Arkham Horror- Ire of the Void

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Good evening, madam,” said Schmidt. “My colleague and I are scientists from the university. We’re conducting research that requires us to take some readings in your home. I promise it won’t take long, and we’ll leave everything as we found it.”

  The woman scowled. “Mr. Page—my husband—says never let anyone in when he’s not here.” She started to close the door.

  Schmidt whisked a folded dollar bill from his pocket. “Naturally, we wouldn’t dream of asking without offering to compensate you for your trouble.”

  Mrs. Page hesitated. “I’d have to leave the door open.”

  “Of course,” said Schmidt.

  She grabbed the money. The physicist shot Norman a wink as the door swung open.

  The cramped apartment seemed an unlikely place for a scientific breakthrough, but Schmidt’s enthusiasm remained undiminished. He took the bag from Norman, flipped up the latches, and brought out a thermometer. He then moved about the apartment, repeatedly stopping and recording the temperature in various spots. Mrs. Page regarded him with perplexity writ large on her pinched, blotchy face.

  Norman knew how she felt. “What does this have to do with space-time?” he asked at length.

  Schmidt shrugged. “I had a hunch. Maybe it was wrong, or maybe the differential is so slight the thermometer can’t detect it. Either way, what comes next is more important.”

  He returned to the valise and produced a carpenter’s level and squares of cardboard. Inserting the latter under the legs of Mrs. Page’s dining room table as needed, he rendered it rock-steady despite the uneven flooring beneath.

  After that, he brought out a small triple beam balance scale, set it on the table, and put a lead one-gram weight on the platform. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to weigh one gram.

  Despite himself, Norman felt his earlier disgruntlement creeping back. He had not known what to expect, but surely a revolutionary discovery in physics required more than pointless fiddling with the most basic of instruments.

  Then again, Einstein had supposedly arrived at his extraordinary insights through thought alone. After all, a telescope was simply pieces of glass in a tube, and now that Norman had come this far, what did he have to lose by seeing the venture through? If it all turned out to be “bushwa,” he could at least take comfort that, for once, he wasn’t the one who looked the fool.

  “What did that accomplish?”

  “Nothing yet,” Schmidt answered, “but now we move the table. We’ll have to re-level it with each placement.”

  “I would assume so.” Norman took hold of an end.

  They shifted the table about, and for the first half-dozen placements, one gram was one gram. Then, when the platform was partway across the yellowed linoleum floor of the kitchen, the weight registered ever so slightly less. Schmidt crowed and clapped his hands together.

  The German seemed so elated that Norman rather hated to dampen his moment of triumph. Still, Occam’s razor and simple common sense obliged him to speak. “It’s likely,” he said, “that we simply didn’t get the table leveled properly. Or else the scale slipped out of adjustment.”

  “Then we’ll check both,” Schmidt replied, “and weigh again.”

  They did. The reading was the same as before. The physicist brought out a tape measure and used it to define the scale’s position in relation to fixed reference points in the room.

  As he held his end of the tape, Norman felt lightheaded. Could the variance possibly be real?

  One obvious alternative was that, at some point in his life, Schmidt had acquired the skills of a prestidigitator and was using them to perpetrate a hoax, possibly switching one weight for another. But Norman could not imagine why a scientist with a first-rate reputation and bright future to protect would stoop to such a fraud, nor did the notion jibe with his sense of the young man’s character.

  No matter how carefully the two scientists leveled the table and checked the scale—and how keenly Norman watched Schmidt, just in case the latter was attempting chicanery after all—the next several placements yielded similarly anomalous results. Gradually a pattern, a gradient, emerged. Objects became ever so slightly lighter, which meant gravity became marginally weaker, as one approached the icebox in the corner of the kitchen.

