Arkham Nights

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  The avenue seemed to have taken a turn for the worse since I’d last walked down it, a mere two months earlier. Arkham might be a place of deep history and untouched mystery, but it sorely needed a cleanup.

  God only knew where our taxes went. Then again, they probably went down the same sinkhole that the Town Hall had been sucked into six months ago.

  I neared the store and was not surprised to notice that it had probably seen better days. It stood next door to a fleapit hotel with a sign over it saying, ‘Coloreds Only.’

  I sneered in disgust. Some of those ‘Coloreds’ had fought and died for their country as hard as any white boy, but they still couldn’t catch a break.

  Arkham Pawn and Jewelry had grimy windows partially concealed by a row of second-hand jackets. I passed a group of black fellows leaving the hotel as I approached it. I gave them a reassuring smile and got nothing but suspicious looks and muttered slurs for my trouble.

  I shrugged them off but could not ignore that dark cloud that seemed to gather around me. The door opened to gloom and must and a tinkling bell.

  Like a devil’s workshop ripped straight out of the funny pages, the place was cluttered with junk, and impenetrably dark.

  The counter was located to my right. I had to tiptoe around guitars and golf clubs and even a suit of armor to reach it.

  It was a glass affair, with its top shelf brimming with discarded jewelry, second-hand guns and poorly maintained knives. The man behind it, with his pits stained under each rolled up pale blue shirtsleeve, was hard at work stuffing a greasy BLT into his mouth. He only acknowledged me after he’d worked the thing into his maw.

  He chewed slowly and stared at me all bug-eyed. One masticating eternity later, he finally blessed me with a crooked little smile.

  “Good day, sir. How can I help you?” he said, his voice surprisingly well-groomed. Feeling jittery, I got down to brass tacks and showed him the ticket.

  He grasped it in his greasy fingers and looked it over.

  “What the!” he said, staring at me all worried, before finally mustering a sickly sweetness in his tone that I did not approve of.

  “Yes sir. Quite so, sir. Please, wait here while I fetch the item.”

  The man turned to unlock a steel cupboard out of a row that lined the wall behind the counter. I kept up my con act in silence, whistling a tune until he was done shuffling about.

  The man banged around beyond the counter, mumbled and tutted a few times before going, “Aha!”

  He shuffled back to me before thrusting a small cardboard box in my direction.

  Smiling sheepishly, almost as if he were afraid to ask, he said, “That’ll be twenty dollars, sir.”

  I pulled the wallet from my pocket and handed him two tens.

  I raised my head to find him leering over the cash in my billfold.

  “We have some quality goods just released this morning that you may be interested in, sir,” he said, almost drooling. “Some Prussian helmets in near-mint condition and a few Chambers originals, if you’re looking for something more... grisly.”

  “Who is that?” I muttered, as I palmed the cardboard box.

  “Chambers, sir,” he continued. “Surely you are a man of books.”

  I shook my head, acting all ambiguous and turned to exit the shop.

  The futz said: “I’ll see you soon.”

  Pausing in the threshold, I turned to say, “Let’s hope not,” and let the door clatter shut, its eerie bell tinkling behind me.

  Finally out of the shop’s stuffy clutches, I went back to my usual routine of acting wary all the way across Miskatonic Avenue.

  I walked back the way I’d come without acknowledging the blacks this time. They just hissed and swore.

  The mist over Garrison had grown thicker, looking as if it was about to choke Arkham in its pillowy mass.

  I stuffed the box in my coat pocket and headed the other way, looking for a way out of the Avenue. Reaching the turn into Garrison, I had to step over an unconscious bum sprawled out on the sidewalk, hopped up on Arkham’s finest coffin varnish.

  I turned right and felt a strange, nonsensical terror: it seemed to me as if the street was watching me. Not just the people walking across it, mind you, but the very bricks in the walls and the glass within the window frames themselves.

  I undid my tie, my fingers slipping uselessly along the knot.

