Arkham Nights

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  From the heart of Arkham, Barnes and Towers Investigations stands against the things that go bump in the night, growing stronger by the day.

  Abandon hope, all ye monsters who fuck with us.

  The Lady in Yellow

  I stared out of my office window at a view as dull and uninviting as a nun’s underwear. Arkham’s dark, cobbled streets and its scruffy little buildings did little to inspire me. Beyond the lazy, tar-black stretch of the Miskatonic, the town lay like a sleeping serpent, under an evening sky dotted with stars.

  But I—one of the few and proud enlightened with a pulse—knew that beneath Arkham’s doddering façade lay unimaginable horrors, ready to pounce on any poor fool that wandered too close. Me and my business partner, —ex-marine and former boxer by the name of Trevor Towers—had come face to face with Arkham’s deadly underbelly on more than one occasion. After surviving our first encounter with its evils, we’d decided to go into business together as private investigators, operating in the very heart of the seedy little town.

  Say what you will about old Arkham, it sure knew how to pull you in.

  In the few months we’d worked in Arkham we’d succeeded in thwarting the plans of an alien monster that posed as the new Mob Boss, and solved the case of a man that vanished in degrees, only to be replaced by something inhuman. There was the odd kidnapping, of course, the usual extortion cases, and the sordid little jobs that came our way.

  It was a hell of a way to make a living.

  I turned away from the window and checked my watch. It was already a few minutes to six and I guessed my client would be knocking on the door at any time. I pulled a chair behind my desk and wondered, for the hundredth time, just who this mysterious john was that wanted to meet me without even disclosing his name.

  We’d certainly made more than a few enemies since dispatching Arkham’s otherworldly crime-lord. That’s why I kept a Colt Automatic under the desk to keep away any prospecting torpedoes, as I hopefully waited for the next paying gig. Being careful goes a long way in this business.

  Our office was situated in the newer part of Arkham, just across the river from old town, in a building that was barely classy enough to let us skip rent every other month. My office, white-walled and laid with a gaudy blue carpet, could’ve almost been sparse if not for the huge antique desk before me. Hewn from dark brown wood and paneled with decorative scallops on each corner, it was filled with drawers, some of which were still stuck like Hell. We’d bought it for a song in a yard sale in nearby Kingsport.

  That was where my partner was at the moment, working a surveillance gig and judging by the way he sounded on the phone, also wrestling with one bastard of a hangover. Trevor couldn’t work unless he’d gotten absolutely smashed the night before a job. Besides, he was a big boy; he could deal with it. Who was I to judge the man who saved my life?

  A huge shape darkened the office door’s frosted glass pane. I didn’t need to check my watch to know that the knock came at six o’ clock sharp. Looked like this john was prompt, at least. He let himself in without a word from me. He seemed oblivious to the gun I pointed at him, too hip to the jive to even consider that his next action could get him killed on the spot.

  He was a huge black fella, just tall enough to clear the door, wide too; so wide he had to squeeze through the door frame. Thankfully, he seemed to be unarmed. Smiling at him, I said “Wish you’d called ahead; I would’ve had the door widened.”

  He grunted before shutting the door behind him. I gave him the once-over: this wasn’t your usual spade. He looked dead serious, dressed in the spiffiest pinstriped suit I’d ever seen. Every single thing on him, from his black leather brogans all the way up to his yellow cravat, reeked of orchids.

  He wore a black bowler hat that ended just above his dark, beady brown eyes. There was a weariness in those moist and jaundiced eyes, as if he’d walked a million miles to reach me. Curiouser and curiouser, as the caterpillar said.

  At least the john looked like he could afford me, so I tucked my gun into the desk holster and stood up to shake his hand when he reached the desk, and invited him to sit.

  My hand was engulfed in his big brown grip, then he squeezed his wide behind into my two-sizes-too-small chair. I cringed inwardly as he sat, expecting it to break like kindling. Thankfully, it held.

  He introduced himself, saying, “My name isn’t important. All you need to know is that I need help and I got all the heavy sugar you need.” The man’s voice was thick like pea gravel. Once he’d said his piece, he stared around the office, and said, “This doesn’t seem like the kind of place a couple of shamus’s would work from.”

  “Oh, this is my thinking desk,” I replied. “We keep the filing cabinets and secretaries on another floor.”

  He grunted and stared at me morosely with those big, sad eyes.

  “I’m here because I know you and that hard-boiled mug, Towers, took out Big Boss himself.”

  The man had done his homework, apparently. I bet he even shifted through every dive and asked all the right jailbirds, just to make sure. I asked, out of professional courtesy, “So you know my partner?”

  He put both hands on the edge of the desk and I guessed that if he really put it into his head, he could’ve probably snapped it in two without even breaking a sweat.

  “I saw him kill a man in the ring once,” he explained. “Cost me a whole lot of dough, too.”

  “That’s Towers, alright,” I said. “A right heartless bastard.”

  Ignoring my joke, he continued, “I need you to pay attention. This is important.”

  Realizing he wasn’t after any sweet talk, I pulled a notepad and a pencil from the desk drawer.

