By the end of the epidemic, God only knew how many had died. It had taken at least a year before the mood of the city returned to normal and people began to breathe the air like they were enjoying it, instead of fearing it might kill them. The deserted streets, the boarded up stores and the people crossing the street to avoid you: that was Boston at the height of the epidemic.
And that was how Arkham felt right now. Like a city that people wanted to abandon, but were too afraid or too poor to leave.
Arkham wasn’t in the grip of a disease, but the unspoken fear that hid in plain sight behind its inhabitants’ eyes was all too apparent to Finn. Nobody was speaking of it, but everywhere he went he saw people go about their business with unaccustomed speed, refusing to linger where once they might have stopped to gossip about the weather, an upcoming fair, the latest church choir, or some other refuge of normality.
The streets around the schools were quiet, like the kids had been taken out of classes by scared parents, and the playgrounds were empty at recess. The teachers were keeping those few kids they had in class indoors, fearing something unutterable might happen were they to be left outside for even a moment. The town was quiet, weirdly so. Even the birds seemed to know something was wrong, keeping silent and close to their nests rather than venturing into the tainted sky above Arkham.
Finding those bodies under the bridge had scared the bejesus out of Arkham’s inhabitants. It was the final straw that had forced them to finally admit there was something unwholesome lurking beneath the carefully maintained New England façade. The surface had cracked, and Finn had seen dozens of cars and trucks hit the road by way of the turnpikes heading toward Boston and Essex. Some of those people would be back, some wouldn’t, but none of those who left could meet the eyes of those who remained behind. To flee was cowardice, but to stay was more than many could bear.
Finn didn’t blame them for leaving. He could sense the feeling of impending doom as well, a drum-taut tension in the air, like the hours before a big storm hits. Shadows seemed more menacing. Days felt shorter and the nights endless, as though the light were fighting a losing battle for supremacy over the long, fear-filled darkness. A heavy sense of foreboding lurked at the threshold of sensation, and Finn fought the urge to pack up what few possessions he owned and leave town.
But where would he go and what would he do?
He had no answer to those questions, and the thought was discarded as soon as it appeared. Finn had decided to face whatever was coming the moment he had seen young Jimmy torn to pieces by those flying monsters. Besides, he knew in his bones that the crimson-robed priest who’d led the army of cannibal monsters would find him no matter where he went.
The desire to flee was, paradoxically, tempered by the very danger that hung over Arkham like a gathering thunderhead. Better to face it on his terms than to be forever looking over his shoulder. Besides, he still had his revolver and ten bullets for anything that came for him. It was an old gun—battered, scraped, and well-used—but it had never let him down.
God help any bastard who tried to kill him.
At least the first ten of them.
* * *
Stone walked Oliver back to his home in Easttown. By the time he closed his door on the Pinkerton man it was past midnight. Fitful beams of streetlights and the faint glow of the moon lighted his home. He made his way unsteadily to the bottom of the stairs, gripping the banister tightly as he swayed on the deceptively level floorboards.
It had been an interesting evening he decided, and then laughed at the fabulous understatement of the thought. Monsters had tried to kill him, and he let out another bray of hysterical laughter.
The booze had smoothed the rough edges enough for him to converse with Gabriel Stone, but as its effects began to wear off, the full horror of what might have happened in his office struck Oliver forcefully.
He imagined the office door breaking down and the dog-faced killers bursting in to tear him limb from limb and gnaw the flesh from his bones. Like everyone in Arkham, Oliver had heard the tall tales of ghoulish eaters of the dead that lingered in the shadow-haunted catacombs beneath the graveyards, but every town in New England had versions of such macabre superstition.
He wanted to go upstairs to bed, but his body had had enough, and he collapsed on the bottom step, sobbing at the nearness of death. What had he stepped into? What manner of world had he become part of, with its star-spanning horrors from beyond space, who possessed no concept of good and evil? In context of such extra-terrene entities, what did such notions even matter? Good and evil were simply humanistic ideas, and did not apply to creatures that had once ruled this world and were destined to rule it again if ancient prophecy and myth were to be believed.