  Beyond the unreality of Garrison, I told myself, was the river and the safety of the office. I picked up the pace, trying to outrun the paranoia that had gripped me since I’d left the shop.

  I broke into a run, my feet slapping on the dew-soaked pavement. I noticed another sound: the gentle clicking of talons, the soft clop of hooves and the skittering of things I couldn’t quite put in words.

  I reached the university and turned left, looking to lose myself in the buildings past the gate. I half-slipped on the slick cobbles wondering just where the pretty girls had gone off to.

  Everything was thick with fog, with the university wavering behind a wall of shifting white.

  Panting and sweating despite the cold, I realized that I had taken one hell of a wrong turn. A row of coarsely hewn buildings peeked out from beyond the mist, their peaks coming together to form a horizon of ugly, twisting spires.

  I’d stopped and turned back too late: my assailants had reached me.

  I left the Arkham Kettle and headed back to the office. Towers was restless, what with the recent dry spell, and I had gone out looking for him. He and the bearcat he’d been seeing were an item apparently and I wanted to let him know that our cash flow situation had greatly improved after Abernacky’s check had cleared. After talking to Trevor’s gal, I was surprised to learn that Trevor hadn’t been in the entire day. I asked her to have him drop by the office if he should show up later and told her he ought to treat her to something fancy, first chance he got.

  Back at the office, I winced when I found the door unlocked and the front desk deserted. I checked up on the front desk, looking for Betty Polanski, our occasional secretary and just found a note that told me she’d be out for the next couple of hours. I briefly considered letting her go, but only briefly; if she left, I’d only have Trevor’s bent little mug to look at, every time I went through the front door. Sighing, I walked into my inner sanctum.

  I plopped down on the swivel chair behind the battered Kingsport desk and cringed as an ancient spring protested loudly. “Yeah well, suck it up pal,” I mumbled and eased into the desk. I leaned forward to pick up my half-empty pack of smokes, when I noticed that the top left drawer of the desk was open.

  “Would you look at that,” I said. “Trevor finally got the best of it.”

  Smiling, I looked inside the drawer and was disappointed to find nothing but a brief note.

  Barnes,

  I finally beat the bastard! Would you believe all I found was a lousy pawn ticket? But get THIS: it was given in receipt of an item sold to the pawnbroker only a week ago! I’m going to pay them a little visit and see what sort of screwy crap is going on here. Probably won’t be back today.

  Ta-Ta,

  Trevor

  “Trevor can do cursive, huh?” I mumbled, honestly surprised. I was definitely intrigued but I’d have to suck it up until Trevor came to gloat, first thing tomorrow. I wasted the next couple of hours getting some billing statements in order until Betty Polanski finally showed. With everything looking peachy, I took the rest of the day off and caught a matinée at the Arkham Bijou.

  I didn’t get back to the office until ten the next morning. Betty was hard at work on her nails but had at least brewed me a fresh cup of coffee while she was at it.

  “Any news from Trevor?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen Mr. Towers all morning,” she answered. “But he’s a big guy. I bet he can take care of himself.”

  I smiled and said, “That’s Trevor all right.”

  I sounded more confident than I felt. True, Trevor could take care of any run
of the mill toughs with one hand tied behind his back. But we didn’t deal with toughs; we dealt with ghoulies and ghosties and things from beyond the grave and those were more than a handful, even for Trevor. What if one of those had come back for a rematch?

  I went back to the Arkham Kettle at noon and found that Trevor was still a no show. From there, I started scouring through his usual hangouts. After drawing another blank, I decided to pay a visit to Arkham Pawn and Jewelry, seeing how that was his last known destination.

  The pawnshop was an oddity, even for Miskatonic Avenue, but I figured it was about time I had a chat with the people that ran the place. I walked through the door and smiled as the attached bell tinkled my arrival. The pasty-faced man behind the counter frowned as he saw me walk in. I glanced at his wares and found that most of them were just piles of halfway rusted junk.

