Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

by Graham McNeill

  “Right,” said the orderly. “Then he’s not a professor. You shouldn’t confuse things by saying things that aren’t true.”

  Oliver wanted to say that Professor Henry Cartwright deserved the title of professor more than most men who bore it, lunatic or not, but sensed that getting into an argument with this orderly would see him shown the door in short order.

  A heavy visitor’s book was turned around to face Oliver.

  “You need to sign in,” said the orderly, as though Oliver had never been here before.

  Oliver took out his fountain pen and dipped it into the desk’s recessed inkwell, signing his name and taking his pocket watch out to write down the time. It was a quarter past seven, early by any academic’s standards, but Henry always seemed more cogent in the early hours of the day. Medicated he was barely coherent, and by evening virtually catatonic.

  The rattle of iron keys and the clatter of a lock announced the arrival of another orderly. Oliver looked up from the book to see a thin-faced man coming through the barred gateway. His name was Monroe, and he was smoking a cheap roll-up cigarette that reeked unpleasantly of damp moss.

  The thickset orderly jabbed a callused thumb toward Oliver.

  “Take him upstairs,” said the orderly. “He’s here to see the firebug.”

  * * *

  “Henry?” he said. “Henry? It’s Oliver Grayson. Thought I’d stop by and see how you were getting on. Been awhile, I know, but you know how it is at the university. Always classes to take, papers to grade and so on.”

  Henry Cartwright didn’t respond, sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands clasped in his lap and staring vacantly at the blank wall opposite him. Oliver removed his coat and put it on the back of the chair Monroe had provided. He set down his briefcase and sat beside Henry, looking at the man’s pale, ravaged features. He’d lost weight since coming to the asylum, almost three years ago, but that was only to be expected. The burn scarring on his hands and face had healed well, and only the barest hint of it could be seen at the side of his neck and upon his palms.

  Some of the other patients had access to sketch pads, paints, and colored crayons, with which they decorated their rooms with drawings and symbols analyzed by the institute’s physicians. Not that much came of such analysis, for though Arkham Asylum practiced modern psychiatric treatments, the emphasis was very much on palliative care and not curing its patients. Henry had no such adornments to his room. Since he had been incarcerated at the asylum after a series of arson attacks in late 1923, it had been deemed ill-advised to give Henry anything flammable in his room.

  “Are they treating you well?” he asked. “Is the food tolerable?”

  Again there was no answer, though Henry turned his head slightly.

  “I expect you’ll be glad of the coming winter,” continued Oliver. “Less light to wake you in the mornings.”

  As well as no paper, Henry’s room had no curtains either, and in summer the light streamed in criminally early. Oliver himself was a light sleeper, and hung blackout curtains on the windows of his bedroom at the first hint of spring. He unsnapped his briefcase and lifted out a book, The Great Gatsby, and opened it to where he’d reached the last time he’d come to see Henry. After catching the movie at the Amherst Theatre, Oliver had picked up the book from the university library and found it far superior to the celluloid adaptation.

  “Now where were we?” said Oliver. “Ah, yes. Nick had just learned that his neighbor is the millionaire Jay Gatsby, and has received an invitation to one of his lavish parties.”

  Oliver had no idea whether Henry understood anything he had read, but the soothing cadences of his reading voice seemed to give his old friend pleasure. Henry had been a dear friend to Oliver, and if this small act leavened the long emptiness of his days then it was the least he could do.

  He read a couple of chapters, regaling Henry with the tale of Nick’s experience at the party and the comical realization that almost none of the partygoers actually knew their host. As Oliver finished the section where Nick and Jordan Baker finally meet the reclusive rich man, he closed the book and placed it back in his briefcase. Sunlight was stretching across the wall behind him, and Henry’s eyes were following its growing intensity. His hands unclasped and his mouth opened as he looked out through the barred window.

  “The sun,” said Henry. “It’s alive you know. The fire inside it. I’ve seen the fireflies that burn when they come down from the sun and the stars beyond. They come down and they burn everything they touch. Ash and cinders, that’s all they leave behind.”