The walls of his house, once homely and welcoming, were now suffocating and imprisoning. His books and papers were meaningless collections of ephemera, inconsequential and worthless in the face of humanity’s ultimate extinction. Oliver could barely grasp the edges of the world he inhabited, every certainty and pillar upon which his world had rested was now revealed to be as insubstantial as mist.
He rose angrily and went to the first shelf he could reach, tearing the books out and hurling them across the room. His rage and fear consumed him. Oliver emptied his shelves, a library’s worth of information and knowledge strewn around and discarded like so much trash. Oliver howled in inchoate rage, breaking the spines of books accumulated over two decades of study and academic research. Papers were torn, books broken, and diplomas smashed from the walls.
His rage spent, Oliver collapsed in the middle of the room, surrounded by the debris of his hysterical vandalism. With his hands over his face, he wept for his species, his soul, and the lives that walked through this world with no inkling of the infinitely terrible things surrounding them.
How he envied them!
Oliver’s breath and heart rate finally slowed, and he took a heaving breath as his mind fought to hold onto the frayed ends of sanity remaining to him. Was this how Henry had felt after reading those terrible books in the French chateau? And Morley Dean? Had this been what had driven him to seek solace within the walls of an asylum for the mad? Both these men had faced horrors and succumbed to them. Of the two, Morley had emerged from his time of madness to make his solitary way in the world, but Henry remained lost in his delusions.
It had taken four years for Henry’s mind to collapse, whereas Oliver had been reduced to lunatic aggression in the space of a few days. What kind of ally would he make for Alexander if his mind could not face up to such truths without buckling? How terrible it must have been for Henry to know the truth of the world and feel it eating away at his mind with terrifying inevitability.
Thinking of Henry and Morley brought a measure of calm to Oliver, and though he knew he teetered on the brink of an endless abyss from which there could be no escape, he willingly stared into its blackness. He felt it looking back at him, daring him to accept its truth and yet still present a quotidian face to the world. Could he do that?
He stared at the destruction he had wrought on his own possessions and knew the answer to that question.
Slowly and with infinite care, Oliver began replacing every book and paper on his shelves.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Funny how you could get used to almost anything given enough time, thought Amanda. Her wrists didn’t hurt as much from the iron fetters and she’d given up trying to ignore the hunger pains in her stomach. The darkness of the cave wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been when she’d first woken up, and even the strange snuffling, grunting snorts of the chained creatures in the caves seemed less threatening.
Or perhaps that was just the fatigue talking.
Rita lay next to her, breathing in short, shallow gasps as she dreamed fitfully. Amanda had lost track of time, and didn’t know whether days or weeks had passed since that night at the Commercial. With no sunlight to leaven the gloom, the passage of time became impossible to judge. There had been no
contact with the robed men to give any indication of how long they had been here.
The only change in their environment had come when they’d heard through their drowsiness the creak and clang of metal as the cage doors were opened and the pale-skinned monsters were allowed to slunk from their confinement to venture beyond the cave. Rita and Amanda had listened to them leave, barking and hooting to one another as though they were talking. Here and there Amanda had thought she recognized a word, but that was surely just her imagination.
Rita stirred from her uneasy sleep and rolled onto her side.
“What… Where?” she said, before remembering where she was.
“Hey you,” said Amanda, her voice little more than a faint croak. She was so thirsty, and licking the brackish moisture from the rock walls was hardly a substitute for a long drink of water. Even at the fullest extent of their chains, they couldn’t reach the edge of the inky black pool, though from the smell of it, Amanda figured that was a blessing.
“Oh hell,” said Rita. “It wasn’t just a nightmare.”
“No,” said Amanda. “I’m afraid it’s not.”
