Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

by Graham McNeill

  “Amanda told me to find you,” she said as tears eased from her eyes. “I went to your office, but you wasn’t there.”

  “No,” said Oliver. “I was…uh, elsewhere. I’m sorry.”

  “You have to find Amanda,” said Rita. “I left her there. I’m sorry, Mandy. I didn’t have no choice. I had to get out and get help.”

  “You did the right thing, Rita,” soothed Oliver.

  “I couldn’t just sit there and let them kill us.”

  “Let who kill you?” asked Stone.

  “I dunno…those guys. They wore robes, like priests or something. There was one, a guy in a red robe. He wanted to know about Mandy’s dreams. Threatened to feed me to the monsters unless she told them.”

  “The ghouls,” said Alexander. “She was held in their lair.”

  “A man in a red robe like a priest?” said Oliver excitedly. This was the link between the murdered girls, the ghouls, and the sphere Finn had taken from the monstrous flying creatures. It was all linked, every gruesome thread part of a larger design, with the minions of dread Cthulhu at the heart of the web.

  “Yeah, he was like a Klansman in red,” said Rita, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I don’t know who he was…we could never see his face, but he scared us. I mean, more than any man should. He had bad mojo in him, real bad, the worst I ever seen.”

  “Bad mojo? I don’t know the term,” said Oliver. “What does it mean?”

  “Means he’s evil,” said Rita. “Evil in his heart like it went bad, you know? Nothing smells worse than something that’s gone rotten.”

  Rita screwed her eyes shut at the memory of this man. Eventually she sighed and Oliver stroked strands of hair from her forehead.

  “Rita, this is very important,” said Oliver. “Can you tell us where you were? Do you remember anything about the place you were held prisoner? Even the slightest detail could help us find Amanda.”

  Rita shook her head. “It was a cave, underground somewhere. We never saw how we got there. We got jumped on the bridge after we left the Commercial, and that’s the last thing I remember before we woke up in the cave. They had those things in cells around the wall. Oh hell, Mandy, I’m so sorry! We have to find her!”

  “We will,” Stone assured her. Behind him, Rex wrote furiously in his notebook.

  “You have to, before he gets her to tell,” said Rita. “Mandy’s a good girl, but she won’t last, not without me to keep her strong. She’ll tell him, and then he gets what he wants.”

  “What exactly was he wanting?” asked Oliver.

  “Her dreams,” said Rita. “Everything she dreamed about that damn city under the water.”

  “Do you know why?” asked Rex.

  “He thought he could find it, I guess,” said Rita. “I think he thought Amanda’s dreams would show him where it was.”

  “Can he do that?” asked Minnie. “It was only a dream, after all.”

  Alexander shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. It was a vision of another place. Maybe even another time. After what’s happened to us all recently, is that so hard to believe?”

  “I guess not,” agreed Minnie.

  “How did you manage to escape?” asked Rex, earning him a stern glance from Stone.

  “A few ghouls came back one time, and some looked wounded. Like they’d been shot.”

  Stone and Oliver exchanged a look of understanding.

  “The others ate them right in front of us. It was horrible, but I got a weapon out of it.”

  Rita told them how she had fought the cultists, and Oliver felt his admiration for this courageous girl soar at her desperate escape from the lair of the ghouls. To have survived so long and still have the pluck and energy to fight free was staggering.

  “Did you see where you came out into the river?” asked Stone.

  “I tried to,” said Rita, “but I got turned around too much to see for sure. Somewhere upriver of the West Street Bridge, but I can’t say for sure. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m surprised you remember anything after all you’ve been through,” said Oliver.

  Stone and Oliver quizzed Rita for another hour, learning everything they could of her terrible ordeal. As Rita began to doze off again, they were no nearer to finding Amanda’s location, save that it was likely somewhere in the western parts of the Campus or Merchant District. But that still left a lot of properties in which Amanda might be held prisoner.

  Stone approached Oliver and said, “Rex tells me you got nothing from your friend at the asylum. Tough break.”

