by Scott Jäeger
“There are no men here,” Ash said, smirking at a joke known only to himself, “excepting my brothers and I.”
“There is no coal burners’ camp, either,” I said, as if to accuse him of something. “I see some fuming pots, but precious little evidence of charcoal.”
He squinted slightly, and shook his head to indicate it was as much a mystery to him as to me.
“All right,” I pronounced, “I am going to search this camp for Solomon the shipwright. I trust you won’t try to stop me.”
“You will search, will you?”
Though he had spoken in the same uninflected monotone as before, every ill-favoured coal burner stopped his work at these words. My men tensed, watching all quarters. The camp dwellers had no weapons in the proper sense, but as any sailor will tell you a pickaxe or awl will do in a pinch. Ash pointed to a low canvas tent, which I presumed was used for stores.
Cautious that Erik watched my back, I unfastened the leather tassels and parted the flaps. Inside was a row of eight sackcloth-wrapped oblongs, between five and six feet in length. I bent to peel open the first, the smell anticipating the corpse within. The body was brittle, the skin drawn tight and shiny where the bones jutted underneath. My trepidation grew as I revealed the others, all stricken with the same disease. The eyes of the last corpse were squeezed shut, the face twisted in a careworn frown. The Shipwrights’ crest confirmed what I already knew.
My companions continued to glare in all directions as I withdrew into the sunlight. Seeing my blanched face, Ajer switched to a two-handed grip on his staff. The one calling himself Ash looked on blandly, offering no explanation or plea. I picked up one of the two-handled planes I had spotted earlier and tossed it to Erik.
"What do you make of these?"
He turned it over, examining it. "It’s for wilt,” he said. “They must render it from the bark."
I looked down at my feet and gathered my breath.
"Solomon is dead,” I said. “Gorice, Cal, gather up these tools. You can melt them down in the forge." To the sailors I called, “Burn it down, all of it! Burn them out!”
My order was answered by the sound of a sickening thud. Gorice had clubbed down one of the coal burners with his hammer. Brains wet the dust in a perfect fan. Another of the creatures raised a shovel, too slowly, and was likewise swiftly killed. He writhed soundlessly on the ground where he fell, a bubbling, creamy stuff, like half-rendered fat, emitting from the wound.
“He took a swing at my knees with that mattock,” Gorice protested at my severe look. “I did just what anyone would.”
The eight of us were wound tight for we were outnumbered by a significant margin, but our remaining foes stayed unmoving and passive.
Gorice was staring at the one he had felled, and bent over to recover the chain broken from his neck, from which hung a small toad cast in iron. I could see as he passed it to me that he found it repulsive. Though crude in design, it conveyed something decidedly unnatural. Not wanting to think on its import right then, I pocketed it.
“Let’s get on with it,” I said to him. “I assume you’ve got the most experience lighting fires.”
My friends moved warily at first, but were eager to take up any job that would break the enveloping tension. With brands from the few small fires already burning, they began to light up the tents. The wilt harvesters did not move, except those who shifted aside to avoid being burned themselves. I smouldered along with the ugly little village, part of me hoping for a reason to cut one of them down. As Cal was about to set the corpse tent alight, it occurred to me Isobel would want to see her father’s body. I went to shift Solomon’s desiccated remains outside.
Erik’s shrill whistle gave me just enough warning to keep my feet when the captain of the mutants grappled with me. The two of us staggered in an ungainly pirouette, Ash clinging to my shoulders, and to my hips as well, with monkey-like claws in place of feet. His teeth snapped at my cheek. Seizing him in turn I butted him in the face, but instead of the expected crunch of a nose breaking, the center of his head folded in, as soft and pulpy as a rotten melon. Having tempered his bite, I grabbed his wrists to throw him off, but not before he had hooked up a shank from the ground with one of his claw feet.
Though I knew what was to come, I was helpless to prevent it.
He drove the sheared metal rod into my abdomen, just under the ribs, and out my back. The sensation was one of an indescribable cold, at first around the shank, then radiating throughout. Ash disappeared and the world turned on end as Ajer Akiti’s shocked expression filled the sky.
