed doing.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said Ronnie.

  They turned to look at her.

  “Are you sure?” said Chambers. “You don’t have any need to be here, and it could become dangerous.”

  Ronnie smiled. It was quite possibly the most serene thing he had ever seen. “I’m sure, Professor Chambers. All my life I have wanted to make a difference. All my life I’ve seen things, heard things, known that there are forces outside the bounds of our normal reasoning. All my life I’ve been trying to help people, from telling the fortunes of friends in the schoolyard right up to my humble little place in Glastonbury. If things might get as bad as you seem to think, how could I possibly be anywhere else?”

  Chambers resisted the sudden urge to hug her. Instead he turned to Paul Hale.

  “I’m guessing you’d like to get away from here?”

  The young man surprised him by shaking his head. “I don’t like Dr. Chesney much, I don’t like the idea of things scaring Dr. Cruttenden, and I don’t like that ugly bastard up on the wall there,” he said. “But if you think I’d leave you all here to deal with it and wimp out like some useless piece of cowardly shit you’re wrong.” He gave them all a grin. “I’m in, if you want me.”

  Ronnie squeezed his hand and smiled.

 
; “Right,” said Chambers. “In that case that’s settled. We see this thing through to the end.”

  “If there is an end,” said Ronnie.

  “What about the priest?” That was Hale. “Shouldn’t we ask him?”

  Karen shrugged. “We can’t get into the vestry. He’s locked himself in.”

  Dr. Cruttenden looked concerned. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s talking,” said Chambers. “Or at least we heard someone speaking behind the door.”

  “Very quietly,” Karen added. “Or rather, as if he was very far away.”

  “Well, it’s not fair we don’t ask him,” said Hale, making for the vestry door. He hammered on the wood. “Father?”

  No reply.

  “Father Traynor, we need to talk to you.”

  Nothing.

  “Did you say it was locked?”

  Karen nodded.

  Hale took a couple of steps back, and then thrust himself at the door, twisting the handle at the same time. Everyone jumped when the door opened with little effort and the man went careering through. Chambers helped him up while the others stayed in the doorway and peered into the room. There was silence for a moment, before Ronnie was the first to state the obvious.

  “There’s no one here.”

  Hale brushed off his trousers as he and Chambers regarded the bare stone floor, the forbidding stone walls, the damp-stained plaster ceiling.

  The open trapdoor in the far corner.

  “Do you think that’s where he’s gone?” Karen asked.

  Chambers crouched by the hole in the floor and peered into the yawning darkness. “If he has, he’s probably broken his neck by now. I can’t see a thing down there.”

  “If it’s multichambered under there he may have passed into a different area and . . . closed the door behind him?” Dr. Cruttenden offered.

  “True.” Chambers looked at the trapdoor itself—worn planking with a few scraps of fading pinkish paint still adherent. When he tried to move it the door refused to budge, the hinges clogged with rust. “And he certainly couldn’t close this behind him. Or open it in the first place for that matter.”

  “I’m guessing no one wants to go down there, then?” Hale had joined Chambers and was gazing into the void.