Arkham Nights

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  We made for Chamber Woods on a dirt road so thickly peppered with rocks and fallen branches that I felt like my car’s suspension would go at any moment.

  I drove in silence, mostly looking out for the larger chunks of debris. Barnes, staring out at the passing trees, said, “Everything about this place just screams ambush.”

  I nodded, saying, “It’s too quiet around here; you even heard a bird since we got here?”

  The ‘road’ continued unabated, every now and again snaking out into unexpected turns. These sections were pretty much choked with trees, with a few of their branches stripped where unknown vehicles had recently passed.

  “So Errin loves seclusion,” Barnes said after I’d scraped the Buick’s paintjob through another obstruction.

  I grunted.

  “There’s no gate,” he said. “You’d think there would be a gate or something.”

  After a few more minutes, the dirt road finally led us to our destination. Hopefully, there was only one person around here that was crazy enough to build a mansion in the middle of these damn woods.

  Surrounded by two acres of well-kept lawn stood a white, two-storied, T-shaped building with a square face. The mansion was set in the center of a nearly perfectly round clearing, with the thirty feet or so of gravel path I drove down ending at a square space bearing three poorly parked cars.

  The mansion’s front end was about forty feet high and about just as wide. Its steepled gray roof stuck out over the building’s walls, festooned with gold spindly columns that reached down to touch the veranda.

  Its outward gaudiness, however, didn’t make the place look any less like it had been left to ruin. Most of its windows had been broken, with jagged spikes of glass poking out from the second-floor window frames. The same went for the two flanking the door on the first.

  As I slowed the Buick and turned into the car park, I noticed that the building’s left side was similarly damaged. The glass in the car windows had also been smashed.

  I counted a bright red convertible, a black Ford station wagon and a green sedan of the same make.

  I was about to turn to Barnes, when he said, in a quiet tone, “Get the feeling we might be too late to crash the party?”

  I nodded.

  The steps up to the veranda, leading to the dark red door centered deep within an alcove, lay just a few feet beyond the car park. It’d been left ajar to reveal a gaping blackness beyond.

  Barnes was staring at the cars. He clicked his tongue before saying, “So what’s the verdict Trev? Bomb? Bop party gone bad?”

  My eyes felt almost glued to the house. I couldn’t quite put it in words, but the thing seemed almost alive, somehow.

  I bit my bottom lip and said, “Don’t know and I don’t wanna know, but I bet you we can take it.”

  I reached into my jacket to retrieve the .45 auto from my holster. It didn’t help much, but it was a start.

  As Barnes reached to prep his own gun, I pumped a cartridge into the chamber of mine.

  I found myself grinning as I climbed out of the car. Barnes stared at me all puzzled.

  He said, “What? We’re just gonna barge in there? Just like that?”

  “Well, if it was a bomb that tore up the place,” I waved towards the cars and the mansion, “Then maybe we don’t really got to do squat.”

  Barnes snorted before heading towards the veranda. He said, “I don’t think Wallace is going to go for it; not if his wife is in pieces.”

  “After the shit we’ve been up against, who gives a rat’s ass what Wallace wants,” I said.

  I followed him around the car knowing in my gut that death himself had cast a very long shadow over Errin Fox’s shattered home. We walked up the steps to cross a veranda blanketed in shattered fragments of glass.

  We crunched across the debris and positioned ourselves on either side of the door. Peeking inside, I saw that the room beyond was as dead and empty as we’d thought.

  There wasn’t much in the way of light as we entered, besides what was filtering in from behind us. That long, dull square however, revealed everything we needed to know.

  The entrance hall was about fifteen feet wide and twice that in length. It told a story of destruction and death. The ornate oak grandfather clock and tables and chairs were smashed to bits all around us.

  The dark red blots spattered across the floor were the worst part, seeming to somehow move, when I’d catch them from the corner of my eye. The walls were also spattered with blots of congealed gore.