I knew no more.
An Unexpected Detour
From a featureless amaranthine void, I stepped again onto the streets of the nameless city of my old dream, and went among the hooded, candle bearing figures. I walked until I was surrounded, and as always the mob subjected me to their whispered, then roared, mantra, until terror drove me to waking. It was a familiar fear however and I quickly set it aside, kicking at the sheets and wishing for a thicker cover as the sweat chilled my skin in the too cool room.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked about. Pale starlight revealed crowded rows of gambrel roofs outside the window, which surely meant I was in Arkham. The industrial green sheets and sterile hush placed me in St. Mary’s Hospital. What fresh mistakes had brought me here? I considered whether I had been admitted for an overdose, but the protocol for drug users was to send them to the Asylum, a fact I did not like to dwell on. I twisted around to confirm I was alone, and felt a disagreeable tightness a few inches above my pelvis. I rested my hand on a ridge of scarred tissue. The wound was long-healed and painless, but a lump pressing into my hip provided another distraction. I reached beneath me to grab hold of a coiled leather belt that, for some reason, triggered the flood.
Isobel’s face flashed in my mind’s eye, and Erik, Ajer, and my crewmates on the Asphodel, then Zij and the ports of the Southern Sea. I lay back, my end approaching with the speed and implacability of a freight train, and experienced again the thrust of jagged metal which had severed me from my friends and, so I had thought, my life. For one vertiginous moment, I wondered if it was all the elaborate fantasy of a man in a weeks, or months, long coma. As I struggled to make sense of the chaos, my hand of its own accord followed the length of belt and grasped the sheath of my pearl-handled dagger.
I cried aloud with this discovery, as in the same moment a nurse entered the room. Beneath the covers I clutched at the hard lump of the sheath, my anchor to the place I had left behind, but kept it concealed. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
The woman was tall, yellow-haired, and lovely in an indifferent way, as if chiseled from marble. Though St. Mary's was outfitted with gas light, she carried a candle. An intolerably strong cinnamon scent wafted along with her as she passed the foot of my bed to lower the blinds. She crossed the room again to rummage about in a drawer, and slipped something into her pocket. My thoughts darted to a syringe and morphine, and although much time had passed since I last indulged, my pulse quickened.
“Miss, how was I admitted here?” I asked. “Can you tell me the date?”
She did not answer, but leaned over me to fluff my pillow. In close proximity her perfume, and the smell of something less pleasant beneath it, was so overwhelming I raised an arm to my mouth, brushing her cheek with my sleeve. As if I had disturbed an image reflected in a pool, her cold beauty dissolved before my eyes.
In its place, a grey, misshapen form loomed over me, presenting instead of a woman’s aspect a crawling nest of worms.
My whole frame arched away from this obscenity, but the nurse’s body had also transformed, into something massive and bulky, and I was pinned beneath its arm. When it lifted a scalpel into view I grabbed its wrist in my left hand. Its skin was scaled, slippery, and ice cold. The thing could produce no expression, but the tubules, like maggots grown twenty times their natural size, danced as if in agony.
I had been in more than a f
ew fights since I was last in Arkham however, and would not succumb so easily. I groped about the bed for the pearl-handled knife. Instead, my fingers closed round the solid butt of a revolver. Yanking it free, I fired all four cartridges into the slack stomach of the beast, the force of the blasts knocking it back on its heels. It stood hunched there in the wavering candlelight, a colourless ichor streaming from its torso. The pink facial appendages gradually slowed their writhing, and when they stilled altogether it toppled cumbrously to the floor.
I was weak and my ears still rang with the echo of the shots but, after folding down the bed’s safety bars, I was well enough to get around. My newly acquired weapon was a four-shooter with a worn, pearl-inlaid grip. I ejected the spent shells and reloaded with additional bullets from the holster.