  As he helped shift the table and held his end of the measuring tape, Norman’s initial stupefaction gave way to an excitement akin to Schmidt’s. He was no nearer to solving his own scientific puzzle, but he was not quite so fixated on it as to render him indifferent to someone else’s amazing discovery, nor was it lost on him that his participation, even in a secondary role, might redeem his colleagues’ disdainful opinion of him.

  Gradually, though, as he and Schmidt shifted the table progressively closer to the icebox, his emotions altered once again. His interest remained, but a growing uneasiness undercut it. Eventually, like an image coming clear when one focused a telescope, the anxiety resolved itself into the suspicion that he and the German were being observed.

  As they were. When he glanced around, Mrs. Page was viewing the work with an expression that proclaimed her conviction that her visitors were out of their minds.

  Clearly, her scrutiny must be the source of Norman’s edginess, but to his annoyance, realizing that did not banish the feeling. His mouth remained dry, and a clumsy tightness persisted in his limbs.

  The moment came when the table was flush with the icebox and the final weight recorded. Schmidt reached into the corner.

  Norman wanted to shout, Don’t! But he didn’t want to appear ridiculous, so he remained silent.

  Schmidt felt around the space where one wall met the other. Unlike the weighings, nothing about the manner in which his fingertips tapped the faded wallpaper was peculiar. Still, Norman’s sense of being observed intensified, and although he assured himself it was just some fleeting, meaningless agitation of the nerves, he nonetheless felt relieved when Schmidt drew back his hand.

  They restored the table to its original position, and Schmidt repacked the valise. Giving Mrs. Page a smile, he said, “Thank you for your patience. Should it prove necessary, may we call again?”

  She shrugged. “If you keep making it worth my while.”

  4

  After returning the valise to the Bearcat’s trunk, Schmidt clapped Norman on the back. “The first house we checked!” he exclaimed. “The very first!”

  “What we found was remarkable,” Norman replied. “That is, assuming there isn’t another explanation, and the observations can be replicated.”

  Schmidt waved the comment away. “They will be.”

  “If so,” said Norman, “unexplainable fluctuations in gravity are an extraordinary discovery. But we didn’t find a discontinuity in space-time.”

  “True. We’re not hitting on all six yet. But what a start!” The physicist extracted a silver case from a pocket of the Lindbergh jacket and offered a celebratory cigarette to Norman. Hoping for some exotic European flavor, the American was a bit disappointed that the tobacco tasted pretty much the same as the Chesterfields that were his accustomed brand.

  Exhaling smoke, he said, “Do you have any thoughts as to why no discontinuity was in evidence?”

  “At this point,” Schmidt replied, “we know so little that any speculation is little more than guesswork. But, that said, what if the discontinuity was unstable? The unfortunate patriots disappeared all the way back in 1774. That gave the breach a century-and-a-half to close. Or shrink to microscopic size.”

  “Maybe. If the discontinuities come and go, that would explain how people like the Pages can live in the same places where others disappeared and never notice anything odd.”

  “It also raises the possibility that there may not be any open breaches left in Arkham. But I refuse to be pessimistic after such a promising beginning! I prefer to believe that if we simply work our way down the list, we’ll find one. Let’s get a wiggle on!”

  5

  The scientists’ next stop was South Church its
elf, or rather, the small graveyard adjacent to it. As they began their work, a priest who introduced himself as Father Michael arrived to ask what they were doing but, invoking his status as a professor at Miskatonic, Norman satisfied the man as to their bona fides.

  Unfortunately, the outdoor site posed longer-lasting hindrances, such as the lack of Mrs. Page’s dining room table and the floor on which it sat. Schmidt’s valise proved to contain a folding table with stubby telescoping legs that was just big enough to hold the balance scale, but it was less convenient to keep bending over it and more difficult to level it on the ground.

  The greatest hindrance, however, was that while the accounts that had drawn Schmidt to this location indicated that three people had vanished—a sexton digging a grave in 1845, a widow come to put roses on her husband’s final resting place in 1889, and a pair of truant schoolboys as recently as 1909—they did not indicate where in the cemetery the disappearances had occurred. Thus, it was necessary to perform exploratory weighings all around the rectangular space within the waist-high fieldstone walls.

