Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

by Graham McNeill

  “You learn that from the archives?” asked Rex.

  Stone nodded, pausing as a waitress came and poured some coffee for Rex and Minnie. He flipped back to the beginning of his notebook.

  “Came to Miskatonic from Brown in 1919. Seems he made his name studying tribal cults in Alaska. Went there with a guy called Morley Dean, some big shot professor who came back and had himself committed to an asylum soon after.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t know, but it was real bloody stuff they were researching by what I read. Real horror show material, you know? Blood sacrifices, hearts ripped out and eaten, that sort of thing. Would send most normal folk to the nuthouse. But not Grayson. The man knows his way around a ritual murder, if you take my meaning?”

  Rex looked at Minnie and they shared a horrified look.

  “Ah, what? You’re saying Grayson is the killer?”

  Stone shrugged. “I don’t know yet, maybe. I seen it before, guys going native. You spend too long on the frontier, you get to like what you see, make it your own. Happens all the time in undercover stings. Guy gets too close to the people he’s selling out, and when it comes to the bust, he can’t do it. He warns them and the whole deal is blown.”

  Minnie looked up from her own note taking. “I don’t know, it sounds kinda far-fetched.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Stone, leaning in and rapping his knuckles hard enough on the table for other diners to turn around and look at them. “Why don’t you tell me what you think is going on, doll face? You got anything better? I’d sure love to hear it.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Minnie, meeting Stone’s glare with one of her own. “All we have is background stuff. Could be nothing, could be something. I’ll lay it out for you, see if it fits with anything you’ve been finding.”

  “Okay, doll, dazzle me,” said Stone, the words a challenge as much as a request.

  “We did some digging around the campus, tried to get a vibe on where the kids went to dance and drink. We heard of a few places and checked them out. Most were pretty tame joints, a little liquor and some local flavor, but nothing that raised any red flags.”

  “Until we went to the Commercial,” said Rex. “Don’t know who owns it, but a guy named Rufus is the big wheel that runs it. Old black guy, blind he claims, but he says he sees who comes and goes in the club.”

  “How does a blind guy see anything?”

  “You got me, Stone,” said Rex, “And call me crazy, but I think he’s on the level. He said Lydia was in the Commercial. Said she came there a lot. He…uh, well, he said…”

  “Come on fella, spit it out,” snapped Stone. “What else he say?”

  “He said the Commercial was a place where students hooked up for sex,” said Minnie without blinking. “Said it was a place where seniors came to find girls they could get drunk and sneak back to their dorm rooms.”

  Rex held his breath and waited for Stone’s inevitable anger.

  “You don’t pull your punches, lady,” said Stone at last, and Rex breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Neither do you, Agent Stone,” said Minnie. “Ain’t we a pair?”

  Stone nodded and said, “What else this Rufus say?”

  “Said Lydia came to the club with a girl from Bolton, though we haven’t been able to find out who that might have been. Rufus said they drank too much and left the club with, in his words, ‘a couple of beaus.’”

  “Did he give you a description?”

  “No, but he said they were a couple of white boys who didn’t like jazz and who had money to spare. They were only there for the pickups.”

  “Damn,” said Stone, shaking his head. “You know, I came here wanting it to be something terrible, something so bad that I could hardly believe it. That’s the only way I could believe my little girl would check out, but that…it’s just too damn obvious. And that’s why I don’t buy it.”

  “Don’t buy what?”

  “That what’s happening here is just about these killings. I mean, why now? Those bodies couldn’t have been under that bridge for too long, they’d have been washed down to the sea. Someone dumped them there because they wanted them found now. It doesn’t make sense that there would be that many bodies if it was just a couple of guys picking up girls in a club to rape and kill. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  Stone sat back and let out a breath of realization. “It’s classic misdirection. Damn, but I should have seen it sooner.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Minnie. “Why would any killers want the bodies to be found? Surely that just exposes them and gives the cops more opportunities to catch them?”

