Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

by Graham McNeill

  “My dreams? What are you talking about?”

  “We know you have dreamed of the lightless place beneath the sea, where the Great Old One slumbers. The dreamer stirs once again, called to the surface by his faithful believers, and you will tell us what you saw.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” pleaded Amanda. “So I had a few bad dreams, but that’s normal. I wish I hadn’t, but they were just dreams. They don’t mean anything!”

  “They mean everything,” said a voice on the stairs above the two figures. Amanda squinted through the dim light to see a hooded figure dressed in crimson robes, like a high priest of some bloody religion from ancient history. He came down into the cave with measured slowness, his every step regimented and precise. Though he was just a man, Amanda couldn’t look at him. She felt her entire body tremble at his presence, and tears spilled down her cheeks at the sound of his voice.

  The monster in the cell issued fearsome barking grunts, dragging its bloodied fingernails down the rock of its cell. Even monsters could know fear, it seemed.

  “Only a rare few are permitted glimpses of the Great Old One’s entombed flesh,” said the man, “lost forever beneath the waves in an age before the vermin of mankind spread across the earth like an infection. You, Amanda, have seen the city, and you are going to tell me every last detail of what you saw.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I know everything about you, Amanda Sharpe,” said the man. “Now begin by telling me when it was that you first dreamed of the Great Old One.”

  “And if I don’t?” said Amanda, with bravado she didn’t feel.

  “Then I will feed Rita to Latimer,” said the priest, waving an elegantly manicured hand at the sniveling, grunting creature taking refuge in its cell. As if summoned, the beast emerged from the bloody alcove and crawled on its belly toward the man. It feared him, but its hunger was an equally strong pressure on its thoughts.

  “Latimer is one of our oldest residents in the house, and he has developed quite a taste for human flesh, as well as a remarkable penchant for cruelty. Most of the girls Latimer has killed over the years didn’t die until a good amount of their bodies was devoured before their very eyes, so I can assure you, Rita’s death will be extremely painful. But tell me what I wish to know and this will be over soon.”

  “And then you’ll let us go?” snapped Rita. “Call me crazy, but I don’t believe you.”

  “Let you go?” said the priest. “Oh no, neither of you can be allowed to live, but if you cooperate, I promise I will simply have you shot in the head.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me help you?” cried Amanda.

  “It should. Defy me and once Rita is dead, I will cut you up slowly and feed you to Latimer piece by piece. Now, shall we begin?”

  * * *

  Oliver squinted against the sunlight, shielding his eyes as he made his way toward the Liberal Arts building. His mind was awhirl with terrible thoughts and the unreasonable fear that he had stepped into a world he hadn’t known existed. Sleep had eluded him again last night, more due to the insistent telephone calls from Dr. Hardstrom at Arkham Asylum informing him of Henry’s deteriorating condition.

  His old friend had taken a turn for the worse. Night terrors, delusional visions, and violent acting out were now a daily occurrence. Hardstrom was inclined to believe that hospitalization at the more secure Sefton Asylum would be more in keeping with Henry’s current prognosis.

  Oliver had promised to come and speak to Hardstrom personally, but that would have to wait. He had other matters to attend to. Behind him, the Administration building held only bad news for him. Neither Amanda nor her roommate had shown up for classes, and a swift trip to Dorothy Upman Hall had revealed that none of the girls there had seen either of them since the day before yesterday. The last any of the girls he spoke to had heard, Amanda and Rita were talking of going to the Commercial Club to see some singer from New Orleans. Oliver didn’t know the place, but guessed it was a jazz club speakeasy.

  He had hoped to find some clue as to their whereabouts in the room they shared, but no matter how much he pressed, the dormitory monitor would not allow him within the building. Oliver had left with his fear for the girls’ lives growing with each passing minute.