  I kicked at a piece of broken clockwork and sent it skittering towards the end of the hall, into another open door, flanked by a pair of alcoves. Steep staircases reached up beyond each of them.

  Barnes was going over the carnage, whistling softly. He held his gun slack against his side and I suppose that, like me, he thought that the worst had come to pass after all.

  I said, “No bomb could have done this. This is old-fashioned human ugliness, plain and simple.”

  We cautiously made our way to the end of the hall, raising our guns at the darkness in case the mansion had any more surprises in store for us.

  We’d go through the mansion with a fine-toothed comb, if it meant that we might just get Gemma Wallace out of here in one piece.

  The rest of the first floor held more of the same brutal carnage. As we searched through the other rooms we found smashed glass, cracked furniture and blood in spades.

  It was after we had retraced our steps and made our way up to the second floor that we found our first survivor. In a bedroom on the western side of the mansion’s ‘T,’ we found a man dying in a growing pool of his own blood.

  The door was locked so I kicked it down. Inside a bedroom decorated in gay whites and pinks with a large double bed at its center, we found the half-naked bastard.

  As we entered, he struggled to raise his revolver in his limp hands, then finally dropped it when we approached. He seemed almost relieved to see us.

  We approached him cautiously He was a pale, skinny fellow, topless with a shock of mussed, receding black hair lying atop his sweating brow. Blood trickled slowly from the multiple stab wounds dotting his red-stained chest. After taking a gander at him, I lowered my gun. He looked halfway gone.

  Barnes said sternly, “You the one behind this bloodbath?”

  The man coughed with a liquid sound and raised his head.

  His eyes seemed to clear a little as he looked at Barnes.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said, obviously in agony.

  “Then who the hell did this?” Barnes sounded almost about to lose it.

  “Let’s just say we bit off a whole lot more...” the man said, spitting blood. “... than we could chew.”

  “We know about the King in Yellow, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Barnes said.

  The man chuckled, another gurgle rising from his throat.

  “They came for us after the second act. The Stranger and his mask...”

  He was wracked with coughs, bloody spittle flying out of his mouth. He had a few more minutes left in him, if that.

  I said, “Listen, we’re looking for the Wallace girl.”

  His eyes focused on mine. “Some of our troupe fell in with the King’s phantoms. The rest... didn’t make it through the act.” He laughed and pointed at his gun. “They got me before I could pull the trigger....”

  Barnes went on, fighting back the wave of nausea that creeped into his voice.

  “Who are ‘they’? Where the hell are the rest of you?”

  “What about the Wallace girl? Come on man, the least you can do is give us that!” I said.

  He grinned at me widely, revealing a mouth full of bloodstained teeth.

  “One last good deed, eh?” he swallowed back a mouthful of blood and said, “The unturned women were restrained. The men were slaughtered.”

  “Then...” I began to say but was quickly cut off.

  “I escaped just as they began tearing out the men’s hearts. Th
ey almost got mine.” He pointed at his mangled chest. “What’s left of them is probably scattered in the woods. The phantoms told them to eat the hearts.”

  “God damn,” I said.

  Barnes frowned, obviously disgusted.

  The man groaned before saying, “Fox and Madson have a place in Kingsport, on the docks near the cannery. You may find the woman there, if you’re quick.”

  Barnes turned to me, “Looks like Geoffrey was right on the money.”

  I said, “Kingsport isn’t too big. She shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  I turned back to ask the dying man, only to find that life had left his eyes.

  I crossed myself. Barnes didn’t bother.

  We stood in silence and turned away from the corpse. Barnes began heading towards the door.

  “You think we should let the bulls know or something?”

  Barnes shrugged. He paused for a moment before replying. “Let’s just wipe down the place and leave this mess up to someone else.”

  We did just that.

  The carnage at Fox’s mansion stuck with us all the way to Kingsport.