  As the two men labored among crumbling tombstones and ivy-covered mausoleums, gray clouds smothered the sun, threatened rain, and brought a hint of autumn chill. Still, Schmidt worked on with cheerful enthusiasm. Something, pride perhaps, compelled Norman to try to match the younger man’s energy even when his lower back began to ache.

  Eventually they made their way to the northeastern quadrant of the graveyard. As he slipped cardboard under a table leg, Norman abruptly felt a renewed suspicion of scrutiny. With it came another pang of trepidation, even though the feeling of being spied upon was plainly more baseless than before. Mrs. Page was not here, and Father Michael had gone back inside the church.

  Schmidt set the weight on the scale. “Voilà! Only this time, the weight is heavier instead of lighter.”

  Norman tried to keep any irrational anxiety out of his voice. “What do you make of that?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s interesting. Now we have to figure out where the trail of anomalies leads from here.”

  Norman hesitated, then shoved away the pusillanimous urge. He pointed to the spot where the low cemetery wall took a right-angle bend. “We should try that direction first.”

  Schmidt cocked his head. “Why?”

  “In Mrs. Page’s apartment, the gradient led to a corner.”

  “It’s difficult to imagine that’s any more than a coincidence, but I don’t have a better suggestion. So why not?”

  It soon became apparent that Norman’s hunch was correct. Schmidt whooped and gave him another clap on the shoulder.

  As before, the gravitational disturbances spread out in a fan shape from a presumed point of origin. Only this time, in place of a steady gradient, the weight was too heavy in one spot, too light at the next, and too heavy again at the third.

  His heart thumping, Norman conjectured the difference reflected the fact that the previous discontinuity had opened in 1774 and this one as recently as 1909. Perhaps when they did, they created gravitational chaos, and after they closed, the anomalies settled toward a more orderly resting state.

  But that was not how the situation felt. Crazy though it was, his imagination suggested that gravity was more disturbed than before because the invisible watcher was staring more intently. Or more maliciously. He wondered if he and Schmidt were like prey obliviously approaching a hungry tiger hidden in tall grass.

  He reached to pick up the scale and nearly knocked it over. “Are you all right?” asked Schmidt.

  Norman swallowed. “Fine.”

  “Are you sure? Your hands are trembling,”

  Norman forced a smile. “I’m not as young as you, but I’m not going to fall over dead, either. Not and miss out on all the excitement.”

  Had he been candid about it, he would have said he was not going to disgrace himself by succumbing to groundless fear. He did not know what ailed him—maybe he would see his doctor when he had the chance—but he was a scientist, and he was going to behave as such.

  They reached the juncture of the two walls. Schmidt waved his hands through the air above. Norman held his breath, and…nothing happened.

  Schmidt dropped to one knee and Norman’s anxiety ratcheted up another notch. He had to struggle not to wince despite himself as his thoughts returned to the crouching tiger he had imagined previously. No such beast was present—obviously—but if one entertained the fantasy that it was, Schmidt had just put himself eye to eye with it.

  The physicist felt around the gray, fitted fieldstone, and the corner proved to be as solid as it looked. No hitherto undetected hole in the substance of things yawned in response to the probing.

  Schmidt rose and brushed off his pant leg. “Do you want to try?”

  “No!” Norman yelped. He took a breath. “I mean, I don’t see a point. You were thorough. I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t mere moments before.”

  “Suit yourself. I just don’t want to hog the fun.” Thunder rumbled, and a first raindrop plopped on Norman’s shoulder. “Let’s pack up and get some supper. My treat, and I insist on somewhere expensive.”

  As they walked toward the cemetery gate, Norman’s sense of being watched faded, as did the anxiety that accompanied it. He resolved that he would not succumb to such idiocy again. Or permit himself to harbor the suspicion that he and Schmidt had now been lucky twice.

