By the Light of a Gibbous Moon

by Scott Jäeger

  *Barton’s pauses smack a little too much of the theatre for my liking. Still irritated with myself for my outburst, I tried to hurry him along.

  GB. Don’t you see? That’s one way the police could find him.

  DW. Find who?

  GB. Rockwell, my step-father!

  DW. And he cannot be found in his lab on Walnut Street I presume?

  GB. No, no, no! He took his device and fled the day he murdered my mother. The laboratory means nothing to the police. Alembics and burners and flasks can’t tell what he was about.

  DW. Calmly, Mr. Barton.

  *I affected again to be taking notes.

  DW. And I suppose you can produce this fantastic journal you keep going on about? That would be something to go on.

  GB. I don’t have the notebook. I knew after two hours of reading it that Rockwell was insane, desperately insane, and perhaps dangerous. I thought that instead of breaking his invention, whatever it was, a better revenge would be to get him committed to the Asylum.

  *Barton looked at his feet for a moment and sadly shook his head.

  GB. In his last journal entry he wrote that he his suspicions about being followed had proved true. He worried that my mother had hired a detective, that she had found out about the bank accounts. He wrote that he would test the device the following Wednesday, his first opportunity to acquire more of those rare salts. I replaced the book in the desk, and jiggled the drawer back into place. Knowing he always worked at night, I returned on Wednesday at dusk to watch from behind the doors of the coal bin. I wanted to see for myself just how far his mind had gone.

  DW. And it was after your step-father’s experiment that you murdered him?

  GB. I tell you I didn’t kill him and neither did anyone else. From my hidey-hole I watched him connect two cables to the box. With it lit up from inside, I could see there was a kind of grill on the sides beneath the lid. It sort of hummed for a bit, then the light got brighter, much brighter, like an arc welder’s light. Rockwell put on some dark goggles and the vibrations got deeper. I thought that it might explode in his face. Then there was a wind. Even though the coal chute was the only opening to the room, the air seemed to blow outward from the box, and it stank like a marsh. I didn’t know what to think of this. There was a kind of crackle in the air, and the hairs on my arm stood up like during a thunder storm, and the box–it made this murmuring sound, for all the world like a person whispering. And then… the window.

  *I confess I was getting mightily tired of this drama. I worry I have let Barton get away with his prevarications too long.

  DW. Mm-hmmm..?

  GB. His box does what he said it would do in the notes. It opened some kind of gate right there in the brick wall of that musty basement. It’s all madness, I know that, but it opens a window to another place, a horrible place, somehow contiguous with his laboratory, with Arkham, with everything, but horrible. There was another being inside, in the distance, some thing that Rockwell called his counterpart, and it wants to come through. The device works I tell you, it works!

  After that, I scrambled back up the coal chute. But some time in the last few hours, the hatch at the top had been shut and barred from outside. There was no way to force it so I huddled up against it and waited. The light behind got brighter still. It seemed to fill up my hiding place. I shut my eyes tight, but I could feel that weird energy lapping up against me like icy water, pressing on me from all sides, and the murmuring from that box got louder. It had a voice, but like nothing human. It spoke in some monstrous language from beyond. I do not know if I screamed before I passed out.

  DW. So Rockwell created a machine which opens a ‘window’ to a ‘horrible place’. What’s to stop him from doing so again, other than his being dead I mean?

  GB. There’s nothing to stop him! That’s why I have to get out of here, or if I must stay in here, at least get the police to investigate.

  DW. I am sorry, Mr. Barton, but regardless whatever hallucination you witnessed on Walnut Street, I don’t understand how you could have come by all this information about Rockwell and his invention. Even you must see how implausible it all sounds.

  GB. I told you, I read all this in his work journal, the notebook he kept in his laboratory.

  DW. The notebook, the notebook.

  *here I leaf through my own notes like an absent-minded old man. I continue as his agitation builds, and at the moment he finally makes to interrupt, raise a finger to shush him.