  Though he told himself that the two matters were unrelated, he wondered what manner of madness he might be opening himself up to by associating with Finn Edwards and his mysterious sphere. Beyond the walls of Miskatonic, Kate Winthrop’s talk of other dimensions and gateways between worlds would be ridiculed as patently absurd, and on any other day, Oliver would have denounced her and Finn Edwards as frauds.

  But this was not any other day.

  The lingering oddness, of which he had always known permeated every corner of Arkham, had now swelled to impossible proportions. Each evening as he walked to his car or turned a corner, he suspected a shadowy form would emerge from the shadows, knife in hand to end Oliver’s intrusion into matters he was not meant to plumb. What had once seemed quaint and charming to his city-born eyes, now seemed distorted and threatening, as though Arkham had withdrawn whatever transient welcome it had extended him.

  His eyes had been opened to a new reality: one where the everyday curtain of ignorance was pulled away and the horrors lurking in the cosmos were starkly revealed. No wonder Shrewsbury had gone missing! The man had likely taken his own life in terror of the things he had dared to put down on paper. Could such things really be believed? In the light of day, with the normal mundane bustle of students and everyday folk passing him by, it was easier to dismiss such things as lunatic fancies. But as night closed in and his mind conjured terrors from the depths of memory, they became stubborn in the face of his denial.

  A sudden recollection of the story that had appeared in the Advertiser, telling of a young girl’s body found on the athletics ground, filled Oliver with fear. His higher consciousness tried to stem the tide of dark imaginings pouring from the older, primal part of his brain, but against such horrors there was no refuge.

  Could this girl have shared similar dreams to Amanda? Might the same forces that had presumably abducted Amanda and her roommate have murdered her? Was there a link between Finn’s strange device (a device he had not yet elaborated upon as to how it had come into his possession) and the disappearances of young girls over the years? It was all too much to take in, too much to believe, but if Laban Shrewsbury’s book had convinced him of anything, it was that there was no such thing as coincidence where such monstrous, ancient evils were concerned.

  Oliver stopped beside the Copley Tower and rested for a moment. His body was drained after nights of troubled sleep and terrified wakefulness. He hadn’t shaved in two days and his clothes were in need of a good airing and pressing. He had to know the truth. He had to know whether he had unwittingly placed Amanda in danger. But where to begin and who to trust?

  He needed help, but the police had been singularly disobliging. A detective named Harden had written down Amanda and Rita’s details, but Oliver held out little hope that the man would take any action until it was too late.

  No, there was only one man in Arkham to whom Oliver could turn.

  The clock at the top of the tower struck the hour and Oliver looked up its immense length as it tolled midday. The sun was directly overhead, and the carven finials of the tower seemed misproportioned and out of balance, as though twisted into dimensions unknown to the five senses of man. Stone gargoyles leered down at him, fangs bared and jaws spread wide. He blinked and the moment passed, the clock tower resuming its earthly dimensions and architecture, but it was yet another fragment of the ever-growing catalogue of dark wonders plaguing him.

  “Oliver?” said a concerned voice, and he sighed in relief as he recognized it as belonging to Alexander Templeton. “Are you all right? You look dreadful. Is something the matter?”

  Oliver turned to see Alexander staring at him with genuine concern, his hat pulled low against the
uncharacteristically bright September sun. His appearance stood in stark contrast to Oliver’s, his suit immaculately pressed, his shirt carefully starched, and the Windsor knot of his tie perfectly centered at his collar.

  “Alexander!” cried Oliver. “Good God, man, it does my heart glad to see you.”

  “Good to see you too, old man, but why the fervor of the greeting? Not that I’m not glad of it, you understand.”

  “I need to talk to you,” said Oliver, clutching his briefcase up to his chest. “About that book you loaned me. And some other things…”

  Alexander looked around to ensure they were not being observed and there were no eavesdroppers within range. He took Oliver by the arm and walked him away from the tower. His step was sure and his grip powerful as he steered Oliver down streets away from the main thoroughfares of the campus.