“I miss anything?” said Rita, sitting upright and massaging her belly with the heels of her palms. She groaned in hunger.
“I don’t think so,” said Amanda. “I think I dozed for a little bit, but I don’t really remember. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” said Rita, her voice little more than a croak. “What I wouldn’t give to have Mama Josette here right now. Or my daddy with his shotgun. Both would be nice.”
Amanda didn’t say anything, not entirely happy with Rita’s faith in such strange beliefs. Everything she’d heard about voodoo, which admittedly wasn’t much, told her that it was bad news. Right now, though, she’d take any help they could get.
“Those things come back yet?”
“I don’t think so,” said Amanda. “Where do you think they went?”
“I don’t wanna know. Probably off killing for those robed-up sons of bitches.”
It felt good to hear a curse so earthy and grounded when their world had been turned upside down.
Amanda sighed, “At least they haven’t come back downstairs.”
“Who?”
“The men in robes. I thought they’d come back with some food.”
“Food? Where do you think we are, a hotel?”
“No, but if they’re going to keep us here, they need to feed us.”
“I don’t think they plan to keep us here all that long,” said Rita. “Leastways, it’s not like they’re going to head out and get us some somethin’ fresh from Velma’s Diner.”
“Oh, let’s not talk about food anymore,” begged Amanda. “I’m so hungry I could eat until I burst.”
“Sorry,” said Rita. “But you brought it up.”
“Golly, I’m so hungry,” said Amanda, leaning her head back on the cave wall.
“They’re just trying to get us so weak that we’ll do what they want.”
Amanda pulled at her chains and whispered a swear word under her breath.
“But it’s all so unnecessary,” she pouted. “You heard what they told me. I have to tell them about my dreams or they’ll kill you.”
“You ain’t thinking of saying anything are you?” said Rita, sitting up suddenly.
“Of course,” said Amanda. “You think I’d let them hurt you?”
“Don’t be foolish,” said Rita, turning to look her straight in the eye. “You tell them about your dreams and we’re both dead.”
“But they’ll feed you to those…things.”
Rita shook her head. “They’ll do that anyway. Now you listen here, Amanda Sharpe, don’t you say nothing to no one about your dreams. If they want to know what you been dreaming about, it ain’t for any good reason I can think of. All this talk of ‘Great Old Ones’ smacks of some real black magic to me, and if what you been seeing helps these bastards out, then you got to hold on tight to that. Don’t breathe a word of it, you hear me?”
Amanda nodded, but said, “I won’t let them hurt you. I can’t watch them…do anything to you. I just can’t.”
“Don’t you worry none about me,” said Rita. “I got some moves.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rita held up her right hand, which glistened red with blood. It took Amanda a moment to realize what was different about it. Her hunger and thirst had dulled her mind so much that she didn’t at fist register that Rita’s hand was no longer confined to the manacle.
“Your hand!” cried Amanda. “How did you—”
“Quiet down, Mandy,” hissed Rita. “You want the whole world to know?”
“Sorry,” said Amanda, clamping a hand over her mouth. “But how?”
“I told you. I got moves. And I got skinny wrists and a high tolerance for pain.”
Before Amanda could say more, distant light from one of the barred cells filtered into the cave, followed by squealing grunts that might have been pain or triumph. It was hard to tell. A door opened somewhere above them and more light spilled into the cave as a trio of robed figures made their way down the carved steps.
Rita put her hands behind her back and slumped against the cold wall. She gestured at Amanda to do the same. The two girls watched as the robed priest followed two of his acolytes into the cave. It was impossible to tell whether it was the same two they had first encountered, but there was no mistaking the terrible purpose emanating from their leader.