  DW. I must say having the book wherein these incredible fancies are described would go a long way to establishing your sound mind.

  GB. But I don’t have it! Rockwell took it with him after the murders.

  DW. So Mr. Rockwell is a deadbeat, a mad scientist, and a wife-beater? Come, Mr. Barton, you pile fancy on top of fancy. What am I supposed to believe?

  GB. I never claimed he beat my mother. I said he killed her, you quack!

  *as the patient’s fine veneer of control finally cracked, I gave a sigh and slowly shook my head, as if in disappointment. In reality, I am euphoric! Once I have broken past Barton’s wall of fake ‘reason’, my real work can begin. I shall let him stew a while this time.

  July 29th, 1923

  DW. We meet again, Mr. Barton. You have had ample time to reflect on our last conversation, as have I.

  *shuffling of notes.

  DW. Your story last time about your step-father’s magical box… heady stuff. It unfortunately leaves many holes in the account of most importance to the police, and to me, the murders. How, for instance, did you come to be on the scene just when the police arrived?

  GB. Right. I passed out pressed against the coal hatch. Judging by the light leaking in I judged it to be about dawn. The horrible emanation from the laboratory was gone and all was silent. I do not count myself courageous. However much I dreaded Rockwell’s creation, I had to return to the lab or stay in the coal chute until discovered.

  I crept out of the coal bin to find two bodies and the horrid stench of acid and burned flesh. The box and notebook were gone. My mother was laid out on the floor as from a blow, and already cold. I would have believed the other corpse to be Rockwell myself, but for my long study of him over the previous weeks. The hair was carefully parted and combed, a practice he had abandoned long ago, and didn’t have any gray in it. The skin was too tanned and healthy looking, and I didn’t recognize his overcoat. There were other details too which in aggregate told me it could not be him.

  DW. I thought your mother was in Boston at the time.

  GB. So did I. It was a puzzle at first, but since then I have come to believe that Rockwell himself invited her. How else would she have known about Walnut Street? He set the whole thing up to frame me. Someone shut that coal hatch after I arrived. Someone telephoned the police to report gunshots at that address, but no one who actually lived in the apartment house admitted to making the report, or to hearing anything like gunfire, and as I said the bodies were already cold when I found them.

  *I waved this aside.

  DW. And what about the small matter of Mr. Rockwell’s corpse, discovered alongside that of your mother?

  GB. That wasn’t him. The face had been burned away with some kind of caustic agent.

  DW. Clever trick that, casting doubt on the identity of the victim, and there was some doubt. Mr. Rockwell was not employed as you have mentioned, and with his wife dead and his son the prime suspect, the police were at a loss. For a while. Yet the librarian at Miskatonic, a Mrs. Duncan, identified the body. He was a frequent visitor to the University Library, yes? And there was a very distinctive tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, a snake in a ring, head to tail, with some kind of cabalistic symbol within. The police found that compelling enough evidence of his identity.

  GB. The corpse was Rockwell’s partner. He had helped early on with locating the thing in the box, for the experiment. They both belonged to a secret society of some kind. That’s what the tattoo was for. Look, I told all of t
his to the police–

  DW. But you said nothing about a partner before now–

  *I saw now that his story was starting to fall apart.

  GB. He was only mentioned in passing. They had had a falling out and he wasn’t supposed to know about Walnut Street. I never saw him around the place.

  DW. Wheels within wheels, Mr. Barton. Whatever proofs are presented, you counter them. To yourself, these explanations are rational. But to those of us in full control of our faculties, your stories are phantasies. Your step-father killed some friend of his whom no one had ever seen –as far as everyone else knows, Rockwell was a loner– and, what? Tattooed his arm in order to fake his own death?

  GB. I told you, they had matching tattoos. He and Rockwell used to be part of secret group researching contact with this other world.

  *here I allow my thoughtful frown to evolve into eagerness. I lean forward as if to record something of great importance.

