Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

  Dressed in an expensive suit from Brooks Brothers, Charles Warren looked, at first glance, like any number of Wall Street brokers, but one look at his pugnacious face, thunderous brow, and fist-fighter’s hands made it clear that he was not a man to be taken lightly. He turned away from the gleaming ship and made his way back into his office. The walls were covered with plans and blueprints, pinned invoices, and letters. A pair of drawing boards heaped with T-squares, protractors, and slide-rules sat unused at the back of the office, and his heavy pinewood desk was similarly chaotic.

  A pretty young woman sat in the corner, behind a smaller desk and a dented typewriter. He didn’t know her name, but it didn’t pay to learn their names. She looked nervous, some innate womanly instinct warning her that he was a dangerous man. She hadn’t been working for him long, barely a week, and had yet to feel the full force of his anger. She would, though. That was inevitable. The last girl’s body had been dumped quietly in the Hudson, and the scabs were still visible on Charles’s knuckles.

  “Any news?” he demanded, his gruff tone precisely conveying how bad it would be if her answer were not to his liking.

  “No, sir,” she said, swallowing hard. “No one’s called. I’m sorry.”

  He laughed at her pathetic attempt to apologize for something totally beyond her control, as though that might one day save her from his monstrous rage. This time it had. It wouldn’t a second time.

  Charles sat behind his desk, wondering if he should call the unlisted Arkham number he’d been given. He immediately decided that would be foolish. The caller had been very clear about how bad things would have to be to justify such a call. As self-absorbed as Charles Warren was, he knew enough to understand how much he would suffer if he displeased his master.

  The words of the earlier call still rang in his ears. A clipped New England voice had simply said that the final piece of the device had been lost, but that it would be retrieved forthwith. There had been no hint of contrition in the voice, though Charles knew the speaker would never demean himself with anything so prosaic as an apology.

  “Can I get you anything, Mr. Warren? Coffee maybe?” ventured the girl, seeking to defuse his simmering anger with pathetic blandishments.

  “No,” he said. “Go away. I’ll hurt you if you stay.”

  She gathered her coat and all but fled the office. He knew she would consider not coming in tomorrow, but the money was too good for a young thing like her to refuse. Booze, dresses, dancing, and cigarettes needed to be paid for. She would come in to work tomorrow as if nothing had happened. And one day soon he would beat her.

  The thought gave him a delicious thrill of excitement, like the last days of the war, when the urges that had beset him since childhood had been given free reign.

  When he had become a monster and been embraced for the fact.

  * * *

  Oliver studied Amanda as she settled into the chair opposite him and turned her attention to his bookshelf. They had left the classroom and climbed the steps to his office, where she had politely declined a glass of water and sat with the awkwardness of students throughout the world when in a professor’s inner sanctum.

  She was pretty, in a bookish sort of way, with straight blond hair and a heart-shaped face framed by half-moon glasses. Like most girls in higher education, her clothes were demure and sensible, not like the girls you saw in the movies dancing on tables and smoking like they were characters in The Beautiful and the Damned. After all, women were a new feature at American universities, and such bastions could never have been stormed by those dangerously exciting types.

  She smiled nervously, and Oliver saw she was at the point of regretting her decision to speak to him. Before her nerve failed her completely, he sat forward and steepled his hands before him on the desk.

  “So, Amanda, that was a rather remarkable thing you said in class.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’d be very interested in what you have to say.”

  “I feel stupid telling you this…”

  “Not at all. Imagine how I felt when I had to inform the university bursary that three years’ worth of research was wasted.”

  “I suppose,” said Amanda, “that must have been difficult.”

  “It wasn’t pleasant,” agreed Oliver, not wishing to relive that particular horror again. “But I don’t want to bore you with such stuffy matters.”

  “I should tell you what I saw, I guess.”

  Oliver nodded and took out a yellow legal pad and pencil, scribbling the date and Amanda’s name at the top of the page. “That would be most useful, Miss Sharpe. You don’t mind if I take notes?”

  She shook her head, keeping her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was nervous, scared even, and Oliver waited for her to begin. When she spoke it was with a soft voice, as though she were afraid of being overheard. Or was afraid of being ridiculed.

  “When I say I’ve seen the sunken city, I don’t mean literally, you understand? What I mean to say is that I’ve dreamed it. Almost every night for the last two weeks.”

  “You’ve dreamed it?” asked Oliver, almost disappointed.

  “Yes.”

  “And what happens in this dream?”

  “I’m floating on the surface of the sea, in the middle of a huge ocean. I can’t see any land, and it’s night I think. I can see stars overhead, turning like the intricate mechanisms of a clock as they slot into position. I don’t feel scared, but I know there’s something wrong, something just, I don’t know, not right.”

  “I see,” said Oliver, writing what Amanda said in his spidery handwriting. “Not right in what way?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Amanda, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap. “It’s just a feeling, like intuition, that something’s out of place. Like when you look at a movie screen. It looks real, but you know it’s not. It’s like someone has twisted the world just a little and it doesn’t fit anymore. I know that’s not a very good description, but that’s how it feels.”