  Oliver cleared his throat and took Henry’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve written to a friend of mine about you, Henry. His name is Dr. William Hillshore, and he is an eminent psychologist from England who teaches at the Jesuit College of San Francisco. If you don’t have any objections, I’d like to have him take a look at your case notes. He’s rather brilliant, you know, and the academic grapevine has it that he’s dealt with some rather challenging and…unusual cases. I’ve known and corresponded with him for many years now, and his work with British veterans of the Great War is quite groundbreaking.”

  “Hillshore?”

  “Yes, that’s his name. Do you mind at all?”

  Henry shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t. But he won’t be able to see the fireflies.”

  “I expect he won’t,” said Oliver. “But he might be able to help you.”

  “No one can help me,” said Henry, and the finality of the words almost broke Oliver’s heart. “142, 142, 142…”

  Oliver had heard this mantra of numbers before, but now, as then, he had no idea what they represented. Henry’s pathology was such that whenever those numbers were recited it was an indication he was becoming agitated. Oliver switched tack, changing the subject to something less likely to upset his friend.

  “I had another letter from the Journal of Anthropology, you know?” said Oliver. “They were going to be publishing my research on the Yopasi tribe in the fall edition, but with all that’s happened they’ve pushed it back to the spring. To ‘give me the opportunity to revise my findings.’ It’s all politics, of course. They think I’m a fraud, Henry. Trying to hoodwink them and make them all look foolish. As if I don’t already look foolish enough.”

  Henry ceased his repetition of the number 142, and his face took on a more serene look, like the pictures of soldiers Oliver had seen upon their return to the United States after the war. They looked right through the camera lens, as though not seeing it, as though they had seen things their minds could not process. Oliver thought they looked desperately sad, and hoped Hillshore could make some headway with Henry’s file.

  “Three years of work up in smoke,” Oliver continued. “Three years living in primitive huts and researching the Yopasi, and for what? For them to up and damn well disappear on me, that’s what. I ask you, where does a whole tribe of Pacific Islanders go? It looked like a hurricane had hit their island, but I checked the meteorological data for the entire six months I was back in the States, and there wasn’t a single thing out of the ordinary. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was trying to mount an elaborate hoax.”

  The words came out in a rush, years of frustration undimmed by this fresh telling. He knew Henry probably didn’t understand what he was saying, but it felt good to say the words out loud, to vent to a sympathetic ear. Even if that ear couldn’t really hear him.

  A key clattered in the lock, and Monroe appeared in the doorway. The mossy stink of his cigarette quickly filled the room as he blew a series of smoke rings.

  “You have to go now,” said Monroe. “It’s time for his meds.”

  “Of course,” said Oliver, gathering his coat and briefcase.

  Monroe stepped inside the room and took a drag on his cigarette. The tip burned brightly, and Oliver nearly jumped out of his skin as Henry let out a terrified scream and scrambled to the corner of his bed, pulling the sheets up over his head.

&n
bsp; “Fire! Fire…oh God in heaven, no! Not the fire, please no!” yelled Henry, beating his sheet-covered head with his fists. “It’s coming down again. Fires falling from the sky to burn them all. It’s burning them all! Iä Cthugha, na, Fnagt…”

  The words died off, but before the last nonsensical syllable was out of Henry’s mouth, Monroe’s cigarette sparked with fire, the entire length of the crooked roll-up bursting into flame that crackled for the briefest moment like a spiteful laugh. Monroe flapped like a flightless bird, and though the sight was comical, the words Henry had spoken left a bitter taste in Oliver’s mouth, like the acrid aftermath of a particularly bilious belch.

  “Get out,” ordered Monroe, his words muffled by the hand pressed to his burned lips.

  Oliver backed out of the room as Monroe slammed the door. He stood forlornly in the antiseptic corridor of the asylum, listening to Henry’s pitiful sobs and Monroe’s angry words. He wished there was something he could do for his friend, but there was little enough he could do for himself.

  Oliver checked the time on his pocket watch.

  He had a call to make.