  DW. I see. That is something, Mr. Barton. And what was this partner’s name? There haven’t been any missing persons reported in the paper recently, but who knows.

  GB. I never knew his name. In the journal, Rockwell always referred to him as either ‘my former partner’ or some derogatory term.

  DW. Unfortunate. Events do seem to conspire against you. But how about this ‘secret society’, so-called? Surely we can get in touch with them and confirm that one of their members is missing? Are they similar to the Free Masons?

  GB. None of the others are left to be found. There had been eight originally, but they all died over the years pursuing their goal.

  *here his voice trails off, and his head droops forward ever so slightly, as if he feels for the first time the unforgiving weight of Sefton’s stone walls. Despair has overcome pride. Now we shall see what we shall see.

  July 31st, 1923

  *today, I allowed my patient to speak first. He prefaced the following with a deep breath.

  GB. Can I ask you something, Doctor? Can I be candid?

  DW. At all times, please.

  GB. Have you read the police report? Because I answered all their questions in detail. I offered them several possible leads–

  DW. I apologize, Mr. Barton. It appears I may have been unclear on a few points in our conversations so far. There is no police report.

  *the silence which met this revelation can truly be described as ‘golden’.

  DW. It was lost, weeks ago now.

  *the look on his face when I said this! If I could have captured it in a photograph, I would hang it above my desk.

  DW. To be fair to the police, they do have their hands full in our little town, don’t you agree? Are you quite well, Mr. Barton? Now that I think on it, I am certain I mentioned the missing police report before. I didn’t prattle on about it because I didn’t want to distress you any more than– Can you hear me, sir?

  *the patient made no further response, but collapsed onto his cot like a wet blanket fallen from a line. He was practically catatonic. Thus ended our shortest meeting to date, but by no means the least productive.

  *the orderly asked if I still wanted him to administer the afternoon sedative, to which I replied emphatically, ‘yes’. The layabouts here will do anything to get out of their duties.

  *of course the file was not really misplaced. The Arkham Police are undoubtedly buffoons, but to lose the file on a double murder would be incompetence on a whole new level, even for them. For all I know, they may have actually followed up on one or two of Mr. Barton’s ‘leads’, since he has been remanded to my care.

  August 3rd, 1923

  DW. How are we feeling today, Mr. Barton? Are you ready to continue with our discussions?

  *no reply

  DW. Mr. Barton? Anyone in there? It is typical for a patient to experience resentment after the first few sessions. You’re frustrated with the slow pace, you want everything resolved right away, but this is only a phase. Deep down you know that I am your friend.

  GB. Doctor, you don’t understand the urgency to find my Ward Rockwell. Other than being my mother’s killer, he’s utterly mad. I can’t imagine what the consequences of his discovery will be, but they cannot be good.

  *the patient affects a weariness with the world as if he had just returned from the War. However, I’ve prepared something to counter his hangdog facade.

  DW. As soon as I have all the facts in order, as presented by yourself, I will pass them along to the Arkham Police Department. I assure you that as soon as they find anything out, you will be the first to know.

  *I raised a hand to wipe imaginary sweat from my brow.

  DW. Hot in here, no?

  *I removed my lab coat, beneath which I was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt. At once, the patient made to grab me by the wrist, but I danced away from his grasp.

  *He insisted, vehemently, that I present my arm for his inspection. I knew what he wanted to see, but turned it away, affecting to study it myself, and declared that it was the same old arm I used every day.

  *he assaulted me, but I had forewarned Dean, the orderly on duty, that there might be trouble today and he was quick on his feet this once. While Dean’s hands were full, I quickly donned my coat and exited without the orderly spotting my secret. Judging by the screams and thuds that followed me down the corridor, his hands were indeed full.

  *that morning, with a bit of India Ink and using the police photograph as a guide, I had made a copy of Rockwell’s ‘secret society’ tattoo on my forearm in just the same place. Whatever his claims to the contrary, Barton was nothing if not murderous just then.