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t think dream logic has to hold true to the strictures of the real world, Miss Sharpe. It’s quite understandable that some things feel out of place or otherwise distorted.”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, it’s not ‘cause it’s a dream that makes it seem out of alignment, it’s something else. Something below the water. And as soon as I realize that, I feel the current drag me under the water.”

  “How dreadful!”

  “I’m not scared, at least not yet. I can breathe and no matter how far down I go, I’m not cold or drowning. I don’t know how deep I go, but it feels like I’m going down forever and ever. It’s then I see the city and hear the chanting. That’s when I get scared.”

  “And what does this city look like?” asked Oliver.

  “It’s big, I mean really big. Like someone sank Manhattan, then dumped Chicago and Boston on top of New York. But it was ruined, like it had fallen all the way from the surface and hit the bottom with an almighty crash that toppled all the statues and buildings in a big pile.”

  Oliver leaned forward. “Can you describe any of these statues?”

  Amanda closed her eyes, and her eyes darted behind her lids. Frown lines appeared on her forehead and her skin went quite pale as though she were remembering something hideous. She flinched as though slapped by an invisible hand and when she opened her eyes, they were moist with tears.

  “They’re horrible, like one of those stitched together monsters in Mr. Barnum’s freak shows. They’re squatting things, like a gorilla or something, but their faces are missing.”

  “Missing? You mean the heads have been knocked off?”

  “No,” said Amanda, clearly distressed at her recall. “It’s more like you can’t see them.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s just tentacles there, as if it’s got a giant squid or octopus for a face.”

  Oliv
er rose from behind his desk and ran his thumb along the spines of the research materials he had gathered on the island of the Yopasi. When he came to the sketchbook he was looking for, he returned to his seat and opened it in front of Amanda.

  “Did it look anything like this?” he asked.

  Amanda looked down at the picture, a painted representation of the abode wherein dwelled the Yopasi’s demonic nemesis. The work was crude, without the benefit of perspective and realism, though that was perhaps a blessing. It was a riot of impossible dimensions, for no two angles seemed complete or possible, as though the stubborn reality of mathematics and planar geometry were cosmic laws that no longer held dominance.

  Amanda drew in a panicked breath and looked away, as though she had been shown a hideous photograph of a murder victim. She nodded and the tears that had been gathering on her eyelids now fell freely down her cheeks.

  “Yes, it looked just like that,” she gasped, dabbing her eyes with the sleeve of her green cardigan. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry, but it’s all getting a bit much for me. I’m scared to close my eyes, because I’m afraid I’ll see the city again.”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Oliver, ashamed that he had caused Amanda to cry, but the similarities between her dream vision and the city drawn by the Yopasi shaman were too great to ignore. The seaweed-hung statues of that ink-rendered city were virtually identical to those described by Amanda. She could not have seen this picture, which begged a stark and unanswerable question.

  How had she seen this city?

  Oliver pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Amanda, who smiled gratefully and dabbed her eyes. She nodded toward the sketchbook, but studiously avoided looking at the image on the paper.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the sunken city where the star-fallen is said to sleep,” said Oliver. “A Yopasi shaman named Kaula drew it for me, though it took months of persuasion and hard liquor to get him to put pen to paper.”

  Amanda sniffed and moved some papers from Oliver’s desk to cover the image.

  “How can I be dreaming of that place? I’ve never seen that drawing before.”

  “I was wondering that very thing, Miss Sharpe,” said Oliver. Afternoon sunlight shone through his blinds in crisp bars, yet the office seemed dark, as though low rain clouds pressed down on the world. “You couldn’t possibly have seen that image, but perhaps something else is at work, something not unlike the primal shared consciousness that linked the earliest shamans. Perhaps you too share a latent connection to the memory of this ancient sea devil, and some recently manifested sensory awareness has made you more sensitive to these visions.”

  Amanda gave him a sidelong look. “I’m sorry, professor, you’re losing me.”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous, and if I were you, I’d be tempted to call me a lunatic and have me sent to the asylum, but bear with me. This is a queer town, no mistake, and some of the texts Armitage keeps in the restricted section make for even stranger reading. There have been scores of documented cases where people sensitive to such things experience visions of things they cannot possibly have seen. Now, tell me, Miss Sharpe, you say you have been experiencing these dreams for two weeks. Can you be more precise? When exactly did they start? Was there a catalyst that brought them on, a precipitating event that might have caused you to begin seeing such things?”

  Amanda gave the matter some thought as Oliver took more notes in his pad, writing a complete record of their conversation. She chewed her bottom lip as she thought, until a light of clarity appeared in her eyes.

  “Yes, I remember,” she said. “I was looking for your class at the beginning of the semester, but went to the wrong floor. I ended up in the Department of Fine Arts and wandered around there until I realized I had to go up another story.”

  Amanda paused in her recollection, as though her mind had become fogged and uncertain. She cocked her head to one side, frowning as though trying to recall the name of a distant friend.