  “It’s like sleight of hand,” explained Stone. “You get people looking where you want them to look while you’re palming the coin. And it’s working. Everyone in here is talking about ten dead bodies like a pack of rabid wild animals killed them or a touring carnival of freaks or something. They’re not looking deep enough to understand why this is happening.”

  “So why is it happening?” asked Minnie.

  “Fear,” said Stone. “I’ve known fear before. You see it every day in New York and this city stinks of it. While everyone’s thinking about the bogeyman and wild animals, something else is going on. I just know it.”

  “Something worse than twenty plus girls being murdered?” said Rex. “What could be worse than that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stone. “But I got a feeling we’re not going to like it.”

  * * *

  Oliver kept his office blinds shut, as though he didn’t want any hint of what he was hearing to escape into the world beyond. It had been mid-afternoon before one of the university technicians could procure him a phonograph, as such machines were on the verge of becoming obsolete. Gramophones with their double-sided pressings were replacing wax cylinders, and American universities were rushing to embrace this new technology.

  With the door locked, Oliver sat through each cylinder’s contents once more, not taking notes or making any judgments, simply listening. Henry’s voice, rising and falling in pitch with the motion of the rotator, filled the office with scratchy and tinny fidelity. It was heartbreaking to hear the voice of a dear friend so afraid, so brittle, and so lost within his own madness.

  Though the recordings were short, each cylinder lasting no more than five minutes, it took a lifetime to go through them. Much of what Henry was saying made no sense, merely meaningless collections of syllables with no business being strung together. Other portions were hideously clear, evil descriptions of cannibalism and bloodletting on a frightful scale.

  — The knife goes in under the solar plexus and cuts outward.

  — Cuts must be made transverse to preserve the integrity of the heart and lungs.

  — Some fat is good on human meat. Marbling gives it texture and flavor.

  — Ten maidens were offered to the Outer Ones, their blood drained and their souls devoured by the night-haunting terrors. The Dark Waters rise in the south, but drown the north. His time is coming, whereupon the vermin of mankind will be wiped from the earth. The signs of his coming are there to see, the words of the Atlantean Gods speak true! Seek the writings of Nereus-Kai, for he alone bears the burden of all knowledge!

  — The Fire falls from the sky at 142, burning all it touches…oh God, they’re burning. Meat and cloth and earth burning together! 142, 142! Oh, God in Heaven, the stench of it!

  — Fireflies in the sun, dancing like spinning embers. Iä Cthugha! They flit like capricious demon sparks, and ignite that which cannot be burned. Iä Cthugha! The fire devours everything! Iä Cthugha!

  Henry described in vivid detail the torture and mutilation of men, women, and children, and Oliver began to understand Hardstrom’s reluctance to discuss such things before the nurse. The more he heard, the less he believed the voice was that of his old friend.

  As he had been told, some of Henry’s lunacy was delivered in French. Eloquent phrases and liquid monologues were delivered in a fraugh
t, archaic style that seemed at odds with the terrible fear in Henry’s voice. Until now there had only been Hardstrom’s gently interrogative tones and Henry’s fearful rambling, but as the French words spilled from the speaker horn, Oliver would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that there had been a third person in the room.

  Oliver had no idea what Henry was saying, nor was he aware that his old friend even knew French. Henry could have picked up a smattering while serving overseas, but the words being spoken here sounded fluent, like a native speaker. Oliver would have Professor Drouet in the Modern Languages Department take a look at his transcriptions for a translation.

  With the recordings finished, Oliver rubbed his temples with the heels of his palms. A steady, throbbing pain pulsed behind his eyes, and his mouth felt parched. A low-level buzzing seemed to fill the office, like static from a badly tuned radio. The phonograph hissed and spat repeating crackles as the needle trailed over the smooth wax at the end of the last cylinder, and Oliver lifted it off. He took a fresh notebook from his desk and opened it to the first blank page, carefully annotating it with the date and time of the transcription.