One of the figures unlocked a grate in the wall, and a bedraggled group of shapes emerged into the light. Two of the dog-faced monsters, their pallid flesh streaked with blood, hauled in two more. One of the dragged bodies was clearly dead, its chest punctured by two cratered wounds that looked like bullet holes. Its body was dropped unceremoniously upon the floor and Amanda saw its back was a ruined mess of blood and bone fragments. The gun that had made those holes in its chest must have been a heavy caliber. Amanda’s dad had taught her and her brother to shoot as soon as they were able to hold a pistol, and while her brother was the better shot, Amanda had held her own. Right now she wished she had her dad’s .38 revolver to finish the job on the rest of them. The other beast being carried wept blood from two gunshot wounds in its belly and chest, and its breath heaved in tortured hikes.
The creature the robed priest had called Latimer appeared to have lost an eye, and his monstrous companion had taken a bullet to the shoulder. The priest barked a string of guttural commands, unintelligible to Amanda’s ears, but somehow understood by the monsters.
The wounded beast dropped to its knees, and it squealed in terror. It raised its hands in supplication, but there was no mercy to be had. Latimer’s claws slashed out and tore the kneeling beast’s throat. Blood arced across the chamber, squirting like a punctured pressure hose. The creature gurgled in pain and fear, falling onto its front and convulsing in its pitiful death throes. Another command was issued, horrid and animal and hideous that it had issued from a man’s throat.
The two surviving beasts fell upon their dead brothers, clawing and biting in a frenzy of hunger. Raw chunks of meat were torn from chests and thighs, lifted to bloodied jaws, and devoured whole. They attacked the corpses with tooth and claw, ripping flesh, snapping bones, and sucking the marrow as if they’d been starved for weeks.
Amanda buried her head in Rita’s shoulder as the butchery continued, the slurping, smacking, chewing, and tearing noises too terrible to contemplate. This was no genteel feast, but a frenzy of diabolical appetite. Snapped off limbs were hurled aside, bones gnawed clean of meat were discarded like trash and scooped out skulls were tossed into the water.
At last it was over, and Amanda looked up to see the red robed priest standing before her. She tried to see past the shadows clinging to his face beneath his hood, but the fuliginous darkness was impenetrable and she could see nothing.
“Amanda,” he said, his voice sounding almost reasonable. “You see now that my ghouls are no
ne too tender in their mercies. Do you really want to see Rita thrown to them? Their hunger has been sated for a moment, so they probably wouldn’t kill her quickly. I imagine they might gnaw her leg to the bone for a day. Then perhaps they would move on to the arms, taking a finger at a time as a snack. And after that they might kill her as they look for sweeter morsels in the belly or skull. Can you imagine listening to your friend as she screams for death? Think of hearing Rita beg for mercy that you can give her as she is slowly eaten alive over a period of days.”
“Don’t you tell him nothing, Amanda!” spat Rita.
The priest loomed over Rita and backhanded her across the face. Her head snapped back and she spat a mouthful of blood.
“Please! Don’t hurt her!” cried Amanda.
“I won’t,” said the priest. “But I can make no such promise for Latimer and his brothers. You can end this now by telling me everything I want to know. I gave you time to consider your position and to understand the seriousness of this matter, but now I require an answer.”
“Don’t you say nothing,” hissed Rita. “Keep your mouth shut!”
“We’ll see how brave you are when you see your body being eaten in front of you,” said the priest, gesturing toward where the ghouls swallowed whole handfuls of raw, bloodied meat. “Time is now of the essence, so I will return again this evening. If you are still of a mind to resist, then that is when Rita will die. The choice is yours, Amanda.”
Amanda blinked back tears and said, “I’m not telling you anything.”
The man shook his head, as though disappointed.
“You will change your mind, I promise.”
“No,” said Amanda. “I won’t.”
“We’ll see,” said the priest, as his robed acolytes herded the flesh-sated ghouls back into their cave cells. With a final shake of his head, the priest turned and ascended the stairs, his acolytes in tow, leaving Amanda and Rita in the familiar twilight of their prison. The occasional grunt and smack of lips from within the monsters’ cells echoed as the ghouls ate the last mouthfuls of their ghastly meal.