  * * *

  Rita ran with her arms pumping at her sides, her long economical strides eating up the distance with ease. She left Dorothy Upman Hall and ran along the tree-lined thoroughfare of Church Street, giving a wave to the bronze statue of Dean Halsey as she passed. Behind the statue of the good doctor, the tall tower erected to memorialize the sons of Arkham who’d died in the Civil War reared up taller than the surrounding buildings, and Rita never failed to be impressed by its scale. It was the tallest thing in Arkham, and dominated the skyline south of the river.

  She turned north alongside the old graveyard and onto the Aylesbury pike, heading west out of town toward the athletics field. The day was clear and the cold wind kept her nice and cool as the Georgian homes, cobbled streets, and clustered buildings of the town receded from sight.

  Rita ran every day, and needed to keep her fitness level high. The last thing she wanted was to get kicked out of Miskatonic for failing to achieve sporting glory for the university. She wasn’t smart like Amanda, and knew that if she didn’t justify the faith her scholarship trustees had placed in her, then she’d be back in the tenements of New Orleans within the month.

  She kept a picture of Paavo Nurmi above her bed, a Finnish runner who had won five gold medals in five events at the Paris Olympics in 1924. He was part of the Flying Finn, a group of runners who excelled at all levels of distance running, and a man whose achievements Rita hoped one day to emulate. He was her hero, a proper sportsman, not like that thug Jack Dempsey the boys at Miskatonic all seemed to idolize. He was simply a brawler who’d begun his sporting career by picking fights in bars and walking away with the winnings of the bets made against him. Sure, he’d won a bunch of proper fights since then, but hadn’t he just lost his title in Philadelphia to an ex-Marine?

  There was a purity in running that couldn’t be found in any other sport, a battle with the self to find those last reserves to keep going when your body was telling you to stop. When it was so easy to give up, the challenge was to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep pushing on. And Rita never gave up. She’d been a fighter ever since she’d decided to get the hell out of New Orleans. She’d had to: after a group of Klansmen had bought her older brother out of jail only to force him into virtual slavery on their sugar plantations east of the city, she’d had no other choice.

  Rita’s daddy had gone out one night with a shotgun and Mama Josette, the mambo of Rampart Street, to get her brother back. Her father and brother had come back just after dawn, but would never speak of what had happened out on the plantation. Rita saw her daddy’s shotgun still had both shells in the barrel, but when she’d asked how they’d gotten the plantation owner to give her brother back, her momma had told her to hush up and never speak of it again. She never did find out how her brother had been freed, but a month later, she heard a number of plantations along the east bank of the Mississippi had burned down.

  No way she was going back to that life.

  With that thought, she picked up the pace, knowing she would need to dig deep to finish her run if she peaked too early.

  West of Arkham, the trees crowded in on the pike, forming shadowed leafy archways and drooping bowers. The road was asphalt, and though there weren’t any sidewalks, the sides were still grassy, so Rita ran there. The forests grew thickly around Arkham, surrounding the town as though seeking to keep it away from prying eyes. She’d mentioned that impression to Amanda once, but her friend had looked at her strangely and muttered something about the witch-hunts of hundreds of years ago.

  Through gaps in the forest canopy, Rita saw the hills rising above the trees. Though they were many miles ahead, it seemed as though they too pressed in on the city, their rounded flanks and stone-capped summits bare of any vegetation whatsoever. Rita eased up, slowing to a more measured pace as she came up on the rutted turnoff to the athletics field. It was a mile and a half to the field. By the time she’d gone around the baseball diamond and the bleachers, it’d be time to head back to take a shower before heading to class.

  She took the turn and came in sight of the athletics grounds: a football field and a crumbling stand, which backed onto a baseball diamond and tiered wooden bleachers stacked high behind home plate. A few jocks were out hitting a ball around, mostly freshmen from Hell East, and Rita didn’t blame them for wanting to get out of that crummy dorm, with its busted heating, crappy plumbing, and lousy rooms. She headed past the thwack of ash on leather and made her way along the cinder track at the edge of the grounds.