  “I urge you not to speak of that book so freely,” said Alexander as the brightness of the sun appeared to diminish fractionally. “Its contents are, as I am sure you now know, not for the easily shocked.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” said Oliver. “The things Shrewsbury talks about, they’re too fantastical to be real, too…”

  Alexander shook his head. “I agree, it’s a lot to take in at once, but you need to get over any residual hysteria if you’re to help me, Oliver.”

  “Help you?”

  “Of course,” said Alexander. “Why do you think I loaned you the book in the first place?”

  Oliver was at a loss for words. “I thought because you wanted to help with Amanda Sharpe’s dreams? You had another purpose?”

  “I did, but your interests were also served by that purpose,” said Alexander.

  Oliver’s mind raced. He looked around him, trying to identify where they were, but the buildings on either side of the street were unknown to him. He was sure he and Alexander had walked less than a block, but he had absolutely no idea on which street he now found himself. The noon day sun seemed somehow dimmed, as though a pall of ash now blotted out the heavens, and the roofs of the brownstones seemed to lean in like teetering cliffs, dark, looming, and massive with crushing weight.

  “Where are we?” asked Oliver. “I don’t recognize this street.”

  “We are in Arkham still, but there are other books than Shrewsbury’s to which I have access, books with formulas to cloud the perceptions of those who might seek to hear what I must say to you now.”

  Oliver looked at Alexander with new eyes, suddenly fearful of this man who owned ancient tomes of forgotten gods and to whom the arts of mystical misdirection appeared second nature.

  “You have nothing to fear from me, Oliver,” Alexander assured him. “I gave you Shrewsbury’s book because I adjudged you a man of determined character and stout consciousness. I know things in the book are shocking, sacrilegious even, but you must be made aware of the nature of the enemy if you are to help me fight it.”

  “Fight them? Good God, Alexander, how do you fight things like that? We might as well be ants attacking an elephant!”

  “You assume too much of our race,” said Alexander. “We are smaller than bacteria to the Great Old Ones. Yet were not such lowly microbes the undoing of Wells’s Martians?”

  Oliver paced across the deserted street, hearing the silence that enveloped them as firmly as the winter’s cold. The street was utterly silent, bereft of bird song, traffic, or people. The complete absence of sound was unnerving in the extreme, and Oliver felt his heart rate quicken at the thought of what Alexander was telling him.

  “Amanda is missing,” he said at last. “So is her roommate, a girl named Rita Young.”

  “That is truly terrible, and is yet another reason for us not to hesitate,” said Alexander, coming close to Oliver and gripping his arms. “Don’t you see? Our enemies are moving against those who are aware of their diabolical plans. Amanda and Rita, and who knows how many others, may already be dead. You and I, Oliver, we alone are aware of the terrible forces moving against the world. We two, we happy two, may alone prevail against this gathering terror.”

  Oliver backed away from Alexander’s fervor, shocked by the depth of his friend’s passion. This was too much for him. As much as he needed to do something to try and save Amanda, the idea of joining forces against foes too terrible to comprehend was beyond him. He sat on the curb and put his head in his hands.

  “For heaven’s sake, Alexander, I don’t know if I can,” he said.

  “You must,” said Alexander, sitting next to him. “For I desperately need your help.”

  “I’ve seen where this road leads,” said Oliver. “It almost destroyed Morley, and it left Henry a raving lunatic. I don’t know if I have the strength to embark on such a journey. Look what happened to them. I don’t have a tenth of their mental fortitude.”

  “You are stronger than you know,” said Alexander. “I understand such things, Oliver, believe me. After the war, I was drawn to Arkham as a moth to flame because I sensed it was a center of activity for the Great Old Ones described in the horrid books I read. This is a place where metaphysical energies and cosmic forces converge in horrifying ways. I had thought to bear the burden of their opposition alone, but it was too much for me. I knew I would need allies in my struggle to defeat these beings. I had thought Henry Cartwright might be such a man, but he and I had a…falling out in Flanders, and he would not be reconciled.”