  “I ain’t here to buy. Ain’t selling either,” I said, putting both hands on the counter.

  “Sorry, sir,” the man rasped, “I’ll have to ask you to come back during business hours....”

  I could tell that he was so full of bushwa his eyes were brown.

  “Closing down? In the middle of the day?” I asked.

  He struggled with the words. “Inventory check, sir. Only employees allowed.”

  “All right then. I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Help me find a missing bit of inventory of my own and I’ll keep out of your hair.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Need a hint?” I said. “My business partner came to your shop yesterday. Been missing ever since.”

  The man stared up at me, looking terrified.

  “Were you on shift yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  I reached into my pocket and took a snapshot of me and Trevor from my wallet. Betty Polanski had taken the snapshot, after we had gotten ourselves properly smashed after the Innsmouth case. I laid it down on the counter.

  “The one on the right is my partner,” I said. “Was he in here yesterday?”

  The man shook his head, making his jowls wobble like jelly.

  “Look closer,” I said. “You can’t have missed him.”

  I looked at the man’s hands as he fumbled with the picture. They looked like fat rolls of dough, pudgy with scabbed over nails. I hoped like hell that whatever he had wasn’t contagious.

  “He certainly wasn’t here yesterday,” he said, lying through his teeth.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, smiling as I stared into his bloodshot eyes. “Good luck with your inventory.”

  I turned my back to the freak and headed for the door. I heard him snickering as it closed behind me.

  On my way back to the office I had to squeeze my way past a crowd gathered around some scholarly weirdo who called Hitler ‘a godsend to Germany’. It just goes to show how quickly people forget how bad Huns can get, when you let them fly off the handle.

  “Nuts,” I grunted, and headed back to the office all good and pissed. In the end, I decided I was better off making an after-hours return visit to the pawnshop later that evening.

  The fog provided plenty of cover when I broke into Arkham Pawn and Jewelry, through the back entrance, sneaking past the burglar alarm in no time flat.

  Closing the door behind me, I reached into my jacket and took out a heavy-duty flashlight, keeping its beam aimed low. I swept the back room, scanning through cardboard boxes brimming with books. There were a few other boxes filled with random junk but nothing that really caught my eye. Stepping lightly—or at least, trying to—I made my way to the front of the shop and looked around.

  I was about to leave, when I decided to check out the counter drawer just under the cash register. By the way it hung, halfway open, it almost seemed to beckon. Shielding my flashlight’s glare from any stray passers-by, I looked inside and immediately spotted a Barnes and Towers Investigations card. We’d had a bunch of them printed up shortly after going into business and it was a good bet that the one I was staring at had been from Trevor’s personal stash.

  I palmed the card and put it in my jacket pocket. Tomorrow, I’d put the pasty-faced sonofabitch through the wringer for lying to me. I wiped my fingerprints from the counter and drawer and made my way to the back room. I decided to take a last-minute peek at one of the book-filled boxes, so I bent forward and pulled back a cardboard flap.

  “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, staring at the title printed across the spine. “The King in Yellow.”

  There was a rustle, a raspy chuckle and then a brass candlestick put me out like a light.

  I awoke on a beach mumbling, “Where the hell am I?”

  Waves gently lapped against the shore but I couldn’t hear them for the jackhammers pounding inside my skull. I reached for the back of my head and felt the large goose-egg that was sprouting out from the dried blood and matted hair.

  It took a few moments to gather my wits but I finally remembered what had happened. The freak at the pawnshop had gotten the drop on me while I was rifling through his books. And not just any books, mind you, but copies of The King in Yellow itself. Me and Trevor had seen it before, when we went up against a bunch of lunatics that worshiped the work in its pages and the alien king that starred in it.

  With great effort, I struggled to my feet and gazed across the water. My geography was a bit rusty but I knew that I definitely wasn’t in Arkham. I had to wonder if I was even in Massachussets, for that matter.