  “It’s hard to know what to make of what he was saying. I’m no psychiatrist, though perhaps I could have my colleague, William Hillshore, come out from San Francisco to examine him more thoroughly in the days to come,” said Oliver.

  “Maybe,” agreed Stone, “but that won’t do us much good just now.”

  “I know, but sometimes it felt like Henry was on the verge of saying something profound, but then he would veer off into raving lunacy. I’m afraid the experience of the war has broken him. Henry kept talking of the world being wiped clean, of the stain of humanity being washed away.”

  “Do you know what he meant by that?” asked Minnie.

  “Not really, no,” said Oliver. “But it bears relation to the rise of the demon’s undersea tomb city. I suspect Henry’s madness and the machinations of the Cthulhu cult to be inextricably linked.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t say anything that’d help us find Amanda? Think, professor.”

  “He said he’d seen the ghouls, found their lair even, but he didn’t give me any clue as to where it might be located.”

  “Damn,” muttered Stone, turning away and sitting at the end of Rita’s bed.

  Oliver shrugged and said, “I do think he wanted us to find Amanda. The more I think about it, the more I have a hard time believing that this was Henry’s doing. If anything, he seemed utterly horrified by the idea of these ghouls loose in Arkham. I had the very distinct impression that he’d found them, and tried to stop them, but was in turn stopped himself.”

  “By the guy in the red robes,” suggested Rex.

  “I suspect so,” agreed Oliver.

  “We need to find him,” said Stone. “Whoever he is.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” said Rex, jerking his thumb toward the recumbent figure of Rita. She was dozing, not quite awake and not quite asleep. “If even half of what Rita says is true, then this is one serious guy. He doesn’t mind getting his hands bloody at all, and I don’t want to be the next item on those ghouls’ menu.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Rex,” said Minnie.

  Rex slumped in his chair and tapped his pencil against his pad. “So what else did Henry say, Oliver? Gimme a quote to end on, eh?”

  Oliver massaged his temples with his fingertips. “Henry did give me one piece of advice. He said it was the most important thing.”

  “Yeah? What was it? Don’t eat yellow snow?”

  “Hardly,” said Oliver. “He said, ‘Do well, whatever you do.’”

  No sooner had the words been said than Rita sat bolt upright.

  “He said what?” she demanded, her eyes alight with sudden fervor.

  “‘Do well, whatever you do.’ Does that mean anything to you?” asked Oliver.

  “I knew they were bad news!” exclaimed Rita. “Get me outta here. I’ll kill ‘em!”

  “Woah, there,” said Stone as Rita tried to hurl herself from the bed. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere, missy. Lie back and tell us what that means, okay? I got a big gun, and if anyone needs killin’, you best be leaving it to me. You understand?”

  Rita looked up at Stone and recognized a man who never broke his word, never lied, and never made a threat he wasn’t prepared to back up with violence if need be. Oliver felt an acute relief that he counted Stone as an ally, for he would make a potent enemy.

  “What does it mean, Rita?” Oliver asked again. “What is its significance?”


  “It’s their motto,” said Rita. “He told us at the Commercial. ‘Do well, whatever you do.’ He was bragging, telling us how smart they was, how lucky we were to be with them. All he did was look like some rich kid boasting he had more money than me.”

  “Who was this?” asked Oliver.

  “Wilson Brewster, he’s part of the AQA Fraternity,” said Rita. “Oily bastard’s been trying to be Amanda’s sugar daddy ever since he laid eyes on her.”

  “AQA? What’s that?” asked Rex.

  “Age Quod Agis,” said Oliver. “It’s a Latin abbreviation, and means—”

  “‘Do well, whatever you do,’ I get it,” finished Stone. “Where’s their frat house?”

  “It’s on West Church Street, I think,” said Alexander. “Near the graveyard…”

  “That’s it,” said Stone, his hand drifting toward his pistol. “We got ‘em.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Amanda slept fitfully, her hunger and thirst now too great to ignore or keep at bay with willpower. The brief surge of hope she’d felt at Rita’s escape had lasted as long as it took for the cultist she’d taken the keys from to rise and beat her unconscious. She’d tried to remember his name, and where she’d seen him before, but it wouldn’t come. Exhaustion, fear, and malnutrition were eroding her ability to think clearly.