I thought I should examine the thing more closely, but even dead it was such an affront to the senses I could not bring myself to approach it. A cursory search of the room revealed a weary suit of clothes and a pair of scuffed shoes, which I hastily pulled on. Behind the door I found a coat as well, in the thigh length style that became popular during the War. I buttoned it to cover the holster. The billfold in the pocket gave me pause, however. Inside were about sixty dollars in small bills and an insurance card made out to a Wendell Richards. I rushed to the mirror over the basin in pure panic, but the reflection, whey-faced and skinny, was the same old Isaac Sloan. I was straightening my new clothes, considering what lies I should tell the police, when the silence finally battered its way into my thoughts.
No one had come to investigate the shots.
I exited into a long corridor, brightly lit and perfectly empty, and followed it to the stair. I heard none of the sounds one would expect from a busy hospital, not a stray cough or a snoring patient, just the sibilant hiss of the gas lamps. When I descended the stairs to the charity ward, about half the beds were turned out and ready, the others rumpled with the outlines of human forms, but empty, as if everyone had decided to use the lavatory at the same time. Here was evidence of activity: a sandwich on a tray, a mop in a steaming bucket, but nowhere a living soul. I took several bites of the sandwich, which was chicken and quite good, and continued past the equally deserted admittance area.
Outside, I looked back at the lobby and saw a tired receptionist at the front desk and a doctor reviewing a file. There were others too, going about their business, unmindful of gunshots and shapeshifting monstrosities.
A hand on my shoulder drove me rigid as an electric shock.
“Make way, please,” someone said. I spun around. It was a man bringing his son to hospital with a hurt wrist. I muttered an inane reply, wondering how many more surprises I could endure in one day.
Eager to be away from St. Mary’s, I headed east towards the downtown, the paving beneath my feet growing firmer as I went. I had fallen asleep in my uncle’s cottage in Kingsport in autumn and had, I deduced by the state of the now budding trees, woken in Arkham in spring. I pondered this predicament for an hour before a fresh idea guided me to Miskatonic University’s library, which naturally was shut. I sat on the steps to watch a spiritless light herald the day.
At precisely eight o’clock a fellow in a checked tweed suit arrived, his face framed by round, wire-rimmed spectacles and a heroic white beard of a kind not in fashion this century. Offering a gruff “Good morning,” he opened the doors with a skeleton key.
I hadn’t been in a library since my college days, and though it held no nostalgia for me, I did recollect cross-referencing and the working of a card catalogue. It took me an hour to find a few written accounts of the place to which I had traveled. They mentioned the great cities –Celephaïs, Dylath-Leen, Ulthar– by name, and called the world itself the Dreamlands. I soon established these to be nothing more than outlandish pulp stories however, and of little practical use. Through a bibliographic entry, I did discover a more serious study in the Occult Room, an area sealed behind a locked door.
I came upon the bearded man scribbling on a pad of foolscap at an enormous desk heaped with stained and dog-eared books, working counterparts to their primly arranged cousins which lined the shelves of his office. He glanced up, ready to dismiss me for a vagabond, but paused for a closer examination. Perhaps my eyes reflected something of what I had seen.
“The early riser,” he chuckled. “I expect to see no one at the library at eight o'clock of a Monday morning except for the most dedicated graduate student, of which I believe there to be three this year. I am Henry Armitage, Head Librarian.”
“Sloan, sir,” I said, “Isaac Sloan.” I accepted his invitation to sit on a straight-backed chair that would discourage all but the most committed seeker of knowledge. “I'm not a student at Miskatonic, Professor, but I have been conducting research here and hit a bit of a dead end. Apparently, your occult collection is segregated from the rest of the library. I need access if I’m to get any further.”
“Ah yes, the Occult Room.” His brow furrowed along lines more used to smiling. “And what institution did you say you were from, Mr. Sloan?”
“Northeastern. I’m a graduate of the Liberal Arts program. I hope to continue on to an advanced degree, once I can raise the funds, but in the interim I’m pursuing my studies on my own. The notice on the door to the Occult Room says that it is off limits to the public.”