  Turning away from the water, I peered into the distance. I could see mist-laden buildings slowly coming into view, laid out like pictures out of a children’s book. Sighing, I rubbed my head and started walking toward the unknown city. Maybe there would be someone there I could ask for directions.

  Or maybe I could just catch the next Jitney out of Fairy Land to Arkham, while I was at it.

  Out-manned and outmaneuvered, I raised my hands, palms up, to the shadowy group around me. A tall, naked thing with hooves for feet and a pair of twisted horns stepped out of the mist to meet me.

  Ain’t that just the bee’s knees.

  It snorted, but kept its distance. I caught sight of the leather collar fastened to a long steel chain and sighed with relief.

  A man appeared holding the chain. Bald, he was dressed in a black robe, beneath which he wore a suit of medieval-style armor. He held a wicked-looking spear in his other hand.

  “Ah-ka-me ku-se?” the satyr giggled, just as the other shapes stepped into the light, to reveal a row of armored, spear-wielding, scowling weirdos.

  “Look guys,” I said, trying to play it cool in the face of abject insanity. “I know it’s nowhere near Halloween yet. But if you’re doing something, then I don’t wanna know about it. How’s that sound?”

  The satyr cackled, and said, in his scratchy voice, “As geht-mey cat cu-hul!”

  A pair of strong hands shot out of the mist and dragged me down by my arms. A moment later I was pushed roughly to the floor, my hands cuffed behind my back with steel shackles.

  Looking up at the wall of spears around me, I decided to sit perfectly still and let the satyr start digging through my pockets, until he finally found the cardboard box.

  He turned to his entourage and showed them his prize.

  I said, “Anybody. Speak. Fucking. English?”

  The satyr said, “Every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharply dressed man.”

  “Well I’ll be goddamned,” I muttered.

  I looked up to see a bald rube pushing out from the crowd, wearing a metal skullcap with a peacock’s tail feather sticking out from the top.

  The man kneeled close to me with the box in his hands. Without hesitation, he began to rip at it, revealing the small, carved effigy of a lion’s head inside it. It was red, about the size of a tangerine, the king of the jungle himself wreathed in a crown of living snakes.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” I mumbled.

  You’d think that being trapped in a strange city at the mercy of sinister men would teach me sub
tlety. Then again, what good is subtlety when you’re stuck in a place full of weirdos?

  “You have been summoned by the King,” the man said, his accent pure Brooklyn, before barking the word, “Udo!” at his entourage.

  Once again, I was dragged to my feet and turned to face the array of misty buildings that spread out where Arkham should have been.

  Suddenly the penny dropped.

  “Shit, the King, THE KING IN YELLOW?”

  I was dragged forward, flanked by two spear-wielding toughs.

  No one had bothered answering my question so I twisted around to see where the English speaking man had got to. He stood behind me, walking side by side with the satyr. The creature poked its tongue out at me.

  I asked, “This is about the King in Yellow, isn’t it?”

  The man nodded.

  We walked in silence for what seemed like hours, as we made our way through the city, trudging through the puddles that had formed among the cobblestones of the rain-soaked streets.

  I tried to take in the city around me, checking the crooked curve of its clay and wooden buildings, trying to peer at the shapes that writhed behind the tinted windows, when I finally turned my eyes up at the sky.

  It was a dull, bone white dome, flecked with black stars.

  “Madness,” I said, shaking my head.

  An eternity later, we finally stopped in the middle of what must have been a square. Not that I could have known, with the fog laid as thick as it was.

  “What? Are we taking a piss-break or what?” I asked and for the first time I realized one of the shaven-headed spear-bearers was a woman.

  She smiled, looking halfway decent while she was at it. Then the man with the Brooklyn accent started to shout in that weird gobbledygook of theirs and the female guard spun me round on my heels.

  I was facing the satyr. It gave me a grin that was all teeth, and said in a clipped, English accent that sent shivers down my spine, “You heard the man! Stop and rest!”

  Then Brooklyn voice and the beast keeper proceeded to pull barbed daggers from their robes.