  She’d woken with blood in her eyes and a thudding pain between her temples. All trace of the struggle had vanished, though freshly chewed bones littered the far side of the pool. She’d thought she heard distant chanting, mixed with angry shouts from above, but it was hard to be sure of anything.

  Rita had gotten free, and Amanda’s only hope now was that her friend had managed to find help and was bringing the cavalry to her rescue. It wasn’t much of a hope. Even if Rita had made it back to civilization, how would she know where to return? She glanced toward the grate Rita had snuck through. Would her rescuers come back in that way?

  She drifted in and out of consciousness, letting her mind wander the forgotten pathways of her memory and taking refuge in memories of childhood. She remembered swimming through the crystal cold waters of Lake Champlain, racing her brother to the yellow buoys that marked the edge of the safe swimming area.

  Amanda would always swim a few strokes beyond the buoys, and tease her brother mercilessly for being chicken. Then he’d swim out to her and they’d laugh and dunk each other...until that one time a fish or some submerged piece of driftwood brushed against her leg. She’d screamed and thrashed like a maniac, thinking that Champ, the lake’s legendary monster was attacking her. She’d immediately pictured slimy tentacles pulling her down, like a rubbery octopus wrapping its oozing bulk around her and dragging her toward its beak-like mouth.

  After that summer, she never swam out beyond the buoys.

  The memory of the lake faded, and Amanda saw herself as a young girl, poring over her father’s atlas, memorizing the different names of all the countries. Capital cities, rivers, mountains, and forests—she memorized them all. That faded too, and she was in the automobile factory where her father worked, watching the assembly lines from the gantry above as line after line of men riveted, bolted, hammered, and welded the cars together. It never ceased to amaze her how all these pieces of metal, shaped, pressed, and molded together, could form such an incredible machine.

  Amanda had spent every moment she could at her father’s side, learning all about the science behind these automobiles and the machines the men used to build them.

  She wondered why her escape into memory had brought her to these moments.

  Then she remembered. They were an escape from pain.

  When had that pain happened?

  The memory of that pain surged, though it was without a point of reference or anchor in her mind. It might have been days ago, weeks ago, minutes ago. She could no longer tell.

  A voice had whispered to her, beguiling and soft, though she couldn’t hear the words. They were calming, and though she knew how this scene would play out, she wasn’t afraid. The voice came again, and this time it felt like it was asking her something.

  “Tell me, Amanda,” said the voice, “what did you dream?”

  “What?” she replied foggily.

  “The dreams of the sunken city. The ones you told to Oliver Grayson. Tell me what you saw and I can return you to your pleasing fictions of memory.”

  “I don’t remember them,” she said as a warning voice deep in the farthest reaches of her mind screamed at her not to relive this horrible memory.

  “I think you do,” said the voice. Amanda opened her eyes to see the red robed priest kneeling before her. A glittering fog filled the space between them, like they were inside a snow globe filled with flecks of silver and gold. She screamed and shrank back from him, feeling his hatred of her as a palpable force. It washed off him like sweat, a powerful disgust at her very existence. No, not just her existence, but her existence as part of the human race.

  His hood was right in front of her, but she still couldn’t see his face. Unnatural darkness clung to his face like a mask, and all the pain and hunger vanished as the force of her terror blotted out all other thoughts.

  “No,” she said emphatically. “I won’t tell you. I can’t. I promised.”

  “You do remember, and you’re going to tell me. Time has run out for you, Amanda. I tried to do this without you suffering unduly, but my patience is at an end. With Rita rotting in the tunnels beneath Arkham, I no longer care whether I kill you, so this is your last chance. Tell me what I want to know or you will die screaming in pain.”

  Amanda fought to hold back her tears, but no dam could restrain the tidal wave of emotion that surged through her. Tears flowed down her face and wracking sobs shook her body as days’ worth of fear surged to the fore. Without Rita beside her, she wasn’t strong. She couldn’t resist the man’s horrible demands.