  Running wasn’t as popular as baseball and football, and much of the track was overgrown with weeds. Rita was sweating freely now, her entire concentration fixed on continuing forward. She heard whooping yells and more cracks of bat on ball, but paid them no mind. She was in the runner’s “corridor” where all she could see was the ground immediately in front of her, the yard or so of track she would cross in the next second.

  Too late, Rita saw the bundle of clothes on the track and tried to avoid it. Her right foot came down on the bundle and she felt her ankle twist as she tried to extend her stride to avoid it. The world spun around her and she tumbled to the ground, grazing her knee and slamming her cheek into the cinders. She rolled and spat dirt, grabbing her ankle with a howl of frustration. She could already feel the joint begin to swell and the pain throbbing up her shin told her that, at the very least, she’d sprained it badly.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain, she looked to see what had tripped her.

  “What the hell…?” she said, not sure she was seeing it right.

  It looked like a tattered dress, black and sequined, with corn-colored butterflies stitched around the hems. The cloth was torn, as if it had been cut up with long pinking scissors, and Rita saw it was wet with a sticky liquid. Pink and red lumps laced with wriggling insects protruded from the arms and bottom of the dress.

  A moment later Rita saw the bloody remains of the girl wrapped in the dress.

  And this time it was her turn to scream.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rivet guns and the sound of hammers echoed over New York’s East River Shipyard, reverberating off the cavernous assembly sheds as waterfalls of sparks fell from acetylene torches welding heavy sheets of steel together. The shipyard employed nearly ten thousand men: fitters, welders, riveters, steelworkers, panel beaters, riggers, glassblowers, surveyors, engineers, electricians, and skilled machine operators.

  The vessel currently berthed in dry dock 23F was the DCV Matilda Rose, a deepwater construction vessel that was nearing completion. The vessel belonged to the Warren Mining Company, a business that had prospered under the ineffectual presidency of Warren Harding and the benevolence of the corrupt Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall.

  In 1922, the Wall Street Journal had uncovered evidence that Fall had leased government petroleum fields at Elk Hills and Teapot Do
me to oilmen in return for huge bribes and numerous gifts. One of the benefactors of this had been the oilman Charles Warren, and though the fields at Elk Hills had since been returned to the government, his drilling rigs’ brief tenure on the land had made him millions of dollars. Though the ensuing scandal had hit Warren and the other oilmen hard, America’s voracious consumption ensured that their businesses weathered the storm without noticeable ill-effect.

  Work on the DCV Matilda Rose had begun at the East River Shipyard the year before, and her launch date was set for early November. The foreman of the shipyard was optimistic that he and his work gangs would hit that deadline. Designed to build offshore drilling platforms, the vessel was ungainly and ugly, but would allow Charles Warren’s drillers to reach oil fields that had, until now, been inaccessible via conventional means.

  Her decks swarmed with workers, mainly steel fabricators and welders fitting the last portions of her deck and winch gear. A giant A-frame crane rose in the middle of the ship, and it was here that Patrick Doyle and his workmate, Martin Quinn, watched the quayside cranes lifting a tarpaulin-covered object onto the forked fantail at the rear of the ship. Patrick and Martin had, together with a veritable army of welders, recently finished attaching a complex series of winches and cable drums to the Matilda Rose and were enjoying a well-deserved break.

  “So what d’ye reckon that’ll be then, Patrick?” asked Martin, carving a slice of his apple with a small pocket-knife and nodding toward the object being maneuvered into position by a gang of foreigners. They were mulattos and oriental-looking types mostly, but among them were a sprinkling of strange looking men of uncommon bulk with skin burnished bronze in distant lands.

  “Damned if I know, laddie,” shrugged Patrick. He took a drink from an unmarked glass bottle and handed it to Martin. “Here, a drop o’ the real stuff. By God, we’ve earned it.”

  “Aye, that we have, Patrick,” agreed Martin, taking a slug of the Irish whiskey. “Saints alive, Patrick, where did ye get that from? That’s whiskey right enough, none of your bathtub shite.”