  6

  Paneled in dark oak with frosted Art Nouveau wall fixtures providing soft illumination, Drew’s was one of Uptown’s better restaurants. Once, Norman had been a regular. After he witnessed the six stars vanishing, though, a visit to any such establishment came to feel like a waste of time better spent in his study. Now, dining on shepherd’s pie, he rather felt he had been cheating himself.

  The unavailability of wine or beer to accompany one’s meal had provoked Schmidt into a humorous lamentation on the puritanical American character and the absurdity of Prohibition, but now that the food had arrived, he did not appear to miss alcohol all that much. He was attacking his broiled Boston scrod with the gusto he brought to everything in life.

  Norman sipped his coffee. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the elephant’s eyebrows,” the German replied, “and there’s nothing like discovering something to give a scientist an appetite.”

  Norman grunted. “I suppose.”

  “What’s eating you, partner? Most of the time, you seem as excited as I am, but every once in a while, you turn into a bit of a wurp.”

  Norman’s immediate impulse was to deny it. Then, however, it occurred to him that he could in some measure acknowledge his edginess without mentioning imaginary watchers or admitting to irrational anxiety attacks.

  “I just wonder,” he said, “if you’re being a little reckless.”

  Schmidt cocked his head. “How so?”

  “Your hypothesis is that the discontinuities exist and people occasionally blunder through them never to be seen again, and there you are groping around for them with your bare hands. What if you fall in?”

  The physicist grinned. “Then I’ll have the most glorious adventure any scientist ever had.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Well, in principle, but in practice, perhaps you raise a valid point. Suppose I do the initial probing with a stick. Will that make you feel better?”

  “Yes.” A little, anyway.

  “Then that’s how we’ll do it.” Schmidt pushed his plate away, dabbed at his lips with his napkin, and set it on the table. “Are you game for one more site before we seek out one of these juice joints I’ve heard so much about?”

  Norman frowned. “It’s dark, and it’s raining.”

  “I’m sure we can find flashlights and umbrellas, and we’ll choose another indoor location. Come on, what do you say?”

  Norman reminded himself that he had resolved to put irrational anxiety behind him. “All right. One more.”

  7

  The farm—if it still w
as a working farm—lay beyond the city limits of Arkham, on a narrow unpaved road that twisted west from the Aylesbury Pike. The land near the road was overgrown, and no lights shined in the house in the distance. If not for the flashes of lightning, Norman might have missed seeing the vague black mass of it and the larger shape that was the barn.

  A chain hung across the drive with a tin No Trespassing sign wired to the middle of it. The wind tugged at their umbrellas as he and Schmidt shined their tungsten-filament flashlights on the sign. The chain was not rusty, and weather had yet to fade or stain the lettering.

  That felt incongruous, but Norman supposed it shouldn’t, really. Whether or not anyone was farming the land, someone presumably still owned it.

  “It’s a good thing the equipment weighs no more than it does,” said Schmidt. “We can ankle the rest of the way.”

  Norman frowned. “The sign says—“

  “Oh, come on! We’re not going to hurt anything. No one will even know we were here.” He grinned. “For science!”

  Norman returned a grudging smile. “Very well. For science.”

  He opened the trunk, and Schmidt took out the valise. Norman gave the Bearcat a last look, decided no harm would come to it parked where it was on the side of the lonely road, and followed his companion as the German stepped over the chain and headed up the drive.

  The wind gusted, and cold rain slipped beneath his umbrella to spatter him. The brush rustled and swayed as though animals were moving through it, although only blackness showed in the gaps between branches. Norman resisted the urge to play his flashlight beam across the overgrowth just to make sure.

  “Do we want the house or the barn?”

  “The barn,” Schmidt replied. “In 1871, a farmer went in and never came out. In 1910, virtually the same thing happened again, this time to the missing man’s eldest son.”