  Thrice more he listened to the recordings, feverish and sick with the horrors he was transcribing. The sickness of Henry’s mind poured out onto the page with every stroke of the pen. Oliver felt a nauseous bile build in his stomach with every damnable phrase committed to paper. Each time the recordings played, the pain behind his eyes grew worse and worse until he was forced to take a break and pace his office for half an hour until the pain receded. When he took his seat once again, he saw that the light had vanished completely from the day. No hint of streetlights filtered in through the blinds.

  Time had flown past him, its elastic nature seeming to compress during his pursuance of Henry’s vile outpourings. Oliver glanced at his watch, shocked to see that it was past ten at night. How had he lost track of so much time? Had he been so caught up with his obsessive transcription that the day had fled in fear from his compulsion to render every horrid syllable as accurately as he could?

  The Liberal Arts building would be deserted by now, its staff and students long since returned to their homes for dinner, the company of loved ones, and perhaps a radio play. Though Oliver had never yet desired to marry or raise children, the thought of returning to the bosom of a family that loved him suddenly seemed like the most desirable thing in the world. Briefly he thought of calling his mother and father in Baltimore, but dismissed the notion. In his current state of mind, he would only scare them with his repressed terrors.

  He looked down at his notebook, its pages filled with fragments and hideous ramblings, many of which were obscure to the point of uselessness. Much of what Henry said bore the unmistakable hallmarks of Shrewsbury’s conclusions. This was yet another corroboration of the truth of the Great Old Ones and their agents, yet another pillar of his world of certainties pulled down. Henry knew of this secret world beneath the surface of the waking world of sanity, and it had driven him mad. Oliver could already feel his own grip on reality slipping, and struggled to maintain his focus.

  Too many things vied for his attention.

  Amanda and Rita’s disappearance, and the gruesome discovery of the devoured bodies beneath the Garrison Street Bridge—it seemed impossible they were not connected.

  The device Finn had brought to him that Kate believed to be some kind of key to unlocking the gates to other dimensions.

  His alliance with Alexander to stand against the return of the Great Old Ones.

  Yet for all that, nothing would ever be the same. Normal life had been snatched away from him, and there was no going back. He knew that without those to stand against these dreadful, alien creatures from beyond time and space, the race of Mankind was utterly doomed. To think that he might be part of that opposition was absurd, but what general ever went into battle with everything he needed?

  Oliver turned off the phonograph, and the sudden silence that filled his office was unwelcome and unnerving. The silence of a deserted building was a strange thing. Once bereft of humanity, the structure took it upon itself to stretch its hidden girders, flex its skin of brick, and exhale from the heart of its boiler room. Sounds that were obscured by the bustle of students and the chatter of classrooms now came to the fore, little dry echoes and soft zephyrs blowing through half-opened windows.

  He closed his eyes, letting the night sounds of the building wash over him. He listened to the rattle and gurgle of pipes within the walls, the gentle hum of dormant electrics, and the silent echoes of empty hallways and corridors.

  Then, a sound out of place.

  A sound that had nothing to do with absence.

  A sound that spoke of activity and presence.

  Glass breaking. Falling to the floor and scattering like shards of ice.

  Irregular footsteps, like football cleats scraping on concrete.

  Oliver rose from behind the desk and unlocked the door of his office. He opened it and listened again. The sounds were faint, coming from below. He eased cautiously out of his office and into a wide hallway carpeted along its length in plush red, gold, and green. Portraits hung on the walls, and diffuse light from outside spilled through the arched windows at both ends of the corridor where stairs to the ground floor were located.

  Below the window, light from the atrium entrance to the building filtered up, casting strange, elongated shadows that moved like waving undersea fronds. Oliver couldn’t recall anything in the atrium that might cause such shadows, but he had never been in the building at this time of night...

  He edged along the hallway to the stairs and leaned over the polished wooden banister.