  “I know,” said Oliver. “What I mean to say is that I know something happened between you, but Henry would never elaborate on its nature.”

  Alexander looked as though he too would remain close-lipped on his spat with Henry, but at length he sighed and his shoulders slumped as he recounted the cause of the friendship’s dissolution.

  “I was a Marine captain during the war,” said Alexander. “My company was billeted within a ruined chateau in northern France during the spring of 1918. It was a grand structure, a fine example of north European fortification architecture, but its pleasing lines and fanciful turrets concealed a darker secret. I found a hidden library that had been uncovered by the impact of German shells the week before, a buried entrance sealed by bricks and mortar and other, more esoteric, means. Of course, the common soldiers paid the revealed books no mind, but Henry and I eventually understood full well the significance of our find.

  “The Germans didn’t attack for another three days, and in that time, Henry and I acquainted ourselves with the contents of the long-dead Comte’s books.”

  Alexander shook his head at the memory, and Oliver saw pain and grief etch themselves in quick succession across his face.

  “Though Henry deemed it unwise, some of the more inquisitive Marines joined us in the library. I berated him for his academic elitism, but oh, how I wish I had listened to him. A measure of the true horror of this universe was contained in those blasphemous books, and while Henry and I could compartmentalize the abhorrent truths, some of my men were…less able to withstand them.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Oliver, almost afraid of the answer.

  “Four went mad and shot themselves with their side arms. Another leapt from the battlements, dragging two other men to their deaths as they tried to rescue him. Three others descended into catatonic states from which they only emerged upon their return to the United States. We had unlocked a dreadful Pandora’s box, and it was too late to seal it up once again. Henry blamed me for the deaths of those Marines, not without some justification, but I had no idea how much the revelations of those books had irrevocably scarred his mind.”

  “Henry was changed after the war,” agreed Oliver, “but until the fire starting he was as sane as you or I.”

  Alexander raised an eyebrow at that and said, “His madness was a creeping sort, like an invisible contagion that weakens the mind’s defenses little by little until it eventually snaps. Diseases of the mind are no different to those that infect the body, or societal maladies that corrupt mankind as a whole. I came to Arkham to try and help Henry and turn him into
an ally, but I failed.”

  “And so you come to me now,” said Oliver. “I fear I will be a poor second to Henry Cartwright.”

  Alexander shook his head. “If I thought that, I would never have given you Shrewsbury’s book. You have a resilient mind, Oliver, and together we may yet hold off the encroachments of the Old Ones. Say you will join me, my friend. I need your help, more than you know.”

  Oliver looked down at his hands. They were trembling with the enormity of what Alexander was asking. He was a scholar, more at home in a library than on some abstract field of battle. To take sides in a war no one else even knew was being waged was a terrifying prospect, one for which he was wholly unprepared. Yet, even as he protested his unsuitability to play the role of hero, he knew he could not refuse Alexander’s plea for help.

  Did Pierre Aronnax refuse when the United States government tasked him with discovering the nature of the undersea threat in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Did Phileas Fogg balk when challenged by Andrew Stuart to travel around the world in eighty days?

  No, they did not, and if Oliver were to live up to the exploits of his fictional heroes, he could not refuse this call to adventure.

  “Very well, Alexander,” he said at last. “If you are in need of allies, then you may count me among your staunchest.”

  Alexander offered his hand, and Oliver shook it firmly.

  “Good man,” said Alexander. “I knew I could count on you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The low-level hum filling the laboratory was a comfort to Kate Winthrop as she wrote up her notes and observations from the day’s experiments. Frank Pabodie and Dr. Hayes had returned from their testing of the new batteries, and the job of collating their notes and tabulating the results had fallen to her. It was a thankless task requiring convoluted equations and precise arithmetic, but one Kate was happy to perform. The calculations were her constant, the mathematics a universal language that could be used to unlock the very secrets of the universe.