  “Before I found my way, I went down a corridor that led to an office. The door was shut, and looked like it hadn’t been opened in a very long time. It looked closed up, and closed up for a good reason, like the person whose office it was wouldn’t be coming back for a very long time. There was a picture on the wall, I think.”

  “A picture? Do you remember what the picture was?”

  “That’s the thing,” said Amanda. “I remember looking at it, but for the life of me I can’t remember anything about it, just impressions really. Sea, waves, and a mass of foam. It might have looked like a giant whirlpool. I’m sorry, I’m not being much help here.”

  “On the contrary, Miss Sharpe, you’re being a tremendous help. Was this corridor lit by an electric light fitting with one bulb cracked and lightless?”

  “Yes,” said Amanda, absurdly happy that this aspect of her memory seemed unaffected. “I remember thinking that it was a bit dark.”

  Oliver tapped his pencil on the legal pad. “That office you saw belonged to David Rosen, the university’s ‘artist-in-residence,’ and he hasn’t been in his room for some time. A couple of years ago, he started behaving rather strangely, painting all manner of disturbing canvases, many of which match your dreams and this image from the Yopasi. What do you think of that?”

  “I think it’s horrible,” said Amanda. “I wish I’d never seen that terrible painting.”

  “Well, yes, of course, but it’s intriguing, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” said Amanda. “Do you know how I can stop these dreams from coming? I’m scared to sleep, and I…I think I’m being watched.”

  “Watched? By whom?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amanda. “Just last week I was attacked as I was on my way home from the bank. I work as a teller at the First Bank of Arkham. It was dark and I didn’t see them, but I ran before they could grab me. I got home to Dorothy Upman Hall and told Rita, but she said they were probably after her.”

  Seeing Oliver’s look of puzzlement, Amanda said, “I share a dorm room with Rita Young, she’s a black girl from New Orleans. I’d borrowed her coat and she said that maybe the guys who jumped me mistook me for her. I believed her, but now I’m not so sure.”

  Oliver took a breath, shocked to hear that such a thing had happened so close to the campus grounds. Frat-boy pranks and drunkenness were as rowdy as this part of town usually got...until recently it seemed. To hear of another potentially violent assault was disturbing to say the least.

  “I take it you reported the matter to the police?” he asked.

  “No, there didn’t seem like much point,” said Amanda. “I figured Rita was probably right, and the cops probably weren’t going to make a big deal out of a black girl getting beaten up.”

  “I think you are maybe doing them a disservice, but I see your point,” said Oliver.

  “So what am I going to do?” asked Amanda. “How do I get these crazy dreams to stop?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Sharpe,” said Oliver. “But I promise you I will try to find out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Minnie looked him square in the eye and said, “Just so you know, Rex, honey. You owe me big time for this.”

  Rex smiled and wiped the rain from his forehead. Their stakeout of the athletics ground had lasted the better part of three hours, and despite the cold and enforced stillness, he was enjoying himself. Minnie had her camera set up on its tripod, draped in a waterproof tarp covered with leaves and branches to hide it from the casual observer.

  The lens was aimed at the murder scene, the area still taped off, but looking like it had been abandoned. Rex didn’t know why the cops were bothering to keep the area marked. The light rain earlier in the evening would surely have washed any remaining evidence away.

  “You can’t fool me, sweet cheeks,” said Rex. “I know you’re loving this as much as I am.”

  “True, but you still owe me,” she said.

  “Fair enough. This guy turns
up, I’ll treat you to a steak dinner at Anton’s. Good enough?”

  “Good enough,” she agreed with a triumphant grin. “And he’s gonna show.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I read a lot, you know? Police reports and scare stories from newspapers around the world. Seems like a lot of these sickos like to go back to the scene of the crime.”

  “What for?”

  “Beats me. Maybe to get some weird kick coming back and reliving the murder. Or maybe they just get their yuks from knowing the cops don’t have a thing on them, like Leopold and Loeb did until they got caught.”

  Switching tack, she said, “You know how good it feels when you think you’ve gotten away with something? I think maybe this guy’s like that.”

  Rex gave her an admiring look. “Clever girl, we’ll make a reporter out of you yet.”

  “Why would I want that?” smiled Minnie. “I prefer being an artist to a hack.”

  “You cut me deep, milady,” answered Rex. “But I like your thinking. In any case, this is the best chance we got until we get word back from the state bureau in Boston about those plates.”

  “I’d bet the farm it’s an ex-soldier.”

  Rex returned his attention to the athletics ground, feeling a tremor of unease as his gaze roamed the empty bleachers and football stand. It was funny how an absence of daylight could make even the most humble structures look threatening. What was, during the day, full of lively fans and cheering supporters, now seemed like some dismal amphitheater, an elevated box where emperors watched gladiators fight to the death.

  Places that ought to be filled with life should never be visited when empty. It made them dreary and dreadful. Rex let his stream of consciousness flow though him and into his pencil, letting the tip scratch its way across the page.

  Place of execution?

  Dumping ground?

  Body not concealed. Killer wanted it to be found.

  A murder done for show as much as the act itself.

  “Pretty perceptive,” said Minnie, reading over his shoulder.

  “Just some thoughts,” muttered Rex.