  I was coming to terms with the supernatural angle, while Barnes was chalking it all up to drugs and madness. We were about to leave the Salem Turnpike when Barnes spoke up.

  “I get it now: Kingsport, as in, ‘The King’s Port.’ You think that’s why they chose the place?”

  I nodded. “Sounds kooky enough for a pack of freaks to cling to. You still working the drugs angle, aren’t you?”

  Barnes snarled. “No way around it, is there? I mean, who the hell else could have done it, except for some big six junkie, off his head on dope?”

  I wanted to remind Barnes about the kinds of things people can get up to when they’re not on dope. When they’re stuck in the trenches, for example, trapped behind a gas-mask, hands shaking from not letting go of the trigger for two days straight, when they find themselves knee-deep in the dead, screaming at a radio that’s gone dead with the Krauts shelling the world above into dust....

  I held on to the supernatural angle instead.

  The drive to Kingsport was fairly uneventful, all things being equal. Towers managed to avoid running over anyone and I was only teetering at the edge of another coronary. The traffic had been worse than expected and Trevor wasn’t having it. In all fairness, my attitude may have—hard as it is to believe—made Trevor a bit nervous. I tend to keep it together most of the time, but this case was really rubbing me the wrong way.

  What we’d seen at the Chamber Woods mansion had really shaken me. Yet, after all we’d experienced in the way of supernatural bogies it was mild by comparison. Our conversation on the road had been standard fare, but I still couldn’t keep the anger that was bubbling in me from showing. Trevor made sure he gave me as much space as I could stand. He cracked, fifteen minutes later.

  “You want to tell me about that bug up your ass?” he said, flipping the bird at a hot-rodding college boy.

  I scowled, so he pressed on.

  “Come on, Riley,” he said, “it’s not like we haven’t had worse.”

  I lit a gasper and breathed it in, before staring out the window.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t enjoy sticking my big nose in your business but we’re partners, goddamn it. Don’t clam up on me.”

  “Skeletons in the closet,” I mumbled.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I said there are skeletons... in my closet.”

  Trevor scowled. On any other day, he would have looked almost funny.

  “I had a sister,” I said, “emphasis on had.”

  He nodded and actually slowed the car down.

  “This was back when I was still boxing,” I continued. “I’d been training for the big leagues and I let Lisa get... loose.”

  “How old was she?” he asked.

  “Nineteen,” I answered, “but you wouldn’t know it, looking at her. She was just a kid at heart.”

  “She was about my age,” he continued. “When they sent us to the trenches, that is.”

  “Yeah, you either wised up fast or you weren’t around to worry about it.” I smiled grimly.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “it seems that while I’d been busy, Lisa had gotten involved with some no good types in college.”

  “College, huh?” Trevor said, “She sounds like a smart girl.”

  “Yeah, Lisa got the lion’s share of the brains in the family. Ma worked like a dog to pay for the tuition and I chipped in however much I could.”

  “What about your old man?” Trevor asked.

  “He was worthless,” I replied. “Ain’t that just the thing?”

  Trevor nodded.

  “Well, Lisa came to me one afternoon at the gym and really nagged me, all sweet like, to take her to the pictures.”

  “And you didn’t take her, did you?” Towers asked.

  “Hell, no,” I answered. “Riley Barnes was going to be the champ some day. He couldn’t be bothered to waste any time with his kid sister.”

  I was shocked to find my eyes watering. I choked back the tears.

  “Look,” Trevor said. “It’s okay if you’d rather not talk about it. I know I pry sometimes.”

  “No,” I said, “this has been a long time coming.”

  I ran my shirtsleeve over my eyes and said. “Damned wind’s messing up my peepers.”

  Trevor kept quiet as I pulled myself together. After a while, I went on with my story.

  “Lisa didn’t go to the pictures that night. She hooked up with some college rowdies and went to a party instead. There was dope and brown and she just couldn’t turn it down. We never figured out exactly what happened but some old couple found her dead by the side of the road. She’d overdosed and her friends had dumped her like so much garbage.”