  He continued, “Soon after Big Boss was done with, there was a vacuum that a whole lot of folks rushed in to fill.”

  I nodded. This one wasn’t just a loaded daddy-o; he was educated enough and smart enough not to waste time.

  “Many of Big Boss’s operations were ripe for the picking,” he continued, “so my underlings and I took over some of them. I suppose I should thank you for that.”

  I saluted and started doodling on my pad.

  He said, “I need a whole lot of things done that I can definitely afford.”

  I smiled politely, saying, “My associate and I will do anything to assist you, within the limits of the law.”

  He grunted again, his little shorthand for distaste to my little attempts at humor.

  The hulking man reached into his jacket pocket and produced two objects. The first was a big brown envelope, the second a small photograph. He dropped them on the desk and pushed the envelope towards me, checking up on the photo one last time. In his big fingers, it looked more like a postage stamp.

  “One thousand dollars,” he said without looking up, “and ten extra, too, once you’ve got the job done.”

  The envelope seemed one hell of a lot more important all of a sudden. I never thought I’d see that much dough from a simple peeping job. After he’d slipped the photo towards me, I realized that maybe the pay was nowhere near as good as it had first seemed.

  The photograph was a mug shot of a blond-haired woman. She was beautiful.

  “That’s my wife,” he said, “She’s been abducted by a cult.”

  At this point, I started to wonder just what the hell I had gotten myself into.

  The abduction by a cult part: water off a duck’s back; but a black man, married to a white woman? Now there was a proper can of worms.

  I started getting some serious notes as we went through the details of the case, my eyes constantly drawn back to the thick wad of cash concealed in the envelope.

  I just had to wonder what Towers would make of it all.

  Slouched back as comfortably as my Buick’s seats would let me, I kept my eyes on the job while daydreaming of a time when I wasn’t going through the hangover from Hell.

  I’d left my apartment as quietly as possible, hoping I could maybe sneak past it and lose it in tra
ffic. No dice: the damn thing shot off its dark little corner, sank its teeth into my brain and reminded me that beer and a Welsh bearcat by the name of Rhian mixed far too well together.

  I’d left her asleep in my bed, looking as sweet as an angel and smelling twice as nice.

  You ask me, it ought to be illegal, making a man work after a night like that.

  But, the gig Barnes gave me was a simple one: following some dame around whose husband suspected her of infidelity. That’s what I’d been doing as the afternoon slowly turned to evening, driving around the streets of Kingsport before I finally parked my keister across from a row of houses, one of which I’d seen her wriggle her perky blonde ass into.

  To the left of me, the row of houses were big-bricked, cottage-like affairs, arranged behind a row of pepper trees that gave me lots of camouflage as I searched them through my binoculars.

  Tailing her so I wouldn’t be noticed had had me lagging way too far behind her, so I hadn’t been able to see which house she entered. It wasn’t that big a deal, all things being equal, but my slip-up had me spying on all three houses instead of just the one.

  To my right stood a high, white fence, beyond which lay a sloping field that led straight into an unlit country club, which made me seem inconspicuous. When the odd pedestrian walked by I pretended I was reading my paper—just some bozo with nothing to go home for.

  Sat there, all neat and cozy with my head still pounding and my body aching like I’d been stretched on a rack the night before, I waited to see just what the bird was up to, if anything.

  The wait paid out, eventually. I discovered two important pieces of information. One, that the first house in the row was owned by an old geezer. I’d caught him puttering around in his front garden, holding a kid-sized watering can in his claw-like, arthritic hands. Two, the house at the end of the road was shuttered up and quite probably empty.

  The first two were well lit for the night, so I deduced the woman was either inside the old guy’s house, somehow humped to death by the octogenarian stud. That, or she’d just gone for the one at the center, which had kept its doors and curtains good and shut since she’d gone, to guard her from prying eyes.

  I looked back at the old man, shrugged, then turned to the center house.

  Around six, I started to wonder how my partner was doing with our latest potential client. All told, we might have gotten ourselves a pretty sweet gig, but the kale wasn’t always a given and some of our jobs weren’t exactly cliffhanger material.

  Take our latest case, for example: a rube in Kingsport, some well-to-do banker type with more mullah than sense, had gotten in touch with Barnes worried that his wife was getting busy behind his back. I hadn’t met the rube, but according to Barnes, he’d been a stuffy old goat who acted like the whole world owed him rent.

  He paid us what we thought we were owed for taking the job and although I spent the day following his hustling wife from one dull location to another, it did seem like she was up to something fishy.

  I was reaching for my thermos, fit to burst with black coffee laced with about a pound of sugar, when that something finally happened.

  The window on my side of the Buick was wound down slightly, just enough to allow some of the night air in and my coffee breath out. The loud sound of a door slamming shut meant that, since the little old gardener had been gone for a while, something was going on next door. I mentally crossed my fingers in the hopes I wouldn’t have to stick around here any longer than I’d have to.

  A minute after the door shut, the blonde came strolling into view, heading out of the middle house’s front garden with a tall, dark-haired man in tow. Going by the way they handled each other, stepping off the sidewalk before turning to embrace, I knew they weren’t just old pals playing catch-up.