  She nodded, but Rita’s voice sounded in her ear.

  Don’t you say nothing, Mandy. Don’t you dare!

  Amanda laughed to hear Rita’s voice bullying her from far away, but that laugh only enraged her captor more. She felt herself dragged to her feet as the chains binding her wrists were released. She sagged against the man, her legs unable to support her weight. She tried to struggle, to fight like Rita had fought, but there was no strength left in her. Rita trained every day and she had barely managed to fight her way free.

  The priest dragged her across the chamber, her legs splashing through the pool and scraping her knees bloody on the rocky floor. The ghouls barked and growled as he approached, thinking he had brought them a fresh meal.

  “Still choosing to be stubborn?” said the man.

  She didn’t answer him, and he shrugged. With surprising strength, he locked one hand around her throat and hauled her upright. Her feet dangled as he slammed her back against a barred door to one of the ghoul’s cells. Amanda struggled for breath, his rough hands almost, but not quite, cutting off the air to her lungs.

  “Latimer!” called the man. Amanda screamed in fear.

  The sound was barely out of her mouth when razors sliced down her back on either side of her spine. Red-hot claws tore her bedraggled dress and cut strips from her back, the skin and flesh curling down like rolled up paper as the ghoul’s paw shredded her flesh. The torn strips of skin were gathered up, like strands of hemp being wound into a length of rope. Warm, sticky wetness poured down her back.

  Amanda bucked and thrashed in the man’s grip, but his strength was enormous and he held her pinned. With a grunt and a savage jerk, the ghoul wrenched the strips of torn skin from her back and Amanda wept in pain and horror as she heard its jaws chewing the meat of her body.

  “No!” she screamed. “Oh no, please, no! Oh God, please, mister, what do you want to know about my dreams? They don’t mean anything, oh, please don’t hurt me again!”

  “Tell me what I want to know,” the man insisted. “Otherwise Latimer will peel the skin from your arms as easily as you’d remove
an opera glove.”

  Sharpened claws settled on her shoulders, digging deep enough to draw blood.

  “I’m sorry Rita, I’m so sorry…,” Amanda wept.

  “Speak up, girl!” snapped the priest.

  “I’m floating in the ocean,” began Amanda. “I don’t know where, but I’m not afraid…”

  “Go on,” said the man.

  Amanda told him everything in her dream, every nuance and every subtlety, no matter how inconsequential. He made her tell it three times at least, going over every detail, highlighting different aspects depending on the questions the man would ask to clarify certain points. She sobbed with each retelling, ashamed she had broken her promise to Rita. Her head knew there was no weakness in speaking under such circumstances, but her heart would not be dissuaded that she had committed some hideous betrayal.

  “Look up at the stars,” said the man, as she went over her last sight before the waters dragged her beneath the surface. “Tell me what you see. Describe them.”

  “There’s one group,” gasped Amanda. “Like a crucifix. It’s the brightest of all.”

  “The Southern Cross,” said the man. “As I’d expect, but what of the other stars?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amanda, hearing the frustrated, snuffling hunger of the ghoul at her back. At any moment it could tear more of the skin from her body. The thought of that made her tremble in fear.

  “I don’t know them!” she yelled. “I don’t know stars. I’m not an astronomer.”

  “No, but you are an engineer. Describe them, their shape, their position, their relative brightness. Do it now.”

  Amanda cried in abject fear, but she did as he demanded.

  * * *

  Henry’s steps carried him in a brisk circuit of his cell, his hands knotting together in frantic motion as his ruined mind tried to order itself. Oliver’s visit had thrown him for a loop, and the chaotic nature of Henry’s mind was undoing a measure of its disorder. For the first time in years Henry could think clearly.

  He knew it was a fleeting window of clarity, and he fought to hold back the anguish of his lost years and the horror of his current life. Oliver had spoken of terrible things, events he had tried to bury in the darkest vaults of his memory, but that prison was now unlocked and the dreadful events of 1918 returned to haunt him.