  August 10th, 1923

  *today I found the patient in what polite society calls ‘much reduced circumstances’. He lays confined in a straight-jacket in one of our private rooms. The floor is padded, as are the walls and even the door, to a height of six feet. My most recent prescription is ‘no stimulation’. There is no furniture, naturally. I have a chair brought in for myself. My entrance provokes no response.

  DW. Mr. Barton? If you’re not feeling well, we can delay..?

  *no one who has spent any amount of time in the ‘icebox’ will be keen to extend his stay, whatever the circumstance.

  GB. No, it is important that we continue. I apologize. The police must find him… Rockwell…

  *the patient’s voice fades off and his attention drifts. The sedatives linger longer than I had hoped. I snap my fingers, pretending impatience.

  DW. Yes, what did you say?

  GB. He must be in town still, for his experiment. There is something, he said in his journal, something about Arkham. He claimed the electro-magnetic signature made the town a ‘nexus’ for entities trying to cross over. He couldn't succeed anywhere else.

  *even now, with the highfalutin vocabulary! I doubt Mr. Barton has the merest inkling what ‘nexus’ means.

  DW. Cross over? You don’t mean ‘cross over’ the Miskatonic River I take it?

  *there in no replay to my little bit of humour. We are approaching that place where therapy can begin.

  DW. If you believe I have missed anything by not seeing this all-important police report, now is the time to fill me in. I’m waiting.

  GB. Yes. There is one more thing. Rockwell depended on opiates, powerful opiates, to cope with the stresses of operating his machine.

  *the pauses in his diction have become interminable, as if he speaks from the midst of an unpleasant dream.

  GB. If the police cannot find him, I can only hope that his drug-addled mind will fail him, and the final stage of his experiment will remain unfinished, like the remainder of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan… lost… forever.

  *a Coleridge reference, bah! Barton never went to university. If there’s one thing that gets under my skin, it’s phony intellectuals. Even if he wasn’t plainly as mad as a March hare, I would be tempted to keep him here a few months just to knock that ego down a few notches.

  *it looks like I will hear no more from him on Ward Rockwell or the murders.


  the last entry, two days ago…

  *Barton is for the time being totally unresponsive, but once I am able to cobble these notes together, they will make a fine start on an academic paper.

  ****

  ADDENDUM I:

  As with any new patient who is confined against his will, there are the usual complaints about the conditions of the facility and the forced medicinal treatment, and insistence upon legal counsel, access to a telephone, etc., etc., ad nauseam, ad infinitum. I have expurgated this commentary for ease of reading.

  ADDENDUM II:

  For the sake of protocol, I have submitted a much edited duplicate of this record to the official file at Sefton Asylum. This decision bends a few rules, but it is critical to the new process I am establishing that I not be bound by the Asylum’s antiquated ethical standards. Once Mr. Barton is cured, and in sound mind stands trial for the double-murder of his mother and step-father, my superiors will accept the necessity of this small deceit.

  An Excess of Radium

  It was two weeks ago today that the drifter first wandered onto my porch out back of Webb Road. It was still and hot, and the silence seemed to say that even the birds and bees had decided to sleep the day through. I had a clear view up the road for a half mile, and I had watched him wading through the heat shimmer to my house. I knew this was his destination. Nothing else around here.

  “Benjamin Wilson,” says he, “I’m Lionel Pardee. Pleased to meet you, sir!” His smile was brighter than a cop’s lamp at midnight. He proffered a hand –decorated with a fine gold ring– which I chose to ignore.

  “Uh-huh,” I replied. Close up he was tall and young, with a touch of baby fat still in his cheeks. He was dressed nice enough. His shoes had a polish too, quite a trick where there’s no paved road. The final clue was the combination of tanned face and soft hands. A drifter will always be a drifter, however you dress him up. His name wasn’t really ‘Pardee’ either, I’ll give you that one for free.