  I would’ve liked to use the camera but the flash would definitely blow my cover. Not that it would have mattered, as it turned out.

  I’d tucked myself into my seat and made some notes on my pad. Going by the address she’d gone into and the time she arrived, I wrote down how long she’d spent there before making a brief note of her lover’s description.

  While I was at it, the pair began necking something fierce, with her leaning against the car her husband had probably got her. When they finally split, she turned to climb into the Cadillac and I found myself surprised she’d actually held off from jumping his bones in the middle of the street.

  The Caddy started with a tiger’s growl and sped down the street. Soon as the man turned back to his den, I decided to finally call it a night.

  I got my stuff together and chuckled. There went another rich man’s trophy wife, sneaking out of her display cabinet to get some take-away nookie, when I heard a loud, angry tapping against my window.

  I didn’t have my gun on me. After all, what was the worst that could happen on a stakeout? I turned to look at the schmuck thumping at my window and wished I hadn’t. It was the blonde’s lover boy, looking all good and pissed off as he pointed at me through the glass.

  His other hand held a tire wrench.

  Forcing a smile, I rolled the window all the way down and pretended to put up my innocent bystander act. Turns out, the gigolo must have noticed my camera so my gig was well and truly up.

  Up close and personal, he didn’t look like much. He had a too big nose for his pretty boy face and I could smell the fruitcake perfume he had slapped all over his prissy self.

  “Did that old bastard put you up to this?” he growled. “You better tell me or I swear to God I’ll bash your stupid mug in. Then your stupid car.”

  From the sound of his voice, the lollygagger couldn’t string a threat together to save his life: his voice wavered too much and his face kept switching between a snarl and a frown.

  “Public decency inspector.” I said, friendly as you please, still eyeing the tire iron. “Just patrolling the streets to make sure no one makes a mess on the sidewalks.”

  This made him lean into the car, his pointed finger almost pushing up against my nose. “Why you...” he snarled, then yelped like a pup as I grabbed his finger and twisted it all the way back.

  I leaned into him even as he retreated, grinning as he dropped the wrench and fell down to his knees.

  He twisted like a little dervish against my grip, trying to rescue his pointing finger against my hold.

  I caught his wet gaze and snarled “Stop playing with other people’s toys. And never, ever, approach strange men in cars!”

  I released him after this, leaving him to fall flat on his ass.

  I wound the window up without bothering to check whether I’d made him cry.

  Sometimes, the job is its own reward.

  For the next hour, my mystery john told me his little sob story, about how he’d gotten to know a young, down-on-her-luck dancer and saved her from a life of streetwalking. Soon after meeting, they fell head over heels for each other before getting married in an odd little coastal town called Innsmouth. I knew it as a place full of bad news and ugly truths.

  He went on to say that while he spent his time running his empire, she kept herself busy with a lot of hobbies that would keep her mixed race wedding out of sight from the rest of society. One of them, the seemingly innocent pursuit of antique books, had got her involved with a bunch of book-loving kooks that went so far as to worship one work in particular, by the name of The King In Yellow.

  The last time he’d seen her, before she fell off the face of the Earth, was five days ago, when she left for one of their meetings in Boston.

  He scoured the place for her, naturally: every single person that was there that day, from the manager of the hotel where the meeting took place, all the way down to the bellhops and the cleaning lady, had been given the third degree and then some, without much success.

  After picking up a few names and some vague descriptions of the cult’s leaders that led him nowhere, he decided to hire a professional. Someone with a taste for the weird and the bloody: two dicks g
oing by the name of Towers and Barnes.

  I was flattered that he picked me, especially considering the amount of dough he decided to throw my way. After I reassured him that he’d be updated on a daily basis, he left me his number scrawled on a piece of paper. A half hour later after he was gone, I was still staring at his wife’s photo, laid out beside that big wad of cash, and wondered where on earth I should even start looking for her.

  In my opinion the whole book angle was nothing but hokum, and she’d just dumped him for a fresh start elsewhere. Then again, I sort of wished that wasn’t the case. He didn’t look like the type of guy who could take getting dumped like that all civil like.

  I was knocked out of my reverie by the shrill ring of the telephone. I picked it up, only to hear Towers’ gruff voice on the other end. After he’d finished telling me how the tailing had gone down, I went on to inform him about our latest gig. True to form, he’d worked out a lead before I’d even finished speaking.

  “Well, a daddy-o got hitched with an offay. Heavens above.” Towers muttered, squinting through the glare on the car’s windscreen. He fumbled for a pair of sunglasses before continuing. “I guess it does take all kinds.”

  I smirked. “Says the man who raised Hell just to talk to his ex-wife.”

  He snarled in reply, not taking his shielded eyes off the road as he peeled rubber towards Boston.

  It was a few minutes past nine, and he was in a real foul mood for being dragged out of bed so early; probably wouldn’t have bothered if it weren’t for the big wad of cash that’d just been thrown at us. He’d just picked me up in his Buick, his angry, hulking form barely covering the glint in his eye.

  Apparently, Trevor knew his weird books. The King in Yellow, Trevor informed me, had something to do with a writer fella from Boston.