  “Jesus,” Trevor whispered.

  “Damn near killed my Ma,” I said. “She held on for a year after that, just wasting away.”

  “I’m sorry,” Trevor said.

  I barely held back a smile. This had been the first time Trevor had ever said the word. “I did just fine for myself, though. Made it all the way to my first big bout and got KO’d just the once in my entire career. Not that it meant a damn, in the end.”

  “I must’ve fought you before that,” Trevor said. “You seemed to care plenty when you were in the ring with me.”

  “Nah,” I replied. “I just hated your stupid mug.”

  He laughed and I couldn’t help but smile. “Since then,” I said, “Dope dealers tend to drive me off the deep end, you know?”

  “Makes sense.”

  Time seemed to pick up the pace after I’d spilled my guts to Trevor. We spent the time telling dirty jokes, having our little gross-out pissing contest as we went. I was halfway through telling the raunchy story of the vicar and the toothless whore, when Trevor took a right into Kingsport and steered the Buick into a shadowy little spot on the dock.

  “So she says ‘I guess you just don’t love me anymore’...”

  “We’re here,” he said, nodding toward a gray, tall building.

  “Nice place for a bad deal,” I replied. “Bet it blends right into the background.”

  “Not that anyone would look for it, going by the place.”

  “We did,” I replied. “Time to bust some heads.”

  “Soon as we get the schmucks,” Trevor affirmed. “We rush them.”

  “Got any cards with you?”

  Trevor shook his head.

  “Ain’t that a shame,” I said, pulling a rolled-up magazine from my pocket.

  Trevor rolled his eyes and smirked. “What’s that? Latest version of McClure’s?”

  I held up the copy of Thrilling War Stories and grinned. On the cover, some overly patriotic doughboys were going over the top with bayonets at the ready. They looked almost constipated, if you asked me.

  “Jeez,” Trevor moaned. “What, the Somme wasn’t enough for you?”

  “Oh, the Somme is gonn
a last me for a lifetime,” I answered. “But at least in these stories the good guys win for once.”

  Trevor stared at the warehouse. “You think we’re the good guys in this story?” he said.

  “Who the hell else could we be?” I answered. “We got the Tommy Guns and the trenchcoats and the crappy rat-trap for an office, don’t we?”

  In my heart of hearts, I prayed that I was right.

  It had been two hours since we began our stakeout and there was still no sign of our quarry. After the first hour, our conversation had slowly died down. Since then, Barnes had sat reading from his magazine while I looked for another way to waste my time.

  After failing to keep myself busy, I’d set my sights on a small black beetle that kept attempting to climb across the windscreen. Each time it reached the halfway mark, it slipped and tumbled back down the glass to land against the wipers.

  I was sat watching it go through its hundredth attempt, when the bad thing happened.

  Barnes yawned and I couldn’t blame him. I was beginning to miss all those hours I’d wasted during trophy wife stakeouts. At least there, nobody got seriously hurt.

  Everything went weird at the blink of an eye.

  I noticed that something was wrong when Barnes, after I saw him with his arms still stretched a good minute into his yawn. He sat there in that pose, as if he was stuck in place.

  I only noticed the change from his reflection on the windshield, as my eyes were stuck on the bug, stuck in mid-step.

  It took me a good few blinks before I even noticed the stillness.

  I was about to turn and ask him just what was going on, when I realized that I couldn’t move my head a single inch. I tried to speak, but found my lips locked shut.

  My whole body seemed inert, or just about. I was unable to turn my head. My hands were stuck across my lap. I could wiggle my fingers and toes a little, but that was about it.

  Fear began to creep in.

  Before long, I realized that I could move my eyes. I couldn’t see much past Barnes or the warehouse through the windshield, but that would have to do.

  The terror set in about a thousand years later, creeping into my mind at an almost geological pace, while we were both frozen in place.