  Bracing himself for what he might see, Oliver looked down through the open stairwell to the black and white checkerboard patterned floor of the atrium. Pale shapes, hunched over and uncertain, lingered in the shadows, barking and gibbering to one another in some vulgar parody of language. There were four shapes moving onto the lower reaches of the stairs. With each uncertain step they took, Oliver heard the scraping tap-tap he’d heard from his office.

  Oliver’s eyes widened at the sight of these hideous monstrosities, unholy mockeries of the hominid form with their wretchedly wiry arms, skulls vaguely suggestive of canine morphology, and claws and teeth more in keeping with the African big cats. These were natural weapons designed to tear a victim’s flesh from his bones. As he struggled to comprehend the horror of the creatures, Oliver was put in mind of the dead girl on the athletics field and the bodies under the bridge.

  “Dear God have mercy…,” he said.

  Though he had spoken in the softest whisper, one of the beasts snapped its head in his direction. Oliver jerked back, but an excited jabber of exchanged whoops and brays told him he was too slow.

  The creatures had seen him.

  And they were coming to kill him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Oliver turned and ran back along the hallway, horrified at the sight of such disgusting creatures within the university. He heard them bounding up the marbled stairs, the scratching sound of their hooked claws and taloned feet a dreadful cacophony of animal hunger as they pursued him. Their gibbering barks and howls echoed from the walls as he ran, the solemn-faced portraits watching his desperate flight with dispassionate eyes.

  He looked back over his shoulder and saw the first of the beasts vault over the balustrade, landing with an ease that spoke of years on the hunt. Oliver’s terror got the better of him. The sight of so abominable a face shocked him to the core, and his body was suddenly no longer his to control. He stumbled and fell to the carpet in a tangle of his own limbs. He rolled and scrambled away on his backside.

  The creature smiled, and Oliver cried out in horror at the sight of so human an expression on so monstrous a beast. Its face was all teeth and malevolence, ears ragged and bitten, its scarred features curiously canine, yet retaining an impression of humanity beneath the degeneration. It was naked, but a layer of encrusted filth covered its lepr
ous flesh as it loped down the hallway toward him.

  Its pack mates clustered behind the monster, hooting and snarling as they smelled his fear and sweat. Bloody nails as long as talons clicked as the light behind the beasts wavered. Oliver felt his numbing shock dissipate at the thought of being eaten alive, and volition returned to his body. He pushed himself to his feet and ran back toward his office as though all the demons of the pit were chasing him.

  He realized this wasn’t too far from the truth.

  The hallway seemed to stretch out before him, like some nightmare vision where the object of desire continually moves out of reach. His office couldn’t be so far away! He walked this route every day, and it had never felt so impossibly distant. At every moment, he winced in expectation of razor claws slashing through his jacket and shirt to tear the flesh from his back. He let loose incoherent cries of panic and fear, arms pumping as the shadows of the monsters’ clawed arms stretched out on the walls on either side of him, ready to envelop him and drag him into their lethal embrace.

  Though he knew it was foolish, he risked a glance over his shoulder to see that the hideous beasts were keeping pace with him, loping and bounding after him like predators toying with a wounded prey they knew couldn’t escape. They were stalking him. Oliver wept with relief as he saw the open doorway of his office ahead of him. He threw himself through and spun on his heel to slam the door shut behind him.

  Oliver fumbled with the key, but his idiot hands were unable to grasp the brass key sitting in the lock. His trembling fingers finally gained purchase and he twisted the key, crying in relief as he heard the heavy click of the lock turning. He backed away from the door, his mind racing as he realized he’d just trapped himself in a small room three stories up.

  Furtive grunts and sniffing noises sounded beyond the door, and the patterns of light on the floor were disrupted as the creatures stopped outside. Remembering the breaking glass sound he had heard, Oliver wondered if such animalistic monsters could grasp the mechanical complexity of a door and handle.