“You are correct,” he said, fiddling with his pen as if deliberating whether he could continue his work while we spoke. He wiped the tip on the blotter, set it down, and folded his hands. “Access is restricted to students with the recommendation of a full professor. May I inquire as to the nature of your research?”
“The Dreamlands,” I replied.
“Hm. A rather esoteric field of study, although it is a common interest among morphine addicts.” This was, mercifully, a neutral observation. “I tell them they can find Coleridge in the regular collection.”
“I have journeyed to the Dreamlands, Professor. I lived there for a time, and I hope to return. It is a real place.” This I said as much for my benefit as his. “As real as Miskatonic University, as New England. Do you believe me?”
“Mr. Sloan,” he replied, “as far as the occult is concerned, I never commit to what I do and do not believe without a bottle of single malt handy. What I can say is that we have no end of folks trying to sneak in, or break in, to our special collection. Most are curiosity seekers, but we’ve also had thieves working on behalf of private collectors, and other unsavoury types. Besides the headache of keeping criminals out, the documents themselves are dangerous.” To himself, he added, “Sometimes I wonder if hosting the collection is worth the trouble that goes with it.”
He had handily dodged my question, but I persisted. “Sir, the realm to which I’ve traveled, do you believe me when I say it is a real place?”
Armitage frowned again, this time setting his jaw. “You said you are not currently enrolled at Northeastern, Mr. Sloan?”
“Regrettably, no.”
“Then I will wish you a good day.”
* * *
I left the library to wander through the hours of the day, not stopping until sunset. After sitting by the inlet awhile to watch the ships and listen with a dull ache to the gulls’ cries, I decided to continue until exhausted. Full night had come around again when I chanced upon Jacob Roth and his partner bracing a man in a derby hat, a sight which left me panting against a grimy Parsonage Street wall. I told myself that I had not actually seen him –Boston was his turf, not Arkham– but nevertheless scuttled away like a cockroach. Such vagary was undoubtedly a sign that my opium fever was returning.
I paid extra for a private room at the Y, and to assuage my anxiety gifted myself a quart of gin. Warmed by that liquid fortitude, I lay down on the cot and circled my problem again, but came no closer to a solution. What I feared most of all was to wake once more to this existence. The world was dusty and colourless to me now, as if viewed through the fly-specked glass of a specimen case.
Then, in that unpai
nted room, on a bed not much wider than my shoulders, I dreamed.
I heard wavelets lapping at the pilings, but though I stood at the edge of a pier, could not see the water for the enveloping fog. Bo'sun Longbottom stood beside me.
“I’m glad you are here,” he said. Longbottom was ill at ease, checking frequently over his shoulder, though there was nothing but white in any direction.
“Why are you in Arkham?” I asked. “Did you bring me to St. Mary's?”
“I am not in Arkham,” he said, plunging his hands in the pockets of his pea coat to keep them still. “I can never return there. For that matter, I should not even have come here.”
“Are we in Kingsport, then?”
“You are known in Arkham now,” he said, neglecting my query. “A watch has been posted. You will need assistance if you wish to return to Zij.”
“It’s simple,” I said, though it had not occurred to me until that instant. “I’ll go back to the cottage in Kingsport.”
“That way is closed. You will have to use the front door this time.”
“The front door?”
Longbottom did not elaborate, but recited the following message as if from rote:
“The book is hidden in a disused apartment on Marsh Street. Take the stair to the first floor. There is a door there, but it is hidden. Put out the light in the hall, and when it is dark you will see a symbol on the wall. Wipe it clean with your sleeve. With a bit of coal, draw this.” He flashed a metal symbol in one hand. It was a circle with an opening at the bottom, like the Greek letter Omega, around something like a letter ‘I’ with serifs. “The door will open. The book is inside; it will be wrapped up. Don't unwrap it, don’t look upon it, and especially do not touch it beneath its wrapping.”
“Didn’t Uncle Eamon sail the Southern Sea?” I asked, grabbing a handful of his coat. It was soaked through and bitterly cold. “The enemies he spoke of on his deathbed, they were from the Dreamlands, weren’t they?”
